After another long minute, Charley hit the bell three times in quick succession. Impatient, I pounded my fist against the door as hard as I could.
Still, there was no response.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s around,” said Charley.
I glared up at the lighted window on the second floor. If nothing else, it told me that the house hadn’t been abandoned for the winter.
The old pilot stamped his feet to warm them. “The women won’t be too happy we flew out here on a wild- goose chase.”
“This house has got to be where Ashley Kim was headed,” I insisted.
“Maybe she and the professor drove up to Camden for a romantic dinner,” Charley said. “I suppose we could wait, but who’s to say when they’ll be back?”
“I’m going to look in the windows.” I stepped into the brittle snow and began making a circuit of the building, pressing my forehead against every pane of icy glass and squinting to see what I could. Most of the windows had curtains to prevent a burglar from doing exactly what I was doing, but there were slits between some of the drapes that afforded a glimpse inside. The interior of the house hid itself in shadows. I could make out the bulked silhouettes of furniture and floating gray rectangles demarcating windows on the far side of the home.
“We should probably get back to the ladies,” called Charley.
The night before, I’d left the scene of an accident without quieting my doubts. I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
A long porch stretched along the ocean side of the house, suspended on steel pilings driven into the ledge. Below me, waves splashed against the rocks, turning from ink black to foaming white as they exploded against the shore. I mounted the steep ice-coated steps and climbed carefully up to the porch.
The doors were all of glass. Like dark mirrors, they reflected the harbor behind me: a phantom seascape lit by watery stars. Again, I peered inside. Heavy drapes barred my view. I moved to the last window and found the curtains parted. Inside, all was blackness. Nothing to be seen.
I switched on my flashlight and, shielding my eyes with my hand, began moving the beam around the inside of the room. On the other side of the window, at the level of my feet, there was a pale carpet that might have been light gray or bluish white. My light encountered the legs of a coffee table. I moved the beam to the right and found a couch. The carpet stretched on into the darkness.
Something sparkled. I directed the cone of light back a few feet and focused it on a distant patch of rug. Tiny prisms lit up, like quartz crystals scattered on the floor. A lamp had fallen from a table. It lay broken in pieces. I saw that the cord had been pulled out of the wall socket. There was something else there, too, at the edge of the flashlight beam. Beside the toppled lamp-a large reddish stain.
“Charley!” I swung the Maglite around in my hand and drove the heavy butt down against the door. The glass shattered. I reached inside to turn the lock. A jagged shard sliced through my parka and into the meat of my forearm. I saw the blood but didn’t feel any pain; it was as if my arm had been unplugged from my nervous system.
The lock turned with a sharp click and I shoved the sliding door open. I unholstered my service weapon.
The inside of the house was very warm and as dry as a desert. I felt the hot air on my face as I entered the room. Someone had cranked up the thermostat. I could hear the furnace murmuring in the basement. I crouched over the stained carpet. It was unmistakably a splatter of congealing blood.
I glanced up, unsure what to do or where to go. “Police!” I shouted. “Professor Westergaard?”
The only answer was the ominous hum of the furnace.
A hallway receded ahead of me, a long Persian carpet disappearing into the shadows. I followed it past a guest room with a stripped mattress and white sheets draped like shrouds over the bureaus. The door of the first- floor bathroom stood ajar, but the room was empty.
In the kitchen, I saw granite countertops and sinks, pots and pans hanging from hooks. Reflected light bounced back at me from the brushed aluminum face of the refrigerator. My eyes searched for clues.
Atop a stone island in the center of the room was the knife block. A knife was missing.
Charley called after me, down the hall, “Mike?”
Steps led up to the second floor. The hall light was burning. “Upstairs!”
I sprang up the stairs, taking two at a time. Behind me came a pulse of light as Charley found a switch on the kitchen wall.
The house was huge. There were so many doors. I pushed open one after another before I reached the master bedroom. I turned the knob and swung the door into the room. Before me was another bare mattress. But this one was splattered with blood. I circled the bed, aiming my weapon at the center of the flashlight beam.
On the floor reposed a naked woman. She lay on her side, with her arms bound together behind her, not with rope but with sailor’s rigging tape. She was very small. Black hair almost completely masked her face, but I could see her chin was painted with blood and her neck was covered with purple spots. Her body was white except where a knife had cut bloody letters into the skin.
The overhead light snapped on as Charley entered the room. I heard the old pilot gasp out loud.
I slid my SIG back into its paddle holster and knelt beside the dead woman. Rigging tape was wrapped over her nose and mouth. I brushed the hair out of her eyes. They were open, lifeless. On the woman’s cheek was a small S. Between her breasts was a larger L. The word continued down her torso, a bloody signature that ended above the dark triangle of pubic hair.
“Don’t touch her!” said Charley.
He yanked me away, but not before I had pushed the dead girl onto her back. By then, I knew the inscription the killer had carved into the body of Ashley Kim.
SLUT, it said.
10
As a child, I had a fierce and powerful faith. My mother instilled in me a deep connection to the Catholic Church, taking me to Mass each Sunday morning while my father lay hungover on the couch.
I was baptized and received my First Communion at the Church of Saint Sebastian in the gritty papermaking town of Madison. I said my first penance there, too, whispering through a screen to a priest whose role in this arcane ritual I didn’t comprehend. I had known Father Landry all my young life, but I was now supposed to believe that he wasn’t actually present in the confessional. The heavyset man who seemed to glide down the aisle during Mass had been transformed into God’s earpiece. At age eight, I couldn’t figure out why the Lord needed a surrogate, especially since my previous conversations with Him in prayer had been so direct. But I surrendered myself to the sacrament, promising not to trespass again and saying the ten Hail Marys that Father Landry gave me as punishment for my childish sins.
I emerged from the confessional, unsure of what had taken place. The unsatisfying ceremony made me feel more distant from Him, rather than less. Still, I continued in my Catholic faith, taking my father’s name, John, in confirmation.
It was only many years later, when I had real sins to confess, that I began to wonder where God was hiding. One of us had gone missing, but I couldn’t have told you which.
By the time of my father’s rampage, I had parted ways with the supernatural. In the weeks following my return from Rum Pond, when the Warden Service chaplain, Deborah Davies, first came to see me, I remembered feeling vaguely sorry for her. She seemed like a kindhearted person, and I was glad that she derived comfort from her beliefs. But when she asked me if I’d spoken to my parish priest recently, it was all I could do to keep from rolling on the floor.
I did not believe in ESP. I did not believe in ghosts or crystal balls or future events foretold in tea leaves. If she had asked me, I would have told her that the prophets of the Old Testament were schizophrenics and that the voices that spoke to them out of the desert were electrochemical misfires in the brain. Human beings are not transmitters of their intentions, I would have said. Angels do not whisper in our ears. Predestination is a fairy tale, a bedtime story for adults scared of meaningless death. Those were the articles of my adult faith.
