IN THE DARK, page 27
So were all the windows.
Well, Jane thought, obviously there isn’t a party going on.
That was a relief. She wouldn’t have to hike back down for her gown. Nobody would have to see her in it. She wouldn’t need to talk her way in to the party, or mingle with strangers or try to fend off the advances of pushy, obnoxious men.
Odd, though, that all the lights were off.
Mog hasn’t sent me to another abandoned house, has he?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Instead of walking straight up the driveway, in plain sight of anyone who might be watching from one of the dark front windows, Jane stayed among the trees and bushes beyond the edge of the lawn and made her way around to the side.
Only a few yards of open space separated her from the wall of the garage.
She dashed across it.
Cupping her hands against the garage window, she peered in. Blackness. So she took the risk of turning on her flashlight. Its beam hit the dirty glass, went through, and formed a bright disk no larger than the lid of a small mustard jar.
Jane scowled.
After a few moments of studying the odd phenomenon, she realized that her light was being blocked, just inside the window, by thick, black fabric.
The fabric covered the entire window.
This is a wonderful sign, she thought. Someone wants to make sure nobody can see in.
Or maybe it’s just to keep out the sunlight.
Terrific. A vampire lives in the garage.
Jane laughed quietly, nervously.
Screw vampires, I wanta know if there’s a car in there.
Break the window?
That’d be a great move, particularly if somebody’s in the house (or garage) and hears it.
Besides, she told herself, cars or no cars in the garage, you couldn’t be completely sure whether someone’s in the house.
Giving up on the window, Jane slipped along the side of the garage and gazed around its corner. The rear grounds were dark, just as she’d expected. She took a few strides until she could see the back of the house.
Dark, everything dark.
She was tempted to explore the area back here: it looked lush and extravagant. Trees, benches, walkways, statues, a gazebo off in the distance. She wouldn’t be surprised to find brooks and waterfalls, and maybe even a fabulous swimming pool.
If everything turns out okay, she told herself, I’ll take a look later. Right now, I’d better concentrate on getting into the house and laying my hands on the envelope.
Wherever the hell it might be.
She hurried to the front of the house, climbed over the railing at the end of the veranda, and crept as quietly as she could toward the front door. The huge window beside her looked black. She ached to shine her light on it, but didn’t dare take the risk.
No sounds came from the house.
She tried to make no sounds herself as she crossed the veranda, but its old floorboards sometime squawked under her weight, and once she walked into something that bumped her belly an instant before she struck it with her knee. She stifled her gasp, but the thing—whatever it was—scooted loudly and thudded.
Moments later, she found it with her hand.
A chair. She felt its wicker back under her fingers.
After that, she walked more carefully and encountered no more furniture.
Turning, she faced the front door.
She took a few deep breaths. She lifted the front of her shirt and mopped the sweat off her face. Then she opened the screen door and tried the handle.
The solid oak door was locked.
She had pretty much expected that.
Now what? she wondered.
Without pausing to think, she jabbed her fingertip into the doorbell button. She listened for the sound of ringing from inside the house, but heard nothing.
Great, she thought. How am I supposed to know if the damn thing works?
She waited. She listened hard, but heard no one approaching.
So she poked the button a few more times.
Nothing.
A, she thought, nobody’s home. B, the bell doesn’t work. C, whoever’s in the house is asleep, or doesn’t hear the bell for some other reason. Or D, somebody is hearing it just fine, but choosing not to come to the door.
“Swell,” she whispered.
Let’s at least eliminate B as a factor.
She knocked hard on the door, pounded it until her knuckles hurt. And waited some more.
Okay, she thought as she backed away from the door. Now what?
Two choices: either break in, or go home.
Midway between the front door and other end of the veranda, she found a window that looked just right for smashing; double-hung with a screen on the lower half, and low enough to climb through.
She stared at it.
Her stomach hurt.
I shouldn’t do this, she thought. I should just go home. If I do this, I’m nothing better than a criminal.
It’s my fifty-one thousand dollars inside!
It will be mine, she corrected herself, if I have the guts to go in and find it.
But this isn’t an abandoned old ruin by the edge of a graveyard—this is a house where people actually live. They might be away right now, but this is still their property, their home.
If I go in, I’m a house-breaker. An intruder. They’d even have a right to shoot me.
Nobody’s going to shoot me. Nobody’s home.
What if there’s an alarm, or something? What if the cops show up? They might shoot me. Or at the very least, I could end up in jail.
If they catch me.
She shut her eyes and muttered, “My God, Mog, what are you trying to do to me?”
Then she bashed a hole in the upper window with the butt of her flashlight. The clamor of bursting glass made her cringe and clench her teeth. After the glass stopped falling, she waited—ready to run.
Nothing happened.
She reached through the hole and unlocked the window. With her switchblade, she cut the screen out of its frame. Then she slid the window up.
She stared into blackness.
Let’s just see what the hell…
She switched her flashlight on.
And its beam was abruptly stopped by a heavy black shroud.
Oh, boy.
Jane killed her light. She was holding her knife in her right hand. With that hand, she reached forward. She pushed her knuckles gently against the fabric. It had the scratchy feel of a thick, wool blanket. It had very little give. Instead of hanging like a curtain, it seemed to be drawn taut across the window.
Somebody likes a lot of privacy. Or darkness. Or something.
Definitely queer.
Jane pierced the fabric with the tip of her knife. She slipped the blade in a bit farther, then drew it downward, carving a four-inch slit. A faint thread of light came through the cut.
Jane switched her flashlight off. She stuffed it into the left front pocket of her jeans to free her hand, then spread the slit apart and peered in.
The room looked like it might be a den or a study, but she couldn’t see it very well. The only light came through its doorway from a hall.
She ripped the gap wide and stuck her head in and looked all around. Nobody. She listened. No voices, no music, no sound whatsoever to suggest that anyone might be home.
Great, she thought. Now what?
Shit or get off the commode, that’s what.
But I don’t wanta break into someone’s house! It’s illegal! It’s wrong! It’s in a whole different ballpark than the other stuff. If I do this, I’m really really crossing the line.
But it’s my money I need to go in and get. I won’t be stealing anything of theirs.
And hell, I’ve already busted the window. The job’s half done: I’ve done the breaking, now all that’s left is the entering.
When I find the money from Mog, I’ll leave them a couple of hundred to pay for the damage.
She liked that idea. Pay for the damage. Maybe even leave them a decent chunk. If she left them quite a lot, they might even be glad she broke in.
How about giving them a thousand bucks?
Before she could do that, however, she would need to locate Mog’s envelope.
Feeling somewhat less like a criminal than before, Jane split the fabric all the way down to the window sill and climbed into the room.
Then she stood motionless, barely breathing. It was strange to be in someone else’s house without permission. It made her feel powerful, but very exposed and vulnerable.
It would be great, she thought, if you could do this sort of thing without any fear of being caught.
She wondered if that’s how it was for Mog. He seemed to be capable, somehow, of coming and going wherever he pleased, never showing himself…
Quit dinking around, she thought. Nobody’s home. But they might come tooling up the driveway any second, so you’d better get on with it and get the hell outa here.
She hurried to a lamp and turned it on.
Should’ve brought gloves, she thought.
Never figured I’d have to worry about leaving fingerprints. Jeez!
Just watch what you touch.
Quickly, she scanned the room: bookshelves, lamps, a desk, a couple of small tables, an easy chair, a familiar painting on one wall—a print of the Goya that has a giant about to bite off someone’s head.
So-vile living up to his name.
But she was looking for her envelope, not for clues to the character traits of S. Savile.
And she saw no envelope here.
This could take forever, she thought.
Holding the knife in her teeth, she slipped Mog’s note out of her shirt pocket and unfolded it. She read it slowly, wondering if she might’ve missed a clue during the previous readings.
My beauty,
Tomorrow night, 901 Mayr Heights for a gala time.
In the meantime, don’t feel lonely. You have me. I shall come to you tonight.
No need to wait up.
Love to my lovely,
hot wet wench,
Mog
Only the first part seemed at all relevant to tonight. “Tomorrow night, 901 Mayr Heights” was there to tell her when and where. Could there be a clue in “My beauty”?
It brought to mind Beauty and the Beast. Maybe Mog hinting that he’s a beast. But what could that have to do with the location on the envelope?
Maybe a lot, she decided. Keep it in mind.
“My beauty” also made Jane think of Sleeping Beauty.
Interesting. A couple of fairy tales. Are they both from the Brothers Grimm? she wondered. She wasn’t sure. But she did know that many different versions of the old tales had been published, and that Disney had made animated feature movies of both stories.
Maybe the envelope’s inside a book of fairy tales. Or in a Disney book. Maybe it’s hidden in a Walt Disney section of Savile’s home video collection, if he’s got such a thing.
Keep an eye out, she told herself.
Now, what about “a gala time?” Maybe the guy has a Poe book. Hey, maybe this big old house has a ballroom or a dance floor.
Anything else in the note?
Nothing that seemed to pertain to tonight.
She returned the note to her shirt pocket, took the knife from her mouth and hurried over to the bookshelves. As fast as possible, she scanned the titles.
No book of fairy tales. Nothing about Disney. None by Poe, or any that appeared likely to contain poetry. Most of the books were nonfiction works and they seemed to cover only two subjects: police procedures and true crime.
“A real good sign,” Jane muttered. “Splendid.”
She turned off the lamp. At the doorway, she leaned out and glanced up and down the hall. Nobody there. She stepped forward. To her left were a few doorways. But she could see the foyer and the foot of a stairway to her right, so that’s the direction she chose.
Where would Mog put that envelope?
He wants me to find it, so he probably hid it somewhere fairly obvious. But he wants to make me work for it.
Upstairs.
Upstairs in a bedroom. That’s where he made me go in the creephouse. And it’d tie in with Sleeping Beauty. And that’s where he’d like to put me, up where I’ll have a hard time escaping in case S. Savile comes home.
Hell, maybe he’s got a coffin waiting for me.
The foyer was lighted by a rustic chandelier made from a wagon wheel. The candle-shaped bulbs gave off a weak, yellow glow so murky that Jane felt as if she were viewing the front door through a pool of cider. For a moment, she couldn’t find the windows. She knew they should be there: long, narrow windows on both sides of the door. She’d seen them from outside, but…
Oh.
Masking the windows, on this side, were black rectangles framed like works of art and nailed in place.
Somebody went to a lot of trouble, Jane thought. This is looking worse and worse.
But she noticed a good sign—the guard chain for the front door hung from its mount. Normally, if people were home at night, they would secure that sort of chain.
They probably aren’t home, she told herself.
Maybe S. Savile took his wife to the movies. If there is a Mrs. Savile. Which Jane was beginning to doubt. Like Clay’s place last night, S. Savile’s home showed no signs (so far) of a female influence.
So maybe he went out for a night on the town by himself. Or with a significant other of the male persuasion.
Maybe he went on a business trip. That’s something to hope for. Gone, not due back for days.
Unless he’s back already, just now steering his way up the driveway.
Jane opened the door, mostly to see if she could.
It opened easily.
She looked out toward the area where the driveway slanted down out of sight.
I oughta get out of here right now, she thought. Any second, there might be headlights and it’ll be too late.
Sure, boogie right outa here and kiss fifty-one thousand bucks goodbye. What I’d better do, instead, is find out where the back door is. That way, if I need to make a quick exit…
What I’d better do is go upstairs and find the envelope and haul my butt outa here!
She shut the door, turned around and gazed up the stairway. There were no lights on at the top. She grimaced.
Maybe I’d better look around down here for a…
Just do it. Get it done!
She slipped her right hand into the front pocket of her jeans and wrapped it around the grips of her pistol. She started to pull the weapon out.
And just who am I planning to shoot, the owners of the house?
Terrific.
She left the gun inside her pocket. As she began to climb the stairs, she thought about putting her knife away, too. She shouldn’t have a knife in her hand if the man of the house suddenly appears at the top of the stairs.
But she couldn’t bear the thought of having no weapon ready.
Reaching behind her with both hands, she lifted the tail of her shirt and slid the blade down between her belt and the back of her jeans.
By the time she’d finished doing that, she was almost to the top of the stairs. She thought about taking out her flashlight.
No, better to sneak through the darkness.
She was one stair from the top when a woman screamed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A quiet, muffled scream that came from somewhere nearby and felt to Jane like an icicle stabbing her low and deep.
Oh, Jesus! Oh-my-God-oh-Jesus, what was THAT?
When the scream ended, Jane unfroze and climbed the final stair and hurried to the right. She knew she was making too much noise. Someone was in the house, after all—a woman in enough trouble or pain to make her scream like that—and Jane wanted to be silent but she needed to hurry and her shoes thumped on the carpet of the upstairs hall—Christ, I sound like a stampede!—and she threw open the first door that she found.
The skinny young woman sitting in the middle of the bed looked up and grinned. Her lips and chin were bloody. A finger pointed at Jane from between her teeth. On the plate on her lap was the rest of the hand.
A right hand.
Her right wrist was a bandaged stump.
So was her right thigh.
She wore a sleeveless T-shirt. It had an arrow pointing to the left and read, “I’M WITH STUPID.” It was spattered with dried brown blood and wet red blood. She didn’t have on any pants. The plate with the severed hand covered her groin.
Jane could only stare at her, shocked.
With her remaining hand, the woman took the finger from between her teeth and nibbled skin off its side.
Jane gagged and looked away.
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m Linda. Who are you?”
She sounded cheery.
“Jane.”
“Haven’t seen you around here before.” She dropped the finger onto her plate. It made a bad sound landing. “Show me your arm?”
“What for?”
“Just because.”
Jane unbuttoned the cuff and slid the right sleeve of her chamois shirt up her forearm. When her fingers touched her arm, they felt like ice.
“Mmmm,” Linda said. “You’ve got meat on you.”
Jane took a step backward, swallowed hard, and said, “What’s going on here?”
Linda grinned. Her front teeth were bloody. “I’m eating myself, what does it look like?”
“Why?”
She shrugged and smirked. “They let me.”
“They let you?”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me eat nothing, you know? Just kept me here and fucked around with me and wouldn’t give me nothing to eat. I got hungry. I got real hungry. I begged and begged for something to eat. So finally, Steve goes, ‘Okay, I’ll get you some food. And what’ll you have?’ he asks me. So then I go, ‘Anything, anything.’ So then he cuts off my right foot and lets me eat that. Not much to a foot, but it was better than nothing.”
Jane took a deep breath. It didn’t feel deep enough. Her heart seemed to be pounding too hard to let her breathe properly.
“I only just wish I hadn’t of gone on my diet last year. You wanta stay away from diets, Janey. I dropped thirty pounds and wasn’t I proud of myself! Biggest mistake I ever made. Shoot, I was only just skin ‘n’ bones when I got here, and things’ve gone downhill ever since. You’re lucky you’ve got some meat on you. Take off your shirt for me, will you?”
