Authors: Nevada Barr

13 1/2 (29 page)

BOOK: 13 1/2

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These thoughts exploded in the same gestalt manner her life story had—seen and grasped in an instant. The man in the next room gave up on silence and blundered toward the bedroom. A lamp fell. With perfect detail, Polly saw where she had pushed it behind her on the path, the shade crooked, the wire wrapped around its base. Next, he would step on empty bourbon bottles.

He yelped and fell heavily. Polly took two steps back and melted into the closet. The soft wall of clothes, hanging and falling, heaped and sliding, molded to her back. The fabric beneath her feet absorbed the sound of her passage. The polyester wall pressed around her, snaked over her head, curled around her arms and hands, then enveloped her completely.

A scratching sound and a light flared from beyond the doorway.

The man had found one of the hundreds of books of matches Red had scattered among the magazines and cigarette butts. Polly pulled a scarf over her face, let it drop over her eyes. Whether it was so she would not be seen or so she could put off the shock of seeing the killer, she wasn’t sure. Through the thin fabric she could make out only shapes and light and dark.

The match expired. There was a sound of slithering papers and a muffled curse.

The AARP magazines.

Polly had tossed them over her shoulder one at a time after shaking each, in the event a note or picture had been thrust between the pages. They made a glossy slick where the path neared the doorway between the living and bed rooms.

Startlingly red light cut through the sheer fabric over her eyes and moved like a star into the bedroom’s firmament. It bobbed and danced, then, with a squawk, was shaken out.

The killer did not speak. No “I know you’re here,” or “Where are you?” or “It will do you no good to try and escape”—all good killer things to say. He did not speak even to curse when the matches burned his fingers or as he fell over one of Polly’s inadvertent traps.

He didn’t want her to recognize his voice.

Instinctually, Polly knew it was not because he intended to leave her alive. It was because he did not wish her to know him for what he was.

Another match was struck. This one came at her face like a fireball.

He’d seen her. He was going to set the closet on fire.

Before she could move, the match flamed out and welcome darkness veiled her. Footsteps moved away, shuffling as he waded through the ankle-deep castoffs on the bedroom floor. Through gauze, Polly watched a tall figure shrink as he squatted with his back to her. Three more matches were struck as he studied the picture album by the bed.

The situation was not going to improve for Polly. Soon, she would be found. He knew she’d been here, was here. He was probably the one who’d lured her here with the card, followed her when she returned after leaving the cellar.

Screw your courage to the sticking place, she told herself and, sucking in a lungful of air, yelling in her mind as she had once yelled before leaping into icy creeks,
Here goes nuthin’!
she exploded from the closet trailing clothes and screaming like a banshee. Her face masked by the scarf, blouses, skirts, and shoes scattering before her, she charged the crouching man. She plowed into him, shoving and stumbling. He went over; the match went out. The yards of fabric that had been so welcome when she hid tangled around her ankles and she crashed against the bed stand.

A hand clamped iron-hard on her left thigh.

Polly wrenched free and felt her way like a blind woman through the doorway to the living room, Red’s laundry like ghostly hands trying to drag her back. A softness coiled around her feet and she fell to her knees. Fingers raked her ankle, then wrapped around it, digging hard into her Achilles tendon. Pain dragged a cry from her.

Her attacker grunted with exertion.

And pleasure.

Scrabbling on sliding magazines, Polly was losing ground. The man’s fingers were wire cables, his strength enough to drag her backwards. Far stronger than she, he could have hammered her kidneys with balled fists; he could have thrown himself upon her and snapped her neck or slammed her head into the floor. He did none of these things; slowly, as if he savored the process, he was pulling her into himself, swallowing her as a snake would swallow a mouse. Garbage piled up under Polly’s chin, drowning her. Scrabbling on the glossy magazines, her hands found no purchase. When Gracie was a baby, too little to walk, she would crawl across the satin bedspread. Polly would catch her tiny, pink feet, pull her back into her arms, and kiss her, then away she would crawl again, laughing. Not Emma. Emma would roll over and kick out in anger.

Polly rolled onto her back, twisting her captured foot painfully. Using the foot that was free, she kicked with the desperation of the trapped. Animal sounds, grunts and shrieks and roars, poured from her. The killer held on, his faced pressed against her leg. She could feel the wet heat of his breath through her trousers. His mouth was working up behind her knee to her inner thigh, as if he would chew into her. Polly struck out again and again and felt her foot glance off his back, his shoulders. Finally her heel struck bone, smashing part of his head or face.

Her captured leg broke from his hands. She kicked again, then scooted backwards like a crab. Before she got to the door she must have turned and stood, but she remembered none of it. By luck or instinct, her hand found her purse on the overturned basket. Grabbing it, she hurtled down the steps and out into the street. Maybe she was chased; maybe she wasn’t. Her escape made so much racket, she couldn’t tell.

Outside, streetlights seemed preternaturally bright and endlessly reassuring. She ran toward her car.

Hands shaking so badly she could scarcely get the key into the ignition, she started the car and drove across Jackson Avenue, then into a smaller street. At each corner, she turned. As she crossed Louisiana Avenue, she watched the rearview mirror. After all the evasive maneuvers, she realized she was praying the murderer had followed, praying she would see a black SUV or a sleek sedan tailing her.

Anything but a cherry red, mint-condition, 1949 pickup truck.

Charles Whitman. Texas Clock Tower. I can see myself doing that. Not right now (no gun, ha ha). Charlie is this marine, right? So, he likes guns and has them. Maybe he’s got this wife that needs stuff and maybe she’s even nice and all but she NEEDS stuff and she’s always at him. And maybe at school he’s got these teachers yammering at him to get stuff. Maybe old Charlie got to thinking everybody was eating him, biting chunks of his flesh out, and he was running out of flesh. Pretty soon he gets to feeling the whole world is made of biters, so he gets his rifle out and decides to take a few biters with him when he goes. Yeah, I could see doing that.

Marshall had not cried in so long his body did not know how. Sobs sawed out in anguished groans. Hot and niggardly tears crept from the corners of his eyes. His shoulders and arms jerked as if he fought to free himself from the clutches of sharp-nailed fingers.

The fit lasted only minutes. Tears were not cleansing; there was no relief, only an ache in his gut where muscles had clenched in a vain attempt to vomit out the unvomitable.

Breathe, you psycho fuck
, he ordered himself and drew in warm air, thick as night, exhaled noisily, and again took a lungful of the static air. A semblance of sanity returned with the oxygen. He looked up at the basement’s center beam.

The axe hung where he’d put it not five minutes before. It had not migrated up the three flights of stairs to secrete itself under the bed like an ogre in a children’s story. It had not flown out of the darkness like a sentient thing, a bat spiraling upward in the night to prey on the innocent. That was a comfort of sorts.

The cellar was dark enough the newly cleaned metal gleamed only in Marshall’s mind’s eye. Still he reached up and flicked off the overhead lights. True or not, TV crime shows had him convinced that scrubbing with turpentine would not be enough. A crime scene investigator would spray the axe with a magic substance and it would glow blue where blood had seeped into the wood, clotted in the crevices between handle and head.

There is no crime scene
, he told himself.

A key grated in the outside door. Polly had come home.

“No!” he cried as the door swung inward.

Danny screamed, high, wild.

“Sorry, man. It’s just me, Marshall.”

“Damn it!” Danny yelled.

“Sorry,” Marshall said.

“The door’s unlocked in the middle of the night. What the hell . . . What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Had Marshall not known his brother never took any drug but aspirin, and that sparingly, he would have thought he was high on something with an edge. “I live here,” Marshall said. “Take it easy. Sorry I startled you.”

Danny closed the door, shutting out most of the light. For a second, Marshall felt threatened. Instinctively, he stood up.

Threat vanished—that or he had imagined it.

“Sorry myself, brother,” Danny said. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that. Scared me is all. Door’s not locked, you yelling from the dark. I jumped so high, I’m surprised I didn’t bash my brains out on the ceiling.” Danny turned the lights back on and looked at Marshall.

“What are you doing in the basement in the dark anyway? Where’s Polly? The kids? You don’t look so good, Marsh.”

“Polly and the girls are staying at Martha’s,” Marshall said wearily and, the effort of standing suddenly too great, sat on the step again.

Danny sat next to him. The closeness was comforting. His brother glanced toward the center beam that bisected the cellar.

“It’s there. I just put it there.”

“I wasn’t looking for the axe,” Danny said. The lie was kind but transparent.

“It wasn’t there last night,” Marshall said. “It was upstairs. Under the bed for Christ’s sake. Like before.”

“And you don’t . . . ”

“No. I don’t remember a thing. I’m a fucking werewolf. At night I turn into a predator and wander the streets thirsting for blood. Goddamn.” He rubbed his face, as if he could scrub the image from his mind.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Marsh. Nobody’s been hurt.”

“There was blood on the axe, Danny.”

Danny said nothing. Marshall didn’t appreciate it. He needed the reassurance of excuses made up by somebody other than himself.

“You’re sure it was blood?” Danny said finally.

“Pretty sure. There was a lot of it, smeared over the blade, the butt, down the handle.”

“Like before.”

“Yeah. I brought it back down, cleaned it with paint thinner, then burned the rag. A criminal mind, no doubt.”

“Maybe it wasn’t human blood,” Danny offered.

“That makes it better? Sneaking around the neighborhood hacking dogs to death? There’s no way out, Danny. Psychotherapy is crap, and the psycho pharmaceutical companies haven’t come up with a drug for the likes of me. I can’t keep screwing around with half-assed theories. It’s too dangerous. Polly, Gracie, Emma . . . ”

After a minute, Danny asked, “What does that leave?”

“Suicide.” Marshall laughed.

“Don’t say that!” The fear in Danny’s voice was sharp. “Ever. You’re with me for the long haul brother. You and me. You don’t get to cut out early.” He put his arm around Marshall’s shoulders. “We’ll get through this. I will see to it that we get through this. Have you been taking the Valium before bed? One of the worst things you can do is let yourself get overtired.”

“Pretty much. They knock me for a loop.”

“They’re fairly mild. You’re just so keyed up, it feels like they knock you out. Your body needs to rest. Wait here.”

Danny stood and looked down. “Will you promise . . . ”

“I’m not going to off myself with the table saw while you run upstairs,” Marshall said. Danny smiled crookedly.

The sound of his brother’s footsteps climbed into the air behind his head where the stairs corkscrewed up. Marshall loved this building. The rooms were full of light. There’d been so many windows and doors—front, back, balcony, and cellar doors—they’d made them all open with a single key so they wouldn’t be carrying key rings the size of janitors’.

Danny’s steps descended again, the
thip, thip, thip
of soft-soled shoes spiraling back down. For some reason it made Marshall think of Edward Gorey’s
The Doubtful Guest
.

“Here.” Danny poured half a dozen small white pills into Marshall’s palm.

“What is it?”

“Valium. The same old thing in a new bottle. The drug reps give me so many samples, I could relax half the Third World. I can run back up and get the literature if you want.”

“Never mind. Thanks.”

“Take two—three won’t hurt you. Get some sleep.”

“Sure,” Marshall said. Danny squeezed his shoulder.

BOOK: 13 1/2

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