It was Rosemary. She had fallen on her face, hit her chin, and wasn’t moving. Her eyes were cracked open, and she was drooling. It looked as if she might have chipped a tooth. With her smile gone, she reminded him of a stupid whore girl again.
Rosemary had been a complete failure. Obviously, she was no longer up to the job of modeling for an artist. She couldn’t even sit in a chair. The truth was that she hadn’t worked out from the beginning. Her attitude had been all wrong. Rosemary never understood her contribution to the larger cause. What was life in the face of great art?
Eddie ignored the interruption and returned to his canvas. He’d been experimenting with various shellacs, and thought he’d finally found one that would do. The problem had always been with the finish. The shellac was only being used in the background, and he didn’t want it to stand out. As he brushed in a thin first coat, he listened to the rhythm of his breathing through the gas mask. It was even and steady, just like his hand. After an hour or so, he lowered the brush and took a step back.
The work was coming together, he decided. It hadn’t been a waste of time after all. He could feel the excitement in his chest as he took another step back, then another. The painting’s perspective was changing. He liked the way the shellac drew out the color of the oils and gave the work added depth.
The eye holes in the gas mask began to cloud over. Listening to his breath, he realized he was hyperventilating. He sat down and peered at the painting through the mask. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. His work even looked good in a fog. After a few moments, he got a grip on himself and noticed a gurgling sound coming from somewhere in the room.
It was his model, Rosemary-interfering again.
He rose from the chair and strode around the large canvas. Was he Napoleon or Michelangelo, he couldn’t really tell. All he knew was that the bitch had thrown up the meal he’d given her all over the fucking floor.
He rolled her over with his foot as if he’d come upon a casualty from a great war that couldn’t be helped. Her eyes were open but lost somewhere in the battle. Sweat streamed from her body as if she’d been caught in the rain. He felt her forehead. She was warm, but not piping hot.
It was time, he decided. Time to prepare for another visit into the past. Time for Rosemary to make her final contribution to the cause.
He grabbed her by the arms and dragged her out of the studio. Clearing his sketches off the worktable, he laid out a plastic drop cloth he’d purchased by the case from the paint department at Walmart, then lifted her body up and set it down. She buckled a moment involuntarily, but appeared to settle. One by one, he secured her wrists and ankles to the legs of the table with rags. Her eyes remained open and Eddie wondered if she was watching him. He wondered if somehow she
He felt her forehead again. Her cheeks. She was starting to cook. In another hour or so she’d be ready. Almost done.
SIXTY-THREE
A wave of panic crashed over the car as Teddy paid the toll and started down Route 100 toward the park. That feeling was back in his gut. The one that told him something horrible was about to happen or already had. He couldn’t stop moving. He couldn’t shake it off.
He saw the turn ahead and made a left onto Lakeview Road. When he spotted the private drive, he pulled over and glanced at the street sign. Then he took another look at the map in the pamphlet he’d pocketed before he was thrown out of the Trisco building. Shoreside Lane had to be it. He could see the frozen lake stretching over the land at the bottom of the hill. A large house and barn were nestled in the trees halfway down. Idling along the street, he reached a break in the curb and stopped. The driveway to the house was snow covered. All except for a double set of tire tracks.
He lit a cigarette, got out of the car and examined the tracks closely. They looked fresh, but were melting in the afternoon sun. A car had entered the property at some point during the day and left, he figured. No one else had used the road since the last storm several days ago.
That left Trisco out. He wasn’t living here.
Teddy took a deep breath and tried to relax as the realization settled in. He hadn’t expected to find Trisco here. Every sign pointed to the madman living in the city. Teddy had made the forty-minute drive because he sensed there was something missing and he needed to be sure. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. But as he gazed at the house in the distance, he knew it was more than that. It was all about the lake. The water. Finding Valerie Kram’s corpse in the river at the boathouse. The ominous feeling he got when he looked at the map in the pamphlet and learned that the Triscos had a place on the shoreline.
He climbed back into the Corolla. Turning into driveway, he eased the car down the hill following the tire tracks from the car before him. Although the snow was eight to ten inches deep, he could see the gravel beneath the tracks and had plenty of traction.
The house began to come into view through the trees. It was a farmhouse, not much different from his own. The driveway appeared to lead to a parking area around back. As he cleared the house and didn’t see any cars, he caught his breath again and pulled to a stop.
The view through the windshield was magnificent, the sprawl of the lake at the bottom of the steep hill, inspiring. Several fishing tents were set up on the ice, and he saw a man with rod and reel crossing the lake on foot to other side. Houses dotted the woods in the distance, built along the road to the park a half mile down. Teddy followed the fisherman’s progress on the other side of the lake until he got into a pickup truck and drove off in apparent silence, the sound of the engine too far away to reach him.
Teddy got out of the Corolla and glanced at the Trisco’s house, guessing it was built in the 1820s. Although the walls were whitewashed stone, modifications had been made to the back within the last twenty years or so to take advantage of the open views. Clearly, money wasn’t an issue in the renovation, and the building wasn’t exactly a farmhouse anymore.
He crossed the drive, noting the tire tracks melting in the snow from the car that had come and gone earlier in the day. It looked as if the driver pulled into the parking area, then backed up to the porch. He could see footprints on the path, the snow packed down as if someone had made more than one trip into the house.
He checked the door and found it locked. Then he stepped over to the window, got rid of his smoke and cupped his hands. It was a living room. Light and airy and about as far from the Trisco museum in Radnor as a trip across the universe. He looked for any indication that someone might be living here. An open book or newspaper, a pair of shoes left by a chair or even a bowl of fresh fruit. The sun was streaking into the room from a window to the left. He followed the shaft of light to a side table and noted the layer of dust. Someone may have dropped something off today, but no one had spent any time here for months.
He stepped off the porch, gazing at the hills rolling toward the horizon and trying to imagine a country club and hotel set on the landscape after it had been shaved down and carted off. There was a place for everything, he figured. This just wasn’t it.
He trudged through the snow over to the barn. The doors were locked with a chain, but the building was old and weathered and pleasingly dilapidated. Prying the barn doors apart, he squeezed through the opening and slipped inside. It was colder in here, the space filled with speckled light. A breeze whistled through the rafters. He shook the snow off his shoes, padding the leather soles dry so that he wouldn’t slip as he eyed a late-model Ford Explorer. The car was clean, but dusty. No chemical residue from winter driving could be seen on any of the fenders. He opened the door and noted the interior light. Checking the glove box, he found nothing. Then he saw a copy of
Teddy tossed the magazine into the car and shut the door. As he moved deeper into the barn, he noticed a small boat on a trailer beside a stack of cinder blocks and gardening supplies. A tractor used for cutting field grass down in the fall was parked off to the side. He thought he heard something and turned. That’s when he noticed the door to a small room behind his back.
A bird flew out of the doorway, landed on a rafter and began cooing at him from above. A mourning dove that
