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Nora felt sick because he was not merely crazy and not merely a killer but a crazy
professional
killer.
professional
killer.
Unaware of her reaction, switching his gaze from the rain-swept road to her face, he continued. “See, we were having dinner in this restaurant, Danny and me, washing down clams with Valpolicella, and I explained to him that I was destined to lead a long life because of my ability to acquire the vital energies of people I wasted. I told him, ‘See, Danny, people are like batteries, walking batteries, filled with this mysterious energy we call life. When I off someone, his energy becomes
my
energy, and I get stronger. I’m a bull, Danny.’ I says, ‘Look at me—am I a bull or what? And I got to be a bull ’cause I have this Gift of being able to take the energy from a guy.’ And you know what Danny says?”
my
energy, and I get stronger. I’m a bull, Danny.’ I says, ‘Look at me—am I a bull or what? And I got to be a bull ’cause I have this Gift of being able to take the energy from a guy.’ And you know what Danny says?”
“What?” she asked numbly.
“Well, Danny was a serious eater, so he kept his attention on his plate, face in his food, until he scarfs a few more clams. Then he looks up, his lips and chin dripping clam sauce, and he says, ‘Yeah, Vince, so where’d you learn this trick, huh? Where’d you learn how to absorb these life energies?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s my Gift,’ and he said, ‘You mean like from God?’ So I had to think about that, and I said, ‘Who knows where from? It’s my Gift like Mantle’s hitting was a gift, like Sinatra’s voice was a gift.’ And Danny says, ‘Tell me this—suppose you waste a guy who’s an electrician. After you absorb his energy, would you all of a sudden know how to rewire a house?’ I didn’t realize he was putting me on. I thought it was a serious question, so I explained how I absorb life energy, not personality, not all the stuff the guy knows, just his energy. And then Danny says, ‘So if you blew away a carnival geek, you wouldn’t all of a sudden get the urge to bite the heads off chickens.’ Right then I knew Danny thought I was either drunk or nuts, so I ate clams and didn’t say any more about my Gift, and that’s the last time I told anyone until I’m here telling you.”
He had called himself Vince, so now she knew his name. She did not see what good it would do her to know it.
He had told his story without any indication that he was aware of the insane black humor in it. He was a deadly serious man. Unless Travis could deal with him, this guy was not going to let them live.
“So,” Vince said, “I couldn’t risk Danny going around telling anyone what I’d told him, because he’d color it up, make it sound funny, and people would think I was nuts. The big bosses don’t hire crazy hit men; they want cool, logical, balanced guys who can do the work clean. Which is what I am, cool and balanced, but Danny would have had them thinking the other way. So that night I slit his throat, took him to this deserted factory I knew, cut him into pieces, put him in a vat, and poured a lot of sulfuric acid over him. He was a favorite nephew of the don’s, so I couldn’t take a chance of anyone finding a body that might be traced back to me. Now, I got Danny’s energy in me, along with a lot of others.”
The gun was in the glove box.
Some small hope could be taken from the knowledge that the gun was in the glove box.
While Nora was visiting Dr. Weingold, Travis whipped up and baked a double batch of cookies with peanut-butter chips. Living alone, he had learned to cook, but he had never taken pleasure in it. During the past few months, however, Nora had improved his culinary skills to such an extent that he enjoyed cooking, especially baking.
Einstein, who usually hung around dutifully throughout a baking session, in the anticipation of receiving a sweet morsel, deserted him before he had finished mixing the batter. The dog was agitated and moved around the house from window to window, staring out at the rain.
After a while, Travis got edgy about the dog’s behavior and asked if something was wrong.
In the pantry, Einstein made his reply.
I FEEL A LITTLE STRANGE.
“Sick?” Travis asked, worried about a relapse. The retriever was recovering well, but still recovering. His immune system was not in condition for a major new challenge.
NOT SICK.
“Then what? You sense . . . The Outsider?”
NO. NOT LIKE BEFORE.
“But you sense something?”
BAD DAY.
“Maybe it’s the rain.”
MAYBE.
Relieved but still edgy, Travis returned to his baking.
The highway was silver with rain.
The daytime fog grew slightly thicker as they drove south along the coast, forcing Nora to slow to forty miles an hour, thirty in some places.
Using the fog as an excuse, could she slow the truck enough to risk throwing open her door and leaping out? No. Probably not. She would have to let their speed drop below five miles an hour in order not to hurt herself or her unborn child, and the fog simply was not dense enough to justify reducing speed that far. Besides, Vince kept the revolver pointed at her while he talked, and he would shoot her in the back as she turned to make her exit.
The pickup’s headlamps and those of the few oncoming cars were refracted by the mist. Halos of light and scintillant rainbows bounced off the shifting curtains of fog, briefly seen, then gone.
She considered running the truck off the road, over the edge in one of the few places where she knew the embankment to be gentle and the drop endurable. But she was afraid she would misjudge where she was and, by mistake, drive off the brink into a two-hundred-foot emptiness, crashing with terrible force into the rocky coastline below. Even if she went over at the right point, a calculated and survivable crash might knock her unconscious or induce a miscarriage, and if possible she wanted to get out of this with her life and the life of the child within her.
Once Vince started talking to her, he could not stop. For years he had husbanded his great secrets, had hidden his dreams of power and immortality from the world, but his desire to speak of his supposed greatness evidently had never diminished after the fiasco with Danny Slowicz. It was as if he had stored up all the words he had wanted to say to people, had put them on reels and reels of mental recording tape, and now he was playing them back at high speed, spewing out all this craziness that made Nora sick with dread.
He told her how he had learned of Einstein—the killing of the research scientists in charge of various programs under the Francis Project at Banodyne. He knew of The Outsider, too, but was not afraid of it. He was, he said, on the brink of immortality, and gaining ownership of the dog was one of the final tasks he had to complete in order to achieve his Destiny. He and the dog were destined to be together because each of them was unique in this world, one of a kind. Once Vince had achieved his Destiny, he said, nothing could stop him, not even The Outsider.
Half the time, Nora didn’t understand what he was saying. She supposed that if she
did
understand it, she would be as insane as he clearly was.
did
understand it, she would be as insane as he clearly was.
But though she did not always grasp his meaning, she knew what he intended to do to her and to Travis once he had the retriever. At first, she was afraid of speaking about her fate, as if putting it into words would somehow make it irrevocable. At last, however, when they were no more than five miles from the dirt lane that turned off the highway and led up to the bleached-wood house, she said, “You won’t let us go when you’ve got the dog, will you?”
He stared at her, caressing her with his gaze. “What do you think, Nora?”
“I think you’ll kill us.”
“Of course.”
She was surprised that his confirmation of her fears did not fill her with greater terror. His smug response only infuriated her, damping her fear while increasing her determination to spoil his neat plans.
She knew, then, that she was a radically changed woman from the Nora of last May, who would have been reduced to uncontrollable shudders by this man’s bold self-assurance.
“I could run this truck right off the road, take my chances with an accident,” she said.
“The moment you pulled on the wheel,” he said, “I’d have to shoot you and then try to regain control.”
“Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you’d die, too.”
“Me? Die? Maybe. But not in anything as minor as a traffic accident. No, no. I’ve got too many lives in me to go that easily. And I don’t believe you’ll try it anyway. In your heart of hearts, you believe that man of yours will pull a sharp one, save you and the dog and himself. You’re wrong, of course, but you can’t stop believing in him. He won’t do anything because he’ll be afraid of hurting you. I’ll go in there with a gun in your belly, and that will paralyze him long enough for me to blow his head off. That’s why I’ve only got the revolver. It’s all I need. His caring for you, his fear of hurting you, will get him killed.”
Nora decided it was very important that she not let her fury show. She must try to look frightened, weak, utterly unsure of herself. If he underestimated her, he might slip up and give her some small advantage.
Taking her eyes off the rainy highway for only a second, she glanced at him and saw that he was staring at her not with amusement or psychopathic rage, as she would have expected, and not with his usual bovine placidity, either, but with something that looked very much like affection and maybe gratitude.
“I’ve dreamed for years of killing a pregnant woman,” he said, as if that was a goal no less worthwhile and commendable than wanting to build a business empire or feed the hungry or nurse the sick. “I have never been in a situation where the risk of killing a pregnant woman was low enough to justify it. But in that isolated house of yours, once I’ve dealt with Cornell, the conditions will be ideal.”
“Please, no,” she said shakily, playing the weakling, though she didn’t have to fake the nervous quiver in her voice.
Still speaking calmly but with a trace more emotion than before, he said, “There’ll be your life energy, still young and rich, but in the instant you die, I’ll also receive the energy of the child. And that’ll be perfectly pure, unused, a life that’s unsoiled by the many contaminants of this sick and degenerate world. You’re my first pregnant woman, Nora, and I’ll always remember you.”
Tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes, which was not just good acting, either. Although she
did
believe Travis would find some way to handle this man, she was afraid that, in the turmoil, she or Einstein would die. And she did not know how Travis would be able to cope with his failure to save all of them.
did
believe Travis would find some way to handle this man, she was afraid that, in the turmoil, she or Einstein would die. And she did not know how Travis would be able to cope with his failure to save all of them.
“Don’t despair, Nora,” Vince said. “You and your baby will not entirely cease to exist. You’ll both become a part of me, and in me you’ll live forever.”
Travis took the first tray of cookies out of the oven and put them on a rack to cool.
Einstein came sniffing around, and Travis said, “They’re too hot yet.”
The dog returned to the living room to look out the front window at the rain.
Just before Nora turned off the Coast Highway, Vince slid down on the seat, below the window level, out of sight. He kept the gun on her. “I’ll blow that baby right out of your belly if you make the slightest wrong move.”
She believed him.
Turning onto the dirt lane, which was muddy and slippery, Nora drove up the hill toward the house. The overhanging trees shielded the road from the worst of the rain but collected the water on their branches and sent it to the ground in fatter droplets or rivulets.
She saw Einstein at a front window, and she tried to come up with some signal that would mean “trouble,” that the dog would instantly understand. She couldn’t think of anything.
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