cynical.
'I know something, Mama.'
'What do you know?'
'I know a secret, Mama.' The voices had been stereo-phonically channeled, Ava's voice coming from the right, Lindy's from the left.
'What do you know, Will?'
'Secrets, secrets.' Taunting.
'What do you know, Will?'
Whispered: 'You're the bad girl.'
'What did you say, Willy?'
'I know you're the bad girl, Mama.' He laughed, a voice thickened with lust. 'Secrets, secrets. So many secrets.'
Harry said, 'Whatever's shaking out, it ain't gonna be good.'
'You… just… shut up… now… Will Lindy.'
'You're the bad girl, Mama, you're the bad girl, Mama, I know a secret…'
Lindy's singsong rant pitched headlong into a scream that cut the air like a scythe, then shivered into black. There was only the whirr of the VCR as over a minute's time a body slowly appeared on the screen, surfacing from a coal-black sea. Nelson's body. The color was completely washed away, leaving only black and white and shape- shifting gray. The camera panned to a bicep, zoomed in close.
'Watch what I can do, Mama, watch me do this' Lindy's voice was a taunting whisper.
Nelson's bicep was replaced by Deschamps's arm in the same position, larger, thicker.
'I'm growing, Mama. Look.'
Nelson's flat stomach turned into the more muscled abdomen of Deschamps. Nelson's thigh became the thicker thigh of Deschamps.
'Uh-oh, Mama,' Lindy's voice challenged, 'you better watch out now.'
Nelson's shoulders ballooned as if by magic, gaining weight and definition.
'My God,' Harry said. 'It's a revenge fantasy.'
Ava/ Mama cobbled-together words: 'Don't, Will. You're scaring me.
Don't scare me.'
'You think you're scared now, Mama, watch this.' Triumph rang in Lindy's voice.
The screen went dark and the eerie sounds grew deeper and more rhythmic. The screen lightened to a shot of Burlew's power lifter body, thick and defined, the boulder chest, the ham biceps. Then a montage of the body from several angles. Dozens of shots squeezed into a few seconds, the camera zooming in as though drawn against the body.
'No. Will. Don't. I'm scared.'
'It's your turn now, Mama.'
A close-up of lips recalled the beginning of the video: Lindy's wet mouth spitting out words: 'Did you ever think I'd come for you, Mama?'
Ava's voice contorted through a mishmash of jammed-together vowels, an ugly choking sound, the ees from 'Pee.' The hollow o's of 'Boston.'
The long o's of 'Kokomo.' The city names had provided both needed syllables and a diversion.
'… ahhhh-oooaa-uu… Don't… please…'
A cut to Lindy's face, half in dark, a wild grin beneath blazing eyes, his hands gesturing the viewer into the picture.
'… oo… ahh… oooaauuhh…'
'Pain makes us pure, Mama.'
'… eeee-aa-ooo-ahhh… Will…'
'I will save you, Mama.'
'… oooooaaaaeee '
The screen abruptly snapped into black and the sound cut off. A white hiss of blank tape filled the room.
Harry said, 'What happened? The tape bust?'
'No,' I said slowly, my mind watching another set of invisible lines push from the dark. 'It's lacking the final scene. The climax.'
'Mama's death.'
'Damn you, Jeremy. Damn you to hell and back,' I whispered at the empty screen, suddenly knowing why I'd escaped his room unscathed.
Harry said, 'What, Carson?'
'Jeremy couldn't see who the killer was, but he saw who it wasn't,' I said, recalling Jeremy's study of the police reports and interviews, his pinpoint-focus mind deciphering the minutia. I heard him rant at Ava when she'd suggested his input had saved lives.
'You see it as saving lives, witch. I see it as betraying Joel Adrian!'
I recalled the ease with which he manipulated me toward the innocent Caulfield, and the willingness with which I went.
I said, 'Jeremy read the material and discovered or suspected the killer was on a mother-dominated mission of revenge or whatever. My brother saw the killer as a kindred spirit. He also saw that Caulfield didn't fit the mindset.'
Comprehension dawned in Harry's eyes. 'So Jeremy aimed you at Caulfield to give the real killer time to fulfill his mission, to put Mama in the movie. Jeremy didn't burn you because…'
I nodded. 'Because he didn't fulfill his end of the bargain. He misdirected me instead.'
'And now Lindy's somewhere with… Mama,' Harry whispered.
'Completing the fantasy.'
I slammed my fist against the table, a gesture as futile as wafting off a storm with a paper fan.
'What will Lindy do?' Harry said. We sat in the car with no idea of direction. I braced my feet on the floor and tumbled twenty years back. Threat. Storm. What to do? Daytime: Run to the oak in the woods, climb to my fort. Wait. Night: Slide out the window, creep to the car.
I knew what he'd do: It was in me too.
'He'll go where he feels safe, Harry his version of a tree-house. I've got to find out what that is.'
'Will he race to to finish the movie?'
'He's never rushed anything. We've got that.'
Was I lying to myself? But Lindy had spent hundred of hours stalking his victims, combing through videotape, selecting scenes, stitching them into a five-minute crazy-quilt of retribution. No. He'd want his moment of confrontation to linger. As long as he felt safe. That meant no standoffs, no rushing attacks, no SWAT teams roaring up in a scream of lights and sirens and bullhorns. That would only accelerate his mad agenda. Yet when it was finished I suspected he could run laughing into a hail of fire and metal, pain and death nothing more than pixels on a TV screen.
But first we had to find him. What had Ms. Clay said? No. What had Mrs. Benoit said?
Bows.
Bows. I recalled Mrs. Benoit's growing turmoil as we talked with her niece. Bows. She'd gotten excited whenever someone had said Lindy's name. Said, bows. Or something. 'Back to the motel, Harry,' I said.
'Crank it,' I added, needlessly.
CHAPTER 34
I sat on the bed beside Ms. Benoit and laid my hand over her knee, a walnut under a blanket. She was still smoking and watching TV, oblivious to anyone else in the universe. I shifted closer until I was staring into her diluted eyes.
'Will Lindy,' I said. 'Willy.'
