Teddy pushed down on the lake bottom, thrusting his body upward. Wriggling through the water, he thrashed at it with his arms and legs as if the dead bodies were chasing him and pulling him down. The weight of his clothing felt like an anchor, the pain in his chest, as if his lungs were made of lead. He was in the tunnel, squirming toward the darkness and running out of air. He thought about drowning. He was scared shitless his body might override his brain in the confusion and make the mistake of trying to draw in air. He knew that’s the way it would happened. Sucking in water instead of air.
He sunk his teeth into his lips, rising closer and still closer. The shadow darkened, then went black. He reached toward it with an open hand, felt a paper thin layer of ice break over his head and wake him up as it vanished.
His body heaved, then bobbed to the surface. He seized hold of the ice, fighting off tears and gasping for air. He was inside one of the tents, huffing on the fresh air in the darkness. His eyes glanced off a five-gallon bucket set beside a couple of canvas chairs. Stabbing at the ice with his fingernails, he clawed his way out of the hole and just laid there. He was panting like an animal, whimpering and shivering in the cold air. He stared at the hole in the ice for a long time. The water glowed like a lit window in the middle of the night.
He pulled himself together and managed to get to his feet, then found the opening in the nylon tent and staggered outside. His shoes were long gone. Ignoring the feel of his socks on the ice, he kept his eyes on the shoreline and moved toward it as if a monk in prayer, one brittle step at a time. He thought someone was walking with him as he reached the boat launch and started up the hill. Powell maybe. Kissing him and hugging him and keeping him warm as he listened to her breath wisping in his ear.
His eyes were fixed on the brake fluid, following its trail through the snow. When the second set of footprints registered, he filed it away and rose up the porch steps until he stood before the window like a zombie. He threw his elbow into the glass, reached inside for the lock, and hoisted the frame up and out of the way. Then he plunged through the hole, pivoting his stiff legs around the shattered glass on the floor and moving deeper into the house.
The rooms felt warm and toasty. When he spotted the thermostat on the wall, he became worried because it was only forty-five degrees. He turned the dial up to ninety, heard the furnace in the basement fire up, and searched for the stairs. He couldn’t find them. Room after room of closed doors led in a circle until he found himself in an entryway off the kitchen and stopped.
The boxes were stacked against the wall, and he wondered which house he was in. They looked like the same cartons he’d seen with Powell and Vega at the Trisco’s estate in Radnor. He counted fifteen of them. He ripped one open, then another. Most of the boxes contained men’s clothing. Others were packed with pictures still in their frames and odd bric-a-brac. When he found the photograph of Edward with his wounded dog, the picture he’d seen on the mantle, Teddy understood what was going on.
Trisco’s parents were getting rid of the evidence. But not from the crimes. Not the kidnappings or even the murders. They were trying to hide their relationship to their own son.
He shivered as he took it in.
After a moment, he reached inside the box for the last of the photographs. He couldn’t place it at first, his mind still icy and dull. It was a young woman with blond hair. A photograph taken a long time ago. Still, the face seemed so familiar to him. He stared at it and forced himself to think. Her mouth was shaped something like Valerie Kram’s. Her eyes reminded him of the picture he’d seen of Rosemary Gibb….
He dumped the photograph into the box, grabbed an armful of dry clothing off the floor and stepped into the den. Emptying his pockets onto the desk, he ripped off his wet clothes and sorted through the pile. The pair of jeans he found were tight, but fit. As he slipped a T-shirt over his head and found a sweater, he couldn’t help thinking that he was getting into the killer’s clothes.
He shook it off, his eyes on the phone. Above the number pad were the names of people the Triscos frequently called. Beside the names were twelve buttons which activated the number programmed into the phone. What struck Teddy was button number three. The entry was blank. Leaning closer, he noticed a faint impression of someone’s name that had been erased.
He glanced into the entryway and thought about the Trisco’s attempt at boxing up memories of their only son. Then he picked up the handset and hit the third button. The number flashed up on the display as the phone started dialing. He recognized the exchange from his days as a student at Penn. It was West Philadelphia, a depressed part of town.
As he listened to the phone ringing through the handset, Teddy opened the top desk drawer, found a pad of paper and grabbed a pen. He wrote the number down and thought it over. How many people could the Triscos know living in that part of the city?
Only one.
SIXTY-SIX
The fucking phone wouldn’t stop ringing….
Eddie looked at Rosemary stretched out on the table and couldn’t believe the lousy timing. Her engines were just heating up. But the phone rang past the usual eight and just kept going.
He couldn’t take it anymore.
He ran upstairs into the kitchen, grabbed the handset and slammed it back down again. Reveling in the silence, he parted the curtains and peered through the window toward the house on the corner. A man dressed like a plumber was getting out of a van and starting up the drive reviewing his clipboard.
The man was good actor, but not good enough. Eddie knew it was them. It had to be them, and they were destroying the moment.
The phone started ringing again.
Eddie screamed at the house through the window, then caught himself as the satellite dish on the roof caught his eye. It looked bigger than usual. Different. The eavesdropping device was pointed straight at him.
He shuddered. He couldn’t take the chance that his Fed neighbors were watching their monitor and knew what was going on inside his head right now. Turning away from the window, he spotted his Walkman by the sink and slipped the headphones over his ears. As he rolled the FM tuner back and forth, he searched for the country station but couldn’t find it. He took a deep breath, switching over to the TV band and settling for a rebroadcast of The Lawrence Welk Show on public television. Lawrence Welk would have to do.
He dialed the volume up until the sound of the phone became negligible, then headed upstairs to prepare for Rosemary’s final contribution to world history and the arts. Turning on the shower, he waited for the hot water and got out of his shirt. Inside the bedroom closet he pulled his robe off the hanger and laid it out on the bed with care. Then he kicked off his shoes, unbuttoned his pants and sat down at the end of the bed.
The headphones had slipped out of position. Eddie pushed them over his ears and listened. It was a recording from a live broadcast at the Champagne Theater in Branson, Missouri. All five living Champagne Ladies were there, and Welk promised that the Hotsy Totsy Boys would be singing a special tribute to Dixieland music later in the show.
Eddie smiled. Pure heaven waited in the wings.
He glanced at the clock radio on the side table, then removed the bandage from his leg and examined the wound. The cut was scabbing over and appeared to be healing. When he touched it with his finger, it stung a little but the morphine was still in play. He wouldn’t need to see a doctor, he thought. All in all, he was glad he only carried a sharp blade.