Sarah covered Meg’s mouth with adhesive tape again and continued securing the rope. With Meg silenced and helpless, she started to talk. They were not words of comfort. “Butterfly, you don’t know a thing. Killing is nothing. I killed my own brother. Two years back. May fourth, 1978. You want to know why? Marty screwed up my life. He pulled the plug on everything I ever did. My parents doted on him. He was brilliant and handsome and charming. He was going to Yale, only he didn’t get there because he crashed his bike on Highway Seventy. They said it was an accident, but nobody could say why it happened. The road was clear. The bike was in perfect condition. Now I’ll tell you what really killed Marty. Imagine you’re riding a motorcycle, one of those big Japanese machines. The road is straight and clear, so you open up. Eighty, ninety. Suddenly something is moving into your line of vision. It’s a spider, not very big, but you don’t know that, because it’s on the inside of your crash helmet, crossing the visor an inch from your eye. You react, and at that speed it’s fatal. Zap!” The charged quality in her voice changed to a giggle. “Want to know how I fixed it? Inside that crash helmet there was a strip of soft leather packed with fiberglass padding that lies across the forehead. It has a row of vents underneath. That was where the spider came from. I inserted an egg sac through the central vent into the fiberglass about ten days before Marty died. One egg sac contains anywhere up to eight hundred spiders, so even if plenty escaped or died, there was a good chance of one or two hatching and taking a walk across the visor sometime when Marty was on the road. You got to admit it was a cute idea. I guess, to be honest, I didn’t expect him to get killed, but I sure as hell wanted to give him a good scare. It was on my conscience for a long time afterward. I had nightmares about it. But it doesn’t bother me anymore.”
She stood up and used the flashlight to check that the bindings were secure. “The reason I told you is so you know killing is no big deal. Telling you is a kind of commitment, too. It means I can’t let you live. Too bad, huh?” She kicked the empty can out of reach. “That’s something I’m working on. There’s no hurry. See you, Butterfly.”
The place was dark again, and the horrors came back.
When Don returned from Lake Pinecliff without a shred of information about Sarah, he went straight to Jerry’s office to see if any news had come in while he was away.
“Yeah,” said Jerry. “Something came in.” He tossed a newspaper across the desk.
It was an early edition of the Post. The headline ran WEB DEATH — SPIDER GIRL WAS THERE. Claiming an exclusive, the paper reported that Sarah “Spider Girl” Jordan was known to have been on the web at about the time Rick Saville was killed. An eyewitness was said to have told friends she had seen Sarah’s jacket — recognizable for its black-sequin spider emblem — folded on the lawn outside the gym at around two A.M., the estimated time of Saville’s death. The rest of the report was a rehash of information published earlier, except that it was stated that Miss Jordan was not available for comment and her present whereabouts were unknown.
“Someone talked, then,” said Don calmly. “This stuff is secondhand. Nancy Lim, I guess. Is there any real news?”
“What do you want — another corpse?” said Jerry in a rising voice. “Isn’t this enough? Havelock Sloane is raising hell. Every goddamned paper in America has been trying to call me all morning. The dean wants a meeting of the trustees and a full inquiry. And the police are all over the campus.”
“We need them,” said Don. “These girls haven’t been seen in twenty-four hours. Was Cunningham here this morning?”
“I took him around the webs myself. No dice. I’m having the damned webs taken down this afternoon. They give people nasty ideas. Where you going now?”
“Police headquarters — see what’s happening.”
Downtown at headquarters, on Pearl Street, he was shown up to the detectives’ squadroom. The lieutenant was there on the phone. He raised his hand to acknowledge Don. He covered the mouthpiece and said, “We found Miss Jordan’s car.” A patrolman had spotted the red Ford Pinto on St. Mark’s Place.
“We’re making intensive inquiries at hotels in the area to see if she stayed there last night,” the lieutenant said, “and naturally we’re watching the car. Too bad we had to move in like this, but now that the story has broken, it could easily panic the girl. Do you know if she has any friends in the Village, or at NYU?”
“I’ve never heard of any. She doesn’t talk much about friends.”
“I heard you went out to Lake Pinecliff this morning. That’s the place she goes hang-gliding, right?”
Don nodded. “The people at the motel saw her the day before yesterday, but she hasn’t been there since. I scoured the area looking for the car and of course there was nothing.”
“There’s a lot of media interest in this, Mr. Rigden. This Spider Girl thing — is it just an act, would you say?”
“I’m afraid she may believe it, some of the time anyway. You might find it useful to talk to Dr. Edmund Cunningham about this.”
“We already did. He says she’s out of touch with reality. In my book, that’s a psychopath.”
“Does it matter what labels we use?”
“If she’s dangerous, yes, sir. Things have moved on since we talked yesterday. We’ve been getting some background on Sarah Jordan and she’s a very strange girl. She’s on record as saying she has the characteristics of a spider. She admits she’s aggressive. She actually sank her teeth in some guy’s neck when he got on a web with her at NBC.”
“Publicity,” said Don. “If you get all your information from the papers—”
“We checked. It happened. In the last two hours we’ve had three unsolicited statements from people who say she is dangerous. That’s not the press; that’s so-called academics like yourself. They say she went to parties looking for guys who would share in her fantasies.”
Don reddened. “That’s a lie. What are you conducting — a search for two missing girls or a witch hunt?”
“I may be conducting a murder investigation, Mr. Rigden.”
There was something like ice creeping down Don’s spine. “You don’t mean that.”
“Add it up,” said the lieutenant, and his eyes watched Don’s face. “She took off her jacket to go on the web. Left it folded, so it was a voluntary action. She turns up afterward wearing all her clothes — which are now torn — and telling a story of attempted rape. Yeah, we’ve been digging. We know a whole lot of things now we didn’t know last evening. The evidence won’t support that story of rape. It looks like Miss Jordan was covering for something else.” He gave a slight smile, “Maybe you reached the same conclusion. I notice you haven’t signed the statement you made, saying you escorted Miss Jordan home that night. Did you think better of it?”
“I got it wrong,” admitted Don. “I’d like to emend that statement.”
“You left around midnight, alone?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I—”
“You wanted to keep her name out of this?”
Don nodded. “But before you reach any conclusions about what happened, you should give Sarah the chance to tell her story.”
The lieutenant shook his head. “I can’t wait. If she killed Saville—”
“Killed? Why would she want to kill him if he wasn’t even attacking her?”
The lieutenant looked at Don for a moment in silence.