Show of Evil

gas range. It was George Balfour's only legacy. He had lived in the house all his life, both of his parents having died in the bedroom that Balfour now shared with his wife.

He loved coming down in the morning to those smells he remembered from his youth: coffee and burned oak slivers from the wood-burning stove, and bacon and, in the summer, the luscious odour of freshly cut cantaloupe. The TV would be set on the Today show. His paper would be waiting.

He was wearing what he always wore: khaki trousers, starched and pressed with a razor crease, a white T-shirt smelling of Downy, heavy, polished brogans, his cherished orange wind-breaker with SOUTHERN ILLINOIS POWER AND LIGHT COMPANY stencilled across the back and the word SUPERINTENDENT printed where the left breast pocket would normally be. Everything about his dress, his home, and his family bespoke a man who lived by order and routine. Balfour was not a man who liked surprises or change.

He kissed his son good morning, wiping a trace of pabulum from the boy's chin before giving Linda a loving peck on the back of her neck. She smiled up at him, a slightly plump woman with premature wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and auburn hair pulled back and tied in a bun. The wrinkles, George often said, were because his wife laughed a lot.

Nothing about George Balfour's life was inchoate.

'Saints finally got beat yesterday,' she said as he sat down.

'Bout time,' he answered, scanning the front page of the paper. 'By the way, I gotta run up to Carbondale after lunch. They got a main transformer out. May be a little late for dinner.'

'Okay. Six-thirty? Seven?'

'Oh, I should be home by six-thirty.'

At seven-fifteen, he was standing on the porch when Lewis Holliwell pulled up in the pickup. He kissed Linda and Adam goodbye, then waved at them from the truck as Lewis drove away from the white-frame house. They turned the corner and suddenly the street was empty except for old Mrs Aiken, who waved good morning as she scampered in robe and slippers off her porch to pick up the paper, and a solitary utility man carrying a toolbox who was trudging down the alley behind the house. A bright sun was just peeking over the hills to the east, promising a day of cloudless splendour.

Thirty minutes later the Balfours' next-door neighbour, Miriam Perrone, noticed that the Balfours' back door was standing open. Odd, she thought, It's a bit chilly this morning. A little later she looked out of her dining room window and the door was still open. She went out the back door and walked across her yard to the Balfours'.

'Linda?' she called out.

No answer. She walked to the door.

'Linda?' Still no answer. She rapped on the door frame. 'Linda, it's Miriam. Did you know your back door's open?'

No answer. A feeling of uneasiness swept over her as she cautiously entered the kitchen, for she did not wish to intrude.

'Linda?'

Suddenly, she was seized with an inexplicable sense of dread. It choked her and her mouth went dry. She could hear the television, but neither Linda nor the baby was making a sound. She walked towards the door to the living room. As she approached the door, she saw the empty playpen and a second later Adam lying on his side on the carpet with his back towards her.

And then, as she stepped through the doorway, she stopped. Her lips trembled for what seemed like eternity before a low moan rose to a horrified shriek.

A few feet from the crib, Linda Balfour's butchered body was crumpled against the wall, her glazed eyes frozen in terror, her mouth gaping, a widening pond of her own blood spreading around her, while Katie Couric and Willard Scott joked about the weather in the bloodstained television set nearby.

That was how it started.

THE CITY

FOUR MONTHS LATER

 

One