“Good enough,” says Dubose.
They cruise not quite one mile before coming upon a Mini Cooper that has somehow been boosted off the pavement and slammed into an oak with such terrific force that its mangled undercarriage is locked tight around the massive, cracked tree trunk, so that the petite vehicle is suspended about four feet off the ground.
Although he doesn’t offer a reason, Dubose will not take his turn getting out of the VelociRaptor to have a closer look at the Mini Cooper. Of course he doesn’t want to give Jergen an opportunity to occupy the driver’s seat in his absence.
Jergen returns from the oak tree. “Mexican, about twenty-five, jeans and a T-shirt. Broken arm, at least one broken leg, probably a major spinal injury. Exceedingly attractive, I think you’d say.”
“I can read through your pathetic deception, my friend. You didn’t use a pronoun because you’re trying to avoid saying it’s a man, as though I’ll run to have a look based on ‘exceedingly attractive.’ ”
“Maybe you are a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes after all.”
“This Mexican is alive?”
“Probably not for long. Unconscious and fading.”
Dubose sighs. “So we can’t question him. And even if he does live and it’s with a major spinal injury, it won’t be a high quality of life. Shall we operate by triage rules and hope the next one, if there is a next, will be more useful to us?”
“Works for me.”
Half a mile later, around a turn, they discover a Big Dog Bulldog Bagger, a motorcycle with wide-swept fairing and saddlebags, once a sweet machine with a 111-cubic-inch V-twin motor but now just wrack and ruin. Eighty or a hundred feet beyond the Big Dog, the man who’d been riding it now lies squashed on the pavement as if he’s been put through a giant sandwich press. He’s obviously been run over several times by a persistent motorist.
The tire tracks of the vehicle used in this homicide are imprinted on the pavement in the victim’s bodily fluids. Although the sun has already mostly dried the tracks, the pattern is clear enough to allow Radley Dubose to declare portentously, “Damn big truck.”
12
JANE IN THE KITCHEN. No cooler here than outside. The old house vaguely scented with dry-rot fungus. Pale panes of porch-door glass. One pane broken out, shards on the floor.
Hard sunshine slanted through the window above the sink, so precisely defined by the shape of the pane that the light had sharp edges and sliced the shadows at the cut lines so that they were sharp-edged, too. Dust motes turning slowly in the illumining shaft. Shadows billowing in the corners as if monks had here discarded their robes. Black-and-white patterns laid out as though delivering a profound message in geometric forms. The scene reminded her of some old pre-color movie, the title forgotten, in which protagonist and antagonist had faced off in a war-ravaged church. She couldn’t remember who died, who lived, or if perhaps no one survived.
She stood listening, but there was nothing to hear until she moved, whereupon the old vinyl-tile flooring crackled underfoot. Floorboards creaked beneath the vinyl.
On the farther side of the kitchen, an open door led to what might be the living room.
To her right, a door probably connected the kitchen to the single-car garage. It stood maybe eight inches ajar.
Jane needed her left hand for tasks. Her right arm, the gun arm, was straight out in front of her.
She picked up a shard of glass from the floor, a crescent-moon-shaped fragment about four inches across, and she stood it on its points, the curve propped against the back door.
Now the nearer of the other two doors. Hinged to swing away from her. Stand on the side opposite the hinges. Through the eight-inch gap, there was gloom beyond. One dirt-glazed window, like a TV turned to a dead channel, admitted barely enough light to suggest the shape of a vehicle, an SUV. It must be Gavin and Jessie’s Range Rover. They’d left it here when they drove Cornell’s Honda to the market in town—and died there. Quiet in the little garage. She held her breath and listened and didn’t know if the silence she heard was perhaps the woman with the knife holding her breath.
She threw the door open. Its corroded hinges rasped. It slammed against the wall in there, and no one responded. Doorways were bad, the worst. She went through low and fast, head and pistol first, from the half-lit kitchen to the darker garage, moving at once to the right, pressing her back against the wall. There was no good way to die, but she had a particular aversion to being stabbed, to the cold intrusion of steel and the vicious twist of the blade. Her heart knocked hard against her breastbone as she reached up and felt the wall and found the switch near the doorframe and clicked on the overhead fluorescent fixtures.
No sign of the woman with the knife. A row of cabinets along the front wall, none large enough to be a hiding place for an adult. Drop low for a quick look under the Range Rover. Nothing. No one inside, either. The only exterior door in the garage was the big one that accommodated a vehicle.
After entering the kitchen with no less caution than she’d left it, she closed the connecting door. She snatched up another fragment of glass, and used it as a telltale; when she returned, if the shards weren’t as she’d left them, she’d know someone had entered the house and waited in the garage for a chance to surprise her.
Beyond the kitchen lay a living room where the front door was secured with a deadbolt. There were as well two small bedrooms, one bath, and a study. The rooms contained mismatched discount-warehouse furniture that Cornell had left behind when he moved to his library and bunker—and all were deserted.
The woman couldn’t have gone out the front door and engaged the deadbolt behind her. None of the windows were broken or open, and in fact they all appeared to be painted shut, inoperable.
The heat was stifling. Even breathing through her mouth, Jane wasn’t as quiet as she wanted to be.
In a corner of the study, one door remained to be investigated. Maybe a closet. She sheltered against the frame, put her left hand on the knob—and hesitated.
Her memory worked the image of the naked woman. Medusa mass of hair. Face at once lovely and horrific, empty of everything except ferocity. A face strangely reminiscent of that Goya painting Saturn Devouring His Children, which contained no loveliness whatsoever. The bold nudity, the bloody hands, the knife.
This was something new in the world. It was surely related to the work of the Arcadians—but how?
Gun arm across her waist. Muzzle toward whatever might burst out of this last unknown space. Keeping pressure on the trigger. She twisted the doorknob, cast open the door. No response.
She dared the doorway and saw splintered boards swaybacked with the weight of time: steps leading down into darkness that seemed impenetrable and final. In houses of this age, in country vulnerable to earthquakes, basements were rare.
Studying the dust on the wide landing for signs that someone had recently descended, Jane startled when a loud crash issued from elsewhere in the house, demanding her immediate attention.
But there was no lock on the cellar door. And because it opened onto the landing, it couldn’t be braced shut from this side.
Another crash from the front of the house, the splintering of wood.
Maybe the woman with the knife wasn’t down there in the dark. Like hell she’s not. Maybe she wouldn’t come up when Jane was busy elsewhere. Like hell she won’t.
Jane hurried out of the study as a third crash reverberated through the walls of the small house.
13