wallet to show me, a set of those little hinged plastic windows fell out, you know, with little wallet-size photographs, and I picked them up for him. One of the pictures was his wife. Another was Laura. She looked so? fresh, unspoiled. I said something like 'That's a pretty girl,' and Paul was off and running about her, every inch the proud papa. Told me she was soon going to have her master's degree in psychology, three-point eight grade average and everything. He told me how he really missed her away at school, even after six years of getting used to it, and how he couldn't wait for the end of the month, because Laura was coming home for a three-day weekend. He didn't mention she was bringing along a friend.'
An accident. Photos dropped. A casual exchange, mere idle conversation.
The arbitrariness of it was breathtaking and almost more than Chyna could bear.
Then, as she watched Vess thoroughly wiping off the counters and rinsing the dishpan and scrubbing the sink, Chyna began to feel that what had happened to the Templeton family was worse than merely arbitrary. All this violent death began to seem fated, an inexorable spiral into lasting darkness, as if they had been born and had lived only for Edgler Vess.
It was as if she too had been born and had struggled this far only for the purpose of bringing one moment of sick satisfaction to this soulless predator.
The worst horror of his rampages was not the pain and fear that he inflicted, not the blood, not the mutilated cadavers. The pain and the fear were comparatively brief, considering all the routine pain and anxiety of life. The blood and bodies were merely aftermath. The worst horror was that he stole meaning from the unfinished lives of those people he killed, made
His base sins were envy-of beauty, of happiness-and pride, bending the whole world to his view of creation, and these were the greatest sins of all, the same transgressions over which the devil himself, once an archangel, had stumbled and fallen a long way out of Heaven.
Hand-drying the plates, pans, and flatware in the drainage rack, returning each piece to the proper shelf or drawer, Edgler Vess looked as pink-clean as a freshly bathed baby and as innocent as the stillborn. He smelled of soap, a good bracing aftershave, and lemon-scented dishwashing liquid. But in spite of all this, Chyna found herself superstitiously expecting to detect a whiff of brimstone.
Every life led to a series of quiet epiphanies-or at least to opportunities for epiphanies-and Chyna was washed by a poignant new grief when she thought about this grim aspect of the Templeton family's interrupted journeys. The kindnesses they might have done for others. The love they might have given. The things they might have come to understand in their hearts.
Vess finished the breakfast clean-up and returned to the table. 'I have a few things to do upstairs, outside- and then I'll have to sleep four or five hours if I can. I've got to go to work this evening. I need my rest.'
She wondered what work he did, but she didn't ask. He might be talking about a job-or about his dogged assault on Ariel's sanity. If the latter, Chyna didn't want to know what was coming.
'When you shift around in the chair, do it easy. Those chains will scrape the wood if you're not careful.'
'I'd hate to mar the furniture,' she said.
He stared at her for perhaps half a minute and then said, 'If you're stupid enough to think you can get free, I'll hear the chains rattling, and I'll have to come back in here to quiet you. If that's necessary, you won't like what I'll do.'
She said nothing. She was hopelessly hobbled and chained down. She couldn't possibly escape.
'Even if you somehow get free of the table and chairs, you can't move fast. And attack dogs patrol the grounds.'
'I've seen them,' she assured him.
'If you weren't chained, they'd still drag you down and kill you before you'd gone ten steps from the door.'
She believed him-but she didn't understand why he felt the need to press the point so hard.
'I once turned a young man loose in the yard,' Vess said. 'He raced straight to the nearest tree and got up and out of harm's way with only one bad bite in his right calf and a nip on the left ankle. He braced himself in the branches and thought he would be safe for a little while, with the dogs circling below and watching him, but I got a twenty-two rifle and went out on the back porch and shot him in the leg from there. He fell out of the tree, and then it was all over in maybe a minute.'
Chyna said nothing. There were moments when communicating with this hateful thing seemed no more possible than discussing the merits of Mozart with a shark. This was one of those moments.
'You were invisible to me last night,' he said.
She waited.
His gaze traveled over her, and he seemed to be looking for a loose link in one of the chains or a handcuff left open and unnoticed until now. 'Like a spirit.'
She was not sure that it was ever possible to discern what this thing was thinking-but right now, by God, it seemed to be vaguely uneasy about leaving her alone. She couldn't for the life of her imagine why.
'Stay?' he said.
She nodded.
'Good girl.'
He went to the door between the kitchen and the living room.
Realizing that they had one more issue to discuss, she said, 'Before you go?'
He turned to look at her.
'Could you take me to a bathroom?' she asked.
'It's too much trouble to undo the chains just now,' he said. 'Piss in your pants if you have to. I'm going to clean you up later anyway. And I can buy new chair cushions.'
He pushed through the door into the living room and was gone.
Chyna was determined not to endure the humiliation of sitting in her own waste. She had a faint urge to pee, but it wasn't insistent yet. Later she would be in trouble.
How odd-that she could still care about avoiding humiliation or think about the future.
Halfway across the living room, Mr. Vess stops to listen to the woman in the kitchen. He hears no clink of chains. He waits. And still no sound. The silence troubles him.
He's not sure what to make of her. He knows so much about her now-yet she still contains mysteries.
Shackled and in his complete control, surely she cannot be his blown tire. She smells of despair and defeat. In the beaten tone of her voice, he sees the gray of ashes and feels the texture of a coffin blanket. She is as good as dead, and she is resigned to it. Yet
From the kitchen comes the clink of chains. Not loud, not a vigorous assault on her bonds. Just a quiet rattle as she shifts position-perhaps to clasp her thighs tightly together to repress the urge to urinate.
Mr. Vess smiles.
He goes upstairs to his room. From the top shelf at the back of his walk-in closet, he takes down a telephone. In the bedroom, he plugs it into a wall jack and makes two calls, letting people know that he has returned from his three-day vacation and will be back in harness by this evening.
Although he is confident that the Dobermans, in his absence, will never allow anyone to get into the house, Vess keeps only two phones and secretes them in closets when he is not at home. In the extremely unlikely event that an intruder should manage to sprint through the attacking dogs and get into the house alive, he will not be able to call for help.
The danger of cellular phones has been on Mr. Vess's mind in recent days. It's difficult to imagine a would-be burglar carrying a portable phone or using it to call the police for help from a house in which he's become trapped by guard dogs, but stranger things have happened. If Chyna Shepherd had found a cellular phone in the clerk's Honda the previous night, she would not be the one now languishing in shackles.
The technological revolution here at the end of the millennium offers numerous conveniences and great opportunities, but it also has dangerous aspects. Thanks to his expertise with computers, he has cleverly altered his fingerprint files with various agencies and can go without gloves at places like the Templeton house, enjoying the full sensuality of the experience without fear. But one cellular phone in the wrong hands at the wrong time could lead suddenly to the most intense experience of his life-and the final one. He sometimes longs for the simpler age of
