All kinds of things could happen.
None of them did.
And then the disappointment: he'd hit her too hard.
When he opened the trunk, she moaned but never seemed aware of what he was doing. He picked her up, and her head rolled, and her eye-lids fluttered, and he thought she might be faking. She wasn't.
He was careful, in handling her, to never let her get in a position to slash at him… but she never even stiffened as he hauled her into O'Donnell's shed. O'Donnell was in Madison, seeing his mother. The availability of his car shed had been the key to launch the attack. He'd gotten the shed ready before he went after her-had laid down a plastic painter's drop cloth that he'd bought from Home Depot. He'd hung a piece of nylon anchor rope over one of the exposed ceiling beams, designed to hold the weight of an automobile engine. He tied Larson's hands and lifted her with the rope.
She was absolutely slack, all her weight on her shoulder joints, but she never protested, never made a sound other than the low gagging moan.
"Angela," he called to her. He'd gotten out his wire flail. "Angela, can you hear me?"
She couldn't. He snapped the flail at her; the wire cut into her back, and blood seeped out of the cuts. Nothing but the moan, the fluttering eyelids.
He hit her again and then a kind of blankness descended on him, and he began beating her with a fury, hitting her, hitting her, until a misstep sent him skidding across the plastic sheet; he dropped to his hands and knees in the blood, gasping for breath. Looked up at her: she hardly looked human, except for her untouched face. He'd shredded her.
He tried calling to her again, but she was no longer home. Finally, in disgust, he'd cut her throat with a carpet knife. Not a straight razor, but a carpet knife from a Hardware Hank store, stood there and watched the blood pumping out of her throat until her heart stopped, and her blood with it.
THEN RICE. That had been different; and Peterson…
In the room next door, Millie reached a climax and cried out, and Grant cried out with her.
He lay on the bed for a moment: everything was coming down on him now. Everything. He'd never make it to Miami. They'd pull him down, lock him down the hall with Biggie and Taylor and Chase.
Grant staggered away from his bed, sweating, his heart still pounding. Into the bathroom: he felt weird, looked at himself in the mirror. His face was bright pink: his blood pressure must be out of sight, he thought. Had to calm down… he splashed a double handful of water into his face, patted his face dry with a towel. Looked at his watch. What? He'd been on the bed for forty minutes. It had seemed like only a moment…
What to do, what to do… He paced his apartment, gnawing on a knuckle until it was raw. They were coming, and he was getting nowhere.
He went into his bedroom again, opened the closet door, pushed away some shoes. Three guns there. Two from O'Donnell, one of his own. One 9mm, one.40, and a.45.
He picked up the guns, looked at them for a moment, then went back to the living room and got his briefcase. The first briefcase of his life. All done now. He poured out the papers inside and threw in the guns. And the razor. Back to the bedroom, he got the straight razor he'd used on Peterson and slipped it into his pocket. He and Biggie and Chase had figured out how to get them inside-as long as he was coming in on a weekday, and on the second shift…
Which was where they were now.
And Justus Smith had to be in the control booth. Smith always worked the second shift, on weekdays; but what if he was sick? Or if he'd taken a vacation day? If they were actually going to execute the Armageddon, they'd always talked of it, Lighter, Chase, Taylor, and himself as being carefully planned ahead of time, with proper options that would allow them to wait until conditions were perfect. Now it was all ad hoc. Nothing was perfect…
GRANT LOOKED AT his watch. The first shift had just ended. He went to the phone, dialed in to the hospital, and asked for Smith.
A moment later, "Cage-this is Smith."
Grant hung up. "All right," he said to himself. Justus was in the cage, and God in his heaven. He looked around the apartment. He didn't have to pack: fuck all this stuff. He picked up the briefcase, focused now, ready to make his run. Ready to go down with the Gods Down the Hall. And then it would all be done. No more misery; no more loneliness; no more acid rolling around in his brains, to make him cry at night.
He carried the briefcase down to his car and threw it in, jingled his keys, got into the driver's seat, and thought: Shit. The coin.
He went back upstairs, into the bedroom, and opened the top drawer in his chest of drawers, dug around some socks, and came up with the plastic box. Inside was a gold 1866S double eagle. The coin cost him $1,432, but the same coin, in better condition, might be worth as much as $25,000 to $30,000.
Justus Smith was a coin nut.
HE WAS TURNING TO GO when he heard a thump on the wall. Then faintly, a woman's voice. He looked at the door and then at the stethoscope on the bed. There was no time for this, no time. He went over to the stethoscope on the bed and plugged it into his ears.
Millie Lincoln was doing it again. The rush came, as it always did, but this time there was more than lust. This time there was anger and anxiety and Armageddon coming; he'd never even seen her, not for sure, because he had too much to lose.
Now, there was nothing to lose. Millie Lincoln was just getting started when Grant unplugged himself from the stethoscope and ran out the door, letting it bang open behind him.
He didn't know Millie, but he knew where her door was.
MIHOVIL HAD JUST gotten up to go to the bathroom to rinse off when Millie heard what sounded like an explosion; the noise was loud enough, and close enough, that she called, "What was that?"
Before Mihovil could answer, there was another boom, and the apartment shook with the impact. She hopped out of bed and picked up her underpants and there was a third impact, and a splintering sound, from close by. Mihovil shouted, "What the hell?" and there was another impact, and Millie picked up her top and pulled it over her head and stepped to the bedroom door.
Mihovil, naked, was standing in the front room, looking toward the outer door. Another boom, and pieces of Sheetrock buckled around the door jamb, and then boom, and the door flew open. A man came through: he was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and tan slacks and loafers, and might have been straight-enough-looking, but there was nothing straight about his eyes. They burned straight through Mihovil, and the man said, "Hello, Millie."
Millie shouted, "Who are you? Get out of here…" and the man, his face a teeth-bared mask, a lion's face, raised a hand and a razor flashed, a razor like Mihovil's father's razor, and he went after Mihovil like a sword fighter, slashing with the razor hand, trying to punch or grab with the other.
Millie started screaming, never thought of dialing 911 or locking herself in the bedroom, never thought of anything but Mihovil when blood exploded out of his shoulder and he and the stranger went twirling into the kitchen and Mihovil went down under the kitch-en table.
When he went down, the stranger turned and came after her. Then she thought of the bedroom, then she stepped back, screaming, tried to slam the bedroom door, but the stranger was right here, flailing with the razor, and then Mihovil was there, too, swinging a kitchen chair.
The stranger saw it coming and fended it off with one arm, but then Mihovil was all over him with the chair, Mihovil himself screaming, bleeding from a terrible wound on his shoulder, not quitting…
They twisted and turned around the apartment, breaking furniture and glass, dumping electronics and dishes, Mihovil now completely wild; and then the stranger broke and ran and Mihovil ran after him, stepped in a streak of blood at the corner of the kitchen's vinyl floor, and went down. The stranger went out the door and was gone. Millie grabbed a towel and ran to Mihovil, shouting, "Stay down, stay down, you're bleeding, you're bleeding."