Blood Music (31 page)

“Put her down? Don't you want her? Come here.” One step more. If he reached for her now he would probably miss. She stood. “Put the baby down, Pat.”

“You're beginning to get on my nerves, hon.” His voice was rising again. Mary wailed.

“If you put her down I can get her to go to sleep.”

“You shouldn't have gone into the van,” he said quietly. “I never wanted to kill you. But now—well,” smiling a little, the arm holding the knife slackening, lowering, “now that I have no choice I find it isn't really such a hard decision. Is it, Zelly? Not really so hard at all.”

“Pat,” Zelly said softly, “put the baby back in the crib.” Her husband continued to look past her. “I didn't think you'd ever find out,” he said. “But now that you have . . . well. But maybe not the baby, huh, hon? Maybe.” He turned and bent a little, lowering Mary into her crib. Zelly tried to keep her face impassive. “That's right, Pat. Put her in her crib,” and his eyes snapped back toward hers and his arms snapped back up and the baby wailed again.

“You think I'm stupid, bitch?” he screamed, and then suddenly he did bend down, and he gently put Mary back into the Port-O-Crib. For a moment his head was down—the crib was on the floor—and he wasn't looking at Zelly but she didn't move.

Pat rooted around a second and found a bottle under the blankets and put it gently in his daughter's mouth and smiled down at her. Then he straightened up and smiled at his wife. He raised the knife a little, showing it to her, and took a step toward her across the room. “And maybe yes,” he said, “after.”

There was nothing else in the world but the baby, not even the knife. Already Mary had almost stopped crying, the way babies do; she was sucking the bottle even though her breathing was still snaggled every third or fourth breath by strangling sobs: When Pat took his hands away from her (holding the knife awkwardly away from her body as he used both hands to put her into the crib) Zelly felt a cold thrill on her own body just where Pat's hands had touched her daughter's. Pat took another step. If he went after her the baby would be safe. Another step. Cold just above the knees, as though she had been lifted out of cold water. The baby would be safe. When Zelly turned and ran, the cold chill raced up over her whole body and out the top of her head.

There was a light at the top of the stairs. The stairs were across a dark room; the darker bulk of a sofa crouched in one corner like an animal. There were chairs, a patterned rug. The room was bigger than the ones John had already gone through, and it was airier. The living room. The man was upstairs, John was certain of that. He had heard something—running feet—just before he came through the door. There were two other doors, but the sound had been going up.

There was faint light coming in through the windows. There was a body at the bottom of the stairs. John hadn't seen it at first as being apart from the other large, dark forms of tables and chairs. It lay sprawled where it had fallen, probably down the stairs.

John walked toward the body, forgetting caution. It was a middle-aged woman in a flowered nightgown. One thigh was obscenely exposed. He could see the woman's face; it was devoid of expression, as though death were boring.

Who was the woman? What was the man doing here? There was a baby crying. The sound was so incongruous that it had not even registered. John's ears had been tuned to the faintest whisper of a footstep, the faraway closing of a door. There was music playing and a baby crying.

There were voices coming from upstairs but all he could hear were the cadences. Then silence, and then a man's angry reply. And the baby's crying.

John ran up the stairs with no thought of caution or his own safety anymore: a baby. The voices were coming from the left. John ran down the hall toward them, but when he came to a room it was empty. He could hear music playing from beyond a door on the far wall. Then there was another hall, and another room, and the music was coming from beyond that door. And John wrenched the door open, his heart a living thing in his throat.

Someone had just come down the stairs. Madeleine didn't know where the stairs were. The moon shown in a lopsided circle outside the window. The footsteps were coming toward her; they were running. She was in a large dark room that was crowded with furniture; she was afraid that if she moved she would bump into something and make a noise.

In the darkness she could see his face. He might be anywhere. She looked at his face inside her head. The lip pulled back in private ecstacy while he hurt her. She looked around for a weapon. If he came through the door she could kill him, but she could not survive looking into his face.

The room was brightly lit. Books lined the walls, and there was a big roll-top desk in one corner. There was a stuffed pink poodle on the floor. There was a playpen in the middle of the floor. John moved over toward the crib, feeling faint—the baby made no sound—but she was only sleeping. She wore a little pink gown with a ruffle and elephants and she was sucking her bottle in her sleep; her lips pulsed beneath her closed eyes. There were tears on her face and her skin was red and mottled. There was a noise behind him. Footsteps, maybe voices, out there in the dark outside the bright door. John turned and followed the sound.

At the bottom of the steps she had to jump over her mother's body. For one sick second in the air she was afraid she would land on it. It was rage that fueled the jump, rage that sent her surefooted across the living room into the sun room beyond. To lay herself down by that body would be a luxury—never to get up. Her mother, her baby. Her baby—she had to keep going. Anything else he'd done didn't even matter. He had killed her mother. If she even allowed her brain to complete the thought she would be paralyzed. But she had to move. If he found her he would kill her too, and who would there be between him and the baby? Her brother Daniel used to hide under the drop of the long tablecloth on the big wooden table over by the far wall. Joey used to just open a door and hide behind it and when you came to get him he jumped out and scared you and ran away: he said it didn't count unless you tagged him.

Zelly slipped behind the dark red brocade curtains that covered the window seat. There were curtains on the inside as well, against the glass, keeping out the night. She felt her mother's scissors, useless inside her sweater. The seat was small, a child's size. Zelly pulled her knees up against her body and hugged them. She could hardly breathe; a cough caught in her throat. She could hear Pat walking deliberately toward this room. It had been a stupid place to go. He would know she was in here.

“Zelly,” his voice came, gentle as a snake, “I know you're in there. I have so much to tell you. Come home with me.” Zelly knew she had gotten to the point where she almost literally couldn't think anymore. The images welled up without words—her mother, her mother dead, her baby, newsprint pictures of dead girls, a blackened spot on a crumpled tarp, an earring, a tiny brown bear, a knife. If she put words to the images she would begin to scream. The scream was there already.

“Zelly,” Pat was saying; he had moved past the sun-room door, into the room. “I could kill the brat now, Zelly. I could go back upstairs—” He stood in the doorway now. Zelly could see him in her mind, in the pitch blackness of the window seat she could see him. She put her hand under her sweater and touched cold metal.

Lieutenant Viscotti tapped the cradle of the telephone until he heard a dial tone. “Get me the Slasher Task Force,” he said. “Kirby!” he yelled to an officer passing his door. “Get ready to put out an all-points. House with a hedge. Black van in driveway. Sirens on.”

“What've we got?”

“Looks like we've got the Symphony Slasher in our backyard. I'm running this past the Slasher Task Force now. Concentrate on the area around Stevens—where the old houses are. There are hedges there repeat, sirens on. Get the car closest to Castle Point Terrace—” He paused, raised his hand, then motioned to Kirby. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “This is Lieutenant Vincent Viscotti of the Hoboken Police Department—”

The door was already open, and maybe that saved his life. If he had opened the door the man would have seen him. The man was standing in a doorway across this dark room. He was a shadow only, a big outline of a man, almost invisible in the dark.

The shadow figure was bulkier at one side, halfway down; an arm held a little bit out from the body, a thickening. John stood stock still; he was holding a knife and the man was holding a knife.

The man moved into the room. “Zelly,” he said—John thought it was “Zelly”—“I want to go home now, don't you? Where did you hide from those bastard brothers of yours?” The voice was calm and mocking. The man was moving toward where John stood half-hidden behind the open door. When the man started yelling John became acutely aware of how cool the metal doorknob was against his hand. “Where the fuck are you, you bitch? I'll stick you like a chicken, you dirty cunt! You never, never, never—” and each “never” was punctuated by the man's fist slamming against a tipsy end table, smashing something made of china, upending a lamp onto the floor—“
never
knew who I was! With all your stupid reading and all your stupid theories and fucking prognostications”—books and another lamp and a pillow went now—“you never knew! So—” and the voice dropped suddenly—“let's go home. The baby's crying, Zelly.” And it was, again, a thin keening. This time John was sure the man said, “Zelly.”

“The baby's crying and I know you're in here and it's time to go now.” The voice was consoling. A child might have come. John wondered where Zelly could be hiding. Was the baby the man's baby? The man moved to one of the windows and pulled back the shade with a single sweep of his hand. Pale light from the street poured in and made a big puddle of light in the middle of the floor. The rug was blue, John noticed, with flowers on it. The man walked to another window; John could see now that the room was circular on one side, with four curtained windows in an arc along one wall. The man stood thoughtfully in front of another window, his hand on the curtain. There was a wedding ring on his hand. John wanted to call out, to tell Zelly that someone else was here with her and that the baby was okay. But if John moved at all the man would see him; he would turn. And when he turned it was by no means certain that Zelly, whoever she was, would be any safer than she was right now.

“Zelly,” the man said with exaggerated patience, “come out now and I won't kill the baby.” He jerked the second curtain open. The room got still lighter. There was no rustle, no hint of anyone else in the room. “Okay, bitch,” the man said conversationally, “I'll be going back upstairs now. If you don't think I'll kill Mary, just think again. Am I capable of it? Will I kill her? You know. You decide.”

Suddenly there was a rustling from one of the floor-length curtains that covered the bay windows, and a woman stepped out and into the light. She looked very young.

“Good choice, Zelly,” the man said.

“Pat,” she said. The simplicity with which she spoke was shocking. The man had a name and this woman knew his name. She was his wife. She was wearing a wedding ring too; John had not thought that the man could have a wife. A wife, a baby. A life. The woman just stood, simply and without defense, and looked at the man.

“Pat,” she said again. The man looked at her and John thought he was crying but it was only a trick of the light.

“Blackman here.” He held the radio mike in a clenched fist. “We're in front of Wyche's house. The Jersey guy never showed. Request to proceed with interro—damn it, I know. I know.” He paused, listening. “What?” he asked. “You just—what? An all-points bulletin? What's that—house with a hedge,” signaling to Scottie, who immediately started the car's engine. “Yes. Got it. Sirens. Out.”

The car was halfway down the block before Blackman spoke again. “The Hoboken Police just put out an all-points on the Slasher,” he said. “Madeleine Levy called, said she was in a house with him. They don't know where. Turn the goddamn siren on and drive. I'm not going to sit on my ass waiting for news of the next murder.”

From where John stood behind the door, the man was only about ten feet away. The woman was lovely—what an odd thing to notice. Her hair was paler than Madeleine's or Cheryl's, and the sadness in her face was beyond anything John had ever seen. She stood as though she were being held up by a wire at the top of her spine. The man stood before her. He was big. Much bigger than the woman, than Madeleine, than Cheryl.

The man's name was Pat. It was Pat that had killed John's sister. Pat that had raped and tried to kill Madeleine. Pat's wife, if that's what she was, simply stood before him. There was no pleading in her eyes. One hand hung down, one rested at her belt.

“Don't you want to go home?” Pat asked her. John did not dare move.

“I do,” said the woman. Zelly. Light from the windows silhouetted them both, and she stood in a nimbus of light. Now her face was beyond sorrow or fear or anything John could name. Her face could have been carved out of rock. She didn't move, and John waited, watching her magnificent resignation, and then she sprang straight toward her husband.

Zelly sprang, and John saw the flash of something silver in her hand, and he did not hesitate: he ran toward the man, his knife firm in his own.

Pat wasn't ready for Zelly to come at him, and neither of them was ready for someone else to be in the room. Pat was caught completely off guard.

When he turned from his wife's attack he turned straight into John. John moved, and the knife went into Pat (which is what John was idiotically thinking,
The knife is going into Pat now
) and John felt it all the way up his arms, it felt the way it feels to hold a knife when it goes into a piece of cake; there was that same spongy resistance.