"Did you notice anything about his stomach, Marie?"
"His stomach?"
"Yes. Anything strange?"
"No, I'm sorry. I guess not." Marie hesitated. "But there was a weird smell."
"Oh?" Emily Lindstrom said. "Can you describe it?"
Marie shrugged. "Well, I guess I don't know what to say except that it was-it smelled like rotten meat or something."
Chris Holland and Emily Lindstrom had been in the Fane apartment for fifteen minutes now. While Marie had looked and sounded remarkably good, Chris now saw that the girl was still in the throes of shock. Soon, she would come in direct contact with her feelings about the slaying tonight and then-
Right now, the girl was instinctively using this interview as a way of avoiding her feelings. Chris had seen this following many traffic accidents, how badly injured people suddenly developed this great need to talk-this was just another manifestation of their shock-before they came crashing down.
"Please think back to his stomach," Emily was saying.
Too intense, Chris thought. I've got to get her to ease off the girl or Marie will break for sure.
Kathleen Fane was starting to watch Emily, too. The beautiful blond woman sounded as if she too were on the verge of snapping.
Chris said, "Did he say anything to you while this was all happening?"
Marie's cheeks flushed. "Dirty words."
"I'm sorry."
"The same dirty words over and over again."
"And then he just grabbed Richie?"
"Yes. And-"
And Chris (so worried about Emily's insensitivity) saw that she'd asked exactly the wrong question at exactly the wrong time.
The question forced the girl to confront the images of her friend's murder again.
With no warning whatsoever, she began crying very softly, and then sobbing so hard that her entire body shook
Her mother was up from her chair in moments, and then sitting next to the girl and holding her with great tenderness.
"Please," Kathleen Fane said, "I think it's time you both leave."
While there was no malice in the woman's tone, there was certainly steel. This was not a request; it was an absolute command.
"I'm sorry if I made you mad back there."
"You got pretty intense."
"I just had to know about his stomach."
"I got the message."
"I'm sorry."
"I was just concerned about Marie."
Emily Lindstrom's voice softened. "The poor girl. She'll probably never really get over it."
Chris was headed back to the station. The harsh wind was blowing litter across the lighted drive of a service station. At a 7-Eleven people were getting knocked around by the same wind as they tried to run to their cars. For a moment Chris felt snug and warm inside her car, even if it was rocking slightly with every other gust.
And that was when, over the rock station that Chris was playing low in the background, they first heard about the killings at Hastings House.
"Two, perhaps as many as three employees of the mental facility have been killed tonight. This is all the information we have right now. But please stay tuned. We'll be updating this story every few minutes."
"To repeat-"
Emily snapped off the radio. "He went back to the hospital."
"But why? I thought he was trying to escape."
"There's only one reason I can think of."
"What's that?"
Emily Lindstrom said, "He wants to get into the tower."
For the second time tonight, O'Sullivan saw a section of the city turned into a kind of hell by the lights of emergency vehicles.
Hastings House had always had a quiet dignity for O'Sullivan-if you ever went crazy, this was clearly the place for them to take you-but tonight the dignity was being trampled by cops and reporters and onlookers roaming around the grounds, and by patients standing in heavily barred windows.
From the way the officials were running around, it was clear that they had no idea where Dobyns was.
Near the rear, at the entrance to the underground parking garage, an ambulance attendant was just closing the back doors on his boxy vehicle, three bodies having been set inside five minutes ago.
"Hey, O'Sullivan."
A cop named Schultz came up. In his grey suit and fashionably greasy hair (what was with everybody wanting to look like Jerry Lewis all of a sudden?), Schultz looked to be on the same diet O'Sullivan was-pancakes and malts.
"Nice gut you've got there," Schultz said, beating him to it.
"Yeah, like I didn't notice yours or anything," O'Sullivan said.
"So I've put on a few pounds."
"A few. Right."
"I quit smoking anyway."
"I don't even have that excuse," O'Sullivan said.
The four redbrick buildings that made up the new section of I lastings House had always reminded O'Sullivan of the small liberal arts college he'd gone to, spending four and a half years of wasted time pleading with WASP princesses for just a glimpse of the treasure between their legs.
"The way I get it," Schultz said, "the guy who stiffed the three staffers in the garage is the same guy who escaped from here the other night. Why the hell would he want to come back here?"
O'Sullivan shrugged. "You think he's still here?"
"Probably. There are a lot of places to hide."
"Why wouldn't he run away?"
"The police shrink thinks he probably came back here to turn himself in but then one of the guards spooked him so he killed these three guys."
O'Sullivan felt no temptation whatsoever to mention anything about cults or serpents that slithered inside the human body.
Schultz would never let him forget it.
"You still going out with Candy?" O'Sullivan said.
"Huh-uh."
"How come?"
"Let's just say that Candy wasn't exactly the most faithful woman I've ever known."
"I hear you. That's how my first wife was. I'm just glad she was hittin' on all these guys before AIDS showed up."
Somebody shouted Schultz's name. Then he was gone and O'Sullivan was thinking of what Schultz had said about Dobyns: He was probably still around here somewhere.
For the first time that evening O'Sullivan raised his eyes to the black sky that was streaked with misty moonlight and racing grey clouds.
The tower appeared medieval and almost majestic against the night sky.
As they pulled into the parking lot of Hastings House, Emily said, "I'm going up to the tower."
"What?"
"It's the only way I can convince him to turn himself over."
"But he'll kill you."
"No, he won't."
Chris shook her head. "I don't know how you can be so sure of that."
"The incantation."
Chris pulled the car into a parking space and shut off the engine. Before her, the grounds of Hastings House flashed with lights from the various emergency vehicles. Uniformed men and women with bullhorns and flashlights ran around the grounds. In one corner stood four men wearing flak jackets and holding rifles. This was obviously a SWAT team.
Their leader was talking with somebody over a walkie-talkie. The men looked very military.
"Then let me go with you," Chris said.
"No," Emily said. "I don't want you to risk your life for me." She looked at Chris with her luminous eyes and sombre beautiful face. "I need to do this for my brother, Chris, I really do."
"So you get up there and then what?"
"I ask him to come with me."
"And if he refuses?"
"He won't refuse. He's desperate. It's worth a try."
"It's so dangerous."
"If I can get him to come with me, it will save a lot of lives. The police may think they'll have an easy time of capturing him, but they won't."
Chris nodded to the SWAT team standing on the shadowy grounds in front of them. "What if they already know he's in the tower?"
"They don't. As far as they know, nobody has ever used the tower. They think it's strictly for decorative purposes."
"Emily-"
But as Chris spoke, Emily's hand was already on the door handle, pressing downward.
"I'm scared for you, Emily," Chris said.
"Don't be," Emily said. "Be happy for me. This is what I've been waiting for ever since my brother escaped from here that night."
Chris took her hand. "Just be careful."
Emily smiled her sad smile. "You be careful, too." And then she started out of the car.
"Wait a minute," Chris said.
"What?"
"I didn't think of this before. How're you going to get up into the tower?"
"My brother told me the route."
"You're sure he's up there?"
Emily smiled again. "Positive." She patted Chris's hand. "Now I've really got to be going."
Dobyns's hands and arms were soaked with blood as he ran up the winding stairs leading to the tower.
In any structure that has been closed to light and warmth as long as the tower had, a dankness sets in. In Dobyns's case, this meant that his sinuses erupted.
As he felt his way up the wall, wishing he could see better, wishing he did not still hear the sounds of the security men as they'd died, he began sneezing violently.
Maybe I need to buy a little Dristan tonight, he thought. Stop in at my favourite neighbourhood pharmacy and have them fix me up.
Deep within his bowels, the snake moved, turning, shifting.
Below him now, somewhere at the bottom of the stairs, he heard the wooden partition covering the window being pushed back. The window was how he got in and out of the tower. Who else knew how to slide the partition back and forth?
His eyes searched the darkness below, uselessly.
He stood absolutely still, listening.
Footsteps scraped across the sandy floor leading to the staircase that wound to the very top of the tower.
Somebody was coming for him.
He formed a mental image of policemen in dark uniforms and flak jackets. Guns ready. Coming up the steps.
But no; for some reason he knew that this person coming after him was not a police officer at all.
Someone else. Someone with a different mission entirely.
And he chose then-just at this very moment in the cold shifting dusty shadows of the tower-to sneeze.
The footsteps below stopped.
Despite all the external noise seeping into the place-two-way radios on emergency vehicles; cops shouting back and forth; a distant siren-something like silence imposed itself on the tower now.
He waited, wondering who was below.
He touched his stomach. Beneath his hairy belly, he could feel the snake writhing.
He started climbing the steps, higher, higher now, clear to the tower.
Below him, the other footsteps began again, too.
Soon enough, he would meet this person.
Marie felt unclean. Usually, as in gym class, she liked the sensation of sweating, of cleaning her body of impurities. But tonight sweating felt different, pasty and dirty as she rolled around on the couchbed, sleeping fitfully. Earlier, she'd dreamed of the killer in the bookstore, the man coming closer, closer, and Marie grasping a gun and-
The apartment was dark except for a night-light in the bathroom. Not even a television could be heard on this floor of the apartment house. No, there were just the incidental sounds that all houses made during the night-the furnace, the plumbing, windows rattling faintly in the wind.
She had been to the bathroom, peeing, every fifteen minutes since her mother had gone to bed. Marie always peed when she was anxious. She couldn't sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the face of the killer. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw him in the bookstore, the knife in his hand, slashing Richie's throat-
In the bathroom she flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and walked back to the living room. She considered turning on the television but decided it might wake her mother. And, in certain ways, her mother needed the sleep worse than she did. She had long known that, in general, she was a stronger person than her mother and had, ever since she was a young girl, felt protective toward Kathleen. Thinking of her mother now, she smiled. She was a 'good egg' (the same phrase Kathleen always used describing people she liked), lonely, frightened, fragile… and a good egg.
Marie walked over to the front window, parted the curtains a half inch, and looked down at the apartment building's parking lot.
There, directly beneath the mercury vapour light that swayed in the wind, sat a black-and-white police car.
Marie felt instantly safe.
With the back door locked, there was only one way the killer could get in-the front door-and any such attempt would immediately be stopped by the policeman sitting out there now.
Marie spent the next few minutes looking around the neighbourhood from her eyrie. She liked late nights like this when all the houses were snug asleep and the trees blew in the wind and the moon rode the sky just the way it had for millions of years. There was a mysteriousness to the night that Marie loved. Somehow night was her friend and day her enemy-she could hide in the night, not be crippled, not be afraid, just be Marie, nobody pointing or whispering. Yes, night was her friend-
Then she thought about the events at the bookstore and had to amend that.
Most times, night was her friend.
Tonight being a terrible, bloody exception.
Suddenly, as her eyes scanned the neighbourhood, the dark houses, the deep shadows, she realised that night was now her enemy.
Because the killer was out there. Somewhere. Hiding.
Her gaze dropped to the police car again. If she squinted hard, she could make out the figure of a police officer sitting on the driver's side behind the steering wheel. From here, she could not tell where he was looking, or what he was doing.
It was enough to know he was there.
She closed the curtains and went back to the rumpled bedclothes on the couch. The sheets were damp, cold damp, from her drying sweat.
Beneath the covers she saw the shape of the gun. She leaned down and touched it.
In its way, her father's gun was just as reassuring as the police officer in the parking lot.
Like her mother, Marie frequently communicated with her father, even carrying on long conversations with him. And she knew the words weren't imaginary, either. She believed in another realm of existence, an eternal realm of existence, and if your faith was true enough and deep enough, then you learned how to communicate with the people in that realm.
She jumped when she heard the creaking noise on the fire escape.
Without thinking, her hand wriggled down inside the covers and retrieved the gun. It felt bulky but comforting in her hand.
The fire escape.
That's how he'd get up here.
He would first of all have checked the parking lot and seen the police officer and then begun to search for alternative ways into the Fane apartment.
And the fire escape was a very logical way.
Clutching the gun to her breasts, Marie moved soundlessly across the carpet to the window that looked down on the backyard. The iron fire escape ran at an angle across this wall.
Marie moved up to the curtains, teased them open with one trembling finger.
God, she wished she weren't so afraid.
Even with her father's gun, she was shaking and dry mouthed.
She looked down at the fire escape that zigzagged down two floors to the ground.
There he was!
Climbing up the steps!
Coming right toward her!
And then she laughed at herself. Out loud.
She'd always had the ability to frighten herself. When she was a little girl, she'd kept her parents running into her room all night long, because she could not disabuse herself of the notion that terrible monsters lurked beneath her bed and in the closet. Her parents would turn on the lights and show her that nothing, absolutely nothing, was there, but as soon as the lights went off and they left, she got scared again because she knew the monsters were back.
And so tonight, gazing down at the fire escape, she'd briefly imagined she'd seen the killer there.
Knife in hand.
Skulking-what a fine word that was, skulking-up the steps to kill her.
She listened to the wind and watched moonlight trapped in the spring trees make patterns against the wall where the fire escape ran.
The fire escape was empty.
She'd only been imagining him there.
She laughed out loud at herself again.
"You scared me."
At the words, Marie spun around, terrified, holding the gun out from her as if ready to fire.
Her mother stood ten feet away, stunned that her daughter would be pointing the gun at her.
"Honey, please put that down. It scares me."
Marie glanced from the gun to her mother. "I'm sorry," she said.
She walked across to the couch and set the gun next to her pillow.
Her mother came over and embraced her. "Are you all right?"
"I just couldn't sleep," Marie said. She mussed her mother's hair and then let her go. "I couldn't sleep. I kept waking up and having nightmares about the-the man at the store. But look."
She walked with her mother over to the window.
Marie pulled back the curtain as if she were displaying a gift and said, "There's a police car right out there."
Kathleen squeezed Marie's hand. "That should make you feel safer."
"It does."
Marie saw her mother in profile as Kathleen stared down at the police car. There were times when she realised that her mother was getting old, times when she realised-had no choice but to realise-that her mother wouldn't live forever. Now, as always when she had this thought, a heavy sorrow burdened Marie and she wanted to grab her mother and hold her and tell her a million things that, unfortunately, humans had no way of telling each other. 'I love you' had to suffice yet 'I love you' was nothing more than code for a thousand feelings, and nuances of feeling, that could never be expressed.
Her mother turned to Marie and looked startled by the girl's expression. "You okay, hon?"
"I'm fine."
"You look so sad."
Marie lied quickly. "I was just thinking about Dad. You know how I get."
Kathleen gave Marie another hug. "Well, you know he's here with us, don't you, honey?"
"I sure do." Marie smiled. "I talked to him tonight."
"Would you like a sandwich?"
"No, thanks, Mom."
"Glass of milk, then?"
"No, thanks." Marie yawned and stretched. "I'm pretty tired. Those pills I took make me feel weak. I just wish I could sleep."
"Glass of warm milk and a good book always puts me to sleep."
Marie smiled. "For a fragile little woman, you've got a will of iron. Has anybody ever told you that?"
"Everybody I've ever known over two days. I think it's their way of telling me I'm pushy."
Marie smiled. "Will of iron sounds better than pushy."
Kathleen laughed. "I think you're right. Will of iron sounds much better, in fact." She took Marie's elbow and pointed her in the direction of the couch. "Now why don't you go over there and pick up your book and I'll bring you in a glass of warm milk."
Marie knew that about all she could do at this point was comply.
The moment she slid beneath the covers, exhaustion began creeping up her legs, spreading into her arms and shoulders.
In the kitchen her mother sounded happily busy. There seemed to be no time that Kathleen was happier than when she was being Marie's mother-domestic, fretful, tirelessly energetic. The woman obviously regarded motherhood as some kind of religious calling.
Marie reached up, clipped on the table lamp, and picked up her book. Her mother was right. Warm milk, a few pages of the Irwin Shaw paperback she'd been working on for a week, and she'd be asleep for sure. And hopefully, this time she'd stay asleep.
Her mother came into the room like a maiden in a parade, bearing the glass of warm milk on a saucer with an air of great ceremony.
"Would you like some toast?"
"No, Mother. And you don't need to fix me a three-course meal. Why don't you set the milk down, kiss me good night, and go in and get some sleep. You look exhausted."
Her mother seemed surprised. "But, honey, mothers are supposed to look exhausted."
"I suppose it says that in the Mother's Handbook."
Kathleen picked up the joke. "Yes, it does. Right on page sixty-three."
Kathleen leaned down, kissed Marie tenderly on the forehead, and then said good night.
"You can always come in and sleep with me," Kathleen said from the top of the hallway. She gathered her robe about her and nodded good night.
"I think I'm a bit old for that, Mother. Anyway, I found out that the boogeyman doesn't actually exist."
But after her mother had gone to bed, after the lonely wind began rattling the windows again, Marie thought of what she'd said about the boogeyman not existing.
But she'd been wrong, of course.
He did exist after all.
And Marie had seen him earlier tonight in the bookstore.