She left the rifle where it was, and got again to her feet. She moved awkwardly now, self-consciously, convinced that eyes were watching her.
The night-table lamp on her side of the bed was the only source of light. She moved to it, cumbersome, uneasy, blinking, and bent suddenly to switch it off. In the new darkness she dropped to the floor again, felt along the bed, reached her hand underneath and slapped at the floor till she felt the cold metal of the rifle barrel. And all the time wincing from the expected sound of breaking glass, sure that Manny would crash into the room now from the porch.
But nothing happened. She pulled the rifle out, sat up, and leaned her back against the side of the bed. She sat cross-legged, tailor fashion, with the rifle across her lap; the barricaded hall door was to her left, the vulnerable porch door to her right.
Nothing happened.
Was that voices, was that movement?
Jessup’s voice, low and threatening, sounded from against the blocked door: “Manny says you’ve turned out the light. You goin’ to bed now? But you got to finish your dinner.”
So she’d been right. Manny had been watching the porch door, that was the only way he could know the light had been turned off.
She thought of shouting to them that she was armed, that they should go away, but she was afraid that would simply make them meaner and more difficult to deal with. It was the mountain lion again; you can’t scare off a mountain lion by telling him you have a gun.
Jessup called, “Honey, you can come out now and cverything’ll be okay, no trouble at all. But you stay in there and you’ll be sorry.”
It was such a temptation to believe him. It would be so much easier that way, to hide the rifle again under the bed, pull the dresser away from the door, and just walk out there. If she could believe him.
She didn’t move.
Nothing happened then for a long while. She continued to sit there, straining to hear a sound that would tell her what they were doing, what they were planning to do.
Where was Parker? Five hours since he’d called.
Noises. Bumping and thumping in the living room, Manny and Jessup saying things to one another. She couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded as though they were doing some sort of work together and were giving one another instructions and comments.
Her eyes had grown more used to the darkness. It was an overcast night, with intermittent starshine; the rectangles of door and windows were paler blurs in the darkness, and at intervals she could make out the light- reflecting restless water of the lake.
The thumping noises were coming closer, moving now across the porch from the direction of the living-room door. Were they bringing something heavy to batter their way through this door? I can’t faint, she told herself, insisting on it because she was afraid she might faint; her arms were trembling, her stomach was light and queasy, and the blinking was back again, worse than ever.
What were they doing? Vaguely she saw movement outside, on the porch. They were out there, or one of them was out there.
Should she shoot at them through the glass? But they were so vaguely seen, and it was probably only one of them anyway, and the chances were she wouldn’t hit them at all, not under these conditions. And afterward they would know she had a gun.
Dragging sounds, rustling movements, half-seen busyness out there on the porch. And then nothing. There still seemed to be someone or something there, a vague shape bulky outside the glass door, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
Turn on the light? But that would illuminate her much more than it.
There were porch lights, two of them, operated by a pair of switches, one beside the door in here and one beside the door in the living room. Either switch operated both lights. She could crawl over to the door—standing up and walking was beyond her now—and reach up and turn on the porch lights, and then she would know what it was out there. But did she really want to know?
She shifted position, turning half-around on the floor so as to put her left side toward the porch. She raised the rifle and pointed it at the bulky thing beyond the door.
Nothing happened. She waited, and nothing happened.
And then the porch lights came on, suddenly, unexpectedly, and she screamed at what was outside the door, looking in at her.
Morris. Dead and naked and cut all over his body and tied upright in a kitchen chair. Just sitting there, with his arms hanging down at his sides, his head dangling to the right, his eyes looking at her.
She emptied the rifle into him, and the laughing kept on anyway, and she was squeezing the trigger to make click sounds against emptiness when Jessup and Manny punched their way in through the bathroom door.
PART FOUR
The plane circled Newark for fifteen minutes, and had been late getting there in any event. It was nearly eight o’clock before they landed and the passengers could get off.
At night, Newark Airport looks like Newark: underilluminated, squat, dirty. The terminal building seemed to be full of short people speaking Spanish, all of them excited about one thing or another. Parker went through them like a panther through geese, and trotted across the blacktop street out front to the parking lot and the Pontiac.
He had major highway to drive on most of the way, with country blacktop for only the last ten miles or so. He drove by the turnoff to the road that circled the lake, knowing that just over a mile farther on, the other end of the same road came around to intersect with the one he was on.
