“Hi, honey,” I said weakly.
She looked too frightened to speak. Tears had streaked her mascara, and there were a couple of dark trails leading down across her cheeks. But she managed to say one word, a question.
“Kids?”
I nodded. “They’re fine. They went to stay with friends overnight.”
“Isn’t that keen,” said Rick, looking at me. “I used to love sleepovers when I was a kid. This could have been such a great night for the two of you, kids out of the house, chance to get it on, right?”
I said nothing. Rick waved the knife about, swung it into the corner of the countertop, chipping it. He whacked at it again, taking out a chink. He was going to whittle away our kitchen.
“So, Zack, good to finally catch up with you,” Rick said. “I feel like I’ve been running around all night looking for you.”
“It’s all over,” I said. “Your boss Greenway, and Carpington, the police are going to be on to them in no time. Just get out of here and make a run for it. It’s not going to take any time for them to figure out you killed Spender, and Stefanie.”
“Whoa, you got that all wrong, fella.”
“Just go. Don’t hurt us. We won’t call the cops for an hour. That’ll give you time to get away.”
Rick looked hurt. “But Sarah here and I were hoping to get to know one another. I feel that you and I have had a chance to get acquainted, but Sarah and me, we don’t hardly know a thing about each other.” To her, he said, “You know I didn’t even realize, until the second time I was here, that your husband wrote one of my favorite books.”
“Really,” Sarah whispered.
“That’s a fact. And I’m not a big reader, so you can imagine my surprise when I found out.”
“Of course,” Sarah said.
Could I rush him? There was the matter of the knife. At least it wasn’t a gun. He couldn’t get me from where I was standing. Suppose I ran? Just bolted, went for help? Outran the son of a bitch? And while it seemed like at least a possibility, I had some trouble with the optics of it all, of fleeing the house, leaving Sarah behind with this guy. At least now, if he went after her with the knife, I could try to do something about it. Try to be some kind of hero.
“In fact, I was wondering if you’ve got a copy of that book,” he said to me, “and if you could autograph it for me.”
“Of course,” I said, my eyes moving back and forth between the knife and Sarah. “I’d be happy to do that for you. And anything else you want, I’ll give it to you, if you’ll go, and leave us alone.”
Rick considered my request. “Well, when I was here last time, I was really only looking for one thing. This big book, with payments and everything listed inside. It was very important to Mr. Greenway that I get that back. And I still want that, no question about it. And maybe those negatives that asshole Carpington says you’ve got, although I don’t really give a fuck about them one way or another.”
Sarah, in addition to looking frightened beyond her worst nightmare, had this look of total bewilderment. Big book? Negatives?
“But what I was wondering was, you said you’d nearly finished the sequel to that book.”
“Yes.”
“Is it, like, printed out on pages and everything?”
“Uh, yes, it is.”
“Terrific. I want that, too.”
“The manuscript.”
“The what?”
“The manuscript. That’s what the book is called.”
“Manuscript,” he said, as though he was picturing the word in the air. “That’s the title? Like, not Missionary Part Two?”
I shook my head. “No, a manuscript is what you call the printed-out pages of the book.”
Rick eyed me suspiciously, as though I was trying to make him look stupid. “You fucking with me?”
“No, listen, sorry. Yes, you can have it.”
“The problem is, didn’t you say you hadn’t quite finished it?”
“That’s right. There’s a chapter left.”
Rick nodded, thought. “Well, let’s deal with the most important matter first. I want that ledger.”
“I don’t have it,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“Where is it?”
I couldn’t put Trixie at risk. I couldn’t send him next door. So I said, “I dropped it off on the doorstep at the police station. They’ll find it, and start figuring out what it all means.”
Rick shook his head slowly. “I think you’re shittin’ me there, Zack. I don’t believe you did anything like that at all. But I think I’ll be able to get the truth out of you eventually. Sit down in that chair.”
He indicated the one across from Sarah. When I didn’t move right away, he took a step forward, waved the knife. “Chair! Now!”
I sat down. Rick tossed a roll of duct tape that he’d left sitting by the phone in my direction. “Gimme your cell phone. Wrap that around yourself so you’re tied into the chair,” he said.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, handing the phone over. “The ledger is with the police and-”
Rick suddenly waved his knife around Sarah. She tried to pull back into herself as he sliced through the air near her neck.
“Start taping yourself up,” he said to me.
I found the end of the roll, gave a tug, heard the familiar rip of duct tape separating from itself. I slapped one end onto my shirt, then pulled the roll around me, handing it off from one hand to the other behind my back, then again in front of me. I went around a couple of times and stopped.
“No, a little more,” Rick said.
“There’s no way I can get out,” I protested.
“Just do it.”
I did one more loop around myself, tore off the tape from the roll, and set the roll on the kitchen table.
“Now your ankles,” Rick said.
“I can’t do my ankles. I can’t bend over because I’ve got all this tape around my stomach.”
“Shit,” Rick said. Talk about a master plan falling apart. He set the knife down on the counter and approached me from behind.
Now or never, I figured.
I stood up and rushed backward. Sarah screamed. The chair came up at a forty-five-degree angle, my butt still attached to it, my body hunched over. The legs of the chair tangled with Rick’s, and the weight of my coming after him propelled him into the vertical blinds that hung over the sliding glass doors to the deck. Rick’s arms flailed, grabbing slats, ripping them from their moorings as I squeezed him against the door.
I took a step away, bound to the chair but my arms still free, and spun around. I threw myself into him, punching randomly. Except for Rick, a few hours earlier, I’d never hit anyone in my adult life. And the last time I’d hit him, I’d used a robot. This time, I was connecting with my hands, and the pain traveled straight up my arms and into my shoulders, which still hurt from dangling from that roof peak.
“You fucker!” Rick screamed, and shoved back. It was only reasonable to expect that a guy who’d spent several years working in construction, when he wasn’t in jail probably lifting weights, was going to have stronger arms than a guy who daydreams at a computer all day. When he shoved, his arms were like pistons, driving me back across the kitchen and into a set of floor-to-ceiling cupboards. The chair hit them first, and inside I could hear stacked cans rattle and fall over.
Sarah kept screaming.
Rick ducked down, rushed me, grabbed me around my taped waist, and dragged me and the chair down to the floor. Then the pummeling began. This was very serious pummeling. I felt his fist connect with my chin, then my right cheek, bounce off my forehead, crush my lip. Blood filled my mouth where my tooth had gone through it. Some time around then, I started blacking out.