It was, Jerry Metger thought, pitiful. It was the raving of a madwoman. But he could understand that. He could understand how she’d broken down this way. The blood, though—how was all that blood to be explained?
Unless—he didn’t want to think it. Unless she’d really snapped and she really had killed the old people.
He escorted her to the redwood house. The front door was open.
Max Untermeyer stood in the hallway, pale, watchful.
Louise hurried up the steps. “How is he?” she asked. “How’s Denny?”
Metger saw the door shut behind him, didn’t hear how Max Untermeyer answered his wife’s question.
He stood at the foot of the porch for a while, feeling the rain on his face and the wind buffet him. And then he turned and went back into the forest, back in the direction of the Summer’s property, like a creature tracking the spoor of blood.
He found Dick and Charlotte Summer in their bedroom. He stood motionless, his awareness filled with violence, with echoes of violence. An ax lay at the foot of the stairs, its blade smeared with stains of blood. And this room, this terrible room—death and feathers, an old couple lying on the floor. Metger shut his eyes. The aftermath of violence had its own noise, a low kind of buzzing, a sound that filled his mind.
He crossed the room. A pair of scissors lay near Charlotte Summer’s body.
And Dick.
Metger moved to the window, pushed it open, listened to the way rain drummed out there in the forest.
And Dick.
Leaving behind him a trail of blood, Dick Summer had somehow crawled across the stained wood floor to die alongside his wife. His body touched hers; his hand was pressed in her hand. Metger studied the trail. It led from the bed to the other side of the room. What kind of effort had it cost the old guy to crawl to the side of his dead wife?
Charlotte’s eyes were wide open. Dick looked as if he were peacefully asleep.
Metger sucked the damp air deep inside his lungs. Louise Untermeyer had come here and killed these two harmless old people, an insane woman unhinged by the conditon of her son. Mitigating circumstances—how could violence like this ever be excused?
He turned, looked down at the bodies. Something in the way they lay, locked in that bloody contact of flesh, touched him. He felt a cold emptiness around his heart, as if all blood had drained out of the organ and it had filled up with ice.
He’d have to arrest the woman. He’d have to go back to the redwood house where the sick boy lay and arrest Louise Untermeyer. The prospect numbed him. How in the name of God could he take her away from the boy’s side at such a time?
From the window he gazed down over the yard. He had a sense that somebody was moving out there beyond the trees, but it was probably only the rain and the damp gesture of a bird. These woods, these woods had a way of driving anybody crazy. He thought of Anthea Ackerley, the roar of a shotgun, the rocking chair going back and forth in a room of death.
Sighing, he went back across the room. There was suddenly so many things to do—he was crowded by the future. This time he’d make sure there was no cover-up, no conspiracy perpetuated by Ted Ronson and Lou Pelusi and Byrce Dunning—this time he’d force it out into the open. Whatever it was, whatever it was in Carnarvon that made children sick, he’d open all the doors and let fresh air blow the secrets away.
Then there was his father. And Florence Hann. Could they be restored?
He looked once around the bedroom, noticed how the wind coming through the window stirred Charlotte Summer’s white hair. Then he went down the stairs and out of the house and back into the forest, back to a situation he didn’t have the heart for.
He understood why they were watching. They were waiting. Waiting for his condition to change.
He clasped his hands together under the quilt his mother had laid over his body. He ached. His pulses felt very weak. His hands were raw. The swelling hadn’t gone down. Strange little thoughts drifted in and out of his mind, pictures of Dick and Charlotte, Charlotte baking things inside her big iron stove, Dick pottering around his yard, sifting through junk, the upraised hood of the Dodge truck—so many inconsequential little pictures.
Then he felt very cold, as if ice were crushed suddenly against his heart, and he knew that Dick and Charlotte were dead. Somehow he knew that his mother had gone over there and killed them. The pressure of ice inside him increased and the cold rose up into his head like some great chilly fist. They were dead but then he thought he could still feel them somewhere very close to him and when he realized this the ice inside him dissolved and he was warm again and a strange sense of peace came over him. The Summers were close to him. It was almost as if they stood in the shadows at the back of his head. They were telling him something, calling to him.
He heard Max whisper, What in the name of God have you done, Louise?
Then Louise said, Wait, just wait. You’ll see.
Max sighed. Christ, oh Christ, he said.
The boy listened to the rain. Under the sound there was something else, some other movement. Footsteps on the porch. And then inside the hallway.
He heard the cop’s voice. Louise, it said. Louise, I went to the Summers’ place … and—
A great silence filled up the house.
Dennis opened his eyes just a little way, squinting out at the cop, who was staring at him. The policeman’s face was very pale. Drained of blood, Dennis thought. Through narrowed eyes. Dennis observed the policeman. And something came back to him. Something he’d just remembered. This policeman was about to become a father.
Yes …
His wife was pregnant. Pregnant, bloated, throbbing with unborn life. A whole new life in her womb.
Dennis thought about this baby, tucked inside its mother’s body. And then he shut his eyes because Dick and Charlotte were still calling to him and he knew he could see them only if he looked inside his own mind. There, locked in the darkness, they were holding their hands out toward him. He listened very carefully to what they were telling him and the warmth he’d felt before spread through his entire body, filling every corner of his system.
He understood. He knew what he had to do. He knew what the Summers were telling him. The Summers loved him.
“Look,” Louise said. “He’s smiling.”
Dennis wasn’t aware of any change in his expression, wasn’t conscious of his facial muscles moving.
Maybe he was smiling.
Because he was thinking-He was thinking about the fetus, plump and succulent, filled with fresh vitality, lying there inside its mother’s womb.
He opened his eyes.
About the Author
Campbell Armstrong (1944–2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these, White Rage and Butcher, were nominated for France’s Prix du Polar. Armstrong’s novels Assassins & Victims and The Punctual Rape won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.
Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Campbell Black
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0404-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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