From the Corner of His Eye

"Uncle Wally gave me an Oreo."
        "Did you put it in your shoe?"
        "Why in my shoe?"
        "Is it under your hood?"
        "It's in my tummy!"
        "Then you can't eat it."
        "I already ate it."
        "Then it's gone forever. How sad."
        "It's not the only Oreo in the world, you know. Is this the most fog ever)"
        "It's about the most I've ever seen."
        As Wally got behind the wheel and closed his door, Angel said, "Mommy, where's fog come from? And don't say Hawaii."
        "New Jersey."
        "Before she rats on me," Wally said, "I gave her an Oreo."
        "Too late."
        "Mommy thought I put it in my shoe."
        "Getting her into her shoes and coat sooner than Monday required a bribe," Wally said.
        "What's fog?" Angel asked.
        "Clouds," Celestina replied.
        "What're clouds doing down here?"
        "They've gone to bed. They're tired," Wally told her as he put the car in gear and released the hand brake. "Aren't you?"
        Can I have another Oreo?"
        "They don't grow on trees, you know," said Wally.
        "Do I have a cloud inside me now?"
        Celestina asked, "Why would you think that, sugarpie?
        "Cause I breathed the fog."
        "Better hold on tight to her," Wally warned Celestina, braking to a halt at the intersection. "She'll float up and away, then we'll have to call the fire department to get her down."
        "What do they grow on?" Angel asked.
        "Flowers," Wally answered.
        And Celestina said, "The Oreos are the petals."
        "Where do they have Oreo flowers?" Angel asked suspiciously.
        "Hawaii," Wally said.
        "I thought so," Angel said, dubiosity squinching her face. "Mrs. Ornwall made me cheese."
        "She's a great cheese maker, Mrs. Ornwall," Wally said.
        "In a sandwich," Angel clarified. "Why's she live with you, Uncle Wally? "
        "She's my housekeeper."
        "Could Mommy be your housekeeper?"
        "Your mother's an artist. Besides, you wouldn't want to put poor Mrs. Ornwall out of a job, would you?"
        "Everybody needs cheese," Angel said, which apparently meant that Mrs. Ornwall would never lack work. "Mommy, you're wrong.
        "Wrong about what, sugarpie smoosh-smoosh?" Celestina asked as Wally pulled to the curb again and parked.
        "The Oreo isn't gone forever."
        "Is it in your shoe, after all?"
        Turning in Celestina's lap, Angel said, "Smell," and held the index finger of her right hand under her mother's nose.
        "This isn't polite, but I must admit it smells nice."
        "That's the Oreo. After I ate it up, the cookie went smoosh-smoosh into my finger."
        "If they always go there, smoosh-smoosh, then you're going to wind up with one really fat finger."* Wally switched off the engine and killed the headlights. "Home, where the heart is."
        "What heart?" Angel asked.
        Wally opened his mouth, couldn't think of a reply.
        Laughing, Celestina said to him, "You can never win, you know."
        "Maybe it's not where the heart is," Wally corrected himself. "Maybe it's where the buffalo roam."
        On the counter beside the bathroom sink stood an open box of BandAids in a variety of sizes, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a bottle of iodine.
        Tom Vanadium checked the small wastebasket next to the sink and discovered a wad of bloody Kleenex. The crumpled wrappers from two Band-Aids.
        Evidently, the blood was Cain's.
        If the wife killer had cut himself accidentally, his writing on the wall indicated a hair-trigger temper and a deep reservoir of long-nurtured anger.
        If he had cut himself intentionally for the express purpose of writing the name in blood, then the reservoir of anger was deeper still and pent up behind a formidable dam of obsession.
        In either case, printing the name in blood was a ritualistic act, and ritualism of this nature was an unmistakable symptom of a seriously unbalanced mind. Evidently, the wife killer would be easier to crack than expected, because his shell was already badly fractured.
        This wasn't the same Enoch Cain whom Vanadium had known three years ago in Spruce Hills. That man had been utterly ruthless but not a wild, raging animal, coldly determined but never obsessive. That Cain had been too calculating and too self-controlled to have been swept into the emotional