Laughing Man (23 page)

So she did.

W
illiamson had a longing. He'd had many longings in his life. Some of them were closer to obsessions than mere longings. But this was simply a longing, he thought. Simply a need. Simply a simple need. Simply the simple need of a simple man who wanted to live simply on the green earth, among the green trees, to be as one with the brown soil and the gray rocks and the other creatures that shared his need. The hedgehog. The cormorant. The Canada goose. The black snake, the burying beetle, the barking tree frog, oh, yes, and all the flora and fauna of the earth.

But such a simple need could not be met here, where breakfast was composed of bologna on white and half a pint of milk, where the air was as stale as the breath of a dead man, and the closest approximation to gray rock was the iron cell that held him, trapped him, made him immobile, and discomforted, made him as one only with the sadness and panic and agony of the others trapped with him—like one of a thousand flies caught in a massive web.

It was an insult to life, this place. And for what? Because he was a vegetarian! Because he ate the flesh of others only when his longing prescribed, only when his longing became greater than his ability to ignore it, only when his longing told him more about himself than he had ever wanted to know.

P
atricia read from a list of names and occupations:

"Tabitha Reed, stockbroker; Jonathan H. Lewenthal, jewelry store owner; Manny Incitus, real estate agent; Vicky Morgan, model; Renee O'Byrne, playwright . . ."

Erthmun held his hand up and she stopped reading. He said, "You're giving me a pain in the head."

She grinned, sipped her coffee, longed to tell him that it was probably the worst coffee that had ever passed her lips, said instead, "Oh? Why?"

He said, "These names mean very little. You say they're gone, poof, vanished. No one knows where. But who were these people? That's the important thing."

Patricia said, "Well, they were who they were, Jack. They were playwrights, models, real estate agents. That's who they were."

He shook his head, sipped his own coffee, said, "No one makes coffee like this, do they?"

She grinned.

He went on. "No, no. That's what these people
did.
They modeled and they sold properties and they managed people's portfolios. But that is not who they
were.
Do you
know
who they were, Patricia?"

"I think you're being argumentative, Jack."

"No, I don't do that. You do that. I've heard you. It's a thing you do. It's a thing that many do. I don't. I say what I believe. This is what I believe. I believe that these people were not what they did, they were who they were. We all are, I believe. I know that I am."

She sighed. "Jack, do you want to know the circumstances of these people's disappearances?"

He shook his head. "You said that there were no circumstances, Patricia. You said that they simply weren't there after being there in the previous moment."

"Well, no, I didn't say that, precisely."

"But it was your meaning? It was what you intended?"

"Not exactly. They didn't simply vanish into thin air. They're gone, true, and no one knows where the hell they are, so in that sense, I guess they did vanish. But it's not as if they were standing there and then they . . . vanished!"

"Oh, of course, Patricia. I may sit around naked eating poppy seed muffins with my door open, but you must know by now that I'm not stupid. I intuit that you're telling me these people didn't leave any notes saying where they were going, and that they didn't tell anyone, either, where they were going. That's what I intuit."

"Intuit?" she said. "I've never heard you use that word before, Jack. But you're right. You intuit correctly. No notes, no final words to friends. Nothing. They're simply gone."

He shrugged. "Well, then, we'll have to find out where they went, I think."

V
etris Gambol did not like the sight or smell of blood, but he liked being a detective, which is why he had hooked up with the South Oleander Police Department. It consisted of six deputies, two detectives, and a police chief named Myrna Guffy, who was pale, redheaded, and as smart as an Armani suit. But she wasn't smart today. She was panic-stricken, because this was the first multiple homicide she'd encountered during her ten years at the South Oleander police force. It was Vetris's first multiple homicide, too, and the bloodiest homicide he'd encountered—judging from the photographs that Myrna was showing him.

He was standing in front of her desk. She was standing, too, and putting the photographs on the desk in front of him. The photographs had been taken several hours earlier, just before sunrise.

"How do we know we're talking about a multiple homicide," he asked, "if we haven't yet found bodies?"

Myrna snorted a little, as if in derision. "Oh, c'mon, no one person carries this much blood around inside him, and no two or even three people can lose this much blood and still be walking around singing hallelujah."

Vetris mumbled, "They were singing hallelujah?"

"Yes," Myrna said, "and playing bagpipes. Are you coming out there with me?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Do I need to answer that?" He shook his head.

"Then let's get going." She picked up the photographs, straightened them, put them back in their folder, and came around the desk. "How's that evil cat of yours?" she asked as she and Vetris started for the door.

"Still evil," Vetris said.

"God," said Myrna, "I'd shoot the damned thing."

W
hen Erthmun and Patricia walked into squad room at the 20th Precinct, Peabody looked up from his work and said, "Your mother called."

Patricia asked, "My mother called?"

"No," Peabody said, then nodded at Erthmun, "His mother called. She said it was urgent."

Erthmun asked, "Did she say what it was about?"

Peabody shook his head. "Not so's anyone but a jackrabbit would notice."

"Huh?" Patricia said.

"Never mind," Erthmun said. "It's how he talks."

Peabody said, clearly annoyed, "How do I talk?"

"Like a man who has no Gatorade," Erthmun said, and went to his desk, behind Peabody's.

"Huh?" said Peabody, and turned around to look at Erthmun, who was dialing his mother's number.

"Huh?" Patricia said, to no one in particular.

"Hello," Erthmun said into the phone, "is my mother there, please?" After a moment, he said, "This is her son." After another moment, he said, "Why?"

Patricia said, "Jack, is there a problem?"

Erthmun said into the phone, "Damnit, just tell me what the problem is." There was a silence, then Erthmun said, "When?"

Patricia said, "Jack, what's going on?"

He said into the phone, "Yes. As soon as I can," hung up, looked blankly at Patricia, then at Peabody, then at Patricia again. He sighed—it was a big sigh that made his whole body shudder—looked down at his desk, looked at Patricia again, back at his desk, then out one of the tall, narrow precinct windows—it faced the solid brick wall of an office supply warehouse. "She put her head into her oven and turned the gas on and killed herself," he said, and looked at Patricia. She saw that his eyes were moist. He added, "She did it this morning. After having her tea. And scones."

Peabody said, "Scones?"

Patricia said, "My God. Jack, I'm so sorry."

He stood. "I'm going there," he said.

M
yrna Guffy, Chief of Police at the tiny South Oleander, New York, Police Department, thought for a moment that some of what she was seeing had, indeed, to be red paint, because there couldn't possibly be so much blood in even a dozen people. Then it came to her that barns were red because it had once been the practice to paint barns with the blood of cows and bulls that had been slaughtered, which was cheaper than paint. A quaint, if horrific custom, a simple, financial consideration that was, on balance, completely reasonable. Make use of the entire animal, not simply its flesh. Waste not, want not. A penny saved is a penny earned. And who knows, maybe blood paint was more durable than paint paint. Maybe it bonded with the wood in a way that Sherwin Williams simply couldn't.

"Are you all right?" she heard. It was Vetris.

She glanced quickly at him. "Yeah. I'm fine. This"— she nodded—"is just very . . . difficult."

"I think Villain would love it."

She gave him a curious look. She hadn't expected such a flip remark from him, under these circumstances. Blood made him queasy. But maybe this much blood was simply overwhelming. At some point, blood stopped being blood, stopped being something trickling and suggestive and became something much more than blood, or much less. She remembered a scene from
The Shining
—a thousand gallons of blood flowing from the closed doors of an elevator. Instead of being gory or upsetting, it had been, for her at least, simply like watching a river that was an odd color.

Vetris added, with a wave of his hand, "It's like it's not blood at all because there's so goddamned much of it. It's like it's . . . I don't know, paint."

There were several state police investigators nearby, collecting samples of the blood, taping off the area, and they looked very grim. Vetris thought they should look grim; this was damned grim work. Somewhere in this park, there were . . . remains, and the awful process of collecting those remains would be doubly grim. He didn't know if he wanted to be a part of it, though he knew that he would have to be a part of it, that being a part of it would be wonderful for his career. But still, it was work that a creature like Villain, human or otherwise, would adore; he—Vetris—was simply not up for it.

Myrna Guffy said, "Yeah, but it isn't paint. Jesus, it doesn't smell like paint."

"I don't smell anything," Vetris said.

She shrugged. "You never do."

P
eabody declared, "You know, it's as baffling as a shoe store in Milwaukee: a cop gets up from his desk and goes to take a piss, and never comes back. I mean, people actually see him go into the goddamned bathroom, but no one sees him come out."

Detective Tony Julia said, "It's as strange as a three-headed snake."

"No such things as three-headed snakes," said Peabody.

Detective Julia frowned.

Peabody said, "And these other people. This stockbroker, and this model and the others. I know that people go missing every day in this goddamned city. It's like clockwork. But not people like this. People who
know
people—people who
are
people!"

"That would be everyone, I think," Patricia said. She was standing next to Detective Julia, who was standing in front of Peabody's desk, because, for reasons Peabody couldn't understand, he'd been delivered the file on the recent disappearances. It was a thick file, and Peabody had been poring over it for fifteen minutes, trying to get all the high points.

Peabody shook his head. "Nah, some people aren't anybody, and they don't know anybody either. But I take your point, Patricia."

"Uh-huh," Patricia said.

"Has anyone heard from Erthmun?" Detective Julia asked.

Patricia shook her head grimly.

"Why would anyone kill themself like that?" Peabody asked. "I mean, putting your head in an oven. It's as weird as crazy glue at a flea circus."

Patricia sighed.

Detective Julia said, "Sylvia Plath did it."

"Who?" asked Peabody.

"She was a poet," Patricia explained, and Julia—new to the precinct—gave her a surprised look. "She wrote a lot of . . . I don't know . . . confessional poetry. People ate it up. She killed herself by putting her head in an oven."

"You'd think the heat would make her . . . jump back," Peabody said.

Patricia sighed again. "No. No. She didn't light the oven. She died of asphyxiation."

"No shit?" Peabody said.

Detective Julia said, "She was married to Ted Hughes."

"Big deal," said Peabody. "One billionaire's the same as another."

"Huh?" Patricia said.

Peabody said, "So no one's heard from Erthmun. Poor slob, to have his mother off herself like that. I can imagine how it must make him feel."

"No," said Patricia, "I don't think you can."

I
n another part of the city, a creature was waking that never really slept. Only its needs, its hungers, and its appetites slept, though just briefly. But this was sufficient, because the creature's needs and appetites comprised nearly its whole being, like an infant whose whole self is dedicated to growing. But this creature was no infant, though it was new to the earth. This creature was tall and strong, and as graceful as a cat; its long, dark hair was a thing of consuming beauty, and it spoke with eloquence in a voice that was music.