unobtainable. And although the painter had worked in a standard academic style, he had caught something vibrant and alive in his subject, a moment when she projected herself, bursting with life-force, to the viewer.
But even as Janek was awed by the powerful image before him, his head began to whirl with a kaleidoscopic array of other images in the room.
Below the portrait, arranged upon an odd piece of furniture set within the niche, he saw a number of anomalous objects he could not make out clearly in the red light. Something about them was important. He wanted to decipher them, and was about to move closer to do so, when his eyes, drawn around the room, fastened onto the curled figure of a man lying on the floor at the foot of the bed in a puddle of dark liquid.
Leo!
The moment it registered on him that Leo Titus was lying there, probably dead in a pool of his own blood, the radio strapped to his belt began to squawk. A second later he heard Aaron's voice.
'Shit, Frank! She's coming now, fast!'
Gotta get out of here!
Hearing a sound behind, Janek turned in time to see a short, slim, baldheaded figure, dressed top to bottom in black, ice pick in hand, poised in the doorway to the room. A second later the figure, weapon raised, was rushing at him through the reddish gloom. Janek feinted to the left. At the same time he reached for the Colt strapped to his ankle. Too late. Before he could crouch, his attacker was upon him, plunging down the weapon.
He knew he'd been hit. No pain, but he could feel the steel strike the bone of his shoulder and then his right arm hanging limp. His only chance now, he knew, was to get to his gun with his left hand. He knelt and struggled for it even as he saw his assailant step back two paces, produce a second ice pick, raise it, and thrust at him again.
He ripped the Colt from its holster and, hand trembling, fired at the advancing figure. The pain was coming upon him now, a great wave of pain that filled his head with delirium. He fired a second time, directly into his adversary's body. And in that same split second, when he saw the body blasted back across the room and knew for certain that it was a woman, the pain smashed into him; he felt a wave of nausea and understood that on her second foray she had stabbed him in the throat.
He could feel the blood gushing out of him. And then, as his legs collapsed slowly, he was seized with the certainty that he was going to die.
He came to in an ambulance. He knew it was an ambulance because there was a white-coated medic leaning over him, working on his throat, a siren was blasting directly above, and Aaron was crouching by his head, whispering encouragement.
'Hang in there, Frank. Just a block from Lenox Hill Emergency.'
'Aaron…
'Frank?' Aaron's face was above him now, slightly blurry but recognizable.
'It was Archer, wasn't it?' Aaron shook his head. 'Wasn't her. But don't worry II Aaron smiled. 'You got her. You blew the little bitch away.' 'Then who?' But before Aaron could reply, Janek felt himself sinking back into a pit of pain. 'Tell Monika-'
Oh-oh-I'm passing out.
When he woke again, he was on his back, naked beneath a sheet, being wheeled rapidly down a tiled basement corridor. Kit Kopta was by his side. 'Kit 'Right here, Frank.' 'Who?' 'Don't worry about that now.
You're going to be all right. The surgeons'll fix you up.'
Surgeons… Christ, it huti!
Perhaps he dreamed it, though later he would tell people he woke up terrified during the operation, felt the heat of the lights on his face, saw the surgeons and nurses in their pea green smocks and masks, felt the probe of their instruments as they worked on his shoulder and his throat. And then seeing something in their eyes that told him he had a chance to live, he resigned himself and slipped back into a fuzzy chemical-induced sleep.
Kit was beside him when he came to in the recovery room. He could feel the tight grip of her hand. 'You're going to be okay, Frank. I've got some good news for you, too. Aaron got hold of Monika. She's flying in tonight.'
'Great…' he murmured.
'Your arm should be all right. A week here, a week at home, and that should do it. As for your throat-well, another quarter inch and she'd have waxed you. She didn't, thank God!'
'Who was she?' His voice sounded strange to him, raw, hoarse, a mere whimper that sent pulses of pain shooting through his brain. He tried to sit. 'Who?' he demanded.
'Take it easy, Frank. Lie back. She was the girl downstairs, the one who rented the basement apartment. She'd been Archer's patient in Connecticut.'
Connecticut! What the hell was going on?
'But was she… the one? You know. was she-?'
Kit was nodding. 'Sure looks that way. I just got off the phone with Aaron. they went through her apartment, found ticket stubs, ice picks, caulking guns, glue. Suilivan's shitting in his pants. Because you solved it, Frank. You did it, you brilliant son of a bitch! You solved Happy Families!'
'Archer, she-'
Kit shook her head. 'She didn't know anything. That's what she says. The girl was fixated on her, and…'
He felt his eyes starting to close. He struggled but couldn't keep them open. Kit's voice was distant now, as if in the back of a deep cave. 'Rest, Frank. We'll talk later. Aaron'll be here soon. He'll explain…
When he woke nauseated and agitated in a darkened room, there was a moment of clarity. 'You solved it.' Had Kit actually said that? was it possible? How could he have solved it? How?
7
Diana Proctor, braced like a West Point plebe, stood rigid in the garden just outside the window. Back arched, eyes forward, head straight, chin down-in this exaggerated posture her nose was but inches from the glass.
Beverly Archer, sitting in the consulting room, glanced at her and smiled. The rain, running down Diana's young and ardent face, streaked her cheeks like tears. The girl's hair, cut close and hutch, hung limp like wet black yarn. Her gray T-shirt, bearing the word TRAININC; in small block military letters, clung sopping to her rib cage and chest.
What a sight! You'd think the poor thing would have to move, but there she stood still as stone just as she'd been ordered. She was shivering; no surprise, since she'd been standing out there for nearly forty minutes and still had twenty more to go. Rain or shine, a sentence was a sentence; an hour had been decreed, and an hour would be served. A fat little alarm clock, standing on tiny feet, was perched upon the windowsill. Diana's eyes were fastened to its taunting face, her features frozen, locked. That, too, had been ordered.
If the eyes were permitted to drift, the strings of control would weaken. In a matter of this kind control was everything. Obedience and control. to Beverly the glass between them, transparent yet impenetrable, symbolized their relationship: intimately bound yet separate and apart.
Here she sat within, sheltered and warm, flipping casually through a magazine, while Diana stood less than a foot away, braving the elements as she performed her penance. The polarity was perfect, Beverly thought, and best of all, Mama would approve.
She remembered: Mama zippering her into an oversize snowsuit, then pulling the collar up above her head so her face was encased as well.
'Better be good, Bev, or I'll zip you up forever…
She glanced again at Diana. Poor girl! But Diana craved hard discipline, reveled in it. It was discipline that had made her strong, that would make of her a perfect steely tool. With a person like Diana, discipline was the only way. Break her; control her; then build her up again. Take the raw killer rage and forge it to your need. Train her; teach her obedience; then she will serve you and Mama, too. Then she will be better than a bullet, better even than a knife.
She remembered: 'Learn to be an archer, Bev,' Mama said. 'Find your arrow, sharpen it up, string it to your bow, and let it fly. It'll travel far and true, hit your targets again and again…
