Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

In either case, printing the name in blood was a ritualistic act, and ritualism of this nature was an unmistakable symptom of a seriously unbalanced mind. Evidently, the wife killer would be easier to crack than expected, because his shell was already badly fractured.

This wasn't the same Enoch Cain whom Vanadium had known three years ago in Spruce Hills. That man had been utterly ruthless but not a wild, raging animal, coldly determined but never obsessive. That Cain had been too calculating and too self-controlled to have been swept into the emotional frenzy required to produce this blood graffiti and to act out the symbolic mutilation of Bartholomew with a knife.

As Tom Vanadium studied the stained and ravaged wall again, a cold and quivery uneasiness settled insectivally onto his scalp and down the back of his neck, quickly bored into his blood, and nested in his bones. He had the terrible feeling that he was not dealing with a known quantity anymore, not with the twisted man he'd thought he understood, but with a new and even more monstrous Enoch Cain. Carrying the tote bag full of Angel's dolls and coloring books, Wally crossed the sidewalk ahead of Celestina and climbed the front steps.

She followed with Angel in her arms.

The girl sucked in deep lungsful of the weary clouds. “Better hold tight, Mommy, I'm gonna float."

“Not weighed down by cheese and Oreos, you won't."

“Why's that car following us?"

“What car?” Celestina asked, stopping at the bottom of the steps and turning to look.

Angel pointed to a Mercedes parked about forty feet behind the Buick, just as its headlights went off.

“It's not following us, sugarpie. It's probably a neighbor."

“Can I have an Oreo?"

Climbing the stairs, Celestina said, “You already had one."

“Can I have a Snickers?"

“No Snickers."

“Can I have a Mr.'Goodbar?"

“It's not a specific brand you can't have, it's the whole idea of a candy bar."

Wally opened the front door and stepped aside.

“Can I have some 'nilla wafers?"

Celestina breezed through the open door with Angel. “No vanilla wafers. You'll be up all night with a sugar rush."

As Wally followed them into the front hall, Angel said, “Can I have a car.

“Car?"

“Can I?"

“You don't drive,” Celestina reminded her.

“I'll teach her,” Wally said, moving past them to the apartment door, fishing a ring of keys out of his coat pocket.

“He'll teach me,” Angel triumphantly told her mother.

“Then I guess we'll get you a car."

“I want one that flies."

“They don't make flying cars."

“Sure they do,” said Wally as he unlocked the two deadbolts. “But you gotta be twenty-one years old to get a license for one."

“I'm three."

“Then you only have to wait eighteen years,” he said, opening the apartment door and stepping aside once more, allowing Celestina to precede him.

As Wally followed them inside, Celestina grinned at him. “From the car to the living room, all as neat as a well-practiced ballet. We've got a big headstart on this married thing."

“I gotta pee,” Angel said.

“That's not something that we announce to everyone,” Celestina chastised.

“We do when we gotta pee bad."

“Not even then."

“Give me a kiss first,” Wally said.

The girl smooched him on the cheek.

“Me, me,” Celestina said. “In fact, fiancées should come first."

Though Celestina was still holding Angel, Wally kissed her, and again it was lovely, though shorter than before, and Angel said, “That's a messy kiss."

“I'll come by at eight o'clock for breakfast,” Wally suggested. “We have to set a date."

“Is two weeks too soon?"

“I gotta pee before then,” Angel declared.

“Love you,” Wally said, and Celestina repeated it, and he said, “I'm gonna stand in the hall till I hear you set both locks."

Celestina put Angel down, and the girl raced to the bathroom as Wally stepped into the public hall and pulled the apartment door shut behind him.

One lock. Two.

Celestina stood listening until she heard Wally open the outer door and then close it.

She leaned against the apartment door for a long moment, holding on to the doorknob and to the thumb-turn of the second deadbolt, as though she were convinced that if she let go, she would float off the floor like a cloud-stuffed child.

In a red coat with a red hood, Bartholomew appeared first in the arms of the tall lanky man, the Ichabod Crane look-alike, who also had a large tote bag hanging from his shoulder.

The guy appeared vulnerable, his arms occupied with the kid and the bag, and Junior considered bursting out of the Mercedes, striding straight to the Celestina-humping son of a bitch, and shooting him point-blank in the face. Brain-shot, he would drop quicker than if the headless horseman had gotten him with an ax, and the kid would go down with him, and Junior would shoot the bastard boy next, shoot him in the head three times, four times just to be sure.

The problem was Celestina in the Buick, because when she saw what was happening, she might slide behind the steering wheel and speed away. The engine was running, white plumage rising from the tailpipe and feathering away in the fog, so she might escape if she was a quick thinker.

Chase after her on foot. Shoot her in the car. Maybe. He'd have five rounds left if he used one on the man, four on Bartholomew.

But with the silencer attached, the pistol was useful only for close-up work. After passing through a sound-suppressor, the bullet would exit the muzzle at a lower than usual velocity, perhaps with an added wobble, and accuracy would drop drastically at a distance.

He had been warned about this accuracy issue by the thumbless young thug who delivered the weapon in a bag of Chinese takeout, in Old St. Mary's Church. Junior tended to believe the warning, because he figured the eight-fingered felon might have been deprived of his thumbs as punishment for having forgotten to relay the same or an equally important message to a customer in the past, thus assuring his current conscientious attention to detail.

Of course, he also might have shot off his own thumbs as double insurance against being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

Anyway, if Celestina escaped, there would be a witness, and it wouldn't matter to a jury that she was a talentless bitch who painted kitsch. She would have seen Junior get out of the Mercedes and would be able to provide at least a half-accurate description of the car in spite of the fog. He still hoped to pull this off without having to give up his good life on Russian Hill.

He wasn't a marksman, anyway. He couldn't handle anything more than close-up work.

Ichabod passed Bartholomew through the open door to Celestina in the passenger's seat, went around the Buick, put the tote bag in the back, and climbed behind the wheel once more.

If Junior had realized that they were driving only a block and a half, he wouldn't have followed them in the Mercedes. He would have gone the rest of the way on foot. When he pulled to the curb again, a few car lengths behind the Buick, he wondered if he had been spotted.

Now, here, all three on the street and vulnerable at once-the man, Celestina, the bastard boy.

There would be lots of aftermath with three at once, especially if he took them out with point-blank head shots, but Junior was pumped full of reliable antiemetics, antidiarrhetics, and antihistamines, so he felt adequately protected from his traitorous sensitive side. In fact, he wanted to see a significant quantity of aftermath this time, because it would be proof positive that the boy was dead and that all this torment had come at last to an end.

Junior worried, however, that they had noticed him after he pulled to the curb twice behind them, that they were keeping an eye on him, ready to bolt if he got out of the car, in which case they might all make it inside before he could cut them down.