Later(56)

I dropped my eyes. Which was answer enough.

“You sly dog.” She actually laughed. “We’ll go out and take a look if Marsden doesn’t show in here, but for the time being, let’s just wait a little. We can afford to. His latest whore is visiting her relatives in Jamaica or Barbados or somewhere with palm trees, and he doesn’t get company during the week, does all his business by phone these days. He was just lying there when I came in, watching that John Law court show on TV. Christ, I wish he’d at least been wearing some pajamas, you know?”

I said nothing.

“He told me there were no pills, but I could see on his face that he was lying, so I secured him and then cut him a little. Thought that might loosen his tongue, and you know what he did? He laughed at me. Said yes, okay, there was Oxy, a lot of it, but he’d never tell me where it was. ‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘You’re going to kill me anyway.’ That’s when the penny dropped. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. Muy stupido.” She hit the side of her head with the hand holding the gun.

“Me,” I said. “I was the penny that dropped.”

“Yes indeed. So I left him a sandwich and a bottle of water to admire and I went to New York and I got you and we drove back and nobody came and here we are, so where the fuck is he?”

“There,” I said.

“What? Where?”

I pointed. She turned and of course saw nothing, but I could see for both of us. Donald Marsden, also known as Donnie Bigs, was standing in the doorway of his circular library. He was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and the top of his head was pretty much gone and his shoulders were drenched with blood, but he was staring at me with the eye Liz hadn’t punched shut in her fury and frustration.

I raised a tentative hand to him. He raised one of his in return.





62


“Ask him!” She was digging into my shoulder and breathing in my face. Neither was pleasant, but her breath was worse.

“Let go of me and I will.”

I walked slowly toward Marsden. Liz followed close behind. I could feel her, looming.

I stopped about five feet away. “Where are the pills?”

He replied without hesitation, talking as all of them did—with the exception of Therriault, that was—as if it didn’t really matter. And why would it? He didn’t need pills anymore, not where he was and not where he was going. Assuming he was going anywhere.

“Some are on the table beside my bed, but most are in the medicine cabinet. Topomax, Marinox, Inderal, Pepcid, Flomax…” Plus half a dozen more. Droning them off like a shopping list.

“What did he—”

“Be quiet,” I said. For the moment I was in charge, although I knew that wouldn’t last long. Would I be in charge if I called the thing inhabiting Therriault? That I didn’t know. “I asked the wrong question.”

I turned to look at her.

“I can ask the right one, but first you have to promise you’re going to let me go once you get what you came for.”

“Of course I am, Jamie,” she said, and I knew she was lying. I’m not sure exactly how I knew, there was nothing logical about it, but it wasn’t pure intuition. I think it had to do with the way her eyes shifted away from mine when she used my name.

I knew then I’d have to whistle.

Donald Marsden was still standing by the door of his library. I wondered briefly if he actually read the books in there, or if they were just for show. “She doesn’t want your prescription stuff, she wants the Oxy. Where is it?”

What happened next had happened just once before. When I asked Therriault where he’d planted his last bomb. Marsden’s words stopped matching the movements of his mouth, as if he was struggling against the imperative to answer. “I don’t want to tell you.”

Exactly what Therriault had said.

“Jamie! What—”

“Be quiet, I said! Give me a chance!” Then, to him: “Where is the Oxy?”

When pressed, Therriault had looked like he was in pain, and I think—don’t know but think—that’s when the deadlight-thing came in. Marsden didn’t look to be in physical pain, but something emotional was going on there even though he was dead. He put his hands over his face like a child who’s done something wrong and said, “Panic room.”

“What do you mean? What’s a panic room?”

“It’s a place to go in case of a break-in.” The emotion was gone, fast as it had come. Marsden was back to his shopping-list drone. “I have enemies. She was one. I just didn’t know it.”

“Ask him where it is!” Liz said.

I was pretty sure I knew that, but I asked, anyway. He pointed into the library.

“It’s a secret room,” I said, but since that wasn’t a question, he made no response. “Is it a secret room?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

He went into the library, which was now shadowy. Dead people aren’t ghosts, exactly, but as he went into that dimness, he sure looked like one. Liz had to feel around for the switch that turned on the overhead and more flambeaux, suggesting to me that she’d never spent any time in there, even though she was a reader. How many times had she actually been in this house? Maybe once or twice, maybe never. Maybe she only knew it from pictures and very careful questions to people who had been there.