They would deceive Denny solely to ensure that he would spend the last month of his life desperately wondering why his mother had so stubbornly condemned him to such excruciating pain and horrible disfigurement. By the end, half mad or worse, in deep spiritual misery, he would curse her vehemently and beg God to let her rot in Hell.
As he continued to carve the tiny wheel of Gouda and serve himself off the dangerous point of the blade, the sensualist assured Barbara that no one—not the police, not the admittedly clever FBI, not the mighty United States Army—could keep Denny and Rebekah safe forever. He claimed to be employed by an organization with such bottomless resources and extensive connections that it was capable of compromising and subverting any institution or agency of the federal or state governments.
He asked her to nod if she believed him.
She did believe him. Implicitly. Without reservation. His seductive voice, which seemed to lick each of his hideous threats to savour the texture and astringency of it, was filled with the quiet confidence and smug superiority of a megalomaniac who carries the badge of a secret authority, receives a comfortable salary with numerous fringe benefits, and knows that in his old age he will be able to rely upon the cushion of a generous civil-service pension.
He then asked her if she intended to cooperate.
With guilt and humiliation but also with utter sincerity, she nodded again. Yes. She would cooperate. Yes.
Studying a pale oval of cheese like a tiny filleted fish on the point of the blade, he said that he wanted her to be deeply impressed with his determination to ensure her cooperation, so impressed that she would be in no danger of forsaking the pledge she had just made to him. Therefore, on their way out of the hotel, he and his partner would select, at random, an employee or perhaps a guest—someone who just happened to cross their path—and would kill that person on the spot. Three shots: two in the chest, one in the head.
Stunned, Barbara protested from behind the gag, contorting her face in an effort to twist the tape and free her mouth. But it was pulled cruelly tight, and her lips were stuck firmly to the adhesive, and the only argument that she could get out was a pained, muffled, wordless pleading. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death. She was going to cooperate. There was no reason to impress her with their seriousness. No reason. She already believed in their seriousness.
Never taking his great sad eyes from her, without saying another word, he slowly finished his cheese.
His unwavering stare seemed to cause a power backflow, draining her of energy. Yet she could not look away.
When he had consumed the final morsel, he wiped the blade of his knife on the sheets. Then he folded it into the handle and returned the weapon to his pocket.
Sucking on his teeth and rolling his tongue slowly around his mouth, he gathered up the shredded cellophane and the peels of red wax. He rose from the bed and deposited the trash in the waste basket beside the desk.
The younger man stepped out of the shadowy corner. His thin but eager smile no longer fluttered uncertainly; it was fixed.
From behind the strapping tape, Barbara was still attempting to protest the murder of an innocent person when the older man returned to her and, with the edge of his right hand, chopped hard at the side of her neck.
As a scintillant darkness sprayed across her field of vision, she started to slump forward. She felt the chair tipping sideways. She was unconscious before her head hit the carpet.
For perhaps twenty minutes she dreamed of severed fingers in preserving sheaths of red wax. In shrimp-pink faces, fragile smiles broke like strings of pearls, the bright teeth bouncing and rolling across the floor, but in the black crescent between the curved pink lips, new pearls formed, and a choirboy eye blinked blue. There were hound-dog eyes too, as black and shiny as leeches, in which she saw not her reflection but images of Denny’s screaming, earless face.