Edgler Vess stands motionless. Listening. Watchful. Breathing deeply, seeking scents. Then for a while he inhales through his open mouth, catching what he can upon his tongue. He feels the moist air like the clammy skin of a cadaver against his face. All his senses are open wide, irised to the max, and the freshly washed world drains into them.
Finally he can detect no harm in the morning.
As Vess is putting the license plate on the back of the motor home, Tilsiter pads to him. The dog nuzzles his master’s neck.
Vess encourages the Doberman to stay. When he is finished with the plate, he points Tilsiter to the nearby deer spoor.
The dog seems not to see the tracks. Or, seeing them, he does not have any interest.
Vess leads him to the spoor, right in among the prints. Once more he points to them.
Because Tilsiter appears to be confused, Vess places his hand on the back of the dog’s head and presses his muzzle into one of the tracks.
The Doberman catches a scent at last, sniffs eagerly, whimpers with excitement—then decides that he doesn’t like what he smells. He squirms out from under his master’s hand and backs off, looking sheepish.
“What?” says Vess.
The dog licks his chops. He looks away from Vess, surveys the meadows, the lane, the yard. He glances at Vess again, but then he trots off to the south, returning to patrol.
The trees still dripping. The mists rising. The spent clouds scudding fast toward the southeast.
Mr. Vess decides to kill Chyna Shepherd immediately.
He will haul her into the yard, make her lie facedown on the grass, and put a couple of bullets in the back of her skull. He has to go to work this evening, and before that he has to get some sleep, so he won’t have time to enjoy a slow kill.
Later, when he gets home, he can bury her in the meadow with the four dogs watching, insects singing and feeding on one another in the tall grass, and Ariel forced to kiss each of the corpses before it goes forever into the ground—all this in moonlight if there is any.
Quickly now, finish her and sleep.
As he hurries toward the house, he realizes that the screwdriver is still in his hand, which might be more interesting than using the pistol, yet just as quick.
Up the flagstone steps, onto the front porch, where the finger of the Seattle attorney hangs silent among the seashells in the cool windless air.
He doesn’t bother to wipe his feet, a rare breach of compulsive procedure.
The ratcheting hinge is matched by the sound of his own ragged breathing as he opens the door and steps into the house. When he closes the door, he is startled to hear his thudding heartbeats chasing one another.
He is never afraid, never. With this woman, however, he has been unsettled more than once.
A few steps into the room, he halts, getting a grip on himself. Now that he is inside again, he doesn’t understand why killing her seemed to be such an urgent priority.
Intuition.
But never has his intuition delivered such a clamorous message that has left him this conflicted. The woman is special, and he so badly wants to use her in special ways. Merely pumping two shots into the back of her head or sticking the screwdriver into her a few times would be such a waste of her potential.
He is never afraid. Never.
Even being unsettled like this is a challenge to his dearest image of himself. The poet Sylvia Plath, whose work leaves Mr. Vess uncharacteristically ambivalent, once said that the world was ruled by panic, “panic with a dog-face, devil-face, hag-face, whore-face, panic in capital letters with no face at all—the same Johnny Panic, awake or asleep.” But Johnny Panic does not rule Edgler Vess and never will, because Mr. Vess has no illusions about the nature of existence, no doubts about his purpose, and no moments of his life that ever require reinterpretation when he has the time for quiet reflection.
Sensation.
Intensity.
He cannot live with intensity if he is afraid, because Johnny Panic inhibits spontaneity and experimentation. Therefore, he will not allow this woman of mysteries to spook him.