This kitchen had cedar cabinets, beige vinyl-tile floor, counters of beige Formica with a design of pears and apples, and the pulley was gone.
She’d gotten around this by tying the boy’s knees to the handles of the wall cabinets behind him, raising his bare legs and butt even higher, exposing him even more. He was older, his legs had some muscle, but he was just as scrawny. His ribs looked like vines through his shirt, his knees and ankles were lumpy knobs of bone... and he was covered with the scars. Some were old, healed welts, others were fresh and raw. It must have been going on for years by now, because the boy looked about eight, although it was hard to tell since he was so thin and probably undersized. His face was longer, his features more formed, and his eyes were blank and empty, exactly like the eyes of the man in the doorway in 1993.
The woman hadn’t changed at all.
Except she seemed more urgent, enjoyed herself less. Maybe because he was so impossibly, almost supernaturally calm. He was also taller, harder to position; his genitals were heavier, his feet larger. He was growing up, her time was almost up, her chance to hurt him finally and forever was dwindling, and she was too crazy and stupid to see that she already had.
She picked up a big knife—no more Exacto, no more Mrs. Nice guy, Eve thought crazily—and she made a long shallow incision across other cuts that were still raw. The pain must have been excruciating, but the boy looked as if he were watching a boring lantern show on the ceiling. Blood ran; she mopped it up, then stood helplessly over him, not knowing what to do next. Her dark, insane eyes brightened as if she’d thought of something delicious, and Eve tried desperately to come back. It’s 1993, the “police action” in Vietnam turned into a war we lost; we sent men to the moon; a space shuttle blew up and killed seven people, including a schoolteacher from New Hampshire. It’s 1993, Bill Clinton’s president. I’m pregnant, Sam’s gone... it’s 1993. But the vision stayed firm and clear. The woman came to the counter and picked up a bottle of rubbing alcohol, soaked paper towels in it, then went back and jammed them on the running cut. His body quivered but his eyes stared emptily at the ceiling as if she’d done it to someone else.
“Acid,” she screamed in frustration, “I need acid.”
Then her eyes got that hot, crazy brilliance again, and she put the bloody wad of paper towels down, grabbed the shriveled organ in the boy’s crotch, and singsonged, “Lookie, lookie, lookie... here comes cookie!” She tremblingly put the knife against the base of it and Eve knew she wanted to do this more than she’d ever wanted to do anything in her life. Was a hair from doing it, but knew she’d never get away with it. She never had done it because he’d made love to Abigail Reese before he’d sliced her open.
“Lookie, lookie, lookie... here comes cookie,” she chanted, then screeched, “Look bastard, look what I’m going to do to you.” He fell into her trap, raised his head, and saw where the knife was. His skin went from ivory to green and he looked scared. Just scared... not terrified, pleading, or pitiful as he had before; just scared, then accepting. His head fell back on the table, he closed his eyes, and waited for her to do it.
The transformation from the pretty, vulnerable, terrified little boy on the swing to the monster in the doorway was complete.
Eve whirled around to throw up in the sink of that other kitchen and saw a ceramic cookie jar shaped like a head on the counter. Mrs. Knapp had one that looked almost manically cheery, but this one appeared sad, as if it could see the boy and wept for him. Then the cookie jar disappeared, the sink she bent over changed from stainless to enamel with a modern one-armed faucet, and she was back.
“Why,” he asked over and over, Why, why, why... like a kid.
“I don’t know, I never see why,” Eve said.
They were in the living room. He sat on the chair Dave had sat in; she was on the dust-sheeted couch. They used to cover the furniture at home when they went to Maine for the summer and they’d sometimes come home unexpectedly and find dim rooms full of low-slung ghostly shapes, and she and Meg had spooky fun playing hide and seek under the dust sheets.
Oleee olleee ocean free...
She might never be free again, might not live to leave this house because she’d done what he’d wanted and taken away his only reason to keep her alive.
But he didn’t look ready to shoot her; he held the gun loosely, resting on his thigh. She’d never seen a handgun this close up before, but thought the lever at the crest of the butt must be the safety, and it was down. That must be off.
She’d never get it away from him, no matter how loosely he held it, but she might make it to the front door before he could grip it, cock, aim, and fire at her.
“She must have had a reason,” he insisted.
“She hated you.”
She was much closer to the door than he was. She had to get around the end of the couch, then make it ten feet to the door. She didn’t dare look back at it but she thought there was a little jog in the wall to hide her. She might make it outside, across the clearing and into the trees before he shot her. No point trying for the car, he’d never be careless enough to leave the keys in it, and life had not prepared her to hot-wire a car. She almost grinned.
“But why?” he asked.
He’d probably get off a shot, but she could make it to the trees with a bullet in her shoulder... only he’d aim for her back, the widest part of her. That didn’t mean he’d hit her; he was a killer, not necessarily a good shot.
“What could make her want to hurt me like that?” he asked wonderingly.
“She didn’t hurt you,” Eve snapped; wrong tone to take to a killer with a gun, but she couldn’t help it. “She tortured you, wanted to castrate you—would have if she’d thought she could get away with it.”
“But why?”
That question again—the madman who thought other people had sane reasons for what they did.
“I don’t know,” Eve mumbled.
“What did I ever do to her?”
“Nothing. You were just a kid, you couldn’t do anything to her.” That should end the whys, she thought, shifting to get closer to the end of the couch. But he came up with a new one.
“And why’d she call me bastard? My mother never swore. If she said it, she meant literally bastard.”
Eve stared at him transfixed, the gun, the distance to the door, and her plan of escape forgotten.
“Why?” he insisted. “They were married when they had Mike and he’s seven years older than I am. My mother and father...”
“Your mother! That bitch wasn’t your mother!”
Latovsky slipped the pick into the lock, feeling for the slot in the works. “What’s the point?” Lucci whispered tensely. “He ain’t here.”
“Maybe she is.”
Slit open and hung out to dry in the attic, he thought. Shot in the face in the basement.
“Dave, we ain’t got a single piece of legal paper.”
“Want to leave her if we find her?”
“Don’t talk like that.” Lucci was whispering although no one was around. The house was dark, the garage empty. No one had answered the bell or their pounding on the front, then back door.
Latovsky felt the groove he was looking for and twisted the pick. The latch clicked back and they entered a dark kitchen (no hall light this time) and started their search of Adam Fuller’s supemeat house on Rusty Pond.