Ride the lightning

XX

She hadn't been dead long when Nudger got there.

He saw from the top of the stairs that the door to Edna Fine's apartment was open a few inches, and a heavy dread fell through him, making him walk slower, as if his feet were mired in mud.

When he reached the door he stood motionless in the hall and listened for a moment. The only noise from inside the apartment was a soft and rhythmic sighing sound.

His stomach growled and told him to move one direction or the other. He was in or he was out.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Immediately his gaze fixed on the body. It had been mutilated horribly, beaten, twisted. One of the limbs had been wrenched off by terrible force and lay on the floor near the corner of the sofa.

On the other corner sat Edna Fine. The sound Nudger had heard was her soft and regular sobbing. She held Artemas close to her with almost maternal protection, refusing to look again at the abused corpse of Matilda. Artemas turned his feline head and stared obliquely at Nudger, as if bored by the carnage around him, untouched by Matilda's death. Matilda's yellowish fur was all over the room. A small tuft of it was snagged in the side of Edna Fine's hair, near her ear. Nudger decided not to tell her about it.

What he said was, "Excuse me," and found his way to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet bowl.

After a few minutes he straightened, flushed the toilet, then stood at the washbasin and ran cold water over his wrists. Then he rinsed out his mouth, washed his pallid face, and returned to the living room.

He swallowed several times and tried to ignore the unique and unmistakable odor of fresh blood. He wished he could open a window, but he remembered that they were sealed shut. Breathing shallowly but regularly, he waited for his stomach to adjust and be still.

Edna Fine hadn't moved.

"I was only down in the laundry room about fifteen minutes," she said. "When I came back upstairs, I found… this." She looked at the walls, the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but at the mutilated body of her pet on the floor.

"Was your door locked?"

"Yes. I mean, I'm not sure. I think so."

Nudger walked over and examined the door. There were faint scratches on the doorjamb around the latch, as if the lock might have been slipped by plastic or a thin strip of metal. It wouldn't have taken much effort or expertise to get past the apartment's mass-produced and ineffectual lock.

He returned to Edna Fine and rested a hand on her bony shoulder. Was she trembling, or was the unsteadiness in his hand? Nudger always felt helpless, awkward, in the presence of grief. And the intensity of this grief was almost like that of a mother who had lost a child.

"Can I do anything?" he asked. "Get you anything?"

Edna Fine shook her head no. She was sitting motionless now, still hugging Artemas the survivor between her scrawny breasts. Artemas lay coiled in her grip patiently, putting aside feline restlessness for a while, as if sensing that she needed him and granting her a reluctant favor.

"I'll phone the Humane Society," Nudger said.

Edna Fine nodded.

She sat with her eyes closed as Nudger called the Humane Society and arranged for them to drive out and pick up Matilda's remains. When he explained the situation, the woman on the phone said they would have someone there immediately. Animal lovers understood the depth of this grief.

"The Humane Society cremates dead animals," Edna Fine said quietly.

Nudger nodded. "It's the best way."

"Perhaps."

A pet could be a vital factor in the life of a woman like Edna Fine. She was becoming emotionless now, going into mild shock so she could accommodate the vision of what had been waiting for her when she'd walked back into her apartment with her laundry. It would be a long time before the vivid color and savagery of that scene ceased to bedevil her. Sometimes nightmares turn out to be real and irrepressible no matter how much the mind denies them. Somebody had torn apart Matilda in a way that suggested he'd enjoyed it.

"Do you want me to wait here with you?" Nudger asked.

"No. Thanks for offering, though." Still the flat, emotionless voice. She peered myopically at Nudger with her small, reddened eyes. "This is a warning, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who did it?"

"I think so. But we could never prove it."

She delicately dabbed at her nose with a knuckle. "I suppose not. That's the way society seems to work these days. People do things to other people who can't prove it. It's like a game the victims don't realize they're playing until it's too late."

"Do you want me to phone the police?"

Now she did look at what was left of her affectionate and trusting Matilda. Edna Fine's long body quaked as if a cold wind had passed over it.

"No," she said, and Nudger knew he'd lost her.

"Has Randy Gantner been here to talk to you?" he asked.

"Yesterday," she said. "He told me you were talking to the witnesses, trying to get them to change their stories. He wanted to know what I'd told you, if I was still sure about what I'd seen."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I was sure. But after he left I began thinking about that night, what I saw from the window."

"Did he borrow your phone?"

Edna Fine looked sharply up at him, startled; Nudger the psychic. "Yes, he did. He said he had to make an important call that couldn't wait. He suggested it was private, so I went into the other room while he talked."

Nudger went to the phone and unscrewed the mouthpiece. He found the bug immediately and removed it, dropped it in his pocket.

"What's that?" Edna Fine asked.

"An electronic device that transmits your telephone conversations. Someone had your phone tapped and knew you called me."

"Randy Gantner?"

"Probably him and others," Nudger said.

"But, why?…"

"Somebody-it seems like everybody-wants to be sure Curtis Colt dies Saturday."

"Then Gantner did this to Matilda?"

"Maybe," Nudger said. Or maybe it was the work of the big man who liked to break things, especially if they were alive.

"A warning…" Edna Fine repeated, as if finally accepting the reality, a constant terror she must incorporate into her day-to-day living. It was a debilitating apprehension shared by victims of brutality, and by the witnesses and indirect casualties of violence.

"You were going to tell me something about the liquor- store murder," Nudger said, still hoping.

She sat motionless, as if she hadn't heard.

"Edna?…"

"I can't, Mr. Nudger." She clutched Artemas to her. "Not now. I really can't." Artemas began to squirm.

Nudger knew Edna Fine would never talk now. Whatever opportunity had existed was gone.

He told her he understood. And he did understand. He knew about the crippling effect of fear that fed on love destroyed. And the monster that had killed and torn Matilda knew about it, too. Had used it to silence Edna Fine.

Nudger didn't say anything else, but he stayed with her until the Humane Society attendant arrived. Then he left as quickly as possible. The presence of violent death, human or animal, sickened and frightened him.

Down on the sidewalk, he forced himself to chew and swallow two antacid tablets. He didn't feel like eating them, but he might be glad later that he had.

He knew that Edna Fine was right. The grotesque thing left on the carpet upstairs was a warning. And one meant not just for her.