Quentin broke the champagne bottle with a stone. In the broken glass he saw it: The shriveled, skeletal hand of a teenage girl. "Lizzy," he whispered.
She sat in the snow in front of him, leaning against the car. Tears streamed down her face. "Thank you, Tin," she said.
"Lizzy, she had you—"
"Good work, Tin. I'm free and the beast is gone."
"Are you sure? It had control of the house, it was—"
"Only as long as there was still life in her body. Now that she's dead, the beast lost its connection to the world. Mrs. Tyler found me and told me everything. She knows so much, Quentin."
"Yes, but she's dead. And Roz's parents are dead, and what good did it do? The beast will just come back somewhere else."
"Not till someone invites it," said Liz. "Maybe not for a long time. You've done all you could. You stopped it here, before it could get a foothold. That's all that anyone can ever do."
"Lizzy, what if I hadn't found you?"
"But you did. Mrs. Tyler led you. As soon as she found me, she made you realize." Lizzy glanced around. "They're coming to question you. Don't let them see you talking to me—they'll think you're crazy. And don't leave my hand here, Quentin. I don't want to be tied to this place."
She disappeared. He reached down and picked up her desiccated hand and put it in his jacket pocket.
A policeman sauntered over to him. "You the one called this in?"
"I was here to see the house," said Quentin. "They drove up from Washington to show me the house."
"Somebody was in that place?"
"I just got here. I was out at their car, talking to Mr. Duncan, when the roof started collapsing. He yelled about Rowena and Roz being inside and he ran for the house and it caught him. I called for help but it was too late for any of them. Should I have gone in, Officer? I was so scared, I drove out here and my car got stuck but then I ran back and I thought I should try to help them but the house was collapsing and—"
"No, no, you did the right thing. If you'd gone in there you'd just be dead, too."
"It crushed him right there on the front porch." It took no effort at all for Quentin to let the emotion pour out, to dissolve in tears—of relief, of exhaustion, of grief for the good people who had died. All of them—even Roz. She was just a child. She never understood what she was doing until it was too late. Ray Duncan never understood anything at all.
"Here, man, come on, sit down, get in your car and sit down for a minute." The policeman opened the door and helped him in. "Wait here, will you? We've got questions, but there's no rush, you can get ahold of yourself first, OK?"
Quentin sat there, getting control of himself, as a fireman approached the cop who had been talking to him. "I can't believe a house could collapse like that. Must've had termites out the wazoo."
The cop shook his head. "Just before this call came in, we got word. The old lady used to live here, she still owns the place. She got her head blown off in a rest home upriver. Our own chief. Used to work here as a gardener. He went crazy and killed her and then blew off his own head." The cop looked away for a moment, as if to contain his own emotions. "Family man, decent guy, good boss, good cop. You never know."
"The owner of this house just got killed?"
"It's like the old lady's revenge, the house collapsing like that. It can't just be a coincidence, she gets murdered and then her house caves in."
Quentin spoke up from the car. "I think they were her family."
The cop and the fireman came closer. "What?"
"The Duncans. They said their mother owned the house, they were selling it for her. She was in a rest home up the river, they said."
"You mean the people inside the house were her kids?"
"And her granddaughter. All the family she had in the world."
"Dear God in heaven," murmured the cop. "The whole family in a single hour, a hundred miles apart."
"Nobody's ever going to believe a story like that," said the fireman. "Straight out of The X-Files."
They went on talking. Quentin closed his eyes. It was over. The ending was lousy, but it could have been worse. For him. For everybody.
Except Mike Bolt's family. It was hard to think how it could possibly be worse for them.
Sally Sannazzaro pulled up to the barricades in front of the rest home. The policeman recognized her, waved her in. They were bringing two bodies out of the building, both with sheets draped over their heads. News cameras flashed. TV crews shone floodlights that made it brighter than day on the bodies.
Chief Todd was standing by the ambulance. He waved her over, then thought better of it and walked to meet her as she got out of her car. "Nobody can figure out how he did it. My boys got here first, they verified that she was OK and then they stood watch at the door and they swear nobody could have got by them. But he did. Not one of them heard the shots, they just saw him standing in the doorway with a gun and she was already dead."
"And Bolt?"
"They couldn't even disarm him before he blew his own head off. That didn't stop them from pumping about eight more rounds into his body. Ms. Sannazzaro, we screwed up. I don't know how, because these aren't my worst guys. I don't know whether to fire them or drown them like puppies, I'm so mad. I'm so sorry."
She patted his shoulder and turned away. Tears ran down her cheeks. "I don't think it could have been stopped, Chief Todd," she said. "I think it was going to happen no matter what."
"I know you got a thousand things to take care of inside, the whole place is in an uproar, your staff will sure be glad to see you. I'll come by tomorrow and ask you some questions, all right?"
"Fine," she said.
She started for the entrance of the rest home. The newspeople noticed her and started firing off questions. She passed the ambulance as they loaded the second body onto it. She didn't pause to see which one it was. It didn't matter now.
All she knew was that there was only one person on God's green earth who could explain this all to her, and he was a crazy man wearing the dead woman's hair in a plastic bag taped to his chest.
19. Into the Grave
Police questioning in two towns kept Quentin in the area for the next few days, and by then there was no reason to leave before the funerals. Besides, Sally Sannazzaro was there, also answering questions for the police, and then, after hours, assailing him with questions of her own.
Poor woman. She was trying so hard to believe him. Not a skeptic like Wayne Read, she nevertheless had no evidence for her own eyes, as Mike Bolt had had. It didn't help that immediately before he told her the true story, she read through his litany of deceptions to the police as he gave a more believable version of Mike Bolt's activities prior to going on his murderous mission.
Yet she stayed with him as much as possible during the days of inquisition and grief. It finally occurred to him that she stayed with him, despite her doubts, because she needed him right now. He was actually good for something that didn't involve money or opening boxes containing mythical beasts.
Before Mike Bolt's funeral, as he and Sally sat with Leda Bolt in her living room, he felt how empty and powerless his money was when pitted against real problems. Yet it could do something. He promised her that all her children would have a college education, that they would never lack for anything. If it was hard for them to continue living in Mixinack, he would pay for them to move anywhere they wanted.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "You barely knew Mike."