Bill certainly wouldn’t be ogling her.
As for the woman, Sandy didn’t care. She’d never had real trouble with any woman. It was only men who always wanted to stare at her and mess with her.
Dirty cruds, all of them.
Two down in one night, she thought. That’s pretty good.
Limping slightly, she made her way toward the car.
It looked as if it had bounded down the slope, raced across the short clearing at the bottom, and finally met a tree. Though the taillights and one of the headlights still worked, the engine seemed to be dead. She saw no smoke or flames.
As she approached, she crouched slightly to look through the windows.
The woman was sitting up straight behind the steering wheel.
She seemed to be gazing out through the hole in her windshield.
Bill no longer filled the hole.
He’d left his empty sweatshirt in the broken glass at the bottom of the hole, but he was gone.
With a quick, sick feeling, Sandy hurried forward.
She stared at the hood of the car.
Bill was gone from there, too.
But he hadn’t gone far. Maybe fifteen or twenty feet.
The headlight pointed him out.
Sandy gasped. She almost ran away, but realized he didn’t seem interested in her.
He couldn’t even see her.
He was upright with his back toward Sandy, standing on his head—just on his head, not even supporting himself with his hands. Both his arms dangled, his hands limp against the ground.
It seemed a remarkable feat.
Until she noticed that he wasn’t balancing himself on his head. Up above him, both his feet were wedged into the crotch of the tree trunk.
He was no acrobat, after all. Just a dead guy turned by accident into a freakish spectacle.
Sandy grimaced at him.
She could see how it might’ve happened: when the car struck the tree that demolished its right headlight, Bill had been shot backward, feet first, off the left side of the hood. He’d hit the ground and done a wild backward somersault toward a second tree. At the peak of the somersault, only his head touching the ground, he’d rammed both his feet into the V of the trunk and gotten stuck that way.
Staring at him, Sandy felt goosebumps prickle her skin.
Sure doesn’t look accidental, she thought. Looks like somebody put him that way on purpose.
What if someone did, and he’s still around?
Stupid, she thought. The guy just happened to end up like that.
Maybe.
Let’s get.
But she couldn’t. Not yet. First, she needed to check the woman.
She hurried around the rear of the car. In the red glow of the taillights, she saw that it had a traitor hitch.
Lot of good it’ll do me.
She kept moving. Her right hand ached from clutching the knife so hard. She scanned the woods on all sides as she made her way toward the driver’s door.
So dark.
Except where the headlight went, she could see almost nothing.
Somebody could sneak right up on me.
Take it easy. Nobody’s around. It’s Just the three of us, and both of them are dead. Probably.
She crouched near the driver’s door, saw the shape of the woman sitting behind the wheel, then opened the door.
The car filled with light from its ceiling bulb.
The woman wore a seatbelt. Her blouse was torn open and hung off one shoulder—probably the result of the beating, not the crash. From her face to her lap, she was coated with blood. It still dripped off her chin.
Dripped from her wide open mouth.
Her mouth was jammed full of bloody hair.
Not her hair.
Her own hair was all shaved off. The hair stuffing her mouth had to be Bill’s.
It was easy to figure out how that had happened.
Sandy muttered, “Jeez.”
The woman’s head slowly turned toward her.
The eyes opened.
Chapter Eight
THE DAY TOUR
“We’ll be there in just a few minutes, now,” Patty announced. • "Any last questions before we arrive? Yes, Marv?”
“Are there plans to ever open the Kutch house for tours? I mean, it seems like the obvious thing. You could have people go over there through the underground tunnel, you know? It’d be incredible.”
“As a matter of fact, Janice purchased the Kutch house at the same time she bought Beast House. But a condition of the sale was that Agnes would be allowed to continue living there—and that it wouldn’t be shown on tours—as long as she remains alive.”
“So if we wanta see it, we’ve gotta outlive Agnes?”
“That’s right.”
“How old is she?”
Patty shook her head. “I can’t say for sure, but I suppose she must be about fifty-nine or sixty.”
“I won’t hold my breath, then.”
A few of the passengers chuckled, but most didn’t respond. Owen suspected that just about everyone on the bus had grown tired of Marv’s incessant questions and comments. He was a little sick of Marv, himself.
The guy was like a hotdog student, always popping his hand into the air, endlessly ready to answer questions or ask them, forever eager to show that he knew more than anyone else.
Every group seemed to have a Marv.
The Marvs often seemed interesting, at first. But they wore on you until you wished they would just shut up.
“Any more questions?’ Patty asked. “Yes, Marv?”
“How about giving me your phone number?”
A few passengers chuckled.
“Afraid not, Marv.”
Laughter and applause.
Owen looked over his shoulder. Marv was laughing, too, but his face was red.
Patty turned away. Ducking slightly, she peered out the windshield. She faced the group again, then held on to a pole while the bus made a right turn. “Okay, folks, we’re now on Front Street of Malcasa Point. You should be able to catch a few glimpses of the ocean off to the left of the bus.”
Leaning forward to see past Monica, Owen spotted a patch of pale blue water through a break in the trees. But he wasn’t much interested in the Pacific. He swung his gaze northward, hoping to see the Kutch house.
“The Kutch house will shortly be coming up on the left side of the road,” Patty announced. “Beast House itself will be on the right. If you can’t see one or the other from your seat, don’t worry about it; we’ll be parking in just a few seconds and you’ll have three hours to look them over.”
Owen spotted the Kutch house.
He’d seen it plenty of times before: in photographs and in movies.
But this is it. This is really it. Not a picture, the actual Kutch house. And I’m looking at it.
Except for the chain link fence surrounding the property, it looked just as it did in the books and films. Brown-red bricks, almost like the color of old, dry blood. A weathered front door. Just the one door. No windows.
Not only were no other doors or windows in sight, but Owen knew that none existed.
The lack of any windows made the house seem more strange than he would’ve supposed.
He suddenly imagined Janice Crogan locked in one of its upstairs rooms, waking up naked on a mountain of pillows after being raped and abducted. This was one of his favorite scenes from her first book. He’d read it many times, daydreaming about being there, helping her, making love with her on the pillows.
He’d really hoped he might have a chance to meet her today.