Just After Sunset(15)

Em stood looking in, too shocked to move, too shocked to even breathe. Then it occurred to her that this was a fake dead girl, a movie prop. Even as her rational mind was telling her that was bullshit, the part of her that specialized in rationalization was nodding frantically. Even making up a story to backstop the idea. Deke didn't like Pickering, and Pickering's choice of female companionship? Well guess what, Pickering didn't like Deke, either! This was nothing but an elaborate practical joke. Pickering would go back across the bridge with the trunk deliberately ajar, that fake blond hair fluttering, and-

But there were smells rising out of the trunk now. They were the smells of shit and blood. Em reached forward and touched the cheek below one of those staring eyes. It was cold, but it was skin. Oh God, it was human skin.

There was a sound behind her. A footstep. She started to turn, and something came down on her head. There was no pain, but brilliant white seemed to leap across the world. Then the world went dark.

5. He looked like he was trying to play creep-mouse with her.

When she woke up, she was duct-taped to a chair in a big kitchen filled with terrible steel objects: sink, fridge, dishwasher, a stove that looked like it belonged in the kitchen of a restaurant. The back of her head was sending long, slow waves of pain toward the front of her head, each one seeming to say Fix this! Fix this!

Standing at the sink was a tall, slender man in khaki shorts and an old Izod golf shirt. The kitchen's fluorescent fixtures sent down a merciless light, and Em could see the deepening crow's-foot at the corner of his eye, the smattering of gray along the side of his short power haircut. She put him at about fifty. He was washing his arm in the sink. There appeared to be a puncture wound in it, just below the elbow.

He snapped his head around. There was an animal quickness to him that made her stomach sink. His eyes were of a blue much more vivid than Deke Hollis's. She saw nothing in them she recognized as sanity, and her heart sank further. On the floor-the same ugly gray as the outside of the house, only tile instead of cement-there was a dark, filmy track about nine inches wide. Em thought it was probably blood. It was very easy to imagine the blond girl's hair making it as Pickering dragged her through the room by her feet, to some unknown destination.

"You're awake," he said. "Good deal. Awesome. Think I wanted to kill her? I didn't want to kill her. She had a knife in her gosh-damn sock! I pinched her on the arm, that's all." He seemed to consider this, and while he did, he blotted the dark, blood-filled gash below his elbow with a wad of paper towels. "Well, also on the tit. But all girls expect that. Or should. It's called FORE-play. Or in this case, WHORE-play."

He made quotation marks with the first and second fingers of his hands each time. To Em, he looked like he was trying to play creep-mouse with her. He also looked crazy. In fact, there was no doubt about his state of mind. Thunder crashed overhead, loud as a load of dropped furniture. Em jumped-as well as she could, bound to a kitchen chair-but the man standing by the stainless-steel double-basin sink didn't glance up at the sound. It was as though he hadn't heard. His lower lip was thrust out.

"So I took it away from her. And then I lost my head. I admit it. People think I'm Mr. Cool, and I try to live up to that. I do. I try to live up to that. But any man can lose his head. That's what they don't realize. Any man. Under the right set of circumstances."

Rain poured down as if God had pulled the chain up there in His own personal WC.

"Who could reasonably assume you're here?"

"Lots of people." This answer came without hesitation.

He was across the room in a flash. Flash was the word. At one moment he was by the sink, at the next beside her and whacking her face hard enough to make white spots explode in front of her eyes. These shot around the room, drawing bright cometary tails after them. Her head snapped to the side. Her hair flew against her cheek, and she felt blood begin to flow into her mouth as her lower lip burst. The inner lining had been cut by her teeth, and deep. Almost all the way through, it felt like. Outside, the rain rushed down. I'm going to die while it's raining, Em thought. But she didn't believe it. Maybe no one did, when the deal actually came down.

"Who knows?" He was leaning over, bellowing into her face.

"Lots of people," she reiterated, and the words came out losh of people because her lower lip was swelling. And she felt blood spilling down her chin in a small stream. Still, her mind wasn't swelling, in spite of the pain and fear. It knew her one chance at life was making this man believe he'd be caught if he killed her. Of course he would also be caught if he let her go, but she would deal with that later. One nightmare at a time.

"Losh of people!" she said again, defiantly.

He flashed back to the sink and when he returned, he had a knife in his hand. A little one. Very likely the one the dead girl had taken from her sock. He put the tip on Em's lower eyelid and pulled it down. That was when her bladder let go, all at once, in a rush.

An expression of somehow prissy disgust momentarily tightened Pickering's face, yet he also seemed delighted. Some part of Em's mind wondered how any person could hold two such conflicting emotions in his mind at the same time. He took a half step back, but the point of the knife didn't waver. It still dimpled into her skin, simultaneously pulling down her lower eyelid and pushing her eyeball up gently in its socket.

"Nice," he said. "Another mess to clean up. Not unexpected, though. No. And like the man said, there's more room out than there is in. That's what the man said." He actually laughed, one quick yip, and then he leaned forward, his vivid blue eyes staring into her hazel ones. "Tell me one person who knows you're here. Don't hesitate. Do not hesitate. If you hesitate I'll know you're making something up and I'll lift your eye right out of its socket and flip it into the sink. I can do it. So tell me. Now."