Shifting identities.
A manipulative psychopath.
Carter rocked and shook violently. Spit up clear mucus and groaned.
Not acting.
"Please leave, Inspector," said Hauser.
Not Carter. Then who?
Oh, God, who?
Then he thought of the watchman's warning: When Mr. Baldwin returns you'll be in big-
When Mr. Baldwin returns from where?
According to the surveillance log, the administrator hadn't left the Amelia Catherine since Sunday morning.
Shifting identities.
Exchanging identities.
Dr. Terrific.
Runs the place. Boss over the doctors.
Takes on an alter ego when he goes out to kill.
Carter on nightwalk-but not Carter.
False Hassid.
False Arab driving a white Mercedes diesel. Carrying cardboard boxes labeled records. No beard.
Judged possibly large enough to conceal a human body if the body was bent to the point of contortion.
Or small.
A child's body.
He granted Hauser her wish. Ran for the door labeled BALDWIN, S.T.
Locked.
He aimed the Beretta, shattered the lock, stepped in, ready to kill.
A large room, tile-floored and whitewashed, twice the size of Carter's
Blueprint recall; storage pantry.
Big, cast-iron bed. The covers drawn and tucked military tight. Neat and clean, everything in its place.
A Hassid's clothes folded neatly on the bed. False red beard, eyeglasses.
Something shiny and green.
A butterfly pin, silver filigree with malachite eyes.
Not a sign of the monster.
No Shoshi.
He followed the Beretta into the bathroom.
No one.
Luggage in the corner: three suitcases, packed tight and fastened.
A messy one, Danny.
Swallowing his fear, he opened them.
Only clothes in the two bigger ones, neatly folded. He scooped his hands under the garments, tossed them out, opened the smallest.
Toiletries, a shaving kit. False mustaches, wigs, more beards, bottle of hair dye, tubes of theatrical makeup.
In the shaving kit was a one-way ticket on a Greek-registered ship to Cyprus, leaving tomorrow from Eilat Harbor.
He faked us out, Pakad.
He searched the closet: empty.
Looked for attic passages, trapdoors.
Nothing.
Where? The cave? Border Patrol staked out down there- he would have been notified.
He sank to his knees, looked under the cast-iron bed. Silly ritual, like checking for ghosts.
Saw brass hinges, a rise in the tile. Wood.
Trapdoor in the floor.
Blueprint recalclass="underline" the auxiliary wine Cellar.
Moving the bed.
The door a solid hardwood rectangle stretching from the center of the room to one wall. The doorknob had been removed, the hole plugged with wood.
Pry marks around the edges. A crowbar or something like it.
He looked for the tool. Nothing-bastard had taken it down with him.
He struggled to pry it open, lost his hold several times, mashing his nails and tearing skin from his fingers. Finally he managed to pull up hard enough. Open the door, then stepped back.
Darkness below.
He slipped into it.
Abba's coming!
He descended silently, frantically, on narrow stone stairs. A score of them, pitched steeply.
The darkness absolute, dizzying. Touching moist stone walls for support and orientation.
Please, God.
The passageway twisted, shifting direction, then more stairs, a dank chill rising from unseen depths.
He sped down blindly.
A deep cellar. Good-perhaps the sound of the gunshot hadn't penetrated.
Another twist. More steps.
Then the bottom, gripping the Beretta, extending his bad hand. Metal. He explored, flumbing with damaged fingers, holding his breath. A low metal door, rounded at the top. Sheet metal-he could feel the seams, the bolts. Took hold of a handle, turned, and pushed.
Opening. Silence. No monster.
But he was assailed by icy white light.
Momentarily sightless, he stepped back reflexively, shielding his eyes and blinking. His pupils constricted painfully.
When they were partially adjusted, he took a step forward, saw that he was in a small, cavelike room, empty save for a troughlike double sink and two floor drains encrusted with something unhealthy-looking.
The floors, walls, and ceilings were rough-hewn stone, the entire space scooped out of bedrock. Age-blackened rock streaked with greenish-blue mold and overlaid with a warped wooden exoskeleton-widely spaced pine laths laid cross-hatched over the walls; knotted overhead beams from which hung panels of fluorescent tubes on chains.
Dozens of fluorescent tubes-half a hundred, emitting an eye-searing flood of light.
He heard laughter, turned toward it.
At the end of the room, beyond the light, was another door-old, flimsy, wooden, banded with rusty iron. He ran to it, nudged it open, stepped into another room, somewhat larger than the first, the light brighter, tinted an odd silvery lavender.
Cold air, chemically bitter. Another trough, more drains.
At the center was a long steel-topped table on stout metal legs that had been bolted to the floor.
Daniel stood at its foot, looking down on soft whiteness, white buds-the soles of two small feet. Two fragile calves, a hairless pubis, spindle ribs, concave belly, flat chest.
His baby's naked body, the dusky skin blanched by the light.
She lay motionless in a nest of white sheeting, a pinpoint of red in the crook of one Jimp arm.
Her neck and shoulders had been propped up on several rolled pillows, thrusting the head back, chin upward, mouth open. Her lily-stem throat forced into the most vulnerable of convexities.
The sacrificial arch.
He yearned to rush to her, cover her, was stopped by the knife that caressed her trachea. Long-bladed, double-edged, pearl handled.
White on white.
So still. Oh, God, no-but no blood other than the needle mark, the body sculpture-perfect, not a wound. Her chest rose and left in a shadow, narcotized cadence.
The gift of time
Behind her, a mass of white. White hands-big hands, thick-fingered. One gripping the handle of the knife. The other submerged in her curls, entangled. Stroking, caressing
Ugly laughter.
Baldwin, standing at the head of the table-looming, naked, Shoshi's head shielding his chest, her life contingent upon the turn of a wrist.