He groaned into the phone.
“That mean you won’t talk to her?” Barber asked.
“No, you numb-nuts bastard,” Latovsky shouted. “Put her on.”
He waited with his heart pounding as clicks connected him to Eve. In a second, he had to tell her he’d sicced the six—make that eight-time—killer with the doll’s eyes on her after all. Riley’s doing, but Latovsky’s fault, and she had to cover her ass. But she had money and people to help her. She could spend the summer in Nova Scotia, on the coast of Maine, Vancouver Island, the Riviera. Not too shabby, and in the meantime Latovsky would get him. Fuck Meers and Linney and the legal system. He’d get Adam Fuller, and she could come back to her husband, have her baby...
A last click (after enough of them to connect him to Ulan Bator) and Frances Tilden said, “Lieutenant—”
“Eve,” he cried. “I’ve got to talk to Eve,” and she said, “I wish you could.”
The kitchen Eve remembered had been stark white, with white cabinets, walls, counters, curtains, and a ceiling so white you couldn’t look at it without blinking, with that white-on-white bulge on it.
In reality, the linoleum was streaked with green, the counters had faded to ivory. The stove top and wall phone were black, the curtains yellow, and the nicks around the edges of the porcelain table rust brown.
“Go on.” He prodded her with the gun and she took a few steps, then turned, expecting him to be right behind her. But he was still in the doorway and there was finally some expression in his eyes. It looked like fear, and sweat ran down his face and neck into the collar of his clean shirt. He’d actually had the foresight to bring a clean shirt, along with a lot of other stuff, including the syringe full of whatever he’d shot her full of last night.
They stared at each other, then he raised his foot, let it hang comically in midair a moment, then put it back down on the same side of the sill. He could not come in here for some reason, and she saw her chance. Her eyes flashed around the room and came to the back door, bolted and chained from the inside. She saw herself ripping off the chain and bolt, tearing the door open, and running for her life... and he’d shoot her before she even shot the bolt.
“No way out, Eve,” he said quietly. “You might as well tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What happened to me in this room.”
To the terrified little boy on the swing.
Eve looked up at the bulge so quickly, her neck crackled and she got dizzy from the last of the drug hangover. It had been bad when she’d come to, but he had a coil to heat water and instant coffee with packets of sugar and creamer and paper cups. He’d given her the coffee, then let her use the toilet and shower while he stood outside, with the gun presumably trained on the closed door in case she tried to get away. No way to do that. There was a little window high in the wall, and she stood on the toilet seat in her stocking feet and tried it, but it was painted shut. She could throw something through it, but he’d hear the glass break, shoot the door open... then shoot her. He must have checked the window before he let her in there because he’d been very careful, very well prepared about everything. He’d even brought cellophane-wrapped Danishes drizzled with sugar frosting, the first bite of which made the inside of her mouth ache because it had been so long since she’d eaten.
The coffee, shower, food had gotten rid of the hangover until this reeling second when she looked up at that thing in the ceiling.
She leaned on the porcelain-topped table to steady herself, smelled butter cookies baking, and jerked her hands away. The smell faded, but stayed in the background.
“I can’t help you,” she said without looking at him. “I have no idea what happened to you.”
“No... but you can find out. That’s why you’re still alive.” That’s absurd, she wanted to say, but if she convinced him it was absurd, he’d kill her.
“Maybe I can.” She drew out the words. She’d have to draw everything out, slow it down to buy time for Dave to find her.
“I can give you a clue,” he said softly. He put the gun on the floor next to his foot, then he pulled up his shirt and T-shirt, exposing a chest thatched with light brown hair that thinned to a line running into his pants.
What, no blue light? she thought madly.
He unbuckled his belt, started to undo his fly, and she turned her head away. Then she heard his buckle rattle, his fly unzip, and she shut her eyes.
“Look,” he said, but she kept her eyes shut.
“I said look!”
She heard him pick up the gun, and she opened her eyes and finally saw the scars.
He’d kept his pubis modestly covered, but his abdomen was bare and hundreds of scars ran every which way across it from his navel to the line of his pants. Some were pale threadlike lines, others were liverish welts that looked tender. They were cuts, not burns like the scars on Ken Nevins’s hands, and these were no accident. They had been made. Someone had done this to him!
She tried to say something: Oh God, or how could they, meaning whoever had done it. But she couldn’t make a sound.
“Look!” he commanded.
He didn’t have to because she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The baking smell suddenly intensified, and she tried to drive it away because she didn’t want to see what was coming next. She thought of her mother-in-law, Greta, baking cookies in her kitchen. But even having that good, kind, wholesome woman in her mind, in this horror room with that poor scarred monster in the doorway, was obscene, and she pushed the vision of Greta away.
“Do you have to touch them.’” he asked, blushing.
Her skin shriveled. “I can’t...”
He looked down at himself. “No, I guess not. I don’t see them head-on very often, tend to forget how bad they are.”
He pulled his shirt down and his pants up with one hand, keeping the gun trained on her. He got the fly zipped, but couldn’t manage to hook the waistband and it stayed open with his belt dangling.
He smiled wanly at her. “Show’s over,” he said softly. “Now... tell me...”
Cooking-butter smell filled the air, made her queasy. It was going to happen, but she didn’t want it to; wanted to tell him it didn’t work that way. That she might see what he wanted her to, or she might see anything about anyone who’d ever been in this room, back to the original farmer whose barn this had been. She might see him feeding his chickens, mucking out a stall. She might see any of the countless family gatherings that must’ve taken place in here since it became a kitchen... but that was crap and she knew it. She could go where she wanted, when she wanted, and she better finally admit that to herself or she’d never leave this room alive.
“Go on, Eve,” he said softly, sinuously, using the same low seductive tone Dave Latovsky and Meg had used on her when they wanted her to do it. Go on, Eve. Tell me the past and future, the way and truth. Tell me where Grandma’s emeralds are and if my husband’s fucking another woman. Tell me who played on that swing and what the killer looks like.
And now, Tell me how I got the scars.
She knew what to do. The pulley was the heart of this room, the table was right under it, and she put her hands flat on top of it. The smell of baking butter and sugar was suffocating; she felt heat from the oven and looked at it. It had been all white, with a stainless-steel handle; now it was trimmed in black with a black Bakelite handle. She looked up and saw the unpainted pulley, with a rope through the wheel. The wheel squeaked softly as it turned, the rope pulled taut, and a woman chanted, “Dirty, dirty, dirty...”