He tried to twitch, to move his face, shake them off. His other hand, outside, flailed behind him.
It hit the Raid can.
An idea.
I’ll spray them. I can find a crack and spray in here.
More ants fell on him. The dozens of legs turned into a living mask of limbs and he felt ants at his lips, trying to get in. Snipping at his lips. He was tempted to push at them with his tongue. Force them away. Maybe I could blow them off .
.
.
But that would mean opening his mouth.
That’s what they wanted.
He felt a new sensation. And he knew that one ant had chewed through his eyelid and was now feasting on the eye itself.
Whalen cried.
His hand brought the can up to the side, looking for a gap to squirt the poison in.
He found a hole.
He couldn’t resist — he pushed some ants off his lips with his tongue. Puffed at them quickly blowing just a little bit …
And immediately a squad of ants fell onto his tongue, following it in, swirling around inside his mouth. His mouth opened.
I got to spit them out.
He started spraying.
And now he inhaled the insecticide. It seared his throat, his lungs.
He felt an ant at the back of his throat, going down his gullet.
I’m killing myself, he thought.
Coughing, spitting up ants, sucking in new ones as the poisonous fog filled the cabinet.
I’m killing myself .
.
.
But I’ll kill them too.
But then the bites, all over now, down his chest, in his mouth, on his eyes, in his ears, where he heard their scratching footsteps amplified, made him drop the can to the floor.
A truce the ants didn’t recognize .
.
.
* * *
30
On his way out of the new courthouse, Will tried calling Whalen’s number. He hung up after the fifth ring and redialed.
Again, no one answered.
He gave up and left for home.
Becca greeted him at the door with a nervous stare. He smiled back.
“Daddy!” Beth said, running down the stairs. Will made ready to scoop her off the ground and twirl her through the air.
“Did you call?” Becca asked.
Will shook his head. And then, “Yes, just for a minute. I was supposed to call back. I tried, but — umph —”
Beth careened into his waiting arms and he hoisted her up, giving her the special flight that only dads can deliver.
“He wasn’t there,” Will grunted.
Becca nodded, and then she drifted away. Will knew that she had other questions to ask, questions that she’d hold until later.
He looked at Beth. Her entire face was one giant smile. Her hair flew behind her and she shook with each convulsive giggle. Sweetness and light, thought Will. That’s what she is. No troubles, and filled with complete trust.
He stopped swinging her around.
He heard Beth groan against his shoulder.
“No, Daddy. Swing me some more.”
Will nodded. “Sure, honey. Sure.” But he just stood there a moment and held her tight. Tighter .
.
.
* * *
Will peeked in Sharon’s room. She had a tape on. It was a woman’s voice, but one he didn’t recognize. Not Cher. Not Olivia Newton-John. Who? Paula Abdul? k.d. lang?
Face it, he thought, the music world has passed you by.
“Hey, tiger,” he said, “how are you doing?”
Sharon turned and smiled, a pencil held between her fingers, ready to do damage to her homework paper. She smiled back, a small, controlled grin. Ah, the difference that six years can make. Sharon was well on the way to being a woman. She had her mother’s deep, penetrating eyes. And she also shared Becca’s abiding concern for the world, from the rain forests and the homeless, to lost puppies in the rain.
“Hi, Dad,” she said.
Will risked a step inside her chambers.
Sharon’s pencil went back to the paper.
“What are you working on there, kiddo?” he asked.
She looked up and made a disgusted face. “Geometry.” She shook her head. “Stupid stuff.”
Will risked a few more steps. “Not
that
stupid. It can be kind of fun.”
He stood behind her, leaning over her desk. He looked at her math sheet. “Ah, bisecting an angle. Piece of cake,” he said.
“For you,” she said.
Will shook his head and leaned over her desk. “No. I can get you bisecting angles with the best of them. In five minutes, tops.”
Sharon sat back a bit, waiting and watching him perform his magic.
He screwed up on his first attempt, and Sharon giggled as he ended up creating a new angle instead of bisecting the one on her paper.
“A bit rusty?” she teased.
“Hey, that was my first swing. Let me have another go at it.”
He picked up the compass and tried again and — to his own amazement — he ended up with a neatly bisected angle.
“There you go,” he said.
“But how’d you do it?” Sharon said.
“Okay,” Will said. “Now watch carefully this time. Nothing up this sleeve, and nothing .
.
.”
He retraced his steps carefully, letting Sharon see everything he did. And by the time he was done, Becca called them down to dinner.
* * *
Becca waited until the girls were gone.
“Maybe,” she said, “maybe you should try to reach Tim Hanna.”
Will nodded, still picking at his salad. “Yeah, I guess so. But I don’t think I could get to him. He’s an important man,” Will said, embarrassed at his sarcasm.
“Still,” Becca added, “you were friends. He knew this Jim Kiff —”
He smiled at her. The way she said “this Jim Kiff” — as though Kiff were an
objet bizarre
from the National Museum of the Strange.
“He’d probably want to know.”
Will looked at her. It’s funny, he thought, the things we keep from our spouses. Old girlfriends and their techniques. Secret fears, desires, hopes. That’s probably where divorce came from, he guessed. When enough secrets build up, the gulf becomes unbridgeable.
And one day your marriage is over.
He looked at her, listening to her, thinking .
.
.
“Sure he’s a big businessman, Will. But you could probably reach him .
.
. if you wanted to .
.
.”
Except, thought Will, I very much doubt Tim Hanna
wants
to be reached. Not by me. Not by anyone who was there that night.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Maybe I’ll try.”
He thought about telling Becca then. Telling her about that night. About the special tie that bound Kiff and Whalen and Tim Hanna and him together.
A regular little club, he thought.
He
thought
about telling her.
Letting go of the last secret.
But she sighed and stood up, clearing the table.
And he stood up to help.
Around nine o’clock, he went into his office and tried Whalen’s number again. This time he let it ring eight times, hoping that if Whalen had an answering machine, it would click on.
But there was nothing.
He looked at the two books on his desk.
He looked at the new one first,
The Demonic Realm
, by Dr. Joshua James. The glossy white dust jacket had blood red lettering. Flaky book, Will thought. He flipped the book around to the back, to the photo of Dr. James. A smiling and earnest-looking man looked out at his hoped-for multitude of readers. The staged shot had James holding his glasses in one hand while he sat rakishly on a stool.
Nearly bald at the top, James had bushy white eyebrows. The warm smile looked completely unauthentic. And, idly, Will opened the book to the back, and he read some of the author’s credits.
Dr. James was a former Dominican priest who had served as a staff assistant to Pope Paul VI. He headed a special Vatican study group exploring the Christian concept of sin and damnation.
How cheery, Will thought.
There’s a lot of scared, silly, and superstitious people in the world. They eat this stuff right up.
The last paragraph of Joshua James’s short bio had the good stuff.
He had assisted or witnessed over 150 exorcisms.
Nice hobby, thought Will.
And Will imagined crazy Kiff reading this book, swallowing this baloney hook, line, and sinker. Somehow mixing it up with that nonsense from decades ago.
Poor bastard, he thought again. Poor —
He heard a sound from behind him.
He turned, startled.
It was Sharon. “Dad,” she said, her face crinkled up into a perfect mask of confusion. “Do you know anything about constructing
equal
angles?”
Will smiled. “Constructing equal angles?” he said. “Hell, I wrote the book. I was the equal angle constructing champ of my high school.”
She grinned, her cool facade melting under his goofy boast. And Will reached out for Sharon’s math book, hoping that a few diagrams would, er, refresh his memory about yet another arcane secret from the wonderful world of geometry.
* * *
It was later. Sharon and Beth were asleep. A timid rain began throwing drops against the windows, as if it wanted to come in. The news was on the TV. Will, coming out of the shower, missed the first story.
“Miss anything important?” Will said.
Becca shook her head. “No. Just — another murder. Someone else was killed — another woman cut up in the city.”
Will stopped rubbing at his wet hair. “Wow. How many is that, eight — ?”
“Nine,” Becca said. “And this one wasn’t a hooker. Just a secretary, working late.”
“Poor girl,” he said.
Will heard the bumptious news anchor team promise more updates on the City Slasher, their station’s own pet name for the madman.
But afterward only the fat weatherman came on, joking about even more rain so don’t forget your umbrellas .
.
. it was going to be real nasty in the tri-state area.
Then the dull-eyed sports reporter grimly reported the Mets’ loss of the sixth play-off game at San Francisco. The news closed with a syrupy story on a man who raised puppies and gives them away to poor city kids.
There was nothing more. No update. Becca shut the tube off. And then they were both lying in bed, reading books.
Except that Will wasn’t reading.
He put down his book, an overheated true crime story, a love triangle involving an overheated teacher and a possessive young heiress.
A nicely lurid tale of murder and lust in Westchester.
Becca looked over
“What’s wrong?” she said.
He looked at her. “I think I’ll try calling again,” he said, smiling.
He saw her check the clock. It was 11: 15. “What time there? Eight-fifteen, seven-fifteen?”
Will slid out of bed. The air was cold and unfriendly. He went to his bureau and pulled out a pair of socks. He threw on his ratty robe that he just couldn’t part with. It was too warm and comfortable. Reassuring in a disposable world.
“It’s eight-fifteen there. I’ll just try one more time,” he said. “Then I’ll say the hell with it. Whalen can call me back if he wants to.”
Becca nodded. “It’s funny. He said he’d be in. That he wanted to talk with you.” Becca chewed her lip. “He sounded desperate.”
“Right,” Will said. And he went out the door and downstairs to his office. He threw on the living room light. The room looked startled by his intrusion.
He thought about getting a beer. But then he knew he’d be up half the night while his kidneys processed it.
He sat behind his desk and picked up the phone
He dialed Whalen’s number.
And he listened to it ring and ring.
Knowing that no one was going to answer.
And how do I know that? he wondered. What the hell makes me think that?