NOS4A2(75)

“B-b-buh-b-but, Vic.”

“Stop calling me that. We don’t know each other.”

“Would you prefer if I called you the B-B-Buh-Brat?”

“I don’t want you to call me anything. I want you to go.”

“B-b-but you had to know about Mm-Mm-Mmm—” In her desperation to get the word out, she seemed to be moaning.

“Manx.”

“Thank you. Yes. We have to d-d-d-decide how to d-d-deal with him.”

“Deal with what? What do you mean, Manx is on the road again? He isn’t up for parole until 2016, and the last I heard he was in a coma. Even if he woke up and they did set him free, he’d have to be two hundred years old. But they didn’t cut him loose, because they would’ve notified me if they had.”

“He’s not that old. Try a hundred and ffff-ff-f-f”—she sounded like she was imitating the sound of a burning fuse—“fifteen!”

“Jesus Christ. I don’t have to listen to this shit. You’ve got three minutes to beat it, lady. If you’re still on the lawn after that, I’m calling the police on you.”

Vic stepped off the path and into the grass, meaning to walk around Maggie to the door.

She didn’t make it.

“They didn’t notify you they released him ’cause they didn’t release him. They think he died. Last Mmmm-MmMay.”

Vic caught in place. “What do you mean, they think he died?”

Maggie extended the manila folder.

She had written a phone number on the inside cover. Vic’s gaze caught and held on it, because after the area code the first three digits were her own birthday and the next four numbers were not four numbers at all but the letters FUFU, a kind of obscene stammer in and of themselves.

The folder contained perhaps a half dozen printouts from various newspapers, on stationery that said HERE PUBLIC LIBRARY—HERE, IOWA. The stationery was water-stained and shriveled, foxed at the edges.

The first article was from the Denver Post.

ALLEGED SERIAL KILLER CHARLES TALENT MANX DIES, LEAVES QUESTIONS

There was a thumbnail photo of his mug shot: that gaunt face with its protruding eyes and pale, almost lipless mouth. Vic tried to read the article, but her vision blurred over.

She remembered the laundry chute, her eyes streaming and her lungs full of smoke. She remembered thoughtless panic, set to the tune of “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Phrases from the article jumped out at her: “degenerative Parkinson’s-like illness . . . intermittent coma . . . suspected in a dozen kidnappings . . . Thomas Priest . . . stopped breathing at 2:00 A.M.”

“I didn’t know,” Vic said. “Nobody told me.”

She was too off balance to keep her rage focused on Maggie. She kept thinking, simply, He’s dead. He’s dead, and now you can let him go. This part of your life is done because he’s dead.

The thought didn’t bring any joy with it, but she felt the possibility of something better: relief.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell me he was gone,” Vic said.

“Mmm-mm—I bet ’cause they were embarrassed. Look at the next page.”

Vic glanced wearily up at Margaret Leigh, remembering what she had said about Manx being on the road again. She suspected they were getting to it, to Maggie Leigh’s own particular madness, the lunacy that had driven her to come all the way from Here, Iowa, to Haverhill, Massachusetts, just so she could hand this folder to Vic.

Vic turned the page.

ALLEGED SERIAL KILLER’S CORPSE VANISHES FROM MORGUE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT BLAMES “MORBID VANDALS”

Vic skimmed the first few paragraphs, then closed the folder and offered it back to Maggie.

“Some sicko stole the body,” Vic said.

Maggie said, “D-d-d-don’t think so.” She didn’t accept the folder.

Somewhere down the street, a lawn mower roared to life. For the first time, Vic noticed how hot it was here in the front yard. Even through the overcast, the sun was baking her head.

“So you think he faked his death. Well enough to fool two doctors. Somehow. Even though they had already begun an autopsy on the body. No. Wait. You think he really died but then, forty-eight hours later, he came back to life. Pulled himself out of his drawer at the morgue, got himself dressed, and walked out.”

Maggie’s face—her whole body—relaxed in an expression of profound relief. “Yes. I’ve c-come so f-f-fff-far to see you, Vic, because I knew, I just knew you’d b-b-buh-believe me. Now look at the next article. There’s a mm-mm-muh—a guy in Kentucky who disappeared f-f-from his home in an antique Rolls-Royce. Mmm-Mmuh-Manx’s Rolls-Royce. The article d-d-doesn’t say it was the one that belonged to Manx, buh-buh-but if you look at the p-p-p-p-picture—”

“I’m not going to look at shit,” Vic said, and threw the folder in Maggie’s face. “Get the f*ck out of my yard, you crazy bitch.”

Maggie’s mouth opened and closed, just like the mouth of the big old koi in the fish tank that was a central feature of her little office in the Here Public Library, which Vic could remember perfectly, even though she had never been there.

Vic’s rage was boiling over at last, and she wanted to scald Maggie with it. It was not just that Maggie was blocking the way to Vic’s door, or that with her mad babble she threatened to undermine Vic’s own sense of what was true—to steal from Vic her hard-won sanity. It was that Manx was dead, really dead, but this lunatic couldn’t let Vic have that. Charlie Manx, who had kidnapped God knew how many children, who had kidnapped and terrorized and nearly killed Vic herself—Charles Manx was in the dirt. Vic had escaped him at last. Only Margaret f*cking Leigh wanted to bring him back, dig him up, make Vic afraid of him again.