dead man’s mother had died when he was two; his alcoholic father had abused him terribly throughout his childhood — if there had been larger pieces of him left behind in the Meadow, investigators might have seen the scars.
The dead man’s father had always marked him in places that could be covered by his clothes. These facts might have shocked another person, but they had quite a different effect on the Moth. The Moth knew all about hidden scars.
Like many abused children, David Niles was a good student, a child who tried to please. His father died when he was a teenager. He had been sent to live with his mother’s sister, an old maid who raised dogs in New Mexico. He loved dogs. He loved his aunt. She put him through college, where he met Ben Sheridan, who was a year or two ahead of him.
The Moth knew that it was Ben Sheridan’s enthusiasm for physical anthropology that led David Niles to change his major. Niles’s graduate studies were interrupted when he took care of his aunt before her death. She had already found homes for her dogs when she became too ill to care for them. No one would take care of her except her nephew. After her death, he went back and finished his doctorate, then — with Ben Sheridan’s help — obtained a part-time teaching position at Las Piernas College. Just before he died, he had been promoted to a full-time position.
The Moth also knew that David Niles — no, the Moth decided, call him the dead man — had inherited a little money from his aunt, and had used that to buy this house, build the dog runs, and cover the expenses of buying, training, outfitting, feeding, and otherwise caring for two large search dogs.
The Moth knew a great deal about every member of the group that went up to the mountains with Nicky, but knew more about this dead man than the others. This one had been the Moth’s special project, which was how it came about that this search of the dead man’s home was necessary.
In the living room, the Moth detected an odor of lemon furniture polish and, in the carpet, the scent of the dogs.
Not nearly as well as Nicky would have done. Nicky could distinguish scent better than any human alive. The Moth firmly believed this to be true.
Nicky would have been angry to know that the Moth had overlooked one small, small detail. But the Moth was about to take care of it, and Nicky need never know.
The Moth thought about the drain plugs in the toolbox and wondered why keeping secrets from Nicky was so exciting.
Before long, though, the Moth was feeling not excitement, but panic. What the Moth sought should have been in the living room, but it wasn’t. And suddenly, what seemed like a very small detail loomed very large.
Why, of all things, should this be missing?
Did the police know? Had they already made the connection?
There was a knock at the door. The Moth froze, then moved as quietly as possible to one of the bedrooms, and hid in the closet. Would the Moth have to kill the person at the door? Nicky would be furious — the Moth wasn’t here at Nicky’s bidding. Nicky would have planned for this, would have foreseen this! What if the person at the door went around to the garage and found the toolbox?
Long moments passed, in which the Moth thought of the toolbox and the drain plugs, and felt sick, absolutely sick.
The doorbell rang.
The Moth curled up into a little ball.
There was a long silence, then the Moth found the courage to stand up and leave the closet.
The Moth made a quick search of the two bedrooms and of the bathroom, as silly a place as it would be to hide what the Moth wanted.
The neighbor’s dog began barking again. Losing any remaining courage, the Moth left the house, picked up the toolbox in the garage, and hurried away from the dead man’s house.
Driving away, the Moth didn’t take time to look at the old woman’s house, to see if she was spying at her window. The Moth’s thoughts were consumed by a single idea, a notion that was becoming something of a Moth mantra:
36
WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 31
Las Piernas
Ellen Raice called me at work to tell me that someone had broken into Ben’s office by prying off a basement window latch.
“Was anything taken?”
“Not that I can see. If I hadn’t tried to lock the window, I might not have even noticed that someone had been in here. But when I saw that, I looked around, and I could see that things had been moved, you know, looked through. Especially on some of the shelves, and in the desk drawers.”
“Campus police know about this?”
“Yes. But I don’t believe the officer understands the implication.”
“That this is connected with Nicholas Parrish.”
“I knew you’d understand! Will you talk to your husband about it?”
I called Frank. A detective and a crime lab technician were sent out to the college, and a patrol car to David’s house — there had been a break-in there, too. At the house, it was apparent that someone had jimmied the back door of the garage. I let Ben know what was going on, and told him I would go to the house to see if I noticed anything missing.
