The door was opened by the young girl he'd tried to kill Wednesday night. "Yes?" she said, making it sound as if he were trying to sell them unwanted Boy Scout cookies or something. She didn't recognize him. He saw that instantly. No recognition whatsoever.
"My car," he said. "It stalled across the street. I wondered if I could come in and use your phone so I could call a service station."
"Oh, sure," she said. She smiled then. It was a very healthy, clean-cut smile. She was very good at hiding the fact that she was a little whore. "We'll even give you some hot cocoa."
"Gee, I really appreciate this," he said, standing back so she could push the front storm door open and let him come inside.
He took two steps across the threshold, glancing over at the man in the wheelchair; then he jerked the.38 from his overcoat pocket and put it dead against the girl's temple.
"You're Foster," the man in the wheelchair said. "You're the killer."
Foster saw recognition in the girl's eyes.
"Do I look a little different from Wednesday night, Denise?" he asked, smiling.
Before she got a chance to respond, he cracked her hard across the mouth, knocking her backward to the couch.
He pointed the gun at the man. "I want the tape, pally. I don't want any lies, any excuses, any stalling. Either I get the tape right now, or I kill her. Do we understand each other?"
Wagner said, "I don't have the tape anymore."
Foster leaned down and grabbed the girl by the hair and jerked her to her feet. She cried out from the pain and tried to kick out at him. He just yanked on her hair all the harder.
Finally he yanked the girl close to him-so close he could smell the sudden sweat on her body and feel the slight clamminess on her skin-and put the gun once more to her head.
"You know how it's going to be, pally?" Foster said. He nodded to the east wall where framed photographs of long-dead movie stars were neatly and reverently arranged. "You're going to lose two ways. Because her brains are going to spray all over that wall and spoil your nice fancy photographs. Now, no more bullshit. I want the tape."
"It's in my room."
"Get it and bring it to me."
Wagner glanced anxiously at the girl. "Don't pull her hair anymore."
Foster smiled. "Kind of sweet on her, huh?" He laughed, thinking of his father. "Bet she's safe with you, isn't she? All these other guys sniffing around her little teenage pussy, but not you, Wagner. Not you. You couldn't do anything if you wanted to." He gave the girl's hair a final twist and then shoved her back on the couch. Her knee struck the coffee table as she fell forward. Once again she cried out. He waved the gun at Wagner. "Now, go get the tape."
Wagner looked at the girl. You could see he was sharing her pain. Afraid for her.
"Don't touch her," Wagner said.
"Anything you say, pally," Foster said.
Wagner rolled his wheelchair out of the living room and down the corridor to a darkened doorway. He turned to look back at ' Foster. "Don't hurt her anymore. I mean it"
"You're a real tough bastard."
"You heard what I said."
Then he was gone. Inside. A light came on and made a yellow oblong of the doorway. After a moment or two Foster heard the wheelchair move across some more of the room. Then he heard a squeaky bureau drawer opening and closing. There. At last. The tape.
Foster looked at the girl and said, "Come here."
"Are you going to hurt me again?"
"I didn't ask you to talk. I told you to come here."
"No."
He pointed the gun directly at her face. "I want you in front of me when he comes back here."
"Why?"
"Because I don't trust him."
"There's nothing he can do to you."
"Oh, yeah? Well, maybe not But I'm not going to take the chance. Now get your ass over here."
He leaned down and took her wrist and snapped her to her feet. Then he pulled her in front of him just as Wagner was returning in his wheelchair.
As Wagner rolled down the hallway toward the living room, Foster could see in the man's hand the outline of a videotape. There it was. Without the tape Brolan would spend many weeks trying to convince the police that he was not the killer after all. By that time Foster would be in South America with plenty of cash-enough to buy a new identity.
Foster kept the gun at the girl's temple. He said to Wagner, "Put the tape down on the edge of the coffee table."
"Let the girl go first"
"You're a real macho little bastard, aren't you?"
"The girl. Or I don't set the tape down," Wagner said. Foster laughed at the absurdity of the little man's being so tough. But he was. He really was.
To the girl Foster said, "Now, when I let you go, you walk over to the couch and sit right on the end of it and keep your hands in plain sight Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Good. Then you're going to do what I say?"
"Yes."
Foster kept looking to see if Wagner and the girl were exchanging any messages through their eye contact. He was getting increasingly paranoid, and he knew it
He let the girl go, shoving her toward the couch.
She did as he'd told her. Sat right on the edge. Almost primly. Watching. Waiting.
"The tape," Foster said, snapping his fingers and pointing to the coffee table.
Wagner held up the videotape. "This isn't going to help you now. I hope you know that The police will no longer believe that Brolan is their man."
"Oh, no, pally? Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?" He snapped his fingers again. "Put it down on the table and push it over to me."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll blow your fucking brains out right on the spot." The girl sounded as if she were going to cry. "Please, Greg. Please do what he says."
"You better listen to her, Wagner. She's got the right idea." Wagner said, "All right"
The way he laid the tape down on the table, you might have mistaken him for a poker player about to play his trump card. He set it slowly, carefully, down.
"Now push it over here," Foster said from the other end of the long glass table. "Now."
Wagner pushed the tape toward Foster.
"Good little boy," Foster said.
When the tape reached his end, he started to lean over and pick it up, and that's when the gun appeared at the side of the wheelchair.
The little bastard wasted no time in firing.
Foster dove for cover behind a leather recliner. A bullet had nearly caught him in the shoulder just as he was jumping.
The first thing Foster did, once he got his bearings, was say, "You fucked up, little man. You really fucked up bad. I'm going to make you pay for what you just did."
With that he raised his head slightly behind the arm of the recliner and shot the girl once, twice, three times, in the chest. She had still been on the couch; she rolled off, in a mixture of cries and blood, to the floor.
Wagner cried out, too, and started blindly firing toward the recliner. He needed to use both hands, and he wasn't much of a shot-he was better at hitting the wall decorations than anything else-and about all Foster had to do was wait till the little pecker ran out of bullets.
Which came soon enough.
Knowing he was safe, Foster stood up in the echoes of gunfire and Wagner's sobs and went over to the man and slapped him hard across the face.
"I told you I'd kill her, you little prick," Foster said. "If you'd done what I said, she'd still be alive." He wasn't excited. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, and his breathing was quiet and regular.
He had never heard a man sob the way Wagner was sobbing as he wheeled his chair over to Denise, who lay sprawled and unmoving on the floor. Blood was everywhere in small and large pools, in flecks that had spattered the furnishings.
Foster wasn't unsympathetic. He felt sorry for the little prick. "You should have listened to me," he said again. "I wouldn't have had to kill her if you'd just listened to me. Don't you understand that?"
Foster snapped up the tape, dropped it in the pocket of his overcoat.
And then he was gone, the door banging behind him, Wagner's sobs raging against the vast, empty night.
34
AT THE LAST MOMENT Kathleen decided to pack the doll, which was her way of admitting to herself that her flight from Minneapolis was probably not going to be temporary after all.
There was nothing special about the doll. It was a Barbie from the early sixties, one of the few expensive gifts her impoverished parents had ever bought her. She'd kept it with her all these years. Once, a lover who found her unfaithful had tried to smash the doll with his fist but before his knuckles reached its face, Kathleen had struck the man across the back of the head with a large clock radio. The pleasure she took in this violence almost shocked her. It felt good to strike the man, to feel the intersection of clock and skull, to hear his cry of pain and to see him sink in a heap to the floor.
She brought the doll in its blue taffeta dress to her face and kissed it as tenderly as she would a sister. Parts of the doll's forehead had started to crack. Kathleen smiled wryly about this. So, even Barbies got age lines.
She set the doll down carefully among the blouses, skirts, and two pairs of designer jeans she'd stuffed into the single piece of carry-on luggage. Her flight was less than an hour away. She had to hurry.
The sound of a car door closing startled her.
She ran to the window of her second-floor bedroom and looked below to the driveway and then to the street.
In the house directly across from hers, a man and a child bundled up in a snowsuit were exiting a large green van. The headlights lit up the front of the garage so that it looked like a cave of light in the wintry darkness.
She put a hand to her heart. Her pulse was racing, and she felt sticky and dizzy. She'd been afraid it was Stu Foster. At one time their plan to get big league clients by blackmailing them seemed smart. As did having an affair with Brolan. He was a nice guy, and fun to be with, and there'd really been no reason not to… But Brolan had made the mistake (a mistake for both of them) of falling in love with her… And the other night Foster had killed a woman… Emma the strange, quiet, sad hooker they'd gotten to know through Charles Lane. After killing the woman, Foster had changed. She'd always sensed the violence in him, but then it surfaced completely. Violence had always been a part of their lovemaking but the other night… An image came to mind: his squeezing her breasts until they hurt, until she had to scratch his back bloody before he stopped. And then his laughing and staring at her, obviously aware that she'd seen him for the first time as he really was.
She couldn't go to the police. She was too much a part of all this. But neither could she trust Foster. She was the only other person who knew he'd killed Emma. Which meant he might well decide that now he must kill her, too…
Then she heard it.
A creaking on the stairs.
True, this old house made many plaintive moans and groans on freezing winter nights, but she knew that the sound hadn't been made by the house but rather by somebody creeping up the stairs.
Looking toward the partly opened door, she listened once more. Hard.
It was amazing how many things you heard when you really listened. The blower in the furnace. The creaking of the roof under the burden of a sheet of ice. The distant sound of a siren.
And footsteps.
Coming up the stairs.
Coming after her.
Kathleen laughed aloud. "My God," she said to herself. "My God, what a stupid, frightened little girl you are."
She went to the door and flung it back and walked out into the hallway and over to the head of the stairs.
Empty. Just as she'd expected.
She'd left the vestibule light on downstairs, so she could see, even from here, that the front door was snugly closed and the front part of the house empty.
She felt so relieved, she was practically light-headed, and that was when he grabbed her.
From behind. Wearing gloves.
He clamped one hand hard over her mouth so she couldn't scream. With the other hand he put the small butcher's knife to her throat.
She could hear him gasp and feel him sweat. He was pressed tight to her backside, and she could also feel the hardness of his erection.
"You fucking bitch," he said. "You were going to walk out on me, weren't you?"
He drew a little blood, then, from a spot right next to her jugular.
"You fucking bitch," he said.
***
By the time Brolan finished with Charles Lane, the motel owner was bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ear. Brolan hadn't shown much patience or sympathy.
In the car Brolan thought about the most astonishing part of Lane's confession… that Kathleen was working with Foster.
As he moved onto the Crosstown, heading toward Kathleen's place, he thought of all the elaborate ruses they'd used to convince him that they hated each other. He should have asked so many questions… How could they both go out and do what nobody else in Twin Cities advertising seemed capable of… steal some of the largest accounts in the area, in some cases, accounts that had even been held by New York and Los Angeles agencies.