He turned on the TV, then the Toshiba satellite tuner which sat on top of it. He turned to V–14, and all the time he could feel the picture out there in the hall, pushing at the back of his head. The picture that had somehow beaten him here.
“Must have known a shortcut,” Kinnell said, and laughed.
He hadn’t been able to see much of the blond in this version of the picture, but there had been a blur behind the wheel which Kinnell assumed had been him. The Road Virus had finished his business in Rosewood. It was time to move north. Next stop—
He brought a heavy steel door down on that thought, cutting it off before he could see all of it. “After all, I could still be imagining all this,” he told the empty living room. Instead of comforting him, the hoarse, shaky quality of his voice frightened him even more. “This could be . . .” But he couldn’t finish. All that came to him was an old song, belted out in the pseudo-hip style of some early fifties Sinatra clone: This could be the start of something BIG . . .
The tune oozing from the TV’s stereo speakers wasn’t Sinatra but Paul Simon, arranged for strings. The white computer type on the blue screen said WELCOME TO NEW ENGLAND NEWSWIRE. There were 303
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ordering instructions below this, but Kinnell didn’t have to read them; he was a Newswire junkie and knew the drill by heart. He dialed, punched in his MasterCard number, then 508.
“You have ordered Newswire for [slight pause] central and north-ern Massachusetts,” the robot voice said. “Thank you very m—”
Kinnell dropped the phone back into the cradle and stood looking at the New England Newswire logo, snapping his fingers nervously.
“Come on,” he said. “Come on, come on.”
The screen flickered then, and the blue background became green.
Words began scrolling up, something about a house fire in Taunton.
This was followed by the latest on a dog-racing scandal, then tonight’s weather—clear and mild. Kinnell was starting to relax, starting to wonder if he’d really seen what he thought he’d seen on the entryway wall or if it had been a bit of travel-induced fugue, when the TV
beeped shrilly and the words BREAKING NEWS appeared. He stood watching the caps scroll up.
NENphAUG19/8:40P A ROSEWOOD WOMAN HAS BEEN BRUTALLY
MURDERED WHILE DOING A FAVOR FOR AN ABSENT FRIEND. 38-YEAR-OLD
JUDITH DIMENT WAS SAVEGELY HACKED TO DEATH ON THE LAWN OF HER
NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE, WHERE SHE HAD BEEN CONDUCTING A YARD SALE.
NO SCREAMS WERE HEARD AND MRS. DIMENT WAS NOT FOUND UNTIL
EIGHT O’CLOCK, WHEN A NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE STREET CAME OVER TO
COMPLAIN ABOUT LOUD TELEVISION NOISE. THE NEIGHBOR, MATTHEW
GRAVES, SAID THAT MRS. DIMENT HAD BEEN DECAPITATED. “HER HEAD
WAS ON THE IRONING BOARD,” HE SAID. “IT WAS THE MOST AWFUL
THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE.” GRAVES SAID HE HEARD NO SIGNS OF
A STRUGGLE, ONLY THE TV AND, SHORTLY BEFORE FINDING THE BODY, A LOUD CAR, POSSIBLY EQUIPPED WITH A GLASSPACK MUFFLER, ACCELERATING AWAY FROM THE VICINITY ALONG ROUTE ONE. SPECULATION
THAT THIS VEHICLE MAY HAVE BELONGED TO THE KILLER—
Except that wasn’t speculation; that was a simple fact.
Breathing hard, not quite panting, Kinnell hurried back into the entryway. The picture was still there, but it had changed once more.
Now it showed two glaring white circles—headlights—with the dark shape of the car hulking behind them.
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He’s on the move again, Kinnell thought, and Aunt Trudy was on top of his mind now—sweet Aunt Trudy, who always knew who had been naughty and who had been nice. Aunt Trudy, who lived in Wells, no more than forty miles from Rosewood.
“God, please God, please send him by the coast road,” Kinnell said, reaching for the picture. Was it his imagination or were the headlights farther apart now, as if the car were actually moving before his eyes . . . but stealthily, the way the minute hand moved on a pocket watch? “Send him by the coast road, please.”
He tore the picture off the wall and ran back into the living room with it. The screen was in place before the fireplace, of course; it would be at least two months before a fire was wanted in here. Kinnell batted it aside and threw the painting in, breaking the glass fronting—
which he had already broken once, at the Gray service area—against the firedogs. Then he pelted for the kitchen, wondering what he would do if this didn’t work either.
It has to, he thought. It will because it has to, and that’s all there is to it.
He opened the kitchen cabinets and pawed through them, spilling the oatmeal, spilling a canister of salt, spilling the vinegar. The bottle broke open on the counter and assaulted his nose and eyes with the high stink.
Not there. What he wanted wasn’t there.
He raced into the pantry, looked behind the door—nothing but a plastic bucket and an O Cedar—and then on the shelf by the dryer.
There it was, next to the briquets.
Lighter fluid.
He grabbed it and ran back, glancing at the telephone on the kitchen wall as he hurried by. He wanted to stop, wanted to call Aunt Trudy. Credibility wasn’t an issue with her; if her favorite nephew called and told her to get out of the house, to get out right now, she would do it . . . but what if the blond kid followed her? Chased her?
And he would. Kinnell knew he would.
He hurried across the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus, no.”
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The picture beneath the splintered glass no longer showed oncoming headlights. Now it showed the Grand Am on a sharply curving piece of road that could only be an exit ramp. Moonlight shone like liquid satin on the car’s dark flank. In the background was a water tower, and the words on it were easily readable in the moonlight. KEEP
MAINE GREEN, they said. BRING MONEY.
Kinnell didn’t hit the picture with the first squeeze of lighter fluid; his hands were shaking badly and the aromatic liquid simply ran down the unbroken part of the glass, blurring the Road Virus’s back deck. He took a deep breath, aimed, then squeezed again. This time the lighter fluid squirted in through the jagged hole made by one of the firedogs and ran down the picture, cutting through the paint, making it run, turning a Goodyear Wide Oval into a sooty teardrop.
Kinnell took one of the ornamental matches from the jar on the mantel, struck it on the hearth, and poked it in through the hole in the glass. The painting caught at once, fire billowing up and down across the Grand Am and the water tower. The remaining glass in the frame turned black, then broke outward in a shower of flaming pieces. Kinnell crunched them under his sneakers, putting them out before they could set the rug on fire.
He went to the phone and punched in Aunt Trudy’s number, unaware that he was crying. On the third ring, his aunt’s answering machine picked up. “Hello,” Aunt Trudy said, “I know it encourages the burglars to say things like this, but I’ve gone up to Kennebunk to watch the new Harrison Ford movie. If you intend to break in, please don’t take my china pigs. If you want to leave a message, do so at the beep.”
Kinnell waited, then, keeping his voice as steady as possible, he said: “It’s Richie, Aunt Trudy. Call me when you get back, okay? No matter how late.”
He hung up, looked at the TV, then dialed Newswire again, this time punching in the Maine area code. While the computers on the other end processed his order, he went back and used a poker to jab at the blackened, twisted thing in the fireplace. The stench was 306
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ghastly—it made the spilled vinegar smell like a flowerpatch in comparison—but Kinnell found he didn’t mind. The picture was entirely gone, reduced to ash, and that made it worthwhile.
What if it comes back again?
“It won’t,” he said, putting the poker back and returning to the TV. “I’m sure it won’t.”
But every time the news scroll started to recycle, he got up to check.
The picture was just ashes on the hearth . . . and there was no word of elderly women being murdered in the Wells-Saco-Kennebunk area of the state. Kinnell kept watching, almost expecting to see A GRAND AM MOVING AT HIGH SPEED CRASHED INTO A KENNEBUNK
MOVIE THEATER TONIGHT, KILLING AT LEAST TEN, but nothing of the sort showed up.
At a quarter of eleven the telephone rang. Kinnell snatched it up.
“Hello?”
“It’s Trudy, dear. Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.”