"When?" he asked.
"When she was buried," Joan answered. "Of course."
"So I had to stop her. For her own good, I had to stop her."
"Yes?"
"I got a shovel. I went to where she was buried. In the Edgewater Cemetery, near Erie. You've been there, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"I went there at night. When the moon was new, so it was very dark. Lila walked when the moon was full." She paused. "I took my shovel to her grave and I began to dig." She stopped, looked questioningly at Creosote, then at Ryerson. "I'm sorry; it just occurred to me that I probably insulted your dog when I said he looked like the demons that I see."
"He'll survive," Ryerson said.
"Yes," Joan said. "And I dug Lila up." She looked momentarily astonished. "I dug her up; I dug my friend's body up! Rye, I dug and I dug and I dug! And then I shot her!"
~ * ~
The woman who called herself Loni was aware of a vague sensation of pressure where Laurie Drake had popped out from inside her, and if she had bothered to look, she would have seen that not only was the white blouse ripped from under her arm to where it tucked beneath the black skirt, but that a gaping creamy-pink gash rimmed by jagged protruding ribs and what passed for internal organs were visible beneath. But she didn't bother to look because she was involved in other things. Most important, she was involved in being alive, in being aware of herself and of the people on Baldridge Street, five blocks from Lawrence, only a couple of blocks from the area called "The District." The people were, predictably, looking slack-mouthed at her because they had never before seen such an incredible wound as hers.
"Hello," she cooed to a young man walking toward her; he was dressed in a neat but casual way, as if to take someone to a movie. "My name's Loni. What's yours?"
He hadn't seen her wound, yet; it was on her left side; he was approaching obliquely from her right. And though he had seen the half-dozen or so other people on Baldridge Street staring at her, he thought it was merely because she was so wonderfully attractive.
"My name's Benny," he said, a huge smile crinkling his pink, scrubbed face. How marvelous and how unbelievable, he thought, that this woman should be talking to him, that she should even be looking at 'him the way she was. Damn, it was like a dream. "Benny Bloom," he added; he had stopped walking and was letting her move closer to him. He still had not seen the wound at her left side, and because his attention was now solely on her, he did not see either that some of the slack-mouthed stares of the other people on the street had changed to stares of fear and revulsion, as if something unspeakably obscene had just been dropped into their midsts. One of these onlookers, a young woman wearing white jeans, said to Loni, "Miss, you're hurt; can I help you?" and though Benny heard the woman, her words did not register. He said again, "My name's Benny."
Loni stopped a few feet away; she was turned obliquely to him so her wound still was not visible. Benny added, "My real name is Benjamin."
"Miss," said the same young woman in white jeans, who now reached out to touch Loni's arm, "you're hurt; do you know you're hurt? Can I-"
Loni's movements were incredibly quick. She swung out with her left arm, hand wide, fingers arched, as if her hand were a claw, and caught the young woman in the ear, first, and tore it off, then, nails digging deep into the skin, ripped away half the woman's cheek before the woman fell to the sidewalk screaming in pain; she pushed herself to a kneeling position almost at once.
Benny Bloom could not believe what he was seeing. He smiled nervously. "Jumpin' criminy!" he whispered. Then, deep inside him, some slumbering sense of chivalry and heroism awoke and he threw his arms around Loni as if giving her a bear hug from behind. "No!" he screamed. "Stop it, stop it!" And as he screamed he was dimly aware of the incredible strength he felt in her. He squeezed harder.
"No!" Loni screamed.
"No!" Benny screamed.
And on the sidewalk, the young woman in white jeans moaned in pain and confusion.
Loni's upper body bent forward; Benny came with it, feet lifting from the sidewalk.
"Let her go!" he heard a man holler from close by.
Loni began to back toward the store window behind her.
"Let her go!" the same man said.
On the sidewalk the woman in white jeans had seen the blood pooling beneath her and she began to scream.
Loni screamed, too. So did Benny.
A cop appeared at the other side of the street just as the woman in white jeans fainted from shock and collapsed face forward to the sidewalk.
The cop, not understanding what he was seeing, drew his gun and pointed it at Benny Bloom. "Stop-" the cop began.
Loni backed Benny into the store window; his feet hit it and it shattered inward. Benny screamed again.
"Stop now!" the cop ordered.
Loni lurched forward, Benny still clinging to her, though now as much out of a paralytic fear as chivalry.
"Goddammit, I am ordering you to stop what you are doing now!" the cop screamed. He gave it a second. And another. Then he fired.
Benny Bloom felt a searing hot pain in his arm.
He fell.
Above him, Loni hesitated for only a fraction of a second. Then she bolted to her right. Within seconds she disappeared down an alleyway that led to the area called "The District."
The cop pointed frantically at the woman in white jeans, who was lying flat on her belly. He screamed, "Someone call for an ambulance," and went in pursuit of Loni.
~ * ~
Ryerson said, "Let me get you a drink."
Joan nodded, head lowered into her hands, elbows on the kitchen table. She'd been crying for several minutes. It was a cry of shame, and relief; shame for what she'd confessed, relief that she'd confessed it at last.
"Sure, anything," she murmured.
"Where do you keep it?" Ryerson asked.
She lifted her head from her hands, looked up at him, made a valiant, quivering attempt at a smile. "You don't know everything, do you, Rye?"
He shook his head. "Not everything," he said, and smiled back.
She nodded toward the living room. "There's a small cabinet in there, next to the couch. Get something for yourself, too."
"Thanks," he said, found the cabinet, got Joan a Scotch-because bottles of Dewar's Scotch outnumbered anything else, he figured Scotch was her drink-got himself a glass of ginger ale, and took the drinks back into the kitchen. He found Joan peering into the refrigerator. She looked up at him. "Hungry, Rye?"
He shrugged. "I could eat." He wasn't hungry, but he knew that eating was a way that some people, like Joan, put emotional outbursts behind them.
"Eggs okay?"
"Whatever you're having." He glanced about. "Where's Creosote?"
Joan glanced about, too. "I saw him here a few moments ago."
Creosote trotted in from the bathroom, down the hall from the kitchen, with a pink slipper in his mouth. Ryerson rushed over to him, scooped him up, and tore the slipper from his mouth. "No. Bad dog! Bad dog!"