Maybe this mystery woman is a little bit like Norma Desmond. She’s bold, sure enough. He can’t figure what the hell she’s doing, what she’s after; and when he understands her motivation, maybe she won’t be anything like Norma Desmond. But at least she is already something new and interesting in his experience.
The rain.
The wind.
The motor home.
“Take the A Train” has given way to “String of Pearls.”
Murmuring softly against the blue drapes, Mr. Vess says, “Ready when you are.”
After the killer had gotten out of the motor home and slammed the door, Chyna had waited in the dark bedroom for a long while in the one-note lullaby of rain.
She had told herself that she was being prudent. Listen. Wait. Be sure. Absolutely sure.
But then she’d been forced to admit that she had lost her nerve. Although she had mostly dried out during the ride north from Humboldt County, she was still cold, and the source of her chills was the ice of doubt in her guts.
The eater of spiders was gone, and to Chyna, even remaining in blackness with two dead bodies was far preferable to going outside where she might encounter him again. She knew that he would be back, that this bedroom was not, in fact, a safe place, but for a while, what she
knew
was overruled by what she
felt
.
When at last she broke her paralysis, she moved with reckless abandon, as though any hesitation would result in another and worse paralysis, which she would be unable to overcome. She yanked open the bedroom door, plunged into the hall, with the revolver held in front of her because maybe the murderous bastard hadn’t gotten out after all, and she went all the way forward past the bathroom and through the dining area and into the lounge, where she stopped a few feet back from the driver’s seat.
The only light was a bleak gray haze that came through the skylight in the hall behind her and through the windshield ahead, but she could see that the killer wasn’t here. She was alone.
Outside, directly ahead of the motor home, lay a sodden yard, a few dripping trees, and a rough driveway leading to a weathered barn.
Chyna moved to a starboard window, cautiously peeled back one corner of the greasy drape, and saw a log house about twenty feet away. Mottled with time and many coats of creosote, streaming with rain, the walls glistened like dark snakeskin.
Although she had no way of being certain, she assumed that it was the killer’s house. He had told the men in the service station that he was going home after his “hunting” trip, and everything he had told them had sounded to her like the truth, including—and especially—the taunts about young Ariel.
The killer must be inside.
Chyna went forward again and leaned over the driver’s seat to look at the ignition. The keys weren’t there. They weren’t in the console box either.
She slipped into the copilot’s seat, feeling frightfully exposed in spite of the blurring rain that washed down the windows. She could find nothing in the console box, in the shallow glove box, in either door pouch, or under either front seat that revealed the name of the owner or anything else about him.
He would be returning soon. For some demented reason, he had gone to a lot of trouble and taken risks to bring the cadavers, and most likely he would not leave them in the motor home for long.
The obscuring rain made it difficult for her to be sure, but she thought that the drapes were drawn at the first-floor windows on this side of the house. Consequently, the killer would not casually glance out and spot her when she stepped from the motor home. She couldn’t see the pair of second-floor windows half as well as those lower down, but they also might be draped.
She cracked open the door, and a cold knife of wind thrust at her through the gap. She got out and closed the door behind her as quietly as possible.
The sky was low and turbulent.
Forested hills rose rank after rank behind the house, vanishing into the pearly mist. Chyna sensed mountains looming above the hills in the overcast; they would still be capped with snow this early in the spring.
She hurried to the flagstone steps and went up onto the porch, out of the rain, but it was coming down so hard that already she was soaked again. She stood with her back to the rough wall.
Windows flanked the front door, and the drapes were drawn behind the nearer of the two.
Music inside.
Swing music.
She stared out at the meadows, along the lane that led from the house to the top of a low hill and thence out of sight. Perhaps, beyond the hill, other houses stood along that unpaved track, where she would find people who could help her.
But who had ever helped her before, all these long years?
She remembered the two brief stops that had awakened her, and she suspected that the motor home had passed through a gate. Nevertheless, even if this was a private driveway, it would lead sooner or later to a public road, where she would find assistance from residents or passing motorists.
The top of the hill was approximately a quarter of a mile from the house. This was a lot of open ground to cover before she would be out of sight. If he saw her, he would probably be able to chase her down before she got away.
And she still didn’t know that this was his house. Even if it
was
his house, she couldn’t be sure that this was where he kept Ariel. If Chyna brought back the authorities and Ariel wasn’t here, then the killer might never tell them where to find the girl.
She had to be sure that Ariel was in the basement.
But if the girl
was
here, then when Chyna came back with the cops, the killer might barricade himself in the house. It would take a SWAT team to pry him out of the place—and before they got to him, he might kill Ariel and commit suicide.
In fact, that was almost certainly how it would play out as soon as any cops showed up. He would know that his freedom was at an end, that his games were over, that he would have no more
fun,
and all he would see available to him was one last, apocalyptic celebration of madness.
Chyna couldn’t bear to lose this imperiled girl so soon after losing Laura, failing Laura. Intolerable. She couldn’t keep failing people as, all her life, others had failed her. Meaning wasn’t to be found in psychology classes and textbooks but in caring, in hard sacrifice, in faith, in
action
. She didn’t want to take these risks. She wanted to live—but for someone other than herself.
At least now she had a gun.
And the advantage of surprise.
Earlier, at the Templeton house and in the motor home and then at the service station, she’d also had the advantage of surprise, but she hadn’t been in possession of the revolver.
She realized that she was arguing herself into taking the most dangerous course of action open to her, making excuses for going into the house. Going into the house was obviously crazy, Jesus, a totally crazy move, Jesus, but she was striving hard to rationalize it, because she had already made up her mind that this was what she was going to do.
Coming out of the motor home, the woman has a gun in her right hand. It looks as if it might be a .38—perhaps a Chief’s Special.
This is a popular weapon with some cops. But this woman doesn’t move like a cop, doesn’t handle the weapon as a cop would—although clearly she is somewhat comfortable with a gun.
No, she’s definitely not an officer of the law. Something else. Something weird.
Mr. Vess has never been so intrigued by anyone as he is by this spunky little lady, this mysterious adventurer. She’s a real treat.
The moment she sprints from the motor home to the house and out of sight, Vess moves from the window on the south wall of his bedroom to the window on the east wall. It is also covered by a blue drape, which he parts.
No sign of her.
He waits, holding his breath, but she doesn’t head east along the lane. After half a minute or so, he knows that she isn’t going to run.
If she had taken off, she would have sorely disappointed him. He doesn’t think of her as a person who would run. She is bold. He wants her to be bold.
Had she run, he would have sent the dogs after her, not with instructions to kill but merely to detain. Then he would have retrieved her to question her at his leisure.
But
she
is coming to
him
. For whatever unimaginable reason, she will follow him into the house. With her revolver.
He will need to be cautious. But oh, what fun he is having. Her gun only makes the game more intense.
The front porch is immediately below this window, but he isn’t able to see it because of the overhanging roof. The mystery woman is somewhere on the porch. He can
feel
her close, perhaps directly under him.
He retrieves his pistol from the nightstand and glides quietly across the wall-to-wall carpet into the open doorway. He steps into the hall and quickly to the head of the enclosed stairs, where he stops. He can see only the landing below, not the living room, but he listens.
If she opens the front door, he will know, because one of the hinges makes a dry ratcheting sound. It’s not a loud noise, but it is distinctive. Because he’s listening specifically for that corroded hinge, not even the drumming of the rain on the roof, the pounding of the shower into the bathtub, and “In the Mood” on the radio can entirely mask the sound.
Crazy. But she was going to do it. For Ariel. For Laura. But also for herself. Maybe most of all for herself.
After all these years under beds, in closets, in attic shadows—no more hiding. After all these years of getting by, keeping her head down, drawing no attention to herself—suddenly she had to
do
something or explode. She’d been living in a prison since the day she’d been born, even after leaving her mother, a prison of fear and shame and lowered expectations, and she’d been so accustomed to her circumscribed life that she had not recognized the bars. Now righteous rage released her, and she was crazy with freedom.
The chilly wind kicked up, and shatters of rain blasted under the porch roof.
Seashell wind chimes clattered, an irritation of flat notes.
Chyna eased past the window, trying to avoid several snails on the porch floor. The drapes remained tightly shut.
The front door was closed but unlocked. She slowly pushed it inward. One hinge rasped.
The big-band tune finished with a flourish, and at once two voices arose from deeper in the house. Chyna froze on the threshold, but then she realized that she was listening to an advertisement. The music had been coming from a radio.
It was possible that the killer shared the house with someone other than Ariel, and other than the procession of victims or dead bodies brought back from his road trips. Chyna couldn’t conceive of his having a family, a wife and children, a psychotic Brady Bunch waiting for him; but there were rare cases on record of homicidal sociopaths working together, like the two men who proved to be the Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles a couple of decades ago.
Voices on a radio, however, were no threat.
With the revolver held in front of her, she went inside. The incoming wind whistled into the house, rattling a wobbly lampshade and threatening to betray her, so she closed the door.
The radio voices came down an enclosed stairwell to her left. She kept one eye on the doorless opening at the foot of those steps, in case more than voices descended.
The front room on the ground floor ran the entire width of the small house, and although it was illuminated only by the gray light from the windows, it was nothing like what she had expected to find. There were hunter-green leather armchairs with footstools, a tartan-plaid sofa on large ball feet, rustic oak end tables, and a section of bookshelves that held perhaps three hundred volumes. On the hearth of the big river-rock fireplace were gleaming brass andirons, and on the mantel was an old clock with two bronze stags rearing up on their hind legs. The decor was thoroughly but not aggressively masculine—no glassily staring deer or bear heads on the walls, no hunting prints, no rifles on display, just cozy and comfortable. Where she had been expecting pervasive clutter as evidence of his seriously disordered mind, there was neatness. Instead of filth, cleanliness; even in the shadows, Chyna could see that the room was well dusted and swept. Rather than being burdened with the stench of death, the house was redolent of lemon-oil furniture polish and a subtle pine-scented air freshener, as well as the faint and pleasant smell of char from the fireplace.
Selling H & R Block tax services and then doughnuts, the radio voices bounced with enthusiasm down the stairs. The killer had it cranked up too loud; the volume level seemed wrong to Chyna, as if he was trying to mask other sounds.
There
was
another sound, similar to but different from the rain, and after a moment she recognized it. A shower.
That was why he had set the radio so loud. He was listening to the music while taking a shower.
She was in luck. As long as the killer was in the shower, she could search for Ariel without the risk of being discovered.
Chyna hurriedly crossed the front room to a half-open door, went through, and found a kitchen. Canary-yellow ceramic tile with knotty-pine cabinets. On the floor, gray vinyl tile speckled with yellow and green and red. Well scrubbed. Everything in its place.
She was soaked, rain dripping off her hair and still seeping from her jeans onto the clean floor.
Taped to the side of the refrigerator was a calendar already turned forward to April, with a color photograph that showed one white and one black kitten—both with dazzling green eyes—peering out from a huge spray of lilies.
The normality of the house terrified her: the gleaming surfaces, the tidiness, the homey touches, the sense that a person lived here who might walk in daylight on any street and pass for human in spite of the atrocities that he had committed.
Don’t think about it.
Keep moving. Safety in movement.