Nettle had just taped the last of the pink sheets to the door of the closet in Keeton’s study when she heard a car turn into the driveway.
A muffled squeak escaped her throat. For a moment she was frozen in place, unable to move.
Caught! her mind screamed as she listened to the soft, wellpadded burble of the Cadillac’s big engine. Caught! Oh jesus Savior meek and mild I’m caught! He’ll kill me!
Mr. Gaunt’s voice spoke in answer. It was not friendly now; it was cold and it was commanding and it came from a place deep in the center of her brain. He probably WILL kill you if he catches you, Nettle. And if you panic, he’ll catch you for sure. The answer is simple: don’t panic. Leave the room. Do it now. Don’t run, hut walk fast. And as quietly as you can.
She hurried across the second-hand Turkish rug on the study floor, her legs as stiff as sticks, muttering “Mr. Gaunt knows best” in a low litany, and entered the living room. Pink rectangles of paper glared at her from what seemed like every available surface.
One even dangled from the central light-fixture on a long strand of tape.
Now the car’s engine had taken on a hollow, echoey sound.
Buster had driven into the garage.
Go, Nettle! Go right away! Now is your only chance!
She fled across the living room, tripped over a hassock, and went sprawling. She banged her head on the floor almost hard enough to knock herself out- would have knocked herself out, almost certainly, but for the thin cushion of a throw-rug. Bright globular lights skated across her field of vision. She scrambled up again, vaguely aware that her forehead was bleeding, and began fumbling at the knob of the front door as the car engine cut off in the garage. She cast a terrified glance back over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. She could see the door to the garage, the door he would come through. One of the pink slips of paper was taped to it.
The doorknob turned under her hand, but the door wouldn’t open.
It seemed stuck shut.
From the garage came a hefty swoop-chunk as Keeton slammed his car door. Then the rattle of the motorized garage door starting down on its tracks. She heard his footsteps gritting across the concrete.
Buster was whistling.
Nettle’s frantic gaze, partially obscured by blood from her cut forehead, fell upon the thumb-bolt. It had been turned. That was why the door wouldn’t open for her. She must have turned it herself when she came in, although she couldn’t remember doing it. She flicked it up, pulled the door open, and stepped through.
Less than a second later, the door between the garage and the kitchen opened. Danforth Keeton stepped inside, unbuttoning his overcoat. He stopped. The whistle died on his lips. He stood there with his hands frozen in the act of undoing one of the lower coatbuttons, his lips still pursed, and looked around the kitchen. His eyes began to widen.
If he had gone to the living-room window right then, he would have seen Nettle running wildly across his lawn, her unbuttoned coat billowing around her like the wings of a bat. He might not have recognized her, but he would surely have seen it was a woman, and this might have changed later events considerably. The sight of all those pink slips froze him in place, however, and in his first shock his mind was capable of producing two words and two words only. They flashed on and off inside his head like a giant neon sign with letters of screaming scarlet: THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS!
10
Nettle reached the sidewalk and ran down Castle View as fast as she could. The heels of her loafers rattled a frightened tattoo, and her ears convinced her that she was hearing more feet than her own-Buster was behind her, Buster was chasing her, and when Buster caught her he might hurt her… but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because he could do worse than just hurt her. Buster was an important man in town, and if he wanted her sent back to juniper Hill, she would be sent. So Nettle ran. Blood trickled down her forehead and into her eye, and for a moment she saw the world through a pale red lens, as if all the nice houses on the View had begun to ooze blood.
She wiped it away with the sleeve of her coat and went on running.
The sidewalk was deserted, and most eyes inside the houses which were occupied this early Sunday afternoon were trained on the Patriots-jets game. Nettle was seen by only one person.
Tansy Williams, fresh from two days in Portland where she and her mommy had gone to visit Grampa, was looking out the livingroom window, sucking a lollypop and holding her teddy bear, Owen, under her left arm, when Nettle went by with wings on her heels.
“Mommy, a lady just ran by,” Tansy reported.
Amanda Williams was sitting in the kitchen with Myrtle Keeton.
They each had a cup of coffee. The fondue pot sat between them on the table. Myrtle had just asked if there was any town business going on that Dan should know about, and Amanda considered this a very odd question. If Buster wanted to know something, why hadn’t he come in himself? For that matter, why such a question on a Sunday afternoon in the first place?
“Honey, Mommy’s talking with Mrs. Keeton.”
“She had blood on her,” Tansy reported further.
Amanda smiled at Myrtle. “I told Buddy that if he was going to rent that Fatal Attraction, he should wait until Tansy was in bed to watch it.”
Meantime, Nettle went on running. When she reached the intersection of Castle View and Laurel, she had to stop for awhile.
The Public Library was here, and there was a curved stone wall running around its lawn. She leaned against it, gasping and sobbing for breath as the wind tore past her, tugging at her coat. Her hands were pressed against her left side, where she had a deep stitch.
She looked back up the hill and saw that the street was empty.
Buster had not been following her after all; that had just been her imagination. After a few moments she was able to hunt through her coat pockets for a Kleenex to wipe away some of the blood on her face.
She found one, and she also discovered that the key to Buster’s house was no longer there. It might have fallen out of her pocket as she ran down the hill, but she thought it more likely that she had left it in the lock of the front door. But what did that matter? She had gotten out before Buster saw her, that was the important thing. She thanked God that Mr. Gaunt’s voice had spoken to her in the nick of time, forgetting that Mr. Gaunt was the reason she had been in Buster’s home in the first place.
She looked at the smear of blood on the Kleenex and decided the cut probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The flow seemed to be slowing down. The stitch in her side was going away, too. She pushed off the rock wall and began to plod toward home with her head down, so the cut wouldn’t show.
Home, that was the thing to think about. Home and her beautiful carnival glass lampshade. Home and the Sunday Super Movie.
Home and Raider. When she was at home with the door locked, the shades pulled, the TV on, and Raider sleeping at her feet, all of this would seem like a horrible dream-the sort of dream she’d had in juniper Hill, after she had killed her husband.
Home, that was the place for her.
Nettle walked a little faster. She would be there soon.
11
Pete and Wilma jerzyck had a light lunch with the Pulaskis after Mass, and following lunch, Pete and jake Pulaski settled in front of the TV to watch the Patriots kick some New York ass. Wilma cared not a fig for football-baseball, basketball, or hockey, either, as far as that went. The only pro sport she liked was wrestling, and although Pete didn’t know it, Wilma would have left him in the wink of an eye for Chief jay Strongbow.
She helped Frieda with the dishes, then said she was going home to watch the rest of the Sunday Super Movie-it was On the Beach, with Gregory Peck. She told Pete she was taking the car.
“That’s fine,” he said, his eyes never leaving the TV. “I don’t mind walking.”
“Goddam good thing for you,” she muttered under her breath as she went out.
Wilma was actually in a good mood, and the major reaion had to do with Casino Nite. Father John wasn’t backing down on it the way Wilma had expected him to do, and she had liked the way he’d looked that morning during the homily, which was called “Let Us Each Tend Our Own Garden.” His tone had been as mild as ever, but there had been nothing mild about his blue eyes or his outthrust chin. Nor had all his fancy gardening metaphors fooled Wilma or anyone else about what he was saying: if the Baptists insisted on sticking their collective nose into the Catholic carrot-patch, they were going to get their collective ass kicked.
The thought of kicking ass (particularly on this scale) always put Wilma in a good mood.
Nor was the prospect of ass-kicking the only pleasure of Wilma’s Sunday. She hadn’t had to cook a heavy Sunday meal for once, and Pete was safely parked with jake and Frieda. If she was lucky, he would spend the whole afternoon watching men try to rupture each other’s spleens and she could watch the movie in peace. But first she thought she might call her old friend Nettle. She thought she had Crazy Nettle pretty well buffaloed, and that was all very well… for a start. But only for a start. Nettle still had those muddy sheets to pay for, whether she knew it or not. The time had come to put a few more moves on Miss Mental Illness of 1991. This prospect filled Wilma with anticipation, and she drove home as fast as she could.
12
Like a man in a dream, Danforth Keeton walked to his refrigerator and pulled off the pink slip which had been taped there. The words
