Edgewise (19 page)

Lily drew up at the intersection of France and Lake. The sky was a strange purplish color, like a widening bruise.

“How about pizza tonight?” she asked Tasha and Sammy.

Tasha said, “No—no thanks. Daddy was always bringing home pizza.”

“With pineapple on,” Sammy put in. “I
hate
pineapple.”

At one-fifteen in the morning, Lily heard a piercing scream, and then another. She threw herself out of bed and was halfway across the landing before she was properly awake.

“Sammy! It's okay, honey, Mommy's coming!”

She collided with Tasha, who was just coming out of her room, white-faced. They hurried together into Sammy's room. Sammy was standing on his bed with both hands covering his face. He was juddering and sweating and he had soaked his pajama pants.

“Sammy! It's Mommy! Everything's okay! You had a nasty dream, that's all!”

Sammy took his hands away from his face and stared at her. He looked almost mad. Lily took him tightly in her arms and shushed him.

“You had a nasty dream, baby, that's all. It wasn't real.”

“It—was—nobody,” Sammy quaked. “He—came—through—the—door—but—he—wasn't—”

“Come on, baby. Everything's going to be fine. Why don't we get you out of these pajamas and change your bed for you?”

“He—came—through—the—door—and—he's—
here!
”

“He's not here, Sammy, I promise you.”

Tasha came up to him, too, and brushed back his wet, tousled hair. “He's not here, Sammy. He doesn't know where we live, and he's never going to find out.”

But Sammy turned to her, wide-eyed, and screamed, “
He's here!
I know he is! He's come after us!
He's here!
”

Lily picked Sammy up and helped him into a sitting position on the side of the bed. He had stopped screaming now, but he was moaning and muttering, and his eyes kept rolling up into his head, so that Lily could only see the whites.

“Tasha—I think you'd better call nine-one-one. He's having a fit.”

Tasha had only just reached the door, however, when Sammy dropped sideways on to his pillow. Lily said, “Sammy!
Sammy!
Can you hear me? Sammy!” She pulled back one of his eyelids and his eye was staring back at her, fluttering slightly. She leaned over him. He was breathing evenly and his heartbeat was steady.

“He's asleep.”

She laid a hand on his forehead and although it was sweaty his temperature felt normal.

“Forget about the ambulance. I think he's okay. It was a night terror, that's all. Can you fetch me some clean pajamas out of his drawer? I'll freshen him up and change him and he can come sleep in my bed.”

Tasha said, “You don't think he really saw something, do you?”

“Of course not. What happened to your daddy, that was all the way down in Florida, and whoever killed him, they're not going to come looking for you. Besides, he said it was nobody. And how can anybody see nobody?”

“I guess,” said Tasha. She gave Lily a kiss on the cheek and went back to her bedroom. But when Lily woke up at seven-twenty the following morning, she found Sammy sprawled on one side of her, with his mouth open; and Tasha on the other side, buried deep in the comforter, so that only a few wisps of brunette hair peeped out.

After breakfast they drove down to the Mall of America in Bloomington, so that Lily could buy them both the new coats and sweaters that she had promised them in October, before they were kidnapped. She let Sammy ride on the indoor roller coaster at Camp Snoopy, and she took Tasha into Bloomingdale's and bought her a new pink corduroy skirt and some jingly silver bracelets.

Afterward they had lunch at Ruby Tuesday's. Tasha said that she had decided to become a vegetarian, so she asked for the salad plate. Lily didn't argue. Sammy wanted the Ultimate Colossal Burger, but Lily vetoed that. “You're going to eat a whole pound of beef, with two kinds of cheese? I don't think so.” In the end he chose the hickory chicken breast and Lily ordered crab cakes.

They were still eating when Lily glanced across the restaurant and saw George Iron Walker standing by the door, wearing a short black leather coat, and a black wide-brimmed hat with a braided leather band around it. He was staring at her, stone-faced, his hands forced deep into his pockets. Several people jostled past him, including two of the waitresses, but he didn't move out of the way. He simply stood there, staring.

Lily slowly lowered the forkful of crab cake that she was just about to put in her mouth.

Tasha frowned at her and said, “Mommy? What is it?”

Lily didn't know if she ought to get up and talk to George Iron Walker, or whether she ought to ignore him.

“Mommy? Are you okay? I was telling you about the time we went to Key West.”

“What?”

“You haven't been listening, have you?”

“Yes, sweetheart, of course I've been listening. You went on a boat and saw dolphins.”

She put down her fork. She stared back at George Iron Walker, challenging him to come over and talk to her.
If you have something to say to me, then say it.
George Iron Walker stayed where he was for another ten seconds or so, and then turned around and walked out of the restaurant. Lily thought she glimpsed Hazawin, too, in her ankle-length sheepskin coat with the beads and the embroidery, but the mall was very crowded and she couldn't be sure.

“Are you all right, Mommy?” asked Sammy. “Don't you like your crab cakes?”

“No, sweetheart, they're terrific. I suddenly remembered something I forgot to do, that's all. Come on, eat up. That chicken looks great.”

After lunch they went to Sears so that Lily could buy some new table napkins, and then—as it grew dark, and the temperature began to plummet—they drove home. Sammy fell asleep in the backseat, so that when they arrived outside the house, Lily had to reach around and shake him.

“Come on, Rip van Winkle! Time to wake up!”

As they climbed out of the Rainier, Tasha said, “What's that
smell
?”

Lily sniffed, and sniffed again, and then looked up. Acrid brown smoke was pouring from the chimney, and swirling around the side of the house. It smelled like burning hair.
Oh God
, she thought.
I hope a spark hasn't jumped out of the fire and set the couch alight.

“Just wait up,” she told Tasha and Sammy. “I have to check this out first.”

She pushed her way through the snow-covered privet hedge in front of the living-room window and peered inside. Two of the table lamps were lit, because she kept them connected to a timer, and she could see that the room was hazy with smoke. But she couldn't see any flames, and the fireguard was still in place. Maybe a crow had flown down the chimney and blocked up the flue. It had happened before, only a few days after they had first moved in, and it had cost them nearly $400 to have it cleared.

She unlocked the front door, very cautiously. If there was a fire burning in the living room, she didn't want to feed it with a sudden draft. She slipped through the narrowest gap she could manage and immediately closed the door behind her.

The smell in the hallway was appalling, and she retched. It was much worse than burning hair: it was charred meat. Lily coughed, and coughed, and pulled out her handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth. With her eyes watering, she punched out the alarm code on the panel beside the door, and then she crossed the hallway and hurried into the living room.

She looked around. None of the furniture was smoldering, nor was the hearthrug nor any of the drapes. The smoke was rolling into the room from the fireplace, which appeared to be crowded with many more logs than she had stacked on to it herself. She always left the fire very low whenever she went out—just enough to keep the embers glowing.

She lifted the fireguard away. The logs were burned only on the underside, as if they had been laid on to the fire not much more than a half-hour ago. But there was something on top of them—something black and wedge-shaped, with tiny pinprick sparks glowing all over it. And something was hanging down from the chimney in long festoons—something gray and beige and glistening, like the loops of a fire hose.

Frowning, Lily picked up the poker and prodded the black object two or three times, trying to turn it over to see what it was. One of the logs abruptly dropped, and the object toppled with it. To Lily's horror, she saw a single amber eye staring up at her.

She heard the front door open, and Tasha called out, “Mom! Mommy! What's happening? We're
freezing
out here!”

Special Agent Kellogg said, “How are the kids taking it?”

Lily shrugged. “Badly. How do you think? They grew up with Sergeant. They adored him.”

“So what did you tell them?”

“What could I tell them? I could hardly pretend that it was an accident.”

A woman detective came into the kitchen, snapping off her latex gloves. She was mid-thirties, with wiry black hair and bulbous brown eyes. She wore a dark brown duffel coat and a thickly knitted mustard-colored sweater which made her look as if she didn't have a neck.

“I never saw anything so disgusting,” she said.

“Have the CSU finished up yet?” asked Special Agent Kellogg.

“Well . . .” said the detective, dubiously, looking at Lily.

Special Agent Kellogg said, “Maybe you should check on the kids.”

“I'm okay. Really.” Lily tried to smile, although she was very far from okay. She felt as if her mind had been smashed like a trodden-on mirror, and she couldn't stop shivering. But she didn't want to go upstairs to see Tasha and Sammy—not just yet, because their distress was more than she could bear. Tasha was almost hysterical, while Sammy was silent and seemed to have forgotten how to blink. Agnes was with them now, trying to comfort them.

The detective said, “okay . . . we've managed to extricate the dog's insides from out of the flue, poor creature. We found half of its hindquarters up on the roof, protruding from the chimney stack. We're still missing one leg and part of its rib cage.”

Lily pressed her hand against her mouth. She prayed that Sergeant hadn't suffered too much.

“Any idea how the perpetrator did it?” asked Special Agent Kellogg.

“Not yet. It doesn't look like the dog was
pushed
up the chimney, because the perpetrator would have needed some kind of device like a sweep's brush, and there's no trace of soot on the rug in front of the fire.”

“So maybe it was
pulled
up the chimney?”

“With a rope? That's a more practical explanation, but the trouble with
that
scenario is that there are three inches of snow on the roof and no trace of anybody having climbed up there. No ladder marks, no footprints.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I honestly can't tell you. Right now, we don't have a suspect, we don't have a logical motive, and we don't have any meaningful forensic evidence whatsoever. One of our guys even suggested that the perpetrator might have been a giant ape, like in
The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
You know, that Edgar Allan Poe story, where the girl's body gets shoved up the chimney.”

“Whoever it was, how the hell did they get in here? There's no sign of forced entry and every door and window is locked and alarmed.”

“Every alarm has a code, Agent Kellogg. Maybe the perpetrator was somebody connected with the security company, or somebody who visited the house recently—a cleaner, or a decorator. Can you think of anybody like that, Mrs. Blake?”

Lily whispered, “No.”

“Well, maybe you could put your mind to it. Meanwhile, is there anyplace else that you can stay tonight? We'll arrange a motel for you and your children if you need it.”

Lily said, “You don't have to worry about that. We can go to my sister's in Wayzata.”

“Okay then. We'll make sure that an officer keeps a watch on you. Until we know why this freak wanted to kill your dog and how he managed to do it, I'm going to make sure that you get around-the-clock protection.”

I wish you could protect us
, thought Lily.
But there's only one way to stop the Wendigo coming after us, and that's to give George Iron Walker what he wants.

By the time they reached Agnes and Ned's house, just after ten-thirty
P.M
., Tasha and Sammy were much calmer. Sammy's eyelids kept drooping, and so Lily carried him upstairs to the playroom and tucked him into one of the bunk beds. When she came back down again, Tasha was sitting by the fire with a mug of warm milk, with Red the cocker spaniel lying close beside her.

“Mommy,” said Tasha, “everything's going to be all right, isn't it? I mean, nothing bad is going to happen to us, is it?”

“No, sweetheart. I promise.”

She had already called Bennie three times since they had arrived here, and John Shooks twice. Neither of them had picked up. As she went into the kitchen to talk to Agnes, however, her cell warbled and it was Shooks, answering her call.

“Mrs. Blake?”

Lily went back to the hallway, where Agnes wouldn't be able to overhear her. “Mr. Shooks, do you know what's happened tonight?”

“I know that George Iron Walker isn't at all happy with you, Mrs. Blake.”

“He sent that thing to kill my dog.”

“Yes, Mrs. Blake. You can't say that I didn't warn you.”

“Well, tell George Iron Walker from me that I will never forgive him, ever, but he can have his piece of land. I have to get hold of the land title, but as soon as I do, I'll call you, and we can arrange to meet.”

John Shooks cleared his throat with a sharp rattle. “I think you're taking the most sensible course of action, Mrs. Blake. I wouldn't like to see you or your family caused any further distress.”