“You’re crazy!” he yelled at her. “You’re out of your mind!”
She muttered something he did not understand. He leaned over her, his mouth close to her ear.
“You’re crazy! You ought to be locked up!”
Her head hung down like a defeated animal and the blood dripped from her nose directly onto the carpet.
She muttered something again. Edgar bent closer, holding the razor blade as a weapon in case the crazy bitch tried to bite him or something else insane.
“What?”
She caught her breath.
“You think I’m crazy?” she said. She tilted her head up to look him in the face. She sounded amused. The blood ran over her lips, but she still did not seem to notice.
“I know you’re crazy,” he said.
He grabbed the door and yanked it open. The huge man from the restaurant whom he had seen trudging along the highway sat on the stoop in front of the door like a dog awaiting its master.
“You think I’m crazy?” she said.
The man stood up, blocking Edgar’s way.
Edgar looked from the man to Dee, who had rolled into a sitting position. He wanted to suggest that things had gone far enough, that he had meant no harm, that there was no need to carry things farther. Edgar tried to grin at her, to demonstrate his good will, his certainty that she bore him no real hard feelings.
Dee looked at him and smiled beatifically. The blood was smudged across her stomach where he had kicked her and the entire lower half of her face now seemed to have been painted red. When she spoke her teeth were smeared.
“He hurt me. Ash,” she said.
Ash grabbed Edgar by the throat and squeezed. Edgar managed to slash at him once with the razor blade before his body was hurled against the wall.
After Ash put the man in the trunk of his car he returned to the room to clean up the mess. Dee was curled up on the bed, still naked, her knees pressed to her chest, her face to the wall.
“We have to go, Dee,” he said. He put all of her clothes into the suitcase, folding them carefully as she had taught him.
“I just want to sleep,” she said. Her voice was so sad that Ash wanted to cry for her.
He put his extra shirt atop her clothes, then went to the bathroom to add their toiletries to the suitcase.
“We have to go before they come,” Ash said.
“I just want to sleep.” Her voice was low and fading, as if she were already deep in slumber. He knew she would be like this for several days, immobilized by lethargy, too depressed to even dress or feed herself. He had to get her away from the motel before she sank too deeply to be roused.
He checked her purse and made sure that her pills and his were still there. He tried to remember how many capsules had been in her vial the last time he checked, but he could not. She must not have taken any in several days, he knew that much. There was no point in trying to make her take one now. He knew from experience he would have to trick one into her somehow, but not when she was this low, and not when she was too high, either. She was too clever then. It was only when she would come out of this depression of her own accord, when she was on the way up but not yet high, and ravenously hungry after days of starvation, that he could slip one of the capsules into her food. After that she would take them herself. For a while. Never for long enough, but at least for a while.
Until she did come out of her depression enough to find them a place to stay, they would have to live in the car. Ash could never check into a motel by himself, he knew that. They would all surely know about him immediately. They would be able to tell as soon as he opened his mouth that he was not competent, that he was not to be trusted. They would laugh at him, or worse, send for the authorities to take care of him.
So he would have to wait until Dee could take care of both of them. He would find a rest stop on the highway where he could get food from the vending machines and water from the toilet facilities, and he would stay there and protect her. It wouldn’t matter to Dee where they were when she was in the worst of it. Any place with shelter would do until she returned to herself to take care of him.
Getting a washcloth to clean the blood from the carpet and the wall, he saw his reflection in the mirror and stared, surprised, at the cut that ran from his cheekbone to his jawline. It was shallow and hairline-thin, and the blood had already dried. He wasn’t aware that the Lyle had cut him. He hadn’t felt a thing.
He only managed to spread the smear on the wall, and the carpet seemed to have absorbed Dee’s blood like a sponge. Ash looked at the washcloth. His blood from the wall and Dee’s from the floor were mixed together into a brownish stain on the cloth. He liked the idea that their blood was mingled.
“We’re packed. Dee,” he said, approaching the bed with the washcloth rinsed and wet again. He rolled her over and began to dab at the blood that had dried on her face. Ash tried not to look at her naked body. It aroused him and it also embarrassed him.
With a sob. Dee threw her arms around his neck and pulled him onto her.
She nipped his ear with her teeth and then whispered directly into it so that Ash felt the effect in his groin, as if her warm breath was traveling all the way through him.
“Come on. Ash,” she whispered. “Come on.”
One hand held his neck and the other was already reaching between their bodies, fumbling with his belt.
Ash squeezed his eyes closed. He was so grateful. First that she was not as far gone as he had feared—although he knew it was just a matter of time—and second that she wanted him again. It was so seldom these days; there had been such a long succession of Lyles since last she had needed Ash.
He did not resist her in any way, but let her use him as she desired. It was the way she preferred it, and he preferred whatever she wanted.
With his eyes shut he imagined her as a bird, a large and beautiful and dangerous bird, graceful and effortless in flight, remorseless in pursuit. Lethal and lovely. She was an eagle.
He was a bear, lurking in a cave. Bears hid. They did terrible things, too. They killed, they clawed and bit, but they hid—because they were afraid. The eagles never hid, she was never afraid. There was nothing in the world that could hurt her. The eagle never hid, never stalked, never lay in wait. She circled overhead, seeking her prey with an eye that could see forever. She could see the terror in the rabbit’s eye from afar and had but to fold her wings to be upon it before it could move.
She could even attack a bear. She could rip him apart with her talons, skewer his eyes, grab his heart. To Ash, a bear was helpless before an eagle. He could not hear her approach as she plummeted from on high, he could not see her before she was upon him with her terrible grace and beauty. He could do awful things with his strength, but never to the eagle. He was powerless under the eagle’s attack.
He felt the eagle upon him, the flutter of the giant wings, the caress of feathers, the ripping of his fur and hide with beak so razor-sharp it gave no pain. His flesh opened out to her as if in blossom and she fed upon him.
And then he heard the beauty of her song ringing out, filling the cave and reverberating off the walls with the richness of her joy.
“Oh. Daddy,” she sang. “Come on, Daddy. Daddy!”
Chapter 5
BECKER’S HOME IN Connecticut was forty-five minutes from the Town Center mall in Stamford. He drove there on the Merritt Parkway and studied the center divider. It was as he had remembered it when talking to Karen. A low guard rail made it impossible to pull a car onto the center strip without severe damage to both the railing and the automobile. There were occasional flower beds on the divider and so many trees there as well as on both sides of the road that the experience was one of driving at high speed through the deciduous forest that still held New England in its grasp. In summer, the parkway was a blur of green, and in autumn it blazed with fall colors, providing sudden vistas that made the road known for its uncommon beauty. As a highway for commuter traffic to New York, it serve
d, although just barely, with four lanes and merely adequate engineering. But as an avenue through the forest, it was Connecticut’s pride and joy, and the state devoted a good deal of effort to keeping the divider well trimmed and clean.
It was no place for pedestrians, however. Anyone walking there would be seen by dozens, if not hundreds, of drivers per minute. Becker made a note to investigate the state employees who tended the strip. Their uniforms would not make them invisible but somewhat less noteworthy.
Becker pulled into the passing lane and rolled down his window. On the passenger seat next to him lay a brown leaf bag that he had purchased that morning. Inside the bag, taped together, were three twenty-five-pound sacks of cat litter. First he tried to lift the dead weight from the seat and across his body with his right hand while steering with his left. He made five attempts, stopping midway each time when it was apparent he was about to lose control of the car.
Next he tried to steer with his knees while handling the heavy bag with both hands. He lost control almost immediately with the exertion necessary for the lift. Finally Becker dragged the litter-filled bag onto his lap and lifted it from there to the open window. Opening the door was out of the question; it would require him to be too far from the divider. After several failed attempts. Becker managed to get the bag balanced on the window opening. The blast of a horn brought him back to the realization of his position. He was swerving dangerously and his speed had dropped to less than forty miles an hour. Angry motorists were passing him on the inside and gesturing as they went past.
And I haven’t even gotten the thing out the window yet, he thought. Nine times out of ten he would have swerved into the guard rail or another car if he’d made the final effort of throwing the bag onto the divider. He knew that throwing was the wrong idea. There was no way he could throw anything this heavy and unwieldy from a sitting position behind a steering wheel, never mind the demands of driving a car at the same time. It would be all he could do to push it far enough away from the car not to fall under the wheels. Becker eased into the right-hand lane, still balancing the bag on the open window, until the line of cars that had built up behind him had passed. Middle-of-the-night reduced traffic would make things somewhat easier, but not enough.
When the road was clearer. Becker pulled into the passing lane once more. Steadying the car with his knees, he pushed the bag as hard as he could with both hands, grabbing the wheel again immediately to avoid a crash. The bag hit the guard rail and split in two. The sacks of litter hit the highway and spilled onto the pavement. He looked at the mess behind him in his rearview mirror. The first car had already reached the mess and was warily swinging wide to avoid the torn sacks and flapping plastic. Any worse push and he would have caused a traffic hazard within minutes. As it was, there would probably be a slowdown for several minutes until the wind of passing cars pulled the plastic free of the litter and sent it winging crazily away from the road. And that was the best I could do, Becker thought. He knew he was stronger than most men because of a lifetime of staying in shape. His arms were conditioned by the rigors of pulling himself up rock faces on a rope. If he had been higher and had more of an arc for the push, the bag might have cleared the rail. From the cab of a diesel semitrailer truck, for instance. But this was the Merritt Parkway and commercial vehicles were prohibited. Driving such a truck here was an open invitation for arrest by the state police. Either the man who had successfully put the Shapiro boy’s body on the divider had carried it across two lanes of traffic and dropped it there, or he was possessed of great strength. Becker wondered if he were chasing a man who was a monster in more than one sense.
The Town Center was five vertical layers of shops surrounding a center well with a courtyard, a fountain, and tiers of steps for sitting. Both elevators and escalators gave access from the ground floor to the higher levels. There were exits on every floor to the parking garage, which ascended parallel to the central shopping core, as well as three ground-level pedestrian entrances from the street. Security guards sat in glass booths at the parking lot exits but, as Becker noted upon entering, they paid only intermittent attention to the flow of people. If someone tried to drive a minivan through the exit and onto the elevator, they might notice that, Becker thought. Otherwise, their value as witnesses was limited. The guards had been positioned where they were for three reasons. One, the glass offices were out of the way of the shopping flow and would not be bothering customers with unpleasant thoughts of security. Two, their position next to the exits just might give shoplifters second thoughts—although experience had shown this was a very questionable premise. And three, the nook behind the elevators was a relatively secluded spot where trouble might be expected to spring up were it not for the proximity of the security guards.
Becker, knew, however, that the occurrence he was most concerned with had taken place somewhere else. The man known as Lamont Cranston had snatched his quarry somewhere in the body of the building. By the time he passed through an exit, he already had the boy completely under his control. Anything else would have been far too risky. The boy could have shouted to the security guards, fallen to the floor and made a scene, anything to attract attention. Lamont had done it successfully six times, four times from places such as this. Whatever his method, it was not haphazard. It was effective, and for the moment it had Becker baffled.
On the fourth level where he had entered from the garage, Becker stood at the railing and looked down at the activity below him. It was a Saturday and the mall was crowded with customers, a chamber of commerce dream of joy. Exhausted husbands with low-shopping tolerance, eyes glazed, grim expressions on their faces, stretched out on the seating areas around the fountain as if their feet were killing them. A few teenagers congregated there, too, but only briefly as they made their plans before sallying forth again. Otherwise the activity was in the shops and the food halls. From a distance, Becker thought it looked rather like the apparently chaotic motions of a hill of ants that managed to get things done in such an efficient way. Becker’s sympathies were with the groggy husbands, but then Becker was no shopper.
He was a hunter. He found his quarry on the second level, inside the video arcade where dozens of children ranging in age from six or seven to late teens stood mesmerized by the flashing images of dragons and heroes and karate choppers. It was a kindergarten of treasures for the predatory or perverted. While parents shopped, their children milled and mingled, waiting for their favorite game or moving to the next like Las Vegas patrons at the slot machines. It would be impossible for any but the most diligent and paranoid of observers to keep track constantly of any individual for long. It was like keeping one’s eye on a single specimen among a shifting school of fish.
Lamont had not been distracted by the motions or the numbers, however, but then Lamont was very single-minded. He could look at such a group, make his pick, await his moment, then strike with the swiftness of a shark. What was it that set the victim apart? Did he fill a type the killer preferred? Did one seem more vulnerable than the others? More appealing to Lamont’s peculiar aesthetic taste? Could Lamont tell at a glance that one of the many was more apt to lend himself to capture? Or simply better designed to slake his thirst? And was it at a glance, or did Lamont study his quarry at length? And how would he do that without drawing attention to himself?
Becker felt conspicuous even now, standing apart from the arcade and watching the children. He looked around him to see if he was being observed. Lamont would look like a shopper, of course. He would carry a shopping bag or packages. As Becker watched, a man walked into the arcade. He had the haircut and shoes of the wealthy middle class although his jeans and T-shirt were part of the nation’s universal weekend uniform. The man approached one of the teenage boys and spoke his name aloud. After waiting long enough to assert his independence, the boy turned and glared at the man with the sullenness reserved at that age for one’s own family. As they left together the man tried to put a paternal hand on the boy’s shou
lder but the boy dipped, slid away, and walked in front of the man as if he were not really his father.
The man glanced at Becker and offered a fading smile as if knowing that any male of a certain age could sympathize. A transaction as common as humanity itself, Becker thought, repeated endlessly in all the malls and public places of the country. And yet a few weeks ago something similar had happened here that ended in a child’s death. Becker had noticed this meeting of father and son, but would anyone else have had any reason to note an occurrence so mundane? But if the man was not the father, if the boy was a little younger, at an age when parents still warned their children not to talk to strangers, what would the meeting have looked like then? And how would the man have convinced the child to accompany him?
Perhaps it was not that sort of selection process, Becker thought. What if Lamont went after a target of opportunity, the one of the group that distinguished itself in some way, not by appearance but by movement? The first to move away from the crowd, perhaps.
Was Lamont that hungry? Would just any victim do? Did the man come to the mall, cruise until he saw one of the boys alone or in the position Lamont required, and then strike? It was possible, but the idea didn’t sit well with Becker. For one thing, it was much too dangerous. It discounted the fact that so far no one had noticed anything unusual. If Lamont was making it up as he went along, if he was grabbing at the first opportunity, he would have been hurried, he would have made a mistake. And more important was the desire. Lamont kept the boys for a couple of months before he killed them. That implied care, lodging, food, a major investment of time and caution. The victim had to be watched over during that time, probably guarded. Certainly obsessed over. Lamont was no mad-dog sex fiend who dragged the boys into a dark corner and had his way. For two months at a time he lived with them. It made no sense—not even the twisted sense of a serial killer—to devote that much to a random choice.
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