He was at a branch, he felt, when ten thousand things were possible, but he couldn't deal with that, with all the branches…
"Just… go away," he said.
He tried, but couldn't sleep. Too many suppositions. Finally, glancing at the clock, he called the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and asked how late the gift shop was open. He had just enough time.
He hurried, trying not to think. Just keep moving. Don't worry about the guns. They sit there in the basement and they glow, and fuck 'em, let 'em glow.
The gift shop was empty, except for a bored saleswoman who was dressed so well that Lucas guessed she was a volunteer.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Yeah. I'm interested in a dude named Odilon Redon. What've you got? Got any calendars?"
Five minutes later he was back in the car, looking for a scrap of paper. He finally found a receipt from a tire store. He turned it over, flattened it against the Porsche owner's manual on his leg and started a new list.
And later, afraid of the bed, he sat in the spare bedroom with a bottle of Canadian Club and stared at his charts.
The Killer One chart was complete: Druze. A troll, powerful, squat, odd head, murdering Stephanie. No question about that anymore. If he was working with Bekker, must have killed George, because Bekker was with Lucas. Could have killed Cassie. Could have killed Armistead. Could have killed woman at the shopping center-but why? She was entirely out of the pattern. Not at home; not with the academic/art crowd… And where did the photos come from, with the missing eyes?
Killer Two: Did he exist? Was it Bekker? Some tracks at the site of the George killing suggested a second man. How would Druze have found George if Bekker hadn't fingered him? (Possibility: He'd watched Stephanie's funeral?) Why would he have driven George's Jeep to the airport? How could he have killed Armistead? Why the phone call-a coincidence, somebody trying to get in free?
The answers were in the pattern, somewhere. Lucas could feel it but couldn't see it.
He took the tire store receipt from his pocket. At the top he'd written "Loverboy."
He looked at it, closed his eyes and let the circumstances flow through his mind.
At six in the morning, he phoned Del. "I gotta come over and talk to you," he said. Del had an affinity for speed.
"Jesus Christ, man, what're you doing up at six o'clock? You're worse'n me…"
Lucas drove across town with the breaking dawn, another cool, overcast day. The drive-time radio programs had started, and he dialed past the jock talk to 'CCO, half listening as he put the car on I-94 toward Minneapolis.
Del met him at the door in a pair of slightly yellowed jockey shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that Clark Gable would have approved of. When Lucas told him what he wanted, Del shook his head and said, "Lucas, you'll kill yourself."
"No. I just need to stay awake for a while," Lucas said. "I know what I'm doing."
Del looked at him, nodded, went to the bedroom and came back with an orange plastic vial. "Ten hits. Heavy-duty. But don't try to stretch it too far."
"Thanks, man…" Lucas said.
A woman's voice came from the back. "Del…?"
"In a minute," Del said. He smiled thinly at Lucas. "Cheryl. What can I tell you?"
The speed brightened him up. He turned south, looking at the clock. Almost seven. Sloan would be up.
"How're you feeling?" Sloan's wife asked as she opened the door.
"Everybody wants to know," Lucas said, grinning at her. She was a short woman, slightly plump, motherly and sexy at the same time. Lucas liked her. "Is Sloan out of bed?"
She turned her head. "Sloan? Lucas is here."
"Out on the porch," Sloan called back.
"Does Sloan have a first name?" Lucas asked as he went past the woman.
"I don't know. I never asked," she said.
Sloan was sitting on the sun porch, smoking a cigarette and eating a cherry Moon Pie. A Coke sat on a side table by his hand.
"A real lumberjack breakfast," Lucas said.
"Don't talk loud," Sloan said. "I'm not awake yet."
"I need you to sweet-talk some people for me," Lucas said. Sloan was the best interrogator on the force. People told him things. "I've got the names and addresses…"
"What for?" Sloan asked, taking the slip of paper.
"Their kids died," Lucas said. "We want to dig them up. We want to do it today."
CHAPTER 29
Beauty danced and bled and danced and bled and danced until he fell down on his back, his arms thrown wide, his legs spread, a kind of crucifixion on the huge Oriental rug in the dining room. There were no dreams of eyes. There were no dreams of anything. There was nothing at all.
The pain woke him.
Daylight filtered past the blinds and his body trembled with cold, his muscles tight and shaking. He sat up and looked down, thought that somehow he'd gotten muddy, then realized that his chest was caked with dried blood. When he tried to stand, flakes of the blood broke away and fell on the carpet.
Something had changed. He felt it. Something was different, but he didn't know what. Couldn't remember. He tried to find it, but his mind seemed confused and he could not. Could not find it. He went to the bathroom, turned on the water for the tub, watched it pour, the water swirling, and he began to sing just like Mrs. Wilson had taught them in the fifth grade:
"Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, dormez-vous, dormez-vous?…"
In the tub, the blood dissolved, pink in the water, and Beauty bathed in it, patted it on his astonishing face, and sang every song that a fifth-grader knew…
The mirror was steamed over when he got out of the tub. He was annoyed when this happened, because he could not look into his face, he had to open the bathroom door, had to wait until the cool air cleared it. He always tried to rub the steam away with a towel, but he could never quite clear the mirror…
He opened the door and the cold air flooded around him, and the stimulation almost brought the memory back. Almost… The first streak of condensation ran down the mirror. Bekker picked up a towel and wiped. Ah. There he was…
The face was far away, he thought, puzzled. He wasn't that far away. He was right here… He reached out and touched the glass, and the face came closer, and the horror began to grow.
This wasn't Beauty. This was…
Bekker screamed, stumbled back, unable to tear his eyes from the mirror.
A troll looked back. A troll with a patchwork face, the wide eyes staring, measuring him. And it all came back, the apartment, the gun, and Druze going down like a burst balloon.
"No!" Bekker screamed at the mirror. He grabbed the hair on both sides of his head, pulled at it, welcoming the pain, trying to rip the troll from his consciousness.
But the eyes, cool, cruel, floated in the mirror, watching… Bekker ran into the hallway: another of her mirrors, mirrors everywhere, all with eyes. He stumbled, fell, crawled down the hall, scampering, naked, his knees burning from the carpet, down to his bedroom like a weasel, groping in panic for the brass cigarette case.
The eyes were everywhere, in the shiny surfaces of the antique bedstand, in the window glass, on the surface of the water in a whiskey tumbler… Waiting. No place for Beauty. He gobbled three bloodred caps of Nembutal 100 mg pentobarbital and the green eggs, the Luminal 30 mg phenobarbital, three of them, four, six. And then the purple eggs, the Xanax 1 mg alprazolam. Too much? He didn't know, couldn't remember. Maybe not enough. He took an assortment of eggs with him, squinting through half-closed eyes, avoiding the shiny surfaces, and whimpering, he crawled into his closet, behind the shirttails and the pantlegs, with the shoes and the odors of darkness.
The Nembutal would be on him first; there was a mild rush as they came on, a Beauty rush. Bekker didn't want that. He wanted the calming effect, the sedation; even as he thought it, the rush dwindled and the sedation came on. The Luminal would be next, in an hour or so, smoothing him out for the day, until he could make plans to get at Druze. The Xanax would calm him…