In Cedarville, the neighbors clustered around the Farands’ house, but there was nothing anyone could do.
Nothing Sheila could do. She was helpless and boiling. There had to be something.
“Why can’t they get him?” she demanded of Pamela Cheskill, who had brewed a pot of coffee—as if that could make any difference.
“Don’t you want to lie down?” Pamela asked. “Maybe the doctor could give you something.”
“No, I don’t want to lie down.” Sheila slapped away the hand that tried to comfort her.
Foster had come home an hour ago. They couldn’t reach him before, because he was on the train when they found Anita. She wondered how “they” knew. An anonymous phone call, they had said.
“Why can’t they get him?” she asked again.
“Who do you mean, dear? Foster? He’s with the police. Don’t you remember?”
“Don’t be so dumb.” Sheila stood up, brushing past her friend. She had no friends now. Only a stone where her heart used to be.
“I don’t mean Foster, I mean
him.
That depraved pervert
out there. Why couldn’t they get him before—”
“They’ve been trying.”
“What do you mean trying?
I
could have told them. All those people getting killed, ahd he’s running around free. They should have locked him up the first time. Right there in the woods, his whole playground, he had the whole place to kill little girls.”
She ended, choking, wishing she could cry. The cold stone wouldn’t let her cry.
Pam’s green eyes seemed to swim before her. “Who do you mean? You don’t mean Lattimer?”
“Who the hell do you think I mean? He’s a killer. Maybe he’ll start on boys. Maybe he’ll kill Brucie.”
She saw Bruce Cheskill jerk up his head. Bruce Cheskill needed a daughter, then he’d care.
“They’re going to leave him there,” she screamed.
“I’m not going to leave him there!” roared Bruce. She did not know what happened, but suddenly he had a rifle in his hand. He must have gone next door. She must be having blank spells and he had gone next door. It was all crazy, like a dream, but she knew it wasn’t going to end like a dream. It would go on and on for the rest of her life, with Anita dead.
“Let’s go,” Bruce called. They murmured and shuffled. What was wrong with these people? Sheila heard herself speak. “Do you want another kid to get killed? How many kids do you want dead, you bastards?”
Somebody said something about the police.
“Oh, go to hell.” Tears suddenly ran down her cheeks. “They had a whole month. A whole month and five people dead.”
“I’m going.” Bruce charged through the door. Sheila’s own daughter June was suddenly there, her eyes red and wet, and then Denise. And the Massey boys from down the road, and some of the others.
Pam called out, “Don’t kill anybody, will you?”
They followed the path Anita had walked so many times to go out to the woods, or over to Gail’s house. When they reached the little hill, she turned away and wouldn’t look at it until they were past, and then she had to look, but couldn’t see anything. Not even any policemen. She wondered if they were already there, at Lattimer’s, taking him in. Where the hell were they?
At the brook they turned northward along a less trampled path, probably the one he used to come down and kill her baby. There was the springhouse where Herb said they found the scraps of cloth. God damn, they could have taken him then, there had only been two deaths, and Anita would still be alive. Nothing they could do would make her alive anymore, it was incredible the way it happened so fast and then nothing could change it ever again.
“Shut up, you people, he’ll hear us coming,” she said.
“Him hear anything?” laughed one of the Massey boys.
“All the better,” said Bruce. “He’ll know what it’s all about.”
Excitement rippled through her as they approached his house. She watched for his face to peer out of a window and suddenly become transformed with terror, but there was no face. Was he too drunk even to know? Damn him, he was going to know.
Things still seemed to be happening in blank spells. Now she couldn’t remember any of the walk over. She saw Bruce march across the front porch and burst through the door. She ran to catch up.
Bruce stood still. They were all still. The house seemed dead, hot and stuffy, and there was a smell.
And then she saw him lying by the cold fireplace next to a wooden table that crawled with insects.
Footsteps clunked over the porch and Herb came in. “What are you all doing here?”
“Oh, Herb.” She sagged against his chest, a stupidly feminine gesture.
Gently he stood her back on her feet. “Out,” he told them. “Out.”
“But—” She couldn’t seem to understand what had happened.
“Okay, you came to get him and he’s dead.” They obeyed like sheep as Herb ushered them back over the porch. “We already checked that. We sent for an ambulance.”
“Who killed him?” she demanded.
“Nobody. You can see, he fell and hit his head on the table. Been dead a couple of days.”
“Are you sure?”
They all looked at each other. Her eyes turned to Bruce. But he’d been in the city. What about the Massey boys?
“Herb,” she said, “who called the police?”
“About Anita? I don’t know. Some woman.”
“A
woman?”
“Didn’t leave a name.”
“What did she say?”
The others gathered close. Herb tried to remember what the report had been. “She said it was near where we found the first body. The next hill, she said.”
Sheila’s head began to spin. She wondered if she was going to faint. She had never fainted in her life.
The next hill. Who knew exactly where they had found the first body? Who saw it?
Who was the person—? Who—this afternoon—had been so nervous when she came in the car, looking for Anita? Who had tried to get her out of there fast,
alone
, instead of going with her to ask Gail where they had been playing? Instead of helping her, as any friend would, to find her child?
“God damn,” she said slowly. It didn’t tell them anything, but it was all she could think of.
“You know who that woman was? It was Joyce Gilwood.”
“How do you know?” asked Herb.
“Because I just God damn
know”
“We’ve been checking everybody around here. They’re not home. The house is locked.”
“Of course they’re not home, you dumb cop.”
She began to walk alone down the path beside the brook. Anita’s brook, where she used to play. At first she was not sure what was going to happen. Everything seemed to be just happening, without her doing anything or even deciding anything. She reached into the pocket of her denim skirt—Pamela had helped her put on a skirt because it seemed more dignified than shorts—and felt a matchbook there. She had known the matchbook was there but did not have any distinct recollection of putting it there, nor any conscious plan for it.
All this time, she thought. All this time it wasn’t Lattimer at all.
She looked back and realized that they were going with her. She had almost blanked out again, almost forgotten all about them.
She clutched the matchbook tightly, as though squeezing the fingers of someone who would help her.
Adam, Joyce cried to herself. Little Adam, alone. How could he do that to his child?
They looped around Kennedy Airport. She waited for him to tell her which exit to take, which terminal, but he said nothing. There had been traffic jams on the Van Wyck Expressway. With the cars and trucks closing in she had waited for someone to notice the gun, but nothing happened.
“Carl,” she said again, “which airline do you want?”
Around once more. You had another chance if you missed your terminal.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told her.
Sometime they would run out of gas. She wanted it to happen right there, where he couldn’t do anything. She wanted him to get on a plane. Allegheny? Delta? Aero Mexico? She didn’t care.
The sun was going down in a blaze of golden clouds. How could it be so late?
Golden clouds and golden rays. She had always thought that was heaven up there. Anita was in heaven. And Gail. She could have gone to Pennsylvania. Gail could have been safe.
“Forget it!” he barked, as though he had spoken before. Was she losing her mind?
“Forget what?” Her nerves were shot. Mustn’t speak crossly and upset him.
“Get out of here.”
“Out of—the car?”
He gestured furiously at a sign that pointed back to the Van Wyck Expressway.
Out of the airport was all he meant.
It wouldn’t work, he decided. There were too many complications in taking a plane. They’d wonder why he didn’t have luggage. And with
her.
She was wearing shorts. And barefooted. He should have made her dress better. There hadn’t been time.
“You’ll take the Whitestone Bridge,” he said, “and the Hutchinson River Parkway.”
That was a good idea, the Hutchinson. They wouldn’t expect him to be on it.
He could be pretty sure there was something else they wouldn’t expect. They wouldn’t think he’d be going back toward Cedarville.
The Gilwood house was locked up tight, just as Herb had said. Sheila chewed on her lip. It was maddening. They shouldn’t have gotten away.
She was further maddened when they came around to the side of the house and saw two police cars in the parking area and Frank D’Amico standing in the open door of one. Those mirrored sunglasses hid his face even though the sun had just gone down.
If he didn’t have a gun, she would have killed him. He should have done something.
He raised his hands and waved to silence them, just the way he’d done at that meeting, with Joyce—her fingers tightened on the matchbook—with Joyce sitting right next to her.
“Okay, people, let’s cool it.” The bastard, as though he was talking to a bunch of kids.
The place was overrun with cops. She could kill every one with her bare hands, but the Gilwoods first.
Bruce Cheskill yelled, “Where are they?” He thought they were hiding in the house. She knew they were gone. Joyce’s car was gone.
“Nobody’s going in that house,” said D’Amico. “I’ll go in myself when I get a search warrant. But you won’t find them here.”
Bruce turned to the neighbors. “How does he know?”
“Her car’s gone,” said Sheila. Frank glanced at where the car was usually parked. He knew.
She backed away from the others, wishing she hadn’t called attention to herself. They were impotent with all those cops there. They were defused, in spite of Bruce wanting to fire his rifle. They would be sent home, like kids, but she still had her matchbook, and no one was looking.
She backed farther away, until she found a basement window that was open just a crack. Right below it were those two upholstered chairs Joyce had wanted to get rid of, and next to them, the woodpile. She remembered how, in early spring, Carl had gone out in the woods with Foster and they’d cut up some fallen trees.
She lit a match and touched it to the other matches, and the whole book blazed up. She dropped it through the window.
“That’s for Anita,” she told the house.
Frank watched them start away. Jesus, a lynch mob, right here in Cedarville. Herb’s cousin, too, but Herb had told him how they marched on Lattimer and found him dead, and then were coming here. Somehow the Farand woman knew it was Joyce who called the police.
He’d thought of that himself. He thought—too late. Everything was too late. He hadn’t realized the guy was home this week. Thought he was in the city, but now it all fell into place. Too late.
She was gone. He didn’t know where the kids were. He remembered how she’d been that night at the pizza parlor. Full of questions and jumpy as a cat. Had she suspected even then? Why hadn’t she told him?
He couldn’t blame her, really. You just don’t believe a thing like that.
And now she was gone.
He’d already asked for a search warrant. Now he radioed for the number of the car. He didn’t know whose name it was registered in, and gave both of them.
He listened and, far off, thought he heard a sound, like music. He couldn’t be sure, there was too much noise, too many people around. Probably one of them carried a radio.
He looked up at the windows. If he thought there was anybody there, he’d bust his way in, but it looked empty.
He ordered the people away, back over the stone wall, the way they had come. Then he got in his car with Finneran and they drove back to headquarters to wait for the search warrant and, more importantly, the number of the car.
Gail heard them leaving. Their voices and all that noise faded away. She heard everything so clearly, but she hadn’t been able to make them hear her.
He had thrown her into that thing they said was a coal bin. She had always been afraid of it, a dark, black hole, probably full of spiders. Now she was in it. Every now and then she felt something crawl across her, and she screamed and shook herself, but she couldn’t scream loud with the gag in her mouth, and she could hardly move.
Her hands were tied to her feet. The ropes cut into her and she was doubled up in a painful position, and had been for ages, but she couldn’t get free.
At first she had thought her mother would come. For a long time she had been so sure. Now she wasn’t sure anymore. They had all gone away and left her. The house was quiet, except for a faraway sound like water going through the pipes, and Mary Ellen’s radio which she could hear sometimes, a note or two when it played loud. A couple of times she even thought she heard Adam crying, but now there was nothing, and it was probably her imagination. They wouldn’t go off and leave Adam.
Only her.
But then the people had come. She didn’t know why or who they were. She thought they might be looking for her, and made all the noise she could. She even heard a man say, “What’s that? Hear it?” and another replied, “I don’t hear anything.”
And now there was starting to be a smell, like smoke. It was like when they had the fireplace in winter. They sat in front of it, she and her mother, and she could almost pretend Carl wasn’t there.