Rose Madder (57 page)

And, just to add to the fun, her pager had gone off three times in a space of forty-five minutes.
Weeks
went by when it sat mutely in her purse, but this afternoon, during a meeting where there were long periods of silence broken by people who seemed incapable of speaking above a tearful mutter, the gadget had gone crazy. After the third time she got tired of the swivelling heads and turned the Christing thing off. She hoped nobody had gone into labor at the picnic, that nobody's kid had taken a thrown horseshoe in the head, and most of all she hoped Rosie's husband hadn't shown up. She doubted that he had, though; he would know better. In any case, anyone who'd called her pager would have called D & S first, and she'd make the answering machine in her study stop number one. She could listen to the messages while she peed. In most cases, that would be fitting.

She got out of the car, locked it (even in a good neighborhood like this you couldn't be too careful), and went up the porch steps. She used her key card and silenced the
meep-meep-meep
of the security system without even thinking of it; sweet shreds of her daydream

(only woman of her time to be loved and respected by
all
factions of the increasingly divergent women's movement)

still swirled in her head.

“Hello, the house!” she called, walking down the hall.

Silence replied, which was what she'd expected . . . and, let's face it, hoped for. With any luck, she might have two or even three hours of blessed silence before the commencement of that night's giggling, hissing showers, slamming doors, and cackling sitcoms.

She walked into the kitchen, wondering if maybe a long leisurely bath, Calgon and all, wouldn't smooth off the worst of the day. Then she stopped, frowning across at her study door. It was standing ajar.

“Goddammit,” she muttered. “God
damn
it!”

If there was one think she disliked above all others—except maybe for touchy-huggy-feely people—it was having her privacy invaded. She had no lock on her study door because
she did not believe she should be reduced to that. This was
her
place, after all; the girls and women who came here came through her generosity and at her sufferance. She shouldn't need a lock on that door. Her desire that they should stay out unless invited in ought to have been enough.

Mostly it was, but every now and then some woman would decide she
really needed
some piece of her documentation, that she
really needed
to use Anna's photocopier (which warmed up faster than the one downstairs in the rec room), that she
really needed
a stamp, and so this disrespectful person would come in, she'd track through a place that wasn't hers, maybe look at things that weren't hers to look at, junk up the air with the smell of some cheap drugstore perfume . . .

Anna paused with one hand on the study doorknob, looking into the dark room which had been a pantry when she was a little girl. Her nostrils flared slightly and the frown on her face deepened. There was a smell, all right, but it wasn't quite perfume. It was something that reminded her of the Mad Marxist. It was . . .

All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all.

Jesus! Jesus Christ!

Her arms crawled with gooseflesh. She was a woman who prided herself on her practicality, but suddenly it was all too easy to imagine Peter Slowik's ghost waiting for her inside her study, a shade as insubstantial as the stink of that ludicrous cologne he'd worn . . .

Her eyes fixed on a light in the darkness: the answering machine. The little red lamp was stuttering madly, as if everyone in the city had called today.

Something
had
happened. All at once she knew it. It explained the pager, too . . . and like a dummy she'd turned it off so people would stop staring at her. Something had happened, probably at Ettinger's Pier. Someone hurt. Or, God forbid—

She stepped into the office, feeling for the light-switch beside the door, then stopped, puzzled by what her fingers had found. The switch was already up, which meant the overhead light should be on, but it wasn't.

Anna flipped the switch up and down twice, started to do it a third time, and then a hand dropped on her right shoulder.

She screamed at that settling touch, the sound coming out of her throat as full and frantic as any scream ever voiced by a horror-movie heroine, and as another hand clamped on her upper left arm and turned her around on her heels, as she saw the shape silhouetted against the flooding light from the kitchen she screamed again.

The thing which had been standing behind the door and waiting for her wasn't human. Horns sprouted from the top of its head, horns which appeared to be swollen with strange, tumorous growths. It was—

“Viva ze bool,” a hollow voice said, and she realized it
was
a man, a man wearing a mask, but that didn't make her feel any better because she had a very good idea of who the man was.

She tore out of his grip and backed toward the desk. She could still smell English Leather, but she could smell other things now, as well. Hot rubber. Sweat. And urine. Was it hers? Had she wet herself? She didn't know. She was numb from the waist down.

“Don't touch me,” she said in a trembling voice utterly unlike her usual calm and authoritative tone. She reached behind her and felt for the button that summoned the police. It was there someplace, but buried under drifts of paper. “Don't you dare touch me, I'm warning you.”

“Anna-Anna-bo-Banna, banana-fanna-fo-Fanna,” the creature in the horned mask said in a tone of deep meditation, and then swept the door shut behind it. Now they were in total darkness.

“Stay away,” she said, moving along the desk, sliding along the desk. If she could get into the bathroom, lock the door—

“Fee-fi-mo-Manna . . .”

From her left. And close. She lunged to the right, but not soon enough. Strong arms enfolded her. She tried to scream again, but the arms tightened, and her breath came out in a silent rush.

If I were Misery Chastain, I'd
—she thought, and then Norman's teeth were on her throat, he was nuzzling her like a horny kid parked on Lovers' Lane, and then his teeth were
in
her throat, and something was spraying warm all down the front of her, and she thought no more.

B
y the time the final questions were asked and the final statement was signed, it was long past dark. Rosie's head spun, and she felt a little unreal to herself, as she had after those occasional all-day tests they threw at you in high school.

Gustafson went off to file his paperwork, bearing it before him as if it were the Holy Grail, and Rosie got to her feet. She began moving toward Bill, who was also getting up. Gert had gone in search of the ladies' room.

“Ms. McClendon?” Hale asked from her elbow.

Rosie's weariness was supplanted by a sudden, horrid premonition. It was just the two of them; Bill was too far away to overhear anything Hale might say to her, and when he began to speak, he would do so in a low, confidential voice. He would tell her that she would stop all this foolishness about her husband right now, while there was still time, if she knew what was good for her. That she should keep her mouth shut around cops from here on out, unless one of them either (a) asked her a question, or (b) unzipped his fly. He would remind her that this was a family thing, that—

“I
am
going to bust him,” Hale said mildly. “I don't know if I can completely convince you of that no matter what I say, but I need you to hear me say it, anyway. I
am
going to bust him. It's a promise.”

She looked at him with her mouth open.

“I'm going to do it because he's a murderer, and crazy, and dangerous. I'm also going to do it because I don't like the way you look around the squadroom and jump every time a door slams somewhere. Or the way you cringe a little every time I move one of my hands.”

“I don't . . .”

“You
do.
You can't help it and you do. That's all right, though, because I understand
why
you do. If I was a woman and I'd been through what you've been through . . .” He trailed off, looking at her quizzically. “Has it ever occurred to you how magic-goddam-lucky you are just to be alive?”

“Yes,” Rosie said. Her legs were trembling. Bill was standing at the gate, looking at her, clearly concerned. She
forced a smile for him and raised a single finger—one more minute.

“You bet you are,” Hale said. He glanced around the squadroom, and Rosie followed his eyes. At one desk, a cop was writing up a weeping teenager in a high-school letter-jacket. At another, this one by the chickenwired floor-to-ceiling windows, a uniformed cop and a detective with his jacket off so you could see the .38 Police Special clipped to his belt were examining a stack of photos, their heads close together. At a row of VDT screens all the way across the room, Gustafson was discussing his reports with a young bluesuit who looked no older than sixteen to Rosie.

“You know a lot about cops,” Hale said, “but most of what you know is wrong.”

She didn't know how to answer that, but it was okay; he didn't seem to require an answer.

“You want to know what my
biggest
motivation for busting him is, Ms. McClendon? Numero uno on the old hit parade?”

She nodded.

“I'm going to bust him
because
he's a cop. A hero cop, for God's sake. But the
next
time his puss is on the front page of the old hometown paper, he's either going to be the
late
Norman Daniels or he's going to be in legirons and an orange tracksuit.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Rosie said. “It means a lot.”

He led her over to Bill, who opened the gate and put his arms around her. She hugged him tight, her eyes shut.

Hale asked, “Ms. McClendon?”

She opened her eyes, saw Gert come back into the room, and waved. Then she looked at Hale shyly but not fearfully. “You can call me Rosie, if you want.”

He smiled briefly at that. “Would you like to hear something that'll maybe make you feel a little better about your first less-than-enthusiastic reaction to this place?”

“I . . . I guess so.”

“Let
me
guess,” Bill said. “You're having problems with the cops back in Rosie's hometown.”

Hale smiled sourly. “Indeed we are. They're being shy about faxing us what they know about Daniel's blood-medicals, even his prints. We're already dealing with police lawyers. Cop-shysters!”

“They're protecting him,” Rosie said. “I knew they would.”

“So far, yes. It's an instinct, like the one that tells you to drop everything and go after the killer when a cop gets gunned down. They'll stop trying to throw sand in the gears when they finally get it through their heads that this is real.”

“Do you really believe that?” Gert asked.

He thought this over, then nodded. “Yes. I do.”

“What about police protection for Rosie until this is over?” Bill asked.

Hale nodded again. “There's already a black-and-white outside your place on Trenton Street, Rosie.”

She looked from Gert to Bill to Hale, dismayed and frightened all over again. The situation kept sandbagging her. She'd start to feel she was getting a handle on it, and then it would whop her flat all over again, from some new direction.

“Why?
Why?
He doesn't know where I live, he
can't
know where I live! That's why he came to the picnic, because he thought I'd be there. Cynthia didn't tell him, did she?”

“She says not.” Hale accented the second word, but so lightly Rosie didn't catch it. Gert and Bill did, and they exchanged a look.

“Well, there! And Gert didn't tell him, either! Did you, Gert?”

“No, ma'am,” Gert said.

“Well, I like to play safe—leave it at that. I've got the guys in front of your building, and backup cars—at least two—in the neighborhood. I don't want to scare you all over again, but a nut who knows police procedure is a special nut. Best not to take chances.”

“If you think so,” Rosie said in a small voice.

“Ms. Kinshaw, I'll send someone around to take you wherever you want to go—”

“Ettinger's,” Gert said, and stroked her robe. “I'm going to make a fashion statement at the concert.”

Hale grinned, then put his hand out to Bill. “Mr. Steiner, good to meet you.”

Bill shook it. “Same here. Thanks for everything.”

“It's my job.” He glanced from Gert to Rosie. “Good night, girls.” He looked back at Gert, fast, and his face broke into a grin that knocked fifteen years off his age in an instant.
“Gotcha,” he said, and laughed. After a moment's thought, Gert laughed with him.

O
n the steps outside, Bill and Gert and Rosie huddled together a little. The air was damp, and fog was drifting in off the lake. It was still thin, really no more than a nimbus around the streetlights and low-lying smoke over the wet pavement, but Rosie guessed that in another hour it would be almost thick enough to cut.

“Want to come back to D and S tonight, Rosie?” Gert asked. “They'll be coming in from the concert in another couple of hours; we could have the popcorn all made.”

Rosie, who most definitely did not want to go back to D & S, turned to Bill. “If I go home, will you stay with me?”

“Sure,” he said promptly, and took her hand. “It'd be a pleasure. And don't worry about the accommodations—I never saw a couch yet that I couldn't sleep on.”

“You haven't seen mine,” she said, knowing that her sofa wasn't going to be a problem, because Bill wasn't going to be sleeping there. Her bed was a single, which meant they'd be cramped, but she thought they would still manage quite nicely. Close quarters might even add something.