Just After Sunset(16)

"Deke Hollis," she said. It was tattling, bad tattling, but it was also nothing but reflex. She didn't want to lose her eye.

"Who else?"

No name occurred to her-her mind was a roaring blank-and she believed him when he said hesitating would cost her her left eye. "No one, okay?" she cried. And surely Deke would be enough. Surely one person would be enough, unless he was so crazy that-

He drew the knife away, and although her peripheral vision couldn't quite pick it up, she felt a tiny seed pearl of blood blooming there. She didn't care. She was just glad to still have peripheral vision.

"Okay," Pickering said. "Okay, okay, good, okay." He walked back to the sink and tossed the little knife into it. She started to be relieved. Then he opened one of the drawers beside the sink and brought out a bigger one: a long, pointed butcher knife.

"Okay." He came back to her. There was no blood on him that she could see, not even a spot. How was that possible? How long had she been out?

"Okay, okay." He ran the hand not holding the knife through the short, stupidly expensive tailoring of his hair. It sprang right back into place. "Who's Deke Hollis?"

"The drawbridge keeper," she said. Her voice was unsteady, wavering. "We talked about you. That's why I stopped to look in." She had a burst of inspiration. "He saw the girl! Your niece, he called her!"

"Yeah, yeah, the girls always go back by boat, that's all he knows. That's all he knows in the world. Are people ever nosy! Where's your car? Answer me now or you get the new special, a breast amputation. Quick but not painless."

"The Grass Shack!" It was all she could think of to say.

"What's that?"

"The little conch house at the end of the key. It's my dad's." She had another burst of inspiration. "He knows I'm here!"

"Yeah, yeah." This didn't seem to interest Pickering. "Yeah, okay. Right, big-time. Are you saying you live here?"

"Yes..."

He looked down at her shorts, now a darker blue. "Runner, are you?" She didn't answer this, but Pickering didn't seem to care. "Yeah, you're a runner, damn right you are. Look at those legs." Incredibly, he bowed at the waist-as if meeting royalty-and with a loud smack kissed her left thigh just below the hem of her shorts. When he straightened up, she observed with a sinking heart that the front of his pants were sticking out. Not good.

"You run up, you run back." He flicked the blade of the butcher knife in an arc, like a conductor with a baton. It was hypnotic. Outside, the rain continued to pour down. It would go on that way for forty minutes, maybe an hour, and then the sun would come back out. Em wondered if she would be alive to see it. She didn't think so. Yet this was still hard to believe. Impossible, really.

"You run up, you run back. Up and back. Sometimes you pass the time of day with that old man in the straw hat, but you don't pass it with anyone else." She was scared, but not too scared to realize he wasn't talking to her. "Right. Not with anyone else. Because there's nobody else here. If any of the tree-planting, grass-cutting beaners who work down here saw you on your afternoon run, will they remember? Will they?"

The knife blade ticked back and forth. He eyed the tip, seeming to depend on this for an answer.

"No," he said. "No, and I'll tell you why. Because you're just another rich gringa running her buns off. They're everywhere. See 'em every day. Health nuts. Have to kick 'em out of your way. If not running, on bikes. Wearing those dumb little potty helmets. Okay? Okay. Say your prayers, Lady Jane, but make it quick. I'm in a hurry. Big, big hurry."

He raised the knife to his shoulder. She saw his lips tighten down in anticipation of the killing stroke. For Em, the whole world suddenly came clear; everything stood out with exclamatory brilliance. She thought: I'm coming, Amy. And then, absurdly, something she might have heard on ESPN: Be there, baby.

But then he paused. He looked around, exactly as if someone had spoken. "Yeah," he said. Then: "Yeah?" And then: "Yeah." There was a Formica-topped island in the middle of the room, for food preparation. He dropped the knife on it with a clatter instead of sticking it into Emily.

He said, "Sit there. I'm not going to kill you. I changed my mind. Man can change his mind. I got nothing from Nicole but a poke in the arm."

There was a depleted roll of duct tape on the island. He picked it up. A moment later he was kneeling in front of her, the back of his head and the naked nape of his neck exposed and vulnerable. In a better world-a fairer world-she could have laced her hands together and brought them down on that exposed nape, but her hands were bound at the wrists to the chair's heavy maple arms. Her torso was bound to the back by more duct tape, thick corsets of the stuff at the waist and just below her br**sts. Her legs were bound to the chair's legs at the knees, the upper calves, the lower calves, and the ankles. He had been very thorough.

The legs of the chair were taped to the floor, and now he put on fresh layers, first in front of her, then behind. When he was finished, all the tape was gone. He stood up and put the empty cardboard core on the Formica island. "There," he said. "Not bad. Okay. All set. You wait here." He must have found something funny in this, because he cocked his head upward and loosed another of those brief, yapping laughs. "Don't get bored and run off, okay? I need to go take care of your nosy old friend, and I want to do it while it's still raining."