The main floor shower was cave-like: there were no windows in the bathroom, and with the shower curtain drawn the light had to sneak in over the rod.
He usually liked it that way.
In the roar of the water and the enveloping murk, he felt like he was in a secret pocket of space outside the world, existing solely for him.
Alina got annoyed by how much time he'd spend in there, but sometimes he felt like he had to gather his strength there just to face another day of work.
Today he couldn't get ahold of that rejuvenation.
His thoughts were whirling too quickly to be paced by the torrent, and the dimness seemed to mask some secret treachery.
He finished quickly and tore the curtain back, bracing himself to find Eston crouched like a predator in the steam, but the bathroom was empty.
After getting dressed, he grabbed a used plastic grocery bag from the kitchen and went to clean up.
The sight of the living room drew him up short.
When he'd left it, the mess had resembled a battlefield: there had been a fight here, and of course, some collateral damage.
Now it looked more like the naked aftermath of a man who had lost control of himself.
He swallowed the insight and flipped on the TV, for some background noise while he worked.
Law & Order wasn't on anywhere, amazingly, so he had to settle for some nature show.
It was about fish, the weird ones that live way down deep.
As he finished collecting the biggest chunks of debris and got up to grab the vacuum, Silvia Kalen's face filled the screen.
The reward was still $100,000.
Ian watched the whole thing.
For once, it didn't make him angry, but he was still glad when it ended.
He hated how happy she looked in that commercial.
It was too keen a reminder of what he'd lost.
That night he tried again to dig up information on Kelly, but he focused instead on Leroy Eston, hunting for any reference to the woman in Eston's online presence.
Surprisingly, there weren't many Leroy Estons on Facebook.
It felt like a long shot, thinking he could just comb through the man's friend list and come across a Kelly, but Ian went through each of the four hits anyway.
Nothing.
He ran through many of the same searches he'd run on Kelly, and found little bits of the man's past.
Eston had lived in Shakopee for a year or so before he died, but before that, he'd been all over the country.
He had never been arrested before, or at least, he didn't show up as a registered sex offender.
During Eston's year in Shakopee he'd held several different jobs as far as Ian could tell, either in town or close by - mostly at gas stations and little car repair shops.
But there was no sign of a sister, or girlfriend, or wife.
After two hours Ian gave up.
Behind him, Eston said, "That's what I like to see."
Fear slithered out of Ian's heart like a host of maggots.
He was rooted to his chair, unable to move while that old, gibbering terror clawed at him.
Alex answered with a whimper.
"Uh huh."
It broke Ian's paralysis, and he slowly swiveled his chair around, nausea bubbling in his throat.
His son sat on the couch, his red turtleneck standing out in the drab basement decor like a pool of blood.
His hands and feet were loose.
He wasn't gagged.
Eston had his arm around him.
"Pee in the pot.
Like we talked about.
You don't get that dirty piss on the ground, or in those... pretty pants.
Put it in the pot, and Uncle Leroy will take care of it."
He set his free hand on the boy's knee.
Ian gagged, a quick dry heave that left him trembling.
Alex looked away, and Eston frowned.
"Hey, no," he said.
"Don't look at her.
Look at me."
The boy grimaced and clenched his eyes shut.
He shook his head.
Eston caressed his cheek.
"Get out of here, Alex," Ian breathed.
"He can't hurt you any more."
As Alex disappeared, Eston's eyebrows knitted in confusion.
He started panning the room, eyes roving up and down the wall.
"Kelly," Ian said.
"Who is she?
Is she still alive?
Were you working with her?"
Eston stopped his scan of the wall, cocked his head as Ian spoke.
"Answer me," Ian demanded.
"What is she doing there?
Where is she now?"
I'm going to find her and cut her fucking throat out.
"Do you care about her?" he pressed.
"If she hurt my son, I'm going to kill her."
Eston's upper lip twitched; it made the whole side of his face spasm.
Then he rose slowly to his feet, and resumed his careful inspection of the room.
For an instant Ian remembered the Ouija board, and wondered if he could force answers from the man that way.
Then Eston's meandering search finally met his eyes.
A wondering grin played at the corner of the killer's mouth.
"Well, well," he said.
From upstairs, Alex cried, "
Daddy!
"
The shout made Ian jump.
Eston disappeared.
For a second, Ian again found himself unable to move, every nerve struck senseless by too much impossible stimuli too quickly.
Then Alex called for him again, and his rubbery legs bore him up the stairs two at a time.
"Alex?" he shouted as he reached the kitchen.
His hands were trembling.
Eston's grin leered at him.
"Alex!"
The boy was in his room, sitting up in bed, eyes wide.
"Alex," Ian breathed, relieved to have found him.
"What is it?
What's wrong?"
He crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to his son.
He started to reach an arm out, to hold him, but stopped himself before they touched.
"I want Mr. Tuskers," Alex whined.
Alex's stuffed elephant was his guardian against nightmares, monsters, and "bad animals."
Ian or Alina would set it at the foot of his bed every night, where it would stand vigil until sunrise.
He and Mowsalot, the kitty, were Alex's two favorite stuffed animals: one for standing guard, and one for snuggling.
Ian bit his lip.
"God, I'm sorry, kiddo.
Mr. Tuskers isn't here."
"Can we go find him?"
No, it's your bedtime.
You wait here and I'll go get him.
"No, bud.
I'm sorry."
He longed to give Alex what he wanted.
The request wasn't surprising, after the number of times Ian had seen Alex with his attacker in the last few days.
It was a request for reassurance, a simple yearning to be safe again.
But the elephant had to be buried somewhere in the garage, if they even still had it at the house at all.
More likely it was thrown out, with most of the other things they'd taken out of Alex's room.
"Daddy,
please
," Alex urged.
"You have to find him."
"I can't, honey.
I wish I could."
"What about Mau-zlot?
Is he gone
too
?"
"Yeah," Ian said heavily.
When Alex had lost the two animals while he was alive, bedtime could be held up for half an hour while his parents tore the house apart searching.
"Yeah, Mowsalot is gone too."
Alex was stricken.
He looked back at his pillow like it was a hornets' nest.
In the darkness, Ian again envisioned Eston's grin.
"It'll be okay," Ian said.
"I promise."
It's what he'd said when his son was alive, too.
He'd promised a hundred times that everything would be okay.
Now, the words scraped from his throat. He'd never been so wrong about anything in his life.
"But what will I
do
?" Alex moaned.
"What will I do without Mr.
Tuskers
?"
Ian forgot himself.
He reached for his son to pull him into a hug, and found himself in an empty room, sitting on a stack of boxes.
The night passed in fits of dozing on the couch, as the TV droned.
His dreams were of his son running and screaming toward a lake, of Eston grinning as one eye ran with blood, of Alina marrying Justin.
Sunday he went to Cub to pick up a few basics for the house.
When he left the house, he found the air giddy with snow.
The radio said it would continue through the night, and into the coming week.
Alex again asked him to stop wearing his black hat.
He asked what would happen if he didn't.
Alex said, "The eyes are scary on that black hat."
Ian chewed this over as if just hearing it for the first time, but couldn't make any more sense of it than he had before.
Cub took about twenty minutes.
It was good to be around people, even strangers; the respite from his constant sightings gave him room to breathe.
As he walked across the parking lot back to the car, he realized he was in no hurry to get home.
He wished, not for the first time, that he knew somewhere trendy to go.
A coffee shop,
he mused.
Or a... I don't know, some place downtown.
I have no idea.
He frowned.
That was the whole problem.
Even when he was at the U he'd never really been cool, though he'd had plenty of friends who were.
He'd gone with them a couple times, to
First Ave
or the Lagoon, but a lot of the places they'd visited were closed now.
The ones that were still open he couldn't even picture himself in anymore.
He'd just look like a buffoon.
He and Alina used to commiserate about how uncool they both were.
But they'd done it cuddled together on the couch, under a blanket, watching TV and secretly feeling like they were the lucky ones.
"Screw it," he muttered.
He went to the library.
The woman behind the counter gave him a little smile as he came in.
They knew him here, mainly from when Alex was still alive.
Ian used to bring him in on Saturday mornings, to give Alina a little extra time to sleep in.
Once, when he was almost three, Alex had somehow located a copy of
The Pimp's Bible
and run wild through the place, brandishing it like a prophet with a sacred text.
Ian had been mortified and apologized profusely, but remembering it still made him smile, and the staff here still talked about it.
He wandered over to the little Fantasy/Sci-Fi section, relishing the ambience: hushed footfalls, murmured conversations, muted taps on a keyboard.
It matched his mood.
All the people he required, none of the noise.
"Daddy!
Can I get this one?"
Ian jerked his head toward the voice, his heart hammering, and saw a little girl in a pink jumpsuit and pigtails.
She had a SpongeBob picture book clutched in one hand.
She wasn't talking to him.
When the library closed at five, the sky was already growing dim.
The clock in his car read
6:04 PM.
He realized grimly that Daylight Savings Time had ended yesterday, and he hadn't set his clocks back.
It was the first time in years he had missed that.
Fuck.
It was another one of those little signs, like staring into the sink for ten minutes, like the dirty pizza cutter.
Signs that he couldn't hold it together.