Locked Doors

62

THE inside of the wicker clothes hamper smelled of fishguts and mildew. Beth had burrowed down into the laundry, covering herself in underwear and panties and damp jeans and a blanket that stunk of gasoline.

The old man was no longer keening and above the distant moan of sirens she could hear hallway doors opening and closing.

Having managed to put the lid on the hamper from inside, her only view of the master bedroom was through a gap in the wicker. But there was little to see. A blue nightlight by the doorway provided the sole illumination.

Footsteps stopped behind the door.

Doorknob turning.

Sirens closing in.

Stay alive one more minute and you get to live, see your children again. He can’t stay once the police are here.

The bedroom door swung open.

“Elizabeth.”

A voice without a shard of emotion.

Through the wicker she could see his legs in the electricblue glow of the nightlight.

“We don’t have much time. Come on.”

The flashing lights of the ambulance passed through the bedroom’s only window, bursts of vermilion streaking across the walls. She could hear the rocks crunching under its tires as it sped down the dirt road toward the saltbox.

“I’m just gonna cut your throat and leave. You’ll be dead in a minute tops. I think that’s very reasonable.”

Beth watched him walk past the hamper, kneel down, and glance under the bed. He rose, moved toward the adjoining bathroom, disappeared inside.

Her heart banging.

Sirens blistering the frozen November night outside.

Reaching out of the clothes, hands on the wicker lid, she heard him rip the shower curtain from its rings.

Go now. Climb out. Go.

A cabinet under the sink opened and closed.

She started to lift the lid when his footsteps reentered the bedroom.

Walk past. Please just go. Leave. Run away. They’ll catch you.

The ambulance parked in front of the house. She could hear its engine, doors opening, slamming.

The man sighed and rushed past the hamper to the doorway.

Oh yes thank you God thank

He stopped abruptly in the threshold.

Paramedics pounding on the front door.

“Almost,” he said. “Almost.”

And he spun around and moved toward the hamper, Beth peering up through the stench of strangers’ laundry as the lid disappeared.

The man with long black hair gazed down at her and smiled, flashing lights rouging his pale and bloodless face.

The voices of the paramedics reached them, yelling for someone to unlock the front door.

What Beth heard next was the sound the blade made, moving in and out of her- footsteps in squishy mud.

He did the work with the casual efficiency he used to clean fish, then put the lid back on and ran out of the bedroom.

Beth heard a window break across the hall. He was escaping through the backyard.

Her heart sputtered, trying to beat, failing, the pain tempered by the expanding vacuum the life left as it rushed warmly and fast out of her throat.

It occurred to her that she couldn’t breathe but she was gone before it mattered.