God helps those who help themselves, she thought. Okay. I’m going to help myself. I’m going to make them pay for what they did to Mark. I’m going to get proof of it. You wait and see if I don’t. You wait and see.
She was beginning to tremble again, and she felt tears at the corners of her eyes. She took a minute to calm herself, then walked out of the nave.
In the foyer she discovered that one of the main doors was open, and that the lowest of its four hinges had been removed. A toolbox stood on the foyer floor, and a variety of tools were spread out around it. The workman apparently had gone to get some piece of material that he had forgotten on his first trip.
She turned and looked through the archway at the twelve-foot-high crucifix.
The wooden eyes still seemed to be staring at her, a terribly sad expression in them.
Quickly, worried that the workman might return at any moment, she bent down, peered into the toolbox, and plucked a heavy wrench from it. She slipped the wrench into a pocket of her windbreaker and left the church.
At 12:35 she strolled past the municipal building which was at the northeast corner of the square. The police chief’s office was toward the rear of the first floor, and it had two large windows. The venetian blinds were raised. As she passed she saw Bob Thorp sitting at his desk, facing the windows; he was eating a sandwich and reading a magazine.
At 12:40 she stood in front of Ultman’s Cafe and watched as a dozen kids cycled north on Union Road toward the macadamed alley where some of the Friday races were held. Jeremy Thorp was one of the cyclists.
At 12:45, at the southern end of Union Road, Rya crossed the street, walked under the grapevine arbor, and went around to the back of the Thorp place. The lawn ended in brush and trees, no parallel streets and no buildings in that direction. There was no house to her left — just the lawn and the garage and the river. To her right the nearest dwelling was set closer to Union Road than was the Thorp house; therefore, she was not in anyone’s line of sight.
A polished copper knocker gleamed in the center of the door. To one side of that, near the knob, were three decorative windows, each six inches wide and nine inches long.
She knocked loudly.
No one answered.
When she tried the door she found that it was locked. She had expected as much.
She took the stolen wrench from her windbreaker, gripped it tightly in one hand, and used it to smash the middle pane in the vertical row of three. The blow made considerably more noise than she had anticipated — although not sufficient noise to discourage her. When she had broken every shard of glass out of the frame, she pocketed the wrench, reached through the window, and felt for the latch. She began to despair of ever locating the mechanism — and then her fingers touched cool metal. She fumbled with the lock for almost a minute, finally released it, withdrew her arm from the window, and shoved open the door.
Standing on the stoop, staring warily into the shadow-hung kitchen, she thought: What if one of them comes back home and finds me in there?
Go ahead, she urged herself. You better go inside before you lose your courage.
I’m scared. They killed Mark.
You ran away this morning. Are you going to run away again? Are you going to run away from everything that scares you, from now until the day you die?
She walked into the kitchen.
Glass crunched underfoot.
When she reached the electric range where the murder had taken place, she stood quite still, poised to flee, and listened closely for movement. The refrigerator and the upright freezer rumbled softly, steadily. The clock-radio hummed. A loose window rattled as a gust of wind rushed along the side of the house. In the living room a grandfather clock, running a few minutes late, solemnly chimed the third quarter of the hour; the note reverberated long after the pipe had been struck. The house was filled with noises; but none of them had a human source; she was alone.
Having broken the law, having violated the sanctity of another person’s home, with the first and most dangerous step already taken, she couldn’t decide what to do next. Well… Search the house. Of course. Search it from top to bottom. Look for the body. But where to begin?
At last, when she realized that her indecision was an outgrowth of the fear which she was determined to overcome, when she realized that she was desperately afraid of finding Mark’s corpse even though she had come here to do precisely that, she began the search in the kitchen. There were only a few places in that room where the body of a nine-year-old boy might possibly be concealed. She looked in the pantry, in the refrigerator, and then in the freezer, but she uncovered nothing out of the ordinary.
When she opened the cabinet beneath the sink, however, she saw a bucket full of bloody rags. Not rags, really. Dish towels. They had used the towels to clean up, had thrown them in the bucket — and then apparently had forgotten to destroy the evidence. She picked up one of the cloths. It was wet, cold, and heavy with blood. She dropped it and gazed at her stained hand.
“Oh, Mark,” she said sadly, a bit breathlessly. A pain rose from deep inside of her, filled her chest. “Little Mark… You never ever hurt anyone. Not anyone. What they did to you. What an awful thing they did to you.
She stood up. Her knees felt weak.
Find the body, she thought.
No, she told herself.
You came here to find the body.
I’ve changed my mind. Find the body? No. No, that’s just… too much. Much too much. Finding him… Mark… with his skull cracked open… and his eyes rolled back in his head… and dried blood all over his face… Too much. Even strong girls can’t deal with everything in life. Even strong girls have their limits, don’t they? This is mine. My limit. I can’t go looking… all through the house… just can’t…
Beginning to cry, beginning to shake, she picked up the bucket and left the house.
At 12:45 Salsbury carried his briefcase down from his room and went to the parlor.
Pauline Vicker was sitting in the largest of the three arm-chairs. She was a heavyset woman in her early sixties. Fluffy gray hair. Ruddy complexion. Double chin. Merry eyes and a nearly constant smile. She had the archetypal grandmother’s face, the model for grandmothers’ faces in storybooks and movies. Her bare feet were propped up on a hassock. She was eating candies and watching a television soap opera.
From the doorway he said, “Mrs. Vicker.”
She glanced up, chewing a caramel. She had some trouble swallowing. Then: “Good afternoon, Mr. Deighton. If you’ve a complaint about your room or anything — do you think perhaps it could wait for just a bit, a few minutes — not longer than that mind you — just until this show ends? It’s one of my favorite shows and—”
“I am the key,” he said impatiently.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed that she wasn’t going to be able to finish watching the program. “I am the lock.”
“Get up, Mrs. Vicker.”
She struggled out of the chair.
Fat old cow, he thought.
“What do you need?” she asked pleasantly.
“I’ll need this room for a while,” he said, walking to the desk which held her private telephone. “Don’t disturb me.”
“Am I to leave?”
“Yes. Now.”
She looked wistfully at the round maple table beside her armchair. “May I take my box of candy?”
“Yes, yes. Just get the hell out of here.”
Pleased, she snatched up the candy. “I’m as good as gone. As good as gone, Mr. Deighton. You take your time here. I won’t let anyone disturb you.”
“Mrs. Vicker.”
“Yes?”
“Go to the kitchen.”
“All right.”
