The door stood open to the dark bathroom.
Like a dowser's divining rod, the pistol guided him to that darkness. Crossing the threshold, he flipped the light switch and with bated breath stepped into the bathroom brightness.
He expected to find something grotesque in the shower or a severed something in the sink. But all was normal.
His face in the mirror was clenched with dread, as tight as a fist, but his eyes were as wide as they had ever been and were no longer blind to anything.
Returning to the bedroom, he noticed something out of place on the nightstand with the extinguished lamp. He clicked the switch.
Two colorful polished spheres of dinosaur dung stood there on small bronze stands.
Although they were opaque, they made him think of crystal balls and sinister fortunetellers in old movies, predicting dire fates.
'Anson,' Mitch whispered, and then a word uncommon to him, 'My God. Oh, God.'
Chapter 37
The hard winds that came out of the eastern mountains were usually born with the rising or setting of the sun. Now, many hours after sunset, and hours before sunrise, a strong spring wind suddenly blew down upon the lowlands as if it had burst through a great door.
Along the alleyway where wind whistled, to the Chrysler, Mitch hurried but with the hesitant heart of a man making the short journey from his cell on death row to the execution chamber.
He didn't take time to roll down the windows. As he drove, he opened only the one in the driver's door.
A gruff wind huffed at him, pawed his hair, its breath warm and insistent.
Insane men lack self-control. They see conspiracies all around them and reveal their lunacy in irrational anger, in ludicrous fears. Genuinely insane men don't know they are deranged, and therefore they see no need to wear a mask.
Mitch wanted to believe that his brother was insane. If Anson was instead acting with cold-blooded calculation, he was a monster. If you had admired and loved a monster, your gullibility should shame you. Worse, it seemed that by your willingness to be deceived, you empowered the monster. You shared at least some small portion of the responsibility for his crimes.
Anson did not lack self-control. He never spoke of conspiracies. He feared nothing. As for masks, he had an aptitude for misdirection, a talent for disguise, a genius for deception. He was not insane.
Along the night streets, queen palms thrashed, like madwomen in frenzies tossing their hair, and bottle- brush trees shed millions of scarlet needles that were the petals of their exotic flowers.
The land rose, and low hills rolled into higher hills, and in the wind were scraps of paper, leaves, kiting pages from newspapers, a large transparent plastic bag billowing along like a jellyfish.
His parents' house was the only one on the block with lights in the windows.
Perhaps he should have been discreet, but he parked in the driveway. He put up the window, left the pistol in the car, brought the flashlight.
Filled with voices of chaos, rich with the smell of eucalyptus, the wind lashed the walkway with tree shadows.
He did not ring the doorbell. He had no false hope, only an awful need to know.
As he had thought it might be, the house was unlocked. He stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him.
To his left, to his right, an uncountable number of Mitches receded from him in a mirror world, all of them with a ghastly expression, all of them lost.
The house was not silent, for the wind gibbered at windows, groaned in the eaves, and eucalyptus trailers scourged the walls.
In Daniel's study, a spectacle of shattered glass display shelves glittered on the floor, and scattered everywhere were the colorful polished spheres, as if a poltergeist had played billiards with them.
Room by room, Mitch searched the first floor, turning on lights where they were off. In truth, he expected to find nothing more on this level of the big house, and he did not. He told himself that he was just being thorough. But he knew that he was delaying his ascent to the second floor.
At the stairs, he gazed up, and heard himself say, 'Daniel,' but not loud, and 'Kathy,' no louder.
For what awaited Mitch, he should have had to descend. Climbing to it seemed all wrong. Sepulchers are not constructed at the tops of towers.
As he climbed, nature's long exhale grew more fierce. Windows thrummed. Roof beams creaked.
In the upstairs hall, a black object lay on the polished wood floor: the shape of an electric razor but a bit larger. The business end featured a four-inch-wide gap between two gleaming metal pegs.
He hesitated, then picked it up. On the side of the thing was a seesaw switch. When he pressed it, a jagged white arc of electricity snapped between the metal pegs, the poles.
This was a Taser, a self-defense weapon. Chances were that Daniel and Kathy had not used it to defend themselves.
More likely, Anson had brought it with him and had assaulted them with it. A jolt from a Taser can disable a man for minutes, leave him helpless, muscles spasming as his nerves misfire.
Although Mitch knew where he must go, he delayed the terrible moment and went instead to the master bedroom.
The lights were on except for a nightstand lamp that had been knocked to the floor in a struggle, the bulb broken. The sheets were tangled. Pillows had slid off the bed.
The sleepers had been literally shocked awake.
Daniel owned a large collection of neckties, and perhaps a score were scattered across the carpet. Bright serpents of silk.
Glancing through other doors but not taking the time to inspect fully the spaces beyond, Mitch moved more purposefully to the room at the end of the shorter of the two upstairs halls.
Here the door was like all the others, but when he opened it, another door faced him. This one was heavily padded and covered with a black fabric.
Shaking badly, he hesitated. He had expected never to return here, never to cross this threshold again.
The inner door could be opened only from the hall, not from the chamber beyond. He turned the latch release. The well-fitted channels of an interlocking rubber seal parted with a sucking sound as he pushed the door inward.
Inside, there were no lamps, no ceiling fixture. He switched on the flashlight.
After Daniel himself had layered floor, walls, and ceiling with eighteen inches of various soundproofing materials, the room had been reduced to a windowless nine-foot square. The ceiling was six feet.
The black material that upholstered every surface, densely woven and without sheen, soaked up the beam of the flashlight.
Modified sensory deprivation. They had said it was a tool for discipline, not a punishment, a method to focus the mind inward toward self-discovery — a technique, not a torture. Numerous studies had been published about the wonders of one degree or another of sensory deprivation.
Daniel and Kathy lay side by side: she in her pajamas, he in his underwear. Their hands and ankles had been bound with neckties. The knots were cruelly tight, biting the flesh.
The bindings between the wrists and those between the ankles had been connected with another necktie, drawn taut, to further limit each victim's movement.
They had not been gagged. Perhaps Anson had wanted to have a conversation with them.
And screams could not escape the learning room.
Although Mitch stooped just inside the door, the aggressive silence pulled at him, as quicksand pulls what it snares, as gravity the falling object. His rapid, ragged breathing was muffled to a whispery wheeze.
He could not hear the windstorm anymore, but he was sure that the wind abided.
