"I have to do something," Grace whispered. He was coming.
"No." Andi shook her head. "I don't think… I don't think he'll do anything when I'm like this."
"He's killing you. I thought you were dying already," Grace whispered. She was crouched on the back corner of the mattress, like a cowering dog at the pound, Andi thought. The girl's eyes were too bright, her lips pale, her skin stretched thin like tracing paper.
"He might be, but we can't fight him yet. He's too big. We need… something." She pushed herself up, feeling the impact of Mail's footsteps on the stairs. "We need something we can kill him with."
"What?" Grace looked wildly around the cell. There was nothing.
"We have to think… but I can't think. I can't think." Andi put her hands to her head, at the temples, as though trying to hold her skull together.
He was close, on the stairs. "You have to lie down, just like you were," Grace said fiercely. "With your hands over your eyes. Don't say anything, no matter what."
She pushed her mother down, and they heard the slide-lock pulled back. Andi, too weak to argue, and without the time, nodded and put her arm up and closed her eyes. Grace pulled back in the corner, her feet pulled tight to her thighs, her arms around her legs, looking up at the door.
Mail peered through the crack, saw them, undid the chain, opened the door. "Get up," he said to Andi.
Grace, frightened, said, "You did something to her. She hasn't moved since you left."
That pushed him back.
Mail's forehead wrinkled and he said, harshly, "Get up," and he pushed Andi's foot with his own.
Andi rolled half over, then pulled herself away from him, toward the wall, like a cartoon woman dying of thirst in a desert. She inched away, pathetic.
"You really hurt her, this time," Grace said, and she began to bawl.
"Shut up," Mail snarled. "Shut up, goddamnit, little fuckin' whiner…"
He took a step toward her, as though to hit her, and Grace choked off the sobs and tried to pull herself tighter to the wall. Mail hesitated, then pushed Andi again. "Get up."
Andi rolled some more, and began to inch away again. Mail caught her feet and twisted them, and she flipped onto her back. "Water," she whimpered.
"What?"
Her eyes closed and she lay limp as a rag. Grace began bawling again, and Mail shouted, "Shut up, I said," and backed away, uncertain now.
"You hurt her," Grace said.
"She wasn't like this when I put her back in," Mail said. "She was walking."
"I think you did something to her… mind. She talks to Genevieve and Daddy. Where's Gen? What did you do with her? Is she with Daddy?"
"Ah, fuck," Mail said, exasperated. He probed Andi again, pushing her left foot with his own. "You'd best get better, 'cause I'm not done with you yet," he said. "We're not done, at all."
He backed out of the room, and said to Grace, "Give her some water."
"I do," Grace sobbed. "But then she… wets on the floor."
"Ah, for Christ sakes," Mail said. The door slammed, but the bolt didn't slide shut. Grace held her breath. Had he forgotten? No. The door opened again, and Mail threw in a towel.
Grace had seen it, when he'd taken her mother out of the cell, lying on the floor beside the mattress he used when he raped her. "Clean her up," Mail said. "I'll be back in the morning."
The door closed again, and they heard his footsteps on the stairs. They waited, unmoving, but he didn't return.
"That was great," Andi whispered. She pushed herself up and felt the tears running down her face and she actually smiled through her cracked lips. "Grace, that was wonderful."
"That's once we beat him," Grace whispered back.
"We can do it again," Andi said. She propped herself up and tilted her head back. "But we've got to find something."
"Find what?"
"A weapon. Something we can kill him with."
"In here?" Grace looked around the barren cell, her eyes wide but not quite hopeless. "Where?"
"We'll find something," Andi said. "We have to."
Mail took the van-the van was blue now, and the sign on the side doors was clear: "Computer Roses"-and rode it down to Highway Three and I-494, filled the tank, and put a little more than four gallons in the red, five-gallon plastic gas can in the back. Inside the convenience store, he bought two quarts of motor oil and paid for it all with a twenty.
He took forty minutes riding out to Minnetonka, thinking it over. Mail thought a lot about crime, about the way things worked. If he were in a movie, he'd break into the boat works, use a flashlight, go through the files, and then play a breathless game of hide-and-seek with a security guard.
But this wasn't a movie, and his best protection was simply timing and invisibility.
Irv's Boat Works was tucked into a curve in the road just off the lake, along with a shabby gas station, a grocery store, and an ice cream parlor, all closed..He drove by once, looking for movement, looking for cops. He saw two moving cars, one in front and one behind, and no cops. Nobody walking. The only light in the buildings was in an ice cream freezer.
He drove a half-mile down the road to an intersection, did a U-turn, and went back the same way. Another car passed; a house a quarter mile past the station was fully lit, although he didn't see anybody around. He drove out to a SuperAmerica store, parked, walked around to the back of the van, and let himself inside. He took just a minute to mix the motor oil with the gas, the fumes giving him a small mental charge: he hadn't done this since he got out of the hospital-he didn't need it anymore-but it still held something for him.
When he finished mixing, he went into the Tom Thumb and bought a cheap plastic cigarette lighter and a Coke. He already had a role of duct tape in the glove compartment. Back in the truck, he put the tape on the lighter so it'd be ready, opened the Coke and put it in the van's can-holder, and drove back toward Irv's.
The place was little more than a wooden shack, with a dock, gas pump, and launching ramp out back. Twenty aluminum fishing boats bobbed off the dock. Inside, he remembered a counter with a cash register, a half-dozen tanks for minnows and shiners, a few pieces of cheap fishing gear in wall racks, and a big, loose pile of green flotation cushions and orange round-the-neck life preservers. The whole place smelled of gas and oil, waterweed and rot.
Mail drove by once more, did his U-turn, looked for cars coming up behind, waited until one passed, and then followed it back to Irv's. Nothing out ahead. He swerved into the parking lot, stopped just outside the dusty picture-window where the fading red stick-up letters said, Irv's boat work with a missing final "s."
He left the engine running, walked quickly around to the back of the van, took a jackknife out of his pocket, and cut a grapefruit-size hole in the top of the plastic gas can. The smell of gas was thick. He picked the can up, ready to ease it out the door, when headlights came up. He stopped, listening, but the car purred past.
He climbed out, got the lighter off the passenger seat, turned it up full, taped the sparking-lever down so he had a miniature torch, then picked up the five-gallon jug and heaved it through the window.
The window shattered with the sound of a load of dishes dropped in a diner: but nobody yelled, nobody came running. He tossed the lighter after the gas, and the building went up with a hollow whoom. By the time he was out of the parking lot, the fire was all over the inside of the building.
Damn. Wished he could stay.
He watched the building in the rearview mirror, until it disappeared behind a curve. When he was a kid, he'd torched a house in North St. Paul and had come back to sit on an elementary school embankment to watch the action. He liked the flames. Even more, he'd liked the excitement and companionship of the crowd, gathered to watch the fire. He felt like an entertainer, a movie star: he'd done this.
And listening, back then, he realized that everybody could find a little joy in watching one of their neighbors get burned out.