Just After Sunset(21)

There was a thump. It wasn't as loud as the swing door had been when he hit it coming in, but it still sounded loud enough, perhaps because the rain had slackened even more. For a moment nothing else happened, and then blood began to run out of his power haircut and over his forehead. She stared at him, into his eyes. He stared back with dazed incomprehension.

"Don't," he said feebly, and reached out one hand to take the chair arm from her.

"Yes," she said, and swung again, this time from the side: a slicing two-handed blow, her right hand giving up and letting go at the last moment, her left one holding firm. The end of the arm-ragged where it had broken, splinters sticking out-hammered into Pickering's right temple. This time the blood burst at once as his head snapped to the side, all the way to his left shoulder. Bright drops ran down his cheek and pattered onto the gray tile.

"Stop," he said thickly, pawing at the air with one hand. He looked like a drowning man begging for rescue.

"No," she said, and brought the arm down on his head again.

Pickering screamed and staggered away from her in a head-tucked hunch, trying to put the center island between them. He stepped on more ice cubes and skidded, but this time managed to stay upright. Only by luck, she had to believe, since he had to be all but out on his feet.

For a moment she almost let him go, thinking he would run out through the swing door. It was what she would have done. Then her dad spoke up, very calmly, in her head: "He's after the knife, sweetie."

"No," she said, snarling it this time. "No, you won't."

She tried to run around the other side of the island and head him off, but she couldn't run, not while she was dragging the shattered remains of the chair behind her like a ball and f**king chain-it was still duct-taped to her left knee. It banged against the island, slammed her in the butt, tried to get between her legs and trip her. The chair seemed to be on his side, and she was glad she had broken it.

Pickering got to the knife-it was lying against the bottom of the swing door-and fell on it like a football tackle covering a loose ball. He was making a guttural wheezing sound deep in his throat. Em reached him just as he started to turn over. She hammered him with the chair arm again and again, shrieking, aware in some part of her mind that it wasn't heavy enough and she wasn't generating anywhere near the amount of force she wanted to generate. She could see her right wrist, already puffing up, trying to address the outrage perpetrated on it just as if it expected to survive this day.

Pickering collapsed on the knife and lay still. She backed away a little, gasping for breath, those little white comets once more flying across her field of vision.

Men spoke in her mind. This was not uncommon with her, and not always unwelcome. Sometimes, but not always.

Henry: "Get that damned knife and put it right between his shoulder blades."

Rusty: "No, honey. Don't go close to him. That's what he expects. He's playing possum."

Henry: "Or the back of his neck. That's good, too. His stinking neck."

Rusty: "Reaching under him would be like sticking your hand into a hay baler, Emmy. You've got two choices. Beat him to death-"

Henry, sounding reluctant but convinced: "-or run."

Well, maybe. And maybe not.

There was a drawer on this side of the island. She yanked it open, hoping for another knife-for lots of them: carving knives, filleting knives, steak knives, serrated bread knives. She would settle for a goddam butter knife. What she saw was mostly an array of fancy black plastic cooking tools: a pair of spatulas, a ladle, and one of those big serving spoons full of holes. There was some other bric-a-brac, but the most dangerous-looking thing her eye fell on was a potato peeler.

"Listen to me," she said. Her voice was hoarse, almost guttural. Her throat was dry. "I don't want to kill you, but I will if you make me. I've got a meat fork here. If you try to turn over, I'll stick it in the back of your neck and keep pushing until it comes out the front."

Did he believe her? That was one question. She was sure he'd removed all the knives except for the one underneath him on purpose, but could he be sure he'd gotten all the other sharp objects? Most men had no idea what was in the drawers of their kitchens-she knew this from life with Henry, and before Henry from life with father-but Pickering wasn't most men and this wasn't most kitchens. She had an idea it was more like an operating theater. Still, given how dazed he was (was he dazed?), and how he must surely believe that a lapse of memory could get him killed, she thought the bluff might run. Only there was another question: Was he even hearing her? Or understanding her if he did? A bluff couldn't work if the person you were trying to bluff didn't understand the stakes.

But she wasn't going to stand here debating. That would be the worst thing she could do. She bent over, never taking her eyes from Pickering, and hooked her fingers under the last band of tape still binding her to the chair. The fingers of her right hand wanted even less to work now, but she made them. And her sweat-drenched skin helped. She shoved downward, and the tape started coming free with another ill-tempered ripping sound. She supposed it hurt, it left a bright-red band across her kneecap (for some reason the word Jupiter floated randomly through her mind), but she was far past feeling such things. It let go all at once and slid down to her ankle, wrinkled and twisted and sticking to itself. She shook it off her foot and sidled backward, free. Her head was pounding, either from exertion or from where he'd hit her while she was looking at the dead girl in the trunk of his Mercedes.