“The danger of being caught increases the guilty pleasure.”
“So they know it’s wrong?”
“The Lincolns? Sure. Its wrongness is its appeal.”
“What will they do next?”
“I have no idea,” Dix said.
“What I’ve been giving you are
informed, or at least experienced, guesses. I’ve talked with a lot
of wackos in my life. All I can say by way of answer is that there is often an element of ritual in these kinds of crimes, and thus they would tend to keep repeating the ritual.”
“Doing the same thing over and over.”
“Yes.”
“In exactly the same way?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Why do you suppose they were photographing my home?”
“I don’t know,” Dix said.
“Maybe they like to first possess the victim’s image.”
“Victim?”
“What do you think?”
“I think they want to kill me next.”
“They might,” Dix said.
54
It was snowing again. Pleasantly. Not the hard nasty snowfall of
a Northeast storm. This was the kind of fluffy downfall that would leave the town looking like a winter wonderland. In a day or two, the reemerging sun, and the strewn salt from the streets, would shrink it in upon itself, and it would become an implacable mix of dirt and ice, marked by dogs, and littered by people. But right now it was pretty.
“Pretty doesn’t have a long shelf
life,” Jesse
said.
“Are you speaking of the snow?” Marcy said. “Or
me.”
They were on the sofa looking through the window in the living room of her small house in the old downtown section of Paradise where the winding streets made the pre-revolutionary town seem older than it was. Marcy was drinking white wine. Jesse had club soda and cranberry juice.
“Snow,” Jesse said.
“It’ll be ugly by Thursday.”
“And I won’t.”
“No,” Jesse said. “You got a
long time yet.”
Marcy was wearing a gray dress. She had kicked off her heels and
put her stocking feet beside Jesse’s on the coffee table.
Jesse
drank some cranberry and soda.
“No wonder you have a drinking problem,”
Marcy said. “You drink
a lot of whatever’s in front of you.”
“Yeah, but think how clean my urinary tract is,” Jesse
said.
“Well, that’s certainly a
comfort,” Marcy said.
They were quiet, watching the snow. There was a small fireplace
faced with maroon tiles on the far wall of Marcy’s living room.
Jesse had made a fire.
“How long since you’ve had a
drink,” Marcy said.
