Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [92]
Colette’s heart began to beat faster. The divinity student and his wife shouldn’t have been out; they were always home at night. Colette went to the kitchen, which was empty, but the icebox door was open, which was wrong; one always shut one’s icebox door. Then she heard the sound of water running. A door from the kitchen led to the bathroom. Colette looked down: from the bottom of that door, water was seeping out onto the kitchen floor. Colette opened the bathroom door.
No one was there. The bath was running, unattended. The tub was full; water overflowed onto the tile floor. Colette didn’t shut off the tap. Instead, for no reason she could have explained, she ran back to the living room, pulled open the window curtain, and looked down into the courtyard outside. Luc was there.
He was standing under a tree near a lamppost, a glass of milk in one hand, a cookie in the other, staring at a female figure who was on her knees, looking into his eyes, her wispy hair tinged red in the lamplight. The girl’s lined face was strained and taut. She could almost have been pretty, if the eyes hadn’t been so frightful—eyes that had seen something unspeakable or were contemplating something unspeakable. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled it open, showing the boy her throat and her naked chest. Though her face was as taut as a madwoman’s, her throat and chest were unmarred, white, soft—almost radiant. The glass slipped from Luc’s hands. It fell to the grass, and so didn’t break, but for a moment a circle of white milk glistened in the darkness at his feet. The figure stretched out her arms as if beckoning him to her.
Colette cried out from the upstairs window. She ran into the hallway and down the stairs. When she heaved open the heavy front door, other voices in the courtyard were crying an alarm too—but they were calling out to her, not to Luc. The girl under the tree had disappeared.
The other voices belonged to Colette’s upstairs neighbors—the divinity student and his wife—who breathlessly declared that they had in their possession a telegram that Colette must read at once. They had been home when an undergraduate came knocking with a message from Western Union erroneously delivered to him. The moment the couple read the urgent wire, they ran off to Colette’s laboratory, telling Luc to stay behind and wait; they had rushed so precipitously that the divinity student had left his bathtub running. But when they reached the laboratory, Colette had already left.
After Colette had taken Luc back to their room, after she had read the message, after the neighbors had retired upstairs, she looked at her brother. “Did she touch you?” asked Colette.
The boy shook his head. He pointed to his neck and made signs with his hands, which Colette understood.
“Yes, I saw it too,” she answered. “The aura.”
Detective Littlemore returned to the law library early Monday morning. It took him several hours, but he finally found what he was looking for. Armed with this knowledge, he set off for the Astor Hotel, where Chief Flynn had set up his command post. Littlemore picked up a couple of hot dogs on the way.
Inside the Astor, ignoring the protests of a secretary, Littlemore ambled directly up to Flynn’s closed door, outside which his two familiar deputies were standing guard. One of them rubbed his jaw on seeing the detective.
“Big Bill around?” Littlemore asked them. Receiving no answer, Littlemore said, “I’ll just knock, if you don’t mind.”
Both deputies placed their hands on Littlemore’s chest. “We mind,” said the one who had been to the detective’s house.
“No problem,” said Littlemore, taking a bite of his hot dog. “I’ll come back in a few hours. Got to go to court anyway. Make out an arrest warrant. Say, you know those soldiers Big Bill stationed outside the Treasury Building? Reason I ask is the Posse Comitatus Act. You don’t want a dog, do you? I got two.”
The deputies stared at Littlemore.