Risk or no risk, he can’t bear to see her suffer.
Holly watches them descend. They move with glassy care, and she’s once again amazed that they have taken her prisoner. That old ad comes to mind. She should have gone to the running car after all instead of hiding behind the chainsaws.
“I wouldn’t believe you’d have much to smile about in your current situation, Ms. Gibney, but apparently you do.” Emily has both hands at the small of her back. “Would you like to share?”
Never answer a suspect’s questions, Bill used to say. They answer yours.
“Hello again, Professor Harris,” she says, looking past Emily… who, by her expression, does not enjoy being looked past. “You came up behind me, didn’t you? With your own Taser.”
“I did,” Roddy says, and rather proudly.
“Were you here last night? I seem to remember your pajamas.”
“I was.”
Emily’s eyes widen and Holly thinks, You didn’t know that, did you?
Em turns to her husband and takes the water. “I think that’s enough, dear. Let me ask the questions.”
Holly has an idea there will only be one question before they slam the big door and turn out all the lights, and she would like to postpone it. She has remembered something else from last night, and it fits with the undergraduate nickname for this man. Fits perfectly. Were she free and talking with friends about the case in bright daylight she would have considered the idea absurd, but in this basement—thirsty, in severe pain, a prisoner—it makes perfect sense.
“Is he eating them? Is that why you take them?”
They exchange a puzzled look that can be nothing but authentic. Then Emily bursts into surprisingly girlish laughter. After a moment, Roddy joins her. As they laugh they share the particular telepathic look that is the sole property of a couple that’s been together for many decades. Roddy gives a slight nod—tell her, why not—and Emily turns to Holly.
“There is no he, dear, only we. We eat them.”
While Holly is discovering that she’s been locked in a cage by a pair of elderly cannibals, Penny Dahl is in the shower with her hair full of shampoo. Her phone rings. She steps out onto the bathmat and plucks it off the clothes hamper while soapy water runs down her neck and back. She checks the number. Holly? No.
“Hello?”
It isn’t a man who replies but a woman, and she doesn’t bother with hello. “Why did you call in the middle of the night? What’s the big emergency?”
“Who is this? I asked for a callback from Peter Hun—”
“It’s his daughter. Dad’s in the hospital. He has Covid. I’m on his phone. What do you want?”
“I was in the shower. Can I rinse off and call you back?”
The woman gives a longsuffering sigh. “Sure, fine.”
“My screen says unknown number. Can you—”
The woman gives her the number and Penny writes it in the steam on the bathroom mirror, repeating it over and over to herself for good measure as she turns the shower back on and sticks her head under it. It’s a half-assed rinse job, but she can finish later. She wraps herself in a towel and calls back.
“This is Shauna. What’s your deal, Ms. Dahl?”
Penny tells her that Holly was investigating the disappearance of her daughter and was supposed to call to report her progress at nine last night. There was no call, and since then, including this morning, Penny gets only voicemail.
“I don’t know what I can do for y—”
A male voice interrupts her. “Give it to me.”
“Dad, no. The doctor said—”
“Give me the damn phone.”
Shauna says, “If you set back his recovery—”
Then she’s gone. A man coughs into Penny’s ear, reminding her of the woman from the answering service. “This is Pete,” he says. “I apologize for my daughter. She’s in full protect-the-old-guy mode.”
Faintly: “Oh my fuck, really?”
“Start over, please.”
Penny goes through it again. This time she finishes by saying, “Maybe it’s nothing, but since my daughter disappeared, anyone not showing up makes me crazy.”
“Maybe nothing, maybe something,” Pete says. “Holly’s always on time. It’s a thing with her. I want—” He coughs dryly. “I want to give you Jerome Robinson’s number. He works with us sometimes. He… well, shit. I forgot. Jerome is in New York. You can try him if you want, but his sister Barbara might be a better bet. I’m pretty sure she and Jerome both have keys to Holly’s apartment. I have one, too, but I’m—” More coughing. “I’m in Kiner. Another day, they tell me, then more quarantining at home. Shauna, too. I guess I could send a nurse down with the key.”
Penny is in the kitchen now, and dripping on the floor. She grabs a pen from beside the day planner. “I hope it won’t come to that. Give me those numbers.”
He does. Penny jots them down. Shauna recaptures the phone, says an unceremonious “G’bye,” and then Penny is on her own again.
She tries both numbers, the one for Barbara first since she’s in town. She gets voicemail from both. She leaves messages, then goes back into the bathroom to finish her shower. It’s the second time this month that she’s had the feeling that something is wrong, and the first time she was right.
Holly’s always on time. It’s a thing with her.
“You eat them,” Holly echoes.
There is no Red Bank Predator. It should be impossible to believe, but it’s not. Only two old college professors living in a neat Victorian home near a prestigious college.
Roddy steps forward eagerly, almost within grabbing distance. Emily pulls him back by his robe, wincing as she does it. Roddy doesn’t seem to notice.
“All mammals are cannibals,” he says, “but only homo sapiens has a silly taboo about it, one that flies in the face of all known medical facts.”
“Roddy—”
He ignores her. He’s dying to expound. To explain. They have never done that with any of their other captures, but this isn’t livestock; he doesn’t have to worry about her adrenals flooding her flesh before they are ready to slaughter.
“That taboo is less than three hundred years old, and even now many tribes—long-lived tribes, I might add—enjoy the benefits of human flesh.”
“Roddy, this isn’t the time—”
“Do you know how many calories are contained in the body of an adult human being of average weight? One hundred and twenty-six thousand!” His voice has begun to rise to the screamy pitch many of his nutrition and biology classes would have recognized in days of yore. “Healthy human flesh and blood cures epilepsy, it cures amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, it cures sciatica! Healthy human fat cures otosclerosis, the main cause of deafness, and drops of warm liquid fat in the eyes spontaneously heal macular—”
“Roddy, enough!”
He gives her a stubborn look. “Human flesh ensures longevity. Look at us, if you have any doubts. Late eighties, yet hale and healthy!”
Holly wonders if he’s having a kind of Alzheimer’s-induced dream, or if he’s just batpoop out of his mind. Maybe it’s both. She just saw the way they came downstairs, step by careful, hesitating step. Like human Ming vases.