LEAVING CASTLE TO face his imminent guests alone, I took 93 north to 495 south, keeping the needle at seventy, but not thinking about numbers, thinking that I ought to have called St. Onge right back and had him send a car ahead, that I should have worried more about the fingerprints I’d probably left. But that was just mind-noise now. I didn’t know if the killer had seen the clipping or not, but I had to figure that Lauren was the special friend and maybe everyone else knew too.
I hooked onto the Connector and got off at Industrial Avenue. The Wang towers were lit up in the twilight, but traffic was sparse. I was easy pickings for a speed trap, which would mean delay and a fine and a penalty on my record for the next three years—which was about a year longer than you’d pull for homicide these days—but I risked it. In the last stretch I got behind an old party who was moving almost as slow as a cabbie with a fare. I honked and got by him and soon made my turn on squealing tires.
The neighborhood was quiet. The ex-neighbor’s lawn gave off a sweet, fresh-cut smell. The other ex-neighbor would be reading the kids Dr. Seuss stories now. Lauren’s Honda was in the driveway, and as I started up the walk I had all I could do to keep from sprinting. The mail was still in the box, no lights on inside, no welcoming sounds of TV, or ice in the martini pitcher.
Beyond the aluminum screen the inside door was ajar. I thought of the .38 I kept locked in the bottom drawer of my office file cabinet, as useful now as a ceramic watchdog. I eased the door open but did not go in yet.
“Lauren,” I called and felt “I’m home” rise in my mind like a ghost. But I was not home. Not anymore.
No reply.
My right hand moved by rote to the light switches, one each for outside, the hallway, living room, coat closet. I hit the middle two and went in fast.
The living room looked like the aftermath of rowdy houseguests.
Adrenaline is the most potent upper there is: zero to sixty in no time. I did not brake to look at anything in particular, just moved through the dining room, scanning. More drawers and the china closet stood open. My heart was thudding as I approached the kitchen. I reached for the wall switch and something whacked the side of my head like the end of a two-by-four.
Fireworks. The blow staggered me. I tried to brace on the kitchen table, but it was not there.
I hit the floor on rubber knees, struggling to stay conscious. From the fogs of Queer Street I made out the smallish man-form as it started past. I grabbed a leg. I was vaguely aware of an Asian face in watery soft focus. The leg I was holding braced, then the other foot swung up fast and kicked at my head. I hunched away, taking the blow on the shoulder, falling backwards with the impact. The attacker bolted for the back door. When I finally got onto the porch and gazed into the thickening dark, nothing was shaking but me.
In the house I put on lights, all of them. Then, dreading it, I went up the stairs to the bedrooms, afraid of what I would find.
The master bedroom had been ransacked, bureau and vanity drawers out, jewelry box upended in a pirates’ booty of costume trinkets on the bed. Lampshades sat askew, like the shadows they cast. Lauren was not in any of the rooms. I used the hall phone and called the Lowell police for the second time in an hour.
In the downstairs bathroom I turned on the sink taps, letting the sound of running water soothe me. I washed my face, which was starting to bruise over my right cheek. When I shut off the taps, I heard something else. You learn the sounds a house makes: the appliances, a loose sash, where the floor squeaks when someone steps on it. The unfamiliar ones alert you.
Hurriedly I looked around for a weapon. They are everywhere when you need them. I removed a potted plant from the vitreous china top of the tank behind the toilet. Gripping the heavy lid with both hands, I eased it off and slipped into the hallway. Someone else was in the house, carefully moving my way. I raised the lid, set to break a skull. Lauren stepped through the doorway.
She yelped and I hissed my breath out. I lowered the lid. “You’re safe,” I said.
“I better be. What are you doing here?” She was in her exercise clothes, her face flushed from walking.
“Someone got in.”
“It looks like you did! I want to know why.”
“In the living room—sit down a minute.”
“This place is a wreck! What are you after? What’s going on?”
I had long ago learned that with bad news there is no good time, nor any useful indirection; the best you could do was the straight truth. “Lauren,” I said, as gently as I knew how, “Joel Castle is dead.”
That did it. She backed into the front room and dropped onto the couch, her face drained to a pallor. I told her.