"Didn't say. "
Ebbie sees that for Ronnie this is already becoming the truth and is satisfied. He turns to T. J. "You got it?"
"I got it. "
"Then let's go. "
They pedal off. The dummocks pulls a little ahead of Ebbie and T. J. as they roll along the tree-lined street, and Ebbie allows this. He swings his bike a little closer to T. J. 's and says: "You see anything else back there? Anybody? Like a guy?"
T. J. shakes his head. "Just his bike and his sneaker. " He pauses, remembering as hard as he can. "There were some leaves scattered around. From the hedge. And I think there might have been a feather. Like a crow feather?"
Ebbie dismisses this. He is grappling with the question of whether or not the Fisherman has actually come close to him this morning, close enough to snatch one of his buddies. There is a bloodthirsty part of him that likes the idea, that relishes the thought of some shadowy, no-face monster killing the increasingly annoying Ty Marshall and eating him for lunch. There is also a childish part of him that is terrified of the boogeyman (this part will be in charge tonight as he lies awake in his room, looking at shadows that seem to take form and slink ever closer around his bed). And there is the older-than-his-years part of him, which has taken instinctive and immediate measures to avoid the eye of authority, should Tyler's disappearance turn into what Ebbie's father calls "a fuckarow. "
But mostly, as with Dale Gilbertson and Ty's father, Fred, there is a continent of fundamental disbelief inside of Ebbie Wexler. He simply cannot believe that anything final has happened to Tyler. Not even after Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham, who was carved into pieces and hung up in an old henhouse. These are kids of whom Ebbie has heard on the evening news, fictions from the Land of TV. He didn't know Amy or Johnny, so they could have died, just as make-believe people were always dying in the movies and on TV. Ty is different. Ty was just here. He talked to Ebbie, Ebbie talked to him. In Ebbie's mind, this equals immortality. Or should. If Ty could be snatched by the Fisherman, any kid could be snatched. Including him. Hence, like Dale and Fred, he just doesn't believe it. His most secret and fundamental heart, the part of him that assures the rest of him that everything is fine on Planet Ebbie, denies the Fisherman and all his works.
T. J. says: "Ebbie, do you think ¡ª "
"Nah," Ebbie says. "He'll turn up. Come on, let's go to the park. We can look for cans and bottles later. "
Fred Marshall has left his sport coat and tie in his office, rolled up his sleeves, and is helping Rod Tisbury unpack a new Hiler rototiller. It's the first of the new Hiler line, and it's a beaut.
"I've been waiting for a gadget like this twenty years or more," Rod says. He expertly inserts the wide end of his crowbar at the top of the big crate, and one of the wooden sides falls to the concrete floor of the maintenance garage with a flat clap. Rod is Goltz's chief mechanic, and out here in maintenance he is king. "It's gonna work for the small farmer; it's gonna work for the town gardener, as well. If you can't sell a dozen of these by fall, you're not doing your job. "
"I'll sell twenty by the end of August," Fred says with perfect confidence. All his worries have been temporarily swept away by this splendid little green machine, which can do a hell of a lot more than rototill; there are a number of sexy attachments that snap in and out as easily as the lining in a fall jacket. He wants to start it up, listen to it run. That two-cylinder engine looks pretty sweet.
"Fred?"
He looks around impatiently. It's Ina Gaitskill, Ted Goltz's secretary and the dealership receptionist. "What?"
&
nbsp; "You've got a call on line one. " She points across the floor ¡ª alive with clanging machinery and the noisy whir of pneumatic screwdrivers loosening bolts on an old Case tractor ¡ª to the phone on the wall, where several lights are blinking.
"Can you take a message, Ina? I was going to help Rod get a battery in this little beast and then ¡ª "
"I think you should take the call. It's a woman named Enid Purvis. A neighbor of yours?"
For a moment Fred blanks, and then his salesman's mind, which stores up names compulsively, comes to his rescue. Enid Purvis. Wife of Deke. Corner of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. He saw Deke just this morning. They waved to each other.
At the same time, he becomes aware that Ina's eyes are too big and her normally generous mouth is too small. She looks worried.
"What is it?" Dale asks. "Ina, what is it?"
"I don't know. " Then, reluctantly: "Something about your wife. "
"Better take it, hoss," Rod says, but Fred is already crossing the oil-stained concrete floor to the phone.
He arrives home ten minutes after leaving Goltz's, peeling out of the employees' parking lot and laying rubber like a teenager. The worst part had been Enid Purvis's calm and careful delivery, how hard she'd been trying not to sound frightened.
She had been walking Potsie past the Marshall house, she said, when she heard Judy scream. Not once, but twice. Of course Enid had done what any good neighbor would, God bless her: gone up to the door, rapped, then pushed open the letter slot and called through it. If there had been no answer, she told Fred, she probably would have phoned the police. She wouldn't even have gone back home to do it; she would have crossed the street to the Plotskys' house and called from there. But ¡ª
"I'm all right," Judy had called back, and then she had laughed. The laugh was shrill, ending in a tittery gasp. Enid had found this laugh somehow even more upsetting than the screams. "It was all a dream. Even Ty was a dream. "
"Did you cut yourself, dear?" Enid had called through the letter slot. "Did you fall down?"
"There was no creel," Judy had called back. She might have said keel, but Enid was quite sure it was creel. "I dreamed that, too. " Then, Enid reluctantly told Fred, Judy Marshall had begun crying. It had been very upsetting, listening to that sound come to her through the letter slot. It had even made the dog whine.
Enid had called through one more time, asking if she could come in and make sure Judy wasn't hurt.
"Go away!" Judy had called back. In the midst of her crying, she'd laughed again ¡ª an angry, distracted laugh. "You're a dream, too. This whole world is a dream. " Then there had been the sound of shattering glass, as if she had struck a coffee mug or water tumbler and knocked it to the floor. Or thrown it at the wall.
"I didn't call the police, because she sounded all right," Enid told Fred (Fred standing with the phone jammed up against one ear and his hand plastered over the other to cut out all the yammering mechanical sounds, which he ordinarily enjoys and which at that moment seemed to go into his head like chrome spikes). "Physically all right, anyway. But Fred . . . I think you ought to go home and check on her. "
All of Judy's recent oddities went through his mind in a whirl. So did Pat Skarda's words. Mental dysfunction We hear people say "So-and-so snapped," but there are usually signs . . .
And he has seen the signs, hasn't he?
Seen them and done nothing.
Fred parks his car, a sensible Ford Explorer, in the driveway and hurries up the steps, already calling his wife's name. There is no answer. Even when he has stepped through the front door (he pushes it open so hard the brass letter slot gives a nonsensical little clack), there is no answer. The air-conditioned interior of the house feels too cold on his skin and he realizes he's sweating.
"Judy? Jude?"
Still no answer. He hurries down the hall to the kitchen, where he is most apt to find her if he comes home for something in the middle of the day.
The kitchen is sun-washed and empty. The table and the counter are clean; the appliances gleam; two coffee cups have been placed in the dish drainer, winking sun from their freshly washed surfaces. More sun winks from a heap of broken glass in the corner. Fred sees a flower decal on one piece and realizes it was the vase on the windowsill.
"Judy?" he calls again. He can feel the blood hammering in his throat and at his temples.
She doesn't answer him, but he hears her upstairs, beginning to sing.
"Rock-a-bye baby . . . on the treetop . . . when the wind blows . . . "
Fred recognizes it, and instead of feeling relieved at the sound of her voice, his flesh goes even colder. She used to sing it to Tyler when their son was little. Ty's lullabye. Fred hasn't heard that particular ditty come out of her mouth in years.
He goes back down the hall to the stairs, now seeing what he missed on his first trip. The Andrew Wyeth print, Christina's World, has been taken down and set against the baseboard heater. The wallpaper below the picture hook has been scraped away in several places, revealing the plasterboard beneath. Fred, colder than ever, knows that Judy did this. It isn't intuition, exactly; not deduction, either. Call it the telepathy of the long married.
Floating down from above, beautiful and on-key yet at the same time perfectly empty: ". . . the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall . . . "
Fred is up the stairs two at a time, calling her name.
The upper hall is a scary mess. This is where they have hung the gallery of their past: Fred and Judy outside Madison Shoes, a blues club they sometimes went to when there was nothing interesting going on at the Chocolate Watchband; Fred and Judy dancing the first dance at their wedding reception while their folks happily looked on; Judy in a hospital bed, exhausted but smiling, holding the wrapped bundle that was Ty; the photo of the Marshall family farm that she always sniffed at; more.
Most of these framed photographs have been taken down. Some, like the one of the farm, have been thrown down. Glass litters the hall in sparkling sprays. And she has been at the wallpaper behind half a dozen. In the spot where the picture of Judy and Ty in the hospital had hung, the paper has been torn almost completely away, and he can see where she scraped at the wallboard beneath. Some of the scratches are dappled with drying spots of blood.
"Judy! Judy!"
Tyler's door stands open. Fred sprints the length of the upstairs hall with glass crunching under his loafers.
". . . and down will come Tyler, cradle and all. "
"Judy! Ju ¡ª "
He stands in the door, all words temporarily knocked out of him.
Ty's room looks like the aftermath of a rough search in a detective movie. The drawers have been yanked out of his bureau and lie everywhere, most overturned. The bureau itself has been pulled away from the wall. Summer clothes are spread hell to breakfast ¡ª jeans and T-shirts and underwear and white athletic socks. The closet door is open and more clothes have been struck from the hangers; that same spousal telepathy tells him she tore Ty's slacks and button-up shirts down so she could make sure nothing was behind them. The coat of Tyler's only suit hangs askew from the closet's doorknob. His posters have been pulled from the walls; Mark McGwire has been torn in half. In every case but one she has left the wallpaper behind the posters alone, but the one exception is a beaut. Behind the rectangle where the poster of the castle hung (COME BACK TO THE AULD SOD), the wallpaper has been almost entirely stripped away. There are more streaks of blood on the wallboard beneath.
Judy Marshall sits on the bare mattress of her son's bed. The sheets are heaped in the corner, along with the pillow. The bed itself has been yanked away from the wall. Judy's head is down. He can't see her face ¡ª her hair is screening it ¡ª but she's wearing shorts and he can see dapples and streaks of blood on her tanned thighs. Her hands are clasped below her knees, out of sight, and Fred is glad. He doesn't want to see how badly she has hurt herself until he has to. His heart is
hammering in his chest, his nervous system is redlining with adrenaline overload, and his mouth tastes like a burnt fuse.
She begins to sing the chorus of Ty's lullabye again and he can't stand it. "Judy, no," he says, going to her through the strewn minefield that was, only last night when he came in to give Ty a good-night kiss, a reasonably neat little boy's room. "Stop, honey, it's okay. "
For a wonder, she does stop. She raises her head, and when he sees the terrified look in her eyes, he loses what little breath he has left. It's more than terror. It's emptiness, as if something inside her has slipped aside and exposed a black hole.
"Ty's gone," she says simply. "I looked behind all the pictures I could . . . I was sure he'd be behind that one, if he was anywhere he'd be behind that one . . . "
She points toward the place where the Ireland travel poster hung, and he sees that four of the nails on her left hand have been ripped partly or completely away. His stomach does a flip-flop. Her fingers look as if they have been dipped in red ink. If only it was ink, Fred thinks. If only.
". . . but of course it's just a picture. They're all just pictures. I see that now. " She pauses, then cries: "Abbalah! Munshun! Abbalah-gorg, Abbalah-doon!" Her tongue comes out ¡ª comes out to an impossible, cartoonish length ¡ª and swipes spittishly across her nose. Fred sees it but cannot believe it. This is like coming into a horror movie halfway through the show, discovering it's real, and not knowing what to do. What is he supposed to do? When you discover that the woman you love has gone mad ¡ª had a break with reality, at the very least ¡ª what are you supposed to do? How the hell do you deal with it?
But he loves her, has loved her from the first week he knew her, helplessly and completely and without the slightest regret ever after, and now love guides him. He sits down next to her on the bed, puts his arm around her, and simply holds her. He can feel her trembling from the inside out. Her body thrums like a wire.
"I love you," he says, surprised at his voice. It's amazing that seeming calmness can issue from such a crazy cauldron of confusion and fear. "I love you and everything is going to be all right. "
She looks up at him and something comes back into her eyes. Fred cannot call it sanity (no matter how much he would like to), but it is at least some sort of marginal awareness. She knows where she is and who is with her. For a moment he sees gratitude in her eyes. Then her face cramps in a fresh agony of grief and she begins to weep. It is an exhausted, lost sound that wrenches at him. Nerves, heart, and mind, it wrenches at him.
"Ty's gone," Judy says. "Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him. Abbalah-doon!" The tears course down her cheeks. When she raises her hands to wipe them away, her fingers leave appalling streaks of blood.
Even though he's sure Tyler is fine (certainly Fred has had no premonitions today, unless we count his rosy sales prediction about the new Hiler roto), he feels a shudder course through him at the sight of those streaks, and it is not Judy's condition that causes it but what she's just said: Ty's gone. Ty is with his friends; he told Fred just last night that he, Ronnie, T. J. , and the less-than-pleasant Wexler boy intended to spend the day "goofing off. " If the other three boys go somewhere Ty doesn't want to be, he has promised to come directly home. All the bases seem to be covered, yet . . . is there not such a thing as mother's intuition?
Well, he thinks, maybe on the Fox Network.
He picks Judy up in his arms and is appalled all over again, this time by how light she is. She's lost maybe twenty pounds since the last time I picked her up like this, he thinks. At least ten. How could I not have noticed? But he knows. Preoccupation with work was part of it; a stubborn refusal to let go of the idea that things were basically all right was the rest of it. Well, he thinks, carrying her out the door (her arms have crept tiredly up and locked themselves around his neck), I'm over that little misconception. And he actually believes this, in spite of his continued blind confidence in his son's safety.
Judy hasn't toured their bedroom during her rampage, and to Fred it looks like a cool oasis of sanity. Judy apparently feels the same way. She gives a tired sigh, and her arms drop away from her husband's neck. Her tongue comes out, but this time it gives only a feeble little lick at her upper lip. Fred bends and puts her down on the bed. She holds up her hands, looks at them.
"I cut myself . . . scraped myself . . . "
"Yes," he says. "I'm going to get something for them. "
"How . . . ?"
He sits beside her for a moment. Her head has sunk into the soft double thickness of her pillows, and her eyelids are drooping. He thinks that, beyond the puzzlement in them, he can still see that terrifying blankness. He hopes he is wrong.
"Don't you remember?" he asks her gently.
"No . . . did I fall down?"
Fred chooses not to answer. He is starting to think again. Not much, he's not capable of much just yet, but a little. "Honey, what's a gorg? What's an abbalah? Is it a person?"
"Don't . . . know . . . Ty . . . "
"Ty's fine," he says.
"No . . . "
"Yes," he insists. Perhaps he's insisting to both of the people in this pretty, tastefully decorated bedroom. "Honeybunch, you just lie there. I want to get a couple of things. "
Her eyes drift closed. He thinks she will sleep, but her lids struggle slowly back up to half-mast.
"Lie right there," he says. "No getting up and wandering around. There's been enough of that. You scared poor Enid Purvis out of a year's life. You promise?"
"Promise . . . " Her eyelids drift back down.
Fred goes into the adjoining bathroom, ears alert for any movement behind him. He has never seen anyone in his life who looks more bolt-shot than Judy does right now, but mad people are clever, and despite his prodigious capacity for denial in some areas, Fred can no longer fool himself about his wife's current mental state. Mad? Actually stark raving mad? Probably not. But off the rails, certainly. Temporarily off the rails, he amends as he opens the medicine cabinet.
He takes the bottle of Mercurochrome, then scans the prescription bottles on the shelf above. There aren't many. He grabs the one on the far left. Sonata, French Landing Pharmacy, one capsule at bedtime, do not use more than four nights in a row, prescribing physician Patrick J. Skarda, M. D.
Fred can't see the entire bed in the medicine-cabinet mirror, but he can see the foot of it . . . and one of Judy's feet, as well. Still on the bed. Good, good. He shakes out one of the Sonatas, then dumps their toothbrushes out of the glass ¡ª he has no intention of going all the way downstairs for a clean glass, does not want to leave her alone that long.
He fills the glass, then goes back into the bedroom with the water, the pill, and the bottle of Mercurochrome. Her eyes are shut. She is breathing so slowly that he has to put one hand on her chest to make sure she's breathing at all.
He looks at the sleeping pill, debates, then gives her a shake. "Judy! Jude! Wake up a little, hon. Just long enough to take a pill, okay?"
She doesn't even mutter, and Fred sets the Sonata aside. It won't be necessary after all. He feels some faint optimism at how fast she's fallen asleep and how deep she has gone. It's as if some vile sac has popped, discharged its poison, left her weak and tired but possibly okay again. Could that be? Fred doesn't know, but he's positive that she isn't just shamming sleep. All of Judy's current woes began with insomnia, and the insomnia has been the one constant throughout. Although she's only been exhibiting distressing symptoms for a couple of months ¡ª talking to herself and doing that odd and rather disgusting thing with her tongue, to mention only a couple of items ¡ª she hasn't been sleeping well since January. Hence the Sonata. Now it seems that she has finally tipped over. And is it too much to hope that when she wakes from a normal sleep she'll be her old normal self again? That her worries about her son's safety during the summer of the Fisherman have forced her to some sort of climax? Maybe, maybe not . . . but at least it has given Fred so
me time to think about what he should do next, and he had better use it well. One thing seems to him beyond argument: if Ty is here when his mother wakes up, Ty is going to have a much happier mother. The immediate question is how to locate Tyler as soon as possible.
His first thought is to call the homes of Ty's friends. It would be easy; those numbers are posted on the fridge, printed in Judy's neat back-slanting hand, along with the numbers of the fire department, the police department (including Dale Gilbertson's private number; he's an old friend), and French Landing Rescue. But it takes Fred only a moment to realize what a bad idea this is. Ebbie's mother is dead and his father is an unpleasant moron ¡ª Fred met him just once, and once is more than enough. Fred doesn't much like his wife labeling some people "low-raters" (Who do you think you are, he asked her once, Queen of the doggone Realm?), but in the case of Pete Wexler, the shoe fits. He won't have any idea of where the boys are today and won't care.
Mrs. Metzger and Ellen Renniker might, but having once been a boy on summer vacation himself ¡ª the whole world laid at your feet and at least two thousand places to go ¡ª Fred doubts it like hell. There's a chance the boys might be eating lunch (it's getting to be that time) at the Metzgers' or Rennikers', but is that slight chance worth scaring the hell out of two women? Because the killer will be the first thing they think of, just as sure as God made little fishes . . . and fishermen to catch 'em.
Once more sitting on the bed beside his wife, Fred feels his first real tingle of apprehension on his son's behalf and dismisses it brusquely. This is no time to give in to the heebie-jeebies. He has to remember that his wife's mental problems and his son's safety are not linked ¡ª except in her mind. His job is to present Ty, front and center and all squared away, thus proving her fears groundless.
Fred looks at the clock on his side of the bed and sees that it's quarter past eleven. How the time flies when you're having fun, he thinks. Beside him, Judy utters a single gaspy snore. It's a small sound, really quite ladylike, but Fred jumps anyway. How she scared him when he first saw her in Ty's room! He's still scared.
Ty and his friends may come here for lunch. Judy says they often do because the Metzgers don't have much to eat and Mrs. Renniker usually serves what the boys call "goop," a mystery dish consisting of noodles and some gray meat. Judy makes them Campbell's soup and baloney sandwiches, stuff they like. But Ty has money enough to treat them all to McDonald's out by the little mall on the north side, or they could go into Sonny's Cruisin' Restaurant, a cheap diner with a cheesy fifties ambience. And Ty isn't averse to treating. He's a generous boy.
"I'll wait until lunch," he murmurs, completely unaware that he is talking as well as thinking. Certainly he doesn't disturb Judy; she has gone deep. "Then ¡ª "
Then what? He doesn't know, exactly.
He goes downstairs, kicks the Mr. Coffee back into gear, and calls work. He asks Ina to tell Ted Goltz he'll be out the rest of the day ¡ª Judy's sick. The flu, he tells her. Throwing up and everything. He runs down a list of people he was expecting to see that day and tells her to speak to Otto Eisman about handling them. Otto will be on that like white on rice.
An idea occurs to him while he's talking to her, and when he's done, he calls the Metzgers' and Rennikers' after all. At the Metzgers' he gets an answering machine and hangs up without leaving a message. Ellen Renniker, however, picks up on the second ring. Sounding casual and cheerful ¡ª it comes naturally, he's a hell of a salesman ¡ª he asks her to have Ty call home if the boys show up there for lunch. Fred says he has something to tell his son, making it sound like something good. Ellen says she will, but adds that T. J. had four or five dollars burning a hole in his jeans when he left the house that morning, and she doesn't expect to see him until suppertime.
Fred goes back upstairs and checks on Judy. She hasn't moved so much as a finger, and he supposes that's good.
No. There's nothing good about any of this.
Instead of receding now that the situation has stabilized ¡ª sort of ¡ª his fear seems to be intensifying. Telling himself that Ty is with his friends no longer seems to help. The sunny, silent house is creeping him out. He realizes he no longer wants Ty front and center simply for his wife's sake. Where would the boys go? Is there any one place ¡ª ?
Of course there is. Where they can get Magic cards. That stupid, incomprehensible game they play.
Fred Marshall hurries back downstairs, grabs the phone book, hunts through the Yellow Pages, and calls the 7-Eleven. Like most of French Landing, Fred is in the 7-Eleven four or five times a week ¡ª a can of soda here, a carton of orange juice there ¡ª and he recognizes the lilt of the Indian day clerk's voice. He comes up with the man's name at once: Rajan Patel. It's that old salesman's trick of keeping as many names as possible in the active file. It sure helps here. When Fred calls the man Mr. Patel, the day clerk immediately becomes friendly, perfectly willing to help. Unfortunately, there isn't much help he can give. Lots of boys in. They are buying Magic cards, also Pok¨
mon and baseball cards. Some are trading these cards outside. He does recall three that came in that morning on bikes, he says. They bought Slurpees as well as cards, and then argued about something outside. (Rajan Patel doesn't mention the cursing, although this is chiefly why he remembers these boys. ) After a little while, he says, they went on their way.
Fred is drinking coffee without even remembering when he poured it. Fresh threads of unease are spinning spider-silky webs in his head. Three boys. Three.
It means nothing, you know that, don't you? he tells himself. He does know it, and at the same time he doesn't know it. He can't even believe he's caught a little of Judy's freakiness, like a cold germ. This is just . . . well . . . freakiness for freakiness's sake.
He asks Patel to describe the kids and isn't too surprised when Patel can't. He thinks one of them was a bit of a fat boy, but he's not even sure of that. "Sorry, but I see so many," he says. Fred tells him he understands. He does, too, only all the understanding in the world won't ease his mind.
Three boys. Not four but three.
Lunchtime has come, but Fred is not the least bit hungry. The spooky, sunny silence maintains itself. The spiderwebs continue to spin.
Not four but three.
If it was Ty's bunch that Mr. Patel saw, the fattish boy was certainly Ebbie Wexler. The question is, who were the other two? And which one was missing? Which one had been stupid enough to go off on his own?
Ty's gone. Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him.
Crazy talk, no doubt about it . . . but Fred's arms nevertheless break out in a lush of goose bumps. He puts his coffee mug down with a bang. He'll clean up the broken glass, that's what he'll do. That's the next step, no doubt about it.
The actual next step, the logical next step, whispers through his mind as he climbs the stairs, and he immediately pushes it away. He's sure the cops are just lately overwhelmed with queries from hysterical parents who have lost track of their kids for an hour or so. The last time he saw Dale Gilbertson, the poor guy looked careworn and grim. Fred doesn't want to be marked down as part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Still . . .
Not four but three.
He gets the dustpan and broom out of the little utility closet next to the laundry room and begins sweeping up broken glass. When he's done he checks on Judy, sees she's still sleeping (more deeply than ever, from the look of her), and goes down to Ty's room. If Ty saw it like this, he'd be upset. He'd think his mom was a lot more than a Coke short of a Happy Meal.
You don't have to worry about that, his mind whispers. He won't be seeing his room, not tonight, not ever. Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him.
"Stop it," Fred tells himself. "Stop being an old woman. "
But the house is too empty, too silent, and Fred Marshall is afraid.
Setting Tyler's room to rights takes longer than Fred ever would have expected; his wife wen
t through it like a whirlwind. How can such a little woman have such strength in her? Is it the strength of the mad? Perhaps, but Judy doesn't need the strength of the mad. When she sets her mind to something, she is a formidable engine.
By the time he's finished cleaning up, almost two hours have passed and the only obvious scar is the scratched-out rectangle of wallpaper where the Irish travel poster hung. Sitting on Ty's remade bed, Fred finds that the longer he looks at that spot, the less he can stand the white wallboard, peering through as brazenly as a broken bone through outraged skin. He has washed away the streaks of blood, but can do nothing about the scratch marks she made with her nails.
Yes I can, he thinks. Yes I can, too.
Ty's dresser is mahogany, a piece of furniture that came to them from the estate of some distant relative on Judy's side. Moving it really isn't a one-man job, and under the circumstances, that suits Fred just fine. He slides a rug remnant under it to keep from marking up the floor, then pulls it across the room. Once it's been placed against the far wall, it covers most of the scratched area. With the bald spot out of sight, Fred feels better. Saner. Ty hasn't come home for lunch, but Fred didn't really expect he would. He'll be home by four, at the latest. Home for supper. Take it to the bank.
Fred strolls back to the master bedroom, massaging the small of his back as he walks. Judy still hasn't moved, and once again he puts an anxious hand on her chest. Her breathing is slow, but steady as she goes. That's all right. He lies down beside her on the bed, goes to loosen his tie, and laughs when he feels his open collar. Coat and tie, both back at Goltz's. Well, it's been a crazy day. For the time being it's just good to lie here in the air-conditioned cool, easing his aching back. Moving that dresser was a bitch, but he's glad he did it. Certainly there's no chance he'll drop off; he's far too upset. Besides, napping in the middle of the day has never been his thing.
So thinking, Fred falls asleep.
Beside him, in her own sleep, Judy begins to whisper. Gorg . . . abbalah . . . the Crimson King. And a woman's name.
The name is Sophie.