He could no longer see Parker and his daughter – he assumed that was who the girl was. They were lost in the gathering dimness between the two houses, and the farther away they got from him, so did his agitation begin slowly to dispel. Parker, Steiger believed, was the cause of his disquiet. The man was uncommon, strange. He should have been dead. The detective was like a broken insect that continued to crawl across the floor, waiting for the second blow that would put it out of its misery. Steiger had shadowed him throughout the day, even following him to the police department in town. Steiger had dearly wanted to know what was being spoken of inside, and it was only good fortune – and, perhaps, instinct – that caused him to linger after the detective departed, so that he was nearby when the car carrying the two women arrived. Even without the telltale motor pool vehicle, he smelled them as detectives, and his concerns only increased as they followed the chief of police out to Mason Point.
Steiger didn’t hang around. He made a call to the local undertaker, claiming to be a relative of Perlman’s, and was informed that the body had been removed to Augusta for autopsy. After that, it was easy for him to make the final connection and surmise that something about Perlman’s body had aroused the suspicions of the state police.
Steiger’s feet were almost submerged in the soft sand of the dunes. He shook them free, and sought firmer ground. He did not enjoy the proximity of the sea. He could not swim, and so the ocean had always been a threatening presence, a dark mass that called to him, inviting him to test himself against it, immersing himself inch by inch until finally he would no longer be able to feel the sand and stones beneath his feet, and he would drown.
Sometimes in his dreams, he would find himself floating in an infinity of black water – oddly safe, as long as he did not struggle – and slowly become aware that a presence was emerging from the depths below, ascending toward the surface, coming to consume him, and he would wake just before he saw it, before he felt its jaws close upon him, and he knew that neither did its form matter nor any physicality he might project upon it, because it would always be the same in essence: it would be his own death.
The dunes, too, were a part of this threat: formed by the sea, and so to him neither land nor water, and composed of organic and inorganic matter, of that which had once lived and that which had no life at all. Seen from a distance, the dunes took the form of hidden vertebrae, as though they concealed beneath them a creature lost to time and memory, but one that, if woken, would want only what all such beasts want: to bite, to tear, to feed.
Steiger was, of course, insane.
Now this being of violence and hate, of envy and loneliness and loss, stood on the dunes and watched as Ruth Winter passed before the kitchen window below. He saw her put plates upon the table and serve the food. He noticed that she did not eat much, and he wondered why she had not invited the detective and his daughter to stay for dinner. Some disagreement could have occurred between them, or it might simply have been that Amanda Winter had not gotten along with the detective’s daughter, and it was decided by mutual consent that the play date should be brought to an end.
He saw Amanda return to the living room while her mother remained at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine before her. She did not read, and no music carried to him from the room in which she sat, although he could hear the faint sounds of the television from the next room.
And so Ruth Winter stayed where she was, and Steiger watched her, unmoving, even as minutes became hours. He was capable of great stillness, of complete silence: it was the only way that a man such as he, one so blighted and benighted, could negotiate the world.
Finally, Ruth rose. She cleaned the glass. The noise of the television ceased, and the lamp in the living room went out. A bathroom light came on in the floor above. Ruth returned to the kitchen. She walked to the window and looked out at the dunes, and for a moment she might have been locking eyes with the man who had come to kill her, some primitive part of her acknowledging his presence, while her conscious mind took no notice of it. Then she was gone, and the light was extinguished.
Steiger waited until all was quiet, until all was dark.
And then he descended.
33
Sam had gone to her room shortly after she and her father had eaten grilled sandwiches for dinner. He’d looked in to find her reading one of her new books. If she was unhappy with him for taking her prematurely from Amanda Winter’s company, then she did not show it. When he checked on her a second time, she was already asleep beneath her sheets.
Parker read distractedly for a while. He was not tired. His mind kept returning to Ruth Winter. He knew that he could have handled their last confrontation better. He was out of practice. He checked his messages, but Walsh hadn’t returned his call about the brown Caddy. When he turned out his light to go to sleep, he thought that he could hear voices calling to him through the white noise of the sea.
Although Sam was in her bed, and the hours and minutes were ticking by on her bedside clock, she did not feel as though she had slept. It seemed to her that she simply tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position in which to rest, her body alternately too warm – which caused her to kick off her sheets – and then too cold. Her stomach hurt as well, and when she burped she could still taste stale French toast in her mouth, despite what she had eaten and drunk since she had thrown up.
She supposed that she must have dozed off at some point, though, for the texture of the darkness had changed when she opened her eyes. It felt physically oppressive to her, almost tangible. She thought that she might even be able to reach out and grasp a handful of it, and feel it ooze through her fingers.
The dead daughter had returned, standing at the end of Sam’s bed, her head bowed so that her hair might conceal the ruin of her face. Sam felt sorry for her, the way she felt sorry for anyone who was forced to endure a form of disability or physical disfigurement. She also understood that it had to be this way for the girl. When she crossed over to this world, she took the last form in which she had inhabited it when she was alive. Her beauty was for another place.
But Sam was also irritated. She had told the girl to go away, that she would look after their father, but now she had returned. Sam could order her to leave, of course, but she knew that the dead daughter wouldn’t like it.
None of them ever did.
‘I said—’ Sam began, and then the dead daughter was gone. It took a moment for Sam to realize that she had moved to one of the windows, and was looking north. She had shifted position in less than the blink of an eye, but Sam was used to their ways. Now she saw that the dead girl was trembling, a shivering that commenced at her head and moved all the way to her toes, like a tightly coiled spring set in motion. Without shifting her gaze, she stretched out her left hand and crooked a finger at Sam.
come
The word was not spoken. There was no sound. It simply fell into Sam’s head, like a pebble dropped into a pool.
Sam left her bed and joined the dead girl. She was careful not to touch her, or even brush against her. The dead burned coldly, and contact with them left marks on her that sometimes hurt for days. They also acted as emotional transmitters, broadcasting with an intensity that was painful to pick up, and Sam was a receiver beyond compare, for no one like her had walked the earth in a very long time. These bursts of feeling – anger, sorrow, fear, confusion – were enough to bring on headaches and nausea, not unlike what she had felt this morning when the nasty brown car drove past. Just before the French toast came back up, she wondered if she had unwittingly come in contact with the dead, as the experience was not dissimilar. But the car had been real, and her father had also seen it.
Her father saw other things too, oh yes, things that were both there and not there. He didn’t understand why, not yet. Sam could have told him, but she knew the importance of remaining quiet, and not drawing attention to herself …
Now Sam stood by the dead daughter. She could smell her. She didn?
??t smell bad, just smoky. Sam knew her name – Jennifer – but she never thought of her by that name. The dead girl was both more and less than her father’s first daughter, her own half sister. You couldn’t pass over and not be transformed, not be changed utterly. She might have looked like a little girl, but she was much older inside. Clever. Dangerous, even, although not to Sam.
The drapes were drawn across the window. They were no obstacle to the dead daughter, but Sam had to move them. She did so carefully. The dead daughter was still shaking, and Sam took it as a warning. Through the gap she had created, she could barely discern the outline of the Winter house.
look
‘I don’t see anything.’
look harder
Sam concentrated, and her eyes grew used to the dark. She picked out the south-facing front door of the house, the window of the living room, the second window halfway up the stairs—
There: a shape against the glass, pausing for an instant as though compelled to do so by forces unknown, framing himself for her. Her stomach gave a little lurch, and she tasted vomit again. The image of the brown car once again flashed across her mind, and the memory of the man’s stink was so strong that she caught it as surely as if he were standing next to her, and not on the stairs of the Winter house.
‘Daddy,’ she whispered, then again, louder: ‘Daddy!’
The dead daughter gripped her arm. The pain of it was so intense that it was all Sam could do not to yelp, and her head was filled with the unspoken words of her non-voice:
careful careful
he’ll hear
the bad man will hear
34
Steiger padded up the stairs, placing his feet as close as he could to the edges in the hope of minimizing any creaks. The wind had picked up in the last hour, buffeting the house, so noises already masked his progress, but there was a difference between the slight tapping of doors on frames, or the rattling of windows, and the purposeful tread of a foot upon a stair. People had died for not recognizing the distinction.
He wore lightweight blue plastic overalls to protect his clothing, and disposable gloves. A surgical mask covered the lower half of his face. He wasn’t worried about being seen. He just wanted to ensure that he got as little blood as possible on his skin. His shoes were soft soled, and he moved with a grace that belied his frame and appearance. His guts ached, though, and he’d finished the last of the Mylanta that afternoon. Once this final act was done, he would allow himself a couple of Vicodin and embrace the peace that it brought. For now, though, the pain spurred him on. The sooner the woman was dead, the sooner he could take the pills.
The walls, painted cream throughout, were largely bare, except for some pictures of flowers and sunsets that he thought had probably come with the house, and a handful of smaller photographs of Ruth Winter and her daughter, some of them housed in frames made from popsicle sticks and decorated by a child’s hand. The carpet on the stairs was pale nylon – cheap, but durable.
He paused as he neared the topmost step. Amanda Winter’s door was slightly open, and a night-light burned in an outlet. It cast the shapes of stars upon the wall above her bed. He could see one of her feet poking out from beneath the comforter. She shifted position as he watched, her breathing momentarily disturbed, and he wondered if he had intruded upon her dream, if her subconscious might have picked up on his presence and manifested it for her. Steiger had not lived for so long in such a dark trade as his without recognizing the importance of the atavistic.
But the girl did not wake. He heard her breathing return to normal. Three more doors stood before him. He had taken the trouble to research the layout of the house, for it was still listed on the Realtor’s website. He knew that the mother’s room was probably the largest: it lay kitty-corner from her daughter’s. Beside it was the main bathroom. Opposite it was a spare room, just big enough to accommodate a small double bed.
Steiger had a gun beneath his arm: not the Mauser with which he had killed Lenny Tedesco – a forgivable piece of theater under the circumstances – but a lightweight Ruger .38 with the hammer concealed within the frame. It was for backup only. He was not worried about noise. If he found himself in a situation where he was forced to use it, then the sound of shots would be the least of his problems, but the only such scenario he could envisage involved Parker, for he was the sole threat. If, for some reason, he did come, Steiger would have to kill him too, and any warnings against doing so aside, he wasn’t being paid to kill him. Then again, he hadn’t been paid to torture Lenny Tedesco’s wife either. He’d simply taken her as a bonus.
So the Ruger remained where it was, and in his right hand he held a short-bladed knife. He wanted Ruth Winter’s death to be as quick and painless as possible, and not only because those were his instructions. A struggle or a scream risked waking her daughter, and the first inkling Steiger wanted her to have was when she found her mother dead the next morning.
As he had anticipated, Ruth’s door was slightly ajar, just like her daughter’s. A single mother would want to be able to hear if anything was wrong. The sound of light snoring came to him. The door creaked slightly as he entered, but not enough to wake her. He stepped into the room and approached the bed. She was lying on her back, which made it easier for him. He shifted his hand so the tip of the knife was facing toward him, the blade away, and at that moment her eyes opened – slowly, drowsily at first, then wider. But by then his left hand was over her mouth, and his right was swinging in a fast slashing motion across her throat. He held her down as the blood came, holding his face away to protect him from the worst of it. He felt her bucking against him, and the headboard thudded – once, twice – against the wall, before she began to weaken. The pumping of the blood slowed and then ceased entirely. He looked down at her. Her eyes were still half-open, as though she were about to slip back into sleep again. He closed them with the fingers of his left hand. It was odd, but he didn’t want her daughter looking into her dead, clouded eyes when she found her. There was blood on the wall, on the sheets, on his overalls. He could even feel some dripping from his forehead, but that was a minor concern. Not for the first time, he was glad that he’d taken precautions to protect himself. The overalls and the mask would burn easily, and he would dispose of the knife by throwing it into the sea farther down the coast. It was a good knife, but replaceable, and no one had yet established a foolproof way of removing all DNA traces from a blade. Even soaking in bleach wasn’t entirely reliable, and why go to such trouble when the stores were unlikely to run out of knives any time soon?
Ruth Winter was already receding from his memory as he turned away from her body and found himself facing her daughter.
35
Parker woke at the sound of Sam’s footsteps entering his room
‘What’s up, honey?’ he asked.
‘Daddy, there’s a man in Amanda’s house.’
He sat up. He was wearing shorts, and he saw Sam’s eyes drift to the new scars on his upper body that had been added to the old, which were themselves more obvious now that he had lost so much weight.
‘What? How do you know?’
She had considered how to answer this question on the way to her father’s room. She didn’t like lying, but sometimes you had to.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, ‘so I got up to look out at the sea and I saw him. He’s in there now. Daddy, you have to hurry. You have to call the police.’
He was already moving as she handed his cellphone to him, but he did not dial 911, not yet. Ruth Winter’s number was in his contacts list, so he tried that first, cradling the phone between his chin and shoulder as he pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped into his sneakers. The number rang out without an answer.
‘Shit,’ he said. Sam, who was not above admonishing her father when he used bad language, remained silent.
Parker zipped up a hooded fleece, and reached for the gun that was now taped to the frame of his bed. He dropped it into the pocket of the fleece befo
re gripping Sam by the shoulders.
‘You stay here, you understand? You lock the door after me and you don’t come for anyone, not unless I’m with them. Are we clear, Sam?’
‘I don’t want you to leave,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘I’m going to call the police on my way, but I don’t know how long they’ll take to get here. Now I have to go. Come on, follow me.’
She trailed after him, down the stairs and across the hall to the door. He opened it, went outside, and waited until she had closed it behind him, and he heard the dead bolt slot into place. He nodded at her once through the glass, and then the night took him.
36
Amanda Winter stared at the man before her, then past him to where her mother lay. Even in the dim light she could see the spray of arterial blood against the cream wall, the great stain on the white sheets, and the terrible gash at her mother’s throat, the darkness of each contrasting with the pallor of the backdrop. She opened her mouth but no sound came. She wanted to call her mother’s name, to scream, but she could not. Terror and grief rendered her silent and immobile. But for the first tears that began to creep from her eyes, she might have been a doll.
Steiger took only a second to overcome his surprise at the sight of the child. He clasped the knife closed and shifted it to his left hand as he advanced upon her. The sight of his approach broke the spell holding Amanda in place, and she turned to run, crying out as she did so, but he was too fast for her. He caught her by the left arm and pulled her back. She struggled against him, and he dropped the knife. Her bare foot hit it, causing it to skid away into the gloom of the hall. She tried to shout again, but Steiger’s hand closed around her throat, constricting the airway. Amanda clawed at him through the glove, ripping the plastic and drawing blood, but the pressure remained. Steiger held her against the door until she lost consciousness, then gently eased her to the floor so that she did not hurt her head. He checked her pulse, even though he was certain that he had used just the right amount of force on her. It was not an exact science, though, and one could never be entirely sure. He felt it beating against his fingers, and was satisfied.