20

People often claim to have experienced fear when they have merely lived through a moment or two of discomfort. Bone-chilling, marrow-withering fear is truly known to only a few. As she lay on her side, her eyes barely open, in the one place above all others that should be safe, Kit joined their numbers. She could sense a presence, unseen because it was in the shadowy recess formed by the end of the hall closet, unheard because of her heart drumming in her ears. But it was there . . . in her home . . . in her bedroom.

Her instincts called for a scream. But a scream would simply fly off into the darkness, heard only by one who would not help her. By a force of will she was not aware she possessed, she suppressed the scream and evaluated her situation.

Chances are this was a simple burglary. That’s all . . . a burglary. The worst thing she could do was confront him. Better to feign sleep and let him take what he wished.

She fought to keep her breathing full and slow, but her lungs seemed shrunken and hard. Her mind began to chase her heart. What if robbery wasn’t his goal? What if he wanted . . .

Her eyes left the shadows across the room and flicked to the drawer of the nightstand. Inside, there was Mace—but if she tried to get it, he’d know she was awake.

Useless . . . the damn stuff was useless if you didn’t carry it in your hand wherever you went.

The pounding in her ears grew louder. Moving . . . he was moving toward her.

In the faint glow of the night-light, there was a glint of steel.

A knife . . . God, he has a knife. . . .

The scream she had been hoarding erupted from her throat, bringing him to her in a rush. Distantly, she heard a crash and the tinkle of broken glass.

He came like a living shadow, faintly visible. The knife went up over his head and he lunged.

She rolled away from the attack and went off the far side of the bed, knocking the nightstand over and bringing the lamp down on top of her.

Caught.

She was tangled in the sheet, which held her legs like the wrappings on a mummy. Kicking to get free, she felt the floor vibrate and was faintly aware of thudding steps. The bed surged toward her, the springs groaning.

The damn sheet—she couldn’t get free of it. She rolled a few feet farther toward the wall and this loosened the hold on her legs. The bedsprings wailed again, followed by another huge crash.

She stripped away the imprisoning sheet and struggled to her feet as a dark mass flew past the foot of the bed and slammed into the wall. There was a grunt of pain.

The shape went to the floor and Kit darted for the bed, kicking the lamp with the same toe she’d banged earlier. But this time, her surging adrenaline washed away the hurt. She hit the bed in a roll that carried her across it and onto her feet again. Nearly falling over the footstool, she scrambled to the door and darted into the hall, where she clawed at the light switch and grabbed for the phone.

Even 911 seemed like too many numbers.

Damn it—no dial tone.

She dropped the receiver and started for the front door, noticing for the first time that it stood wide open, its glass lying in shards on the floor.

“Kit.”

She was being called from the bedroom.

“Kit, help me.”

Warily, she moved toward the bedroom.

“Kit.”

That voice. . . . Moving now with more courage, she went into the bedroom and switched on the light.

There on the floor was Broussard. Straddling him was a figure dressed in black and wearing a black ski mask. The knife was inches from Broussard’s throat, the prowler pushing it forward with both hands, slowly overcoming the counterforce Broussard was applying at the prowler’s wrists.

Mace . . . now she could get the Mace—but there wasn’t time.

She bolted for the footstool. Clutching it to her bosom, she threw herself at the prowler, hitting him from the side. As he fell, he turned so she ended up on his chest, the stool between them, their faces almost touching. From the corner of her eye, she saw the serrated blade still in his hand—and his arm . . . free to move . . . free to reach her. In the frozen instant as he turned the knife in his hand, she saw that the blade was tinged with blood.

She rolled away from the knife and thumped to the floor on her back, knocking the breath out of her. The prowler threw off the footstool and it came her way, one leg headed for her face. She made a half roll toward the bed and the stool hit her on the shoulder. Expecting at any second to feel the knife passing into her, she turned onto her back and grabbed for the stool’s skirt.

The prowler sat up and lunged toward her, swinging the knife in a looping overhand motion designed to clear the obstacle between them. A heartbeat before the blade reached her, she pulled the stool toward her. The prowler’s wrist hit the lightly padded edge of the frame and the knife came free, clattering to the floor beside her.

Broussard grabbed the knife hand and twisted the prowler’s arm behind his back. By the time Kit got to her feet, Broussard had one knee in the prowler’s back and had both his arms pinned behind him.

She was safe. . . . They were both safe. She almost felt like howling.

“Something to tie his hands,” Broussard said breathlessly.

Kit’s mind windmilled. Rope . . .

Spotting her robe lying on the floor, she went to it and tore the sash free. She took the sash to Broussard and while he wrapped the prowler’s hands, she examined herself for wounds. The blood on the knife did not appear to be hers.

“His ankles, too,” Broussard muttered.

With what? Kit thought. She hurried to her closet and pawed through her clothes. She grabbed a belt and returned to the figure on the floor. Broussard was still working on his hands, so she did his ankles, wrapping the belt around them twice and fastening it as she would around her waist.

With the prowler’s hands secured, Broussard looked at what she’d accomplished, then struggled to his feet. Kit saw to her horror a huge bloodstain spreading into the fabric of Broussard’s shirt.

“You’re hurt,” she said, as though he didn’t know it.

“It’s okay . . . I’m . . .” He began to teeter and Kit rushed to him, intending to guide him to the bed. But his legs buckled and he tacked toward the wall by the door. It was like trying to hold up a falling building, and all she could do was go along with him.

He hit the wall with his back and slid to the floor. Forgetting the prowler, Kit rushed for the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and dashed back to his side.

Kneeling to get at the buttons on his shirt, she saw a gun lying against the baseboard, its barrel covered by a spray-deodorant can. Not important now. . . .

As she unbuttoned Broussard’s shirt, his eyes fluttered open. She slipped the folded towel under his T-shirt and placed it over the wound. “Can you hold it while I get help?”

Broussard’s hand came up and he pressed it against the towel. Still barefoot, Kit hurried into the hall and picked her way past the glass on the floor. She flew down the porch steps and hesitated. Mrs. Bergeron was closest, but she was so arthritic, it would take her forever to answer the door—and she was a dog poisoner.

Across the front yard, she went, her speed pressing her nightgown against her in front, blades of grass slipping between her toes. She vaulted the short boxwood hedge lining the Caruso property and landed on a large hosta, crushing it. Even though the man who owned the house usually kept his car in the garage at night, its absence from the driveway gave her cause for concern, partly because he was out of town a lot, partly because she needed him so badly.

She rang the bell and pounded on the storm door until the porch light came on. The inner door inched open and a face appeared in the crack.

“Mr. Caruso. I’m Kit, from next door. There’s a prowler in my house and I need the police and an ambulance. Please, call nine-one-one.”

The door swung inward and a man wearing pajama bottoms but no top unlocked the storm door. The hand behind him trailed a baseball bat. “Come in. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. But a friend of mine has been injured and I’ve got to get back. . . .”

He reached for her through the open door. “You shouldn’t do that. He might still be there.”

She stepped away from his grasp. “He is still there, but we’ve got him tied up. Please, just make the call.”

“All right, I’ll do it now. Don’t worry. I’ll get help.”

He disappeared into the dark house and Kit turned to go, but then she had a terrible thought. If her phone wasn’t working, maybe his wasn’t either. She opened the storm door and leaned inside. “Is the phone working?”

“Yes,” Caruso said from somewhere she couldn’t see. “I’ve got them now.”

Satisfied there was nothing more she could accomplish here, she hurried home the way she’d come.

Afraid to look, she returned to the bedroom and found Broussard with his eyes wide open. For a moment, she thought he might be—but then he blinked.

“Help is on the way,” she said. “You should lie down.”

He held up his free hand in a weak restraining gesture. “I’m okay.” His eyes went past her, to the prowler, and he said, “Why, Brookie . . . Why?”

Brookie? Kit’s brow knitted in confusion. As she turned, the prowler got up on one elbow and then to a sitting position. “Get this mask off me and I’ll tell you.”

Kit edged over, removed the mask, and quickly stepped back.

“I did it because you took Susan,” Brooks said angrily.

“I don’t understand,” Broussard said. “It was cancer. . . .”

Brooks glared at Broussard, his lips curling down at the corners, his face so full of hate, he barely looked like the same man. “Before that . . . our life together.”

“I’m not following you.”

The fury in Brooks’s face subsided. His eyes focused beyond the walls. “I would have done anything for that woman,” he said. “But from the very first, she returned only a fraction of what I offered, keeping a part of herself from me . . . unreachable. I gave everything, but she held back, even denying me children.” His voice took on a dreamy quality. “It’s not a man’s work that matters. It’s children . . . the giving of life . . . passing on the genetic flame . . . two people merging their separate identities to create a new individual whose every breath is their breath, whose very existence could never have happened without one moment of utter surrender.”

Kit found the word surrender an odd choice, almost as though Brooks would have viewed a child as a symbol of some sort of victory over his wife. She moved to the bed and sat down.

“Being Catholic and not disposed to the use of contraceptives, or at least that’s what she said, she kept me away from her except for those few days when she believed there was no chance of her getting pregnant. So there were to be no children and I was to live my life out and die with no heirs. I used to go to bookstores and look at the children’s books and imagine which ones I would buy if I had . . .”

The words caught in Brooks’s throat. He closed his eyes and rocked his head back. Face to the ceiling, he rolled his head from side to side. Abruptly, his eyes popped open and he looked at Broussard, all the anger back. “Of course I don’t expect a self-centered egotist like you to understand,” he snapped. “And at first, that made it hard for me . . . to see where you could be hurt. Then I remembered Kit and how you spoke of her when Susan and I were here last year . . . the sound of your voice, your expression. . . . And I knew that was the way.”

Broussard shook his head. “What did I have to do with Susan’s decision not to give you children?”

As fascinated as Kit was with what was happening, she yearned for the sound of an ambulance, for Broussard was shockingly pale.

“Everything,” Brooks shouted. “You had everything to do with it.” He stared at his knees. When he spoke again, it was Susan Brooks’s husband, not Broussard’s enemy. “There were to be no children and I would never possess Susan like I wished. But I still adored her and decided to take whatever she’d give, thinking that maybe she was simply incapable of more. But then—” his voice grew strident again “—when I was going through her papers after her death, I found the letters.”

“I never wrote to her,” Broussard said.

“Letters she had written to you,” Brooks snapped, “but didn’t mail. Letters saying she should never have left you and gone to New York for her residency, and that marrying me was a mistake. A divorce? Out of the question. Too hard on her devoutly Catholic, sickly mother. So she stayed with me and doled herself out a little at a time.”

Brooks’s expression turned even more malignant. “And then, on the bottom of the stack, I found the letter telling you about her abortion—the abortion she never mentioned to me. With all the restrictions she placed on me . . . a child, our child. And she found the idea so abhorrent, she ignored church doctrine and destroyed it. There’s not even a grave to visit . . . flushed away like a dirty tissue. But I don’t blame her. It was you. It’s always been you. She wanted you and that poisoned her mind against me. And for that, I decided to hurt you the way I had been hurt.”

“But the others you killed had nothing to do with me.”

Brooks’s face shifted into a satisfied smirk. “You’re very much mistaken. Everything I did here was because of you. That means every death is on your head. Three people dead because of you . . . dead. Think how their friends and families are feeling. The pain . . . But if you had never existed, they’d still be alive.” He was almost laughing now. “Oh the guilt you must feel. If you’d been smart enough, you could have stopped it after just one. That’s why I gave you all the Scrabble tiles from the start. But you were too slow. You needed more help and more time. You were too stupid.”

Kit’s mind was humming now, tearing at the logjam of facts that had accumulated since Saturday. This explained so much. Yet . . . “Suppose you had been able to pull this off,” she said. “The only way you could get satisfaction would be by explaining the whole thing to Andy. And that would mean . . .”

Brooks looked at her as if she was retarded. “Do you think my life means anything to me now . . . without Susan? It ended when she died.”

Broussard was no longer listening, but was years away . . . medical school . . . the first pathology exam.

“Name three organs that are radiosensitive,” Susan asked. She was wearing white shorts and a man’s white shirt, tied at the waist so her midriff showed. Her long, tan legs were crossed and her foot was bouncing, her heel out of her sandals. He was lying on his back, on the floor, thinking not of pathology but her clean, sharp smell and how you could see tiny blond hairs on her thighs when the sun was just right. It was no way to study, but he couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.

“The clock’s ticking,” Susan said.

“Radiosensitive organs,” he began. “Lymphoid, testes, ovary.” He glanced at her for approval, knowing he was correct.

She looked back, one tawny eyebrow arching. “Testes, ovary,” she repeated slowly, putting the book down. She got up and knelt beside his face. “I love it when you talk dirty.” She bent to kiss him, her long hair forming a tent around their faces that trapped her scent inside.

The image wavered and grew fuzzy at the edges.

“My Susan,” Brooks moaned. “My dear Susan.” He closed his eyes and began to draw quick deep breaths, his lower lip trembling. Then he toppled over, hitting the floor with a thump, sobbing as though there was no one else in the room.

Kit turned at the sound of a siren. Car doors slammed and there were heavy footsteps in the hall. She looked at Broussard and froze. His chin was on his chest and both hands were resting limply on the floor. He did not appear to be breathing.