Her mother said, ‘You can’t be in an more pageants if you’re going to wet your self onstage. We’re all fed up, just fed up and disgusted with you, Val.”
Valerie looked guiltily at the carpet be tween her feet where she was dripping urine The roller-coaster gave a start-up lurch, pitching her sideways. And she wasn’t securely locked in this time. She felt panic.
Her mother said, “For once have the guts to take what’s coming to you.”
Valerie said, “You’re an evil bitch and I’ve always hated you.”
Her mother said, “Fuck that. You hate yourself.”
No use arguing with her when Ida was in high dander and fine acidic fettle. When she was death by a thousand tiny cuts.
Valerie felt the slow, heavy, ratcheting up of the coaster toward the pinnacle that no longer seemed unobtainable to her. Her throat had swelled nearly closed from unshed tears.
She set her glass down and filled it again. Walked a little unsteadily with the motion of the roller-coaster inside her providing impetus through the furnished apartment that was bizarrely decorated with old putrid flowers she picked up for nickels and dimes at the wholesale market. She unlocked the door and walked out, leaving the door standing open.
When the elevator came she wasn’t at all surprised to see John Ransome inside.
“Where’re you going?” he asked her. “To the top this time?”
“Of course.”
He pushed the button for the twentieth floor. Valerie sipped her wine and stared at him. He looked the same. The smile that went down like cream and had you purring in no time. But that was then.
‘You did love me, didn’t you?” she asked timidly, barely hearing herself for the racket the roller-coaster was making, all the screaming souls aboard.
“Don’t make me deal with that now,” he said, a hint of vexation souring his smile.
Valerie pushed the veil she’d been holding away from her face to the crown of her head, where it became tangled in her hair.
‘You were always an insensitive selfish son of a bitch.”
“Good for you, Valerie,” her mother said. Coming from Ida it was like a benediction.
John Ransome acknowledged her human failings and with a ghostly nod forgave her.
“I believe this is your floor.”
Valerie got off the elevator, kicked her shoes from her feet (no good for walking on walls) and proceeded to the steel door that led to the roof of her building. There she quailed.
“Isn’t anyone coming with me?” she said.
When she turned around she saw that the elevator was empty, the doors silently closing.
Oh, well, Valerie thought. Skip it.
Peter arrived at 415 West Churchill thirty seconds behind the fire department—a pumper truck and a paramedic bus—which had passed him on the way. Two police cars were just pulling up from different directions. Two couples with dogs on leashes were looking up at the roof of the high-rise building. The doorman apparently had just finished throwing up in shrubbery.
The night was windless. Snow fell straight down, thick as a theatre scrim. The dogs were agitated in the presence of death. The body lay on the walk about twenty feet outside the canopy at the building’s entrance.
Red dress contrasting with an icy, broken-off wing of an arborvitae. Pete knew who it was, had to be, before he got out of the car.
He checked his watch automatically. Eight minutes to nine o’clock. His stomach churned from shock and rage as he walked across the street and stepped over a low snowbank, shield in hand.
One of the cops was taking a tarp and body bag out of the trunk of his unit. The other one was talking to the severely shaken doorman.
“She just missed me.” He looked at the front of his coat as if afraid of finding traces of spattered gore.
“Hit that tree first and bounced.” He looked around, face white as snails. “Aw Jesus.”
“Any idea who she is?”
“Well, the veil. She always wore veils, you know, she was in an accident, went headfirst through the windshield. Valerie Angelus. Used to be a model. Big-time, I mean.”
Peter kneeled beside Valerie’s body, lying all wrong in its heaped brokenness. Twenty-one stories including the roof, a minimum of two hundred twenty feet. Her blood black on the recently cleared walk, absorbing snowflakes. The cop put his light on Valerie’s head for a few seconds; fortunately not much of her face was showing. Peter told him to turn the flashlight off. He crossed himself and stood.
“Want I should check the roof?” the uniform asked him. “Before CSI gets here?”
Pete nodded. He was a couple of states outside of his jurisdiction and still on autopilot, trying to deal with another dead end of a long-running tragedy.
The paramedics had come over. Peter didn’t want to explain his presence or interest in Valerie to the detectives who would be showing up along with CSI. Time to go.
When Peter turned away he saw a familiar face through the fall of snow. She was about a hundred feet away. She had stepped out on the driver’s side of a Cadillac Escalade that was idling at an intersection. He knew her, but he couldn’t place her.
She was tall, a black woman, well-dressed. Even at that distance an expression of horror was vivid on her face. He wondered how long she’d been there. He stared at her, but nothing clicked right away.
Nevertheless he began walking briskly toward the woman.
His interest startled her. She slipped back into the Escalade.
Glimpsing her from a different angle, he remembered. She had been John Ransome’s model before Echo. And as far as he could tell, although the snow obscured his vision, there was nothing wrong with her face.
Then she had to be Silkie, Valerie’s friend. Who, Valerie had claimed, was afraid—very afraid—of John Ransome.
He began running toward the Escalade, shield in hand. But Silkie, after staring at him for a couple of moments through the windshield, looked back and threw the SUV into reverse. Hell-bent to get out of there. As if the shock of Valerie’s death had been replaced by fear of being detained by cops and questioned.
Of all the Ransome women, she just might be the one who could help him nail John Ransome’s ass. Pete ran. She couldn’t drive backwards forever, even though she was pulling away from him.
At the next intersection she swerved around a car that had jammed on its brakes and slid to the curb.
Obviously the Escalade was in four-wheel drive; no handling problems. She straightened out the SUV and gunned it. But Peter got a break as the headlights of the car she had nearly ran up on the sidewalk shone on the license plate. Long enough for him to pick up most of the plate number. He stopped running and watched the SUV disappear down a divided street. He took out his ballpoint pen and jotted down the number of the Escalade. Missing a digit, probably, but that wouldn’t be a problem.
He had Silkie. Unless, of course, the SUV was stolen.
The wind was high. Echo dreamed uneasily. She was naked in the cottage in Bedford. Going from room to room, desperate to talk to Peter. He wasn’t there. None of the phones she tried were working. Forget about e-mail; her laptop was still down.
John Ransome was calling her. Angry that she’d left him before she finished posing. But she didn’t want to be with him. His studio was filled with ugly birds. She’d never liked birds since a pigeon pecked her once while she was sitting on a bench at the Central Park Zoo. These were all black, like the Woman in Black. They screeched at her from their perches in the cage John had put her in. He painted her from outside the cage, using a long brush with a sable tip that stroked over her body like waves. She wasn’t afraid of these waves, but she felt guilty because she liked it so much, trembling at the onset of that great rogue wave that was rolling erotically through her body. She tried to twist and turn away from the insidious strokes of his brush.
“No! What are you trying to do to us? You’re not going anywhere!”
Echo sat straight up in bed, breathing hard at the crest of her sex dream. Then she sagged to one side, weak from vertigo. All but helpless. Her mouth and throat were dry. She lay quietly for a minute or so until her heartbeat subsided and strength crept back into her hands. Her reading lamp was on. She’d fallen asleep while reading Villette.
The wind outside moaned and that shutter was loose again. When she moved her body beneath the covers she could tell her sap had been running at the climax of her dream. She sighed and yawned, still spikey with nerves, turned to reach for a bottle of water on the night table and discovered John Ransome standing in the doorway of her bedroom.