"You get a thrill from killing?"
"I didn't say thrill."
"I'm sorry. I thought you did."
He was nervous again, drawing on his cigarette though it had burned to the filter. "All I'm saying is that we shouldn't be wasting our energy through repetition. We should be redirecting our energy."
"Toward the source?" said Andie.
"Yes." He crushed out his cigarette. "But you and I shouldn't be having this discussion. I'm getting way ahead on your program. You know a lot more than someone is supposed to know at your level."
Much more, she thought.
A band of clouds broke on the horizon. Golden rays of morning light pierced the coop's slatted walls. As Tom glanced toward the rising sun, Andie studied his profile. She couldn't quite place it, but he looked strangely familiar. He caught her staring, and she quickly looked away.
Andie picked up her bucket and returned to her task, watching out of the corner of her eye as Tom methodically moved about the flock and culled out the weak.
Chapter Fifty-Eight.
It wasn'tyet sunrise, and Gus was in Beth's side of their master bedroom closet. Ever since he'd uncovered the fruits of her shoplifting, he'd wondered what other clues to Beth's whereabouts might be hiding in there. Over the past two weeks he'd examined jewelry, photographs, memorabilia, and thousands of other little things that had found their way into the drawers and boxes that lined the walls of their oversized closet. Having sifted through some items for the third or fourth time, he realized this was becoming less a hunt for clues than a way, to reconnect with Beth. It was his sanity in another sleepless night.
Tonight he had more focus. Something about that letter from Martha Goldstein yesterday had gnawed at his memory. It was more the paper itself than the message she had written on it. The unusually high linen content of her personal stationery lent the distinctive fuchsia blend a marble-like appearance. Somewhere he had seen it before. It had taken several hours of lying awake in bed to realiie where.
Beth had kept a junk drawer of things related to his law firm. He had blown past it quickly in nights past, figuring it couldn't possibly contain anything important. As he thumbed through the drawer this time, however, his opinion quickly changed. Tucked behind some old programs from past firm banquets was a fuchsia envelope. The postmark told him it was more than a year old. Neither the envelope nor the stationery inside bore a return address. It had been written anonymously on one of those blank extra sheets that come with each box of personal engraved stationery. It was an unsigned letter to Beth--penned in the same handwriting and on the same fuchsia stationery Gus had seen yesterday in the letter from Martha Goldstein.
He read eagerly, his anger rising in the second paragraph. "It doesn't matter who I am," she had written. "What's important is that your husband has given himself to me, and it's time you faced the truth."
He stopped, stunned. She had chosen her words carefully, "given himself." It was consistent with Martha's view of them as soul mates. Yet the implication--the intended message to Beth--was that Gus was having sex with another woman. The whole deceptive package was classic Martha. The letter was unsigned, which meant Beth would have had to confront Gus if she wanted to know who had written it. It was written in her own script so that Gus would know it was Martha. Forcing him to tell his wife that the "anonymous" author was Martha would only make the letter more believable to Beth.
Somehow, Beth had figured out it was Martha on her own, since she'd filed the letter away in the drawer of law firm-related junk. Beth had never said a word to Gus. She'd internalized it, which went a long way to explain her paranoia about him and Martha.
A noise stirred him. In the pre-dawn darkness, the wind whistled through branches outside the bedroom window. The clock ticked in the hallway. All else was still.
He thought immediately of Dex's warning that someone had followed him to the Red Lion Hotel last night.
He stepped quietly from the closet and checked the alarm panel on the wall. It was armed, no sign of intrusion. He left the bedroom and peered down _the hall. Again, only silence. He walked slowly to the front door and peeked through the beveled glass. The car was still in the driveway. No one scurried across the lawn. He headed for the kitchen. The wind was kicking up outside, but the branches against the house didn't sound at all like the noise that had roused him from sleep. He switched on the kitchen light and started.
The rubber trash can had been pulled out from under the sink and left near the dishwasher--not its usual place. It was upright but bulging, nearly overflowing. Something that resembled a tail was curling out from under the lid. Gus stepped closer and checked inside.