“I’ll hit you lightly. It won’t matter.” Jake pointed at the knife block. “Take that one there, top right, it’s the sharpest.”
The kitchen swam in her vision as Alice walked and gripped the knife’s wooden handle, pulling it free from its block. She turned to Jake.
There was the loud, echoey bong of the doorbell ringing.
“Just do it,” Jake said. “There’s no time now.”
“Hit me first.”
Jake nodded, and feebly swung the sock with the quarters, glancing them off of Alice’s shoulders.
“It’s got to be harder,” she said.
He swung again, clipping her left ear. It hurt more than she thought it would. She blinked rapidly.
The doorbell rang a second time.
She punched the knife into his chest, where she thought his heart was, but the knife only went about an inch in, and Jake staggered backward a step, dropping the cosh on the floor. She looked into his eyes, trying to remember the man who had once lifted her into his arms and carried her like a bride into this very home. Now all she saw in his eyes was confusion, and a little bit of panic. He lifted a hand up, his fingers spread, and Alice took hold of his wrist, pressed his hand up against the side of her face, bringing him in closer to her. His fingers gripped her neck, his nails ripping at her skin. They were both breathing heavily, Jake’s lips apart but his stained teeth clenched together. He squeezed harder at Alice’s neck, and she felt a trickle of blood run down into her collarbone. She stabbed him again harder, and this time, when she pulled the knife out, blood began to soak his shirt. He dropped to his knees and then to the ground. Jake put his hand on his chest, and the blood pumped out between his fingers, pooling in the folds of his shirt.
The doorbell rang again. Alice watched Jake, just to make sure he’d stopped breathing. She dropped the knife to the floor, where it skittered away, leaving a trail of blood. She touched her fingers to her neck, puffy where the welts were already rising up.
He nearly killed me, she thought. Then: I had to do it. I had to do it, the words running through her head as she moved, trancelike, to the front door.
Chapter 32
Now
Alice’s car was outside in the parking lot, so Harry knew she was in the condo. He pressed the doorbell, telling himself that if no one answered maybe he should just inform the police of what he thought he’d seen. Still, it would be better if he could get one more look at John, just so he could know for sure if he was the one he’d seen in front of the motel. And with Alice here, he had an excuse—he was concerned, looking for his stepmother.
He rang the bell again, hoping he had the correct door; he’d picked the unit closest to where Alice’s car was parked. An exterior stairway led up to the entryway, above a garage. It was low tide, and the air was filled with the smell of rot. Harry pulled his phone out just as the door swung inward.
“Harry,” Alice said. Her neck was smeared with blood. “Harry,” she said again. “Call the police.”
He stared at the phone in his hand. How had it gotten there? Then he dialed 911 for the second time in a week. He gave the dispatcher the address, but wasn’t able to tell her what had happened. She kept insisting he find out, but he hung up, and stepped into the dim condo. Alice had retreated, and was now sitting on a white leather sofa, holding her hands out to either side. She looked like she was meditating.
“Where’s John?” Harry asked.
“He’s in the kitchen, Harry.”
Harry took another tentative step into the living room. His eyes began to adjust; to his left was a lit alcove kitchen. Harry took another step and looked toward it. He could see the upturned feet of a body lying on the linoleum.
“What happened?”
“He was crazy, Harry. He asked me to come here, and I came, and he wasn’t making any sense. He kept telling me how he had to kill all the people who were threatening him, and then he tried to . . . I had to protect myself. Is he dead, do you think?”
Harry forced himself to take two more steps toward the alcove. Recessed fluorescents in the ceiling lit the scene. John was on his back, one hand sprawled in the spreading pool of blood, the other resting gently on his chest. The smell of the blood—like tidal mud—reached Harry’s nostrils, and he took three quick steps back out the condo’s door and vomited over the railing. In the distance he heard the sound of sirens.
“Is he dead, Harry?” Alice’s voice was closer, and Harry’s body jerked, involuntarily, the way it sometimes did when he was falling asleep and thought he was actually falling.
He turned back, wiping at his mouth. Alice was in the doorway, her hands still held out from her body, her palms up.
“He looks dead.”
“He killed Bill, you know. He killed your father. He just told me.”
“Why did he do it?” Harry asked.
“He didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it was about me. He was protecting me, I think, and that’s why he killed the two girls as well.”
“What two girls?”
“He said their names. Grace, the girl who was murdered, and then he mentioned another girl. Her sister.”
“Caitlin’s her sister. Where is she? What did he say?”
“I can’t—”
“What did he say about Caitlin?”
“Don’t yell at me, Harry. He said she was in the trunk of his car.”
The sirens were louder.
“Where’s his car?” Harry asked.
“Harry, let the police—”
“Where is it?”
“Downstairs, I think, in the garage. Harry, don’t leave me.”
But he was going down the steps. He reached the garage, and pulled up the unlocked door just as the first police cruiser slanted into the parking lot and came to a halt. John’s red Audi, nose in, was parked in the dark garage. It looked far too ordinary to contain a body, to contain Caitlin’s body. It wasn’t possible, Harry thought.
“Did you call 911?” an officer was asking him.
Harry turned. “There’s a body up the stairs from here. In the kitchen. He’s dead.”
Another uniformed officer was already making her way up the wooden steps.
“Is this your car?” The officer again. He was young, with sleepy-looking slanted eyes.
“It’s . . . it’s not. I think there might be someone in the trunk.” Then Harry turned and said, in a slightly louder tone than his usual talking voice, “Caitlin? You in there?”
If I don’t open it, he thought, then it’s not happening.
“Sir,” the officer said, but didn’t add anything. His radio squawked, then Harry heard a few muffled words, the policewoman asking him to come upstairs.
“Stay right here, sir, okay? I’ll be right back.” The policeman looked frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do.
Harry nodded and said, “I won’t leave.”
The policeman made a decision and moved toward the stairs. There was another siren in the distance.
Harry pulled the driver’s side door, and it swung open. He fumbled along the floor near the bucket seat, finding a lever and pulling it. The trunk made a popping sound, but the lid stayed down. There was no other sound as Harry went back to the rear of the car, grasped the lid in his hand, and lifted it, praying silently to himself.
The body was on its side, in the fetal position, facing in. The sharp smell of urine stung at Harry’s nose, and he was hit by a wave of dizziness, dark nothingness pinching at his vision. Then he thought he saw the body twitch, shoulders contracting in as though she was cold.
“Caitlin,” he said, and shook her shoulder, rolling her onto her back. The bottom half of her face was coated in dried blood.
She stared up at him with what looked like lifeless eyes, and then she blinked.
Chapter 33
Now
They’d driven through the night, and the sun was now coming up behind them as they glided through flat Canadian farmlands in Paul Roman’s Prius. The sky, streaked in pink and orange, was like an enormous bowl. They’d crossed into Canada at Buffalo, skirting north of Lake Erie, the fastest route to get to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“You okay to keep driving?” Harry asked Paul, who was lighting up another cigarette.
“You’re awake?”