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“Listen to me, Pete, okay? This is probably nothing and I’m probably going to call you back in five minutes, but if I don’t, call Isabelle Jaynes and tell her to send police to 93 Ridge Road. Tell her to come, too. Have you got that?”
“Why? What happened? Is this about Holly?”
“Tell me the address. Repeat it.”
“93 Ridge Road. But don’t do anything stu—”
“Five minutes. If I don’t call back, call Ms. Jaynes and send five-O.”
She slips her phone back into her left front pocket and takes the gun out of her right pocket. Is it loaded? She never checked, but she remembers Pete telling her that an unloaded gun isn’t very useful if you wake up and find a prowler in your house. It feels heavy enough to be loaded.
She goes up the porch steps, puts the gun behind her back, and rings the bell. With the door ajar she hears its double tone quite clearly, but no one comes. She rings again. “Hello? Anyone home? Professor Harris? Emily?”
She hears something, very faint. It could be a voice; it could be someone’s radio playing loud through an open window on the next block. Barbara knocks, and her fist pushes the door wider. She’s looking down the wood-paneled front hall. Gloomy. Did she think that on her previous visit? She can’t remember. What she does remember is that it smelled stuffy, somehow. And the tea was awful.
“Hello, is anyone home?”
Yes, she hears a voice, all right. Very faint. No way to tell what it’s saying, or possibly shouting. Barbara hesitates on the porch, thinking Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
She peeks behind the door. Sees no one hiding there. Biting her lip, sweat trickling down the back of her neck, the little automatic now held stiffly at her side but with her finger outside the trigger guard as Pete instructed her, Barbara ventures down the hall to the living room.
“Hello? Hello?”
Now she hears the voice better. It’s still muffled, and hoarse, but she thinks it’s Holly. She could be wrong about that, but there’s no doubt about what it’s saying: “Help! Help me!”
Barbara runs into the kitchen and sees a door on the far side of the refrigerator standing open. There’s a padlock hanging from the hasp. She sees steps leading down to a basement and something at the bottom. She tells herself it can’t be what it looks like, already knowing it is.
“Holly? Holly!”
“Down here!” Her voice is a broken croak. “Down here!”
Barbara goes halfway down the stairs and stops. It’s a body, all right. The male Professor Harris is sprawled on the floor in a puddle of drying blood. His wife is slumped at the foot of some sort of cage. In it, standing at the crisscrossed bars with a bloody shirt wrapped around her arm, is Holly Gibney. Her hair is plastered to her cheeks. There are smears of blood on her face. Because she’s taken off her shirt to use as a bandage, Barbara can see a bruise, grotesquely large, spreading up her side like ink.
When Holly recognizes who it is, she begins to cry. “Barbara,” she manages in her cracked voice. “Barbara, oh thank God. I can’t believe it’s you.”
Barbara looks around. “Where is he, Holly? Where’s the guy who killed them? Is he still in the house?”
“There’s no guy,” Holly croaks. “No Red Bank Predator. I killed them. Barbara, get me some water. Please. I’m—” She puts her hands to her throat and makes a horrible grating sound. “Please.”
“All right. Yes.” Her phone is trilling and trilling. That will be Pete. Or maybe Isabelle Jaynes. “As long as you’re sure no one is going to jump me.”
“No,” Holly says. “It was all them.” And shocks Barbara by dry-spitting on Emily Harris’s slumped corpse.
Barbara turns to go back upstairs and get water. That’s the priority; she doesn’t need to take any calls just now because Pete will send the police and the police need to come, oh God they need to come as fast as possible.
“Barbara!” It’s a shriek with splinters in it. Holly sounds like she’s either lost her mind or is on the verge. “Get it from the sink! Don’t look in the refrigerator! DON’T LOOK IN THE REFRIGERATOR!”
Barbara runs up the stairs and into the kitchen. She has no idea what’s happened here. Her mind is frozen on just one thought: water. There are cabinets on either side of the sink. Barbara puts her gun on the counter and opens one. Plates. She opens another and sees glasses. She fills one, starts back to the basement door, then changes her mind and fills another. Carrying a glass in each hand, she goes back down the stairs. There’s a corona of blood around Professor Harris and she sidles past it.
She stops in front of Emily’s body and stretches to pass one of the glasses through the bars. Holly seizes it, spilling some, and chugs the rest down in big gulps. She tosses it behind her onto the futon and holds out her hand through one of the squares. “More.” Her voice is clearer now.
Barbara gives her the other glass. Holly drinks half of it. “Good,” she says. “So fracking good.”
“I told Pete to send police if I didn’t call him back. And the lady detective. How do I let you out, Holly?”
Holly points to the keypad but shakes her head. “I don’t know the numbers. Barbara…” She stops and swipes at her face. “How did you… never mind, that’s for later. Go upstairs. Meet them.”
“All right. I’ll call Pete again and tell him—”
