She said, “I should do what Dr. Krueger wants me to do.”
“No. You should not.” Very soft, very certain. Yes, she knew that voice. Her eyes opened wide. She saw him. “Devereaux,” she said. She had never called him by his first name. She knew him now, it really was him, he had come to her after all these years.
“But what if this is a dream?” she said.
Dr. Krueger said, “You’re not dreaming, Rita.” Very gently.
“Yes. This is the dream where Devereaux comes, only now you’re part of the dream as well,” Rita Macklin said. “Is that right?”
“You’re confused,” Dr. Krueger said.
The sanitarium director finally spoke. “I think she would like to return to her room.”
“You’re tired,” Dr. Krueger said.
“Yes, I must be tired,” Rita said. But she stared at Devereaux.
Devereaux said, “I’ll never leave you again.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“You said words lie.”
“Everything is changed.”
“Is it changed?”
“Come on, Rita.”
“Do I have to go, Dr. Krueger?”
Dr. Krueger shook his head.
Devereaux said, “But you have to go.”
Dr. Krueger said, “She’s staying here. You’ve overplayed—”
Devereaux decided.
He took Rita’s arm and began to walk her the necessary ten steps to the front doors of the sanitarium. Dr. Krueger said, “You’re not going anywhere, I’ll call the police.”
And Devereaux turned at the door. “Dr. Krueger, come.”
Krueger wondered if Devereaux could do anything to him. This was his world. The director was here. There were witnesses.
And the man had a gun and had fired it twice.
“Dr. Krueger,” said the director. “Are you all right?”
“No. I’m all right. I’m all right.” He took a step toward the door. “I’m all right,” he said again. He heard the remembered shot echo in his head and he felt unbalanced for a moment. Terror squeezed him again as it had in his study.
They got into the car, Devereaux and Rita in the backseat.
The director stood on the concrete steps and watched the Mercedes pull around the gravel drive and head for the road that was beyond the trees.
They reached Dr. Krueger’s house shortly after eight P.M. A soft and warm Washington night surrounded the old houses on the block. Trees filled the sky and the clouds over the city were colored red by the lights from the earth.
They all went inside. Dr. Krueger turned on the lights. They went into the study and he turned to Devereaux.
“What are you going to do now?”
“What’s she on?”
“A mild sedative that—”
“Tell me.”
Krueger lied.
Devereaux shook his head.
“Look, I did what you asked me to—”
“But you didn’t do it well. And you started to lose your terror, back there in the sanitarium. You almost forgot that I could have killed you.”
Rita stood next to Devereaux but her hands were at her sides in a completely passive pose. She was hearing the dialogue but it came to her faintly, like the voices on a distant television heard on warm summer nights when all the windows are open.
“You know this is wrong, everything you’re doing is wrong, you’re harming this woman.”
Devereaux said, “Rita. Go outside and wait in the car. It’s a warm night.”
Rita said, “Are we all going someplace?”
“Yes. We’re going someplace.”
“Back to the hospital,” she said to Dr. Krueger.
But Krueger was staring at Devereaux as though he were seeing him for the first time. The fear was coming back exactly as it had been before; the moments without terror were illusions, Krueger saw.
Rita walked out of the room, hands at her sides, doing as she was told. She was trembling because the drugs of the afternoon were beginning to lose their hold on her. The bad dreams of night would be coming unless she could get a powerful enough sedative to sleep right through them, no matter how horrible they were. Devereaux was always in the dreams. Sometimes he was watching her and he was smiling because she was in pain. She was bleeding, lying on gravel, crying for him, and he loomed over her and watched her bleed and die.
She opened the door of the Mercedes and slid into the backseat because that was the seat the men had given her when they took her to Dr. Krueger’s house. She closed the door. There was perfect silence in the world.
Then she heard the scream.
It was long, awful, like the screams in the sanitarium when one of the women had a nightmare. Or when she had a nightmare and awoke and could hear her own screaming. The scream tore through her thin body and made her tremble all the more.
The scream was a single scream and lasted a very long time.
Oh, God, deliver them from pain and suffering, she thought.
And then she thought of hell.
And then she thought of Devereaux. He would never come to see her again. Even if she was dying.
She was dying, she was sure of it.
Devereaux opened the door on the driver’s side and looked at Rita in the backseat. “Come sit in the front,” he said.
“I did the wrong thing,” she said.
“No. It’s all right.”
“Where’s Dr. Krueger?”
“He said he couldn’t come,” Devereaux said.
Rita opened her door and changed seats. Devereaux slid behind the wheel and fired the ignition. The car purred into gear and rolled down the quiet block.
Rita stared at nothing.
Devereaux turned to look at her from time to time but they did not speak again all the way into the part of the city where Mac lived.
21
Matthew O’Day was having sex with Maureen Kilkenny when the telephone rang in the hotel room.
He withdrew from her body and padded across the carpeting to the receiver inconveniently located on a cheap Formica-topped credenza that was screwed into the wall. The hotel was one of the drearier railroad station hotels down from Paddington Station in a slummy neighborhood of London.
“Yeah?”
“You got five minutes to get to the buffet in Paddington Station. Alone. And that means leave the girl in bed.”
The receiver clicked.
“Bloody hell I will,” Matthew O’Day said. But he was already slipping into his undershorts.
It was dead Sunday morning, London time. The pubs were closed, the restaurants were closed, the banks were closed, the windows were closed, the traditional English Sunday yawned ahead, or at least until the public houses opened at noon and the alcoholics and the gentry could mingle over Bloody Marys and pints of lager. The churches were all open and here and there, some appeared to be filled.
Maureen had red hair of the dark, Irish hue and a freckled, fresh face. Only her eyes were absolutely mad, evidence that she took as much pleasure in murder for the cause as in anything else. Including sex. Particularly sex with Matthew O’Day, who was wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
Her nipples were erect and she was leaning on her side. “Where the bloody hell are you goin’, man?”
Her voice ended in the traditional soft Irish lilt with the upturned note on the last syllable, which is a peculiarity of the Northern Irish.
“A man called this time,” he said. “I don’t know what’s up and I’m gonna find out. He wants me alone.”
“Fuck him,” she said, making the word sound like “fook.”
“I’m gonna fuck them all, darlin’, but I got to find out how many there are and what this is all about. So maybe I’ll just do as the fella says and you’ll do as you’re told as well.” The words were tenor light and carried the edge of a straight razor for all that.