An Absence of Light

In that instant both Remberto and Murray burst out into the hall and yelled at her in the same instant that the explosion of a single gunshot reverberated from inside the room. Wheeling around smoothly, her arm never dropping from its leveled position, her silencer coughed one, two, three times, ripping into the door facings on either side of the hall as Remberto and Murray fell back into the rooms. They looked across the hall at each other and waited-the advantage was theirs.

Silence.

Murray turned on the bathroom light and found a hand mirror on the vanity. He turned off the light, and in a moment the mirror moved out from the door frame. She was standing squared at them, her feet planted firmly, slightly apart, her legs flexed in competition shooting form, both arms out in front of her now supporting the gun. The silencer coughed again, and Murray’s mirror disintegrated.

Silence.

“What are you going to do?” Murray yelled. “Jump out the window?”

Silence.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice calm, almost conversational.

“We’re not police,” Murray said. “And we’re not a follow-up from Kalatis.”

Silence.

“You didn’t shoot him,” he said. “We know that.”

“Does that make any difference?”

“It does to me,” Murray said cryptically.

Silence.

“I don’t want this to have a bad ending,” Murray said. “Why don’t you-”

The silencer coughed again-once-followed by the sound of a falling body. Murray grabbed a shard of the broken mirror and held it out against the door frame. He could see her lying on the floor.

“Shit,” he said, and darted his head out, then back. “I think she did it,” he said, looking across at Remberto.

Remberto looked around and saw the dark spreading on the carpet under her head, her body lying almost inside the bedroom door she had just stepped through. The gun was out of her hand, partially concealed under the hem of her skirt.

“Yeah,” he said, “she did.”

They came out of their doorways and approached her carefully, nonetheless, but she was clearly dead. Remberto stepped over her into the bedroom which actually had been turned into a study with a desk and bookcases, a sofa, and chairs. Faeber was sprawled on the floor, his legs over the legs of an overturned chair in which he had been sitting, facing the windows. The blow from the large handgun he had used had knocked him over backward.

Remberto stepped back into the hall.

“Faeber shot himself too,” he said.

Murray was down on his knees pulling off one of the surgical gloves that the woman had been wearing.

“I want to see just who the hell this gal is,” Murray said. “Look in her shoulder bag. I need some paper.”

Remberto opened the purse; it was completely empty.

“Shit,” Murray said.

Remberto stepped into the study and found an envelope which he brought back. Murray took it, lifted the woman’s bare hand, bent her arm back, and dipped the ends of her fingers in her blood. He carefully made two complete sets of prints and then dropped her hand and stood, waving the envelope to dry the prints.

The two men looked at each other.

“I don’t know,” Murray said finally, shaking his head. “What a goddamned creep show. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 70

Even if Graver could understand the maps, he knew it was going to be to his immediate advantage to have as much leverage as possible against Ledet.

The first thing he did was to bring everyone into the bedroom. He put Ledet on the floor, cuffed now at his ankles as well as his wrists, and had Alice sit on the edge of the bed. He laid out all the firearms on the bed and called out the serial numbers on each of them to Neuman who jotted them in his notebook. Then Graver called a friend at ATF and gave him the information, Redden’s telephone number, and hung up.

Then he turned on the television that was standing on a bureau across the room from the foot of the bed, punched on the VCR, and slipped in the first tape. The first several were standard, low-budget, professionally-produced porno films, and Graver fast-forwarded through them, suspecting these weren’t going to have what he was looking for. Cassette number four was home-produced right there in the bedroom where they were sitting. It “featured” Eddie Redden-Neuman identified him-and a couple of girls, a thin, black-haired girl with prune-sized breasts and bruises on her buttocks, and a narrow-hipped blonde with black pubic hair and bosoms as large and distended as overfull udders.

“Goood Lorrrd!” Alice blurted, leaning forward on her hands on the bed and gaping at the television. “My Gahhhd! That’s Katie Mayhew and… and that old girl that hangs out at Remo’s Inn in Kemah! What’s her name… Deena… or Reena or something like that? Look at thaaaat! Look at what…”