Normally, having not found Garth's missing sweater in his apartment, I would have called or faxed to tell him to forget it, that he'd just have to make do between now and New Year's with the half dozen or so other sweaters he'd taken with him. But the sun was shining, the wind was up, it was surprisingly mild for late November, and the water in the Hudson would still be relatively warm compared to the air; the possibility of getting in just one more sail on my brother's fourteen-foot catamaran was too great a temptation to resist, and the quest for Garth's sweater was just the excuse I needed to remove myself from the city and my distractions.
I drove out of New York and up the Palisades Parkway to Garth and Mary's home in Cairn, a small, very artsy town on the banks of the Hudson thirty-four miles to the north. I found the sweater he wanted in the bottom drawer of a dresser in his bedroom, threw it on the back seat of my Volkswagen Rabbit. Then I stripped and put on the black rubber wet suit I kept there, went down to the boathouse beneath the eaves of the music room, then huffed and puffed the cat down across the beach to the shoreline. I set sail, and with eighteen-knot winds was soon streaking across the vast expanse of river between Haverstraw and Piermont that the early Dutch settlers had dubbed the "Tappan Sea." There was nobody and nothing else on the river, and conditions were ideal, if perhaps just a bit nippy. I whizzed back and forth across the river between Cairn and Westchester for almost four hours, dumping only once when a wind shift crossed my stern while I was flying a hull. I ran the cat back up on the beach behind Garth's home just as the blood-red sun was sinking behind the craggy, black outline of Hook Mountain, to the south.
I felt at once completely relaxed yet exhilarated. I took a long, hot shower, then drove south to Nyack for dinner and a movie at Cinema East. By the time I got out of the movie and headed back toward the city I was ready for sleep, for I had decided what I was going to do about Margaret Dutton.
First, I would turn the capsules I had taken from her over to the police, who would probably tell me they were some new kind of illicit drug; how and where Mama Spit had gotten them would undoubtedly remain a mystery, for she obviously couldn't remember. Then it was going to be time for a lot of tender, loving care and attention to the woman's needs. Margaret would no doubt be disappointed in me for in effect turning her out, but it was my hope that she would continue to trust me; as long as I stayed by her side and walked her through the process every step of the way, I thought she might at last be amenable to letting the city's Social Services Department help her. I was going to have a serious chat with a social worker friend of mine to map out a detailed plan for getting Margaret into a controlled clinical setting and keeping her there, at least until she was officially released as an outpatient under the supervision of doctors. And Frederickson and Frederickson would subsidize some of the cost, if it came to that.
When I got home I barely had enough energy to brush my teeth and strip down to my shorts before collapsing into bed, pulling the blankets up over me, and immediately falling asleep. I didn't sleep long. Muffled screams and what sounded like crashing, overturned furniture first materialized in my mind as a dream about the demolition of some theater where there were still people inside, and then yanked me into consciousness when I realized the sounds were real, coming up through the floor from Garth's apartment below me. I jumped out of bed and without even stopping to pull on my pants raced out of the apartment and down the stairs, through the door of Garth's apartment, and into the bedroom. What I saw stunned and horrified me.
Mama Spit had returned with a vengeance. The flannel nightgown I had bought her was half torn from her body and hanging from her shoulders in shreds. Her hair tangled and matted with sweat, Margaret Dutton was once again caught in the throes of madness. Alternately screaming and muttering obscenities, she was slapping at her body and stomping her feet as she slowly circled the nightstand, which she had placed in the center of the room. She would occasionally halt her mad dance and snatch at the empty space on the wooden table where her bag of capsules had been before I'd taken them away. The bedspread and carpet were spattered with blood; bright crimson arterial blood oozed from her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, vagina, and anus. Margaret Dutton not only had snapped back into violent insanity but was slowly bleeding to death from every orifice in her body.
She glanced over to where I was standing just inside the doorway gaping at her, paralyzed with shock. She screamed, spat blood in my direction, and charged, but by then I was already on the move. Heart pounding, thoughts tumbling around in my mind in a kind of prayer that I knew what was wrong and was not too late, I sprinted back up the stairs to my apartment, my safe. For a few terrifying moments I couldn't remember the combination, and I forced myself to stop and take a series of deep breaths to calm myself. The combination came to me. I opened the safe, grabbed the bag of capsules, and raced back downstairs.
I took her low, around the waist, literally tackling her and driving her back on the bed. There I climbed up on top of her and sat on her chest, pinning her arms to her body with the insides of my thighs-no easy task since she was thrashing wildly, probably weighed as much as I did, and was a foot taller. As she opened her mouth to scream at me, I popped one of the capsules down her throat. Then, just as her first benefactor had done, I clamped one hand over her mouth and used the fingers of the other to gently knead her esophagus, encouraging her to swallow. She finally did, and then I lay down on top of her, wrapping my arms around her body to keep her from flailing, burying my face to the side in the bloody bedding to avoid the fusillades of blood and saliva that spewed from her mouth. I held on tight and waited for something to happen-or stop happening.
Gradually she stopped struggling, and her breathing became deep and regular. I carefully eased my weight off her, raised my head to look into her face. She was sound asleep, and the bleeding from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth appeared to have stopped. I rose and went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and saw that I was covered with Margaret Dutton's blood. I turned on the shower, used towels soaked with warm water to gently clean the sleeping woman's face and body as best I could, then covered her with a clean blanket.
I hurried upstairs, quickly showered and pulled on sweats, hurried back downstairs. Margaret Dutton was still fast asleep. The woman had lost a considerable amount of blood, and under normal circumstances I would already have called an ambulance. But I was not dealing with normal circumstances. Until I understood what was happening, and until I could determine exactly what was in the black-and-yellow capsules, I was very reluctant to involve anyone else, especially medical personnel or the police. Notifying the authorities might not at all be in Margaret's best interests; something very bad might happen, just as the man who had given her the capsules had predicted.
I pulled a chair over next to the bed and sat down in it to wait and watch over Margaret until morning.
Chapter 4
Margaret awoke around ten o'clock looking very tired and pale, and with two swollen black eyes-the only external legacy, as far as I could see, of the copious amount of blood that had leaked from her during the night. "Oh, my," she sighed in a hoarse, small voice as she turned her head and saw me.