To the Bone (19 page)

After a minute or so, he heard her.

“Carroll,” she called. “What's the matter, darling? I was only playing!” Her voice was sweet, anxious, concerned.

Monks raised his face just enough to glimpse over the log. She was standing on the hilltop at the edge of the woods, a silvery magnificent vision. Her hair was loose now, a wild, wet stream down her back and shoulders, shimmering as her head turned slowly to overlook the moonlit landscape.

“Are you hurt? Tell me, I'll come help you.” She took a few tentative steps forward, brush crackling under her feet. Monks tensed, ready to flee again. But she hissed in pain and bent suddenly to grip her foot, then backed away, limping a little. He closed his eyes in thanks. The same sharp branches and stones that had fought him were his protectors now.

But the sense of menace was still thick around him.

“You can't stay out till morning—you'll freeze! Come to me, love. I want you again.”

Monks waited.

Suddenly, in screeching fury: “You kicked me, you
bastard
!”

He bowed his head again and hugged himself, shivering. He had never heard a voice like that—it was the furious presence he felt, speaking through her.

“Do I scare you because I'm not a cripple, is
that
it?”

He closed his eyes. She had found that in him too, not just Alison now, but Martine. Vengeance was descending for all that he had and had not done.

“I know you hear me,” she called, voice low with wrath. “I can feel you. Go ahead and hide, but I've got you in me now. You're
mine
.”

He opened his eyes in time to see her stalking away, her white shape fading into darkness.

Monks lay there trembling in his cold rebirth. Around him, the night creatures moved with tiny rustlings, stealthy, timid with fear or fierce with readiness to pounce. In the distance, an owl hooted,
whuh oo-ooo.
The presence hovered around him, electric with menace: Hecate, queen of the night, mistress of spellcasters. They had powered their magic with effluvia from the victim's body, believed to contain the vital essence—hair, nail clippings, menstrual blood. Semen.

Monks forced himself to rise. Getting out of
here
was what mattered most in the world. He could see the lights of the house downhill and steered himself by them, crashing naked through the brush, barking in pain from his tormented bare feet. The invisible fury fought him like a headwind, while the voices chittered in his brain.

The parking area was deserted. He trotted in a crouch to the Bronco, pausing to peer in the windows, to make sure it was empty, then dropped to the ground and pulled himself under the rear end. His fingers found the set of spare keys he kept wired there, hidden by a carefully applied clump of mud. He got in and shuddered with relief when the big engine caught.

He found the narrow road and piloted the vehicle like a grandmother, hardly faster than a crawl, hands clenching the wheel at ten and three, staring wide-eyed through the windshield in the desperate effort to keep that winding line of pavement between the front tires. The overwhelming sense was that he and the Bronco were staying still. Everything else was moving, in a fluid shifting tapestry that obeyed no rules of physical order.

It got quickly unendurable. His panicked gaze searched for a place to hide, and spotted the moonlit tall tops of a eucalyptus grove across a field. He aimed for it, jarring his bones over ruts and hummocks, and finally pulled in behind the trees.

Little by little, the fury around him eased and the voices in his head receded. Awareness of cold seeped back in, and his body responded to meet its need, rummaging in the Bronco's rear for jeans and a sweatshirt. He went teary-eyed at their delicious warmth. He was feeling pain again now, too, from his cuts and bruises. Dark blood seeped from his flesh where the branches had slashed. But he knew that the healing had already begun—that invisible forces, like brownies in a fairy tale, were gathering to rebuild the torn tissue and replace the lost fluids. It was a marvel, this fleshly system that carried him around. As a physician, he was only a clumsy mechanic, able to guide the process a little. But the real work was taken care of on a molecular level, by some mysterious organic instinct that knew exactly what it was doing.

For a time he could not measure, he huddled in the front seat, drifting off into fantastic inner landscapes, getting hints of insights that seemed to have stupendous importance, then snapping back into watchful fear.

At last, he could feel that the drug was wearing off. The moon was near the horizon now. He guessed that four or five hours had passed since he had first arrived at the house. He got out and walked around for a minute to clear his head, then started the engine again. This time, things around him stayed put. He drove carefully, still a little shaky, but all right on the predawn back country roads.

Monks's mind was already filling with doubt. Had any of it really happened? Had she actually tried to drown him—or was that only a drug-induced fantasy, generated by a compounding of his fear, suspicions, and long-buried guilt about Alison? Had he imagined the words he thought she had screamed?

Or was he only being allowed to escape because of a deeper and far more fearsome truth?

It had not only happened, but she was right.

He was hers now.

G
wen Bricknell stalked into the big house through Julia's studio, avoiding the party still going on out front, and quickly climbed the back stairs to her apartment. She had put her skirt and blouse back on, but she was wet, and pale with cold and rage. When she threw open the door, her trembling gaze landed on a vase of a dozen glorious red roses on her vanity. She had brought them up earlier, from the flowers delivered for the party, to celebrate. But now they mocked her.

She yanked off the garments and stuffed them in the trash, then grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked at the scarf, ripping it into shreds. It had failed her. She had had Monks so close. Everyone had seen him stoned. He would have been found in the spring, tomorrow morning, where he had wandered and fallen in. And that would have been the end of the prying.

Then her hands fell to her sides, dropping the scissors and scarf. The truth was, something in her had not wanted him dead. She had failed herself.

But she could not afford that weakness again.

She put on a fluffy terry robe, kept warm on an electrically heated rack, and started hot water running in the Jacuzzi. Then she laid out a long line of finely powdered cocaine on a china plate. She inhaled it sharply, standing quiet while its sweet energy mushroomed in her brain. When the tub was half full, she added a few drops of Rigaud bath oil and stepped in. She sank back, eyes closing, feeling the steaming warmth recharging her cells. There was nothing for that like hot water, but one had to be careful. Water was not friendly to the skin.

She rose and patted herself dry with deliciously soft towels, like the robe, kept electrically warm. She studied herself at her full-length mirror. Most of the flaws—the tiny crow's-feet developing at the corners of her eyes, the slight slackness in her jaw-line, the softening of flesh where no amount of exercise would tighten it—could be artfully concealed. Her skin was supple with the oil. But it was not what it once had been. It was losing elasticity, that smooth tautness over the muscles. There was even evidence of checking, and traces of cellulite on her buttocks and thighs.

In spite of all the exercising, the vitamins, the skin care, she was losing ground at the age of forty-one. There was no longer any denying it.

The days when men with cameras had adored her, when the phone never stopped ringing and all the good things in the world were hers to pick and choose, were long gone. She had stretched them by going to work for D'Anton—becoming the prime example of his art, a living sculpture that women envied and men were still awed by. But she had nearly lost that, too. She shivered, and dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater.

Then she stepped to the vanity and picked up the vase of roses that no admirer had sent, and threw it, with a
hnnhh
of exploding breath, against the mirror. The vase shattered and the mirror cracked in all directions, like a giant spiderweb with spreading fingers.

C
offee Trenette is alone when you find her, curled up on a couch in a darkened side room, watching the poolside party through the windows. She's high from smoking junk.

You knew where she'd be. You've been watching her tonight, getting all this together in your head.

Monks was here, searching for
you
. And Coffee was talking to him.

She doesn't say a word as you walk up—just watches you. She's the queen of cool, with a way of looking at you that puts you right down under her shoes. Like the others, she thinks she knows what you are.

You kneel on the floor beside her, like you're nervous about approaching her.

“What you want?” she says, but her tone isn't too tough. She senses that you're here to offer something.

You keep your voice very quiet. “Here it is, straight. I've got a bottle of pharmaceutical Demerol. Hundred-milligram, the strong stuff.”

She stays cool, watching you with that heavy-lidded look. But she's already made up her mind. Smoke is fine, but the needle is the real thing, and there are twenty or thirty shots in a bottle.

“You going to just give it to me?” she says.

You smile timidly. “I've always had a thing for you.”

Her lips twist, just a little. She nods and rises unsteadily.

“It's out in my car,” you say. “Come on.”

You lead her out the back way, to where you've parked, in the shadows. She stands beside the car, rubbing her upper arms like she's cold. You reach across and pop open the passenger door.

She hesitates a moment longer, then slides in beside you.

I
n the hours between midnight and dawn, the world was still and without distractions, even of daylight itself. D'Anton sat in the darkened waiting room of his clinic, surrounded by the images of his women. It was something he did frequently. It soothed him—softened the hard sharp edge he lived on. His mind was usually a clear pool at these times, and his thinking was pure and undisturbed. He had trained himself since childhood not to need more than four or five hours of sleep per night. He had used this predawn time to form himself into a master surgeon—first, for study, then for practice, and ultimately, to envision the creations he would render.

To see the potential beauty of a woman, and then to be able to render it—to wield the scalpel as it delicately parted the skin, to reshape precisely her living flesh, to take her down to the bone and bring her back transformed—this was a power to which nothing else compared.

But there was no soothing in it tonight. He had made an appearance at the party, put on a good face. He did not want the world to know what Eden's loss meant to him.

Even worse than that—the grotesque fear that he had managed to bury deep in his mind was coming to the surface.

And he was not alone. Monks had spoken the name, Roberta Massey. How in the hell had he found out about
her
?

A glow appeared on the room's far wall. It brightened, swung in an arc, then disappeared. He realized that it came from headlights shining through the curtains—a vehicle pulling into the clinic's parking lot. D'Anton looked at his watch. It was 12:43
.
No one had any business here. He got to his feet and went to a window.

Gwen Bricknell was hurrying up the clinic's steps.

D'Anton strode to the door and jerked it open, anger overcoming his surprise.

“What has gotten into you?” he snapped. “First you invite Monks to our house. Then you show up here, in the middle of the night.”

“I'm trying to save you, darling,” she said, stalking haughtily past him.

“Save me? What are you talking about?”

“From death row,” she said kindly.

“Death
row
? Gwen, what is this—mad cow disease?” But he felt the unseen blow to his gut, close to where that fear lived.

“You want to play games, Welles?” she said. “All right. Let me tell you a story.”

She sat on the desk, crosslegged, hands folded in her lap. It was a little girl's pose—but she was at the station where she controlled the clinic. D'Anton stood before her, powerless, like a patient.

“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful model, who made a plastic surgeon famous,” she said. Her tone was childish, too, an eerie high-pitched whisper. “Let's call her Gwen. She spent her career as a living advertisement for him, and then went to work for him. Right here at this desk.” She slapped her hand down on it.

“Then one day she noticed that he was doing thousands of dollars' worth of free surgery on some little slut. Let's call
her
Eden. It didn't take Gwen long to figure out what was going on. Gwen knew the surgeon had affairs. He'd had one with Gwen, when
she
was young. She could forgive all that. But this was different. The surgeon was making Eden into his new advertisement. Then he was going to throw Gwen away, like an old rug.”

“Oh, no,” D'Anton said softly, enlisting that confident voice that women found hypnotic. “Dear, dear Gwen, you misunderstand completely.”

She ignored him.

“Gwen started listening to the surgeon when he was on the phone, and one day she heard him tell Eden he'd meet her that night,” she said. “But he didn't say where. Gwen drove to all the places she thought they might go, and finally, it must have been one o'clock in the morning by then, she came here.

“There weren't any cars, but there was a light on inside that shouldn't have been. She thought maybe the surgeon had parked in the loading dock, so no one would know he was here. So she let herself in the back door and looked. Sure enough, the surgeon's car was there, and she could hear somebody, farther in.”

D'Anton stared at her silently, with his dread rising to the point of nausea.

“Gwen was just about to go in there and let the surgeon and his girlfriend have it,” she whispered. “Then she saw that the car's trunk was open, and there was a big plastic garbage bag in it. Now, the surgeon would never have carried something like that in his beautiful car. What in the world was going on?”

Her eyes were wide, with a child's playacting earnestness. But the fear in them was real.

“She walked over to the bag and touched it. Something inside was soft and warm. Her hand knew what it was. She took her shoes off and tiptoed out of there as fast as she could, and ran to her car. She never believed she
could
be so scared.”

D'Anton was stepping back, shaking his head, palms held out in denial.

“Don't worry,” she whispered, leaning forward as if to follow him. “Gwen didn't breathe a word to anybody. It's their secret—hers and the famous surgeon's.”

“No!” D'Anton almost shouted. “It wasn't
me
.”

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“You never saw me, did you?” he demanded.

“I didn't need to,” she said, in her normal voice now. “Who else could have been here, driving your car?”

D'Anton exhaled slowly. “There's only one other person who drives that car.”

“
Julia
? You can't be serious.”

He turned away, clasping his head as if he was trying to keep it from exploding.

“You know how vicious she can be,” he said. “I suspected it first when that girl, Katie, disappeared. I think there've been others. She's trying to compete with me in some insane way. Taking out her rage. It's been absolute hell to live with, but I didn't know what to do. Just hoped to God I was wrong.”

His body sagged, hands falling to his sides.

“I think she murdered Eden,” he said.

Abruptly, Gwen laughed, a sound that rang wildly out of place in the stillness.

“Tell the world that if you want, Welles,” she said. “Gwen knows the truth.” She slid off the desk and moved toward him, slowly and seductively, all full-grown woman again.

“You don't have to hide anything from her anymore,” she said softly. “She knows you're the master sculptor. You're driven to push beyond the limits. To see how far you can take the living flesh, toward perfection.”

“I'm not
hiding
anything. Haven't you heard what I've said?”

“But you have to remember, you owe everything to Gwen,” she said. “It was her face, her body, that the world saw, with your name hooked to them. And you are going to
keep
her the way she was. She's done aging.”

D'Anton's forehead furrowed in bewilderment. “What are you talking about? No one stops—”

She slapped his face, a hard stinging blow.

“She's going to make the Monks problem go away,” she said. “And then, things are going to be like they used to be. You're going to make her perfect again, an inch at a time. From now on, she is what you
do
.”

D'Anton looked into her impassioned eyes, his skin prickling with the realization that he might have thought the wrong woman was insane.

He said, with a quaver in his voice, “Was it
you
who killed Eden?”

“Eden's gone. Now there's just Gwen.” She leaned close, all softness again, breasts against him, lips at his ear. “She'll take care of you, much better than Eden ever would have. And she'll keep faith, to the death.”

D'Anton was starting to understand that the beauty he had created was making him a prisoner.

Then he thought he heard a stealthy sound coming from the hallway that led to the procedure rooms.