Battling a fearful reluctance, she crossed to the bed again. She sat on its edge and touched Karen's face.
"You want to tell me why you think it's him?" she asked, unable to think of what else to say. She'd always felt that fears were best faced. Maybe talking it out would help.
Karen told her.
And Cass wished that she hadn't.
Mel draped a stiff yellow rain slicker around Cass's shoulders. The run of fine weather they'd been having had given out that same afternoon, and now a cold steady rain was falling. Around them, parched vegetation seemed to sigh with relief. The air was redolent with a cleansed scent of green.
Mel had found Cass sitting on the back stoop, dressed only in shorts and a light cotton blouse. She was soaked to the skin and shivering, her lips and nail beds blue. After Mel's suggestion that they go inside was ignored, Mel had poked around in the front vestibule and come back with this old slicker.
Now she sat next to Cass on the stoop, an umbrella hoisted high over them both, one arm slung around Cass's shoulders. Rain hissed into the mud around them.
"Want to tell me about it?"
Teeth chattering, Cass met eyes with Mel. There were tears mixed in with the rain.
"I'm so afraid," she said with a shudder. "I think she's really. . . gone crazy."
"She's very frightened, that's true," Mel replied, giving her tone more assurance than she felt. "Knowing that a vicious killer is stalking you would fuck over the best of us. It's the waiting that's hard, the not knowing. But she's safe here with us. whoever he is, he won't get anywhere near her."
"It's much more than that," Cass said, looking at Mel again. "She believes it's the donor who's after her. She thinks he's come back from the dead and she's seeing the murders 'cause she's got his eyes. She says he's out there right now, circling the house. Just. . . waiting."
"Jesus," Mel said, and chuckled.
But the chuckle was mirthless. Her eyes followed Cass's, scanning the rainbeaten gloom of the woodlot, the pockets of mist in the fields.
"Jesus," she whispered again.
Sitting there on the stoop in the rain, Cass had been silently debating what she should do, to whom she should turn. She did not want to burden Albert with this, of that much she was certain. The poor man had enough to contend with, what with his daughter's life in danger and a farm to run. Little sense in alarming him further. She thought again of phoning the psychiatrist, but still found it difficult going against Karen's wishes. Foolish but true; because if she called and they did remove Karen's eyes. . .
Then Mel had come out and draped this slicker around her shoulders—she hadn't even realized it was raining—and Cass had told it all, glad to be getting it out. When she'd finished, Mel had suggested letting Jim Hall in on it, too, deferring the decision to him. Mel knew the situation: thus far, baiting the killer was the only route open to them. But if Karen was losing her mind in the process, then maybe it just wasn't worth it.
Leaving the umbrella with Cass, Mel had gone inside and made her call to Jim. That had been just over an hour ago.
Now, as Jim's car, splashed into the yard, Cass went back through the house to greet him. Mel joined them both on the porch.
Instinct had helped Jim Hall bring down the worst of them before, back in New York. Listening to Karen's bizarre story now, in the sickroom pall of her bedroom, this same innate faculty thrummed into uneasy life.
An indefinable thing, instinct. A kind of foreknowledge, Jim thought, a baseless certainty. Magnified by the circumstance of mortal danger, perhaps instinct became something more—like clairvoyance. The same thing, only different by degree. Karen and the killer were linked, that much Jim had accepted. Karen was not the killer, ergo the only way she could know what she knew—without having heard it from the killer himself—was to have personally witnessed the slayings. And, lying asleep in her bed, the only way she could have done that was the way she'd described—through her dreams. Through that same nameless instinct, but honed into images by fear. The fear of a return to blindness, perhaps, or of a violent death. Some internal chemistry had somehow forewarned her, had sensed the approach of some terrible threat, the way a small animal senses the cat long before its scent has reached the animal's brain. . .
She said he was out there, circling. That much Jim believed; his own instincts told him that. It was most assuredly not a dead man—not yet, anyway. But the bastard was out there, waiting with a predator's patience. Up a tree, maybe, watching with high-powered field glasses. Miles of cover out there. How Karen knew this did not concern Jim, beyond his interest in the uncharted faculties of the mind. The fucker was out there, that was the bottom line.
And it was time to bring him down.
Such was the run of Jim's thoughts as he left Karen's room, descended the stairs, and walked to the phone in the kitchen. His fingers trembled as he dialed his partner's number.
"Don Mellan."
"Don. It's Jim. Listen, I want a couple of men up here. Hotshots. That Baker guy, maybe. And Will. . . Will Peterson. We need high-powered rifles with scopes." He sighed. "It's coming down soon, Don. Real soon."
Dressed in a loose cotton housedress, Karen stood by her bedroom window and peeked past the edge of the curtain, watching the activity in the rain-spattered yard below. Two new men had arrived with the coming of dusk; a third had driven them here and then left. The car had been an unmarked sedan, and all three men had been dressed like hunters.
Now the men stood, in a tight huddle with Jim Hall and Mel. From time to time one of them pointed off into a field, or behind the house, toward the darkening woodlot. Each of the new men held a rifle with a cumbersome-looking scope.
Mel had her gun nestled in its holster, a bulge beneath her shiny wet raincoat.
No good, Karen thought bleakly. Men could not stop him, not with guns. Not with anything.
Over the past two nights she had watched him come in her dreams, spotted a dozen familiar landmarks as he made his way around the house in steadily shrinking circuits. Her dresser top was littered with the Polaroids she'd shot of many of those same places.
In the yard, the two men climbed with Jim into his car and the car ripped away. It swung left onto the Line, then vanished over the hill to the highway. They'd be stationed around the house, Jim had told her. Sharpshooters with night scopes. They'd bring him down like the animal that he was.
Karen didn't think so.
He was strong, sly. . . and utterly undistractable.
She returned to her bed and lay down, so incredibly tired that a beaten part of her psyche embraced the concept of death. Death would mean sleep. And sleep, the true sleep of death, would mean an end to all of this madness.
Or maybe once dead, since it was death which stalked her, she'd he trapped in some rancid, eternal marriage. . .
Her eyelids fell like guillotined heads.
And she saw the fork in the stream, writhing with raindrops, less than half a mile back of the house.
Chapter 42
The gunmen bailed out at the highway. Their plan was to double back through the woods, then scout a radius similar to the one Karen had described. Under cover of night, suitable vantages would be found. Then the wait would begin. Both men had been on stakeouts like this before, and both were excellent marksmen.
An hour later, Jim Hall was seated before a Ceepik console in the Ottawa station, scanning the files for whatever he could find on the Crowell family. Failing to turn up more than Don had already uncovered, he punched up Eden Crowell's mugs and leaned back in his chair to study them.
Mean-looking. Hard. Unsmiling. Tight, greedy mouth. Cold eyes, a coldness which, even in Karen's sweetly plain face, refused to fully thaw out. Jagged scars made by grazing knuckles, unfelt in the anesthetic fog of alcoholism. Nose broken a few times, badly set. Thinning, greasy black hair. Cleft chin.
He focused on the eyes, magnifying them in size.
Do you really want them back? Jim found himself thinking. Are yo
u really that fucking ugly?
Whoa, Jimmy boy, he cautioned himself. This is not a psycho's mind you're trying to crawl into here. It's a dead man's.
He intensified the contrast, letting the hate in that stare wash over him.
Yeah, you're ugly enough. If you were alive you'd do it, wouldn't you. You'd take it all back.
If you were alive. . .
But Jim had seen copies of all the documents, courtesy of Detective Shine in Sudbury. The Consent for Organ Harvesting. The Certificate of Death.
The bastard was long dead.
Where had the old gal hidden him? Jim puzzled. And who was doing her bidding? And what in fuck did she hope to accomplish? Did she really believe that once she'd pieced him back together again he was going to blink open his eyes and say, "Hi, mom! How're ya doin'?"
Jesus, that miserable, child-eating stare. . .
Chapter 43
It was time.
The longer he waited, the more fucking people turned up over there. Christ, there had been men over there not an hour ago. Three of them. What the fuck was she running over there anyway, a hunting lodge? If he didn't get off his ass soon, one of them was going to steal her away on him.
Yeah. It was time.
Danny was tired. Hungry and tired. Things that shouldn't be moving had started to move, to change shape. He had spent the past seventy-two hours without proper food or sleep, and had begun to hallucinate from the neglect. Thought of any kind had become exceedingly difficult—and it had never been easy for Danny.
He leaned back from the window and unsheathed his knife, relishing the clean whisp of steel against hide.
Pigsticker, he thought, and grinned, remembering how much he'd liked the sound of that word when he'd first heard his Daddy use it. Yeah, in those days everybody called on ole Wilson Dolan to slaughter their hogs for them. Best pigsticker this side of the Carp River. Well, now Danny was the best.
"Oink," he said aloud as he fingered the blade. "Zat what you're gonna say when I poke out your peepers, little lady? Oink-oink?"
He touched the knife tip to the pad of one finger. Pressed. Raised a dark bead of blood. Licked the bead away and watched as a fresh one took its place.
"Comin' now," he said to Karen's house, which from Danny's vantage appeared as little more than a few squares of light in the distance. "Oh, I know you're up there, darlin', indeed I do. Seen ya peekin' out into the dooryard, eyein' those boys with their big black guns."
Danny grunted and turned away. With his bloodied finger he traced a line down the slope of his forehead, along the bridge of his nose and over the purse of his lips, then around his chin to his throat. He admired his work in the mirror.
Before leaving, he thought of changing his sweat-grimed T-shirt, then said to fuck with it. She wasn't going to see him anyway.
Not ever again.
As he crept along the upstairs hallway, Danny could hear his mother snoring in her room two doors down—and for a moment the urge to slip in there and do that nagging fat pig nearly overcame him. But her baggy old neck would only dull his blade.
He skulked down the stairs, crossed the kitchen to the front door, and let himself out in the rain.
Chapter 44
"She sleepin'?"
Cass nodded as Albert trudged up the steps, his wellingtons caked with mud. The rain had been falling for hours now, and it showed no signs of letting up.
He sat next to Cass on the porch, glad to be out of the rain. "How's she doin"? he asked. "She holdin' up okay?"
"Of course," Cass lied, doing her best to sound cheerful. "She's scared, sure, but there's really no danger. There's two men with rifles out in the bush, and Mel in there claims she can shoot the asshole out of a deerfly at a hundred paces."
Albert was in no joking mood. He let his rain slicker slide open, shifted a bit, then wagged the business end of a sawed-off shotgun at the yard.
"Well, if he gets past those boys," the farmer said grimly, "I'll cut him in two."
Suddenly cold, Cass excused herself and went inside.
Christ, Mel thought, I'm edgy as hell. All this talk of zombies and ESP had finally managed to get to her. She'd tried to lie down, but every creak of the house or hoot of the wind had her up and glued to the window. Stationed as she was, in the room next to Karen's, the fucker would have to track right past her open door to reach the girl.
And when he did that. . .
Earlier that day Mel had cruised the building's exterior, searching for possible breach points. She'd discovered that if the killer knew Karen's room, he could get to her by scaling the ivy trellis on that side of the house. To remedy this, she'd borrowed a hacksaw from a hook in one of the outbuildings and had sliced partway through a dozen or so footholds. If he tried to get in that way, he'd be in for a painful surprise. And he'd make enough racket to end it right there. The outbuildings themselves were a trove of shadowy hiding places, a fact which could work as well for the hunter as the hunted. She'd have to keep a close eye on those buildings—
Through the wall Mel heard Karen moan.
"Gonna be a long one," she said to no one.
And tried again to lie down.
The creek seemed as close as he meant to come.
In her sleep, more like a trance than actual sleep, Karen saw the back-and-forth track of his pacing, stepping close to the creek but never crossing it. He'd quit circling a while ago; now he just paced.
How long could he wait?
Forever, a whisper came back.
Maybe she should wake up and tell them where he was. . . but she'd tried that once before with Mel; the policewoman had even gone outside to check. But he only skulked further away. Besides, she didn't think she could wake herself up. The closer he got, the stronger his spell on her seemed to be.
Why does he wait? Why doesn't lie just come?
And suddenly he did start to come, bolted forward, lurched through the water at that uncanny pace. . .
Then, just as suddenly, he stopped, slinking deep into a shadowy thicket, stooping low. . . watchful.
Then Karen saw why.
A man with a gun, one of Jim Hall's men, came crouching out of the darkness. He'd heard something—his cautious step told her that—but he couldn't see. Not like the dead man could. . .
In the field of her vision the roan drew closer.
And in her bed Karen moaned weakly. "Run," she murmured. But she knew that he couldn't hear her.
For a moment she fought to wake up—
Then something flashed. . . and the horror began.
Stunned fucker, Danny thought from his crouch by the creek. One of her stiff-dick hunting friends, roaming the bush. Does the shitpoke really think he can stop me?
The knife whispered out of its sheath.
Just a teensy bit closer, Danny coaxed silently, the same way he coaxed the deer he'd brought down with this very same knife. He'd bagged a moose once, too, rode that big sucker's back till it bled itself out.
In the instant before moving, Danny wondered if a man had half that much blood in him.
Will Peterson had heard something—and it had been close by.
Revved up with adrenaline, he had stepped into this clearing, weapon at the ready. . .
But whatever it had been, it was gone now. No tracks, no sound. Only the steady rattle of the rain; and the wind. . . a constant low roar, counterpointed by gusts, creating sibilant whispers in the trees, like voices conversing just out of range.
Spooky.
"Don't go losing your nerve," Will whispered to himself as he slowly revolved on the spot. "Not now, son."
Probably just a cow. They'd frightened each other. . .
But this whole damned scene was just a little too creepy. Hall had told them that the girl they were guarding was a "sensitive," and that, according to her, the monster who tore kids in half was already out here someplace. Will didn't like that. It made him wonder who was hunting whom. It made him feel as if that good old element of surpris
e—which was the very least he liked to have going for him when, he was messing with a homicidal freak—had been generously handed over to the enemy—
Will's nerves began to rattle like the rain in the trees.
No real reason, short of that smell. . .
He inclined his head and opened his mouth, intending to check in with Baker via the tiny transceiver attached to his collar—
Then a huge forearm clamped around his neck and lifted him clean off the ground. His weapon fell to the mud as the arm closed off his windpipe. His feet kicked at the air like a hanged man's. He could feel his own piss scalding down his leg.
But even with his throat crushed shut Will could still smell almost taste the reek of the man who had snared him.
That stink was Will's last living perception.
Something tore through his back, something killing and cold.
The sky above him wheeled. . .
Then Will fell dead by the creek.
Gradually, the household was settling.
Cass, frightened, exhausted, wanting only for it all to be over, had bunked in on the couch downstairs. Sleep did not come easily, but when it did she welcomed it lovingly.
Albert remained at his self-assigned post on the porch; so wide awake it was painful. His whole head throbbed with the force of his concentration. He'd lived on the farm all his life. . . but never had the night seemed so alive, so ridden with killing menace.
Mel had given up trying to sleep, and now she sat on a stool by the window, wishing she still had radio contact with the gunmen. They had given her a transceiver, and when they'd tested it earlier it had worked; but that had been at close, range, and the weather had not been so bad. All she could raise on it now was static. When she'd learned from Cass that Karen's father was outside with a gun, she'd gone down and tried to coax him into going back home, or at least coming inside and handing over the weapon: But the old boy had only glared at her, his big square jaw so firmly set that Mel was afraid his dentures might crack. Nothing she could do about that. It was his place, his right. She just hoped that when the shit came down, the farmer would not get himself hurt.
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