He shakes his head, petting Mr. Peanut. “Uh uh. It’s Mr. Peanut’s buggy, isn’t it, Mr. Peanut? I gotta go in.” He gets up, glancing back furtively at the open front door.
“I tell you what.” I get up, too. “We just need to look at Mr. Peanut’s buggy, but when we’re done I promise to bring it back.”
“Okay.” He tugs the dog after him, half running, half yank- ing. I stare after them as they go inside the house and shut the door. I stand in the middle of the dirt drive in the shadow of scrub pines, hands in my pockets, watching, because I have no doubt Bev Kiffin is watching me. On the street it is called signifying, making your presence known. My business isn’t finished here. I’ll be back.[“_Toc37098925”]
CHAPTER 23
WE HEAD EAST ON ROUTE 5 AND I AM MINDFUL of the time. Even if I could conjure up Lucy’s helicopter, I would never make it back to Anna’s house by two. I pull out my wallet and find the card Berger wrote her phone numbers on. There is no answer at her hotel, and I leave a message for her to pick me up at six P.M. Marino is silent as I slip the cell phone back inside my satchel. He stares straight ahead, his truck rumbling loudly along the winding, narrow road. He is processing what I just told him about the baby carriage. Bev Kiffin, of course, lied to us.
“The whole thing out there, wow,” he finally says, shaking his head. “Talk about a creepy feeling. Like there were all these eyes watching everything we were doing. Like that place has a whole life of its own nobody knows nothing about.”
“She knows,” I reply. “She knows something. That much is obvious, Marino. She made a point of telling us the baby carriage was left by the people who abandoned the campsite. She volunteered that without pause. Wanted us to think it. Why?”
“Those people don’t exist, whoever was supposedly staying out in that tent. If the hairs turn out to be Chandonne’s, then I’m gonna have to entertain the idea she let him stay out there, and that’s why she got all hinky about it.”
The vision of Chandonne showing up at her motel office and asking for a place to stay for the night shorts out my imagination. I can’t picture it. Le Loup-Garou, as he calls himself, would not take such a chance. His modus operandi, as we know it, was not to show up at anyone’s door unless he intended to murder and maul that person. As we know it. As we know it, I keep thinking. The truth is, we know less than we did two weeks ago. “We have to start all over,” I tell Marino. “We’ve defined someone without information, and now what? We made the mistake of profiling him and then believing our projection. Well, there are dimensions to him we’ve completely missed, and even though he’s locked up, he isn’t.”
Marino gets out his cigarettes.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I go on. “In our arrogance, we decided what he’s like. Based it on scientific evidence and came up with what, in truth, is an assumption. A caricature. He’s not a werewolf. He’s a human being, and no matter how evil he is, he has many facets, and now we’re finding them. Hell, it was obvious on the videotape. Why are we so damn slow on the uptake? I don’t want Vander going to that motel alone.”
“Good point.” Marino reaches for the phone. “I’ll go to the motel with him and you can take my truck back to Richmond.”
“There was someone in the doorway,” I say. “Did you see him? He was big.”
“Huh,” he says. “I didn’t see anyone. Just the little kid, what’s his name? Zack. And the dog.”
“I saw someone else,” I insist.
“I’ll check it out. You got Vander’s number?”
I give it to him and he calls. Vander is already on his way and his wife gives Marino a cell phone number. I stare out the window at wooded residential developments with large Colonial homes set back far from the streets. Elegant Christmas decorations shine through trees.