You think you understand everything, but you don't understand anything.
What didn't he understand? The bond between the Graves sisters. The father's bond to them both. If Charles Graves-Andy Bremer-had abandoned the girls after killing their mother, if he had become a fugitive and disappeared, how did Julie know where he was? How had she known where to call him? And if Julie had become a whore to get Olivia out of the foster system, to pay her way through school, why did she go on with it after Olivia was on her own? Why was Olivia so angry with her-and so bound to her? Why were they all so bound up together?
Something about the Graves family didn't make sense to him. Something about the scenario he'd laid out in his mind didn't make sense.
He sat. He thought about it. He ate his cashews. He watched the planes. In some distant part of him, he was dimly aware of his stomach churning, aware of the time passing as he waited for what was on its way, dreading it.
He watched the horizon, where wisps of clouds turned red, turned gray. The sky darkened. He sat and watched it in a kind of trance.
Then, just as night fell, he came to himself as if from a great way off. A sense of sourness had washed over him suddenly. A stale, rotten heat seemed to spread all through him. He had a weird, nauseating, panicky feeling, as if he'd woken up inside his own coffin, underground.
He swallowed a chunk of cashew, swallowed hard. He understood. The time had come. The Shadowman was here.
36.
He saw the killer reflected on the darkness of the airport window: a hulking specter of a man, his features half erased by the night outside. Weiss went on eating his cashews. The figure in the window moved to stand directly behind him.
"If you try to turn around, I will kill you, Weiss."
He sat down slowly in the chair at Weiss's back. Weiss felt the stale, hot presence of him on the nape of his neck. He caught a scent that reminded him of close, dank spaces.
The killer spoke again, his voice low and featureless. No foreign accent, no local dialect. His tone was conversational, almost friendly. Weiss did not remember the voice from when he heard it last in the driveway in Hannock, and he did not think he would remember it the next time he heard it either.
"What'll happen is that they'll find you sitting here after hours like a sleeping bum," the killer said. "With your chin on your chest, you know-sitting here. Someone'll call the airport cops, and one'll come and shake your shoulder to get you to wake up. But you won't wake up. Finally, they'll push your head back, tilt your head back. There won't be any marks, no cuts, no blood, not even a bruise. But you'll've been dead for hours. Just sitting here, dead, for hours with no one to give a damn."
Weiss lifted the striped paper bag to his shoulder. "You want a cashew?" There was no answer but a low exhalation. Weiss shook the bag, rattling the nuts. "They're roasted. Salted too. Take some-do me a favor. I can't stop eating the damned things."
In the silence that followed, Weiss realized he could actually feel the other man's rage. He could actually feel it settle over him like a great, dark thunderhead with a world of flash and fire inside.
"Suit yourself," he said. He lowered the bag. He began picking cashews out of it again. "They're good, though."
After a long, breathing moment, the killer murmured, "This was smart, Weiss. The airport. Make me get a ticket, go through the X-ray, security. I like that. It was smart."
Weiss shrugged, his hand stopping with a nut halfway between the bag and his mouth. "I know you could get a weapon through, if you wanted."
"I don't need a weapon."
"Yeah. I know that too."
"All the same. It shows you were thinking. Planning things out. I can appreciate that. Like the jacket you gave to that nigger in the crazy house. That was good too. That was the kind of thing I might come up with. I liked it. You're all right, Weiss."
Weiss had to fight off a shudder. The friendly, conversational voice-the brooding sense of murderous rage: it sent a chill through him. Close up like this, the killer seemed to give off a kind of atmosphere. It was an atmosphere like houses Weiss had been in as a cop. There were certain houses he had moved through, room to room, holding his gun out in front of him. There were moments when he had seen something up ahead through a doorway-blood spatters on the wall in the next room maybe, or a foot sticking out from behind the jamb-moments when he knew what he would find but before he crossed the threshold and found it, when he was surrounded and filled by a pulsing awareness of Death, Death, Death, Death. The killer gave off a pulsing atmosphere like that.
Weiss peered into the dark window in front of him. He tried to pick out the killer's features reflected there. It was no good. All he could see were the runway lights and the jet lights-and his own face, strained and mournful and also afraid.
"So go ahead," the killer said. "You wanted this. Here I am."
Weiss was about to answer when a woman approached the rows of chairs. He saw her image in the window, then glimpsed her in the flesh out of the corner of his eye as she came near. She was old and small and elegant. She had silver hair and was wearing a pink jacket and pearls. She was pulling a wheeled suitcase behind her with one hand and holding a hardback novel in the other.
The Shadowman must have turned to face her. Weiss couldn't see it happen, but he saw the woman stop short. She stood where she was, very still, like a mouse catching wind of a python. Then, without a word, she turned and walked away, very quickly, her luggage wobbling behind her on its unsteady wheels.
Somehow this brought Weiss's own feeling into focus: the boiling in his belly, the tightness in his throat. He dropped the cashew he was holding back into the bag. He couldn't eat any more.
"What do I call you anyway?" he said.
"Foy. John Foy."
"Well, the thing is, Foy: we're near the end of this."
"That's right. That is the thing. We are."
"You heard what I said to the Graves girl, right? You were listening in?"
"I heard it, yeah."
"So you know I'm close. I'm really close. And everything depends on us not doing anything stupid. Either one of us. You see what I'm saying?"
The killer said nothing. Weiss felt the heat and sourness of him.
"What I mean is these things go step by step. Location work like this-it goes step by step. If you move too fast, if you do too much, you blow it. It takes, you know, patience, or else things go haywire on you. That's what I'm saying."
Foy laughed softly. It was a cold sound, cold and empty.
"You afraid I'll go to see the Graves girl myself?" he said. "Is that it? Well, maybe I should. Like you said, she has a number she calls, a way to get in touch with our girl, doesn't she? Maybe I should go ask her what it is."
"Look…"
"She'd tell me, you know. She wouldn't tell you, but she'd tell me. You know why? I'd stick a tampon in her soaked in gasoline. Then I'd light a match…"
Weiss had warned himself about something like this, but it didn't matter. The anger went off in him like a bomb. He started turning in his seat. "You filthy fuck, I'll…"
The grip on his shoulder sent a lancing pain up the side of his neck. He gasped, gritted his teeth.
"Careful, Weiss," said the Shadowman softly.
He let Weiss go. Weiss rubbed the spot, wincing. He settled back in his seat. He found he'd balled the bag of cashews up in his fist. Crushed the nuts to powder. He let the crumpled bag roll from his hand onto the seat beside him. He wiped his palms together to get the salt off. He was surprised how wet his palms were.