Dietrich lifted his head up from the toilet bowl and flushed.
The smell of half-digested grilled cheese wafted up from the toilet. He was sweating in places he didn’t know a man could sweat. Chills racked his body as he huddled in the corner next to the toilet. If he didn’t shoot up by morning, he might die, sure as shit.
He needed some smack, and in a hurry.
The last time he had needed a bag, he’d gone to toss a big house in the Dorchester area. Of course it had gone from a burglary to a murder in no time, thanks in part to his lack of self-control.
He had chosen Rhonda Barbieri’s house because the lights were off and there were no cars parked in the long asphalt driveway. Once inside, he found the house to be silent as a pharaoh’s tomb.
Dietrich had rummaged through the house, starting in the living room. He considered boosting the television, then decided against it because it was too heavy.
He remembered reaching the bedroom and finding silk sheets on the bed, a plasma screen television with a Bose surround sound system on the wall and a black marble Jacuzzi in the adjoining bath. These folks had bucks.
He came away with two gold chains and a ruby ring that he lifted from a jewelry box and was about to leave when he had heard the low rumble of a car engine in the driveway.
Creeping over to the window, he brushed the venetian blind aside and looked out to see the tail end of a big Audi pulling into the garage. In a matter of seconds, he decided to kill the driver.
The urge to kill washed over him. He stripped off his clothes, right in the bedroom. Kicking them under the bed, he willed himself to change into his other form. It was excruciatingly painful, so he bit his lower lip to quell a groan.
After transforming, he scampered to the basement to hide, waited in the utility room and killed the woman when she came into the basement. It had been a satisfying kill, for when she tried to escape, she had panicked like a trapped animal. She had given off heat like a radiator; he could almost see the fear rising off of her in waves.
Yes, that one had been good, especially since the woman in the warehouse had gotten away from him. As he fed, he vaguely remembered Rafferty’s warning about not killing before the Harvest, but it passed through his mind like a summer breeze through the treetops.
Rafferty didn’t scare him. At least, not at that moment.
Now, as he huddled in the bathroom he remembered that his clothes were probably still in the house over in Dorchester. Using the toilet for support, he got up.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, he saw a pasty-faced skeleton looking back at him. His eyes were sunken and hollow, with purplish bags under them, like the black stuff ballplayers smeared on their cheeks.
It was a risk going back to that house, back to the scene of his crime, but he needed his drugs. And when he needed a fix, the Great Wall of China could not stand in his way.
He turned on the faucet and reddish-brown water dribbled out, turning clear after a moment. After splashing cold water on his face and changing out of his sweat-soaked T-shirt, Dietrich left his apartment and caught the number three Metro bus. The house was only two miles away, but in his state, he knew he would never make it if he had to walk.
In less than half an hour, he would have his fix.
C
HAPTER
13
With one hand, Donna trained the flashlight beam on the workbench standing against the basement wall. She took out her piece with the other.
There was a vise clamp screwed to the tabletop and a sheet of pegboard fixed to the wall that held an assortment of pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers, and hammers. Donna also noticed the cordless Makita drill she had bought Bob for his thirtieth birthday. It still looked brand new, never used.
She smelled gasoline and noticed a gas can and greasy rags on the floor, along with a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches. There were three taper candles on the bench, perhaps emergency lighting in case of a blackout. Donna shook her head at her brother’s lack of fire safety. That was an accident waiting to happen.
Stepping away from the tool bench, she shined the beam on the floor. A cluster of brownish stains dotted the floor. She scanned the walls with the light, finding them spotted with dried blood. Rhonda’s blood. What kind of monster did something like this? Rafferty had lied through his teeth.
No evidence, my ass
.
She turned her attention to the storage room. Brushing a cobweb out of her face, she opened the door; the smell forced her to jerk her head back. What the hell could cause such an odor?
An old yellow dresser stood against one wall, and some paint cans with crusty white paint on their sides were stacked in the middle of the room. Moving the beam back and forth, she looked around but came up with nothing except a mousetrap baited with peanut butter.
The smell in the room had become more tolerable and she inhaled deeply as if to ingrain the smell in her mind, trying to connect it with something. She couldn’t place the odor, but sulfur kept springing to mind.
The killer had hidden here and waited for Rhonda. She didn’t know how she had reached that conclusion, for there was no physical evidence to support it. She just knew the killer had been in this room.
Could it be that the killer worked in a chemical plant where they used sulfur? The nearest chemical plant was OxyChem in Niagara Falls. She made a mental note to call OxyChem.
Donna left the utility room and started up the stairs, which led directly into the kitchen. She shone the beam on the counter and illuminated a can of Diet Coke. Probably part of Rhonda’s dinner or late-night snack the day she was murdered, she mused.
After probing the kitchen, the living room and the dining room, she went upstairs to the house’s five bedrooms.
There was a weight bench and rack of chrome barbells in the first room and she thought of how her brother Bob had always been obsessed with his physique. The next room down the narrow hallway was Rhonda’s office, complete with a huge cherrywood desk and leather office chair.
The next two rooms were filled with boxes of assorted junk; there was nothing special about them.
There was one more room left at the end of the hallway, Bob and Rhonda’s bedroom. Donna pointed her beam at the door, turned the handle and entered the room.
“How’s your face feeling?” Jill asked.
“Throbbing.”
“You want to go back?” She touched his arm, concerned he might have a concussion, or that he might be in worse shape than he said.
“I’m enjoying the company too much to go home now.”
She smiled at him. “Likewise. You sure you’re all right?”
“Positive,” Matt said.
They were sitting on a bench at the corner of Delevan and Thorpe. St. Mark’s Catholic Church loomed behind them like a medieval fortress, its stained-glass windows darkened. Their bench was next to a streetlamp, and a cluster of moths dipped and zigzagged around the light.
Matt had taken her hand as they walked from Mo-rotto’s to the bench. She liked the feel of his hand around hers, strong and firm.
She had told him about the breakup with Jerry over dinner at Morotto’s, and her mother’s desire for her to study medicine at Duke or Harvard. The topic of her mother resisting Jill’s nursing career also came up in their conversation.
Suddenly she found herself liking him very much. She put her finger on his cheek, turned his head toward her and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Thank you, Matt.”
“For what?”
“For putting me at ease.”
“You can thank me again if you want.”
“Maybe later. Let’s go.”
They stood up and walked back to the truck, hand in hand.
They drove back toward Jill’s, rolling down Delevan Street with the windows open. The air ruffled her hair and the sound of the wheels hummed on the asphalt. The air should have felt refreshing, but it served only to chill her. She rolled up the window a bit and said, “What’s going on here, Matt? I mean in Lincoln. The police chief’s a psycho, I almost get killed in a warehouse, the people smell weird, and according to you, there’s monsters underneath everyone’s skin.”
“I think you just answered your own question.”
“I still don’t know about these things you’re describing. I mean, I know something terrible happened to you and I sympathize, but monsters?”
They drove in silence for a moment until Matt spoke.
“Let’s go to my aunt’s. I want to show you some things. Maybe it’ll sway you or maybe it won’t. What do you say?”
She thought about it for a moment, a little curious, wondering what he could possibly want to show her. “Why not?”
He pulled the truck into the parking lot of Lincoln Lock and Key, did a quick U-turn and pulled back onto Delevan in the opposite direction.
Five minutes later, they pulled into his aunt’s driveway. As Jill climbed out of the truck, she had to smile. She noticed the gentleman Mr. Crowe sneaking a peek at her legs.
They entered the house through the side door.
“You’ve got to meet my Aunt Bernie. She’ll love you.”
They climbed three steps and entered the kitchen, Jill noticing the wonderful smells of onion, garlic, and Parmesan cheese lingering in the air. It was a cook’s kitchen, with a huge wooden spice rack on one wall, a block of expensive-looking knives on the counter and a gleaming copper pot in the sink. A stainless steel mixer and bowl sat next to the knives.
“Your aunt likes to cook, doesn’t she?”
“She could give Wolfgang Puck a run for his money,” Matt said.
“The kitchen smells great.”
“Smells like she made her world-famous pork chops. Aunt Bernie?”
“In here!”
They entered the living room where Aunt Bernie sat in a forest-green recliner. An
All in the Family
rerun was on the tube and Arch was singing to Meathead. His aunt stood up and came over to Jill. She wrapped her arms around Jill and gave a squeeze. Jill inhaled the scents of cinnamon and brown sugar.
Aunt Bernie put her hands on Jill’s shoulders and took a step back, as if to admire her. “Matthew, you’re right. She
is
a beauty. Don’t let go of this one!”
Jill thanked her for the compliment and they made small talk, Jill and Matt telling her about dinner. Jill also told her she was a nurse, about her apartment and how long she had been living in Lincoln.
“Would you two like some peach pie?”
They both said no thanks, that they were stuffed from dinner. Jill found herself instantly liking Bernie’s warmth and friendliness, a welcome trait in any person, but especially meaningful to Jill because her own mother was such a piranha.
Matt told her that they were going out to the loft over the garage to check out some pictures.
“You two behave out there. No hanky-panky.” Aunt Bernie pretended to be stern, wagging her finger at them. Her sleeve rode up, revealing a brown bruise on her upper arm.
Jill looked at Matt, checking for a reaction. A frown creased his brow, then disappeared.
“I’ll be a gentleman. I promise.”
Matt wished his aunt good night and he and Jill walked out to the garage and entered through the small door. They climbed a set of wooden stairs that ended at a trapdoor in the ceiling.
Matt flipped on the light switch, revealing a single bed, nightstand, a small fridge and a table with two kitchen chairs. The powder blue carpet looked plush and new. It was livable, if plain.
“Not bad. Could use a woman’s touch, though,” she said.
Matt rummaged under his bed and pulled out his suitcase, a big brown leather job.
“Did you notice the bruise on my aunt’s arm?” he said.
“Yeah, I did.”
“I’d put money on in being there courtesy of my Uncle Rex.”
“He beats her?”
“I’ve never actually seen him do it, but I’m pretty sure he does. He smacked me around when I was living here. He’s a pretty lousy drunk.”
“Mean?”
“As a junkyard dog.”
“Why did he hit you?”
Matt flopped the suitcase on to the bed. “I broke my curfew by fifteen minutes or so. After that I left. I’d had it with him. He liked to refer to me as dickhead or shithead or something equally flattering.”
“Sounds like a real sweetheart.”
“I’m keeping an eye on things. If he hurts my aunt, he’ll deal with me this time.”
This time Jill didn’t discourage his macho talk. Any man who beat a woman deserved whatever punishment came to him. It was one thing for Matt to talk about killing the town’s chief law enforcement officer, but another to defend a ninety-pound woman from an abusive husband.
Matt flipped open the suitcase and pulled out a battered Red Wing shoe box. “Let me show you these.”
She had no idea what to expect, but she was willing to wager one thing: it wouldn’t be dull.
Donna entered the bedroom feeling the way the archaeologists who raided the burial chambers of the Egyptian pyramids must have felt. A strange wonder at being among the possessions of the dead flowed through her.
The sheets on the bed were in a ball and a pillow lay cockeyed on the nightstand. Someone had left the dresser drawers open an inch or two. Her immediate thought was that someone had rifled through the drawers and then halfheartedly closed them when their search was complete.
Not someone. The killer had rifled through them.
She tried Bob’s dresser first, opening the drawers by sticking the pen she always carried in the crack and pulling each toward her. Using the pen, she poked around, lifting up folded shirts and underwear, hoping the killer had left a clue behind. She was a little surprised that the clothes had not been ripped from the drawers and scattered all over the room.
In most burglaries, the house was ransacked.
Maybe this guy was a neat freak.
After searching the drawers in Bob’s dresser (and wishing she’d remembered a pair of gloves) she crossed the room to Rhonda’s.
Her foot brushed against something on the floor. Pointing the flashlight, she saw it was a pair of jeans, sticking out from underneath the king-size bed.
She hunkered down to get a closer look. Brown with white stitching on the back pockets, not Bob or Rhonda’s style.
She stuck her pen in one of the belt loops and pulled the jeans from under the bed. She put her face to the floor and looked around beneath the bed. There was a yellow T-shirt under there as well.
She pulled the shirt out using the same method as she did for the jeans. Unfolding it with her pen, it became clear that the wearer was a fan of the King. There was a circular iron-on of Elvis Presley dressed in full rhinestone jumpsuit garb, crooning into a microphone, eyes closed, sweat beads visible on his forehead. The peeling, turquoise lettering above the picture read
Elvis Presley—Long Live the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Donna wanted to check the pockets on the jeans but was hesitant because there was no telling where the jeans could eventually wind up. Rafferty probably hadn’t noticed them and wouldn’t be back to investigate, but it never hurt to be careful. If she got prints or hair on the jeans, it would give away the fact that she had come to the Barbieri house.
She searched the closet and found a pair of brown leather gloves—it wasn’t likely anyone would notice they were gone. She wished she’d thought of using the gloves sooner, for it would have saved her digging through the dresser drawers with the pen.
She slipped the gloves on and dug her hand into a pocket. The left front yielded two quarters and a half melted stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint.
The right front pocket contained the payoff.
She pulled out a plastic baggie filled with brown powder, probably heroin. As she stuck the bag in her pocket, a bang came from downstairs. It sounded like a piece of furniture being tipped over
.
What if it’s Rafferty or one of his boys?
She stuffed the clothes back under the bed, as close to the way she’d found them as she could manage. She heard the thump-creak of someone climbing the stairs.