The Husband

windows of the garage, as if it had a taste for the macabre and had blown itself a long way across the world to see Mitch at this gruesome work.
    He thought that all this dragging around of bodies should have about it a quality of farce, especially considering that Knox was stiff with rigor mortis and hellaciously cumbersome. But at the moment he had a serious case of laugh-deficit disorder.
    After he had loaded Knox into the Buick wagon and closed the tailgate, he folded the tarp and put it in the trunk of the Honda. Eventually he would dispose of it in a Dumpster or in a stranger's trash can.
    He couldn't recall ever having been this exhausted: physically, mentally, emotionally. His eyes felt singed, his joints half-melted, his muscles fully cooked and tender enough to fall off the bone.
    Maybe the sugar and caffeine in the Hershey's bars prevented his engine from stalling. Fear fueled him, too. But what most kept his wheels turning was the thought of Holly in the hands of monsters.
    Till death us do part was the stated commitment in their vows.
    For Mitch, however, the loss of her would not release him. The commitment would endure. The rest of his life would pass in patient waiting.
    He walked the alleyway to the street, returned to the Chrysler Windsor, and drove it back to the second garage. He parked it beside the Expedition and closed the roll-down door.
    He consulted his wristwatch—4:09.
    In ninety minutes, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less, the furious wind would blow dawn in from the east. Because of dust flung high into the atmosphere, the first light would be pink, and it would rapidly squall across the heavens, fading to the color of a more mature sky as it was blown toward the sea.
    Since he had met Holly, he had greeted every day with great expectations. This day was different.
    He returned to the house and found Anson awake in the laundry room, and in a mood.

Chapter 44

     
    The cut on his left ear had crusted shut, and body heat was quickly drying the blood that had trickled down his cheek and neck.
    His bearish good looks had settled into harder edges, as though a genetic contagion had introduced major wolf DNA into his face. Jaws clenched so tight that his facial muscles knotted, eyes molten with rage, Anson sat in seething silence.
    The wind wasn't loud here. A vent pipe carried sighs and whispers from outside into the dryer, so it seemed as if a troubled spirit haunted that machine.
    Mitch said, "You're going to help me get Holly back alive."
    That statement elicited neither agreement nor refusal, only a glower.
    "They'll be calling in a little more than seven and a half hours with wiring instructions."
    Paradoxically, confined in the chair, restrained, Anson looked bigger than he had before. Shackles emphasized his physical power, and it seemed that, like some figure out of myth, if he attained the pinnacle of his potential rage, he would be able to snap his bonds as if they were string.
    In Mitch's absence, Anson had tried determinedly to wrench the chair free of the washing machine. The steel legs of the chair had scraped and chattered against the tile floor, leaving scars that revealed the intensity of his futile effort. Also, the washer had been pulled out of alignment with the clothes dryer.
    "You said you could put it together by phone, by computer," Mitch reminded him. "You said three hours tops."
    Anson spat on the floor between them.
    "If you've got eight million, you can spare two for Holly. When it's done, you and I never see each other again. You get to go back to the sewer of a life you've made for yourself."
    If Anson discovered that Mitch knew about Daniel and Kathy dead in the learning room, there would be no way to force his cooperation. He would think Mitch had already undone the planted evidence to focus the eye of the law on the true perpetrator.
    As long as he believed those murders were not yet known, he could hope that cooperation would lead to a moment when Mitch made a mistake that reversed their fortunes.
    "Campbell didn't just let you go," Anson said.
    "No."
    "So...how?"
    "Killed those two."
    "You?"
    "Now I've got to live with that."
    "You popped Vosky and Creed?"
    "I don't know their names."
    "Those were their names, all right."
    "Because of you," Mitch said.
    "Vosky and Creed? It doesn't compute."
    "Then Campbell must have let me go."
    "Campbell would never let you go."
    "So believe what you want."
    From under a beetled brow, Anson studied him with sour