“Gail, where did Anita go after you left each other? Do you know?”
Gail’s lips parted as though trying to frame an answer.
“She didn’t go anywhere. We were at the cave-rock. She got too bossy, so I came home.”
“The cave-rock?”
“That place. We just went—She had to get something. And then we fixed up the garden, but—”
“You went to that place? The fairy palace?”
“I didn’t mean to, but she said—”
Without waiting for Gail’s explanation, she ran down the stairs. He was still in the shower, thank God.
Still there. What would he do when he came out?
Run all the way. Of course there wouldn’t be anything, it was all in her mind, there wouldn’t be anything, he was only doing yard work.
But there might be someone else. Mr. Lattimer. What if he came? She could pick up a rock.
Down over the brook and up through the dead white stalks. Like that other time. But she had walked that time.
She walked when she reached the foot of the hill. She couldn’t see anything. Don’t let there be anything.
Two cautious steps up the hill.
Her breath stopped. For a moment she was not really sure. Perhaps only because she expected it.
But it
was
there. It was real.
The gaping red. She saw red everywhere. The face.
She got as far as the brook, and then sat down among the white stalks.
Go home.
It was her sanctuary. She had automatically started for home.
She couldn’t go to the Farands’. It was closer, but she couldn’t.
She didn’t want to see them.
Her children. With
him.
She made herself stand up. Her feet began to move, but she felt nothing in her legs. None of it was real. She floated.
The screen door grated on its spring and she stopped to listen. Upstairs the water was still running. She must have been gone only a second. All that in one instant, like a dream.
She looked in the kitchen. Empty. Chopped meat thawing on the counter. Had she done that?
She picked up the phone.
“Police.” It was Finneran again. The young Finneran that Mary Ellen had liked.
“Up here… In the woods… Where you found the first body, the next hill.”
She hung up. Something about the shower bothered her. He couldn’t be in it that long.
She looked out of the kitchen door, and then the picture window as she passed it on her way upstairs. She didn’t see anyone, but something was all around her. She could feel it.
Very slowly she tested the bathroom door.
It opened.
Through the shower curtain—no one. The water poured
cold, chilling the room. She started to back away.
His hand closed over her wrist. She felt his body like a wall against her back.
His blue shirt. She could see the sleeve. He was dressed, except for shoes. He still wore his rubber thonged slippers. For an instant she caught the scent of soap on his skin. In that instant everything was all right. Then he twisted her arm in back of her. The other arm, too, and something tightened around her wrists.
She whimpered, “Carl?”
He guided her into the bedroom where Adam lay kicking. Adam would be hungry soon. Her breasts felt heavy with milk.
He pushed her across the bed. Her head fell toward Adam. She remembered that gaping red thing in the woods and tried to kick her way free.
“Carl, the baby—”
He knelt across her legs, tying her feet.
She screamed. Mary Ellen—Gail—
“Where are they?”
Through tears, just in time to see the door close.
Her screaming made Adam start to cry.
“Adam … honey…” Would he know her voice? She could roll over, sit up, but could not get free.
She tried to think. A pair of scissors for cutting hair was in the top drawer of the dresser, across the room. He had used clothesline rope, she could see it on her ankles. It would take years to cut through that with barber’s shears.
Adam paused, gasping for breath. Far away she thought she heard a scream, quickly muffled.
Mary Ellen’s radio playing.
“Mary Ellen!”
The baby-lamb cries began again. A helpless sound. She struggled across the bed.
What would he do with them? That gaping red thing.
Anita.
If I’d done something sooner.
But I didn’t
know.
The door opened. She had half sat up to reach the baby. Carl pushed her down and cut the bonds from her feet. Now—
“I didn’t believe it,” she told him. “I just didn’t believe it.”
He dragged her to her feet, so that she faced him. He held a gun. She had never seen one up close, like that, pointing at her.
“Where are your car keys?” he asked.
“My—what?”
“Car keys!” He seized her arm and shook her.
She nodded toward her purse on the dresser. For a happy instant she thought he was going to take her car and drive away.
He nudged her toward the dresser. “Get it.”
“I can’t. My hands—”
“Turn around.”
She felt cold metal against her wrists and the bonds fell away. When she turned back, he was still pointing the gun at her.
He jerked his chin toward the purse. She picked it up. He prodded her toward the door.
“What about Adam?” she asked. He prodded her further.
Maybe the gun wasn’t loaded.
She dared not take a chance. He could overpower her even without it.
“What are you going to do?”
He pushed her toward the stairs. “Get in the car and drive.”
Behind her, Adam screamed for his mother.
“Where’s Gail?” she asked, and stumbled on a step. He caught her. “Where’s Mary Ellen?”
They were not in their rooms. She should have looked in the basement. Oh, God, that clean basement floor. That poor young girl with the shiny hair.
“Carl, you can get help,” she pleaded. “They’ll know you need help, they won’t blame you.”
The gun pressed into her back.
When they passed the front door, he stopped to lock it.
“Carl,” she said, “Adam’s upstairs alone.”
He pushed her into the kitchen. After they went out through the back door, he locked that, too. He nudged her toward her car.
“You just can’t leave the baby here alone,” she cried. “Where are the girls? Carl, where are the girls?”
“We’re going to be all right,” he said. “Get in the car.”
She halted. “Not until you tell me where the girls are.”
“If you don’t get in the car,” he informed her pleasantly, “you’ll never find out where the girls are.”
He opened the door on the passenger’s side and ordered her in. So he could slide in after her without ever taking the gun off her.
She turned the key. “Where are we going?”
“Just start driving. Head for the city. I’ll tell you.”
She looked back at the house as she swung around and started down the driveway. At least the windows were open, but they all had screens that hooked from inside. Would anyone be determined enough to cut through a screen or break down a door? Would anyone know Adam was there, would anyone care? Would they even think of it?
They won’t know we’re gone, she thought. Nobody can see the house.
The girls were dead. There had been no sound, except that scream, and she was not even sure she had heard it.
They were in the basement. Dead.
He asked, “How much gas do you have?”
She glanced at the gauge. “About half.” And the car was economical.
“Carl, really. This isn’t going to help you.”
“I’ll be the one to decide.” He sounded so calm, so rational.
Down Shadowbrook Road. She wished they would pass another car, anybody who would see them driving away together. Damn, she hadn’t given her name to the police.
It wouldn’t have done any good. Even if they were stopped, he would use her as a shield. He wasn’t going to give up. Not Carl.
“You can’t go on like this,” she said. “You can’t run away forever, and you can’t run away from yourself.”
“Forget it.”
Where was Gail? She had been so afraid. And she might have gotten away, maybe even tomorrow. If only—
And Adam. Little Adam. He had only just been born. Wouldn’t somebody—
“Carl, you can’t do this!”
“Keep driving.”
Right through the heart of Cedarville.
“Turn left,” he said. It was the road they took to Paradise Lake. “Get on the Taconic.”
Not through Cedarville. No one would see them. No one on the Taconic Parkway would care.
“Do you know,” she began, “I want you to save yourself, because I love you.”
The words caught in her throat. She hated him.
“We had a good thing going, Carl. We can have it again. You can get help.”
“I don’t need help,” he said through clenched teeth.
Damn the bitch. He could see through her. She hated him.
It wouldn’t be long now. He only needed her to get away.
He looked down at his feet. Those rubber thongs. Hadn’t had time to change. They had to get out of there before somebody came. Before she suffocated.
He wondered how it would be, walking through the airport in rubber thongs. Perhaps they would see, and stare at him.
He could feel the eyes. Like that other time.
“Better not,” he said. “Those eyes.”
He felt the car jerk as she started to slow it. Then she kept going. “What eyes?” she asked.
“They stared at me. All those eyes.”
“When was that?”
“You wouldn’t know.” She disgusted him. She was not Daniella. Even Daniella didn’t know much. Hadn’t cared.
“Her old man beat me up,” he said. It had hurt. All he’d wanted was to touch the girl. Just touch her. He needed a girl and Daniella hadn’t cared. She went off strutting her tits and wagging her ass at the boys. She never cared about him. She left him, and Mama, too.
“He hurt. My face. All beat up, see?”
She was watching the road. He said,
“Look at my face. “
“I can’t, Carl, I’m driving.”
“I said look at my face.”
She looked at him quickly and then back at the road.
She loved him once. Mama did, too, and Daniella. Even the girl. They all loved him. He never had to ask, they just loved him.
But then they beat him up, and Mama had to get him out of town. Out of the state, even. She said he’d never have a record because he was a juvenile, and she’d fix it up anyway. She said she knew he didn’t do it.
But the other people stared. He remembered coming out, his face hurting, and all those eyes.
“They asked if I wanted a doctor.”
Again she turned quickly and glanced at him. “A doctor could do a lot for you,” she said.
“A lot of bullshit. It doesn’t hurt now anyway. That was twenty years ago.”
“I don’t mean—I mean—They could help you live with yourself.”
“Go to hell. I already live with myself.”
“Yes, but they could help you with—”
“God damn it, stop trying to pretend there’s something wrong with me! You’re crazy. That’s what you are, and you know what they do to crazy people?” He raised the gun that had been resting on his knee.
He saw her face tighten. They were almost at the Taconic Parkway now. He would have to decide about the airport.
They had taken the body away, but it would be a long time before the blood was washed from those rocks and the mangled moss grew back.
Frank D’Amico cursed himself. He knew he wasn’t the only one cursing him. It
had
to be someone around here. At this point, he guessed he could write off Foster Farand, and even Bruce Cheskill and the Gilwood guy. They were all commuters, and they hadn’t been home when it happened.
What a thing for Foster to come home to.
He saw Herb Mackey standing a little way off, staring at the moss.
“She was a relative of yours, wasn’t she?”
Herb nodded.
Frank rested his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “What can I tell you?”
It was his fault. He was in charge, he should have come up with something. People had screamed when he released that lush from New York. But he knew it wasn’t right. It didn’t solve anything to hold the wrong man, just to satisfy the bloodlust that was growing in this town.
At Hawthorne, Carl ordered her onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. She remembered driving there last fall when the
trees were red and orange. A family outing. The four of them, for she had just learned that Adam was on the way. Carl had been normal then. Or had he?
Peaceful Westchester. The sun shining through the trees. People exercising their dogs on the grass beside the Saw Mill River, which was really just a brook.
Her breasts were starting to hurt. And if she hurt, what about Adam?
How had she gotten herself into this? They gave him a blood test when she married him. That was all she knew. His
blood
was okay, for God’s sake. What about the rest of him?
He must have a plan. Carl was too intelligent to blunder into the city without a reason. She had a plan, too. There’d be people, and traffic lights. She’d run through a traffic light and then there would be that blessed sound of a siren …
“Stay on the right,” he said. “Take the Cross County Parkway.”
“Where are we going?”
“Stay on the right.”
She almost didn’t see the exit to the Cross County Parkway. She wondered how long her nerves could hold out. He told her to keep to the right, keep bearing right. The parkway widened and entrance ramps merged on the right. She had to watch for cars on those merges, and he was in the way, and he wouldn’t help her. He would not take his eyes off her for one instant.
“Thruway south,” he said.
A sharp turn to the right. For a minute they were on a local street, with a traffic light, gas stations, and a line of cars.
Please, God.
And then on the Thruway, which soon became the Major Deegan Expressway. They were in New York City now. In the Bronx. A diesel truck roared past them. Then another. The noise tore her to pieces.
“Where?” she asked.
“Just keep going to the Triborough Bridge.” The Triborough was a toll bridge. She would have to stop and hand them some money. Wouldn’t they see that gun on his knee? Couldn’t anybody see it?