action.
In his office he went to the walk-in storage closet and hastily selected
four cardboard cartons from stacks of thirty to forty boxes ol the same
size and shape. Each held twenty hardcover books. He could only carry
two at a time to the garage. He put them in the trunk of the BMW,
wincing from the pain in his neck, which the effort exacerbated.
Entering the master bedroom after his second hasty trip to the car, he
was brought up short just past the threshold by the sight of Paige
snatching up the shotgun and whipping around to confront him.
“Sorry,” she said, when she saw who it was.
“You did it right,” he said. “Have you gotten the girls’ things
together?”
“No, I’m just finishing here.”
“I’ll get started on theirs,” he said.
Following the blood trail to Charlotte and Emily’s room, passin the
broken-out section of gallery railing, Marty glanced at the foyer floor
below. He still expected to see a dead man sprawled on the cracked
tiles.
Charlotte and Emily were slumped on the Delorios’ family-room sofa,
heads close together. They were pretending to be deeply involved in a
stupid television comedy show about a stupid family with stupid kids and
stupid parents doing stupid things to resolve a stupid problem.
As long as they appeared to be caught up in the program, Mrs. Delorio
stayed in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Mr. Delorio either paced
through the house or stood at the front windows watching the cops
outside. Ignored, the girls had a chance to whisper to each other and
try to figure out what was happening at home.
“Maybe Daddy’s been shot,” Charlotte worried.
“I told you already a million times he wasn’t.”
“What do you know? You’re only seven.”
Emily sighed. “He told us he was okay, in the kitchen, when Mommy
thought he was hurt.”
“He was covered with blood,” Charlotte fretted.
“He said it wasn’t his.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do,” Emily said emphatically.
“If Daddy wasn’t shot, then who was?”
“Maybe a burglar,” Emily said.
“We’re not rich, Em. What would a burglar want in our place?
Hey, maybe Daddy had to shoot Mrs. Sanchez.”
“Why shoot Mrs. Sanchez? She’s just the cleaning lady.”
“Maybe she went berserk,” Charlotte said, and the possibility appealed
enormously to her thirst for drama.
Emily shook her head. “Not Mrs. Sanchez. She’s nice.”
“Nice people go berserk.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
Emily folded her arms on her chest. “Name one.”
“Mrs. Sanchez,” Charlotte said.
“Besides Mrs. Sanchez.”
“Jack Nicholson.”
“Who’s he?”
“You know, the actor. In Batman he was the Joker, and he was totally
massively berserk.”
“So maybe he’s always totally massively berserk.”
“No, sometimes he’s nice, like in that movie with Shirley Mac Line, he
was an astronaut, and Shirley’s daughter got real sick and they found
out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice.”
“Besides, this isn’t Mrs. Sanchez’s day,” Emily said.
“What?”
“She only comes on Thursdays.”
“Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn’t know what day it was,”
Charlotte countered, pleased with her response, which made such perfect
sense. “Maybe she’s loose from a looney-tune asylum, goes around
getting housekeeping jobs, then sometimes when she’s berserk she kills
the family, roasts them, and eats them for dinner.”
“You’re weird,” Emily said.
“No, listen,” Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, “like Hannibal
Lecter.”
“Hannibal the Cannibal!” Emily gasped.
Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie which Emily insisted
on calling The Sirens of the Lambs–because Mom and Daddy didn’t think
they were old enough, but they’d heard about it from other kids in
school who’d seen it on video a billion times.
Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs.
Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a doctor who went
humongously berserk and bit off people’s noses and stuff, so the idea of
a berserk cannibal cleaning lady suddenly made a lot of sense.
Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the
sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much
revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had