There she came.
Down the hospital steps.
Wearing a yellow rain slicker and black boots, made her look like a fisherman. Melissa was wearing a black cloth coat, kerchief on her head. Fifteen years older than Joyce. Prettier, too. Usually. Right now, she was pregnant as a goose.
Two of them walking toward the parking lot now.
He ducked down behind the wheel of the car.
Fog swirling in around the car, enclosing him.
Watched the yellow rain slicker. A beacon. Joyce in the slicker, bright yellow in the gray of the fog. Melissa's black coat swallowed by the gray, a vanishing act. A car door slamming. Another one. Headlights coming on. The old blue station wagon roared into life. Melissa pulled the car out into the fan of her own headlights, made a right turn, heading for the exit.
He waited.
Joyce started the Benz.
New car, the old man had bought it a month before he'd learned about the cancer. You could hardly hear the engine when it started. The headlights came on. He started his own car.
The Mercedes began moving.
He gave it a respectable lead, and then began following it.
* * * *
The house sat on four acres of choice land overlooking the water, a big gray Victorian mansion that had been kept in immaculate repair over the years since it was built. You couldn't find too many houses like this one nowadays, not here in the state of Washington, nor hardly anywhere else. You had to figure the house alone would bring twenty, thirty million dollars. That wasn't counting the furnishings. God alone knew what all those antiques were worth. Stuff the old lady had brought from Europe when she was still alive. And her jewelry? Had to be a fortune in there. The paintings, too. The old man had been a big collector before he got sick, the art in there had to be worth millions. The old Silver Cloud in the garage, the new Benz, the thirty-eight-foot Grand Banks sitting there at the dock, those were only frosting on the cake.
He parked the car in a stand of pines just to the north of the service road. Went in through the woods, walked well past the house and then approached it from the water side. Huge lawn sloping down to the water. Fog rolling in, you couldn't even see the boat at the dock no less the opposite shore. Lights burning in the upstairs bedroom of the house. The shade was up, he saw her move past the window. Wearing only a short nightgown. House was so naturally well protected by water and woods, not another house within shouting distance, she probably figured she could run around naked if she wanted to.
He could feel the weight of the gun in the pocket of his coal.
He was left-handed.
The gun was in the left-hand pocket.
He could remember movies where they caught the killer because he was left-handed. Left-handed people did things differently. Pulled matches off on the wrong side of the matchbook. Well, wrong side for right-handed people. That was the old chestnut, the matchbook. More left-handed killers got caught because they didn't see all those movies with the missing matches on the left side of the matchbook. Another thing was ink stains on the edge of the palm, near the pinky. In this country we wrote from left to right and the pen followed a right-handed person's hand, whereas the opposite was true for a left-handed person. A left-handed person trailed his hand over what he'd already written. Live and learn. If you were left-handed and you'd just finished writing a ransom note in red ink, it was best not to let the police see the edge of your palm near the pinky because there'd surely be red ink on it.
He smiled in the darkness.
Wondered if he should wait till she was asleep. Go in, shoot her in the head. Empty the gun in her, make it look like some lunatic did it. Maybe smash a few priceless vases afterward. Cops'd think somebody went berserk in there.
In a little while, the upstairs bedroom light went out.
He waited in the dark in the fog.
* * * *
In her dream, the wind was rattling palm fronds on some Caribbean island and there was the sound of surf crashing in against the shore. In her dream, she was a famous writer sitting in a little thatched hut, an old black Smith-Corona typewriter on a table in front of her, a little window open to a crescent-shaped beach and rows and rows of palms lining an aidless shore. The sky was incredibly blue behind the palms. In the there were low, green-covered mountains. She searched the sky and the mountains for inspiration.
In her dream, she reached idly for a ripe yellow banana in a pale blue bowl on a shelf near the open window. Beautifully shaped bowl. Bunch of bananas in it. She pulled a banana from the bunch. And peeled it down to where her hand was holding it. And brought it to her lips. And put it in her mouth. And was biting down on it when suddenly it turned cold and hard.
Her eyes popped wide open.
The barrel of a gun was in her mouth.
A man was standing beside the bed. Black hat pulled low on his forehead. Black silk handkerchief covering his nose and his mouth. Only hiss eyes showed. Pinpoints of light glowing in them, reflections from the night light in the wall socket across the room.
He said, 'Shhhhh.'
The gun in his left hand.
'Shhhhh.'
The gun in her mouth.
'Shhhhh, Joyce.'
He knew her name.
She thought, How does he know my name?
He said, 'Your baby is dead, Joyce.'
His voice a whisper.
'Susan is dead,' he said. 'She died on New Year's Eve.'
All whispers sounded alike, but there was something about the cadence, the rhythm, the slow, steady spacing of his words that sounded familiar. Did she know him?
'Are you sorry you gave the baby away?' he said.
She wondered if she should say Yes. Nod. Let him know she was sorry, yes. The gun in her mouth. Wondered if that was the answer he was looking for. She would give him any answer he wanted, provided it was the right answer. She was not at all sorry that she had given the baby away, had never for a moment regretted her decision, was sorry now that the baby was dead, yes, but only because she'd have been sorry about the death of any infant. But if he wanted her to say-
'I killed the baby,' he said.
Oh Jesus, she thought.
'Your baby,' he said.
Oh Jesus, who are you? she thought.
'And now I'm going to kill you,' he said.
She shook her head.
He was holding the gun loosely, allowing it to follow the motion of her head. Her saliva flowed around the barrel of the gun. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. The barrel was slippery with spit.
'Yes,' he said.
And turned her head so that she was facing him.
Used the gun to turn her head.
A steady pressure on the gun in her mouth, turning her head so that the left side of her face was on the pillow, his arm straight out, his hand and the gun perpendicular to the bed.