“Oh.” Eyes filled with infinite sadness. “When’s he coming back?”
“Not until July.”
“Oh. Why couldn’t we go with him, Auntie Kay? Did he go to the beach?”
“. . . You routinely lie by omission about us.” His face shimmered behind the veil of rising heat and smoke, his hair gold in the sun.
“911.”
I was inside my mother’s house and she was saying something to me.
A bird was circling lazily overhead as I rode in a van with someone I neither knew nor could see. Palm trees flowed by. Long-necked white egrets were sticking up like porcelain periscopes in the Everglades. The white heads turned as we passed. Watching us. Watching me.
Turning over, I tried to get more comfortable by resting on my back.
My father sat up in bed and watched me as I told him about my day at school. His face was ashen. His eyes didn’t blink and I couldn’t hear what I was saying to him. He didn’t respond but continued to stare. Fear was constricting my heart. His white face stared. The empty eyes stared.
He was dead.
“Daddddyyyyy!”
My nostrils were filled with a sick, stale sweatiness as I buried my face in his neck . . .
The inside of my brain went black.
I surfaced into consciousness like a bubble floating up from the deep. I was aware. I could feel my heart beating.
The smell.
Was it real or was I dreaming?
The putrid smell! Was I dreaming?
An alarm was going off inside my head and slamming my heart against my ribs.
As the foul air stirred and something brushed against the bed.
Chapter 16
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN MY RIGHT HAND AND THE .38 beneath my pillow was twelve inches, no more.
It was the longest distance I’d ever known. It was forever. It was impossible. I wasn’t thinking, just feeling that distance, as my heart went crazy, flailing against my ribs like a bird against the bars of its cage. Blood was roaring in my ears. My body was rigid, every muscle and tendon straining, stiff and quivering with fear. It was pitch-black inside my bedroom.
Slowly I nodded my head, the metallic words ringing, the hand crushing my lips against my teeth. I nodded. I nodded to tell him I wouldn’t scream.
The knife against my throat was so big it felt like a machete. The bed tilted to the right and with a click I went blind. When my eyes adjusted to the lamplight, I looked at him and stifled a gasp.
I couldn’t breathe or move. I felt the razor-thin blade biting coldly against my skin.
His face was white, his features flattened beneath a white nylon stocking. Slits were cut in it for eyes. Cold hatred poured from them without seeing. The stocking sucked in and out as he breathed. The face was hideous and inhuman, just inches from mine.
“One sound, I’ll cut your head off.”
Thoughts were sparks flying so fast and in so many directions. Lucy. My mouth was getting numb and I tasted the salty blood. Lucy, don’t wake up. Tension ran through his arm, through his hand, like power through a high-voltage line. I’m going to die.
Don’t. You don’t want to do this. You don’t have to do this.
I’m a person, like your mother, like your sister. You don’t want to do this. I’m a human being like you. There are things I can tell you. About the cases. What the police know. You want to know what I know.
Don’t. I’m a person. A person! I can talk to you! You have to let me talk to you!
Fragmented speeches. Unspoken. Useless. I was imprisoned by silence. Please don’t touch me. Oh, God, don’t touch me.
I had to get him to take away his hand, to talk to me.
I tried to will my body to go limp, to relax. It worked a little. I loosened up a little, and he sensed it.
He eased the grip of his hand over my mouth, and I swallowed very slowly.
He was wearing a dark blue jumpsuit. Sweat stained the collar, and there were wide crescent moons under his arms. The hand holding the knife to my throat was sheathed in the translucent skin of a surgical glove. I could smell the rubber. I could smell him.
I saw the jumpsuit in Betty’s lab, smelled the syrupy putrid smell of it as Marino was untying the plastic bag . . .
“Is it the smell he remembers?” played in my mind like the rerun of an old movie. Marino’s finger pointing at me as he winked, “Bingo . . .”
The jumpsuit flattened on the table inside the lab, a large or an extra large with bloody swatches cut out of it . . .
He was breathing hard.
“Please,” I barely said without moving.
“Shut up!”
“I can tell you . . .”
“Shut up!” The hand tightened savagely. My jaw was going to shatter like an eggshell.
His eyes were darting, looking around, looking at everything inside my bedroom. They stopped at the draperies, at the cords hanging down. I could see him looking at them. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he was going to do with them. Then the eyes darted frantically to the cord leading out of my bedside lamp. Something white flashed out of his pocket and he stuffed it into my mouth and moved the knife away.