“No obvious signs of paralysis, no stertorous breathing,” Donklin said, “no puffing of the cheeks on expiration.”
“Pupils are equally dilated,” Tom Wong noted.
After checking the eyes himself, Donklin continued his brisk examination. “Skin isn’t clammy, normal surface temperature. I’d be surprised if this is apoplectic coma. Not hemorrhage, embolism, or thrombosis. But we’ll revisit that possibility and transfer him to a hospital if we can’t identify the problem quickly.”
Dusty allowed himself a measure of optimism.
Valet stood in a corner, head raised, intently watching the proceedings — perhaps alert for a return or reoccurrence of whatever had raised his hackles and had driven him from the room a short while ago.
At the doctor’s direction, Tom prepared to catheterize Skeet and obtain a urine sample.
After leaning close to his unconscious patient, Donklin said, “He doesn’t have sweet breath, but we’ll want to check the urine for albumin and sugar.”
“He’s not diabetic,” Dusty said.
“Doesn’t look like uremic coma, either,” the physician observed. “He’d have a hard, fast pulse. Elevated blood pressure. None of the symptoms here.”
“Could he be just sleeping?” Dusty asked.
“Sleep this deep,” Henry Donklin said, “you need a wicked witch casting a spell or maybe a bite from Snow White’s apple.”
“The thing is — I got a little frustrated with him, the way he was behaving, and I told him to just go to sleep, said it sort of sharply, and the moment I said it, he zonked out.”
Donklin’s expression was so dry that his face looked as if it needed to be dusted. “Are you telling me you’re a witch?”
“Still a housepainter.”
Because he didn’t believe that apoplexy was involved, Donklin risked the application of a restorative; however, a whiff of ammonium carbonate — smelling salts — failed to revive Skeet.
“If he’s just sleeping,” the physician said, “then he must be a descendant of Rip Van Winkle.”
Because the trash container held only the box of cutlery and because its wheels were large, Martie was able to drag it up the short flight of stairs onto the back porch with little difficulty. From inside the well-taped box, through the walls of the can, came the angry music of knives ringing against one another.
She had intended to roll the container inside. Now she realized that she would be bringing the knives into the house again.
Hands locked on the handle of the trash can, she was frozen by indecision.
Ridding her home of all potential weapons must be priority one. Before full darkness descended. Before she surrendered more control of herself to the primitive within.
Into her stillness came a greater storm of fear, rattling all the doors and windows of her soul.
She left the back door standing open and parked the wheeled trash can on the porch, at the threshold, where it was near enough to be convenient. She removed the lid and put it aside on the porch floor.
In the kitchen once more, she pulled open a cabinet drawer and scanned the gleaming contents: flatware. Salad forks. Dinner forks. Dinner knives. Butter knives. Also ten steak knives with wooden handles.
She didn’t touch the dangerous items. Instead, she carefully removed the safer pieces — tablespoons, teaspoons, coffee spoons — and placed them on the counter. Then she removed the drawer from the cabinet, carried it to the open door, and upended it.
Along with a set of plastic drawer dividers, a steely cascade of forks and knives clinked and jingled into the trash can. The marrow in Martie’s bones rang in sympathy with the icy sound.
She put the drawer on the kitchen floor, in a corner, out of her way. She didn’t have time to return the salvaged spoons to it and slide it back into the cabinet.
The false twilight was bleeding into true twilight. Through the open door, she could hear the first rough songs of the little winter toads that ventured forth only at night.
Another drawer. Miscellaneous culinary tools and gadgets. A bottle opener. A potato peeler. A lemon-peel shaver. A wicked-looking spikelike meat thermometer. A small meat-tenderizing hammer. A corkscrew. Miniature yellow-plastic ears of corn with two sharp pins protruding from one end, which could be jammed into a cob to make fresh corn easier to eat.
She was astonished by the number and variety of common household items that could also serve as weapons. On his way to an inquisition, any torturer would feel well prepared if his kit contained nothing more than the items now before Martie’s eyes.
The drawer also contained large plastic clips for bags of potato chips, measuring spoons, measuring cups, a melon scoop, a few rubber spatulas, wire whisks, and other items that didn’t look as if they would be lethal even in the possession of the cleverest of homicidal sociopaths.
Hesitantly, she reached into the drawer, intending to sort the dangerous items from the harmless things, but at once she snatched her hand back. She wasn’t willing to trust herself with the task.
“This is crazy, this is totally nuts,” she said, and her voice was so torqued by fear and by despair that she barely recognized it as her own.
She dumped the entire collection of gadgets into the trash can. She put the second empty drawer atop the first, in the corner.
Because she had to keep moving to avoid being paralyzed by fear, she found the courage to open a third drawer. Several big serving forks. Meat forks. An electric carving knife.
Outside, the shrill singing of toads in the wet twilight.
22
Martie Rhodes, struggling to stave off total panic, pushed by obsession, pulled by compulsion, moved through a kitchen that now seemed no less filled with mortal threats than a battlefield torn by clashing armies.
She found a rolling pin in a drawer near the ovens. You could bash in someone’s face with a rolling pin, smash his nose, split his lips, club and club and club him until you fractured his skull, until you left him on the floor, gazing sightlessly at you, with starburst hemorrhages in both his eyes….
Although no potential victim was present, and although she knew she was incapable of bludgeoning anyone, Martie nonetheless had to talk herself into plucking the rolling pin from the drawer. “Get it, come on, for God’s sake, get it, get it out of here, get rid of it.”
Halfway to the trash can, she dropped the pin. It made a hard, sickening sound when it struck the floor.
She couldn’t immediately summon the nerve to pick up the pin again. She kicked it, and it rolled all the way to the threshold of the open door.
With the rain, the last of the wind had drained out of the day, but the twilight exhaled a cold draft across the porch and through the kitchen door. Hoping the chilly air would clear her head, she took deep breaths, shuddering with each.
She gazed down at the rolling pin, which lay at her feet. All she had to do was snatch up the damn thing and drop it into the can beyond the threshold. It wouldn’t be in her hand more than a second or two.
Alone, she couldn’t harm anyone. And even if she was seized by a self-destructive impulse, a rolling pin wasn’t the ideal weapon with which to commit hara-kiri, although it was better than a rubber spatula.
With that little joke, she humiliated herself into plucking the rolling pin off the floor and dropping it in the can.
When she searched the next drawer, she found an array of tools and devices that for the most part didn’t alarm her. A flour sifter. An egg timer. A garlic press. A basting brush. A colander. A juice strainer. A lettuce dryer.
