used initially and which I had seen them use earlier. This was puzzling because the guns were hidden in the stable. floor, but then I realized that the small door through which we had escaped was ill suited for vehicles, and the big one was inaccessible because rain had made a huge gully in the sloping gravel drive.
With the help of the thermos of coffee I made it home awake, and rolled up the drive. As I walked to the front door-I hadn't bothered with the garage-I thought I heard a sound at the side of the house. I waited three minutes in total silence. Nothing. My mind was beginning to play tricks on me. I needed sleep, and less cops and robbers.
The coffee had me going now; I walked to the back of the house past the small sign that said Atelier and entered Mary's ceramic studio. I switched on the light. The place was festooned with hanging plants of all varieties, each one in a huge custom-thrown urn. I saw her recent work on the big table. They were modeled after Chinese pots from one of the dynasties, and were trapezoidal in cross-section with angular, though handsome, lids. Some were two feet across. It takes a huge amount of arm muscle to throw a pot that big. They were glazed with a textured drip finish. I stood in silent admiration in the room. I also resolved to forget about him. Schilling, the boat, and even Allan Hart. I would tell Joe and anyone else who wanted to know all about the guns in the Buzarski barn and the blue van. Then it was up to them. This thing had taken too heavy a toll on Mary, and on us.
I went upstairs and kissed her awake and loved her back to sleep. We both said we felt a lot better. I slept very soundly. In fact I slept so soundly that Mary told me later it was her third scream from the bottom of the stairs that stirred me. I met her on the landing. She leaned into me, wailing and moaning in her nightgown. I felt her nails dive into my right forearm.
'The oven! In the oven, Charlie-my God!'
Then she ran to the bathroom, sick.
In the kitchen I saw that the oven door atop the stove was ajar. It was at eye level. I crept forward and opened it with caution. The face of Angel stared back at me. Her eyes were still open, but dulled. Her hound face wore a quizzical expression. There was no anger in it, no snarl to the lips. There was no fear either. Just a confused look, as if asking fate why this had happened to her. A tiny pool had gathered beneath her severed neck. Not much. Her long velvet ears hung down between the wires of the baking rack on which her head rested.
'Oh, my poor Angel,' I whispered to her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brian Hannon's face crinkled up in disgust as he stared into the oven.
'And we're selling the stove, Charlie. Right now! You hear, right now we're selling it! Goddamn thing and-'
Mary was crying hard again and running her twisted fingers through her hair. It was not only the loss of the pet, the murder of our dog, that had her on the brink. It was the stealthy invasion of our home, while occupied: the cold, professional, wanton terrorism of it. If they thought they had us scared, they were indeed correct.
'My God that's awful, Doc. That's an awful thing. Please don't any of you touch anything for a while. Mary, it might be a good idea for you to get out of this house temporarily while my men work. Doc, we never found the body. They came in through the window. Jimmied it up clean as a whistle. They bypassed the alarm too. They're pros, Doc. They knew exactly what they were doing.'
'And the noise I heard coming in the front was them leaving by the window. They saw my headlights and hurried out.'
'Doc, I think their message is pretty clear.'
I nodded.
'What they're saying is lay off or you'll be next.'
'The dogs were all outside last night. They were together, but neither Danny nor Flack barked. How did they get to Angel without the other two knowing? And how did they catch and kill her silently? And why did they bring her inside?'
'They did it all for the message. They've showed they're silent. So quiet that dogs don't wake up when they're near. They're quick. So quick they can snatch a dog in her sleep and destroy her without a peep. And finally, you can't keep them out. They can get to you whenever they want.'
I let out a long sigh as I heard Mary trundling up the stairs.
'That's not encouraging.'
'No. I'd be extremely wary if I were you, Doc. Whatever it is you've been poking around in, forget it. You and Joe have discovered a body up in Gloucester. Now you stay out of it. Let the Commonwealth handle it. I guarantee your house will be guarded twenty-four hours a day.'
'And what will you be doing?'
'I am gonna stay with you. I'm gonna be harder to shake than athlete's foot. Count on it.'
He spun around and went to his men. I went to a pay phone and called the boys and told them to leave their present dwellings at once; and go to earth elsewhere.
'Call Chief Hannon in two days and let him know your whereabouts. That's an order.'
I saw Joe pull into the drive: I was never so glad to see him. The rest of the day was taken up with estate and local police, the dismantling and hauling away of the stove at Mary's irrational insistence, (although I admitted to myself that I never wanted to set teeth around anything cooked in that oven again as long as I, too, lived), and the tramping around through our domicile by state and local lab teams, who admitted to a person (two of them were women) that the breakers-enterers-murderers were very clean. No stray prints were found. The burglar alarm system had been circumvented with surgical precision. I cornered Joe and Brian on the porch.
'Has either of you any comments about the mode of entry? Does it not strike you as interesting that this group appears to be adept at circumventing burglar alarms?'
They nodded at each other without hesitating.
'Well?'
'Well what? It's always interesting that the M.O. has a definite pattern. We're up against pros here, that's certain.'
'Yes,' I answered, 'and pros good enough to crack an armory maybe?'
'Oh I've thought of that,' said Brian.
'Of course. I thought of it right away,' added Joe.
'Oh you did? But then neither of you apparently thought that the Rose could be running something out of the country-namely guns. Instead you thought I was off my nut. Since then we've uncovered a body, some tangible evidence of gun-running, and a direct threat to Yours Truly. The question is, how seriously are you guys taking this?'
'Very,' they answered in unison. I was somewhat heartened, but not very. To me they still seemed a bit like Tweedledum and his big fat brother, dee.
'Before he left Joe hugged Mary on the couch and comforted her.
'I want you at ten-ten Comm. Ave. Tomorrow at ten,' he said as he left.
On Commonwealth Avenue, right at the Boston/Brookline line, is a large store called Eastern Mountain Sports, abbreviated EMS. It sells down parkas, snowshoes, camping gear, and mountain climbing apparatus. The shelves are lined with pitons, nylon lifelines, ice axes, and small hammers to drive the pitons and steel rings into cliff faces. All this so people can scale sheer cliffsides and dangle about underneath ledges and outcroppings like spiders.
The people who die doing this stuff deserve it. It is nature's way of weeding out the insane.
Hordes of people flock to this emporium. Most don't pay any attention to the big dun-colored building across the street. It's blocky and ugly, and is conspicuous in having a splendid array of aerials and antennae on its rooftops. This is the headquarters building of the Department of Public Safety for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. One of the biggest divisions in the department is the State Police. Joe has an office in this big building. The day after we found Angel's severed head in the oven, I found myself on the third floor of this building seated at a table. Joe sat across from me. Next to me sat Sergeant Kevin O'Hearn. We were flipping through a big book filled with black and white photographs.
