then started another drawing.
It was fully dark outside by the time Kate had finished sketching Mrs. Valentine, Mr. Valentine, the other woman at the drinks party (she’d forgotten her name), and, finally, a picture of George Daniels. She’d never stopped drawing him. A number of counselors had suggested that it wasn’t healthy to dwell on his likeness, but she couldn’t help herself. He was always somewhere in her head, and it felt good to pull him from inside of her and put him on the page. In today’s picture, she drew him as she’d seen him in her recent dream, his mouth toothless and grinning.
It was a good drawing, the best she’d done that day. She used the flat of her thumb to smudge the forehead lines, and felt a sharp prick where she still had the splinter from the storage unit door. She’d forgotten all about it, and took a look, the swollen skin around the splinter now a pinkish red. She went to the kitchen and washed the charcoal off her hands, then searched through drawers until she found a safety pin and a book of matches. She burned the sharp tip of the pin, then returned to the living room, where the light was better. There, she picked at the opening in her thumb, widening the ragged skin so that she could see the splinter and prod at it with the pin. It was pretty deep. She sucked on it, tasting her own blood, but it didn’t budge. She’d have to look for tweezers, but the thought exhausted her. What would happen if you left a splinter in your thumb? Would it eventually work its way out on its own, or would it stay there forever and become a part of you?
A scratching sound from the kitchen startled her. She’d let Sanders out, hadn’t she? She put the safety pin down on her sketchbook, got up, and returned to the kitchen. She heard the sound again. It was coming from the door that led to the basement—Sanders again, having looped around through the basement. She opened the door, and there was Alan, holding his palms toward her, his eyes bleary and wild looking. “Please let me in,” he slurred, taking a step into the kitchen before Kate could slam the door.
Chapter 24
Alan wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten so drunk, but it had happened, almost accidentally, and now he was walking back through the darkness, determined to see Kate, even if she didn’t want to see him.
After encountering Jack on Brimmer Street earlier in the day and hearing from him that he thought Corbin Dell had murdered Audrey Marshall, Jack had become chatty, suggesting they go somewhere and talk more. Alan, more than anything, wanted to turn around and go home, in hopes that he’d spot Kate in the courtyard, but decided instead to spend some time hearing what Jack had to say. Alan suggested St. Stephen’s. When they got there, settling into one of the high-backed booths, Alan ordered a large Coke and Jack ordered a bottle of Heineken. The waitress spun on her heels to get their drinks, and Jack immediately started talking about a woman named Rachael Chess, who had been found murdered on a beach in New Essex a few years earlier.
“She was mutilated,” Jack said, “just like Audrey was.” His voice cracked every time he said Audrey’s name.
“How did you hear that Audrey was mutilated?” Alan asked.
“It’s all over the Web, and so I started to search other cases, other cases where someone had been cut down the middle, sliced open, and I found Rachael Chess.”
“And what does she have to do with Corbin Dell?” Alan was interested in what Jack had to say, but also a little wary. Jack was becoming increasingly animated, almost manic, in the way he was talking. The waitress returned with their drinks. Jack took a long pull from his bottle of beer.
“Get this,” he said, setting down the beer hard enough that foam spilled over its lip and rolled down its side. “Corbin Dell used to live in New Essex, and his mother still does. She has a place right on the beach—”
“How do you know all this?”
“Audrey told me some, and some of it I just looked up online. That’s not the point, though. The point is that Rachael Chess’s parents also lived in New Essex, not right on the beach, but close. It’s how Corbin and Rachael met, obviously. He’s a psychopath. Audrey told