It would all be over soon enough.
TWENTY-FIVE
IN THE NIGHT I WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF SIRENS. THEY WERE a few miles away, winding up the scale in their flat, urgent wail, but the sound was coming closer, and without even thinking about it I knew what that meant and where they were headed: here, to this hotel, because another body had turned up, which meant—
Patrick, I thought. He’s done it again. And in my half-sleeping brain I could see his eager face as he slipped out of the chains I had put so carefully around him, and in half-waking horror I watched as he slowly, happily began to swim in toward the hotel, toward me, his rotting face set in a dead smile—
The image was too close and far too real and I jerked my eyes open. Impossible, I told myself. But in the darkened room with the sirens wailing and sleep still crusting my brain it did not seem impossible. He’s dead, I told myself, absolutely positively dead. And I knew this with complete certainty, but just as surely the sirens were coming closer, and just as surely I knew they were coming here.
I looked around the darkened room and tried to focus on real things: a chair, a table, a window. The ghosts began to fade back into dreams, and I took a deep breath—and then a new thought came barreling in, and in its own way it was just as troubling as the first nightmare:
What if I killed the wrong person?
What if that had been some Eagle Scout–innocent kayaker, who just happened to resemble a blurry picture on Facebook? And I had stabbed him and drowned him and sent him to feed the crabs, thinking it was Patrick—and now the real Patrick was right here, right now, in this hotel, and he had just killed someone, and he might even be on his way up here, to this room—
I was wide-awake now. I rolled off the couch and stood there for a moment, blinking stupidly, and then I picked up the Glock and padded across the floor to the door of Jackie’s room. I paused there for a moment, listening for any sound, and as I put my ear against the door it jerked open and I almost fell over.
Jackie stood there, eyes wide, one hand on the doorknob and one hand at her throat. She was wearing a plain cotton nightgown that came down to midthigh, and somehow, on her it seemed more enticing than anything Frederick’s of Hollywood could ever come up with. I gaped for just a moment before her voice brought me back to the real world.
“I heard the sirens,” she said. “I thought …” She glanced down and saw the pistol in my hand and her eyes went even wider. “Oh,” she said.
“I thought so, too,” I said, and she nodded.
For half a minute we both just stood there, listening as the sirens wound their way closer. There was never any doubt in my mind that they were headed here, but even so, we both held our breath as we heard the high, screaming note slide down the scale and then stop right below us, in the courtyard of the hotel. I went over and slid the balcony door open. I stepped out and looked down. Two patrol cars had parked at sloppy, cop-in-a-hurry angles. Their doors hung open and the flashing lights reflected up and onto the front of the hotel, and as I watched, more cars pulled in behind them, motorpool cars filled with detectives. I went back in and stood beside Jackie and we watched the lights flashing through the open balcony door until Jackie finally remembered to breathe.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, shit.”
“Yup,” I said.
Jackie inhaled raggedly, and then said, “It isn’t … I mean, we don’t know … Shit.” Even with the incomplete sentences, I followed her logic exactly. And although I wanted to reassure her, tell her it really wasn’t, it really couldn’t be, that half-dreamed image would not leave me, and I just stood there and felt the sweat come out of my hand and onto the grip of the Glock.
Jackie shook her head, and then walked quickly across the room to the couch and sat down, leaning forward, knees together, with her hands on the cushion beside them. I followed and sat beside her. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot to say. I remembered that I was still holding the Glock, and I slid the safety back on.
We were still sitting like that five minutes later when the house phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Yes?”
“What the fuck is going on?” a voice said; I recognized it as my sister, Deborah, and she sounded very tense. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine, Debs,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage. “Are you here at the hotel?”
Debs breathed out, sounding almost like she was expelling a lungful of cigarette smoke. “I’m downstairs, in the lobby,” she said.
“What happened down there?” I asked, which was unnecessary. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened; I just didn’t know to whom.
> “There’s a dead woman up there, one floor down from yours,” Debs said, and her voice sounded very harsh. “She’s pretty torn up, but she’s carrying a driver’s license in the name of Katherine Podrowski. That mean anything to you?”
“Podrowski?” I said, and behind me I heard Jackie gasp and then make a brief whimpering sound.
“Kathy …?” she said.
“A room service waiter saw blood coming under the door. He used a passkey, took one look, and he’s still crying,” Debs said. “It sounds like our guy did it again.”
“But …” I said, and happily for me, I stopped before I said anything more.
“Is it Kathy?” Jackie said in a hoarse and frightened whisper.
“She’s been ripped up, gutted, and her eye is missing,” Deborah went on, rather relentlessly, I thought, and very definitely harshly now.
“Which eye?” I asked her.