She tried to talk into the gag.
“If I untie you and let you sit up, will you be good? Don’t try to run. I can catch you. Will you be good?”
She twisted her head toward the voice to nod.
A touch of cold steel against her skin, whisper of a knife through cloth and her arms were free. Now her legs. Her cheeks were wet where the gag came off.
Carefully and slowly she sat up in the bed. Take your best shot.
“D.,” she said, “I didn’t know you cared this much about me. I’m glad you feel that way but, see, you seared me with this.”
No answer. She knew he was there.
“D., was it old dumb Ralph Mandy that made you mad? Did you see him at my house? That’s it, isn’t it? I was telling him I don’t want to see him anymore. Because I want to see you. I’m never going to see Ralph again.”
“Ralph died,” Dolarhyde said. “I don’t think he liked it very much
Fantasy. He’s making it up Jesus do I hope. “I’ve never hurt you, D. I never wanted to. Let’s just be friends and fuck and have a good time and forget about this,”
“Shut up,” he said calmly. “I’ll tell you something. The most important thing you’ll ever hear. Sermon-on-the-Mount important. Ten-Commandments important. Got it?”
“Yes, D. I—”
“Shut up. Reba, some remarkable events have happened inBirminghamandAtlanta. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
She shook her head.
“It’s been on the news a lot. Two groups of people were changed.Leeds. And Jacobi. The police think they were murdered. Do you know now?”
She started to shake her head. Then she did know and slowly she nodded.
“Do you know what they call the Being that visited those people? You can say.”
“The Tooth—”
A hand gripped her face, shutting off the sound.
“Think carefully and answer correctly.”
“It’s Dragon something. Dragon… Red Dragon.”
He was close to her. She could feel his breath on her face.
“I AM THE DRAGON.”
Leaping back, driven by the volume and terrible timbre of the voice, she slammed against the headboard.
“The Dragon wants you, Reba. He always has. I didn’t want to give you to Him. I did a thing for you today so He couldn’t have you. And I was wrong.”
This was D., she could talk to D. “Please. Please don’t let him have me. You won’t, please don’t, you wouldn’t—I’m for you. Keep me with you. You like me, I know you do.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet. Maybe I can’t help giving you to Him. I don’t know. I’m going to see if you do as I tell you. Will you? Can I depend on you?”
“I’ll try. I will try. Don’t scare me too much or I can’t.”
“Get up, Reba. Stand by the bed. Do you know where you are in the room?”
She nodded.
“You know where you are in the house, don’t you? You wandered around in the house while I was asleep, didn’t you?”
“Asleep?”
“Don’t be stupid. When we spent the night here. You went through the house, didn’t you? Did you find something odd? Did you take it and show it to somebody? Did you do that, Reba?”
“I just went outside. You were asleep and I went outside. I promise.”
“Then you know where the front door is, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Reba, feel on my chest. Bring your hands up slowly.”
Try for his eyes?
His thumb and fingers touched lightly on each side of her windpipe. “Don’t do what you’re thinking, or I’ll squeeze. Just feel on my chest. Just at my throat. Feel the key on the chain? Take it off over my head. Careful… that’s right. Now I’m going to see if I can trust you. Go close the front door and lock it and bring me back the key. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here. Don’t try to run. I can catch you.
She held the key in her hand, the chain tapping against her thigh. It was harder navigating in her shoes, but she kept them on. The ticking clock helped.
Rug, then floor, rug again. Loom of the sofa. Go to the right.
What’s my best shot? Which? Fool along with him or go for it? Did the others fool along with him? She felt dizzy from deep breathing. Don’t be dizzy. Don’t be dead.
It depends on whether the door is open. Find out where he is.
“Am I going right?” She knew she was.
“It’s about five more steps.” The voice was from the bedroom all right.
She felt air on her face. The door was half-open. She kept her body between the door and the voice behind her. She slipped the key in the keyhole below the knob. On the outside.
Now. Through the door fast making herself pull it to and turn the key. Down the ramp, no cane, trying to remember where the van was, running. Running. Into what-a bush-screaming now. Screaming “Help me. Help me. Help me, help me.” On gravel running. A truck horn far away. Highway that way, a fast walk and trot and run, fast as she could, veering when she felt grass instead of gravel, zigging down the lane.
Behind her footsteps coming fast and hard, running in the gravel. She stooped and picked up a handful of rocks, waited until he was close and flung them, heard them thump on him.
A shove on the shoulder spun her, a big arm under her chin, around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, blood roared in her ears. She kicked backward, hit a shin as it became increasingly quiet.
Chapter 47
In two hours, the list of white male employees twenty to fifty years old who owned vans was completed. There were twenty-six names on it.
Missouri DMV provided hair color from driver’s-licence information, but it was not used as an exclusionary factor; the Dragon might wear a wig.
Fisk’s secretary, Miss Trillman, made copies of the list and passed them around.
Lieutenant Fogel was going down the list of names when his beeper went off.
Fogel spoke to his headquarters briefly on the telephone, then put his hand over the receiver. “Mr. Crawford… Jack, one Ralph Mandy, white male, thirty-eight, was found shot to death a few minutes ago inUniversity City—that’s in the middle of town, close toWashingtonUniversity—he was in the front yard of a house occupied by a woman named Reba McClane. The neighbors said she works for Baeder. Her door’s unlocked, she’s not home.”
“Dandridge!” Crawford called. “Reba McClane, what about her?”
“She works in the darkroom. She’s blind. She’s from someplace inColorado—”
“You know a Ralph Mandy?”
“Mandy?” Dandridge said. “Randy Mandy?”
“Ralph Mandy, he work here?”
A check of the roll showed he didn’t.
“Coincidence maybe,” Fogel said.
“Maybe,” Crawford said.
“I hope nothing’s happened to Reba,” Miss Trillman said.
“You know her?” Graham said.
“I’ve talked with her several times.”
“What about Mandy?”
“I don’t know him. The only man I’ve seen her with, I saw her getting into Mr. Dolarhyde’s van.”
“Mr. Dolarhyde’s van, Miss Trillman? What color is Mr. Dolarhyde’s van?”
“Let’s see. Dark brown, or maybe black.”
“Where does Mr. Dolarhyde work?” Crawford asked.
“He’s production supervisor,” Fisk said.
“Where’s his office?”
“Right down the hall.”
Crawford turned to speak to Graham, hut he was already moving. Mr, Dolarhyde’s office was locked. A passkey from Maintenance worked.
Graham reached in and flipped on the light. He stood still in the doorway while his eyes went over the room. It was extremely neat. No personal items were anywhere in sight. The bookshelf held only technical manuals.
The desk lamp was on the left side of the chair, so he was right-handed. Need a left thumbprint fast off a right-handed man.
“Let’s toss it for a clipboard,” he said to Crawford, behind him in the hall. “He’ll use his left thumb on the clip.”
They had started on the drawers when the desk appointment calendar caught Graham’s eye. He flipped back through the scribbled pages to Saturday, June 28, the date of the Jacobi killings.
The calendar was unmarked on the Thursday and Friday before that weekend.
He flipped forward to the last week in July. The Thursday and Friday were blank. There was a note on Wednesday. It said: “Am 552 3:45—6:15.”
Graham copied the entry. “I want to find out where this flight goes.”
“Let me do it, you go ahead here,” Crawford said. He went to a telephone across the hall.
Graham was looking at a tube of denture adhesive in the bottom desk drawer when Crawford called from the door.
“It goes toAtlanta, Will. Let’s take him out.”
Chapter 48
Water cold on Reba’s face, running in her hair. Dizzy. Something hard under her, sloping. She turned her head. Wood under her. A cold wet towel wiped her face.
“Are you all right, Reba?” Dolarhyde’s calm voice. She shied from the sound. “Uhhhh.”
“Breathe deeply.”
A minute passed.
“Do you think you can stand up? Try to stand up.”
She could stand with his arm around her. Her stomach heaved. He waited until the spasm passed.
“Up the ramp. Do you remember where you are?”
She nodded.
“Take the key out of the door, Reba. Come inside. Now lock it and put the key around my neck. Hang it around my neck. Good. Let’s just be sure it’s locked.”
She heard the knob rattle.
“That’s good. Now go in the bedroom, you know the way.” She stumbled and went down on her knees, her head bowed. He lifted her by the arms and supported her into the bedroom.
“Sit in this chair.” She sat.
“GIVE HER TO ME NOW.”
She struggled to rise; big hands on her shoulders held her down.
“Sit still or I can’t keep Him off you,” Dolarhyde said. Her mind was coming back. It didn’t want to.
“Please try,” she said.
“Reba, it’s all over for me.”
He was up, doing something. The odor of gasoline was very strong.
“Put out your hand. Feel this. Don’t grab it, feel it.”
She felt something like steel nostrils, slick inside. The muzzle of a gun.
“That’s a shotgun, Reba. A twelve-gauge magnum. Do you know what it will do?”
She nodded.
“Take your hand down.” The cold muzzle rested in the hollow of her throat.
“Reba, I wish I could have trusted you. I wanted to trust you.” He sounded like he was crying.
“You felt so good.”
He was crying.
“So did you, D. I love it. Please don’t hurt me now.”
“It’s all over for me. I can’t leave you to Him. You know what He’ll do?”
Bawling now.
“Do you know what He’ll do? He’ll bite you to death. Better you go with me.”
She heard a match struck, smelled sulfur, heard a whoosh. Heat in the room. Smoke. Fire. The thing she feared most in the world. Fire. Anything was better than that. She hoped the first shot killed her. She tensed her legs to run.
Blubbering.
“Oh, Reba, I can’t stand to watch you burn.”
The muzzle left her throat.
Both barrels of the shotgun went off at once as she came to her feet.
Ears numbed, she thought she was shot, thought she was dead, felt the heavy thump on the floor more than she heard it.
Smoke now and the crackle of flames. Fire. Fire brought her to herself. She felt heat on her arms and face. Out. She stepped on legs, stumbled choking into the foot of the bed.
Stoop low, they said, under the smoke. Don’t run, you’ll bump into things and die.
She was locked in. Locked in. Walking, stooping low, fingers trailing on the floor, she found legs—other end—she found hair, a hairy flap, put her hand in something soft below the hair. Only pulp, sharp bone splinters and a loose eye in it.
Key around his neck… hurry. Both hands on the chain, legs under her, snatch. The chain broke and she fell backward, scrambling up again. Turned around, confused. Trying to feel, trying to listen with her numbed ears over the crackle of the flames. Side of the bed… which side? She stumbled on the body, tried to listen.
BONG, BONG, the clock striking. BONG, BONG, into the living room, BONG, BONG, take a right.
Throat seared with smoke. BONG BONG. Door here. Under the knob. Don’t drop it. Click the lock. Snatch it open. Air. Down the ramp. Air. Collapsed in the grass. Up again on hands and knees, crawling.
She came up on her knees to clap, picked up the house echo and crawled away from it, breathing deep until she could stand, walk, run until she hit something, run again.
Chapter 49
Locating Francis Dolarhyde’s house was not so easy. The address listed at Gateway was a post-office box inSt. Charles.
Even theSt. Charlessheriff’s department had to check a service map at the power-company office to be sure.
The sheriff’s department welcomed St. Louis SWAT to the other side of the river, and the caravan moved quietly up State Highway 94. A deputy beside Graham in the lead car showed the way. Crawford leaned between them from the back seat and sucked at something in his teeth. They met light traffic at the north end ofSt. Charles, a pickup full of children, a Greyhound bus, a tow truck.
They saw the glow as they cleared the northern city limits.
“That’s it!” the deputy said. “That’s where it is!”
Graham put his foot down. The glow brightened and swelled as they roared up the highway.
Crawford snapped his fingers for the microphone.
“All units, that’s his house burning. Watch it now. He may be coming out. Sheriff, let us have a roadblock here, if you will.”
A thick column of sparks and smoke leaned southeast over the fields, hanging over them now.
“Here,” the deputy said, “turn in on this gravel.”
They saw the woman then, silhouetted black against the fire, saw her as she heard them and raised her arms to them.
And then the great fire blasted upward, outward, burning beams and window frames describing slow high arcs into the night sky, the blazing van rocked over on its side, orange tracery of the burning trees suddenly blown out and dark. The ground shuddered as the explosion whump rocked the police cars.
The woman was face down in the road. Crawford and Graham and the deputies out, running to her as fire rained in the road, some running past her with their weapons drawn.
Crawford took Reba from a deputy batting sparks from her hair.
He held her arms, face close to hers, red in the firelight.
“Francis Dolarhyde,” he said. He shook her gently. “Francis Dolarhyde, where is he?”
“He’s in there,” she said, raising her stained hand toward the heat, letting it fall. “He’s dead in there.”
“You know that?” Crawford peered into her sightless eyes.
“I was with him.”
“Tell me, please.”
“He shot himself in the face. I put my hand in it. He set fire to the house. He shot himself. I put my hand in it. He was on the floor. I put my hand in it can I sit down?”
“Yes,” Crawford said. He got into the back of a police car with her. He put his arms around her and let her cry into his jowl.
Graham stood in the road and watched the flames until his face was red and sore.
The winds aloft whipped smoke across the moon.
Chapter 50
The wind in the morning was warm and wet. It blew wisps of cloud over the blackened chimneys where Dolarhyde’s house had stood. Thin smoke blew flat across the fields.
A few raindrops struck coals and exploded i
n tiny puffs of steam and ashes.
A fire truck stood by, its light revolving.
S. F. Aynesworth, FBI section chief, Explosives, stood with Graham upwind of the ruins, pouring coffee from a thermos.
Aynesworth winced as the local fire marshal reached into the ashes with a rake.
“Thank God it’s still too hot for him in there,” he said out of the side of his mouth. He had been carefully cordial to the local authorities. To Graham, he spoke his mind. “I got to wade it, hell. This place’ll look like a fucking turkey farm soon as all the special deputies and constables finish their pancakes and take a crap. They’ll be right on down to help.”
Until Aynesworth’s beloved bomb van arrived fromWashington, he had to make do with what he could bring on the plane. He pulled a faded Marine Corps duffel bag out of the trunk of a patrol car and unpacked his Nomex underwear and asbestos boots and coveralls.
“What did it look like when it went up, Will?”
“A flash of intense light that died down. Then it looked darker at the base. A lot of stuff was going up, window frames, flat pieces of the roof, and chunks flying sideways, tumbling in the fields. There was a shock wave, and the wind after. It blew out and sucked back in again. It looked like it almost blew the fire out.”
“The fire was going good when it blew?”
“Yeah, it was through the roof and out the windows upstairs and down. The trees were burning.”
Aynesworth recruited two local firemen to stand by with a hose, and a third dressed in asbestos stood by with a winch line in case something fell on him.
He cleared the basement steps, now open to the sky, and went down into the tangle of black timbers. He could stay only a few minutes at a time. He made eight trips.
All he got for his effort was one flat piece of torn metal, but it seemed to make him happy.
Red-faced and wet with sweat, he stripped off his asbestos clothing and sat on the running board of the fire truck with a fireman’s raincoat over his shoulders.
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