Good enough.
He shut the door behind him. “What the hell do we do now? Turn off the lights and pretend we’re not here?”
She stood in the middle of the room and looked around as if she were still dazed. “They’ll suspect me. They will come here. You should hide.”
He moved farther into the room.
She went to the window, opened it, and fanned like she was trying to chase a bad smell out. “Hide in the bathroom. Take a shower. With soap. Lots of soap.”
He found a moment of grim amusement in her aggression. “Are you insinuating I stink?”
“No, I’m saying it. You stink. I’ll handle the cops.” She flipped on the light in her bathroom. “You take a shower. Towels are in the cabinet over the toilet. If you use enough soap, I’ll let you sit on my furniture.”
That seemed like a good deal to him. He went in and shut the door.
He didn’t remember the last time he had showered. He sure as hell didn’t remember the last time he had showered using sandalwood-scented goat soap and a mint and rosemary shampoo. Washing his face made him wince, and getting the dried blood out of his eyebrows took a couple of rounds of lathering, rubbing, and rinsing. He used a brush for his nails and toes, and a different brush for his back. He found a jar of apple-and-cinnamon-scented oatmeal scrub and used it after the goat soap. He couldn’t work the shampoo down to his scalp, so he poured liberal amounts of lavender and thyme conditioner onto his hair until it was slick, then he shampooed it again.
He was in there a long time, and when he came out he smelled like he’d fallen into his mother’s herb garden. He found scissors in Maddie’s drawer and cut his jagged nails. Inspired by his success thus far, he tried to cut his hair. He got the left half hacked off, his arms got tired, and he gave up. He was using Maddie’s razor to shave when, without fanfare, the door opened. He swung around, ready to kill whoever stood there.
It was Maddie. She held an armful of clothes. His clothes.
He was naked.
If she cared, she didn’t show it. She put the clothes on the hamper. “Here. After the cops left, I went to your house and found you something to wear.” Her lips curled with disgust. “You have perfectly good clothes in the closet, and you were wearing … these.” With two fingers, she picked up his pants, his underwear, his T-shirt. “I’ll take these out to the garbage. You’re a pig.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“That’s because we both have vaginas. People with vaginas are smarter than people with penises. If we weren’t, we’d live like pigs, too.”
His penis apparently heard its name mentioned and took this inopportune moment to remember she had a nice ass. He turned back to the sink to finish shaving.
“When you come out, if you want, I’ll give you a hand cutting your hair.” She said, “Wow, you’re skinny.”
He glanced at her.
She was looking at his face. “Shaving makes you look even more like a concentration camp survivor. And that bruising. Not a good look. You should put some ice on your nose. And eat something.”
For whatever reason, his penis found that exciting, too.
So much for his comforting theory that he was impotent.
He leaned against the cold porcelain sink. That knocked back his erection.
Damn Madeline Hewitson. Like he didn’t have enough trouble already. Horniness: God’s gift for caring whether Maddie walked off a cliff.
When he came out, he was dressed in a pair of his boxers, a worn pair of jeans, and, of all things, a polo shirt. He remembered the jeans—they were his favorites, he’d had them all through his twenties—but his mother must have bought him the polo shirt in one of her periodic attempts to make him more mainstream. Or maybe more eligible. Probably more eligible.
“What happened with the cops?” he asked.
“They asked if I’d heard anything. I said no. I hadn’t. Because I was screaming.”
Made sense.
“Then they had to go talk to Mrs. Butenschoen, who probably tattled on us because she sees everything. But the cops didn’t come back, so maybe she was sleeping the sleep of the self-righteous. I brought your shoes.” Maddie pointed at the pair of running shoes and socks.
“I can’t wear those. I broke my toe.”
“How did you do that?”
“I was kicking someone who wasn’t there.”
“Oh.” She was the only other person in the world who immediately and without question knew about kicking things that weren’t there. “Here.” She handed him an ice bag and started pulling stuff out of the refrigerator. “Put that on your face while I get you something to eat.”
I let her catch sight of me. She knows what’s going to happen now.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Driven by a curiosity he didn’t want to admit, Jacob wandered over to Maddie’s desk and looked at her work.
She made drawings in ink, black ink, no color. Disturbing drawings of a young woman, victimized and in anguish, and a monster in a black hat and an open black coat who haunted her, mocked her, drove her to become a superhero.
“You draw comics.” He picked up a sketch and looked at it. “Damned gruesome comics.”
“Don’t look!” She hurried over and plucked the sketch from his fingers. “It’s no good.”
“Good? No, but it’s visceral.”
“Really?” She shuffled it together with the other papers scattered over the desk. “No one has ever seen these, so I didn’t know … but visceral? That’s excellent.”
He turned his head sideways to look at the sketch on top of the pile. “Are you trying to publish your comics?”
“They’re not comics. I’m seeing if I can create a graphic novel.” She opened the belly drawer, slid the papers inside, and closed them away from his gaze.
“Comics. Graphic novels.” One and the same, his tone implied.
“Graphic novels are more complex, they’re set in an already existing universe, and they’re bound like a book.”
Right. He remembered now. While he was stationed in Korea, one of his kids had avidly read graphic novels. Lydia Adelaide Jenkins’s mother had sent them by the boxfull … He had called her mother when he got back to the States. He had wanted to pay his respects and offer his wholehearted apology for the death of her daughter while under his care.
Her mother hadn’t cared what words he offered in his broken whisper. She despised him. She had hung up on him.
He didn’t want to remember. “Why don’t you just write a book?”
With a fair dollop of sarcasm, she said, “I’ve just written a lot of books.”
“Have you? I thought your brother was the author.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. He’s A. M. Hewitson. He writes horror based on … stuff.”
“Is he good?”
“Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don’t. The books sell well. There’s not much money in writing, but I’m not good for anything else.” While he was puzzling that out, she walked over to the kitchen table and put her hand on a chair. “Sit down, have something to eat, then I’ll cut your hair so it’s not so … lopsided.”
He put his hand up and felt the ragged ends on the cut side, then touched the mats—now conditioned, but still mats—on the other side. He walked over and sat down. “Do you know, while you work I can see you outlined against the light?”
She looked toward her desk in alarm. “When they sold those blinds to me they said … no, I didn’t know. Thank you for telling me.” She brought him a plate.
He looked it over. Vegetables, olives, crackers, thin rolls of cheese wrapped in prosciutto. “You got any coffee?”
“Yes. Yes, I do!” She beamed as if having coffee was an accomplishment. “Do you want me to make some?”
He didn’t. He shouldn’t. “No.”
“I’m going to make myself some, anyway.”
As he chowed down, he kept an eye on her.
She got a bag of gourmet coffee out
of the freezer. She thought for a minute, then got on her knees, opened the cabinet in the corner, and dragged out a cheap drip coffeemaker. She placed it on the counter and plugged it in, got out the instructions, and read them.
“Don’t make a lot of coffee?” he asked drily.
“I don’t like it.”
“Then why do you have it?”
“It’ll keep me awake.”
Like her understanding him kicking someone who wasn’t there, he understood why she wanted to stay awake.
She loaded the basket with ground coffee, filled the pot with water, filled the cistern, turned on the machine, turned to him, and beamed.
Quickly he said, “Put the pot back under before the—”
A stream of coffee started pouring out onto the hot burner.
She stuck the pot under the stream.
The stench of burned coffee filled the air.
Still, she seemed pleased. “Not bad for my first time.”
Nothing much shook this female’s composure … except for imaginary monsters.
She got the scissors out of her desk.
“Do you know how to cut hair?” he asked.
“No. Sometimes I forget to make a hair appointment, so I trim my own bangs to get them out of my eyes, and they’re crooked.” She surveyed him critically. “But I can do a better job than you.” She went into the bathroom and came back with a comb and brush. She tossed a towel over his shoulders. She moved close to his side.
She smelled nice. Like an apple pie, so he guessed she had been using her oatmeal scrub. He said, “I used up some of your soaps.”
“No kidding. How else were you going to get rid of that rancid smell?” She was picking up pieces of his hair. “A rat could live in here and you’d never know it.”
“Once you get the length cut off, I can shave my scalp.” In fact, he looked forward to it.
She slid the scissors along a thin line of hair and slowly cut. She dropped the shorn part on the floor. She moved on to another section. The sound of the blades shearing off the strands sent a shiver through him. She must have noticed, for she said, “Do you know, you’re probably the only person in the world who would let me near them with something sharp.”
“Because you might kill me?” He snorted. “You should do me such a favor.”
“You want me to kill you?” Another section of hair, and she moved behind him and started work on the back. “Why?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She cut some more.
The coffeepot beeped that it was done.
As if that were some signal, he said, “Two people died because of my negligence, young people, one male, one female, and good men were brutalized.”
“After we met, I looked you up online and—”
“After we met? We didn’t meet. You turned my living room into a garage.”
“You don’t have to be unpleasant about it.” Placing her scissors on the table, she got out two mugs—ceramic mugs, not Melmac—and poured them full. “I apologized and my insurance is paying for everything.” She handed him his mug. “After it’s done, you can go back to being a hermit.”
He thought longingly about that, about the darkness and the silence, the perfect hours of blank nothingness interspersed with blinding moments of pain … then he noticed the warm, savory odor of the coffee. The cup’s heat warmed his palms. He watched her take a sip and grimace comically. She made him want to laugh.
Laugh. People were dead because of him, and he wanted to laugh.
Guilt bit at him. He didn’t deserve a moment of sensory pleasure. He started to stand.
She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “I’m not done with your hair yet. If you want cream or sugar, I’ll get it for you.”
“No. Black.” He took a sip and got a mouthful of grounds. Nasty. That eased his guilt. He swallowed carefully. “You might invest in coffee filters.”
“I noticed.” She looked doubtfully into the cup. “Do you want me to strain it?”
“No. Give ’em a minute. The grounds will settle.”
“I’ll finish your hair.” She put down the cup and picked up the scissors. “You have scars from being shot.”
She’d seen his scars. She’d seen him naked.
He would not get an erection.
She continued, “The online article said you were responsible for saving five lives.”
Nope. No erection. “I shouldn’t have had to save them in the first place.” Maddie’s fingers slid through his hair and massaged. He thought she was trying to work the mats apart. But it felt good, and he didn’t deserve that either.
“The article said you got five guys out of a North Korean prison, but it didn’t say who they were or why they were imprisoned.”
“Because they shouldn’t have been in North Korea in the first place.” He felt his throat began to close. He couldn’t talk about this. He refused to talk about this. So he asked, “Tonight. What were you dreaming?”
She didn’t answer right away; something about a hunk of hair close to his neckline occupied her so much she muttered about needing a professional. But she must have known he wouldn’t allow that, so she kept hacking at it. When she had achieved some measure of success, she said, “I didn’t think I was dreaming. I was sitting at my desk writing—I really was, I do that every night—and I could feel the fear begin to creep up on me. I heard noises behind me—”
“What kind of noises?”
“A creaking, like a window opening. A shuffling, like footsteps. The sound of leaves blowing on the wind.”
“Go on.”
“When I looked, there was nothing there. But I knew he was coming. I knew he was stalking me. I heard laughter, and I had to get out.” She put her trembling hand on his shoulder. “Then I was out on a lonely road that stretched forever into the darkness. I wanted to run, to get away from him, but it was so dark, I was afraid of where I was going. Then you woke me and I … I’m sorry about the screaming. I thought you were him.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Who is he?” Why was Jacob asking? He didn’t care.
But he did. He was interested.
Maddie answered. “The man in the coat and the hat with a long fingernail filed to a point. And the knife.”
It sounded as if her nightmares contained about the same horror quotient as his. “The police told me about you. They said you’ve faced two horrific crimes.”
“I’ll bet they told you more than that,” she muttered.
“Not much.”
“So you looked me up online.”
He pointed at his face. “Do I look like I give a shit?”
She actually came around and stared into his face. “I can’t tell.”
“If I had Internet, which I don’t, your car would have taken it out. So fill me in on the details of your life.”
“I thought you didn’t give a shit.”
“It’ll give me something to do while I wait for you to stab me to death.” He pointed at his jugular. “Right here.”
She gave a half laugh and went back to work on his hair. “When I was a freshman in college, I lived in the oldest dorm on campus. Me and four of my friends from high school decided we could share a suite, three in one room, two in the other, bathroom in between. No one thought we could make it work, but we did. We were really good friends.”
So she had lost all her friends at one time.
“The janitor in the building was this guy. We didn’t pay any attention to him. He was, you know, in his thirties, skinny, ordinary. We didn’t even know his name. I know it now. Chase Billingsly. But he called himself ‘Ragnor the Avenger.’”
Jacob caught her wrist. He swiveled to face her. “You are kidding.”
“I wish. After he was … dead, when the police went through his possessions, they found out he had a thing about old comic books. And they found out that he, um”—she cleared her throat—“he was obsessed with me and my friends.”
; “Obsessed.” His law enforcement brain was already filling in the details.
“The police found photos. He’d cut holes in the wall. Photos of us undressing. Going to the bathroom. Sleeping. He had written love stories about us, bizarre fantasies about how we would all be obedient to him, fawn over him, take turns giving him … servicing him.” She wasn’t blushing. Rather, her forehead and cheeks turned a blotchy red. “But we were normal girls. So he took photos of us with our boyfriends.”
“He was a pervert.”
She shook her head. “Worse. That night—Saturday night, we were getting ready to go out. Wearing our underwear or a robe or … Maggie was just out of the shower. He opened the door and stepped in. He wore a cape. None of us recognized him. We thought it was a joke or something. I mean … a cape? My friend, my best friend, Kathy. She was kind of bossy. Tall. Really pretty…” Maddie was losing focus, trying to avoid the story.
He pulled her back on track. “What did Kathy do?”
“Kathy told him to get out. He … he … he locked the door behind him. It clicked.” Maddie flinched as if, even now, the sound signaled the start of terror. “He announced we had betrayed him and that he would punish us. At first we were kind of … we didn’t realize that he was … we didn’t get it. Stuff like that doesn’t happen. We didn’t get it until Charlotte reached for her phone and he stabbed her in the shoulder. Then we screamed.”
“Didn’t anyone hear you?”
“Saturday night. People were out. The ones who heard … thought we were watching a movie. A horror movie.” The red blotches faded to a ghastly white.
Jacob used his foot to push a chair away from the table. Still with his hand on her wrist, he guided her to sit.
She dropped into the chair.
“How did he control five women?”
“He pulled out two guns. He told us to be quiet or he would shoot us. Which was stupid, because if he had fired maybe someone would have realized what was going on and rescued us.”
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