One down, eleven to go.
Simon was feeling pretty good about himself. Large and in charge. This was going to be the best game ever, he told himself. Early as it was, he was already feeling connected with Pender-merely by looking at him, Simon could tell he’d just learned about his sister’s death.
He knew better than to take the credit for it right away, however. Simon didn’t want to drive the hulking Pender into a rage-not until he had him secured, anyway. But first he needed to take care of the superfluous Miss Bell. Having her around was making him too self-conscious-it was like having a ghost at your elbow.
No good-it was no good, trying to climb the stairs standing. Linda’s left hand had lost most of its gripping strength, her fingers were too numb to feel the rail, and the pain traveling up her left arm made her pay dearly when she tried to raise the arm above her shoulder. Every time her hand slipped from the rail, she flailed the other hand to keep her balance, further inflaming the already infuriated coral.
She dropped to her knees on the third stair; three down, nine to go.
Childs marched the two of them back into the bedroom where he’d first surprised Dorie, ordered her onto the bed with her hands on either side of the centermost vertical rail of the brass headboard, then ordered Pender to cuff her wrists behind it.
Yes, thought Pender, trying to hide his eagerness. Perfect. His last girlfriend had been a DEA agent, somewhat unstable, like most DEA, and a hellcat in the sack. She liked to play mild bondage games, with herself as dominatrix-that’s what the cuffs were doing under the bed in the first place. Pender didn’t mind-at least that way she did all the work-but he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. Which was why he had stashed a spare key under the mattress, at the head of the bed, where he could reach it even while cuffed to the headboard.
But how to let Dorie know, with Childs standing over them? Pender leaned across her body, fumbling one-handed with the cuffs. “Under the mattress,” he whispered. Probably not loud enough, but Childs was leaning closer; Pender could smell his own aftershave on the man. Sensing his chance, he whirled around, trying to club Childs with the elbow of his cast.
Childs jumped back; the blow missed. Dorie saw the barrel of the Colt come crashing down across the back of Pender’s neck. Pender’s hat went flying; he fell limply across her, knocking the wind out of her. With his weight across her chest, she couldn’t draw a breath. She started seeing stars; the white hat was a pinwheel, rolling on its brim across the floor. Then, as her consciousness began slipping away to a pinpoint of light, the crushing weight came off her; she sucked in a great gulping breath.
Pender lay on the floor, unmoving; Simon was stretched out across Dorie, clicking the handcuffs into place behind the rail. She tried to knee him. He avoided her easily, then knelt painfully across her thighs while he gagged her with one of Pender’s garish neckties.
This is the last time I’ll ever see him, thought Dorie, as Simon dragged Pender out of the bedroom by the ankles. By him, she meant Pender-she was pretty sure she’d be seeing Simon again.
To keep from toppling backward as she knee-walked up the stairs, Linda had to lean forward, bending at the waist (she hadn’t forgotten her old friend Lhermitte and his lightning bolt), and leaning awkwardly on her left elbow to keep from falling onto her face.
By the sixth step-fuck this excellent pain, fuck this excellent, first-rate pain, was her mantra-her knees were killing her, and both insteps were bruised from banging against the overhanging tread, but she could hear Childs and Pender talking in the kitchen. At least when she reached the top, it would be over, she told herself: she wouldn’t have to drag her sorry ass the rest of the way across the house.
Eight down, four to go.
7
A sense of rising, of swimming upward through blackness, shedding dreams as he rose to the surface. The swimmer, the dreamer-he had no sense of himself as himself yet-heard a voice, echoic and distorted. For a moment he was a boy again, playing a joke on his mother, holding his breath at the bottom of Little York Lake to frighten her.
With the memory came identity; when Pender knew who he was, the rest came flooding back. It was the second time in four months he had been separated from his senses. Back in July, a blow to the head had launched him on one of those so-called near-death experiences, white light, tunnel, a visit from his dad in dress blues-the whole nine yards. This time, there’d been only chaos, and his dreams were not so much dreams as swirling fragments.
Pender opened his eyes, found himself lying in a contorted position on his side on the kitchen floor, with his left arm drawn painfully behind his back and cuffed at the wrist to his right ankle. Looking up sideways, he saw Childs sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair.
“Sorry about your sister,” Childs said in a conversational tone.
Pender assumed he’d read the letter; he mirrored Childs’s tone-stay calm, keep the hostage-taker calm. “She had a good life.”
“I didn’t mean I was sorry she was dead-I meant I was sorry I had to kill her.”
“No shit? Did you off Judge Crater and the Ramsey girl, too?”
“No-neither of them had killed my sister.”
“I didn’t kill your sister. The doctor said she died of a congenital heart condition.”
“Congenital-that means she had it for forty-nine years. Why is it, do you think, that her heart gave out while she was struggling with you?”
“Struggling? She was trying to save me from getting my brains bashed out by you.”
Simon let it pass-he wasn’t here to argue. “Almost biblical, don’t you think? The retribution, I mean-my killing your sister in return for your killing mine. I have to tell you, though, I didn’t really want to kill Ida, fitting as it might have been. I thought she was a very nice lady, right up until the moment I broke that blue capsule into her hot toddy. If it’s any consolation to you-it was to me-she was dead by the time she hit the floor. As I say, I didn’t want to do it-but I couldn’t take a chance on her telling you about our conversation. Would you like to hear about our conversation, Eddie? Or should I call you Pen, like that hooer waiting for me in the bedroom?”
Pender wanted to kill Childs of course-he wanted to kill him as badly as he’d ever wanted anything in his life. Instead, he reminded himself that the most important thing he could do at the moment was to work the problem.
And the problem-how to get loose, at least long enough to dial 911 on the phone in his pants pocket-was in the present. If Childs had killed Ida, that was in the past-nothing he could do would bring her back. And Childs’s threat about Dorie belonged to the future, and was of no account. When your enemy threatens you, he’s either lying, which means he’s scared, or he’s stating his intentions, which gives you more data to work with. The more data, the more better. “Call me anything you want. And, yes, I’d like to hear about your conversation.”
Childs leaned back, laced his arms behind his head, and crossed his legs casually at the ankle-not an easy thing to do in a straight-backed chair. “It was very illuminating. For some reason, Ida was under the assumption that my name was Bellcock.”
The name hit Pender like a slap. Ida had been a tough old bird-she wouldn’t have told Childs squat, no matter how much he’d threatened or cajoled or even tortured her. But Pender himself had given her permission to talk to Bellcock-maybe Childs wasn’t bullshitting about killing her after all.
“She told me all about Stanley, and Dr. Walt-this is Dr. Walt’s gun I’m holding now,” Childs continued. “She also told me all about what a naughty boy her little brother Eddie was. How he threw a firecracker down the chimney and nearly blinded himself. How he never got over it. How as a boy, he wouldn’t let himself be blindfolded for a game of pin the tail on the donkey. And even at Stanley’s birthday party, grown man, big-shot G-man, he wouldn’t even play bust the pinata.”
You wanted data, you got it, thought Pender, as Childs began removing an assortment of implements from the dr
awer next to him, and showing each one to Pender with a stage magician’s flourish before setting it down carefully on the table-folding Buck knife, which he ostentatiously unfolded, apple corer, box cutter.
More data, Pender told himself. Keep working the problem. So Childs knows. About your fear. So what? Pain, darkness, death-one way or another it was going to be pain, darkness, death. Nothing else has changed. The phone is still in your pocket. Six inches away-might as well be six feet.
But there was still the possibility that Dorie had heard him and found the handcuff key under the mattress. If she’d already freed herself and called 911 or gone for help, all Pender had to do was hang on awhile longer. Just hang on. And stall like a mo-fo. A fearless mo-fo from the Eff Bee Fucking Eye. And keep on collecting data: “What have you done with Abruzzi?”
Skairdykat! Thanks for reminding me, thought Simon, as he tested the point of the Buck knife on his thumb-he’d been so caught up in the moment, so dialed in to Pender, that he’d almost forgotten Skairdykat. He’d also almost forgotten that the game, the doubleheader, would have to take place in the cellar, where no one would hear them scream-no one except Dorie, that is. “Nothing, yet. Would you like to see her?”
“Yes-yes, I would.”
“She’s in the cellar-all you have to do is hump your way across the floor and down the stairs. I’ll hold the door for you.”
Dorie had rattled the headboard until her wrists were sore. Leave it to Pender, she thought. The house looks like it’s going to fall down any minute, but the bedstead couldn’t be sturdier. She kept picturing Childs coming through the door, covered in Pender’s blood, and throwing himself on top of her. Horrible as the image was, she knew that would be her best-and last-chance to kill him before he killed her.
But this time, Dorie promised herself-and Pender, and all the others-if she did through some miracle survive this second attack, there would never be a third. She’d kill him first, with her bare hands if necessary.
And as she waited on the bed to kill or be killed, with absolutely no idea that the key to her survival was only inches away, under the mattress beneath her head, Dorie found herself thinking back to the first time she had met Simon Childs. It was at the convention, in the welcoming suite of the Olde Chicago. The name tags had been specially prepared: a blank space for your name on the first line, the printed words A Person With on the second, and on the bottom line you were supposed to print the name of your phobia, using the — ia suffix, not the — ic. Like the name PWSPD, this was all in line with current thinking: a phobia was something you had, not something you were.
And although romance was the last thing Dorie’d had in mind when she got up the courage to leave the central coast for the first time in three years, the moment she saw the tall, handsome, silver-haired man standing behind the registration table, she was prepared to revise her expectations.
Simon Childs
a person with
Katapontismophobia
read his name tag.
“That’s a new one on me,” said Dorie.
“Fear of drowning,” he explained. “The verb katapontidzo means ‘to hurl into the sea.’ The noun katapontidzes means ‘pirate,’ but I guess there were more people who were afraid of drowning than of pirates.”
“I like pirates,” Dorie declared.
“Aargh,” said the handsome Mr. Childs, squinching up one eye. It was the worst Long John Silver impression Dorie had ever seen, but hilarious in context-she’d laughed so hard her boobs bounced. And it turned out, when he saw her name tag, that Simon was the first person she’d ever met, not excluding her current therapist, who knew what prosoponophobia meant without having to be told. She thought she might have found a lover; she knew she’d found a friend.
Honey, you sure can pick ’em, Dorie told herself; a moment later a shot rang out, and the screaming began.
Eleven down, one to go. Linda heard Childs tell Pender he’d hold the door. She was still on her knees-no time to stand up, even if she’d had the strength; as it was, she barely had time to hide the coral behind her back before the door opened.
Childs looked down at her in surprise; behind him, through his legs, she could see Pender on his side on the kitchen floor. “Well, would you look at that, Eddie Pen,” said Childs. “Would you look what gnawed itself loose?” He raised one foot as if to shove her back down the stairs.
Linda flinched but remained upright. She would take the leg if necessary, but she wanted the face, or at least the neck.
“And what’s that behind your back, Skairdykat? Biiiig scairdykat knife? It’s not a gun-I know, I searched the cellar.” He knelt, extended a hand; the gun was in his other hand, out of reach. “C’mon, fork it over.”
Closer, thought Linda, as the coral thrashed frantically behind her back; the face-I want the face.
“C’mon, Skairdykat, give it to Simon before he has to take it away from you and stick it where the sun don’t-”
Close enough.
8
One thing all criminal defense attorneys (along with a majority of cops and the few prosecuting attorneys who are willing to admit it) will tell you is that the only thing most eyewitnesses are good for is impressing juries. The truth is usually quicker than the eye, and the assumption is quicker than either, even for a trained observer like Pender.
He didn’t know, for instance, that Linda was on her knees-he’d seen her through Childs’s legs from the torso up and assumed she was standing on a lower step. He saw Childs kneel, heard him taunting her, heard the word knife, and assumed that’s what she had for a weapon. He saw Linda lunge, heard the gun go off, saw her topple forward, and assumed she’d been shot. When Childs rocked backward and the Colt went flying, Pender continued to assume that Abruzzi had somehow slashed him, and it wasn’t until Childs, still on his knees, turned blindly toward Pender, that Pender began to understand what had happened.
Or perhaps understand is too strong a word. A gun, a knife, a billy, even a sharp screwdriver-those were items commensurate with understanding. But a man on his knees, clawing with both hands at a thrashing snake dangling from his left eye? You don’t understand something like that; you just accept it.
Or reject it-doesn’t matter. What matters is Dr. Walt’s Army Colt under the table, less than six feet away. Pender braced his left leg-his only free limb-against the cabinet and shoved off, bellowing to Dorie, over Simon’s shrieking, that the handcuff key was under the mattress, as he began hump-crawling his way across the splintery plank floor of the kitchen.
The shot, the womanish shrieking-Dorie assumed the worst. The next few seconds were as bad as any she’d experienced in the last week-and that was saying something. When she heard Pender shouting that the key was under the head of the mattress, it was like whiplash, emotional whiplash. She recovered quickly, tried to puzzle it out. Easier to say that the key was under the mattress than to reach it, if you were lying on your back with your arms cuffed through the headboard.
Guess what, though: it’s possible. You have to scooch way up, and contort yourself as far onto your side as you can, and pronate both wrists no matter how tight the cuffs are, and slide your fingers under the mattress, which is pressed tight against the box spring by your weight, so you have to scooch even farther to the side, which puts more strain on your wrists-but it can be done. If the key is less than a finger’s length from the edge, you can find it, you can slide it out. And then if you crane your head at an angle that would break an owl’s neck, so you can see what you’re doing, and get the key inserted in the keyhole without dropping it-whatever you do, don’t drop it-and turn the key, you’ll hear the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard.
Click.
Dorie followed the sound of the bellowing and shrieking into the kitchen, quickly knelt behind Pender, unlocked his cuffs. As Pender scrambled to his feet, he saw Childs rising to his knees, moaning, one hand still clapped to his eye, blood leaking out between the fingers; his other hand was flailing the air
as if he were blind. Pender punted him in the ribs to knock him over, then kicked him in the head a few times, until he lay still. Subduing the suspect, it was called.
As Pender cuffed Childs, Dorie knelt by the woman lying across the cellar doorway. “Are you all right?”
“I’m bit.”
“You’re hit?” Dorie had heard a shot, not a snake.
“Bit. Coral snake got me,” said Linda. “It got Childs worse, though,” she added-there was a world of triumph in those five words.
Pender was already on the line with the 911 operator. “What kind of snake, did you say?”
“Eastern coral.” Linda raised her head wearily. “Tell ’em Animal Control had the antivenin at Conroy Circle.”
“Eastern coral, antivenin, Conroy Circle-got it,” said Pender, who had no idea what she was talking about.
Dorie hauled Linda-she assumed it was Linda Abruzzi-the rest of the way up the steps into the kitchen. The woman looked like hell-her thin face was dark and puffy and both eyelids were drooping. Dorie glanced over at Childs, who hadn’t moved since Pender had “subdued” him. “Is he dead?” she asked Pender when he got off the phone.
“Not yet.”
“Is he going to die?”
“I don’t know.” Pender sat down on the floor next to Linda, helped her turn over onto her back, and cradled her head on his lap. “I guess you’re our resident snake wrangler,” he told Linda, not so much for information as to give her something to do with her mind, to help keep her present and awake. He didn’t know much about snake bites, but he knew you didn’t want the victim slipping away. “What do you think?”
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