don’t half blame Lowbock for thinking this was all a publicity scam of
some kind.” She said, “He’s an idiot.”
“It is an unlikely damn story.”
“I believed it.”
“I know. And I love you for that.”
He kissed her. She clung to him but briefly.
“How’s your throat?” she asked.
“I’ll live.”
“That idiot thinks you choked yourself”
“I didn’t. But it’s possible, I suppose.”
“Stop seeing his side of it. You’re making me mad. What now?
Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
“Fast as we can,” he agreed. “And don’t come back until we can figure
out what the hell this is all about. Can you throw a couple of
suitcases together, basics for all of us for a few days?”
“Sure,” she said, already heading for the stairs.
“I’ll go call Vic and Kathy, make sure everything’s all right over
there, then I’ll come help you. And Paige the Mossberg is under the bed
in our room.”
Starting up the stairs, stepping over the splintery debris, she said,
“okay.”
“Get it out, put it on top of the bed while you pack.”
“I will,” she said, already a third of the way up the stairs.
He didn’t think he had sufficiently impressed her with the need for
uncommon caution. “Take it with you to the girls’ room.”
“All right.”
Speaking sharply enough to halt her, pain encircling his neck when he
tilted his head back to stare up at her, he said, “Damn it, I mean it,
Paige.”
She looked down, surprised because he never used that tone of voice.
“Okay. I’ll keep it close.”
“Good.”
He headed for the telephone in the kitchen and made it as far as the
dining room when he heard Paige cry out from the second floor.
Heart pounding so hard he could draw only shallow staccato breaths,
Marty raced back into the foyer, expecting to see her in The Other’s
grasp.
She was standing at the head of the stairs, horrified by the gruesome
stains on the carpet, which she was seeing for the first time.
“Hearing about it, I still didn’t think . ..” She looked down at
Marty.
“So much blood. How could he just . . . just walk away?”
“He couldn’t if he was . . . just a man. That’s why I’m sure he’ll be
back. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for a month, but
he’ll be back.”
“Marty, this is crazy.”
“I know.”
“Sweet Jesus,” she said, less in any profane sense than as a prayer, and
hurried into the master bedroom.
Marty returned to the kitchen and took the Beretta out of the cabinet.
Although he had loaded the pistol himself, he popped out the magazine,
checked it, slammed it back into place, and jacked a round into the
chamber.
He noticed scores of overlapping dirt-y footprints all across the
Mexican-tile floor. Many were still wet. During the past two hours,
the police had tramped in and out of the rain, and evidently not all of
them had been thoughtful enough to wipe their feet at the door.
Though he knew the cops had been busy and that they had better things to
do than worry about tracking up the house, the footprints–and the
thoughtlessness they represented–seemed to be nearly as profound a
violation as the assault by The Other. A surprisingly intense
resentment uncoiled in Marty.
While sociopaths stalked the modern world, the judicial system operated
on the premise that evil was spawned primarily by societal injustice.
Thugs were considered victims of society as surely as the people they
robbed or killed were their victims. Recently a man had been released
from a California prison after serving six years for raping and
murdering an eleven-year-old girl. Six years. The girl, of course, was
still as dead as she had ever been. Such outrages were now so common
that the story got only minor press coverage. If the courts would not
protect eleven-year-old innocents, and if the House and Senate wouldn’t
write laws to force the courts to do so, then judges and politicians
couldn’t be counted on to protect anyone, anywhere, at any time.
But, damn it, at least you expected the cops to protect you because cops