gallery dedicated to her life.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing for him to sit on the couch. “I just brewed a pot.”
“Thanks,” he said, sinking into one of the deep brown cushions. “I’d love one. Black with a little sugar, please.”
She disappeared through an arched entryway, and Scott could see startlingly white tile and the corner of a kitchen table beyond. Its surface was black, and the chairs surrounding it were framed in silver metal with black cushion seats. Very deco, he thought.
Glasses clinked in the kitchen as he took in the room around him. It held a single couch and two light-blue easy chairs on either side of a low, stained coffee table. There was no TV or fireplace. Where the walls weren’t covered by frames, they were hidden by two bookcases and a curio cabinet. In the cabinet were a number of statuettes and some odd pieces of sculpture he couldn’t quite identify from across the room. Behind him on the wall were several pictures that featured Emmaline. She was younger, her hair longer, but the basic frame of the woman seemed unchanged. And while she’d always been thickset, going by the way her arms draped various men and women and the constant smiles and glinting playfulness in those teardrop eyes, she’d always been the life of the party.
She returned with two tall ivory mugs on a small rectangular tray that she set on the table. Motioning to a small ceramic pot she said, “I didn’t know how much you take, so I just brought the sugar.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” he said, and spooned in two heaps. “Was that your husband?”
He nodded at one of the photos in a black frame immediately behind his head. The tall, long-faced man appeared in several photos around the room, he’d noted. In this one, the man stood with his arm draped easily around a young Emmaline’s shoulders. The pictured room was crowded, and they both were dressed in fancy clothes. They appeared to be at some formal function.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That was my brother George. Harry’s over there.” She pointed to a picture of a heavyset, thirtysomething man with his hands on the shoulders of a young boy.
“Your son?” Scott probed, eyeing the youth.
She shook her head no but recanted. “Well, yes, he was mine for a few years. Justin was Harry’s boy from another marriage. We lost him when he was just twelve years old.” She sipped from her cup and didn’t elaborate.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Scott said, feeling lame.
Emmaline shrugged. “It was many years ago. I’m afraid time leaves everyone scarred.”
“It must have been very hard for you to lose your son and then your husband,” Scott said, then again felt stupid as the words left his mouth. She only nodded and stared, waiting for him to get to the point.
Scott shifted in his seat. “You obviously know that the Pumpkin Man killings have begun again,” he said. “And most of the victims have been the parents of the children who were killed in the eighties. Are you worried for your safety?” He inwardly rolled his eyes.
“No, I’m not worried,” she answered. “I think if he was going to come for me, it would have happened already. And anyway, I keep protection in my nightstand. He wouldn’t stand a chance.” She raised her eyebrow to punctuate a grin. It said,
Scott nodded, pleased she wasn’t scared. “Can you tell me a little about the original killings?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve read the files, but I’ve not had the opportunity to talk to any of the other parents.”
Emmaline laughed. “Well no, you wouldn’t have, would you? Aren’t many left.”
Scott felt himself blush.
“It was a horrible couple of years,” she admitted. “Everyone blamed George for it, but I knew that he wasn’t guilty. My brother would never have done something like that. He wasn’t like the rest of the family. He was gentle as gentle could be.”
“Wait a minute,” Scott said, feeling stupid again for not having done his homework. “I hadn’t realized your maiden name was—”
“Perenais?” she finished for him. “Yes. I am Emmaline Perenais, and yes, the man everyone called the Pumpkin Man was my brother.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
The ride north from San Francisco was long and troubling. Not because he’d blacked out sometime the night before and awoken many hours later covered in blood, but because he
Well, he had blacked out; he’d felt that coming on in his tiny living room and sank onto the old couch begging for it to pass. The next thing he knew, the sun was in his eyes, waking him from where he lay sprawled across the bucket seats of his Honda, parked behind a rusted, beaten-up blue VW on a quiet street lined with other parked cars. He had looked around at the low-hanging tree branches and the pastel melange of tall and narrow houses along the sidewalk and then immediately at his hands. They were clean. No blood specks on his knuckles. No crimson rust beneath his fingernails. No used rubber gloves lying on the car floor.
He’d looked on the passenger seat, expecting to see the leather pouch he’d woken up with so many times after a blackout. But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the backseat either, or on the floor or stuck between the door and the seat. He was sure. He’d gotten out of the car, down on his knees along the curb and looked. Three times.
He hadn’t felt comfortable staying where he was. He’d reached into his jacket pocket and found his car keys right where he always kept them, started up the Honda and pulled out onto the road, not having any idea which direction he was facing, let alone where he was, but he’d thought he could figure those things out once he got a little farther down the road. A little ways away from the scene of the . . .
He didn’t see any weapon. Which was a large part of what worried him. He had never felt the blackout come on and then not awoken without the blood of some poor soul drenching him. And he’d never awoken from a blackout without those knives. Had he cleaned himself up for some reason at the scene of the murder but forgotten the blades? Would the police be able to trace any fingerprints on the knives to him? What exactly had he done? He’d never been sloppy before, not while under the control of the force that he now thought of simply as the Other, and this new wrinkle worried the hell out of him.
It hadn’t taken long before he realized he was somewhere in San Francisco not Santa Rosa. He’d stopped at a burrito joint, gotten some huevos rancheros to go and directions back to the 101. Now, an hour and a half later, he pulled into River’s End and the driveway of his apartment.
The first stop inside wasn’t the toilet but rather the shelf where he normally kept the knives after cleaning them. They always disappeared a day or two later, never stayed in his apartment long, but they were always there for a day or two after an incident. That was why he’d clean them.
They weren’t there. They weren’t in the utility space near the washer and dryer either, and they weren’t anywhere in his bedroom. He stood on a chair and looked on the top closet shelves and then got on his knees and peered under the bed. He turned the entire place upside down, but the knives did not come to light. He thought he knew why: he’d taken them somewhere on behalf of the Pumpkin Man.
But, something different had happened this time. Maybe he’d used them, and maybe he hadn’t. He had no way of knowing.
It was an indisputable fact that the knives, the trademark of the Pumpkin Man, had not returned to River’s End with him. Months ago, he had flown all the way to Chicago to bring them home—not that he remembered much of the trip. But he felt responsible for them now.
In a sense he was glad they were gone. At the same time, he was scared to death. What had he done with them? Worse, what story would they tell when they were found?
