She took a tentative step up a flight of carpeted stairs, but he stopped her, pointing to a trickling trail of blood on the kitchen tiles. The blood looked burgundy in the absence of light. 'She's left us another intentional trail to follow.'
It led them through the expansive kitchen and to a basement door off the kitchen. Meredyth buried her head in his chest, and he held her. 'My God, Lucas, she's killed them all.'
Lucas had no words that might comfort her. He reached a hand out to the basement door, cautiously opening it, and staring into the black hole of the stairwell. 'Stay here, Mere.'
'Don't you dare leave me alone.'
'I have to step inside and close the door before flicking on the light switch. I don't want that madwoman to know where we are. Understood?'
'I go with you.'
He saw the adamant fire in her eyes that said no use arguing. 'All right, but it could be a shock. Brace for it.'
Once on the stairwell, he flicked on the light, and it instantly revealed blood on the interior door and on the panels of dry wall on both sides of the stairwell. They were, in effect, surrounded by a red rain that looked like paintbrush flecks and spurts, the kind of high-velocity blood residue that comes of gunshot wounds at close range, creating a crazy mosaic only a blood-spatter evidence expert could read. It said to Lucas, They were shot here at the top of the stairwell and the killer used their own weight to her benefit, simply allowing the bodies to fall atop one another. The flood of light revealed the heap of three bodies lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs.
'That bitch knows we're here looking at what she's done,' said Meredyth, trembling under his embrace. 'Directed us across the lake and to the kitchen and here.
Lucas. She's orchestrated the whole damn thing…watching us tip over in the water, climb out at the pier, all of it.'
'She can watch our every move through that scope,' he agreed. 'But she can't see through walls.'
Lucas held Meredyth's head close to him, not wishing her to look down the stairwell again at the carnage that lay there, mother, father, and teen daughter. He ordered her to stay on the top stair as he went below. At the foot of the stairs, Lucas got to know the Brodys up close and personal.
Myron, Lorene, and their child, Candice, all with gags, blindfolds, and hands tied at their backs. They'd been summarily shot in the head on the top step. Lauralie had guided each to the basement stairs one at a time, fired into each cranium, and had simply let gravity do the rest.
Myron Brody was at the bottom of the heap, and it recalled Lucas's time in Viet Nam below such a death heap. He truly hated this Lauralie Blodgett now, and he wanted in the worst way to see her dead before this night was over.
Lucas now worked to separate the dead from one another in an effort to find keys for the RV and possibly a cell phone. He pried Myron Brody from the weight of his wife and child and fished into the pants pockets for keys. There were none. He tried Mrs. Brody's pockets. No keys. Finally, he tried the young girl's jeans. Nothing. Finally giving up, he located a tarp and covered the Brodys.
He hurried back upstairs to Meredyth where she sat quietly sobbing. He helped her to her feet, turned out the light, and guided her back into the kitchen. 'No doubt she's emptied the place of any keys and cell phones along with any weapons.' He indicated the empty chopping block.
'Not entirely,' said Meredyth, upending the dining table.
'What're we doing?'
'Arming ourselves.' She began unscrewing one of the table legs. In a moment, she had a baseball-bat-sized weapon with a two-inch screw protruding from the end.
Lucas removed a second table leg. 'Makes a damn nice war club.'
'Lucas, you see what I see?' Meredyth pointed to a clear cookie jar on the countertop, and inside were keys.
Lucas grabbed the jar and emptied out the set of Chevy keys. 'I think it's the RV. Come on! We're out the back door and to the car.'
Outside, they strapped in before Lucas learned that neither the correct key nor hot-wiring would do, as he could not get a spark from the ignition. Exiting the RV, he rounded to the front and lifted the hood, flashing a light found in the glove compartment now over the dead motor. She had gotten out, clutching her table leg and asking, 'What is it?'
He pointed. 'She's made off with the distributor cap. Biiiitch!' He ground out the word.
'She's got us right where she wants us, doesn't she?'
'How could she've known we were without our phones, my gun?' he lamented. 'Hell…I even left my Texas toothpick in your bedroom, Mere.'
'A bowie knife's hardly going to help us now.'
'I think it'd beat nothing.'
'We have our war clubs, remember?' She hefted her chair leg. His lay on the seat inside the RV. 'Lucas, she's thought every detail through. She's been in this house for hours and hours, all damn day. And she's been watching us.'
'From where? Exactly where to watch our every move, Mere?'
'Upstairs…Candice's room in the front. It overlooks the lake and she…she is a stargazer, owns a super telescope.'
'How damn fortunate for Lauralie.'
'She knew when we got up, when we ate, when we left for the stables and left on horseback. All of it.'
'She saw the rifle when we passed it back and forth at the stable,' he thoughtfully said. 'Saw everything that happened across the lake.'
'She saw when Howard arrived to do the lawn, and gauged how much time she had to row across and take his identity before we'd be back.'
'But how'd she arrange for Kemper's body in the boat to bump into us out there on the lake?'
'She didn't, but she arranged it as a horrid, heinous crime designed for maximum effect whenever I should discover it,' Meredyth said. 'Didn't matter whether it was to-night, tomorrow, or the next day, because-'
'— because you'd be left alive to savor all the terror she wants to rub your face in.'
'Exactly.' Meredyth's knuckles had gone white with the grip she held on her table leg club.
'So…here we stand in the dark, and she could be anywhere out there, taking a bead on you at this moment, Lucas. She'd like nothing better than to leave me entirely alone, holding your bloodied body in my arms throughout this night of terror she has planned for me. So, if you please, can we take cover and decide what we do next?'
'What are our options?'
'We go back inside the house, huddle up in the dark in a center room without windows, and wait for daylight.'
'Can we walk out of here?'
'Not another house or a road for several miles this side of the lake, and if she is watching, she'll stalk us and either kill us or turn us back.'
'What about Jeff and Tommy's place, their mother's home?' he asked.
'God, I pray she hasn't been killed, and oh, God, if she is alive, how are we to tell her about her sons, Lucas? How do we explain their deaths?'
'As the senseless act of a madwoman, Mere. Their deaths are not your fault. You give into such guilt, and Lauralie wins. She puts you precisely where she wants you.'
'Oh, you mean like now?' She threw up her hands, the flashlight in them sending up crazy circles of light into the leaves of overhanging trees. 'Look where she has us! Drip-ping wet, freezing, trapped, and at her mercy!'
'Then we don't lay down for the bitch.'
'What do you mean? Go after her?'
'Go after her, yes.'
'Tonight?'
'Now.'
'In the dark?'
