* * *
Laura picked up Melanie's coat and dressed her first. It was a slower procedure than it might have been because the girl didn't help at all.
Manuello said, 'What is she — a retard or something?'
Astonished and angry, Laura said, 'I can't believe you actually said that.'
'Well, she don't act normal,' Manuello said.
'Oh, don't she?' Laura said scathingly. 'Jesus. She's a very sick little girl. What's your excuse?'
While Laura got Melanie into the coat, Earl was directed to sit on the sofa. He perched on the edge. His arms were cuffed behind him.
When Laura finished buttoning her daughter's raincoat, she picked up her own coat.
Wexlersh said, 'Never mind that. You sit there on the sofa beside Benton.'
'But—'
'Sit!' Wexlersh said, pointing at the sofa with his gun.
His ice-gray eyes were unreadable.
Or maybe Laura simply didn't want to read what was evident in them.
She looked at Detective Manuello. He was smirking.
Turning to Earl for guidance, Laura saw that he looked more uneasy than ever.
'Sit,' Wexlersh repeated, not stressing the word this time, almost speaking in a whisper, yet somehow conveying more authority — and a greater potential for violence — with that soft tone than he had when he'd spoken more harshly.
Laura's stomach clenched and twisted. A sickening wave of dread swept through her.
When Laura sat down, Wexlersh went to Melanie, took the girl by the hand, and led her away from the sofa, brought her to where he had been standing, and kept her between himself and Manuello.
'No,' Laura said miserably, but the two detectives ignored her.
Looking at Wexlersh, Manuello said, 'Now?'
'Now,' Wexlersh said.
Manuello reached under his coat and brought out a pistol. It wasn't the weapon that he had taken off Earl, and Laura didn't think that it was the detective's own service weapon either, because she was pretty sure policemen usually used revolvers. That was what Wexlersh was holding: a revolver. The moment she saw the new pistol in Manuello's hand, she had a sharper sense that something was amiss.
Then Manuello took a burnished metal tube from his coat pocket and began to screw it onto the barrel of the pistol. It was a silencer.
Earl said, 'What the hell are you doing?'
Neither Wexlersh nor Manuello answered him.
'Jesus Christ!' Earl said in shock and horror as a sudden and unacceptable realization dawned upon him.
'No shouting,' Wexlersh said. 'No screaming.'
Earl thrust off the sofa, to his feet, uselessly struggling to free himself of the handcuffs.
Wexlersh rushed at him, clubbed him with the revolver, once on the shoulder, once alongside the face.
Earl fell backward onto the sofa.
Manuello had gotten the threads of the silencer misaligned with those that had been machined into the barrel of the pistol, and he had to unscrew it and try again.
Still looming over Earl, Wexlersh looked at his partner and said, 'Will you hurry up?'
'I'm trying, I'm trying,' Manuello said, wrestling with the stubborn attachment to the pistol.
'You crazy bastards are going to kill us,' Earl said through split and bleeding lips.
When Laura heard their fate put into blunt words, she wasn't surprised. She realized that she had known, if only subconsciously, what was coming, had sensed it when the detectives had first entered the room, had felt it even more strongly when they had handcuffed Earl, and had been convinced of it when Wexlersh had taken Melanie away from her, but hadn't wanted to accept the truth.
Manuello had misthreaded the silencer again. 'This thing's a piece of shit.'
'It'll fit if you start it right,' Wexlersh said.
Laura understood that they didn't want to use their own revolvers for fear the murders would be traced to them. And they didn't want to fire the pistol without a silencer, if they could avoid it, because the gunshots would bring neighbors to windows in other apartments, and then someone would see them leaving with Melanie.
Melanie. She was standing near Manuello, whimpering. Her eyes were closed, her head bowed, and she was making small, lost, pathetic sounds. Did she know what was about to happen in this room, that her mother was about to die, or was she whimpering about something else, something in her private inner fantasy world?
In a tone that was part disbelief but mostly rage, Earl said, 'You're cops, for God's sake.'
Wexlersh said, 'You just sit there and be quiet.'
Laura's gaze had settled on a heavy glass ashtray on the coffee table. If she grabbed it, threw it at Wexlersh, and managed to hit him in the head, it might knock him unconscious or cause him to drop his gun, and if he dropped his gun, she might be able to reach it before either he or Manuello could react. But she needed a diversion. She was desperately trying to think of something to distract Wexlersh when Earl evidently decided they had nothing to lose by resisting; he distracted both detectives at exactly the right moment.
As Manuello continued to struggle with the poorly fitted silencer, Earl looked at Wexlersh and said, 'No matter what we do, no matter how loud we scream, you're not going to use your own gun or mine.' Then, shouting for help at the top of his voice, Earl launched himself up toward Wexlersh, using his head as a ram.
Wexlersh stumbled back two steps as Earl butted him in the stomach. But the detective didn't fall. In fact, he struck down with the gun, clubbing the bodyguard to the floor, putting an abrupt end to the attack and to the shouting.
In the brief confusion, Laura snatched up the ashtray even as Wexlersh struck Earl. Manuello saw her and said, 'Hey,' just as she heaved the object at Wexlersh, which was sufficient warning for the detective, who ducked and let the ashtray sail past him. It thudded into the wall, thumped to the floor.
Wexlersh pointed his service revolver straight at Laura, and within the muzzle was the deepest blackness that she had ever seen. 'Listen, you bitch, if you don't sit down right now and keep your trap shut, we'll make this a lot harder on you than it has to be.'
Melanie was mewling softly now, in increasing distress. Her head was still bowed, her eyes closed, but her mouth was open and slack as the pitiful sounds issued from her.
Flopping onto his back, pulling himself up against the sofa, streaming blood from a scalp wound, Earl glared at Wexlersh. 'Yeah? Is that so? Make it harder on us, huh? What the hell could be worse than what you're already planning to do?'
Wexlersh smiled. It was a singularly unsettling expression on his bloodless lips and moon-pale face. 'We could tape your mouth shut and torture you for a while. Then torture this bitch here.'
Shuddering, Laura looked away from his gray eyes.
The room seemed cold, colder than it had been.
'She's a nice piece of ass,' Manuello observed.
'Yeah, we could screw her,' Wexlersh said.
'Screw the kid too,' Manuello said.
'Yeah,' Wexlersh said, still smiling. 'That's right. We could screw the kid.'
'Even though she is a retard,' Manuello said, then cursed the pistol and silencer that wouldn't fit together properly.
Wexlersh said, 'So if you don't just sit there quiet like, we'll tape your mouths shut and screw the kid right in front of you — and then kill you, anyway.'
Gagging, choking down the vomit that rose into her throat, Laura settled back on the sofa, subdued by this crudest of all threats.
Earl had been silenced too.
'Good,' Wexlersh said, massaging his stomach with one hand, where Earl had butted him. 'Much better.'
Melanie's mewling had grown louder and was punctuated with a few words—'open… door… open… no'—and with deep, quaverous gasps.
'Shut up, kid,' Wexlersh said, lightly slapping her face.