The killer’s footsteps brought her back to the moment. Judging by the sound of them, he was no longer in the third aisle. He had turned the corner at the back of the store and was now in the middle passage.
He was coming forward, leisurely covering the same territory over which Chyna had just scuttled.
What the hell is he doing?
She wanted to take the photograph but didn’t dare. She put it on the floor where she had found it.
She went around the paperback carousel into the third aisle, which the killer had just left, and she headed toward the end of the shelf row again. She stayed close to the merchandise on the left, away from the glass doors of the lighted coolers on the right, to avoid throwing a shadow on the ceiling tiles, which he might see.
When she was moving, she could still hear his heavy footsteps, but unless she stopped to listen, she couldn’t tell in which direction he was headed. Yet she didn’t dare stop to take a bearing on him, lest he circle again into this aisle and catch her in the open. When she reached the end of the row and turned the corner, she half expected to discover that he had changed directions, to collide with him, and to be caught.
But he wasn’t there.
Sitting on her haunches, Chyna leaned back against the end panel of the shelf row, the very spot from which she’d started. Gingerly she put the empty Bic lighter package on the floor between her feet, in the same place from which she had retrieved it less than a minute before.
She listened. No footsteps. Other than the noise made by the coolers, only silence.
Thumb poised, she clutched the lighter in her fist, prepared to strike the flame.
*
Vess stuffs two snack packages of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers, one Planters peanut bar, and two Hershey bars with almonds into his raincoat pockets, in which he’s already carrying the pistol, the Polaroid, and the videotape.
He totals the cost in his head. Because he doesn’t want to waste time going behind the register to make change, he rounds the figure to the nearest dollar and leaves the payment on the counter.
After picking up the fallen photograph of Ariel, he hesitates, soaking up the atmosphere of aftermath. There is a special quality to a room in which people have recently perished: like the hush in a theater during that instant between when the final curtain falls on a perfect performance and when the wild applause begins; a sense of triumph but also a solemn awareness of eternity suspended like a cold droplet at the point of a melting icicle. With the screaming done and the blood pooled in stillness, Edgler Vess is better able to appreciate the effects of his bold actions and to relish the quiet intensity of death.
Finally he leaves the store. Using the tagged key that he took from the pegboard, he locks the door.
At the corner of the building is one public telephone. With its armored cord, the handset isn’t easily torn loose, so he hammers it against the phone box five, ten, twenty times, until the plastic cracks, revealing the microphone. He tears the mike out of the broken mouthpiece, drops it on the pavement, and methodically crushes it under his boot heel. Then he hangs the useless handset on the switch hook again.
His work here is done. Although satisfying, this interlude was unexpected; it has put him behind schedule.
He has much driving to do. He is not tired. He had slept all the previous afternoon and well into the evening, before visiting the Templetons. Nevertheless, he is loath to waste more time. He longs to be home.
Far to the north, sheets of lightning flutter softly between dense layers of clouds, pulses rather than bolts. Vess is pleased by the prospect of a big storm. Here at ground level, where life is lived, tumult and turmoil are fundamental elements of the human climate, and for reasons that he cannot understand, he is unfailingly reassured by the sight of violence in higher realms as well. Though he fears nothing, he is sometimes inexplicably disturbed by the sight of serene skies—whether blue or overcast—and often on a clear night when the sky is deep with stars, he prefers not to gaze into that immensity.