So stupid… stupid.
He was almost afraid of seeing Kathleen. Afraid of what he might do when he saw her beautiful, lying face. He'd never struck a woman… and he did not want to start.
He gave the car more gas… and hurried.
***
Foster threw her on the bed, held her captive, and mesmerized her with the knife he held out in front of him.
She could see in his handsome features a different man… the crazed man who had been hiding inside Foster all these years.
He grabbed the large glass lamp with the rattan shade and hurled it into the corner. The noise it made smashing against the wall made Kathleen clamp her hands over her ears.
"You bitch," he said again, moving toward her.
"Stu, what's wrong with you? We're supposed to be working together." The closer he got, the more she scrabbled up the bed to huddle near the headboard.
"Yeah. And that's why you were packing your bag, huh?"
She tried to find her voice. Her whole body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Her throat was dry; her bowels felt loose; her breathing came in ragged, painful bursts. "I just wanted to get out of here so I could take a little time off and-"
His first swipe with the knife came perilously close to tearing a gash open on her throat
"Stu, please; please, listen-"
Without quite being aware of it, she'd begun sobbing, her words lost in her cries.
His second swipe cleaved the shoulder of her mauve silk blouse and cut a thin, hurting line along the flesh of her upper arm.
Blood bloomed immediately. She clamped a hand over the wound and rolled sideways on the bed just as he was plunging the knife downward toward her chest.
"Stu! Please! Don't!"
She rolled until she was off the bed, scrambling on her hands and knees across the hardwood floor.
She was trying to reach the door before-
This time the knife cut a long, curving arc across her back. She screamed. The odd thing was the delayed response of her flesh. She knew she'd been cut, but the pain did not come for long moments after.
His foot caught her in the stomach and rolled her back against the wall.
This time, when she started to crawl away, he was too quick for her, his foot against her chest pinning her against the edge of the door frame.
There was no more pleading on her part. Terror had overcome her ability to make any kind of protest. All she could do was huddle into herself and keep her eyes closed and wait for the final moments.
***
Brolan was driving too fast down the side streets. When he reached Kathleen's, he found that the car had gathered too much momentum to be stopped. He slid past, nearly ploughing into another car parked kerbside. The faint moonlight through the dead, black branches of winter trees did not lend much help. In a pocket of deep shadow, midpoint between the grounds of two large houses, he brought the car to a stop. Within a quarter minute he was on his feet and sliding along the ice-covered street. Foster's car was in Kathleen's driveway. The prospect of finally confronting Foster drove Brolan as nothing else could.
Then he heard the scream.
Raising his head, Brolan saw that the only light on in the house was in the rear-Kathleen's bedroom. It was not too difficult to imagine what Foster was doing to her; not when he thought of how lovingly Emma had been cut up.
Slipping on the stairs, having to grab hold of the black iron railing for purchase, Brolan went up the walk.
Just as he reached the front door, pushing his way in, he heard a second scream.
***
In the end Foster was about to cut her throat.
Hearing somebody pounding up the stairs-and suspecting it was Brolan-he found there was no time for real pleasure here. Just expediency.
He leaned down, grabbed her hair, put the knife to the centre of her throat, and started to slash but-She startled Foster by grabbing on to his leg. As he tried to run from the room, she clung to him like a weight that had been permanently affixed.
He hit her on top of the head, hoping to break her grip. But still she held to him. He had to drag her to the doorway as he tried to see who was pounding up the stairs.
"Foster! Foster!"
So, it was Brolan.
At Foster's feet, Kathleen now made a series of horrible gasps like that of somebody trying to vomit. He felt her grip loosen as she gave herself entirely up to her death.
Brolan was on the staircase.
Coming up fast.
Foster had to make a quick decision. There was a gable off one of her bedroom windows. He could smash through the glass and land on the gable and let himself down to the ground.
Or he could-
As Brolan reached the last step, panting, face sleek with sweat, rage turning his handsome features into a grotesque mask, Foster realized that he had no time to do anything except stand there and defend himself.
Brolan had decided to leap at him, even though Foster kept his bloody knife in full view.
He tackled Foster around the waist, trying to get in under the knife Foster wielded. He wasn't quick enough. The knife ripped a bloody trench in his back, running along the left side of his spine. He dropped to one knee just as Foster moved forward, ready to finish him.
Foster raised the knife over his head and brought it down with slashing fury.
Brolan hit him directly in the crotch. This time he acted quickly enough to inflict damage. Foster screamed and fell back half a step, just enough to make the arc of his downward slashing knife useless. He missed Brolan's shoulder by half a foot.
As Brolan jumped to his feet, he smashed Foster in the mouth with a quick punch and then grabbed Foster's hand, trying to pry the knife loose.
But as he moved in, Foster lunged forward. This time he cut Brolan right across the chest. Brolan fell against Foster, once again finding the man's wrist, and twisting it so he could shake the knife free.
Foster tried to raise the knife at such an angle that he could cut Brolan again, even though Brolan still had hold of his wrist.
He was just about to do this when Brolan surprised him, snapped Foster's wrist around so that the knife was now pointing to Foster's stomach.
"You son of a bitch," Brolan said. "I owe you this."
Brolan concentrated all his weight and motion into the knife handle so that when it tore into Foster, it went in deep, ripping through vital organs in its path.
Brolan watched blood bloom in Foster's mouth and nose. Foster's eyes got huge and ugly.
Brolan kept ramming the knife in.
"P-please," Foster said, blood so thick inside his mouth that his tongue could scarcely form words.
"Is that what Emma did, Foster? Begged you to live?"
Deeper, deeper the knife went, cutting, killing.
"P-please," Foster said again.
But it was too late. Blood had started coming from his ears now. His pants were filled with a horrible stench.
Brolan let him slip to the floor.
From Kathleen's bedroom door he could see a hand flung carelessly, like the limb of a doll that had been tom off and cast down.
Chest heaving, his wounds starting to hurt, Brolan stepped over the bloody form of Foster and made his way down the hall to Kathleen.
Death had robbed her of beauty. She lay in her own blood, staring up at the high ceiling. He tried not to notice how viciously her throat had been cut.
He staggered into her room. He dropped to the blood-soaked bed and picked up the phone. He would call the police, but first he'd call his friend Wagner and see what was going on.
A gruff male voice said, "Sergeant Peterson. Homicide."
"Homicide?" Brolan said. "What the hell's going on there?"
The voice grew kinder. "Why don't I let you talk to Mr. Wagner?"
Then Greg came on. Brolan could tell right away that the man was trying to keep from crying.
"Are you all right?" Brolan said, terrified of the news he was about to receive.
"I am," Wagner said. "But I'm afraid Denise isn't." Then it wasn't so easy for Wagner to hold his tears. Then it wasn't so easy at all.
EPILOGUE
SIX DAYS LATER the funeral was held on the downslope side of a small cemetery eighty miles outside St. Louis. The morning was sunny and brilliant because of the newly fallen snow. Two huge black stone archangels, both more than a hundred years old, sat on either side of the iron entrance gates observing the human drama below them.
In movies and books graveside attendees always wear black. But not there. This was farming country, and not prosperous farming country at that. So, clothes ran all colours in the morning light, from the worn red of a once-elegant dress coat on the back of a frayed farm woman to the lime-green of a blast jacket on the shoulders of a teenager who looked not only cold but bored. Even the minister, a hawkish-looking bald man, wore a blue trench coat over his ministerial garb.
Brolan stood next to Greg Wagner, who sat in his wheelchair, a blanket across his legs. The prayers had been said, and the minister was saying the last of his goodbyes. Off to the left two burly workers stood next to a tree, waiting to put the body into the wide, wintry hole they'd dug the day before. Their breath made silver plumes in the gold sunlight.
Somewhere a woman sobbed.
Brolan put his hand on Wagner's shoulder.
"Let us remember her as she was before she left us," the minister admonished. Then he glanced up at the brown
Oldsmobile that had brought her there. "Let us pray for her soul."
The minister, followed by the twenty or so other mourners, left. Only Brolan and Wagner stayed behind.
Wind came, scattering silver snow beads. Near the top of the hill a fawn stood watching the two men, graceful and supple against the white hills and the cloudless blue sky.
Wagner stared into the empty hole of the grave. "I'm never going to be the same, Brolan."
"I know."
"She was some goddamned kid."
"She sure was."
Wagner started crying. "I don't have anybody," he said. "And I'm going to miss the hell out of her."
Brolan put his hands on the wheelchair handles and started pushing Wagner through the snow to where Brolan's car sat on the winding gravel drive.
At the car, after Brolan had helped him inside and folded up the chair and made him comfortable on the front seat, Wagner said, "Think you'll ever come over and see me, Brolan?"
Brolan didn't answer. He closed Wagner's door and then went around the car and got in behind the wheel. The car had just had a tune-up. It started almost silently. He drove them out of the cemetery.
"I don't think I probably will come to see you," Brolan said as they reached the two-lane highway and started driving past farms huddling against distant hills. "You've got rotten taste in movies."
"What?" Wagner said, startled by Brolan's light tone.
"You like the early Charlie Chans. I like the ones that were done at Monogram."
"Monogram? You're crazy, Brolan. Did I ever tell you that?" And just for a moment Brolan didn't answer. Wagner saw why. Something had caught in Brolan's throat, and he had a hard time swallowing, and something silver appeared in the corners of his eyes. Wagner had been wondering if Brolan was ever going to show that he, too, mourned Denise. Now Wagner had his answer.
"That's what I mean," Brolan said, clearing his throat at last. "Why the hell would I want to hang around with somebody who doesn't appreciate Monogram movies?"
Something like a laugh rumbled through Wagner's chest as he looked out on the vast white mid-western landscape and saw a ghost image of a pretty little girl doomed to run away to the city and die.
Brolan said no more then. They drove for many miles in silence, up and down the rolling white mid-western hills. Wagner thought of Denise. God, how he thought of Denise.