Brrrring.
Telephone, Mary thought. Again: Brrrring.
"Door… buzzer," Edward managed to get out. "Downstairs. Somebody… wants in."
"Who're you expecting?"
"No-nobody. Mary, listen… you're choking me. Come on… stop it… okay?"
Brrrring.
She stared into his too-blue eyes and his mottled face. He was small, she decided. A small person who had given up and been seduced by the Mindfuck State. He was to be pitied. She didn't want to kill him, not yet. Drummer was crying and someone wanted in. She released Edward's tie, and he gasped in a shuddering breath followed by a coughing fit.
Mary pressed the pacifier into Drummer's mouth. His eyes were angry, and big wet tears had rolled down his cheeks. He looked the way she felt. She finished changing his diaper, the gun beside him on the bed.
In the front room, Edward gave a last ragged cough and pressed the intercom button. "Yeah?"
There was no answer.
"Anybody down there?"
Nothing.
He released the button. Neighborhood kids screwing around, he figured. About three seconds later Brrrring.
He hit the button again. "Hey, listen up! You want to play, go play in the middle of the stre -"
"Edward Lambert?"
A woman's voice. Sounded nervous. "Yeah. Who is it?"
"Come downstairs."
"I don't have time for this, lady. What're you selling?"
"Damaged goods," she said. "Come downstairs." She clicked off.
"Who was that?" Mary stood in the bedroom's doorway, freshly diapered Drummer in her arms and the Magnum automatic in her right hand.
"Nobody." He shrugged. "Bag lady, probably. They're all over the place trying to get handouts."
Mary went to the window and looked out. The air was hazed with falling snow. And then she saw the figure standing down on the sidewalk, staring up at the apartment building. The wind had picked up, whipping at the figure's gray overcoat. There was a black cap on the person's head, and a long woolen muffler the same color around the neck.
Mary's eyes narrowed. She recognized the outfit. She'd seen this person before. Yes, she was sure of it. On the boat coming back from Liberty Island. This person had been standing at the stern, hands in pockets, next to the blond-haired girl in the leather jacket. As Mary watched, the figure began to walk slowly away from the building, bent against the wind. A few more steps, and a crosscurrent of winds snatched the cap and lifted it off the person's head.
A mane of red hair spilled down. A woman, Mary realized. The woman caught the cap before it could spin away, pushed her tresses up under it, and mashed it down again. Then she kept walking, shoulders slumped as if under a terrible burden.
Red hair, Mary thought. Red as a battle flag.
She had known another woman with hair that color.
"Oh my God," Mary whispered.
The red-haired woman turned a corner and went out of sight, snowflakes whirling behind her.
"Hold my baby," Mary told Edward, and she put Drummer in his arms before he could say no. She jammed the pistol down into the waistband of her jeans, under her baggy brown sweater, and she headed for the door.
"Where're you going? Mary! Where the hell are -"
She was already out the door and racing down the second-floor stairway. She ran out onto the street, into the cutting cold and snow. Then on to the corner where the red-haired woman had turned off Cooper Avenue, and Mary could see her about a block away. She was opening the driver's door of a brown compact Ford.
"Wait!" Mary shouted, but the wind was in her face and the woman couldn't hear. The Ford pulled out of its parking place and started coming toward Mary, who stepped into the street and walked forward to meet it. Flurries of snow swirled between them. Mary lifted her right hand and made a peace sign, and she strode toward the car as it came on.
She saw the woman's face through the windshield. Like Edward's, it was not a face she knew. And then the woman's eyes widened, her mouth opened in a cry Mary couldn't hear, and the Ford skidded to a stop on the gleaming pavement.
The woman got out, and the wind took her black cap, and the red tresses danced around her shoulders. Mary lowered her peace hand. Was this or was this not someone she knew? The hair was the same, yes, but the face was different. Bedelia Morse had been as lovely as a model, her nose small and graceful, her mouth and chin set with firm purpose. This woman had a crooked nose that looked as if it had been brutally broken and never properly set, her jowls were thick, and her chin had receded above a padding of flab. Deep lines flared out from the corners of her eyes and cut across her forehead. Mary could tell that the woman, who stood about five six, was heavy around the stomach and waist, a once-fine figure gone to seed. But the woman had green eyes: green as Irish moss. They were Didi's eyes, in a face that was almost toadish.
"Mary?" she said in Bedelia's voice grown husky and older. "Mary?"
"It's me," Mary answered, and Bedelia tried to speak again, but only a sob came out and it was tattered by the wind. Bedelia Morse rushed forward into Mary's arms, and they hugged each other with the pistol between them.
2: The Idiot's Dream
On Monday morning between two and three, Laura Clayborne put on her heavy overcoat, got into her car in the Days Inn parking lot, started the engine, and drove west, heading for Didi Morse's cottage in the woods.
Sleep was impossible, the night full of phantoms. A crescent moon hung in the sky, the road empty before the BMW's headlights. Laura shivered, waiting for the heater to warm up. She and Mark had driven out to the cottage at ten o'clock, to see if Didi Morse had gotten home and was simply not answering her telephone, but the house had been dark. Laura wanted to drive, to have the sensation of at least going from one point to another. Her calls to Agent Kastle in Atlanta had told her how his investigation was going: Kastle, his secretary said, was out of the city and would get in touch with Laura whenever he returned. In other words: don't call us, we'll call you.
That wasn't good enough. Not good enough by a damned long shot.
Laura drove past the cottage. Still dark, no car in front. Wherever Didi was, her weekend trip had stretched out another day. Laura thought she might start chewing the walls of her motel room if she'd come all this way and couldn't find the woman. She'd stopped taking her sleeping pills because she didn't want her brain fogged with drugs. The downside of kicking the sleeping pills, though, was that she had maybe three or four hours of sleep a night and the other hours were haunted by visions of the madwoman on the balcony and the sniper with his rifle. Laura couldn't take looking at her face in a mirror; her eyes had seemingly sunken deeper, and there was a steely shine in them as if something hard and unknown were beginning to peer out.
About a mile west of the cottage, Laura turned around on a dirt road and headed back. Get something to eat, she thought. Find an all-night pancake house, maybe. Someplace with a lot of hot black coffee.
She slowed, nearing the cottage again. She glanced toward it as the BMW crept by. Dark, of course. Didi had gone birding, the old man had said. Borrowed his binoculars, and went bye-bye. Her hands tightened around the wheel. Didi Morse might be her only hope of finding David alive. David might be dead right now, torn apart like the dolls in the box they'd found in Mary Terrell's apartment. Dear God, Laura prayed, help me hold on to my sanity.
A light flashed.
A light.
In a window of Didi Morse's cottage.
Laura was past the house by a hundred yards before she could make her foot hit the brake. She slowed down gradually, not wanting the tires to shriek. Her heart was about to blow out of her chest. A light. Just a brief glimmer, maybe a second and then gone. It hadn't been a reflection of the moon, or of her headlights.