Having installed new locks in his house, Billy had not only learned to do the work correctly but also learned how often it is done badly. He hoped for sloppy workmanship—and found it.
Perhaps the door had been hung to swing from the wrong side. Rather than rehang it to match the lockset, they had installed the lockset in reverse, with the interior face turned to the garage.
Instead of an unremovable escutcheon, he was offered one with two spanner screws. The keyhole plug had a grip ring for extraction. In less time than he had spent searching for a spare key, he opened the door. Before proceeding, he put the lock back together. He cleaned up all evidence of what he had done and wiped all his prints off the door hardware. He returned the tools to the box—and took from it his revolver. To facilitate a hasty exit, he put the tools in the Explorer. In addition to the toolbox, he had brought a box of disposable latex gloves. He slipped his hands into a pair.
Now, with an hour of daylight remaining, he toured the house, switching on lamps and ceiling fixtures as he went.
Many of the shelves in the pantry were bare. Steve’s provisions were a cliche of bachelorhood: canned soups, canned stews, potato chips, corn chips, Cheez Doodles.
The dirty dishes and pots heaped in the sink outnumbered clean items in the cabinets, most of which were empty.
In a drawer, he found a collection of spare keys for a car, for padlocks, perhaps for the house. He tried a few in the back door and found one that worked. He pocketed that spare before returning the other keys to the drawer. Steve Zillis scorned furniture. In the dinette off the kitchen, the single chair did not match the scarred Formica table.
187
The living room contained only a lumpy sofa, a cracked-leather ottoman, and a TV with DVD player on a wheeled stand. Magazines were stacked on the floor, and near them were a discarded pair of dirty socks. Except for the lack of posters, the decor was that of a dorm room. Enduring adolescence was pathetic but not criminal.
If a woman ever visited, she wouldn’t return—or sleep over. Being able to tie knots in a cherry stem with your tongue was not enough to ensure a life of torrid romance.
The spare bedroom contained no furniture, but four mannequins. They were all female, naked, wigless, bald. Three had been altered. One lay on its back, on the floor, in the center of the room. It gripped two steak knives. Each knife had been driven into its throat, as if it had twice stabbed itself.
A hole had been drilled between its legs. Also between its legs was a spear-point stave from a wrought-iron fence. The sharp end of the stave had been inserted in the crudely formed vagina.
Instead of feet, the mannequin had another pair of hands at the ends of its legs. Both legs were bent to allow the additional hands to grip the iron stave. A third pair of hands grew by the wrists from the breasts. They grasped at the air, seeking and eager, as though the mannequin were insatiable.
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In more than a few houses, if you could prowl at leisure, you might discover evidence of perversity, kinky secrets.
Because such care had been taken in their alteration, so much time expended, these mannequins seemed to represent more than that. This was an expression not of desire but of a ravenous craving, of a rapacious need that could never be fully satisfied.
A second mannequin sat with its back to a wall, legs splayed. Its eyes had been cut out. Teeth had been inserted in their place.
These appeared to be animal teeth, perhaps those of reptiles and perhaps real. Hooked fangs and snaggled incisors.
Each tooth had been meticulously glued in the rim of the socket. Each cluster appeared to have been designed with much thought as to the most fearsome, bristling arrangement.
The mouth had been cut open, carved wide. Wicked, inhuman teeth filled the mannequin’s maw.
Like the petals of a Venus flytrap, the ears were rimmed with poised teeth. Teeth sprouted from the nipples and from the navel. A crafted vagina featured more fangs than the other orifices.
Whether this macabre figure represented a fear of all-devouring womanhood, whether instead it was being devoured by its own hunger, Billy didn’t know, didn’t care.
He just wanted to get out of here. He had seen enough. Yet he continued to look.
The third mannequin also sat with its back to a wall. Its hands rested in its lap, holding a bowl. The bowl was actually the top of its skull, which had been sawn off.
Photographs of male genitalia overflowed the bowl. Billy did not touch them, but he could see enough to suspect that every picture featured the same genitalia.
A bouquet of similar photos, scores of them, bloomed from the top of the open skull. Still more blossomed from the mannequin’s mouth. Evidently Steve Zillis had spent a lot of time taking snapshots of himself from various angles, in various states of arousal.
189
Billy’s latex gloves served a purpose besides guarding against leaving fingerprints. Without them, he would have been sickened by the need to touch doorknobs, light switches, anything in the house.
The fourth mannequin had not yet been mutilated. Zillis probably hungered to get at her.
During his shift at the tavern, drawing beers from the tap, telling jokes, doing his tricks, these were the thoughts behind the radiant smile. Steve’s bedroom proved to be as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house. The bed, a nightstand, a lamp, a clock. No art on the walls, no knickknacks, no memorabilia.
The bedclothes were in disarray. One pillow lay on the floor. A corner of the room evidently served in place of a laundry hamper. Rumpled shirts, khakis, jeans, and dirty underwear were heaped as Steve had tossed
