Most homeowners finding a burglar in their place would immediately phone for the police.
But it was obvious that Eve McNally wanted no police in on this at all.
I felt sorry for her. She looked alone and scared even with that carbine in her hand. She needed a friend. She really did.
Then there was the matter of the finger.
“You just come up the steps very slowly.”
She waved the carbine at me.
I didn’t move. “Mrs. McNally, you really don’t know about the finger?”
Her fear was now replaced by confusion. “Finger? What’re you talking about?”
“Have you been down in the basement lately?”
“No.”
“Let me just walk over and get something from the desk. Then I’ll bring it back to you.”
She sighed a ragged sigh. “This is some kind of trick. I know it is.”
“No trick. There’s just something I want you to see.”
I turned and started walking to the desk. She didn’t shoot me in the back. That was definitely a good sign.
Lower drawer, right hand, small white box. You couldn’t miss it. The one with the human finger inside.
I retrieved it and carried it back to her like a well-trained family dog.
When I got three feet from the barrel of her carbine, she said, “Hand it over, slow.”
She wasn’t expecting it, so it really wasn’t too difficult: grabbing the barrel of her gun two inches or so down from the muzzle and giving it a jerk that snatched the carbine from her hands and brought her tumbling down the stairs.
I put the gun down, went over and helped her up.
She was crying, hard, bitter crying, and I felt sorry for her again, so I brought her close to me and held her and just let her cry for a time, and then when her tears seemed to subside I helped her upstairs and put on a fresh pot of Mr. Coffee in the kitchen and then we sat down at the Formica-covered table and I pushed the small white box over to her.
While she was looking at it, I went into the bathroom and got her three Bayer aspirin, and then in the kitchen again I got her a cool glass of water.
The finger lay on the table, out of its box, ugly and terrifying.
“I knew he was involved in something like this.”
“Who?” I said.
She looked up. “You know who.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes.”
She’d been wearing blue eyeliner, smudged now from her crying, and her cheeks were puffy and pink.
“The finger doesn’t look familiar?”
“No,” she said. “Thank God. I was afraid—” Then she stopped herself.
“Where’s your daughter?” I said. “I know your husband’s missing but where’s your daughter?”
She changed the subject deftly, nodding her smooth, attractive face to the counter. “Coffee’s ready.”
I brought us two cups of coffee and sat down across the table from her.
“Your husband’s in some kind of trouble with somebody, and now somebody has your daughter. Isn’t that right?”
She stared at the finger some more. “You read the note. You know what it says.”
“You didn’t see the finger until I showed it to you?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know who your husband might be in trouble with?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you he was in trouble?”
“No.”
“That note makes it sound as if he might be blackmailing somebody. Is that something your husband might do?”
She hesitated. “I— He has a dark side, I guess you could say. He only ever really wanted one thing in life and that was to own his own business. He just had a thing about that. Being his own boss and all, I guess. But we lost it two years ago — it was just like losing one of his children for him — and he’s never been quite right since.”
“Do you think he could blackmail somebody?”
“I’d have to say yes.”
“How many days has he been gone?”
“Why was the finger in the basement?”
“He was hiding it from you. He didn’t want you to know he was in trouble. Now, how many days has he been gone?”
“Two.”
“How many days has your daughter been gone?”
The pause again. “Who are you? You haven’t told me yet.”
“A friend.”
She smiled sadly. “That’s what the Lone Ranger used to say when people asked him who he was.”
I smiled back. “Well, unfortunately, I’m not the Lone Ranger.”
“If you go to the police—”
“I won’t go to the police.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
And her speaking of the police made me look up at the wall clock and when I looked at the wall clock, I saw that I was twenty minutes late for my dinner appointment with Jane Avery.
“She didn’t come home from school the other day.”
“And you haven’t heard from anybody about her?”
“No.”
I looked down at the finger.
“We’ll have to assume that he’s got her,” I said quietly.
“He?”
“The man your husband’s been blackmailing.”
She lost it again, put her head down, started sobbing so hard I was afraid she was going to vomit.
I went over and got down on one knee and stroked her dark hair and rubbed her back gently and told her over and over that these things usually turned out fine and that if we just had a little patience and a little time... But that wasn’t true, of course. At the very least we were dealing with a person who could chop off another person’s finger. I had no doubt that we were also dealing with the same man Nora Conners had hired me to find, the same man that Mike Peary had profiled in his letter to Nora. The same man who had murdered all those girls.
She sat up, dried her eyes with the backs of her small white hands, and sniffled. “I really appreciate you being here.”
I stood up. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll check back with you tonight.”
She nodded.
I went over to the back door, opened it and said, “If the man should call you, write down everything he says. Every single word — all right?”
“Yes.”
“And if you should hear any noises in the background, anything at all, write down what those were, too.”
“I will.” She sniffled. “I really appreciate this.”
I nodded and left.
9
The nights make him crazy sometimes. Nobody can really describe nighttime in a lumbering old whore of a prison like this one. Puke & shit & sweat & piss & saliva & jism & every conceivable bodily fluid on the floor & in the crapper & in the mouth & up the bunghole.
It all makes him sick
It all makes him feel like a puritan.
He does not want to be one of them.
He is not one of them.
Even when he kills it is with a kind of purity.
He sometimes has dreams of his own particular dark god.
A very goaty old bastard to be sure.
Bring him bone and bring him flesh and bring him life hacked unto death with a knife or blown unto death with a gun or choked unto death with good strong quick hands.
The goaty old bastard likes it.
He has such crazy dreams.
Is sixteen years old again/sitting in a 1963 movie house watching Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin/but it is a movie unlike any he has ever seen
Sandra Dee is delivering a baby
And Bobby Darin is peering down between her legs