Эд Горман - Blood Moon

The woman had real problems but what were they?

I decided to try the basement, a large, dark, dusty room that would have made Bela Lugosi feel right at home.

The washer and drier were almost comically white and comically new against the backdrop of cobwebs and cracked plaster and rat droppings and empty battered coal bin of this basement.

There were several cardboard boxes filled with cobwebby mason jars of homemade preserves. I lifted each jar and looked under it. Nothing.

Thanks to all the dust in the air, my allergies kicked in. I spent a few minutes sneezing, blowing my nose and coughing hard enough to give myself a vague headache. I groped in my pocket for the antihistamine tablets I always carry, my allergies being what they are and all, and after taking two, and giving my flashlight a little nudge so that its waning batteries temporarily fed more juice to the bulb, I went back to my search.

There were drawers to be looked into, boxes to be opened and inspected, and an old metal desk that probably dated back to the forties to be gone through.

It was in the desk — bottom-right drawer if you really care — that I found the small white box, and in the small white box that I found the finger.

At first I thought it was fake. I have a nephew who is at that age when whoopee cushions and joy buzzers bedazzle the young mind. He once showed me a finger like this. As now, I started when I saw it. The difference was, it took me only a half-second to realize that Jamie’s was a fraud. This one, however, was real. Fake ones don’t come with cuts and bruises and the long red nail fiercely broken. Before this finger had been chopped off just below the lower joint, the woman to whom it belonged had put up a violent struggle.

The finger felt obscene in my hand, cold and inhuman.

I shone my light into the box and found the note. I used the edge of my handkerchief to extract the note — there might well be fingerprints on it — and set it down on the desk.

Neatly typed in the center was:

This is what happens to your daughter if I don’t get those tapes back. And if you go to the police, I’ll kill her.

There was no signature.

I replaced note and finger in box, put box back in desk, and was just turning toward the stairs when I heard a wooden step creak.

I shone my light up there.

Her eyes glowed like a cat’s.

Eve McNally, she was. And she held a carbine. And it was pointed directly at me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said.

“Trying to help you.”

“Right,” she said. “Trying to help me.”

“I found the finger.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t care. I just want you out of my house.”

She told me much more in that last sentence than she meant to.

Most homeowners finding a burglar in their place would immediately phone for the police.

But it was obvious that Eve McNally wanted no police in on this at all.

I felt sorry for her. She looked alone and scared even with that carbine in her hand. She needed a friend. She really did.

Then there was the matter of the finger.

“You just come up the steps very slowly.”

She waved the carbine at me.

I didn’t move. “Mrs. McNally, you really don’t know about the finger?”

Her fear was now replaced by confusion. “Finger? What’re you talking about?”

“Have you been down in the basement lately?”

“No.”

“Let me just walk over and get something from the desk. Then I’ll bring it back to you.”

She sighed a ragged sigh. “This is some kind of trick. I know it is.”

“No trick. There’s just something I want you to see.”

I turned and started walking to the desk. She didn’t shoot me in the back. That was definitely a good sign.

Lower drawer, right hand, small white box. You couldn’t miss it. The one with the human finger inside.

I retrieved it and carried it back to her like a well-trained family dog.

When I got three feet from the barrel of her carbine, she said, “Hand it over, slow.”

She wasn’t expecting it, so it really wasn’t too difficult: grabbing the barrel of her gun two inches or so down from the muzzle and giving it a jerk that snatched the carbine from her hands and brought her tumbling down the stairs.

I put the gun down, went over and helped her up.

She was crying, hard, bitter crying, and I felt sorry for her again, so I brought her close to me and held her and just let her cry for a time, and then when her tears seemed to subside I helped her upstairs and put on a fresh pot of Mr. Coffee in the kitchen and then we sat down at the Formica-covered table and I pushed the small white box over to her.

While she was looking at it, I went into the bathroom and got her three Bayer aspirin, and then in the kitchen again I got her a cool glass of water.

The finger lay on the table, out of its box, ugly and terrifying.

“I knew he was involved in something like this.”

“Who?” I said.

She looked up. “You know who.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes.”

She’d been wearing blue eyeliner, smudged now from her crying, and her cheeks were puffy and pink.

“The finger doesn’t look familiar?”

“No,” she said. “Thank God. I was afraid—” Then she stopped herself.

“Where’s your daughter?” I said. “I know your husband’s missing but where’s your daughter?”

She changed the subject deftly, nodding her smooth, attractive face to the counter. “Coffee’s ready.”

I brought us two cups of coffee and sat down across the table from her.

“Your husband’s in some kind of trouble with somebody, and now somebody has your daughter. Isn’t that right?”

She stared at the finger some more. “You read the note. You know what it says.”

“You didn’t see the finger until I showed it to you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t know who your husband might be in trouble with?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you he was in trouble?”

“No.”

“That note makes it sound as if he might be blackmailing somebody. Is that something your husband might do?”

She hesitated. “I— He has a dark side, I guess you could say. He only ever really wanted one thing in life and that was to own his own business. He just had a thing about that. Being his own boss and all, I guess. But we lost it two years ago — it was just like losing one of his children for him — and he’s never been quite right since.”

“Do you think he could blackmail somebody?”

“I’d have to say yes.”

“How many days has he been gone?”

“Why was the finger in the basement?”

“He was hiding it from you. He didn’t want you to know he was in trouble. Now, how many days has he been gone?”

“Two.”

“How many days has your daughter been gone?”

The pause again. “Who are you? You haven’t told me yet.”

“A friend.”

She smiled sadly. “That’s what the Lone Ranger used to say when people asked him who he was.”

I smiled back. “Well, unfortunately, I’m not the Lone Ranger.”

“If you go to the police—”

“I won’t go to the police.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

And her speaking of the police made me look up at the wall clock and when I looked at the wall clock, I saw that I was twenty minutes late for my dinner appointment with Jane Avery.

“She didn’t come home from school the other day.”

“And you haven’t heard from anybody about her?”

“No.”

I looked down at the finger.

“We’ll have to assume that he’s got her,” I said quietly.

“He?”

“The man your husband’s been blackmailing.”