I was close enough to the doorway now to brace myself against the casing. Sweat trickled into my eyes, across my cheek. I wiped it away with my wrist. “Why?”
“It’s one sacrilege on top of another on top of another,” she said. “Spitting in the face of God, understand? He thought his rituals made him a god. He took life so he could make life. And after he took that step with the mother and child both, there was only one step left. The ultimate in sacrilege: suicide. Literally taking his own life, the one God gave you. It’s the final insult. And it ain’t like someone sick who does it for different reasons. This was calculated, so that even his own death was a ritual, you see?”
“They’re going to find the bodies of that woman and little boy, aren’t they,” I said softly. She didn’t answer so I said, “I just wish I knew why she came to me.”
Claudia had followed me to the door, and I hadn’t realized how close she was to me until she spoke. “Maybe the riddle isn’t about her.”
I looked over my shoulder at her. “What do you mean?”
“Deception. Maybe it’s more about Bernard, more about you. Could be she’s trying to help you.”
“And what about Bernard?”
“Maybe he knew you’d listen, maybe he has unfinished business, or he’s restless or can’t let go yet. Not all spirits cross peacefully. Some hang on.” She slipped past me, so close that her hip brushed my leg before she took up position on the other side of the doorframe. A tracer of sunlight formed a thin line across her face. The smudged eyeliner made her look strangely sinister. “Go back to the beginning. Watch. Listen. Keep your mind open to it and follow your instincts, those voices in your head—whatever you want to call them. If the other side’s looking for you, it’ll find you. That much I do know.”
The more I searched those sad, liner-smudged eyes, the less sinister they became. “Why do you think he never hurt you?”
“Never said he didn’t.”
“Didn’t kill you then?”
“I didn’t fit the mold. I was just a stupid junkie fuck-toy.” She smiled ever so slightly. “Didn’t have to worry none about me, right?”
I could’ve talked with her for hours, picking her brain and delving deeper and deeper into her time with Bernard, but I had to get out of that cottage. It was closing in around me and there were unsettling vibes passing between us. “Thanks for your help,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. I ain’t sending you anywhere good.”
“You aren’t sending me anywhere I didn’t ask to go.” I glanced at the poster across the room. “Hope things work out for you in Florida.”
She pressed a hand against the screen door and pushed it open, holding it there as she leaned closer to me. We stood together in the doorway a moment, our faces mere inches apart. I could feel her breath against my neck. “Be careful out there, Plato.”
CHAPTER 27
Sunday afternoon. It was hot, and I was exhausted. I paused at the base of the steps to my apartment and gazed at Life a moment, as if I was the only one moving and everything else was standing still.
Couples walked hand-in-hand and children played along the sunny bank of the cove across the street. Bass-heavy car stereos thumped from passing vehicles, and the air was filled with food smells typical of the neighborhood.
I was halfway up the staircase before I realized the door to my apartment was ajar. I froze a moment, then grabbed the railing and pulled myself a step closer in an attempt to see beyond the slight opening. I stole a quick glance back down the stairs at the parking spaces below. The cars blended one into the next like everything else under the rippling heat. Nothing looked distinct or individually defined; the world was all smooth edges and rounded angles, a nebulous blur of colors and shapes distorted by the slow steady burn of a brilliant and scorching sun.
I climbed the remaining stairs cognizant of my weight and the sound of my footfalls against the aged wood. When I reached the landing before the door, I pulled my 9mm free, and holding it down by my thigh, pushed the door open the rest of the way with my free hand.
Toni stood inside, shaded from the sun.
I don’t know why I’d suspected it might have been someone else.
My nerves settled and I joined her, closing the door behind me. I slipped the 9mm back into the holster then pulled the entire thing free of my belt.
“Why are you carrying a gun, Alan?”
I hadn’t heard her voice in a while, and was troubled by how quickly unfamiliar it had become. Her clothes looked new, small purple shorts with a matching sleeveless top and a pair of white Keds. Sunglasses sat atop her head. She was tan and healthy-looking, which somehow seemed appalling under the circumstances. “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I said.
It was then that I noticed the nylon bag dangling from her hand. Perhaps because she swung it rather casually down by her leg. “I came by to pick up a few more things.”
I nodded in answer. I’d been hoping for something better. I’m coming home, maybe. I wanted to see you, even. It didn’t seem possible that such a chasm could exist between us so quickly. Good, bad or indifferent, just weeks before I would have spent the day with this woman, cuddling on the couch or going for a walk, maybe catching a movie, ridiculously unaware that even with our problems it would ever change, that anything else might ever have meaning beyond our little cocoon, so certain it would always be her breath on my neck, her head on my chest, her arms around my back, her lips against mine, her dreams and fears and desires intermingled with my own. Didn’t she understand I was coming apart at the seams? Didn’t she understand that Bernard was a devil and that I was lost, lost in the dark and that he was there with me? Didn’t she know how much I needed her just then? Didn’t she still need me too? Had she ever?
“How are you?” she asked. Before I could answer she said, “You look tired.”
“Among other things.”
Toni clutched the bag with both hands, as if for comfort, and held it tight against her chest. It crinkled in her grasp, still empty, and for a moment I entertained the notion that I might be capable of convincing her to stay, or at a minimum, to prevent her from taking anything else from the apartment. I wasn’t sure how much more could be removed before what remained would become vestiges of a relationship no longer relevant. “Can you believe they found another body?” she asked.
“Yeah, down at the public beach.” I emphasized the word public because the cottage her friend Martha was letting her use was located on one of the few private stretches of beach in town.
She sighed and frowned a little. “The whole town’s terrified. It’s all everyone talks about. It’s all over the news, on TV and the radio, in the papers. There’s even national media in town some days. People look at each other on the street with such distrust now, and there are FBI agents and strange law enforcement types all over the place, it’s like something out of a movie. Have you noticed how at night it’s so much quieter than it used to be? Everyone goes home, locks their doors like prisoners, and hides. It’s awful.”
I shrugged. “It’s never been that noisy where you are now.”
She continued speaking like she hadn’t heard me, the words spilling from her quickly. “The police even released a statement about how the bodies are not recent murder victims. They were killed months ago, and they say it as if that fact should put people at ease, like the killer has moved on or hasn’t killed anyone lately. One article even quoted an unnamed source in the police department that said the killer might be a transient, and that there’s a good chance he’s already left town. Apparently some killers cross the country traveling by rail, like hobos or something, hopping trains and killing people from one end of the country to the next, and since the train runs through town, well… you know. One article said the killer might be targeting low income single mothers.” Toni lowered the bag, holding it with both hands against the front of her thighs like a schoolgirl. “Anyway, the selectmen had an announcement in the paper about it too, with tomorrow being the Fourth of July and all, did you see it? About how it’s the official kickoff of the tourist season and tourism doesn’t need to suffer because of it—blah, blah, blah—can you believe it?”