“No. Not that I saw.”
“Is there anything in particular that we didn’t ask about? Anything. Even if it seems unimportant to you, but for some reason stuck in your mind.”
Peltz pressed his fingertips into his temples to make a show of thinking. “The way he moved, maybe. He was quick and kind of hopped. And his body hair. It was dark, and he had a lot of it.” He shook his head. “God! Poor Margaret.”
“Sounds like she was attacked by some kind of animal,” Fedderman said.
Peltz said, “No. But there was something about him . . .”
“Like a leprechaun?”
“No.”
“A gremlin?”
“Yeah!” He looked momentarily confused. “However a gremlin’s supposed to look.”
“You’re sure Margaret was dead when you first saw her last night through the peephole?” Quinn asked.
The shaking got worse. There were tears now, and Peltz’s voice cracked. “Her head was detached.”
Quinn made an effort to keep calm. To at least appear calm. He was the one assigned to find and stop this monster.
“No one could blame you for being upset,” he said to Peltz.
“Jesus save me! Horrible as it was, I couldn’t look away.”
“We understand,” Quinn said. “Anyone would react as you did. Even old cops like us.”
Fedderman glared at him.
Quinn almost felt guilty about the anger he experienced on learning that Peltz was merely a voyeur and didn’t photograph or video Margaret or her killer.
He started toward the door. “If you think of anything else, Mr. Peltz . . .”
“Of course. I’ll let you know.”
“They’ll want your statement down at the precinct house.”
Peltz seemed annoyed. “Another statement? I thought that’s what this was. Why so many statements?”
“C’mon, Mr. Peltz, you watch cop shows on TV.”
“Yeah. You want to see if I contradict myself, then it’ll be my ass.”
“It’s been our experience,” Quinn said, “that people who don’t contradict themselves are usually lying.”
They were silent as they left the building. Out on the sun-warmed sidewalk, Peltz stopped as if his batteries had suddenly run down.
“We going back to my apartment?”
“No,” Quinn said. “We’ll let you face your wife by yourself.”
“All that stuff about the peephole in the closet, will it be on the news?”
“Most likely.”
“Do you photograph well?” Fedderman asked.
Peltz looked angry enough to attack Fedderman. Even took a step toward him. Fedderman didn’t back up.
“Now, now,” Quinn said, moving between them.
“It’s all your fault,” Peltz said, still zeroed in on Fedderman. “You’re supposed to catch dangerous psychos like that, keep them from killing.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Quinn said.
That seemed to calm Peltz. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. “Okay, I’m sorry. I guess I got lost in my own anger, in those images of Margaret. I couldn’t look away.”
“You told us that,” Fedderman said.
Peltz looked mournfully at him. “I’d like to think you believe me.”
Fedderman turned and walked toward the car.
When Quinn had gotten in on the driver’s side and slammed the car door closed, he lowered the window to let out some of the heat. Peltz bent down and said, “Why’s your partner got such a hard-on for me?”
“It’s that part about you wanting to be believed. He mostly doesn’t believe anyone.” Quinn smiled. “I’m pretty much the same way.”
Peltz looked enraged, his temper barely in check. “Bad cop, bad cop,” he said in disgust. He crossed his arms and stood unmoving as a rock.
Quinn said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Quinn started the car and turned the air-conditioning on high. He didn’t drive away immediately, though. After a minute or so, he goosed the Lincoln and made the tires squeal. He wanted to be sure Bud Peltz saw them leave.
“Something not ring true to you?” Fedderman asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure if it matters, except to Maria Peltz.”
“You think Peltz might be abusing her?”
“Or she him,” Quinn said.
“He’s got a temper,” Fedderman said, watching Peltz move toward his apartment like a condemned man, “but he controls it.”
“Let’s hope his wife controls hers,” Quinn said. “That woman reminds me of a stick of dynamite.”
Fedderman said, “Notice we’re both more concerned that she’s going to do him serious harm, rather than the other way around?”
Quinn said, “That oughta tell us something.”
PART TWO
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate
undertakings.
—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
22
Iowa, 1991
As Jordan Kray watched, the propane explosion obliterated the only house he’d ever lived in. Shingles and wooden splinters flew. Chimney bricks and large sections of the house became airborne and arced away from the fiery explosion in all directions. No one could live through the blast and the inferno.
They were dead. His family was dead.
For a moment he saw a flame-shrouded dark figure that might have been his mother running, flailing her arms. Or he might have imagined it. She was dead when he saw her; she had to be.
Another figure, that he knew wasn’t a mirage, was hurrying toward him, still absently lugging the fire extinguisher. Ben the bus driver, lucky to be alive. Ben was forty pounds overweight, most of it in his gut, and could run only so fast. But despite his slowness afoot, his fear had helped to propel him outside the radius of death caused by the propane blast.
Also outside the reach of the explosion, Jordan found himself wondering about the effects of what he’d done.
Was he detached? Already? No. He definitely wasn’t detached. And he wasn’t horrified or in shock. Maybe he should be both those things. Instead he was being observant and reasonable. Analytical and curious.
He was aware that others might assume that his calm silence was a symptom of shock. Well, let them.
What he’d planned had worked. He was proud of that but knew he mustn’t let anyone realize it. He put on his mental mask. Its expression was one of disbelief and disorientation rather than accomplishment.
What would the house look like later, inside its burning walls? How would the walls and what was left of the wiring and plumbing look? There was a steel I beam running the length of the basement. Would it be melted? Or would it withstand heat and explosion long enough to prevent the house from collapsing into the basement? And what about the heating vents? Had the flames found them to be an easy route through the rest of the house?
The firefighting books Jordan had read in the library were accurate and useful. The precautions, when read and interpreted from a different point of view, provided instructions from hell.
The bus was far enough onto the road shoulder to make room for a fire engine, a red-light-festooned chief’s car, and several pickup trucks. What there was of the local fire department. The lead vehicles had their lights flashing. None of them sounded a siren. There was no point. The firefighters could see for miles and it was just them and the fire that was drawing them like a magnet.
Ben and Jordan returned to the bus. Ben, looking at the kids in the rearview mirror, fastened the emergency brake and said, “We might as well watch what happens from here and stay outta the way.” He opened the bus’s front and rear doors, then switched off the engine and air conditioner. In the sweltering heat and silence, several of the kids raised the bus’s side windows. A welcome breeze played down the aisle.