Cold musty air announced the basement, and I felt along the wall for a light switch. My fingers hit it and I flipped it up, flooding dark red painted wooden stairs. I went down them because I had to see what was there. Nothing was going to stop me, not even fear of her finding me. My heart was beating hard against my ribs as if it were trying to escape.
Chuck Steiner's worktable was still there, cluttered with tools and gears and an old clock face frozen in time. Pith buttons were scattered about, most of them imprinted with the greasy shapes of the delicate parts they once had cleaned and held. Some were on the concrete floor here and there, along with bits of wire, small nails and screws. Empty hulls of old grandfather clocks stood silent sentry in shadows, and I spotted ancient radios and televisions, too, along with miscellaneous furniture thick with dust.
Walls were white cinder block without windows, and arranged on an expansive pegboard were neat coils of extension cords and other cords and ropes of different materials and thicknesses. I thought of the macrame draped over furniture upstairs, of the intricate lacework of knotted cords covering armrests, chair backs, and cradling plants hanging from eye bolts in ceilings. I envisioned the noose with its hangman's knot that had been cut from Max Ferguson's neck. In retrospect, it seemed unbelievable no one had searched this basement before. Even as the police had looked for little Emily, she probably had been down here.
I pulled a string to turn on another light, but the bulb was burned out. I was still without a flashlight, and my heart was drumming so hard I almost couldn't breathe as I wandered. Near a wall stacked with firewood coated with cobwebs, I found another shut door leading outside. Near a water heater another door led to a full bathroom, and I switched on the light.
I looked around at old white porcelain spattered with paint. The toilet probably had not been flushed in years, for standing water had stained the bowl the color of rust. A brush with bristles stiff and bent like a hand was in the sink, and then I looked inside the tub. I found the quarter almost in the middle of it, with George Washington faceup, and I detected a trace of blood around the drain. I backed out as the door at the top of the stairs suddenly shut, and I heard the bolt slide. Denesa Steiner had just locked me in.
I ran in several directions, my eyes darting around as I tried to think what to do. Dashing to the door near the woodpile, I turned the lock on the knob, threw back the burglar chain, and suddenly found myself in the sunny backyard. I did not see or hear anyone, but I believed she was watching me. She had to know I would come out this way, and I realized with growing horror what was happening. She wasn't trying to trap me at all. She was locking me out of her house, making certain I couldn't come back upstairs.
I thought of Marino, and my hands were shaking so hard I almost couldn't get his keys out of my pocket as I ran around the corner to the driveway. I unlocked the passenger's door of his polished Chevrolet. The stainless steel Winchester was under the front seat where he always kept his shotgun.
The gun was as cold as ice in my hands as I ran back to the house, leaving the car door wide open. The front door was locked, as I had expected. But there were glass panes on either side of it and I tapped one with the butt of the gun. Glass shattered and lightly fell to carpet on the other side. Wrapping my scarf around my hand, I carefully reached inside and unlocked the door. Then I was running up carpeted stairs, and it was as if someone else were me or I had vacated my own mind. I was in a mode that was more machine than human. I remembered the room lit up last night and ran that way.
The door was shut, and when I opened it she was there, sitting placidly on the edge of the bed where Marino lay, a plastic trash bag over his head and taped around his neck. What happened next was simultaneous. I released the safety and racked the shotgun as she grabbed his pistol off the table and stood. Our guns raised together and I fired. The deafening blast hit her like a fierce gust of wind, and she fell back against the wall as I pumped and fired and pumped and fired again and again.
She slid down the wall, and blood streaked the girlish wallpaper. Smoke and burned powder filled the air. I ripped the bag off Marino's head. His face was blue and I felt no pulse in his carotids. I pounded his chest, blew into his mouth once, and compressed his chest four times, and he gasped. He began to breathe. Grabbing the phone, I called 911 and screamed as if I were on a police radio during a mayday.
"Officer down! Officer down! Send an ambulance!"
"Ma'am, where are you?"
I had no idea of the address.
"The Steiner house! Please hurry!" I left the phone off the hook.
I tried to sit Marino up in bed but he was too heavy.
"Come on. Come on."
I turned his face to one side and slipped my fingers under his jaw to keep it pulled forward so his airway would stay clear. I glanced around for pill bottles, for any indication of what she might have given him. Empty liquor glasses were on the table by the bed. I sniffed them and smelled bourbon, and I stared at her numbly. I saw blood and brains everywhere as I trembled like a creature in its agonal stages. I shook and twitched as if in the throes of death. She was slumped, almost sitting, with her back against the wall in a spreading puddle of blood. Her black clothes were soaked and riddled with holes, her head hanging to one side and dripping on the floor.
When sirens sounded they seemed to wail forever before I was aware of many feet hurrying upstairs, of the sounds of a stretcher banging and being unfolded, and then somehow Wesley was there. He put his arms around me and held me hard as men in jumpsuits surrounded Marino. Red and blue lights throbbed outside the window and I realized I had shot out the glass. Air blowing in was very cold. It stirred blood-spattered curtains of balloons flying free through a sky pale yellow. I looked at the ice-blue duvet and stuffed animals all around. There were rainbow decals on the mirror and a poster of Winnie the Pooh.
"It's her room," I told Wesley.
"It's all right." He stroked my hair.
"It's Emily's room," I said.
21
I left Black Mountain the next morning, which was a Monday, and Wesley wanted to go with me but I chose to go alone. I had unfinished business, and he needed to stay with Marino, who was in the hospital after having Demerol pumped out of his stomach. He would be fine, at least physically, then Wesley was bringing him to Quantico. Marino needed to be debriefed like an agent who's been under deep cover. He needed rest, security, and his friends.
On the plane I had a row to myself and made many notes. The case of Emily Steiner's murder had been cleared when I had killed her mother.
I had given my statement to the police, and the case would be under investigation for a while. But I was not worried and had no reason to be. I just did not know what to feel. It bothered me some that I did not feel sorry.
I was aware only of feeling so tired that the slightest exertion was an effort. It was as if I had been transfused with lead. Even moving the pen was hard, and my mind would not work fast. At intervals I found myself staring without seeing or blinking, and I would not know how long I had been doing that or where I had gone. My first job was to write up the case, and in part this was for the FBI investigation, and in part it was for the police investigating me. The pieces were fitting together well, but some questions would never be answered because there was no one left to tell. For example, we would never know exactly what happened the night of Emily's death. But I had developed a theory.
I believed she hurried home before her meeting ended and got into a fight with her mother. This may have happened over dinner, when I suspected Mrs. Steiner may have punished Emily by heavily salting her food. Salt ingestion is a form of child abuse that, horrifically, is not uncommon.