Night Chills

“I told you to be quiet.”

“She was naked and—”

In eleven years he had never been required to deal out any punishment more severe than a twenty-four-hour suspension of some of her privileges. But now, angry, he started toward her.

Rya pushed past Jenny, threw open the kitchen door, and ran.

Shocked by her defiance, angry and yet worried about her, Paul went after her. When he set foot on the stoop, she was already out of sight. She couldn’t have had time to run to the garage or to the station wagon; therefore, she must have slipped around the comer of the house, either left or right. He decided she would most likely head for Union Road, and he went that way. When he reached the sidewalk he saw her and called to her.

She was nearly a block away, on the far side of the street, still running. If she heard him, she didn’t respond; she disappeared between two houses.

He crossed the street and followed her. But when he reached the rear lawns of those houses, she wasn’t there.

“Rya!”

She didn’t answer him. She might have been too far away to hear — but he suspected that she was hiding nearby.

“Rya, I just want to talk to you!”

Nothing. Silence.

Already his anger had largely given way to concern for her. What in the name of God had possessed the girl? Why had she concocted such a grisly story? And how had she managed to tell it with such passion? He hadn’t really believed any of it, not from the start — yet he’d been so impressed by her sincerity that he’d come to the Thorp house to see for himself. She wasn’t a liar by nature. She wasn’t that good an actress. At least not in his experience. And when her story was shown to be a lie, why had she defended it so ardently? How had she defended it so ardently, knowing it was a lie? Did she believe, perhaps, that it wasn’t a fabrication? Did she think that she actually had seen her brother killed? But if that was the case, she was — mentally disturbed. Rya? Mentally disturbed? Rya was tough. Rya knew how to cope. Rya was a rock. Even an hour ago he would have staked his life on her soundness of mind. Was there any psychological disorder that could strike a child so suddenly, without warning, without any symptoms beforehand?

Deeply worried, he went back across the street to apologize to Emma Thorp.

2 10:15 A.M

Jeremy Thorp stood, almost as if at attention before a military court, in the center of the kitchen.

“Do you understand what I’ve said?” Salsbury asked.

“Yeah.”

“You know what to do?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Any questions?”

“Just one.”

“What is it?”

“What do I do if they don’t show up?”

“They’ll show up,” Salsbury said.

“But what if they don’t?”

“You have a watch, don’t you?”

The boy held up one thin wrist.

“You wait twenty minutes for them. If they don’t show up in that time, come straight back here. Is that understood?”

“Yeah. Twenty minutes.”

“Get moving.”

The boy started toward the door.

“Don’t leave that way. They’ll see you. Go out the front. ”

Jeremy went down the narrow hall to the door.

Salsbury followed, watched until the boy was out of sight behind the neighboring house, closed the door, locked it, and went back to the kitchen.

Not bad, he thought. You’re holding up well, Ogden. H. Leonard himself couldn’t have coped any faster than you’ve done. Clever as hell. You are certainly clever. With your mind and the advantage of the power, the key-lock code phrases, you’ll weather this crisis. If Miriam could see you now… What would old Miriam say now? You aren’t anything like Miriam said you were. You’re a tough customer. Jesus, what a tough customer. You make sound decisions under pressure, and you stick with them. Smart. Damned smart. But oh, my God, what a razor edge you’re walking!

Standing next to the rear window, he pushed the curtain aside a fraction of an inch, until he could see the garage. Annendale slid the squirrel’s cage into the cargo bed of the station wagon, closed the tailgate, and put up the electric window. Jenny Edison got in the car. Annendale and Emma talked for perhaps a minute. Then he got behind the wheel and reversed out of the driveway. When Emma waved good-by to them and started back toward the house, Salsbury let the curtain fall into place.

She came into the kitchen, saw him, and was startled. She looked as if she was ready to scream. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

“I am the key.”

“I am the lock.”

“Relax.”

She did.

“Sit down.”

She sat.

He stood in front of her, loomed over her. “What were you and Annendale talking about out there?”

“He kept apologizing for his daughter’s behavior.”

Salsbury laughed.

Because her memories of this morning’s events had been selectively edited, she didn’t see the humor in the situation. “Why would Rya accuse Bob of murder? What a terrible thing. Does she think she’s being funny? What a gruesome joke!”

The entrance foyer of St. Margaret Mary’s Roman Catholic Church was quiet and nearly lightless. The entire interior was done in dark pine — pegged pine floors, dark pine walls, open-beam ceilings, an intricately carved twelve-foot-high crucifix — as befitted the major house of worship in a lumber mill town. A five-watt bulb burned above the holy water font twelve feet away. At the far end of the auditorium, votive candles flickered in ruby- colored glass cups, and soft lights shone at the base of the altar. However, little of this ghostly illumination filtered through the open archway into the foyer.

Cloaked in these shadows and in the holy silence, Jeremy Thorp leaned against one of the two heavy, brass- fitted front doors of the church. He opened it only two or three inches and held it in place with his hip. Beyond lay a set of brick steps, the sidewalk, a pair of birch trees, and then the western end of Main Street. The Union Theater was directly across the street; he had an adequate view of it in spite of the birches.

Jeremy looked at his watch in the blade of light that sliced through the narrow crack between the doors. 10:20.

As they approached the traffic light at the town square, Paul switched on the righthand turn signal.

Jenny said, “The store’s to the left.”

“I know.”