Reassuring, Florence thought, with bitter irony. She was breathing easier. While she had mousy brown hair, it was a comfort to know she was middle-aged, dumpy, and nobody had ever thought of her as attractive. Passable at her younger, thinner best, but that was years ago.
Directors would hardly cast her as the delectable prey of a psychosexual serial killer.
Florence had long ago stopped worrying about not being a beauty. Despite being overworked, she was quite happy doing her job, going to art exhibits, and dining out with friends of both sexes. It was a narrow life, perhaps, but she found it a contented one.
She used the remote to switch channels. The national news. Now here were people with real problems. In some city where there were palm trees, flames and smoke were curling into the sky above a fire-ravaged building. Several cars parked nearby were also on fire.
The picture cut to a helicopter shot of a distant white van speeding the wrong way along a freeway; apparently the vehicle contained the arsonist who'd set the fire. This was something, Florence thought. She peered at the screen, trying to read the crawl without her glasses, and figured it all had to be happening in LA.
The intercom buzzed, and she muted the TV and rose from the sofa. It took her several seconds to cross the room on her sore feet, press the painted-over button, and ask who was there.
She felt not the slightest sense of danger when the voice from the lobby fifteen stories below told her there was a Federal Parcel package to be delivered to her address.
A present? Something she'd ordered from a shopping channel and forgotten?
Whatever, it was sure to brighten her mood.
Pearl had removed her practical cop shoes and sat with her feet propped on the coffee table, watching TV news. Another California car chase. Was that all they did out there, when they weren't hauling in junkie celebrities?
Maybe that was what she should do, she thought, watching the white van being pursued by an orderly procession of LAPD cars with flashing lights. Leave New York and become an LA cop, join the parade of police cars. Forget about Quinn and the NYPD and this noisy, dirty city with the accelerated heartbeat. Forget about all her frustration. LA looked clean and sunny and sparsely populated-at least compared to New York. It looked manageable. Being a cop in la-la land might even be fun.
She took a sip from her can of diet Pepsi and watched the driver in the white van slow down and cut across a grassy median, then wave at the cops and lead the pursuit in the opposite direction. Police cars on the other side of the highway politely got out of the way as the van passed.
The hell with that, Pearl thought, and wondered how far the asshole in the van would get in some good old New York traffic with NYPD radio cars on his tail.
As she watched, two cops by the side of the road stood helplessly with hands on hips as the van sped past.
Pearl shook her head.
The hell with that!
If it hadn't been her TV, she might have thrown the soda can at it.
10
Bocanne, Florida, 1979
Darkness had fallen.
Nine-year-old Sherman Kraft lay on his sagging mattress in his bedroom in the ramshackle house on the edge of the deep swamp. His door was open about a foot, and he'd scooted over on the bed so he could see out into the hall, where from time to time his mother appeared and peeked into the bedroom of their boarder, Ernest Marks.
His mother's hair was darker than the shadows, unkempt and hanging to beneath her shoulders, exaggerating the eager craning of her neck as she opened Marks's door a few inches to peer in. Sherman knew what she was looking for, waiting for.
He was a skinny boy but with a good frame, and as handsome as his mother was beautiful. He had his father's blue eyes but his mother's firm jaw, her high forehead. His thin lips were a slash that curled downward slightly at one corner, like his mother's. Maybe like his father's, too. Sherman had no idea what his father looked like, only that his name was George, he was what Sherman's mom called a con man, and he'd deserted them both five years ago and been shot to death by a woman's angry husband in South Carolina.
Chickens coming home to roost, Sherman's mom had remarked a few times, and that was the end of conversation about her late husband and Sherman's late father George.
George the forgotten man.
The hinge on Mr. Marks's door squeaked again, not loud, almost like the plaintive cry of a mouse surprised by a trap. Marks was a big man, in his late sixties, but he still looked strong. Sherman's mom was being careful.
Sherman let his gaze slide to the side in the dim bedroom. It took in his wicker desk, where he was homeschooled. His bamboo fishing pole, propped gracefully against the wall in the corner. His threadbare armchair, where he loved to sit and read, whenever he could buy or steal a used paperback. Sometimes, when he had nothing to read, he simply sat and did math problems in his head. It was funny, the way the world could be broken down into numbers and mathematical equations. Everything neat and orderly in its place, if you concentrated hard enough and made things fit. If you questioned things enough. Sherman was always questioning. Not out loud, of course, but questioning.
How many heartbeats to the minute? He considered taking his pulse. His heart was surely racing. He'd read somewhere that seventy-six was normal. He placed his fingertips over his pulse for what he thought was ten seconds, then did the calculation.
Much higher than seventy-six.
He knew why.
The door hinge squealed louder out in the hall. His mother, no longer being careful, opening Mr. Marks's door all the way.
Much, much higher than seventy-six. Like a bird trapped in my chest and beating its wings.
Footsteps in the hall, bare feet on the plank floor. His mother, coming toward his room.
She pushed his door open all the way and looked in at him. He could see her only in silhouette, dark and almost without substance, like a shadow.
Sherman rolled onto his side, facing away from her. He didn't want to do this. He didn't.
He never did.
'Sherman, I know you're awake. I need your help.'
He knew there was no point in arguing. He simply didn't disobey. It was always easier if he did as he was told. Always.
He rolled over and sat up in bed.
'Go into Mr. Marks's room and wait for me,' his mother said. She wasn't whispering.
'Mom…'
'This isn't any fun for me, either, Sherman.'
He nodded to the shadow in his doorway and watched it disappear into darker shadows. Then he climbed out of bed, slipped on his jeans that felt stiff and cool even though the night was warm, and walked reluctantly into the room across the hall.
The conch shell lamp by the bed was on, too dim to read by. Next to it on the table was a cracked saucer with a snubbed out filter-tip cigarette in it. Mr. Marks was in bed, lying on his back, his right hand raised about a foot off the mattress, as if he were about to reach for something. Not looking at it, though. Staring at the ceiling. Not breathing. So still. Dead.
The light was on in the hall now, and Sherman's mother came into the bedroom. She was carrying a long- bladed pair of scissors.
'We'll undress him here,' she said in her crisp voice that meant business, 'then you know what to do.'
