her jacket pocket to point at the last door. “I’m pretty sure he’s in there. Open it.”
I did, and sure enough, Donald Marsden was there, sprawled on a bed so big it looked like a triple, maybe even a quadruple, instead of a double. He was a quadruple himself, Liz had been right about that. To my child’s eyes, the bulk of him was almost hallucinatory. A good suit might have disguised at least some of his flab, but he wasn’t wearing a suit. He was wearing a pair of gigantic boxer shorts and nothing else. His immense girth, jumbo man-breasts, and flabby arms were crisscrossed with shallow cuts. His full moon of a face was bruised and one eye was swollen shut. There was a weird thing stuck in his mouth that I later learned (on one of those websites you don’t want your mom to know about) was a ball-gag. His wrists had been handcuffed to the top bedposts. Liz must have only brought two pairs of cuffs, because his ankles had been duct-taped to the bottom posts. She must have used a roll for each one.
“Behold the man of the house,” Liz said.
His good eye blinked. You would say I should have known from the cuffs and the duct tape. I should have known because some of the cuts were still oozing. But I didn’t. I was in shock and I didn’t. Not until that single blink.
“He’s alive!”
“I can fix that,” Liz said. She took the gun out of her coat pocket and shot him in the head.
61
Blood and brains spattered the wall behind him. I screamed and ran out of the room, down the stairs, out the door, past Teddy, and down the hill. I ran all the way to Renfield. All of this in one second. Then Liz wrapped her arms around me.
“Steady, kiddo. Stead—”
I punched her in the stomach and heard her woof out a surprised breath. Then I was whirled and my arm was twisted up behind me. It hurt like blue fuck and I screamed some more. All of a sudden my feet were no longer holding me up. She’d swept them right out from under me and I went on my knees, yelling my head off with my arm twisted up so high that my wrist was touching my shoulderblade.
“Shut up!” Her voice, little more than a growl, was in my ear. This was the woman who had once played Matchbox cars with me, both of us down on our knees while my mother stirred spaghetti sauce in the kitchen, listening to oldies on Pandora. “Quit that squalling and I’ll let you go!”
I did and she did. Now I was on my hands and knees, staring down at the rug, shaking all over.
“On your feet, Jamie.”
I managed to do it, but I kept looking at the rug. I didn’t want to look at the fat man with the top of his head gone.
“Is he here?”
I stared at the rug and said nothing. My hair was in my eyes. My shoulder throbbed.
“Is he here? Look around!”
I raised my head, hearing my neck creak as I did it. Instead of looking directly at Marsden—although I could still see him, he was too big to miss—I looked at the table beside his bed. There was a cluster of pill bottles on it. There was also a fat sandwich and a bottle of spring water.
“Is he here?” She slapped me on the back of my head.
I scoped the room. There was nobody but us and the fat man’s corpse. Now I’d seen two men shot in the head. Therriault had been bad, but at least I hadn’t had to watch him die.
“No one,” I said.
“Why not? Why isn’t he here?” She sounded frantic. I couldn’t think much then, I was too fucking terrified. It was only later, replaying that endless five minutes in Marsden’s room, that I realized she was doubting the whole thing. In spite of Regis Thomas and his book, in spite of the bomb in the supermarket, she was afraid I couldn’t see dead people at all, and she’d killed the only person who knew where that stash of pills was hidden.
“I don’t know. I was never where someone actually died. Maybe…maybe it takes awhile. I don’t know, Liz.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll wait.”
“Not in here, okay? Please, Liz, not where I have to look at him.”
“In the hall, then. If I let go of you, are you going to be good?”
“Yes.”
“Not going