a couple of dirty rags that were on the workbench, then he put the rags
with his coveralls. Finally he stacked the other tarps on top of all
that incriminating evidence, until there was nothing to see but a mound
of rumpled canvas. No one would stumble across the dead woman, at
least not during the few hours she would be there.
Conrad put on his street clothes and left the funhouse by a rear
door.
Because the basement wasn’t underground, the door opened onto the warm,
late-afternoon sunshine behind the building.
He walked to the nearest comfort station. Because the gates had opened
only minutes ago, there weren’t yet any marks in the restrooms. Conrad
scrubbed his hands until they were as clean as a surgeon’s.
He returned to the funhouse and walked around to the front of it.
The giant clown’s face was laughing. Elton, one of Conrad’s employees,
was selling tickets. Ghost was working at the boarding gate. Gunther
was dressed like the Frankenstein monster and was growling
enthusiastically at the marks, he saw Conrad, and they stared at each
other for a moment, and although they were too far apart to see each
other’s eyes, an understanding passed between them.
–I did it again.
–I know. I found her.
–What now?
protect you.
Until night fell over the fairgrounds, Conrad worked on the pitchman’s
platform, ballying the marks, drawing them in with his polished
spiel.
As soon as darkness came, he complained of a migraine headache and told
Ghost that he was going back to his motor home to lie down.
Instead, he went to the large parking area adjacent to the fairgrounds,
and he searched for Janet Middlemeir’s car. He had the miniature
license plate on her key ring to guide him, and even though there were
a great many cars to check through, he located her Dodge Omni in just
half an hour.
He drove the Omni onto the lot through a service gate, well aware that
he was leaving an evidential trail in other people’s memories, but
there was nothing else he could do. He parked in the shadows behind
the funhouse.
The service alley was deserted at the moment. He hoped no one would
stroll past on the way to the comfort station.
He entered the funhouse basement through the rear door and carried out
the tarp that contained the corpse, while the marks screamed at
mechanical monsters in the dark tunnels overhead. He put the gruesome
bundle in the Omni’s trunk, and then he drove away from the
fairgrounds.
Although he had never been so bold before, he decided the best place to
leave the dead woman was in her own home. If the police thought she
had been murdered in her own house by an intruder, they wouldn’t be
likely to link the killing with the carnival. It would look like just
another random act of senseless violence, the sort of thing the cops
saw all the time.
Two miles from the fairgrounds, in a supermarket parking lot, he looked
through the car, trying to find some indication of where Janet
Middlemeir lived. He discovered her purse under the front seat, where
she had left it while making her inspection tour of the carnival. He
went through the contents of the purse and found her address on her
driver’s license.
With the help of a map that he picked up at an Erron station, Conrad
managed to find the pleasant apartment complex in which the woman
lived.
There were a number of long, two- and threestory, colonial-style
buildings angled through and around the park-like grounds. Janet
Middlemeir’s unit was on the ground floor, at the corner of one of the
buildings, and there was an empty parking slot behind her place, not
more than fifteen feet from her back door.
The apartment was dark, and Conrad hoped that she lived alone.
He hadn’t found anything to indicate that she was married. There were
no rings on her hands, nothing in her purse bore the word “Mrs.” Of
course she might have a girlfriend rooming with her, or there might be
a live-in boyfriend. That could mean trouble. Conrad was prepared to