green moss and lichens the color of ashes. What looked like cancers had taken hold on the wood, grown tendrils and linked with other tumors. Part of the porch's supports had collapsed, the floor sagging. Vandals had shown their hand: every window in the house was shattered, and spray-painted graffiti was snarled like gaudy thorns between the lichens.
Laura started up the steps. The second one was already broken, as was the fourth. Laura touched the banister, and her hand sank into the rotten wood. There was no front door. Just beyond the threshold there was a hole in the floor that might have been the size of Mary's boot. Laura walked inside, the smell of saltwater thick and the inner walls dark with growths. Moss hung from the ceiling like garlands. The decorations for a homecoming, Laura thought. She walked toward the staircase, and her left foot slid through the floor as if into gray mud. She pulled free, little black beetles scurrying out of the hole. The first riser of the stairs had given way. So had most of the others. The house was decayed to its core, and the walls were about to fall.
'I know you're there,' Laura said. The saturated walls muffled her voice. 'I want my baby. I'm not going to let you have him, and you know that by now.'
Silence but for the thunder and the noise of dripping.
'Come on, Mary. I'll find you sooner or later.'
No answer. What if she's killed him? Laura thought. Oh Jesus, what if she killed him back in Freestone and that's why the police were –
She stopped herself before she cracked. Laura walked carefully into another room. Its bay windows, long broken out, gave a majestic view of the ocean. She could see waves crashing against the rocks, spume leaping high. Mist, a silent destroyer, was drifting into the house. On the cratered floor lay beer cans, cigarette butts, and an empty rum bottle.
Laura heard what she thought at first was the crying of a sea gull on the wind.
No, no. Her heart kicked. It was the crying of a baby. From upstairs, somewhere. Tears burned her eyes, and she almost sobbed with relief. David was still alive.
But she would have to climb the stairs to get him.
Laura started up, over the broken risers. David was still crying, the sound ebbing and then strengthening again. He's tired, she thought. Worn out and hungry. Her arms ached to hold him. Careful, careful! The staircase trembled under her weight, as it must have shaken under the weight of Mary Terror. She climbed into the gloom, moss glistening on the walls, and she reached the second floor.
It was a warren of rooms, but David's crying guided her. Her right foot slid down into the floor, and she nearly fell to her knees. On this second level, much of the floor had already given way, the rest of the boards swollen and sagging underfoot. Laura eased around the rotten-edged craters, where black bugs swarmed, and followed the sound of her child's voice.
Mary could be anywhere. Lurking around a corner, standing in the darkness, waiting for her. Laura went on, step after careful step, her gaze wary for the big woman suddenly appearing in a doorway. But there was no sign of Mary, and at last Laura came to the room that held her son.
He was not alone.
Mary Terror was standing in the far corner of the room, facing the doorway. She had David in the crook of her left arm. Her right hand held a revolver, aimed at the baby's head.
'You found me,' Mary said. A smile flickered across a face tight with madness. Her eyes were burn holes, beads of sweat like blisters on her skin. A patch of blood and pus had soaked through the thigh of her jeans.
The hairs had risen on the back of Laura's neck. She'd seen the gore spattered on the woman's sweater and the Smiley Face button. The revolver's hammer was cocked and ready. 'Let him go. Please.'
Mary paused. She seemed to be thinking about it, her eyes staring off somewhere beside Laura. 'He says I shouldn't do that,' Mary told her.
'Who says it?'
'God,' Mary said. 'He's standing over there.'
Laura swallowed thickly. David's crying waxed and waned. He was calling for his mother, and her legs wanted to carry her to him.
'Throw your gun down,' Mary commanded.
She hesitated. Once the gun was gone, she was finished. Her brain was smoking, trying to think of a way out of this. 'In Freestone,' she said. 'Did you find Jack Gardi -'
'DONT SPEAK THAT NAME!' Mary shrieked. Her gun hand trembled, the knuckles white.
Laura stood very still, her lungs rasping and cold sweat on her forehead.
Mary's eyes closed for a second or two, as if she were trying to shut out what she'd seen. Then they jerked open. 'He's dead. He died in 1972. Linden, New Jersey. There was a Shootout. The pigs found us. He died… saving me and my baby. I held him while he died. He said… he said…' She looked to God for guidance in this. 'He said he'd never love anyone else, and that our love was like two shooting stars burning bright and hot and people who saw it would be blinded by that beauty. So he died, a long time ago.'
'Mary?' Laura kept her voice steady with a supreme effort. If she didn't do something in a hurry, her infant was going to die. The thought of a police sniper and a madwoman on a balcony whirled through her mind in a horror of flashing blue lights. But that woman had killed the baby because of the death reflex. If Mary had to make a sudden choice, would she kill Laura first, or David? 'The baby is mine. Can you understand that? I gave birth to him. He belongs to -'
'He's mine,' Mary interrupted. 'And we're going to die together. Can you dig it, or not?'
'No.'
It was the only way. Laura's eyes calculated the inches as her mind measured the dwindling seconds. Time was almost gone. She lunged forward and dropped to her knees, the quickness of her movement catching Mary Terror by surprise.
A single memory passed through Mary's fevered brain, like a cool balm: Drummer's small hand, tightening around her index finger as if to stop it from pulling a trigger.
The revolver didn't go off.
As Laura lifted her pistol and took aim, the gun in Mary's hand left the child's head and began to turn toward Laura.
But Laura got off the first two shots.
She was aiming at the woman's legs, from a distance of ten feet. The first shot missed, hitting the wall behind Mary, but the second bullet grazed Mary's wounded thigh and burst it open in a hot spray of blood and pus. Mary screamed like an animal, her legs buckling and her gun firing before it could train on Laura. As Mary's knees hit the floor, Laura scrambled toward her and swung the automatic at the woman's head, striking her a blow across the left cheekbone. Mary's gun hand began to spasm uncontrollably, and the revolver fell to the floor. Then Laura grabbed hold of the green parka David was zipped up in. She wrenched him out of Mary's grasp, and then she kicked the revolver through a hole in the floor and backed away.
Mary fell onto her side, grasping her ruined leg and moaning.
Laura began to sob. She pressed David against her and kissed his face. He was squalling, his eyes bright with tears. 'It's all right,' she told him. 'It's all right. Oh God, I've got you. I've got my sweet baby, thank God.'
She had to get out of there. The rangers' station wasn't far. She could go there and tell them where Mary Terror was. Her heart was beating wildly, the blood rushing through her veins. She felt faint, the ordeal about to smash over her like the ocean on the rocks. She held her baby close, and staggered out of the room. 'I've got you, I've got you,' she kept saying as she carried him toward the stairs.
She heard a whuff.
Behind her.
She turned.
And Mary Terror took one last hobbling lurch and hit her in the face with her right fist, the blow snapping Laura's head back. As Laura fell, her mind ablaze with pain, she hugged David close and swiveled her body so the impact would not be on him but on her right shoulder. The gun left her fingers, and she heard it thud down somewhere in the gloom.
Mary was on her, trying to pull David away. Laura let go of him and clawed at Mary's eyes, her broken fingernails raking across the big woman's face. Mary hammered a punch into Laura's chest, cheating her lungs of air, and as Laura gasped for breath she felt David being taken from her again.
