One advantage to having been raised in his grandfather’s house-Simon had learned to handle disappointment. Or at least to disguise it. It didn’t matter whether your birthday presents consisted of a savings bond and an itchy sweater, or if your dinner was liver and onions with brussels sprouts, you’d better not let an expression other than stupefied gratitude cross your mug or Grandfather would have your hide. (None of this applied to Missy, of course- Missy always got away with murder.)
So as he made his way back to the kitchen, Simon reassured himself that he’d gotten his money’s worth out of the coral with Gloria. And as for that pitiful creature crawling across the kitchen floor, dragging her legs behind her? Useless-that was a good word for her. Blame it on the disease-knowing that she was dying anyway rendered her unfit for the game.
But there was always Pender’s game. Pender would make it all worthwhile, thought Simon, striding across the room and dragging Linda back from the counter-she was trying to pull herself up, probably hoping to climb through the tiny window over the sink. She turned, raked at his face with blunt and bitten nails. He caught her wrists, bent her arms back, leveraged her down to her knees.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” he asked, kneeling in front of her, looking into her eyes. He saw white-hot anger, but not a blessed trace of fear.
“No, and I don’t give a rat’s ass,” she said. She’d have spat in his face, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching her trying to work up some saliva.
“I’m going to let you live,” he said quietly. “I’m going to make you watch while I blind your friend Pender- slowly, one eye at a time-and then I’m going to let you both live.”
“We’ll dance on your grave,” Linda snarled back. “If I have to lead him there and he has to hold me up, we’ll dance on your fucking grave.”
10
Darkness. Smell of dank cement, old brick and old timbers, damp cardboard and laundry soap, and the faintest whiff of decay from the far corners, the unexplored reaches of the cellar where generations of rodent corpses had long since crumbled to dust.
Linda was lying on her side with her hands behind her back and her wrists tied to her ankles with a length of clothesline; Childs had gagged her with the belt of her flannel bathrobe. She could hear a television overhead, somewhere off to her right. Sounded like Childs was listening to CNN.
Linda held her breath, straining to make out the words. Media coverage, she knew, was a two-edged sword for law enforcement in these situations-every piece of information broadcast to warn the public would likewise inform the fugitive. So if the arson investigators had figured out that the body in 5-B wasn’t Childs, he would learn it along with everybody else. Then she could expect footsteps descending the basement steps, a bright light piercing the darkness, the resounding boom of a Colt.45 in an enclosed space.
On the other hand, if they still hadn’t discovered that Childs was alive, there wasn’t much hope of anybody calling to check on
After the big story-double murder in Georgetown, six dead in Atlantic City, including the fugitive serial killer- the sports came on. Something about the Redskins. In this day and age, how could you call a sports team the Redskins? It was not only demeaning, thought Simon indignantly, it was inaccurate. Native Americans were no more red than Gloria was yellow. She was ivory, that’s what she was. Beautiful antique ivory.
Thinking about Gloria, Simon felt a stab of regret. Not over killing her, but over losing her. Naked, terrified, pliant, in the bed or in the bath, she’d been
Simon switched off the bedroom TV, lay back on Pender’s bed. Underneath the gloss of the dexedrine he was dull and exhausted-he hadn’t slept since Wednesday morning-but whether exhaustion would be soporific enough for someone with a snootful of crosstops and a history of sleep disorders was highly questionable.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to knock himself out with one of his few remaining Halwanes. It seemed unlikely that in the space of three hours the cops would not only figure out he was still alive, but trace him here as well-but if they did come, he didn’t want to be taken while he slept. Not without a fight-and not alive, either.
But he did have one of Zap’s Ecstasy capsules left. He swallowed it dry, and while waiting for it to take effect he kept the blind rat away by thinking about the upcoming game. Pender’s game. Searching the house earlier, after stowing Skairdykat in the cellar, Simon had learned that the information he’d failed to extract from her had been right in front of his nose the whole time, or at least the whole time they were in the kitchen. A note, stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a banana:
Four-oh-seven. Simon went over it in his head again. Dulles wasn’t that far over the Virginia border. If the flight was on time, if Pender didn’t check his baggage and the traffic wasn’t horrendous, then the earliest he’d be arriving would be five; five-thirty or six more likely. Still daylight. Simon would wait inside-the vestibule would screen him from Pender.
But if for some unforeseen reason Pender decided to go around, to enter the house via the back porch, there was no cover in the living room-Simon would have to hide in that first bedroom and wait for him there. Either way, the Colt would be cocked and ready. If Pender ignored the order to freeze, Simon would kneecap him; if he obeyed it, Simon would secure him-the man was a cop: there had to be a pair of cuffs around here someplace-and the game would begin.
The only other question was whether to bring Skairdykat upstairs or Pender down to the cellar. Simon decided to play that by ear. Or by eye, he thought with a chuckle. Then we’ll see who dances on whose grave.
11
The natural habitat of the eastern coral snake is varied, from scrublands to woodlands to swamp verges, but the species is rarely found north of the thirty-fifth parallel: they don’t much care for cold. And this particular individual had been born and raised under the lights of the reptilarium: he or she had no yearning for the wide open spaces, not when there was food under the house.
The coral had never hunted before, but neither had it ever been hungry before. (The instinct was programmed, anyway-nature’s plan for reptiles didn’t involve Mommy or Daddy Snake spending a lot of quality time with the young’uns, teaching them how to fend.) The mice under Pender’s house were well fed (everything in Pender’s house but the ficus in the living room was well fed) and had never been hunted by anything as fast and deadly as a coral snake before.
Afterward, another programmed instinct kicked in, a thermal tropism: find warmth. The warmest place in the cold cellar was on the floor between the furnace and the water heater, but no sooner had the coral settled down than the thermostat on the furnace kicked in with a full-throated, percussive roar even a deaf snake could feel.
Once again, nurture affected nature’s plan. The coral had been raised, and more important, fed, by humans; it had no fear of them-quite the opposite. And the next warmest place in the cold cellar was across the room, next to the human. For all the snake knew, there might even be more food by the human, after the mouse had been digested. And perhaps there was also a conditioned reflex at work: this human smelled like coffee; coffee was the first thing the coral smelled every morning when the humans arrived to turn on the warm lights, and feed it, and clean its cage.
Or maybe it was just lonely. If snakes even
