The Voice of the Night (16 page)

“What’s up?” Colin asked.

Roy pulled him inside and slammed the door. They stood in the foyer. The immaculate living room lay beyond; the emerald-green drapes filtered the sun and fllled the place with cold light that gave Colin the feeling they were deep beneath the sea.

“I want you to get a good look at Sarah,” Roy said.

“Who?”

“I told you about her Friday night, when we were at the beach steps on the palisades, just before we split up. She’s the girl, the one who looks good enough to be in a pom movie, the one I think we can find a way to screw.”

Colin blinked. “You’ve got her
here?”

“Not exactly. Come on upstairs. You’ll see.”

Colin had never been in Roy’s bedroom before, and it surprised him. It didn’t look like a kid’s room; in fact, it didn’t look like a place where anyone, either child or adult, really lived. The nap on the carpet stood up as if it had been vacuumed only minutes ago. The dark pine furniture was highly polished; Colin couldn’t see a nick or a scratch in it, but he could see his reflection. No dust. No grime. No fingerprints around the light switch. The bed was neatly made, the lines as straight and the corners as tightly tucked as those on a bunk in an Army barracks. In addition to the furniture, there was a big red dictionary and the uniform volumes of an encyclopedia. But nothing else. Nothing else at all. There were no knickknacks, no model airplanes, no comic books, no sports equipment, nothing to show that Roy had any hobbies or even any normal human interests. Quite clearly, the room was a mirror of Mrs. Borden’s personality and not her son’s.

To Colin’s eyes, the oddest thing about the place was the total absence of decoration on the walls. No paintings. No photographs. No posters. In the downstairs foyer, in the living room, and on the wall along the stairs, there were a couple of oils, a watercolor, and a few inexpensive prints, but here the walls were bare and white. Colin felt as if he were in a monk’s cell.

Roy led him to a window.

Not more than fifty feet away, in the backyard of the house next door, a woman was sunbathing. She was wearing a white bikini and was lying on a red beach towel that was draped across a cot. Small cotton pads shielded her eyes from the sun.

“She’s really a terrific piece of ass,” Roy said.

Her arms were at her sides, palms turned up as if in supplication. She was tan and lean and shapely.

“That’s Sarah?” Colin asked.

“Sarah Callahan. She lives next door.” Roy picked up a pair of binoculars that had been on the floor beneath the window. “Here. Take a closer look.”

“What if she sees me?”

“She won’t.”

He put the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and found the woman. If she actually had been as close as she suddenly appeared to be, she would have felt his breath on her skin.

Sarah was beautiful. Even in repose, her features held great sensual promise. Her lips were full, ripe; she licked them once while he watched.

A peculiar sense of power overcame Colin. In his mind he touched and caressed Sarah Callahan, but in reality she was unaware of it. The binoculars were his lips and tongue and fingers, feeling and tasting her, exploring her, surreptitiously violating the sanctity of her body. He experienced mild synesthesia: Magically, his eyes seemed to possess senses other than sight. With his eyes he smelled her fresh, thick, yellow hair. With his eyes he felt the texture of her skin, the pliancy of her flesh, the soft roundness of her breasts, and the moist warmth in the musky junction of her thighs. With his eyes he kissed her concave belly and tasted the salty beads of perspiration that ringed her like a jeweled belt. For a moment Colin felt that he could do anything to her that he wished; he had complete immunity. He was the invisible man.

“How’d you like to get in her pants?” Roy asked.

Finally Colin lowered the binoculars.

“You want her?” Roy asked.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“We can have her.”

“You’re living in a dream.”

“Her husband’s at work all day.”

“So?”

“She’s pretty much alone over there.”

“What do you mean—‘pretty much’?”

“She has a five-year-old kid.”

“Then she’s not alone at all.”

“The kid won’t give us any trouble.”

Colin knew that Roy was playing the game again, but this time he decided to play along. “What’s your plan?”

“We just go over and knock on the door. She knows me. She’ll open up.”

“And then?”

“You and me can handle her. We’ll push inside, knock her down. I’ll put a knife at her throat.”

“She’ll scream.”

“Not with a knife at her throat.”

“She’ll think you’re bluffing.”

“If she does,” Roy said, “I’ll cut her a little to show we mean business.”

“What about the kid?”

“I’ll have Sarah under control, so you’ll be free to catch the brat and tie him up.”

“What’ll I tie him with?”

“We’ll take along some clothesline.”

“After I’ve gotten him out of the way, what happens?”

Roy grinned. “Then we’ll strip her, tie her to the bed, and use her.”

“And you think she’s not going to tell anybody what we’ve done?”

“Oh, of course, when we’re finished with her, we’ll have to kill her.”

“And the kid, too?” Colin asked.

“He’s a rotten little brat. I’d like to snuff him most of all.”

“It’s a bad idea. Forget it.”

“Yesterday, you dared me to kill someone,” Roy said. “And now the idea scares you.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“What do you mean?”

Colin sighed. “You’ve protected yourself by coming up with a plan that can’t possibly work. You figured I’d shoot it down, and then you could say, ‘Well, I wanted to prove I could kill someone, but Colin chickened out on me.’”

“What’s wrong with my plan?” Roy demanded.

“First of all, you live next door to her.”

“So what?”

“The cops would suspect you right off.”

“Me? I’m just a fourteen-year-old kid.”

“Old enough to be a suspect.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure.”

“Well ... you could give me an alibi. You could swear I was at your house when she was murdered.”

“Then they’d suspect both of us.”

For a long time Roy stared down at Sarah Callahan. Finally he turned away from the window and began to pace. “What we’d have to do is leave clues that pointed away from us. We’d have to mislead them.”

“You realize the kind of lab equipment they’ve got? They can trace you by a single hair, a thread, almost anything.”

“But if we could snuff her in such a way that they’d never in a million years think it was just kids that did
it
...”

“How?”

Roy continued to pace. “We’d make it look like some raving lunatic killed her, some sex maniac. We’d stab her a hundred times. We’d cut off her ears. We’d slice up the brat pretty good, too, and we’d use blood to write a lot of crazy things on the walls.”

“You’re really gross.”

Roy stopped pacing and stared hard at him. “What’s the matter? Are you a sissy about blood?”

Colin felt queasy but tried not to show it. “Even if you could mislead the cops that way, there’s too many other things wrong with your plan.”

“Like what?”

“Someone will see us going into the Callahan place.”

“Who?”

“Maybe somebody taking out the garbage. Or somebody washing windows. Or just somebody going by in a car.”

“So we’ll use the Callahans’ back door.”

Colin glanced out the window. “Looks to me like that wall goes all around the property. We’d have to enter by the front walk and go around the house to get to the back door.”

“Nah. We could climb over the wall in a minute.”

“If anyone saw us, they’d be sure to remember. Besides, what about fingerprints when we get into the house?”

“We’ll wear gloves, of course.”

“You mean we’ll walk up to the door wearing gloves in ninety-degree heat, carrying a lot of rope and a knife—and she’ll let us in without a second thought?”

Roy was becoming impatient. “When she opens the door, we’ll move so fast she won’t have time to realize anything’s wrong.”

“What if she does? What if she’s faster than we are?”

“She won’t be.”

“We’ve at least got to consider the possibility,” Colin insisted.

“Okay. I’ve considered it, and I’ve decided it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Another thing. What if she opens the inner door but not the storm door?”

“Then we’ll open the storm door,” Roy said. “What’s the problem?”

“What if it’s locked?”

“Christ!”

“Well, we have to expect the worst.”

“Okay, okay. It’s a bad idea.”

“That’s what I said.”

“But I’m not giving up.”

“I don’t want you to give up,” Colin said. “I’m enjoying the game.”

“Sooner or later, I’ll find the right setup. I’ll find someone for us to kill. You better believe it.”

For a while they took turns watching Sarah Callahan through the binoculars.

Earlier, Colin had been eager to tell Roy about Heather. But now, for reasons he couldn’t quite define, he felt the time wasn’t right. For the moment Heather would be his little secret.

When Sarah Callahan finished sunning herself, Colin and Roy went down to the garage and passed Monday afternoon with the trains. Roy engineered elaborate wrecks and laughed excitedly each time the cars plunged off the tracks.

That night Colin telephoned Heather, and she accepted a movie date for Wednesday. They talked almost fifteen minutes. When Colin finally hung up, he felt that his happiness was a visible light, that it was radiating from him in a golden nimbus; he was glowing.

Colin and Roy spent part of Tuesday at the beach, getting tanned and watching the girls. Roy seemed to have lost interest in his macabre game; he didn’t say a single word about killing anyone.

At two-thirty Roy stood up and brushed sand from his bare legs and his cut-off jeans. He had decided it was time to go back into town. “I want to stop by your mother’s gallery.”

Colin blinked. “What for?”

“To look at the paintings, of course.”

“Why?”

“ ‘Cause I’m interested in paintings, dummy.”

“Since when?”

“Since always.”

“You never mentioned it before.”

“You never asked,” Roy said.

They rode their bicycles back to town and parked on the sidewalk in front of the gallery.

A few browsers were in the shop. They moved slowly from painting to painting.

Weezy’s business partner, Paula, was sitting at the big antique desk in the far right corner of the room, where sales were written. She was a wispy, freckled woman with lustrous auburn hair and large glasses.

Weezy was circulating among the browsers, offering to answer any questions they might have about the paintings. When she saw Colin and Roy, she headed straight for them, smiling stiffly. It was clear to Colin that she thought a pair of sandy, sweaty, bare-chested boys in cut-off jeans were definitely not conducive to business.

Before Weezy could ask them what they wanted, Roy pointed to a large painting by Mark Thomberg and said, “Mrs. Jacobs, this artist is terrific. He really is. His work has a lot more depth than the two-dimensional stuff that most current painters are turning out. The detail is really something. Wow. I mean, it almost looks like he’s trying to adapt the style of the old Flemish masters to a more modern sort of viewpoint.”

Weezy was surprised by Roy’s observations.

Colin was surprised, too. More than surprised. Stunned. Depth? Two-dimensional? Flemish masters? He gaped at Roy, amazed.

“Are you interested in art?” Weezy asked.

“Oh yes,” Roy said. “I’m thinking of majoring in art when I go to college. But that’s still a few years away.”

“Do you paint?”

“A little. Mostly watercolors. I’m not really very good.”

“I’ll bet you’re being modest,” Weezy said. “After all, you apparently have quite an understanding of art—and a very good eye. You went right to the heart of what Mark Thornberg is trying to achieve.”

“I did?”

“Yes. That’s astounding. Especially for someone your age. Mark is attempting to take the meticulous detail and the three-dimensional techniques of the Flemish masters and combine those qualities with a modern sensibility and modern subject matter.”

Roy looked at other Thornberg canvases on the same wall as the first, and he said, “I think I detect a trace of ... Jacob DeWitt.”

“Exactly!” Weezy said, astonished. “Mark is a great admirer of DeWitt. You really do have a knowledge of art. You’re quite remarkable.”

Roy and Weezy moved from one Thomberg painting to another, spending a few minutes in front of each, discussing the artist’s merits. Colin tagged along behind them, left out, embarrassed by his ignorance—and baffled by Roy’s unexpected expertise and brilliant perception.