Starling’s cheek stung. She didn’t touch it, if it was bleeding she didn’t want her hands slick.
The moaning from the well came again, Catherine talking, crying. Starling had to wait. She couldn’t answer Catherine. She couldn’t say anything or move.
Mr. Gumb’s invisible light played on the ceiling. He tried to move it and he couldn’t, any more than he could move his head. A great Malaysian Luna Moth passing close beneath the ceiling picked up the infrared and came down, circled, lit on the light. The pulsing shadows of its wings, enormous on the ceiling, were visible only to Mr. Gumb.
Over the sucking in the dark, Starling heard Mr. Gumb’s ghastly voice, choking: “How … does … it feel … to be … so beautiful?”
And then another sound. A gurgle, a rattle and the whistling stopped.
Starling knew that sound too. She’d heard it once before, at the hospital when her father died.
She felt for the edge of the table and got to her feet. Feeling her way along, going toward the sounds of Catherine, she found the stairwell and climbed the stairs in the dark.
It seemed to take a long time. There was a candle in the kitchen drawer. With it she found the fuse box beside the stairs, jumped when the lights came on. To get to the fuse box and shut off the lights, he must have left the basement another way and come down again behind her.
>
Starling had to be positive he was dead. She waited until her eyes were well adjusted to the light before she went back in the workroom, and then she was careful. She could see his naked feet and legs sticking out from under the worktable. She kept her eyes on the hand beside the gun until she kicked the gun away. His eyes were open. He was dead, shot through the right side of the chest, thick blood under him. He had put on some of his things from the armoire and she couldn’t look at him long.
She went to the sink, put the Magnum on the drainboard and ran cold water on her wrists, wiped her face with her wet hand. No blood. Moths batted at the mesh around the lights. She had to step around the body to retrieve the Python.
At the well she said, “Catherine, he’s dead. He can’t hurt you. I’m going upstairs and call—”
“No! GET ME OUT. GET ME OUT. GET ME OUT.”
“Look here. He’s dead. This is his gun. Remember it? I’m going to call the police and the fire department. I’m afraid to hoist you out myself, you might fall. Soon as I call them I’ll come back down and wait with you. Okay? Okay. Try to shut that dog up. Okay? Okay.”
* * *
The local television crews arrived just after the fire department and before the Belvedere police. The fire captain, angered at the glare from the lights, drove the television crews back up the stairs and out of the basement while he rigged a pipe frame to hoist out Catherine Martin, not trusting Mr. Gumb’s hook in the ceiling joist. A fireman went down into the well and put her in the rescue chair. Catherine came out holding the dog, kept the dog in the ambulance.
They drew the line on dogs at the hospital and wouldn’t let the dog in. A fireman, instructed to drop it off at the animal shelter, took it home with him instead.
CHAPTER 57
There were about fifty people at National Airport in Washington, meeting the red-eye flight from Columbus, Ohio. Most of them were meeting relatives and they looked sleepy and grumpy enough, with their shirttails sticking out below their jackets.
From the crowd, Ardelia Mapp had a chance to look Starling over as she came off the plane. Starling was pasty, dark under the eyes. Some black grains of gunpowder were in her cheek. Starling spotted Mapp and they hugged.
“Hey, Sport,” Mapp said. “You check anything?”
Starling shook her head.
“Jeff’s outside in the van. Let’s go home.”
Jack Crawford was outside too, his car parked behind the van in the limousine lane. He’d had Bella’s relatives all night.
“I…” he started. “You know what you did. You hit a home run, kid.” He touched her cheek. “What’s this?”
“Burnt gunpowder. The doctor said it’ll work out by itself in a couple of days—better than digging for it.”
Crawford took her to him and held her very tight for a moment, just a moment, and then put her away from him and kissed her on the forehead. “You know what you did,” he said again. “Go home. Go to sleep. Sleep in. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The new surveillance van was comfortable, designed for long stakeouts. Starling and Mapp rode in the big chairs in the back.
Without Jack Crawford in the van, Jeff drove a little harder. They made good time toward Quantico.
Starling rode with her eyes closed. After a couple of miles, Mapp nudged her knee. Mapp had opened two short-bottle Cokes. She handed Starling a Coke and took a half-pint of Jack Daniel’s out of her purse.