Latovsky said, “Miss Tilden, I’m going to make another call with you on the phone, so just hang on. We’ll be talking to a man named Berger from the FBI. Okay?”
“I just hang on?” she asked meekly.
“Yes, ma’am. It’ll only take a minute.”
He put her on hold and felt himself run out of breath. “Breathe out,” Bunner used to tell him. “Hyperventilating comes from gasping in and forgetting to let it out.”
He forced himself to exhale in a slow stream that warmed the mouthpiece, then he buzzed Barber.
“Listen to me, Larry.” He never used Barber’s first name, was surprised he even remembered it. “I’ve got a Miss Tilden on oh-three.
I want you to keep her there; at the same time, I want you to get Stan Berger on oh-four, then I want you to conference the calls.”
“You mean so you can all talk at once?” Barber said brightly.
“That’s right, Larry. And if you lose one of them, I’m going to suspend you.”
Silence at the other end.
“Do you understand me, Larry?”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
Latovsky tore through his book and found Berger’s number, got Barber back, gave it to him, then hung up and waited.
It was no ordinary kidnapping; the FBI would do their stuff, but there’d be no ransom call or note. Fuller had her and she was already dead, or would be as soon as he got whatever he wanted out of her, and it wasn’t money. But that was an assumption, the one thing a good cop never made, and he wanted to be a good cop this minute more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“Eve...” Me didn’t mean to speak out loud and was startled by the sound of his voice. The phone beeped, he grabbed it, and Barber said, “Okay, Mr. Berger... ma’am... you can go ahead now.”
Latovsky made the introductions, then let the other two do the talking. After Frances Tilden explained, Berger said they would put a wire on the phones at Tilden House and so on. This was all in case Latovsky was wrong and it was the straightforward kidnapping of an heiress after all. Latovsky waited another minute to make sure they were in sync, then he disconnected himself and went to find Lucci; he was probably about to face Adam Fuller and his “big-mother gun,” and he wanted backup.
“Dirty, dirty, dirty,” the woman chanted in a slow, sly voice that made Eve want to clap her hands over her ears. The gray light coming through the windows brightened to streaks of yellow sun, the nicks around the edge of the table were gone, and the little boy who’d been on the swing was lying on his back on top of it. He was undressed from the waist down; his knees were tied to the pulley rope and raised, exposing his bare buttocks and thighs. He was sobbing, weak sobs that made Eve think he’d been crying for a while.
His trousers and underpants were neatly folded on a chair and the room was cleaner than clean... cleaner even than Mrs. Knapp insisted her kitchen be when the dailies got done with it. Smells of wax and pine oil fought the baking aroma.
“Dirty, dirty, dirty,” chanted the voice. “Gotta get it clean... gotta dig it out.”
Sun hit the boy’s face and he turned his head. On the table in front of his raised pelvis was a snowy towel with a gleaming hobby knife, a vegetable knife, and a single-edged razor blade on it; also a deflated pink enema bag, a bedpan, and a blue jar of Vaseline.
The frame widened and Eve saw the woman’s broad back in a silky flowered dress. She had thick dark hair with strands of gray in it pinned into a smooth solid bun. She was tall and heavy, big-boned, not fat. The boy looked like a wraith compared to her—the ghost of a child.
“Ready?” she whispered. The boy whimpered and she grabbed a hunk of thin thigh and pinched so hard it looked like her fingers met through the meager flesh. “I said, ready?”
“Yes,” the boy choked.
“Good—just gotta check.” Her voice was deep, almost mannish, but toneless like a recording played at the wrong speed. She went to the window, facing Eve as she did, and Eve looked into dark eyes sparkling with crazy hate. She had never seen such total screaming madness without any hint of moderation or reason in them. She wanted to scream, but no one would hear her.
The woman’s middle bulged as she leaned against the sink and looked out the window.
“All clear,” she caroled. “There’s just us... just you and me, little bastard.”
She advanced on the table and the boy hiccuped in terror and tried to say something, but couldn’t. She picked up the enema bag, brought it back to the sink, and filled it with cold water. It ballooned, and Eve forgot and cried, “He’ll never take all that—you’ll kill him!”
The woman hummed to herself and squeezed in some Ivory Liquid, then she chanted, “Dirty, dirty, dirty... gotta clean it up inside and out... dirty, dirty, dirty...”
She turned on the boy and almost screamed, “Dirty! And cleanliness is next to godliness. So you hate dirt as much as I do, don’t you, little bastard?”
The boy sobbed wildly, but managed to nod his head. She carried the enema bag back carefully without spilling a drop, then dunked the nozzle into the jar of Vaseline and stared at it, glittering in the sun.
She tore her eyes away from the greased nozzle, pushed the bedpan under him, and, with a little frown of concentration on her face, she spread his buttocks and slid in the tube. Eve tried to close her eyes, but that never worked; she turned away, but the picture turned with her and she saw the boy’s eyes widen, then squeeze shut; then he screamed and water sluiced into the pan, leaving a thin foam of soap bubbles on top. Finally the screams sank to moans and stopped; his face didn’t have any more color than the top of the table and Eve thought he’d passed out.
The woman eased the pan out from under him and carried it out of the room.
Sweat darkened his hair, his eyelids were thin as tissue, and a tiny blue vein pulsed in his white forehead. Eve wanted to stroke his head, push the wet hair off his forehead, to shade his eyes from the harsh ceiling light the lids looked too thin to keep out. But she couldn’t see her own hand when she raised it.
The woman came back without the pan and leaned over to look at the boy’s face. “No playing possum now...” She snapped her fingers in his face, and Eve prayed that he’d stay out and miss whatever else this unspeakable bitch had in store for him, but his eyes fluttered and opened. The woman giggled happily and picked up the hobby knife.
“Lookie, lookie, lookie, here comes cookie,” she sang in that basso voice. The boy’s eyes rolled, he saw the hobby knife, and he found the strength to scream again. The sound rocketed off the walls and hard surfaces of the room and the woman started, afraid someone would hear. But no one did, and she leaned over him, held the knife up so it caught the sun, and snarled, “Shut up, bastard, or I’ll slit you from stem to stem. I’ll slice off your dingus and shove it in your mouth. You hear me, bastard?”
He stifled himself and the woman’s eyes lit up with mad anticipation as if she were about to devour her favorite comestible, then she put the knife blade against the boy’s smooth belly (it was the first time, there wasn’t a mark on him) and pressed a little tentatively. The boy jerked and drove the knife deeper; blood spurted out and the woman yelped, “Messy” and ran for the paper towels over the sink. She passed Eve again, and Eve begged wildly, “Please... please... please... oh please.” But it was hopeless; this back-room horror show had been over and done for thirty years.
The woman wadded up paper towels to mop the blood and went back to a... different table in a different room. The baking smell and light ripples from the lake disappeared, the sun lost its hard-edged clarity, and the light was soft, gray, wintery.