Immediately inside the door I flattened against the wall, just to be cautious, and felt for a light switch. I found one right where it should be and flipped it up.
Like Danco’s first den of iniquity, this one was sparsely fur-nished. Once again, the main feature of the place was a large table in the center of the room. A mirror hung on the opposite wall. Off to the right a doorway without a door led to what looked like the kitchen, and on the left a closed door, probably a bedroom or bathroom. Directly across from where I stood was another screen door leading outside, presumably the way Dr. Danco had made his escape.
And on the far side of the table, now thrashing more furi-
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ously than ever, was something dressed in a pale orange coverall. It looked relatively human, even from across the room.
“Over here, oh please, help me, help me,” it said, and I crossed the room and knelt beside it.
His arms and legs were bound with duct tape, naturally, the choice of every experienced, discriminating monster. As I cut the tape I examined him, listening but not really hearing his constant blubbering of, “Oh thank God, oh please, oh God, get me loose, buddy, hurry hurry for God’s sake. Oh Christ, what took you so long, Jesus, thank you, I knew you’d come,” or words to that effect. His skull was completely shaved, even the eyebrows. But there was no mistaking the rugged manly chin and the scars festooning his face. It was Kyle Chutsky.
Most of him, anyway.
As the tape came off and Chutsky was able to wiggle up to a sitting position, it became apparent that he was missing his left arm up to the elbow and his right leg up to the knee. The stumps were wrapped with clean white gauze, nothing leaking through; again, very nice work, although I did not think Chutsky would appreciate the care Danco had used in taking his arm and leg. And how much of Chutsky’s mind was also missing was not yet clear, although his constant wet yammering did nothing to convince me that he was ready to sit at the controls of a passenger jet.
“Oh, God, buddy,” he said. “Oh Jesus. Oh thank God, you came,” and he leaned his head onto my shoulder and wept.
Since I had some recent experience with this, I knew just what to do. I patted him on the back and said, “There there.” It was even more awkward than when I had done it with Deborah, D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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since the stump of his left arm kept thumping against me and that made it much harder to fake sympathy.
But Chutsky’s crying jag lasted only a few moments, and when he finally pulled away from me, struggling to stay in an upright position, my beautiful Hawaiian shirt was soaked. He gave a huge snuffle, a little too late for my shirt. “Where’s Debbie?” he said.
“She broke her collarbone,” I told him. “She’s in the hospital.”
“Oh,” he said, and he snuffled again, a long wet sound that seemed to echo somewhere inside him. Then he glanced quickly behind him and tried to struggle to his feet. “We better get out of here. He might come back.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that Danco might come back, but it was true. It’s a time-honored predator’s trick to run off and then circle back to see who’s sniffing your spoor. If Dr. Danco did that, he would find a couple of fairly easy targets. “All right,” I said to Chutsky. “Let me have a quick look around.”
He snaked a hand out—his right hand, of course—and grabbed my arm. “Please,” he said. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“I’ll just be a second,” I said and tried to pull away. But he tightened his grip, still surprisingly strong considering what he had gone through.
“Please,” he repeated. “At least leave me your gun.”
“I don’t have a gun,” I said, and his eyes got much bigger.
“Oh, God, what the hell were you thinking? Christ, we’ve got to get out of here.” He sounded close to panic, as though any second now he would begin to cry again.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get you up on your, ah, foot.” I hoped he didn’t catch my glitch; I didn’t mean to sound in-
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sensitive, but this whole missing-limbs thing was going to require a bit of retooling in the area of vocabulary. But Chutsky said nothing, just held out his arm. I helped him up, and he leaned against the table. “Just give me a few seconds to check the other rooms,” I said. He looked at me with moist, begging eyes, but he didn’t say anything and I hurried off through the little house.
In the main room, where Chutsky was, there was nothing to be seen beyond Dr. Danco’s working equipment. He had some very nice cutting instruments, and after carefully considering the ethical implications, I took one of the nicest with me, a beautiful blade designed for cutting through the stringi-est flesh. There were several rows of drugs; the names meant very little to me, except for a few bottles of barbiturates. I didn’t find any clues at all, no crumpled matchbook covers with phone numbers written in them, no dry-cleaning slips, nothing.
The kitchen was practically a duplicate of the kitchen at the first house. There was a small and battered refrigerator, a hot plate, a card table with one folding chair, and that was it. Half a box of doughnuts sat on the counter, with a very large roach munching on one of them. He looked at me as if he was willing to fight for the doughnut, so I left him to it.