فصل 49

CHAPTER 49

On the morning of the fourth day, Mr. Gumb was ready to harvest the hide.

He came in from shopping with the last things he needed, and it was hard to keep from running down the basement stairs. In the studio he unpacked his shopping bags, new bias seam-binding, panels of stretchy Lycra to go under the plackets, a box of kosher salt. He had forgotten nothing.

In the workroom, he laid out his knives on a clean towel beside the long sinks. The knives were four: a sway-backed skinning knife, a delicate drop-point caper that perfectly followed the curve of the index finger in close places, a scalpel for the closest work, and a World War I–era bayonet. The rolled edge of the bayonet is the finest tool for fleshing a hide without tearing it.

In addition he had a Strycker autopsy saw, which he hardly ever used and regretted buying.

Now he greased the head of a wig stand, packed coarse salt over the grease and set the stand in a shallow drip pan. Playfully he tweaked the nose on the face of the wig stand and blew it a kiss.

It was hard to behave in a responsible manner—he wanted to fly about the room like Danny Kaye. He laughed and blew a moth away from his face with a gentle puff of air.

Time to start the aquarium pumps in his fresh tanks of solution. Oh, was there a nice chrysalis buried in the humus in the cage? He poked with his finger. Yes, there was.

The pistol, now.

The problem of killing this one had perplexed Mr. Gumb for days. Hanging her was out because he didn’t want the pectoral mottling, and besides, he couldn’t risk the knot tearing her behind the ear.

Mr. Gumb had learned from each of his previous efforts, sometimes painfully. He was determined to avoid some of the nightmares he’d gone through before. One cardinal principle: no matter how weak from hunger or faint with fright, they always fought you when they saw the apparatus.

He had in the past hunted young women through the blacked-out basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into corners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. Always they became disoriented, lost their balance, ran into things. He could stand in absolute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee so they could still crawl.

That was childish and a waste. They were useless afterward and he had quit doing it altogether.

In his current project, he had offered showers upstairs to the first three, before he booted them down the staircase with a noose around their necks—no problem. But the fourth had been a disaster. He’d had to use the pistol in the bathroom and it had taken an hour to clean up. He thought about the girl, wet, goosebumps on her, and how she shivered when he cocked the pistol. He liked to cock it, snick snick, one big bang and no more racket.

He liked his pistol, and well he should, because it was a very handsome piece, a stainless steel Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. All Python actions are tuned at the Colt custom shop, and this one was a pleasure to feel. He cocked it now and squeezed it off, catching the hammer with his thumb. He loaded the Python and put it on the workroom counter.

Mr. Gumb wanted very much to offer this one a shampoo, because he wanted to watch it comb out the hair. He could learn much for his own grooming about how the hair lay on the head. But this one was tall and probably strong. This one was too rare to risk having to waste the whole thing with gunshot wounds.

No, he’d get his hoisting tackle from the bathroom, offer her a bath, and when she had put herself securely in the hoisting sling he’d bring her halfway up the shaft of the oubliette and shoot her several times low in the spine. When she lost consciousness he could do the rest with chloroform.

That’s it. He’d go upstairs now and get out of his clothes. He’d wake up Precious and watch his video with her and then go to work, naked in the warm basement, naked as the day he was born.

He felt almost giddy going up the stairs. Quickly out of his clothes and into his robe. He plugged in his videocassette.

“Precious, come on Precious. Busybusy day. Come on, Sweetheart.” He’d have to shut her up here in the upstairs bedroom while he got through with the noisy part in the basement—she hated the noise and got terribly upset. To keep her occupied, he’d gotten her a whole box of Chew-eez while he was out shopping.

“Precious.” When she didn’t come, he called in the hall, “Precious!” and then in the kitchen, and in the basement, “Precious!” When he called at the door of the oubliette room, he got an answer: “She’s down here you son of a bitch,” Catherine Martin said.

Mr. Gumb sickened all over in a plunge of fear for Precious. Then rage tightened him again and, fists against the sides of his head, he pressed his forehead into the doorframe and tried to get hold of himself. One sound between a retch and a groan escaped him and the little dog answered with a yip.

He went to the workroom and got his pistol.

The string to the sanitation bucket was broken. He still wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Last time the string was broken, he’d assumed she’d broken it in an absurd attempt to climb. They had tried to climb it before—they had done every fool thing imaginable.

He leaned over the opening, his voice carefully controlled.

“Precious, are you all right? Answer me.”

Catherine pinched the dog’s plump behind. It yipped and paid her back with a nip on the arm.

“How’s that?” Catherine said.

It seemed very unnatural to Mr. Gumb to speak to Catherine in this way, but he overcame his distaste.

“I’ll lower a basket. You’ll put her in it.”

“You’ll lower a telephone or I’ll have to break her neck. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt this little dog. Just give me the telephone.” Mr. Gumb brought the pistol up. Catherine saw the muzzle extending past the light. She crouched, holding the dog above her, weaving it between her and the gun. She heard him cock the pistol.

“You shoot motherfucker you better kill me quick or I’ll break her fucking neck. I swear to God.” She put the dog under her arm, put her hand around its muzzle, raised its head. “Back off, you son of a bitch.” The little dog whined. The gun withdrew.

Catherine brushed the hair back from her wet forehead with her free hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said. “Just lower me a phone. I want a live phone. You can go away, I don’t care about you, I never saw you. I’ll take good care of Precious.” “No.”

“I’ll see she has everything. Think about her welfare, not just yourself. You shoot in here, she’ll be deaf whatever happens. All I want’s a live telephone. Get a long extension, get five or six and clip them together—they come with the connections on the ends—and lower it down here. I’d air-freight you the dog anywhere. My family has dogs. My mother loves dogs. You can run, I don’t care what you do.” “You won’t get any more water, you’ve had your last water.”

“She won’t get any either, and I won’t give her any from my water bottle. I’m sorry to tell you, I think her leg’s broken.” This was a lie—the little dog, along with the baited bucket, had fallen onto Catherine and it was Catherine who suffered a scratched cheek from the dog’s scrabbling claws. She couldn’t put it down or he’d see it didn’t limp. “She’s in pain. Her leg’s all crooked and she’s trying to lick it. It just makes me sick,” Catherine lied. “I’ve got to get her to a vet.” Mr. Gumb’s groan of rage and anguish made the little dog cry. “You think she’s in pain,” Mr. Gumb said. “You don’t know what pain is. You hurt her and I’ll scald you.” When she heard him pounding up the stairs Catherine Martin sat down, shaken by gross jerks in her arms and legs. She couldn’t hold the dog, she couldn’t hold her water, she couldn’t hold anything.

When the little dog climbed into her lap she hugged it, grateful for the warmth.