From the Corner of His Eye (62 page)

Junior couldn’t leave the dead man in the hall and hope to have any quality time with Celestina.

Aftermath had a way of being discovered, often at the worst of all possible moments, which he had learned from movies and from crime stories in the media and even from personal experience. Discovery always brought the police at high speed, sounding their sirens and full of enthusiasm, because those bastards were the most past-focused losers on the face of the earth, utterly
consumed
by their interest in aftermath.

He jammed the 9-mm pistol under his belt, grabbed Ichabod by the feet, and dragged him quickly toward the door to Apartment 1. Smears of blood brightened the pale limestone floor in the wake of the body.

These weren’t lakes of blood, just smears, so Junior could wipe them up quickly, once he got the corpse out of the hallway, but the sight of them further infuriated him. He was here to bring closure to all the unfinished business of Spruce Hills, to free himself from vengeful spirits, to better his life and plunge henceforth entirely into a bright new future. He wasn’t here, damn it, to do
building maintenance.

The cord wasn’t long enough to allow Celestina to take the telephone handset with her, so she put it down on the nightstand, beside the lamp.

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked.

“Be quiet, sugarpie,” she said, crossing the bedroom to the door, which stood only slightly ajar.

All the windows were locked. She was conscientious about them.

She knew that the front door was locked, too, because Wally had waited to hear the deadbolts clack shut. Nevertheless, she stepped into the hall, where the light wasn’t on, walked quickly past Angel’s bedroom, came to the entrance to the lamplit living room—and saw a man backing through the open front door, dragging something, dragging a dark and large and heavy rumpled something, dragging a—

Oh, dear sweet Jesus,
no.

He had dragged Ichabod halfway across the threshold when he heard someone say,
“No.”

Junior glanced over his shoulder even as Celestina turned and fled. He caught only a glimpse of her disappearing into the inner hallway.

Focus. Get Ichabod all the way inside. Act now, think later. No, no, proper focus requires an understanding of the need to ize: scrutinize, analyze, and prioritize. Get the bitch, get the bitch! Slow deep breaths. Channel the beautiful rage. A fully evolved man is self-controlled and calm.
Move, move, move!

Suddenly so many of Zedd’s greatest maxims seemed to conflict with one another, when previously they had together formed a reliable philosophy and guide to success.

A door slammed, and after the briefest of internal debates about whether to ize or act, Junior left Ichabod straddling the threshold. He must get to Celestina before she reached a telephone, and then he could come back and finish moving the body.

Celestina slammed the door, pressed the lock button in the knob, shoved-rocked-
muscled
the dresser in front of the door, astonished by her own strength, and heard Angel speaking into the phone: “Mommy’s moving furniture.”

She snatched the handset away from Angel, told Bellini, “He’s here,” threw the phone on the bed, told Angel, “Stay close to me,” ran to the windows, and jerked the drapes out of the way.

Commit and command. It doesn’t matter so much whether the course of action to which you commit is prudent or hopelessly rash, doesn’t matter
whatsoever
whether society at large thinks it’s a “good” thing that you’re doing or a “bad” thing. As long as you commit without reservation, you
will
inevitably command, because so few people are ever willing to commit to anything, right or wrong, wise or unwise, that those who plunge are guaranteed to succeed more often than not even when their actions are reckless and their cause is idiotic.

Far from idiotic, Junior’s cause was his survival and salvation, and he committed himself to it with every fiber of his body, with all of his mind and heart.

Three doors in the dark hallway: one to the right, ajar, and two to the left, both closed.

To the right first. Kick the door open, simultaneously firing two rounds, because maybe this was her bedroom, where she kept a gun. Mirrors shattered: a tintinnabulation of falling glass on porcelain, glass on ceramic tile, a lot more noise than the shots themselves.

He realized that he’d trashed a deserted bathroom.

Too much clatter, drawing attention. No leisure for romance now, no chance for a two-sister score. Just kill Celestina, kill Bartholomew, and go, go.

First room on the left. Move. Kick the door open. The sense of a larger space beyond, no bathroom this time, and darker. Fan the pistol, gripping with both hands. Two quick shots: muffled cough, muffled cough.

Light switch to the left. Blinking in the brightness.

Kid’s room. Bartholomew’s room. Furniture in cheerful primary colors. Pooh posters on the wall.

Surprisingly, dolls. Quite a few dolls. Apparently the bastard boy was effeminate, a quality he sure as hell hadn’t inherited from his father.

Nobody here.

Unless under the bed, in the closet?

Waste of time to check those places. More likely, woman and boy were hiding in the last room.

Swift and yellow, Angel flew to her mother, grabbing at one of the bunched drapes as if she might hide behind it.

The window was French with small panes, so Celestina couldn’t simply break the glass and climb out.

A deep-set casement window. Two latches on the right side, one high, one low. Detachable hand crank lying on the foot-deep sill. Mechanism socket in the base casing.

Celestina jammed the shaft of the crank into the casing socket. Wouldn’t fit. Her hands were shaking. Steel fins on the shaft of the crank had to be lined up just-so with slots in the socket. She fumbled, fumbled.

Lord, please, help me here.

The maniac kicked the door.

A moment ago, he’d slammed into Angel’s room, and that was loud, but this boomed louder, thunderous enough to wake people throughout the building.

The crank engaged.
Turn, turn.

Where was the patrol car? Why no siren?

The window mechanism creaked, the two tall panes began to open outward but too slowly, and the cold white night exhaled a chill plume of breath into the room.

The maniac kicked once more, but because of the bracing dresser, the door wouldn’t budge, so he kicked harder, again without success.

“Hurry,” Angel whispered.

Junior stepped back and squeezed off two shots, aiming for the lock. One round tore a chunk out of the jamb, but the other cracked through the door, shattering more than wood, and the brass knob wobbled and almost fell out.

He pushed on the door, but still it resisted, and he surprised himself by letting out a bellow of frustration that expressed quite the opposite of self-control, though no one listening could have the slightest doubt about his determination to commit and command.

Again he fired into the lock, squeezed the trigger a second time, and discovered that no rounds remained in the magazine. Extra cartridges were distributed in his pockets.

Never would he pause to reload at this desperate penultimate moment, when success or failure might be decided in mere seconds. That would be the choice of a man who thought first and acted later, the behavior of a born loser.

A plate-size piece of the door had been blasted away. Because of the light shining through from the room beyond, Junior could see that no part of the lock remained intact. In fact, he peered through the hole in the door to the back of a piece of furniture that was jammed against it, whereupon the nature of the problem became clear to him.

He tucked his left arm tight against his side and threw himself against the door. The obstructing furniture was heavy, but it moved an inch. If it would give one inch, it would give two, so it wasn’t immovable, and he was already as good as
in there.