Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [96]
A cold rage came over Quinn. I could see it happening.
“I did murder her, Sheriff,” he said in an iron voice. “I snatched her up from her couch upstairs, broke her neck, carried her out into the pirogue and went deep, deep into the dark swamp until I saw the backs of the gators in the light of the moon, and then I threw her body into the muck. And I said, ‘Eat up Mother.’ That’s what I did.”
The entire room was thrown into consternation, with Big Ramona and Jasmine crying No no no, and Nash murmuring desperate confidential reassurance to Tommy, and Tommy glaring at Quinn, and one of the Shed Men laughing, and Cyndy the Nurse avowing that Quinn would never really do such a thing. Grady Breen was speechless, shaking his head and shuffling papers in his briefcase uselessly, and even Mona was shocked, staring at Quinn with her glassy green eyes in vague wonder.
“You going to run me in, Sheriff?” asked Quinn, looking icily up at the man.
The room fell silent.
The sheriff was squint-eyed and speechless.
Nash was fearful and poised to act.
Quinn uncoiled from the chair and rose to his full height and looked down on the sheriff. The combination of Quinn’s youthful face and imposing height alone was frightening, but the menace flowing from him was palpable.
“Go on, Big Boy,” Quinn said in a stage whisper. “Put those handcuffs on me.”
Silence.
The sheriff froze, then turned his head away, backed up two feet, and sidled towards the door and went off into the hall and out the front, muttering that nobody at Blackwood Farm had a lick of sense, and, it was such a crying shame that the house would now go to rack and ruin, yes, indeed, RACK AND RUIN! Slam went the door. No more sheriff.
“Well, I think I’d better be going along,” said Grady Breen in a cheery loud voice, “and I’ll get you a copy of the coroner’s report first thing.” He made for the front door so quickly that he might have suffered a heart attack later in his car. (But he did not.)
Meantime, Tommy ran to Quinn and threw his arms around him. Nash looked on helplessly.
This caught Quinn very much off guard. But he at once reassured the boy.
“Don’t you worry about anything,” he said. “You go on back to Eton. And when you come home, Blackwood Farm will be here, always, safe and sound and beautiful as it is now, and making lots of people happy, with Jasmine and Big Ramona and everybody, the same as it is today.”
The Shed Men murmured that that was certainly the case. And Cyndy the Nurse said it was true. Big Ramona said, “Yes, Lawd.”
Now Jasmine saw that she was needed, and, giving her face a final wipe with her handkerchief, she released her grip on me, received a little torrent of my kisses and went to put her arms around Tommy.
“You come on in the kitchen with me, Tommy Blackwood,” she said. “You too, Nash Penfield, I’ve got a pot of stewed chicken on the stove; you too, Cyndy . . .”
“You have a pot of chicken on the stove? Who is this ‘You’?” asked Big Ramona, “that’s my pot of stewed chicken. And just look at this Mona Mayfair, why the child’s totally recovered.”
“No, no, you all go on,” said Mona, rising and gesturing for them to leave us. “Quinn and Lestat and I have to talk.”
“Little Boss,” said Jasmine, “I’m not sleeping downstairs in that house. I’ve moved upstairs with Jerome and Grandma, and I’m locking the shutters over the windows. Patsy’s after me.”
“I’ll find her out there,” said Quinn. “Don’t worry.”
“Does she come at any certain time?” Mona asked very kindly.
“ ‘Bout four in the morning,” said Jasmine. “I know ‘cause she stops the clock.”
“That’s about right,” said Quinn.
“Now, don’t you start again with that!” Jasmine rebuked him. “Now they found all those letters and they think she shot herself, you’re off the hook, now cool it!” And she pulled Tommy away with her.
“But wait a minute,