From the Corner of His Eye

to the day. Birds. Softly rustling leaves. Nobody on the porch. Even trying hard to be quiet, people always made some little noise.
        "Uncle Jacob?
        No answer.
        After nudging the door shut with his shoulder, Barty carried the sodas out of the kitchen and forward along the hall. Pausing at the livingroom archway, he said, "Uncle Jacob?"
        No answer. No little noises. His uncle wasn't here.
        Evidently, Jacob had made a quick trip to his apartment over the garage and, with no thought for mice and dust, had not closed the back door. Junior said, "You've caused me a lot of trouble, you know." He'd been building a beautiful rage all night, thinking about what he'd been through because of the girl's temptress mother, whom he saw so clearly in this pint-size bitch. "So much trouble."
        "What do you think about dogs?"
        "What're you drawing there?" he asked.
        "Do they talk or don't they?"
        "I asked you what you're drawing."
        "Something I saw this morning."
        Still looming over her, he snatched the pad out of her hands and examined the sketch. "Where would you have seen this?"
        She refused to look at him, the way her mother had refused to look at him when he'd been making love to her in the parsonage. She began twisting a red pencil in a handheld sharpener, making sure that the shavings fell into a can kept for that purpose. "I saw it here."
        Junior tossed the pad on the floor. "Bullshit."
        "We say bulldoody in this house."
        Weird, this kid. Making him uneasy. All in white, with her incomprehensible yammering about talking books and talking dogs and her mother driving pies, and working on a damn strange drawing for a little girl.
        "Look at me, Angel."
        Twisting, twisting, twisting the red pencil.
        "I said look at me."
        He slapped her hands, knocking the sharpener and the pencil out of her grasp. They clattered against the window, fell onto the window-seat cushions.
        When she still didn't meet his stare, he seized her by the chin and tipped her head back.
        Terror in her eyes. And recognition.
        Surprised, he said, "You know me, don't you?"
        She said nothing.
        "You know me," he insisted. "Yeah, you do. Tell me who I am, Pixie Lee."
        After a hesitation, she said, "You're the boogeyman, except when I saw you, I was hiding under the bed where you're supposed to be."
        "How could you recognize me? No hair, this face."
        "I see."
        "See what?" he demanded, squeezing her chin hard enough to hurt her.
        Because his pinching fingers deformed the shape of her mouth, her voice was compressed: "I see all the ways you are."
        Tom Vanadium was too unnerved by the Cain scare to be interested in the newspaper anymore. The strong black coffee, superb before, tasted bitter now.
        He carried the mug to the sink, poured the brew down the drain and saw the cooler standing in the corner. He hadn't noticed it before. A medium-size, molded-plastic, Styrofoam-lined ice chest, of the type you filled with beer and took on picnics.
        Paul must have forgotten something that he'd meant to take on the pie caravan.
        The lid of the cooler wasn't on as tight as it ought to have been. From around one edge slipped a thin and sinuous stream of smoke. Something on fire.
        By the time he got to the cooler, he could see this wasn't smoke, after all. It dissipated too quickly. Cool against his hand. The cold steam from dry ice.
        Tom removed the lid. No beer, one head. Simon Magusson's severed head lay faceup on the ice, mouth open as though he were standing in court to object to the prosecution's line of questioning.
        No time for horror, disgust. Every second mattered now, and every minute might cost another life.
        To the phone, the police. No dial tone. Pointless to rattle the disconnect switch. The line had been cut.
        Neighbors might not be home. And by the time he knocked, asked to use the phone, dialed… Too great a waste of time.
        Think, think. A three-minute drive to the Lampion place. Maybe two minutes, running stop signs, cutting comers.
        Tom snatched the revolver off the table, the car keys from the pegboard.
        Slamming through the door, letting it bang shut behind him hard enough to crack the glass, crossing the porch, Tom took the beauty of the day