precisely grasping the detective's ludicrous interpretation of Marty's
crime report, the source of his antagonism. She had the temper in the
family, and since Marty was barely able to keep from striking the cop,
he wondered what Paige's reaction would be when Lowbock made his idiotic
suspicions explicit.
"It must help a career to be profiled in People magazine," the detective
continued. "And I guess when Mr. Murder himself becomes the target of a
muy misterioso killer, then you'll get a lot more free publicity in the
press, and just at a crucial turning point in your career."
Paige jerked in her chair as if she'd been slapped.
Her reaction drew Lowbock's attention. "Yes, Mrs. Stillwater?"
"You can't actually believe . .."
"Believe what, Mrs. Stillwater?"
"Marty isn't a liar."
"Have I said he is?"
"He loathes publicity."
"Then they must have been quite persistent at People."
"Look at his neck, for Christ's sake! The redness, swelling, it'll be
covered with bruises in a few hours. You can't believe he did that to
himself."
Maintaining a maddening pretense of objectivity, Lowbock said, "Is that
what you believe, Mrs. Stillwater?"
She spoke between clenched teeth, saying what Marty felt he couldn't
allow himself to say, "You stupid ass."
Raising his eyebrows and looking stricken, as if he couldn't imagine
what he'd done to earn such enmity, Lowbock said, "Surely, Mrs.
Stillwater, you realize there are people out there, a world of cynics,
who might say that attempted strangulation is the safest form of assault
to fake. I mean, stabbing yourself in the arm or leg would be a
convincing touch, but there's always the danger of a slight
miscalculation, a nicked artery, then suddenly you find yourself
bleeding a lot more seriously than you'd intended. And as for
selfinflicted gunshot wounds--well, the risk is even higher, what with
the possibility that a bullet might ricochet off a bone and into deeper
flesh, and there's always the danger of shock."
Paige bolted to her feet so abruptly that she knocked over her chair.
"Get out."
Lowbock blinked at her, feigning innocence long past the point of
diminishing returns. "Excuse me?"
"Get out of my house," she demanded. "Now."
Although Marty realized they were throwing away their last slim hope of
winning over the detective and gaining police protection, he also got up
from his chair, so angry that he was trembling. "My wife is right.
I think you and your men better leave, Lieutenant."
Remaining seated because to do so was a challenge to them, Cyrus Lowbock
said, "You mean, leave before we finish our investigation?"
"Yes," Marty said. "Finished or not."
"Mr. Stillwater . . . Mrs. Stillwater . . . you do realize that it's
against the law to file a false crime report?"
"We haven't filed a false report," Marty said.
Paige said, "The only fake in this room is you, Lieutenant. You do
realize that it's against the law to impersonate a police officer?"
It would have been satisfying to see Lowbock's face color with anger, to
see his eyes narrow and his lips tighten at the insult, but his
equanimity remained infuriatingly unshaken.
As he got slowly to his feet, the detective said, "If the blood samples
taken from the upstairs carpet are, say, only pig's blood or cow's blood
or anything like that, the lab will be able to determine the exact
species, of course."
"I'm aware of the analytic powers of forensic science," Marty assured
him.
"Oh, yes, that's right, you're a mystery writer. According to People
magazine, you do a great deal of research for your novels."
Lowbock closed his notebook, clipped his pen to it.
Marty waited.
"In your various researches, Mr. Stillwater, have you learned how much
blood is in the human body, say in a body approximately the size of your
own?"
"Five liters."
"Ah. That's correct." Lowbock put the notebook on top of the plastic
bag containing the leather case of lock picks. "At a guess, but an
educated guess, I'd say there's somewhere between one and two liters of
blood soaked into the upstairs carpet. Between twenty and forty percent
of this look-alike's entire supply, and closer to forty unless I miss my
guess. You know what I'd expect to find along with that much blood, Mr.
Stillwater? I'd expect to find the body it came from, because it really
does stretch the imagination to picture such a grievously wounded man
being able to flee the scene."
"I've already told you, I don't understand it either."
"Muy misterioso," Paige said, investing those two words with a measure
of scorn equal to the mockery with which the detective had spoken them
earlier.
Marty decided there was at least one good thing about this mess, the way
Paige had not doubted him for an instant, even though reason and logic
virtually demanded doubt, the way she stood beside him now, fierce and
resolute. In all the years they had been together, he had never loved
her more than at that moment.
Picking up the notebook and the evidence bag, Lowbock said, "If the
blood upstairs proves to be human blood, that raises all sorts of other
questions that would require us to finish the investigation whether or
not you'd prefer to be rid of us. Actually, whatever the lab results,
you'll be hearing from me again."
"We'd simply adore seeing you again," Paige said, the edge gone from her
voice, as if suddenly she ceased to see Lowbock as a threat and could
not help but view him as a comic figure.
Marty found her attitude infecting him, and he realized that with him,
as with her, this sudden dark hilarity was a reaction to the unbearable
tension of the past hour. He said, "By all means, drop by again."
"We'll make a nice pot of tea," Paige said.
"And scones."
"Crumpets."
"Tea cakes."
"And by all means, bring the wife," Paige said. "We're quite
broad-minded. We'd love to meet her even if she is of another species."
Marty was aware that Paige was perilously close to laughing out loud,
because he was close to it himself, and he knew their behavior was
childish, but he required all of his self-control not to continue making
fun of Lowbock all the way out the front door, driving him backward with
jokes the way that Professor Von Helsing might force Count Dracula to
retreat by brandishing a crucifix at him.
Strangely, the detective was disconcerted by their frivolity as he had
never been by their anger or by their earnest insistence that the
intruder had been real. Visible self-doubt took hold of him, and he
looked as if he might suggest they sit down and start over again.
But self-doubt was a weakness unfamiliar to him, and he could not
sustain it for long.
Uncertainty quickly gave way to his familiar smug expression, and he
said, "We'll be taking the look-alike's Heckler and Koch, as well as
your guns, of course, un
til you can produce the paperwork that I
requested."
For a terrible moment, Marty was sure that they had found the Beretta in
the kitchen cupboard and the Mossberg shotgun under the bed upstairs, as
well as the other weapons, and were going to leave him defenseless.
But Lowbock listed the guns and mentioned only three, "The Smith and
Wesson, the Korth thirty-eight, and the M16."
Marty tried not to let his relief show.
Paige distracted Lowbock by saying, "Lieutenant, are you ever going to
get the fuck out of here?"
The detective finally could not prevent his face from tightening with
anger. "You can certainly hurry me along, Mrs. Stillwater, if you would
repeat your request in the presence of two other officers."
"Always worrying about those lawsuits," Marty said.
Paige said, "Happy to oblige, Lieutenant. Would you like me to phrase
the request in the same language I just used?"
Never before had Marty heard her use the F-word except in the most
intimate circumstances--which meant, though masked by her light tone of
voice and frivolous manner, her anger was as strong as ever. That was
good. After the police left, she would need the anger to get her
through the night ahead. Anger would help keep fear at bay.
When he closes his eyes and tries to picture the pain, he can see it as
a filigree of fire. A beautifully luminous lacework, white-hot with
shadings of red and yellow, stretches from the base of his throbbing
neck across his back, encircling his sides, looping and knotting
intricately across his chest and abdomen as well.
By visualizing the pain, he has a better sense of whether his condition
is improving or deteriorating. Actually, his only concern is how fast
he is improving. He has been wounded on other occasions, though never
this grievously, and knows what to expect, continued deterioration would
be a wholly new and alarming experience for him.
The pain had been vicious during the minute or two after he'd been shot.
He had felt as if a monstrous fetus had come awake within him and was
burrowing its way out.
Fortunately, he has a singularly high tolerance for pain. He also draws
courage from the knowledge that the agony will swiftly subside to a less
crippling level.
By the time he staggers through the rear door of the house and heads for
the Honda, the bleeding stops completely, and his hunger pangs become
more terrible than the pain of his wounds. His stomach knots, loosens
with a spasm, but immediately knots again, violently clench that can
seize the nourishment he so desperately needs.
Driving away from his house through gray torrents at the height of the
storm, he becomes so achingly ravenous that he begins to shake with
deprivation. They are not mere tremors of need but wracking shudders
that clack his teeth together. His twitching hands beat a palsied
tattoo upon the steering wheel, and he is barely able to hold it firmly
enough to control the vehicle. Fits of dry wheezing convulse him, hot
flashes alternate with chills, and the sweat gushing from him is colder
than the rain that still soaks his hair and clothes.
His extraordinary metabolism gives him great strength, keeps his energy
level high, frees him from the need to sleep every night, allows him to
heal with miraculous rapidity, and is in general a cornucopia of
physical blessings, but it also makes demands on him. Even on a normal
day, he has an appetite formidable enough for two lumberjacks. When he
denies himself sleep, when he is injured, or when any other unusual
demands are made on his system, mere hunger soon becomes a ravenous
craving, and craving escalates almost at once into a dire need for
sustenance that drives all other thoughts from his mind and forces him
into the rapacious consumption of whatever he can find.
Although the interior of the Honda is adrift in empty food
containers--wrappers and packages and bags of every description-there is
no hid San Bernardino Mountains into the lowlands of Orange County, he
feverishly consumed every crumb that remained. Now there are only dried
smears of chocolate and mustard, thin films of glistening oil, grease,
sprinkles of salt, none of it sufficiently fortifying to compensate for
the energy needed to rummage for it in the darkness and lick it up.
By the time he locates a fast-food restaurant with a drive-in window, at
the center of his gut is an icy void into which he seems to be
body is consuming itself to repair itself, catabolizing two cells for
every one it creates. He almost bites his own hand in a frantic and
despairing attempt to relieve the grueling pangs of starvation. He
imagines tearing out chunks of his own flesh with his teeth and greedily
swallowing, sucking down his own hot blood, anything to moderate his
suffering--anything, no matter how repulsive it might be.
But he restrains himself because, in the madness of his inhuman hunger,
he is half convinced no flesh remains on his bones. He feels utterly
hollow, more fragile than the thinnest spun-glass Christmas ornament,
and believes he might dissolve into thousands of lifeless fragments the
moment his teeth puncture his brittle skin and thereby shatter the
illusion of substance.
The restaurant is a McDonald's outlet. The tinny speaker of the
intercom at the ordering post has been exposed to enough years of summer
sun and winter chill that the greeting of the unseen clerk is quavery
and static-riddled. Confident that his own strained and shaky voice
won't sound unusual, the killer orders enough food to satisfy the staff
of a small office, six cheeseburgers, Big Macs, fries, a couple of fish
sandwiches, two chocolate milkshakes--and large Cokes because his racing
metabolism, if not fueled, leads as swiftly to dehydration as He is in a
long line of cars, and progression toward the pick-up window is
aggravatingly slow. He has no choice but to wait, for with his
blood-soaked clothes and bullet-torn shirt, he can't walk into a
restaurant or convenience store and get what he needs unless he is
willing to draw a lot of attention to himself.
In fact, though blood vessels have been repaired, the two bullet wounds
in his chest remain largely unhealed due to the shortage of fuel for
anabolic processes. Those sucking holes, into which he can insert his
thickest finger to a disturbing depth, would cause more comment than his
bloody shirt.
One of the slugs passed completely through him, out his back to the left
of his spine. He knows the exit wound is larger than either of the
holes in his chest. He feels the ragged lips of it spreading apart when
he leans back against the car seat.
He is fortunate that neither round pierced his heart. That might have
stopped him for good. That and a brain-scrambling shot to the head are
the only wounds he fears.
When he reaches the cashier's window, he pays for the order with some of
the money he took from Jack and Frannie in Oklahoma more
than
twenty-four hours ago. The young woman at the cash register can see his
arm as he holds the currency toward her, so he strives to repress the
severe tremors that might prick her curiosity. He keeps his face
averted, in the night and rain, she can't see his ravaged chest or the
agony that contorts his pale features.
At the pick-up window, his order comes in several white bags, which he
piles on the littered seat beside him, successfully averting his face
from this clerk as well. All of his willpower is required to restrain
himself from ripping the bags asunder and tearing into the food
immediately upon receipt of it. He retains enough clarity of mind to
realize he must not cause a scene by blocking the take-out lane.
He parks in the darkest corner of the restaurant lot, switches off the
headlights and windshield wipers. His face looks so gaunt when he
glimpses it in the rearview mirror that he knows he has lost several
pounds in the past hour, his eyes are sunken and appear to be ringed
with smudges of soot. He dims the instrument-panel lights as far as
possible, but lets the engine run because, in his current debilitated
condition, he needs to bask in the warm air from the heater vents.
He is swaddled in shadows. The rain streaming down the glass shimmers
with reflected light from neon signs, and it bends the night world into
mutagenic forms, simultaneously screening him from prying eyes.