In the night room Page 0,37

key, on account of that room is locked right now.

Willy could barely hear him. She was still reeling from the hours subtracted from her day. Everything else was an irrelevance, a minor problem. Hours had not been taken from her; she had lost them, because she was cuckoo, bats, looney tunes.

Giles had wandered over. Mud was spattered across his beautiful shoes. —And it’s locked for a reason, Santolini. Mr. Faber values his privacy very highly. Can’t you do something from the outside?

—What, you want me to pull that shit out? Sorry, missus.

—Go in and open the door, Giles, Willy said, wanting to put an end to all this blather.

—I’m sorry, but I can’t do that without authorization from Mr. Faber.

—Mr. Faber won’t be very happy with you if you let his office get wrecked any more than it already is. Let’s get out of the rain.

—This is on your head, Willy.

He spun around and proceeded toward the garage with Willy immediately behind him. Rocky and Vince Santolini trotted off to pick up power saws and rolls of plastic sheeting.

Willy whispered, Did I fall asleep in the car?

—How would I know? Ask yourself how much you had to drink.

Expressing his opinion of the enterprise by leaving muddy footprints on the carpets, Coverley refused to say any more as he marched up the big central staircase, wheeled across the landing, took the next, narrower flight up, and positioned himself in front of the office door. Through its thick, dark wood came the sound of a high wind and the rattling of leaves. He pulled a baseball-sized key ring from his coat pocket, selected a key, held it up in front of Willy, and challenged her with a glare.

—I take no responsibility for this. Coverley inserted the key into the lock and twisted it. The door flung itself open on a blast of wind and struck the startled Coverley full in the face. Rainwater and torn leaves flew past him.

—Christ. Blood dripped from behind the hand Coverley held over his nose. I’m not going to stand here and bleed to death. He moved aside, with an ironic gesture of welcome.

The Santolinis brushed past Willy and went immediately to work in the chaos of Faber’s lair. Saws roaring like motorboat engines, they climbed over the tangle of branches protruding through the roof and the destroyed window frame. Wood chips and sawdust flew up around them as they worked.

—This was your idea, you deal with it, Coverley said. A fat streamlet of blood was running down over his chin and dripping onto his shirt.

—I’ll drive you to the hospital, if you like.

—Just make sure these clowns don’t steal anything. He slipped away.

Willy entered Mitchell’s office with hesitant footsteps and a distinct feeling of trespass. A smell of burnt wood that somehow reminded her of Christmas came from the Santolinis’ side of the room. The floor and huge rectangular Persian rug were covered with wet and far-flung papers, and in the absence of anything else to do, Willy began picking these up. Hunkering down to scoop up a long, spilled-out sheaf of documents, she groaned at the mess before her and put out a hand to steady herself. Then her eyes fell upon a flat, intricately carved wooden box propped open on its hinged top. Either the wind or one of the invading branches had wiped it from its accustomed surface and sent it flying. Beneath the box lay a scattering of photographs. Willy duckwalked over to the box, closed its top, and set it down next to her right foot. When she reached out for the photographs, a stray breeze caused them to stir and flutter as if suddenly come to life. Willy caught one in its ascent from the deep reds and inky blues of the densely patterned rug and turned it over to look at its surface. What in the world is Mitchell doing with a picture of Jim Patrick? she wondered, only mildly intrigued by the mystery of her first husband’s photograph turning up in her fiancé’s office.

It was not until her surprise at the unexpected sight of her first husband’s face began to recede that she was able to take in what had happened to his body. In the photograph, Jim Patrick’s corpse lay on stony soil beside the car in which his charred body, and Holly’s, had been found. Three bullets had entered his body, and a great deal of blood lay pooled around it. Then she saw that his