“You are out of your mind.”
“Then I might as well tell you the rest of it, since you feel that way anyway. I think Grayson is obsessed by the idea of his own genius. I think after a while it became all that mattered to him. The mystique, the Grayson legend, the almost religious following that’s coming along behind him. I think that’s what this case is all about. You tell a guy often enough that he’s a god, after a while he starts to believe it. And it led him straight over the edge, till he became as cold-blooded a killer as I’ve ever seen.”
“You must be mad.”
“Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of Otto Murdock?”
She tried to shake her head. I wouldn’t let her.
“He’s a book dealer, or was, but you know that. He’s dead now. Murdered.”
“I saw it…in the newspaper.”
“Ever hear of Joseph Hockman?”
She made a little
“What about Reggie Dressier?…Mike Hollings-worth?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about Laura Warner?”
Nothing from her now. Her face looked like stone.
“They were book collectors. Grayson killed them.”
“I want you to leave now,” she said numbly.
“You remember your stalker?…The guy named Pruitt?”
Her eyes came up and gripped mine. Oh, yes, she remembered Pruitt.
“He’d be dead now too if he hadn’t been lucky. Somebody else took the knife that was meant for him.”
“Will you leave now?” she said thickly.
“Yeah, I’m finished. And I’m sorry, Crystal, I really am. I liked you all.”
I got up from the table. “I suppose you’ll tell Grayson what’s been said here tonight. I imagine he’ll come after me next.”
I gave her a last sad look. “Tell him I’m waiting for him.”
I walked out.
***
Down in the yard, where the night was now full, I turned away from the car and went along the path to the printshop. I looked back once, but Crystal was nowhere in sight. I was confident now, strong with faith in my premise. The old bastard was out there somewhere, his return as inevitable as the rain. I remembered the night I’d spent here, squirreled away in the loft, and the constant feeling that some presence was close at hand. Someone downstairs. Someone a room away. Someone walking around the house in the rain at four o’clock in the morning. Bumps in the night. You feel him standing in the shadows behind you, but when you turn to look, he’s gone. Cross him, though, and he will find you and cut your heart out.
I stood in the total dark of the printshop door. I put my hand in my pocket and took hold of the gun. Then I pushed open the door and went inside.
I crossed to the inner door. It made a sharp little click as I pushed it in.
“Crystal?”
It was Rigby’s voice, somewhere ahead. I stepped into the doorway and saw him, perched on a high steel chair halfway down the long worktable. No one was in the room with him, but that meant nothing. People can be anywhere, for any reason.
“Who’s there?”
I came all the way in, keeping both hands in my pockets. My eyes took in the length and breadth of it, from the far window to the locked door on this end that looked like nothing more than a storage room. Then, when I was sure he was alone, I came around the end of the workbench so he could see my face. I felt a chill at having my back to the door.
He took off his glasses and squinted.
“Janeway. Well, gosh.”
He’d been doing something there at the table, working on a sketch of some kind. He pulled open a thin, flat drawer, dropped his work inside, closed and locked it. Then he put one foot down from the chair he sat on and leaned
