Doll's Eyes
- Автор: Wood Bari
- Год: 1993
- Язык: английский
- Год: Morrow
- ISBN: 9780688124403
- Жанр: Маньяки
Электронная книга - «Doll's Eyes». Краткое содержание книги:
A clairvoyant woman involuntarily witnesses a grisly murder in the woods of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York and is inexorably drawn into the violent, horrifying web of a genius serial killer's dementia.
“You’re psychic; you can go places, see things no one else can... and that’s fabulous and awesome and most of all useful.”
Eve Tilden Dodd Klein, thirty-something scion of a rich Connecticut family, has inherited a powerful and fearsome legacy from her mother: clairvoyance. But she doesn’t see her power as fabulous or awesome or useful or anything except a curse that has robbed her of her emotional peace and driven her husband away. She follows him to a small town in the Adirondacks in an attempt at reconciliation, and, through the hated clairvoyance, “witnesses” a murder in the woods. She is the only one who’s seen the killing, and is inexorably drawn into the violent, horrifying web of the killer’s dementia. Police Lieutenant Dave Latovsky, the tough but charming local cop who has been tracking the murderer, has no leads—until Eve gives him a fragment of a description. “His eyes are light brown. Same color as his hair. And they’re empty. Never saw eyes like that—empty... dead... glassy. Like a doll’s eyes.” Those words lead Detective Latovsky closer to the killer, and in turn, the killer closer to Eve. Before long, the price of Eve’s power may prove too high. “He’s looking for me. Hunting for me.” But both Eve and Latovsky are wrong about why — and can’t imagine what the killer with doll’s eyes would do if he found her.
It wasn’t. She wasn’t “there,” wherever that was. She was an incorporeal observer to something that had happened or would happen; nothing she saw could hurt her, but it was scaring her anyway. Her color was ghastly, her eyelids fluttered like moth wings, and he didn’t know what to do. He took hold of her icy hand but she wrenched it away from him and, with her eyes still closed, she grabbed the little recorder in both hands, raised it over her head like a basketball, and pitched it straight at him. He ducked and it flew past him, hit the lamp on the table behind him, and fell to the floor with a crack. The lamp teetered, then fell, and the crystal base shattered.
The doors slammed into the walls and Frances Tilden and her butler came in. They must’ve been right outside listening and heard the lamp fall.
Simms rushed across the room. Eve’s head swung back, her eyes opened and looked blindly at the ceiling. Then her body started to topple forward out of the chair and Latovsky reached for her.
“Don’t touch her,” the aunt snapped, and Simms got between him and Eve and eased her back in the chair.
“I’ll take it from here, Lieutenant,” he said pleasantly.
Simms cupped her head with his hand and tilted the glass to her lips. Some brandy went into her mouth, more ran down her chin, but Latovsky saw her throat work as she swallowed. Simms fed her a little more and her color went from green to something approximating flesh. She opened her eyes and looked at Simms, then at Latovsky.
“I saw him,” she choked, “this time I saw him.”
She tried to take the glass from Simms, but he held it away. “Not yet,” he said. “Be patient.” He fed her more in tiny sips, while the aunt paced behind the couch, twisting her hands together so the diamond sent dots of the prism across the room.
“I think we should call Dr. Rubin.”
“No,” Eve croaked, “no.”
She reached for the glass again, and Simms let her have it. She took a big gulp and choked, then another and it went down all right. She looked better, at least as well as she had when she’d walked into the room before.
Three more swallows and she’d finished the glass. Simms brought the smoked-glass bottle on which Latovsky saw the word Napoleon and refilled the glass. At this rate, she’d be plastered, Latovsky thought.
She drank, then looked at him again and said, “This time I saw him, I really saw him, Dave.”
The gates were open and Riley noticed the alarm panel on one of the pillars was unlit; it must be unarmed during the day. He turned in, went up the drive to the curve around the maple, saw the house with Latovsky’s car parked in front of it and stopped the Camry.
He wasn’t shocked by the size of the place; he’d known what to expect from the stone pillars, plaque, wrought-iron gates, and other mansions that he’d gotten glimpses of nearby.
Latovsky must have had a stupendously good reason to come here the day after the doctor’s murder and three days after Abigail Reese’s. Someone in that house knew something crucial about one of the cases.
But Latovsky was not going to be happy to see him and people who lived in houses like this didn’t talk to the press. Ringing the bell and asking for Lieutenant Latovsky or for an interview with the lady or gentleman of the house wasn’t going to work.
“When in doubt, find a bartender,” Trennant had told him a long time ago. “People tell their bartender more than they tell their priest, and bartenders talk. ’Specially if it’s a man, because men gossip more than women. One of those facts of life no one likes to face.” A bartender.
It was eleven Monday morning, but even here, in this rich, lovely, isolated corner of southern New England, there’d be a bar open. He backed and filled and turned around quickly, to get away before anyone looked out one of the hundred or so windows on this side and saw him.
“He’s tall... but I told you that before,” Eve said. Her voice was thick from the brandy. “Maybe six feet, but I think a little less. Hair’s light brown, etcetera”—she grinned a little—“and he’s got regular features, straight nose, longish face, nice mouth. He’d be handsome, except for his eyes.”
“What about his eyes?”
“Light brown, too. Same color as his hair.” She took another deep swallow of the brandy. “And they’re... empty. Never saw eyes that—empty... dead... glassy. Like a doll’s eyes.” She shivered, and the aunt said, “I think we should call—
“Doll’s eyes,” Eve murmured, and finished the brandy. Simms poured again.
“Go on,” Latovsky said.
She looked at him blearily. “That’s it.”
“Can you still see him? I mean in your mind’s eye?”
She nodded.
“Good. I can have an artist here in a few hours.”
“No. No artist.”
“But how else... ?”
“No artist, no nothing,” she said. “It’s over.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t tell you any more, and I’m not going to describe him to an artist or anyone else, Dave. I also mean—I’m sorry—but I mean you have to leave here now and not come back or call or...”—another swallow of brandy—“or anything else,” she said.
“Why!”
“Because you were wrong, It wasn’t the tape of himself the killer took, it was the tape of me Bunner made on Saturday. And the killer took it because he’s looking for me. Hunting for me... and I just saw him find me.”
The sun was high when Latovsky left the house, and it was hot. Simms closed the door on both of them and said, “Let’s take a walk, Lieutenant.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve got to talk and it’s too hot to sit in the car. Leave the little recorder so you don’t have to carry it.”
Obediently, Latovsky opened the Olds’s door and put the recorder on the seat. The crack it had gotten when it hit the floor had widened and the buttons were loose. It was beyond repair, but it was old; Bunner should’ve gotten a new one long ago. Too late now, he thought, and tears stung his eyes. He bowed his head over the recorder to hide his face from Simms.
“I broke his recorder,” she’d cried when she’d seen it. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”
That was the last thing she’d said to him or probably ever would, because right before that she’d told him to get out. “You’re the only link between me and the killer. If he finds me it’ll be because of you.”
“What about Lucci?” Latovsky had croaked.
“He only knows my last name, not who or where I am... unless you told him. Did you?” She looked terrified.
“No.”
“Then it’s you. If he finds me it’ll be because of you. And he will find me unless you do what I ask.”
“But...”
“No buts, Dave. You didn’t see those eyes, I did.”
“Eyes,” he’d said tonelessly. Dead, glassy doll’s eyes.
“I saw them in a mirror,” she had said, very thickly now as she worked on the fourth brandy, “a compact or rearview mirror. He was behind me, looking at me in it... he’d caught me.” She shivered all over and drained the glass. “So you’ll go, please. And swear... swear you won’t come back or call... or anything. Please—swear.”
He’d done it, forcing words out through lips that felt like slabs of liver. Then she had nodded, mumbled about being sorry again, and sagged back in the chair. He’d gone to pick up the recorder, getting a little dizzy when he’d straightened up too quickly. That was when she had seen it and sobbed, “I broke his recorder... I didn’t mean...”