Текст книги "Full dark, no stars"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

He broke into a grin at that-his old, well-loved grin. Because there was one long-established habit of marriage they had not resumed since the night he had smelled her discovery (yes, smelled it, just as a wise old wolf may smell a poisoned bait) and come rushing home from Montpelier. Day by day they had walled up what he was-yes, as surely as Montresor had walled up his old pal Fortunato-and sex in the connubial bed would be the last brick.

He clicked his heels and threw her a British-style salute, fingers to forehead, palm out. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t be long,” she said pleasantly. “Mama wants what Mama wants.”

Going up the stairs, she thought: This will never work. The only thing you’ll succeed in doing is getting yourself killed. He may not think he’s capable of it, but I think he is.

Maybe that would be all right, though. Assuming he didn’t hurt her first, as he’d hurt those women. Maybe any sort of resolution would be all right. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life looking in mirrors. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and couldn’t get away with a kid’s craziness.

She went into the bedroom, but only long enough to toss her purse onto the table beside the hand mirror. Then she went out again and called, “Are you coming, Bobby? I could really use those bubbles!”

“On my way, ma’am, just pouring it over ice!”

And here he came out of the living room and into the hall, holding one of their good crystal glasses up before him at eye level like a comic-opera waiter, weaving slightly as he crossed to the foot of the stairs. He continued to hold the glass up as he mounted them, the wedge of lime bobbing around on top. His free hand trailed lightly along the banister; his face shone with happiness and good cheer. For a moment she almost weakened, and then the image of Helen and Robert Shaverstone filled her mind, hellishly clear: the son and his molested, mutilated mother floating together in a Massachusetts creek that had begun to grow lacings of ice at its sides.

“One glass of Perrier for the lady, coming right uh-”

She saw the knowledge leap into his eyes at the very last second, something old and yellow and ancient. It was more than surprise; it was shocked fury. In that moment her understanding of him was complete. He loved nothing, least of all her. Every kindness, caress, boyish grin, and thoughtful gesture-all were nothing but camouflage. He was a shell. There was nothing inside but howling emptiness.

She pushed him.

It was a hard push and he made a three-quarters somersault above the stairs before coming down on them, first on his knees, then on his arm, then full on his face. She heard his arm break. The heavy Waterford glass shattered on one of the uncarpeted risers. He rolled over again and she heard something else inside him snap. He screamed in pain and somersaulted one final time before landing on the hardwood hall floor in a heap, the broken arm (not broken in just one place but in several) cocked back over his head at an angle nature had never intended. His head was twisted, one cheek on the floor.

Darcy hurried down the stairs. At one point she stepped on an ice cube, slipped, and had to grab the banister to save herself. At the bottom she saw a huge knob now poking out of the skin on the nape of his neck, turning it white, and said: “Don’t move, Bob, I think your neck is broken.”

His eye rolled up to look at her. Blood was trickling from his nose-that looked broken, too-and a lot more was coming out of his mouth. Almost gushing out. “You pushed me,” he said. “Oh Darcy, why did you push me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, thinking we both know. She began to cry. Crying came naturally; he was her husband, and he was badly hurt. “Oh God, I don’t know. Something came over me. I’m sorry. Don’t move, I’ll call 911 and tell them to send an ambulance.”

His foot scraped across the floor. “I’m not paralyzed,” he said. “Thank God for that. But it hurts.”

“I know, honey.”

“Call the ambulance! Hurry!”

She went into the kitchen, spared a brief glance for the phone in its charger-cradle, then opened the cabinet under the sink. “Hello? Hello? Is this 911?” She took out the box of plastic GLAD bags, the storage-size ones she used for the leftovers when they had chicken or roast beef, and pulled one from the box. “This is Darcellen Anderson, I’m calling from 24 Sugar Mill Lane, in Yarmouth! Have you got that?”

From another drawer, she took a dishwiper from the top of the pile. She was still crying. Nose like a firehose, they’d said when they were kids. Crying was good. She needed to cry, and not just because it would look better for her later on. He was her husband, he was hurt, she needed to cry. She remembered when he still had a full head of hair. She remembered his flashy breakaway move when they danced to “Footloose.” He brought her roses every year on her birthday. He never forgot. They had gone to Bermuda, where they rode bikes in the morning and made love in the afternoon. They had built a life together and now that life was over and she needed to cry. She wrapped the dishwiper around her hand and then stuffed her hand into the plastic bag.

“I need an ambulance, my husband fell down the stairs. I think his neck might be broken. Yes! Yes! Right away!”

She walked back into the hall with her right hand behind her back. She saw he had pulled himself away from the foot of the stairs a little, and it looked like he’d tried to turn over on his back, but at that he hadn’t been successful. She knelt down beside him.

“I didn’t fall,” he said. “You pushed me. Why did you push me?”

“I guess for the Shaverstone boy,” she said, and brought her hand out from behind her back. She was crying harder than ever. He saw the plastic bag. He saw the hand inside clutching the wad of toweling. He understood what she meant to do. Perhaps he had done something like it himself. Probably he had.

He began screaming… only the screams weren’t really screams at all. His mouth was filled with blood, something had broken inside of his throat, and the sounds he produced were more guttural growls than screams. She jammed the plastic bag between his lips and deep inside his mouth. He had broken a number of teeth in the fall, and she could feel the jagged stumps. If they tore into her skin, she might have some serious explaining to do.

She yanked her hand free before he could bite, leaving the plastic bag and the dishwiper behind. She grabbed his jaw and chin. The other hand she put on top of his balding head. The flesh there was very warm. She could feel it throbbing with blood. She jammed his mouth shut on the wad of plastic and cloth. He tried to beat her off, but he only had one arm free, and that was the one that had been broken in the fall. The other was twisted beneath him. His feet paddled jerkily back and forth on the hardwood floor. One of his shoes came off. He was gurgling. She yanked her dress up to her waist, freeing her legs, then lunged forward, trying to straddle him. If she could do that, maybe she could pinch his nostrils shut.

But before she could try, his chest began to heave beneath her, and the gurgles became a deep grunting in his throat. It reminded her of how, when she was learning to drive, she would sometimes grind the transmission trying to find second gear, which was elusive on her father’s old Chevrolet standard. Bob jerked, the one eye she could see bulging and cowlike in its socket. His face, which had been a bright crimson, now began to turn purple. He settled back onto the floor. She waited, gasping for breath, her face lathered with snot and tears. The eye was no longer rolling, and no longer bright with panic. She thought he was d Bob gave one final, titanic jerk and flung her off. He sat up, and she saw his top half no longer exactly matched his bottom half; he had broken his back as well as his neck, it seemed. His plastic-lined mouth yawned. His eyes met hers in a stare she knew she would never forget… but one she could live with, should she get through this.

“Dar! Arrrrrr!”

He fell backward. His head made an egglike cracking sound on the floor. Darcy crawled closer to him, but not close enough to be in the mess. She had his blood on her, of course, and that was all right-she had tried to help him, it was only natural-but that didn’t mean she wanted to bathe in it. She sat up, propped on one hand, and watched him while she waited for her breath to come back. She watched to see if he would move. He didn’t. When five minutes had gone by according to the little jeweled Michele on her wrist-the one she always wore when they went out-she reached a hand to the side of his neck and felt for a pulse there. She kept her fingers against his skin until she had counted all the way to thirty, and there was nothing. She lowered her ear to his chest, knowing this was the moment where he would come back to life and grab her. He didn’t come back to life because there was no life left in him: no beating heart, no breathing lungs. It was over. She felt no satisfaction (let alone triumph) but only a focused determination to finish this and do it right. Partly for herself, but mostly for Donnie and Pets.

She went into the kitchen, moving fast. They had to know she’d called as soon as she could; if they could tell there had been a delay (if his blood had a chance to coagulate too much, for instance), there might be awkward questions. I’ll tell them I fainted, if I have to, she thought. They’ll believe that, and even if they don’t, they can’t disprove it. At least, I don’t think they can.

She got the flashlight from the pantry, just as she had on the night when she had literally stumbled over his secret. She went back to where Bob lay, staring up at the ceiling with his glazed eyes. She pulled the plastic bag out of his mouth and examined it anxiously. If it was torn, there could be problems… and it was, in two places. She shone the flashlight into his mouth and spotted one tiny scrap of GLAD bag on his tongue. She picked it out with the tips of her fingers and put it in the bag.

Enough, that’s enough, Darcellen.

But it wasn’t. She pushed his cheeks back with her fingers, first the right, then the left. And on the left side she found another tiny scrap of plastic, stuck to his gum. She picked that out and put it in the bag with the other one. Were there more pieces? Had he swallowed them? If so, they were beyond her reach and all she could do was pray they wouldn’t be discovered if someone-she didn’t know who-had enough questions to order an autopsy.

Meanwhile, time was passing.

She hurried through the breezeway and into the garage, not quite running. She crawled under the worktable, opened his special hiding place, and stowed away the blood-streaked plastic bag with the dishwiper inside. She closed the hidey-hole, put the carton of old catalogues in front of it, then went back into the house. She put the flashlight where it belonged. She picked up the phone, realized she had stopped crying, and put it back into its cradle. She went through the living room and looked at him. She thought about the roses, but that didn’t work. It’s roses, not patriotism, that are the last resort of a scoundrel, she thought, and was shocked to hear herself laugh. Then she thought of Donnie and Petra, who had both idolized their father, and that did the trick. Weeping, she went back to the kitchen phone and punched in 911. “Hello, my name is Darcellen Anderson, and I need an ambulance at-”

“Slow down a little, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “I’m having trouble understanding you.”

Good, Darcy thought.

She cleared her throat. “Is this better? Can you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am, I can now. Just take it easy. You said you needed an ambulance?”

“Yes, at 24 Sugar Mill Lane.”

“Are you hurt, Mrs. Anderson?”

“Not me, my husband. He fell down the stairs. He might only be unconscious, but I think he’s dead.”

The dispatcher said she would send an ambulance immediately. Darcy surmised she’d also send a Yarmouth police car. A state police car as well, if one were currently in the area. She hoped there wasn’t. She went back into the front hall and sat on the bench there, but not for long. It was his eyes, looking at her. Accusing her.

She took his sport coat, wrapped it around herself, and went out on the front walk to wait for the ambulance. – 17 -

The policeman who took her statement was Harold Shrewsbury, a local. Darcy didn’t know him, but did know his wife, as it happened; Arlene Shrewsbury was a Knitting Knut. He talked to her in the kitchen while the EMTs first examined Bob’s body and then took it away, not knowing there was another corpse inside him. A fellow who had been much more dangerous than Robert Anderson, CPA.

“Would you like coffee, Officer Shrewsbury? It’s no trouble.”

He looked at her trembling hands and said he would be very happy to make it for both of them. “I’m very handy in the kitchen.”

“Arlene has never mentioned that,” she said as he got up. He left his notebook open on the kitchen table. So far he had written nothing in it but her name, Bob’s name, their address, and their telephone number. She took that as a good sign.

“No, she likes to hide my light under a bushel,” he said. “Mrs. Anderson-Darcy-I’m very sorry for your loss, and I’m sure Arlene would say the same.”

Darcy began to cry again. Officer Shrewsbury tore a handful of paper towels off the roll and gave them to her. “Sturdier than Kleenex.”

“You have experience with this,” she said.

He checked the Bunn, saw it was loaded, and flipped it on. “More than I’d like.” He came back and sat down. “Can you tell me what happened? Do you feel up to that?”

She told him about Bob finding the double-date penny in his change from Subway, and how excited he’d been. About their celebratory dinner at Pearl of the Shore, and how he’d drunk too much. How he’d been clowning around (she mentioned the comic British salute he’d given when she asked for a glass of Perrier and lime). How he’d come up the stairs holding the glass high, like a waiter. How he was almost to the landing when he slipped. She even told about how she’d almost slipped herself, on one of the spilled ice cubes, while rushing down to him.

Officer Shrewsbury jotted something in his notebook, snapped it closed, then looked at her levelly. “Okay. I want you to come with me. Get your coat.”

“What? Where?”

To jail, of course. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to jail. Bob had gotten away with almost a dozen murders, and she hadn’t even been able to get away with one (of course he had planned his, and with an accountant’s attention to detail). She didn’t know where she’d slipped up, but it would undoubtedly turn out to be something obvious. Officer Shrewsbury would tell her on the way to the police station. It would be like the last chapter of an Elizabeth George.

“My house,” he said. “You’re staying with me and Arlene tonight.”

She gaped at him. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“You can,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. “She’d kill me if I left you here by yourself. Do you want to be responsible for my murder?”

She wiped tears from her face and smiled wanly. “No, I guess not. But… Officer Shrewsbury…”

“Harry.”

“I have to make phone calls. My children… they don’t know yet.” The thought of this brought on fresh tears, and she put the last of the paper towels to work on them. Who knew a person could have so many tears inside them? She hadn’t touched her coffee and now drank half of it in three long swallows, although it was still hot.

“I think we can stand the expense of a few long-distance calls,” Harry Shrewsbury said. “And listen. Do you have something you can take? Anything of a, you know, calming nature?”

“Nothing like that,” she whispered. “Only Ambien.”

“Then Arlene will loan you one of her Valiums,” he said. “You should take one at least half an hour before you start making any stressful calls. Meantime, I’ll just let her know we’re coming.”

“You’re very kind.”

He opened first one of her kitchen drawers, then another, then a third. Darcy felt her heart slip into her throat as he opened the fourth. He took a dishwiper from it and handed it to her. “Sturdier than paper towels.”

“Thank you,” she said. “So much.”

“How long were you married, Mrs. Anderson?”

“Twenty-seven years,” she said.

“Twenty-seven,” he marveled. “God. I am so sorry.”

“So am I,” she said, and lowered her face into the dishtowel. – 18 -

Robert Emory Anderson was laid to rest in Yarmouth’s Peace Cemetery two days later. Donnie and Petra flanked their mother as the minister talked about how a man’s life was but a season. The weather had turned cold and overcast; a chilly wind rattled the leafless branches. B, B amp; A had closed for the day, and everyone had turned out. The accountants in their black overcoats clustered together like crows. There were no women among them. Darcy had never noticed this before.

Her eyes brimmed and she wiped at them periodically with the handkerchief she held in one black-gloved hand; Petra cried steadily and without letup; Donnie was red-eyed and grim. He was a good-looking young man, but his hair was already thinning, as his father’s had at his age. As long as he doesn’t put on weight like Bob did, she thought. And doesn’t kill women, of course. But surely that kind of thing wasn’t hereditary. Was it?

Soon this would be over. Donnie would stay only a couple of days-it was all the time he could afford to take away from the business at this point, he said. He hoped she could understand that and she said of course she did. Petra would be with her for a week, and said she could stay longer if Darcy needed her. Darcy told her how kind that was, privately hoping it would be no more than five days. She needed to be alone. She needed… not to think, exactly, but to find herself again. To re-establish herself on the right side of the mirror.

Not that anything had gone wrong; far from it. She didn’t think things could have gone better if she had planned her husband’s murder for months. If she had done that, she probably would have screwed it up by complicating things too much. Unlike for Bob, planning was not her forte.

There had been no hard questions. Her story was simple, believable, and almost true. The most important part was the solid bedrock beneath it: they had a marriage stretching back almost three decades, a good marriage, and there had been no recent arguments to mar it. Really, what was there to question?

The minister invited the family to step forward. They did so.

“Rest in peace, Pop,” Donnie said, and tossed a clod of earth into the grave. It landed on the shiny surface of the coffin. Darcy thought it looked like a dog turd.

“Daddy, I miss you so much,” Petra said, and threw her own handful of earth.

Darcy came last. She bent, took up a loose handful in her black glove, and let it fall. She said nothing.

The minister invoked a moment of silent prayer. The mourners bowed their heads. The wind rattled the branches. Not too far distant, traffic rushed by on I-295. Darcy thought: God, if You’re there, let this be the end. – 19 -

It wasn’t.

Seven weeks or so after the funeral-it was the new year now, the weather blue and hard and cold-the doorbell of the house on Sugar Mill Lane rang. When Darcy opened it, she saw an elderly gentleman wearing a black topcoat and red muffler. Held before him in his gloved hands was an old-school Homburg hat. His face was deeply lined (with pain as well as age, Darcy thought) and what remained of his gray hair was buzzed to a fuzz.

“Yes?” she said.

He fumbled in his pocket and dropped his hat. Darcy bent and picked it up. When she straightened, she saw that the elderly gentleman was holding out a leather-cased identification folder. In it was a gold badge and a picture of her caller (looking quite a bit younger) on a plastic card.

“Holt Ramsey,” he said, sounding apologetic about it. “State Attorney General’s Office. I’m sorry as hell to disturb you, Mrs. Anderson. May I come in? You’ll freeze standing out here in that dress.”

“Please,” she said, and stood aside.

She observed his hitching walk and the way his right hand went unconsciously to his right hip-as if to hold it together-and a clear memory rose in her mind: Bob sitting beside her on the bed, her cold fingers held prisoner by his warm ones. Bob talking. Gloating, actually. I want them to think Beadie’s dumb, and they do. Because they’re dumb. I’ve only been questioned a single time, and that was as a witness, about two weeks after BD killed the Moore woman. An old guy with a limp, semi-retired. And here that old guy was, standing not half a dozen steps from where Bob had died. From where she had killed him. Holt Ramsey looked both sick and in pain, but his eyes were sharp. They moved quickly to the left and right, taking in everything before returning to her face.

Be careful, she told herself. Be oh so careful of this one, Darcellen.

“How can I help you, Mr. Ramsey?”

“Well, one thing-if it’s not too much to ask-I could sure use a cup of coffee. I’m awfully cold. I’ve got a State car, and the heater doesn’t work worth a darn. Of course if it’s an imposition…”

“Not at all. But I wonder… could I see your identification again?”

He handed the folder over to her equably enough, and hung his hat on the coat tree while she studied it.

“This RET stamped below the seal… does that mean you’re retired?”

“Yes and no.” His lips parted in a smile that revealed teeth too perfect to be anything but dentures. “Had to go, at least officially, when I turned sixty-eight, but I’ve spent my whole life either in the State Police or working at SAG-State Attorney General’s Office, you know-and now I’m like an old firehorse with an honorary place in the barn. Kind of a mascot, you know.”

I think you’re a lot more than that.

“Let me take your coat.”

“No, nope, I think I’ll wear it. Won’t be staying that long. I’d hang it up if it was snowing outside-so I wouldn’t drip on your floor-but it’s not. It’s just boogery cold, you know. Too cold to snow, my father would have said, and at my age I feel the cold a lot more than I did fifty years ago. Or even twenty-five.”

Leading him into the kitchen, walking slowly so Ramsey could keep up, she asked him how old he was.

“Seventy-eight in May.” He spoke with evident pride. “If I make it. I always add that for good luck. It’s worked so far. What a nice kitchen you have, Mrs. Anderson-a place for everything and everything in its place. My wife would have approved. She died four years ago. It was a heart attack, very sudden. How I miss her. The way you must miss your husband, I imagine.”

His twinkling eyes-young and alert in creased, pain-haunted sockets-searched her face.

He knows. I don’t know how, but he does.

She checked the Bunn’s basket and turned it on. As she got cups from the cabinet, she asked, “How may I help you today, Mr. Ramsey? Or is it Detective Ramsey?”

He laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough. “Oh, it’s been donkey’s years since anyone called me Detective. Never mind Ramsey, either, if you go straight to Holt, that’ll work for me. And it was really your husband I wanted to talk to, you know, but of course he’s passed on-again, my condolences-and so that’s out of the question. Yep, entirely out of the question.” He shook his head and settled himself on one of the stools that stood around the butcher-block table. His topcoat rustled. Somewhere inside his scant body, a bone creaked. “But I tell you what: an old man who lives in a rented room-which I do, although it’s a nice one-sometimes gets bored with just the TV for company, and so I thought, what the hell, I’ll drive on down to Yarmouth and ask my few little questions just the same. She won’t be able to answer many of them, I said to myself, maybe not any of them, but why not go anyway? You need to get out before you get potbound, I said to myself.”

“On a day when the high is supposed to go all the way up to ten degrees,” she said. “In a State car with a bad heater.”

“Ayuh, but I have my thermals on,” he said modestly.

“Don’t you have your own car, Mr. Ramsey?”

“I do, I do,” he said, as if this had never occurred to him until now. “Come sit down, Mrs. Anderson. No need to lurk in the corner. I’m too old to bite.”

“No, the coffee will be ready in a minute,” she said. She was afraid of this old man. Bob should have been afraid of him, too, but of course Bob was now beyond fear. “In the meantime, perhaps you can tell me what you wanted to talk about with my husband.”

“Well, you won’t believe this, Mrs. Anderson-”

“Call me Darcy, why don’t you?”

“Darcy!” He looked delighted. “Isn’t that the nicest, old-fashioned name!”

“Thank you. Do you take cream?”

“Black as my hat, that’s how I take it. Only I like to think of myself as one of the white-hats, actually. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Chasing down criminals and such. That’s how I got this bad leg, you know. High-speed car chase, way back in ’89. Fellow killed his wife and both of his children. Now a crime like that is usually an act of passion, committed by a man who’s either drunk or drugged or not quite right in the head.” Ramsey tapped his fuzz with a finger arthritis had twisted out of true. “Not this guy. This guy did it for the insurance. Tried to make it look like a whatchacallit, home invasion. I won’t go into all the details, but I sniffed around and sniffed around. For three years I sniffed around. And finally I felt I had enough to arrest him. Probably not enough to convict him, but there was no need to tell him that, was there?”

“I suppose not,” Darcy said. The coffee was hot, and she poured. She decided to take hers black, too. And to drink it as fast as possible. That way the caffeine would hit her all at once and turn on her lights.

“Thanks,” he said when she brought it to the table. “Thanks very much. You’re kindness itself. Hot coffee on a cold day-what could be better? Mulled cider, maybe; I can’t think of anything else. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I know. Dwight Cheminoux. Way up in The County, this was. Just south of the Hainesville Woods.”

Darcy worked on her coffee. She looked at Ramsey over the rim of her cup and suddenly it was like being married again-a long marriage, in many ways a good marriage (but not in all ways), the kind that was like a joke: she knew that he knew, and he knew that she knew that he knew. That kind of relationship was like looking into a mirror and seeing another mirror, a hall of them going down into infinity. The only real question here was what he was going to do about what he knew. What he could do.

“Well,” Ramsey said, setting down his coffee cup and unconsciously beginning to rub his sore leg, “the simple fact is I was hoping to provoke that fella. I mean, he had the blood of a woman and two kiddies on his hands, so I felt justified in playing a little dirty. And it worked. He ran, and I chased him right into the Hainesville Woods, where the song says there’s a tombstone every mile. And there we both crashed on Wickett’s Curve-him into a tree and me into him. Which is where I got this leg, not to mention the steel rod in my neck.”

“I’m sorry. And the fellow you were chasing? What did he get?”

Ramsey’s mouth curved upward at the corners in a dry-lipped smile of singular coldness. His young eyes sparkled. “He got death, Darcy. Saved the state forty or fifty years of room and board in Shawshank.”

“You’re quite the hound of heaven, aren’t you, Mr. Ramsey?”

Instead of looking puzzled, he placed his misshapen hands beside his face, palms out, and recited in a singsong schoolboy’s voice: “‘I fled Him down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways… ’ And so on.”

“You learned that in school?”

“No ma’am, in Methodist Youth Fellowship. Lo these many years ago. Won a Bible, which I lost at summer camp a year later. Only I didn’t lose it; it was stolen. Can you imagine someone low enough to steal a Bible?”

“Yes,” Darcy said.

He laughed. “Darcy, you go on and call me Holt. Please. All my friends do.”

Are you my friend? Are you?

She didn’t know, but of one thing she was sure: he wouldn’t have been Bob’s friend.

“Is that the only poem you have by heart? Holt?”

“Well, I used to know ‘The Death of the Hired Man,’” he said, “but now I only remember the part about how home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in. It’s a true thing, wouldn’t you say?”

“Absolutely.”

His eyes-they were a light hazel-searched hers. The intimacy of that gaze was indecent, as if he were looking at her with her clothes off. And pleasant, for perhaps the same reason.

“What did you want to ask my husband, Holt?”

“Well, I already talked to him once, you know, although I’m not sure he’d remember if he was still alive. A long time ago, that was. We were both a lot younger, and you must’ve been just a child yourself, given how young and pretty you are now.”

She gave him a chilly spare-me smile, then got up to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee. The first one was already gone.

“You probably know about the Beadie murders,” he said.

“The man who kills women and then sends their ID to the police?” She came back to the table, her coffee cup perfectly steady in her hand. “The newspapers dine out on that one.”

He pointed at her-Bob’s finger-gun gesture-and tipped her a wink. “Got that right. Yessir. ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’ that’s their motto. I happened to work the case a little. I wasn’t retired then, but getting on to it. I had kind of a reputation as a fellow who could sometimes get results by sniffing around… following my whatdoyoucallums…”

“Instincts?”

Once more with the finger-gun. Once more with the wink. As if there were a secret, and they were both in on it. “Anyway, they send me out to work on my own, you know-old limping Holt shows his pictures around, asks his questions, and kind’ve… you know… just sniffs. Because I’ve always had a nose for this kind of work, Darcy, and never really lost it. This was in the fall of 1997, not too long after a woman named Stacey Moore was killed. Name ring a bell?”