Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(17)

What day is it? he wondered again. He went back in his mind to late Saturday night, worked hard to find his way back to it and harder still to stop short of the house. He did not want to go back inside the house in his memory. He was outside of it now, a man wandering the streets with a knife in his hand. A heavy, ugly knife, something to cut through the darkness and then the fog, something to give him weight. He remembered the way the knife had sliced through the water, how it fell straight down, stabbed through the water with hardly a splash, disappeared into the murk.

No, wait, he told himself. That was the next day, wasn’t it? Didn’t I have the knife when I found the cave? Yes. Yes! Sunday night I found the cave. How did I get there? I don’t know. I walked, I guess. I walked all day. Then I found the cave and I broke off some branches and I crawled inside. I had the knife. What about the jacket? I don’t know, but I had the knife. I wanted to use it on myself, I remember that. I wanted to open up my wrists and fill the cave with blood. And I almost did it, didn’t I? Or did I dream that? No, I almost did it. I put the blade against my wrist. I wanted to do it. God how I wanted to do it.

Then the next morning… Monday. It was Monday; today is Monday. I went back to the road. I was going to flag down a car, get a ride back home. I wanted to go home. I wanted everything back. But nobody would have picked me up if they saw that knife. So I dropped it in the water. I watched it going down. I hated it but I hated to let it go. Why was it so hard to let that damned thing go?

That was Monday, wasn’t it? Or was that Sunday?

Then what did you do? he asked himself. Then you remembered. How could you go home? There was nothing there, nobody there, everything gone. So you started walking again. You walked to the bog. You walked down the stream. You came to the road and the drainage ditch, and you couldn’t go any farther so you climbed into the culvert. And then you did what?

You found the jacket. You were wearing it. You found it when you saw that you were wearing it.

Then you slept all night.

No, he remembered, first my feet were blue. I held them, and they felt like packages of frozen meat. So I rubbed them awhile, and then I didn’t care anymore and I fell asleep. I woke up and it was dark. It was dark everywhere, and I was shivering. I thought I was underwater, and I tried to swim to the top but I banged my head on the pipe, and I went to sleep again. I passed out; some more time passed.

And now it’s daylight again. Another morning. So this must be Tuesday.

Huston looked down at his stockinged feet. He put a hand over each foot. The socks were no longer wet, his feet no longer icy to the touch. Somewhere, he had lost most of a day. That day was in the drainage ditch somewhere, had maybe leaked away from him in the trickle of water beneath his feet. Where did it go? he wondered, and he watched the water awhile—he watched himself trickling away with it.

Then he brought himself back.

This is Tuesday, he told himself. Craft of Fiction. But there would be no class today. He wasn’t there. No class unless Denton took over his classes. Who else could they ask? Not Conescu, for Chrissakes. A janitor would be better than Conescu.

Never mind, the other part of him said. Find Annabel. You have to talk to Annabel.

But Annabel is only for Thursdays. I know where to find her on a Thursday. And today is only Tuesday.

Then you have to wait, he told himself. You have to stay alive and wait.

Two more ugly, impossible days. He doubled over again; he hugged his knees. He wept and trembled and muttered aloud, “Two more fuck fuck fucking fucking days.”





Twelve


Under the fluorescent light bar in the middle of the evidence room, DeMarco examined the knife in its clear plastic bag. The tapered blade was eight inches long, the full tang triple-riveted in a handle made of a shiny, black composite material. He said, “It’s an attractive piece of craftsmanship.”

Morgan told him, “It’s called a chef’s knife.”

“And it’s the one?”

“Lab says it matches the wounds on all four victims.”

DeMarco squinted at the inscription on the blade, but he could not make it out. “Fucking fluorescent lights,” he said.

“Wüsthof. Made in Solingen, Germany.”

“And we’re sure it’s Huston’s?”

“There’s one empty slot in the knife block. This one fits.”

“All the others are Wüsthofs?”

“All twenty-five.”

“Twenty-six in the set? Somebody has a serious knife fetish.”

“It’s a professional quality set. Retails for around a thousand.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“We found the receipt in a drawer with all the warranty stuff. Charged to Claire’s Visa last December 12. So apparently the set belonged to her.”

“Unless she bought it for him as a Christmas gift.”

Morgan pointed to the scalloped edge. “These indentations are supposed to keep food from sticking. The style is called Santoku.”

“And I suppose you know what that means.”

“The three virtues. Slicing, dicing, and mincing.”

“Christ,” DeMarco said.

“There were descriptions with the warranty papers.”

“Anything in the descriptions about why he did it?”