In the softest, most casual voice he could muster he asked, “Does she ever wear the ruby slippers?”
Dermott’s lips stopped moving, and his facial expression reverted to a deep, dangerous emptiness. His gun lost its rhythm. The direction of its muzzle settled slowly on Gurney like a roulette wheel winding down to a losing number.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been at the wrong end of a gun barrel, but never in all the forty-seven years of his life had he felt closer to death. There was a draining sensation in his skin, as though the blood were retreating to some safer place. Then, bizarrely, he felt calm. It made him think of the accounts he’d read of men overboard in an icy sea, of the hallucinatory tranquillity they felt before losing consciousness. He gazed across the bed at Dermott, into those emotionally asymmetric eyes-one corpselike from a long-ago battlefield, the other alive with hatred. In that second, more purposeful eye, he sensed a rapid calculation under way. Perhaps Gurney’s reference to the pilfered slippers from The Laurels had served its purpose-raising questions that needed resolution. Perhaps Dermott was wondering how much he knew and how such knowledge might affect the consummation of his endgame.
If so, Dermott resolved these matters to his satisfaction with disheartening speed. He grinned, showing for the second time a glimpse of small, pearly teeth.
“Did you get my messages?” he asked playfully.
The peace that had enveloped Gurney was fading. He knew that answering the question the wrong way would create a major problem. So would not answering it. He hoped that Dermott was referring to the only two things resembling “messages” that had been found at The Laurels.
“You mean your little quote from The Shining?”
“That’s one,” said Dermott.
“Obviously, signing in as Mr. and Mrs. Scylla.” Gurney sounded bored.
“That’s two. But the third was the best, don’t you think?”
“I thought the third was stupid,” said Gurney, desperately stalling, racing back through his recollections of the eccentric little inn and its half owner, Bruce Wellstone.
His comment produced a quick flash of anger in Dermott, followed by a kind of caginess. “I wonder if you really know what I’m talking about, Detective.”
Gurney suppressed his urge to protest. He’d discovered that often the best bluff was silence. And it was easier to think when you weren’t talking.
The only peculiar thing he could remember Wellstone saying was something about birds, or bird-watching, and that something about it didn’t make sense at that time of year. What the hell kind of birds were they? And what was it about the number? Something about the number of birds…
Dermott was getting restless. It was time for another wild swing.
“The birds,” said Gurney slyly. At least he hoped he sounded sly and not inane. Something in Dermott’s eyes told him the wild swing may have connected. But how? And what now? What was it about the birds that mattered? What was the message? The wrong time of year for what? Rose-breasted grosbeaks! That’s what they were! But so what? What did rose-breasted grosbeaks have to do with anything?
He decided to push the bluff and see where it led. “Rose-breasted grosbeaks,” he said with an enigmatic wink.
Dermott tried to hide a flicker of surprise under a patronizing smile. Gurney wished to God he knew what it was all about, wished he knew what he was pretending to know. What the hell was the number Wellstone had mentioned? He had no idea what to say next, how to parry a direct question should it come. None came.
“I was right about you,” said Dermott smugly. “From our first phone call, I knew you were smarter than most members of your tribe of baboons.”
He paused, nodding to himself with apparent pleasure.
“That’s good,” he said. “An intelligent ape. You’ll be able to appreciate what you’re about to see. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll follow your advice. After all, this is a very special night-a perfect night for magic slippers.” As he was speaking, he was backing up toward a chest of drawers against the wall on the far side of the room. Without taking his eyes off Gurney, he opened the top drawer of the chest and removed, with conspicuous care, a pair of shoes. The style reminded Gurney of the open-toe, medium-heel dress shoes his mother used to wear to church-except that these shoes were made of ruby-colored glass, glass that glistened like translucent blood in the subdued light.
Dermott nudged the drawer shut with his elbow and returned to the bed with the shoes in one hand and the gun in the other, still leveled at Gurney.
“I appreciate your input, Detective. If you hadn’t mentioned the slippers, I wouldn’t have thought of them. Most men in your position wouldn’t be so helpful.” The unsubtle ridicule in the comment was meant to convey, Gurney assumed, the message that Dermott was so completely in control that he could easily turn to his own advantage anything anyone else might say or do. He leaned over the bed and removed the old woman’s worn corduroy bedroom slippers and replaced them with the glowing red ones. Her feet were small, and the shoes slipped on smoothly.
“Is Dickie Duck coming to bed?” the old woman asked, like a child reciting her favorite part of a fairy tale.
“He’ll kill the snake and cut off its head. / Then Dickie Duck will come to bed,” he replied in a singsong voice.
“Where’s my little Dickie been?”
“Killing the cock to save the hen.”
“Why does Dickie do what Dickie does?”
“For blood that’s as red / as a painted rose. / So every man knows / he reaps what he sows.”
Dermott looked at the old woman expectantly, as though the ritual exchange was not finished. He leaned toward her, prompting her in a loud whisper, “What will Dickie do tonight?”
“What will Dickie do tonight?” she asked in the same whisper.
“He’ll call the crows till the crows are all dead. / Then Dickie Duck will come to bed.”
She moved her fingertips dreamily over her Goldilocks wig, as though she imagined she were arranging it in some ethereal style. The smile on her face reminded Gurney of a junkie’s rush.
Dermott was watching her, too. His gaze was revoltingly unfilial, the tip of his tongue moving back and forth between his lips like a small, slithering parasite. Then he blinked and looked around the room.
“I think we’re ready to begin,” he said brightly. He got up on the bed and crawled over the old woman’s legs to the opposite side-taking the goose from the hope chest as he did so. He settled himself against the pillows beside her and placed the goose in his lap. “Almost ready now.” The cheeriness of this assurance would have been appropriate for someone placing a candle on a birthday cake. What he was doing, however, was inserting his revolver, finger still on the trigger, into a deep pocket cut into the back of the goose.
Jesus bloody Christ, thought Gurney. Is that the way he shot Mark Mellery? Is that how the residue of down stuffing ended up in the neck wound and in the blood on the ground? Is that possible-that at the moment of his death Mellery was staring at a fucking goose? The picture was so grotesque he had to choke back a crazed urge to laugh. Or was it a spasm of terror? Whatever the emotion was, it was sudden and powerful. He’d faced his share of lunatics-sadists, sex murderers of every persuasion, sociopaths with ice picks, even cannibals-but never before had he been forced to devise a solution to such a complex nightmare while just a finger twitch away from a bullet in the brain.
“Lieutenant Nardo, please stand. It’s time for your entrance.” Dermott’s tone was ominous, theatrical, ironic.