Harry Salinger trails a finger over his rib cage, following the dark line of the bruise that marks his meeting with Detective Alice Madison on Friday night. He stands bare-chested, mesmerized by the red and purple, in front of a full-size mirror in his bedroom, a Spartan room almost devoid of color.
There it is, the point of contact—he can almost feel her anger radiating out from it. It is fierce, which makes sense to him, because the letter f is purple, just like his bruise. The thing is, he is counting on her anger, and, as he presses lightly on a rib, he flinches at the sharpness of the pain. A little of her spirit has passed into him during the fight; he can feel their connection, and he welcomes it. In her house in Three Oaks, she might be looking at the marks he has left on her, too. She would see them clearly, yet she would miss their meaning.
Harry stretches his arms out to his sides, and the light catches the long, thin scars etched all over his chest and back. Prison scars—dozens of jagged lines made with whatever was at hand as someone held him down. The scars remind him of where he came from and where he’s going like his own personal map of hell. He remembers each cut and who gave it to him. His sallow skin will not let him forget even one day of those forty-eight months.
Salinger puts on a clean white shirt and returns to the basement. On the wall, he has taped enlargements of the photographs he gave to Fred Tully at the Star. They had gotten the ball rolling on Cameron in the media, yet more than that, he thought they were really good shots, and he was quite proud of them. Especially the black-and-white film, where James Sinclair was still alive and struggling. They might not win any prizes, but he enjoyed looking at them. On the worktop, he has placed the .22 that he used to shoot Anne Sinclair, her children, and Detective Kevin Brown. An Anglepoise lamp is pointed at it, and the metal sings in the light. Salinger has spent a long time polishing it today, delighted by the memories of the muzzle flashes.
He shifts his chair so that he can see the object in the corner of the basement. It has traveled out of his mind and into the sketches on the wall, and now, unbelievable as it is, it sits there. The glass shards on the metal bars catch the light, but it is the steel knife blades that give the cage its very reason for being. Salinger is grateful: he’d expected it to fulfill his purpose, but never in a million years would he have imagined it would be so beautiful.
He turns on one of the monitors and presses the Play button on the remote: out of the evening darkness Alice Madison’s windows are bright, the front door opens, and the zoom kicks in, framing three people in the doorway. Madison’s cut above the eye and the splint on her arm are clearly visible, and unconsciously Salinger rubs the side where she hit him. Madison says good-bye to the woman and hugs the child tightly. He pauses the video. Madison is hugging the boy: it tells Salinger all he needs to know.