“All we can do is step up patrol around here,” Butler told me as they left. “We’ll keep an eye on your house as best we can, and if anything else happens, call nine-one-one right away. Even if it’s just a noise that bothers you, okay?”
I paged Marino. By now it was midnight.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I told him.
“I’m coming over right now.”
“Listen, I’m all right,” I said. “Battled, but all right. I’d rather you stay out there looking for him instead of coming here to baby-sit me,°”
He seemed unsure. I knew what he was thinking.
“It doesn’t seem his style is to break in anyway;” I added.
Marino hesitated, then he said, “There’s something you ought to know. I didn’t know if I should tell you. Talley’s here.”
I was stunned.
“He’s the head of the squad HIDTA sent in.”
“How long has he been here?” I tried to sound curious and nothing more.
“Couple days.”
“Tell him hello,” I said as if Talley meant very little tó me anymore.
Marino wasn’t fooled.
“Sorry he turned out to be such an asshole;” he said.
The minute I hung up, I contacted the orthopedic unit at MCV and the nurse on duty didn’t know who I was and wouldn’t release any information about anything. I wanted to talk to Senator Lord. I wanted to talk to Dr. Zenner, to Lucy, to a friend, to someone who cared, and at that moment I missed Benton so acutely I thought I couldn’t go on. I thought of being buried in the wreckage of my life. I thought of dying.
I tried to revive the fire, but it was stubborn because the wood I’d carried in was damp. I stared at the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table but didn’t have the energy to light one up. I sat on the couch and buried my face in my hands until the spasms of grief subsided. When a sharp rapping sounded on the door again, my nerves ached tut I was just so tired.
“Police,” a male voice said from outside as he rapped again with something hard like a nightstick or blackjack.
“I didn’t call the police,” I said through the door.
“Ma’am, we’ve gotten a call about a suspicious person on your property,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes,” I said as I turned off the alarm and opened the door to let him in.
My porch fight was out, and it had never occurred to me he might be able to speak without a French accent, and I smelled that dirty, wet doglike smell as he pushed his way in and shut the door with a back-kick. I choked on the scream in my throat as he smiled his hideous smile and reached out a hairy hand to touch my cheek, as if his feelings for me were tender.
Half of his face was lower than the other and covered with a fine blond stubble, and uneven, crazed eyes burned with rage and lust and mockery from hell. He tore off his long black coat to net it over my head and I ran and this all happened in a matter of seconds.
Panic hurled me into the great room and he was on my heels making guttural sounds that didn’t sound human. I was too terrified to think. I was reduced to the childish impulse of wanting to throw something at him and the first thing I saw was the jar of formalin that held part of the flesh of the brother he had murdered.
I snatched it off the coffee table and jumped on the couch and over the back of it and fumbled with the lid, and he had out his tool now, that hammer with the coiled handle, and as he raised it and grabbed for me I dashed a quart of formalin in his face.
He shrieked and grabbed his eyes and throat as the chemical burned and made it difficult for him to breathe. He squeezed shut his eyes, shrieking and grabbing at his doused shirt to rip it off, gasping arid burning like fire as I ran. I grabbed my gun off the dining-room table and hit the panic alarm as I fled out the front door into the snow. On the steps my feet went out from under me and my left arm shot down like a brace to stop my fall. When I tried to get up, I knew I’d broken my elbow, and I was shocked to see him staggering after me.