Fourteen
Upon finding the bloody handprint on the wall near the head of the cellar stairs, Henry Rouvroy considered firing the shotgun down into the darkness. Restraint was not a quality of character natural to him, yet he managed to resist the urge to squeeze the trigger.
When he flicked the switch and light bloomed, he found no one waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He let out his pent-up breath.
Listening to the room below, he became convinced that someone down there likewise listened to him.
He almost whispered a name. But he kept his silence for fear of receiving an answer in a familiar voice.
Anyone in the cellar could leave by the outer door, which opened onto exterior stairs that led up to the lawn. Henry couldn’t imprison the intruder, but he could prevent him from returning to the ground floor by this route.
After switching off the cellar light, he closed the door and slid the bolt into the latch plate. He doubted it would hold against a determined assault. He fetched a chair from the nearby dinette, tipped it on its back legs, and wedged the headrail under the doorknob.
He continued his sweep of the house, making sure no one was concealed anywhere, checking that windows were securely latched. He felt exposed at every pane of glass while he closed the draperies.
In the bedroom, on the bed, he had left the pistol with which he had killed Jim and Nora. During his absence, someone had taken it. The shoulder holster and the spare magazine were also gone.
A small smear of blood brightened the beige chenille bedspread.
Two spaces remained to be searched: the closet and the bathroom. Both doors were in the same wall, and they were closed.
Taking a wide stance to brace himself against the recoil, Henry leveled the pistol-grip shotgun at the closet, fired, fired again. In this closed space, the sound slammed off the walls with a blowback that he could almost feel. He fired two rounds at the bathroom.
The buckshot punched holes through both of the cheap hollow-core doors, with enough velocity remaining to tear up whoever might be waiting beyond. The absence of a scream suggested that he’d wasted ammunition.
He pumped the last round into the breech, dug spare shells out of his pockets, and reloaded the magazine.
His hands trembled, stomach acid scalded the back of his throat, and his bowels felt loose. But he neither vomited nor soiled his pants.
In such a pressurized situation, with everything at risk, not losing control of bodily functions seemed to be a triumph. Henry gained confidence from the fact that his underwear remained dry.
Killing unsuspecting people was far easier than defending your life against an armed enemy.
That was a truth they didn’t teach you at Harvard. At least not in any of the classes that Henry had taken.
The anticipation of violence before a murder was pleasurable, but the expectation of being shot in the head wasn’t in the least exhilarating, no matter what psychology professors said about death having a subconscious appeal similar to that of sex. A good-looking woman chained in a potato cellar had infinitely more appeal than stalking—and being stalked by—someone who perhaps wanted to blow your brains out.
He opened the riddled door to the closet and found no one alive or dead. In the bathroom, buckshot had shattered the mirror.
Having secured the residence, he felt safer but far from safe. The house was not a fortress. Anyway, sooner or later, he would have to go outside.