Eyes of Prey Read Free Page B

bureau, went down the stairs again, started with the frontdoor and worked methodically through the house. In the kitchen, he didn’t look at the body. He couldn’t look at it, but he was always aware of it at the edge of his vision, a leg, an arm . . . enough to step carefully around the blood.
    In the bedroom again, and the bathroom. As he was wiping the shower, he thought about the drain. Body hair. He listened again. Silence. Take the time. The drain was fastened down by a single brass screw. He removed it with a dime, wiped the drain as far as he could reach with toilet paper, then rinsed it with a direct flow of water. The paper he threw into the toilet, and flushed once, twice. Body hair: the bed. He went into the bedroom, another surge of despair shaking his body. He would forget something . . . . He pulled the sheets from the bed, threw them on the floor, found another set and spent five minutes putting them on the bed and rearranging the blankets and the coverlet. He wiped the nightstand and the headboard, stopped, looked around.
    Enough.
    He rolled the underpants in the dirty sheets, put on his shoes and went downstairs, carrying the bundle of linen. He scanned the living room, the parlor and the kitchen one last time. His eyes skipped over Stephanie . . . .
    There was nothing more to do. He put on his coat and stuffed the bundle of sheets in the belly. He was already heavy, but the sheets made him gross: good. If anybody saw him . . .
    He walked out the front door, down the four concrete steps to the street and around the long block to his car. They’d been discreet, and their discretion might now save him. The night was cold, spitting snow, and he met nobody.
    He drove down off the hill, around the lake, out to Hennepin Avenue, and spotted a pay telephone. He stopped, pinched a quarter in the underpants and dialed 911. Feeling both furtive and foolish, he put the pants over the mouthpiece of the telephone before he spoke:
    “A woman’s been murdered . . .” he told the operator.
    He gave Stephanie’s name and address. With the operator pleading with him to stay on the line, he hung up, carefully wiped the receiver and walked back to his car. No. Sneaked back to his car, he thought. Like a rat. They would never believe, he thought. Never. He put his head on the steering wheel. Closed his eyes. Despite himself, his mind was calculating.
    The killer had seen him. And the killer hadn’t looked like a junkie or a small-time rip-off artist killing on impulse. He’d looked strong, well fed, purposeful. The killer could be coming after him . . . .
    He’d have to give more information to the investigators, he decided, or they’d focus on him, her lover. He’d have to point them at the killer. They’d know that Stephanie had had intercourse, the county pathologists would be able to tell that . . . .
    God, had she washed? Of course she had, but how well? Would there be enough semen for a DNA-type?
    No help for that. But he could give the police information they’d need to track the killer. Print out a statement, Xerox it through several generations, with different darkness settings, to obscure any peculiarities of the printer . . .
    Stephanie’s face came out of nowhere.
    At one moment, he was planning. The next, she was there, her eyes closed, her head turned away, asleep. He was seized with the thought that he could go back, find her standing in the doorway, find that it had all been a nightmare . . . .
    He began to choke again, his chest heaving.
    And Stephanie’s lover thought, as he sat in the car: Bekker? Had he done this? He started the car.
    Bekker.
     
    It wasn’t quite human, the thing that pulled itself across the kitchen floor. Not quite human—eyes gone, brain damaged,bleeding—but it was alive and it had a purpose: the telephone. There was no attacker, there was no lover, there was no time. There was only pain, the tile and, somewhere, the telephone.
    The thing