The Face[脸]
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ROWENA, MISTRESS OF THE ROSES, RECALLED Dunny Whistler’s words again, but obviously more for her consideration than for Ethan’s: “He said you think he’s dead, and that you’re right.”
A rattle of hinges, a faint jingle of shop bells turned Ethan toward the front door. No one had entered.
The vagrant wind, having wandered out of the storm for a while, had here returned, blustering at the entrance to Forever Roses, trembling the door.
Behind the counter, the woman wondered, “What on earth could he mean by such a bizarre statement?”
“Did you ask him?”
“He said it after he paid for the roses, on his way out of the shop. I didn’t have a chance to ask. Is it a joke between the two of you?”
“Did he smile when he said it?”
Rowena considered, shook her head. “No.”
From the corner of his eye, Ethan glimpsed a figure that had silently appeared. Turning toward it, breath caught in his throat, he discovered that he had been tricked by his own reflection in the glass door of a cooler.
[159] In pails of water, on tiered racks, the chilled roses bloomed so gloriously that you could easily forget they were in fact already dead, and in a few days would be wilted, spotted brown, and rotting.
These coolers, where Death concealed himself in petals bright, reminded Ethan of morgue drawers, in which the deceased lay much as they had looked in life, and in whom Death dwelt but did not yet manifest himself in all the gaudy details of corruption.
Although Rowena was personable and lovely, although this realm of roses ought to have been pleasant, Ethan grew anxious to leave. “Did my ... my friend have any other message for me?”
“No. That was all of it, I think.”
“Thank you, Rowena. You’ve been helpful.”
“Have I really?” she asked, looking at him strangely, perhaps as puzzled by this odd encounter as by her conversation with Dunny Whistler.
“Yes,” he assured her. “Yes, you have.”
Wind rattled the door again as Ethan put his hand upon the knob, and behind him Rowena said, “One more thing.”
When he turned to her, although they were now almost forty feet apart, he saw that his questioning had left her more pensive than she had been when he’d first approached her.
“As your friend was leaving,” she said, “he stopped in the open doorway, on the threshold there, and said to me, ‘God bless you and your roses.’ ”
Perhaps this had been a peculiar thing for a man like Dunny to have said, but nothing in those six words seemed to explain why the memory of them clouded Rowena’s face with uneasiness.
She said, “Just as he finished speaking, the lights pulsed and dimmed, went off—but then came on again. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, not with the storm, but now it somehow seems ... significant. I don’t know why.”
Years of experience with interrogations told Ethan that Rowena had not finished, and that his patient silence would draw her out more surely and more quickly than anything he could say.
[160] “When the lights dimmed and went off, your friend laughed. Just a little laugh, not long, not loud. He glanced at the ceiling as the lights flickered, and he laughed, and then he left.”
Ethan waited.
Rowena appeared to be surprised that she had said this much about such a small moment, but then she added, “There was something terrible about that laugh.”
The beautiful dead roses behind walls of glass.
A beast of wind snuffling at the door.
Rain gnashing at the windows.
Ethan said, “Terrible?”
“I don’t have the words to explain it. No humor in that laugh, but some terrible ... quality.”
Self-conscious, she brushed at the spotless countertop with one hand, as if she saw dust, debris, a stain.
Clearly, she had said all that she wished to say, or could.
“God bless you and your roses,” Ethan told her, as though he were countering a curse.
He didn’t know what he would have done had the lights flickered, but they burned steadily.
Rowena smiled uncertainly.
Turning to the door again, Ethan encountered his reflection and closed his eyes, perhaps to guard against the sight of an impossible phantom figure sharing the glass with him. He opened the door, then opened his eyes.
In a growl of wind and a jingle of overhead bells, he stepped out of the shop into the cold teeth of the December night, and drew the door shut behind him.
He waited in the entry alcove, between the display windows, as a young couple in raincoats and hoods passed on the sidewalk, led by a golden retriever on a leash.
Relishing the rain and wind, the soaked retriever pranced on webbed paws, snout lifted to savor mysterious scents upon the chilly [161] air. Before it fully passed, it looked up, and its eyes were as wise as they were liquid and dark.
The dog halted, pricked its floppy ears as much as they would prick, and cocked its head as though not entirely sure what kind of man stood here in the shelter of the coral-pink awning, between the roses and the rain. The tail wagged, but only twice, and tentatively.
Stopped by their canine companion, the young couple said, “Good evening,” and Ethan replied, and the woman spoke to the dog, “Tink, let’s go.”
Tink hesitated, searching Ethan’s eyes, and only moved on when the woman repeated the command.
Because the couple and the dog were headed in the direction of his SUV, Ethan waited briefly, to avoid following on their heels.
The leaves of the curbside trees were still gilded by lamplight, and from their pointed tips flowed drips and drizzles as glimmerous as molten gold.
In the street, the traffic appeared to be lighter than it should have been at this hour, moving faster than the weather warranted.
Awning by awning, Ethan approached the Expedition, Fishing keys from his jacket pocket.
Ahead, Tink twice slowed to an amble, looked back at Ethan, but didn’t stop.
The ozone-scented cascades of rain couldn’t rinse away the yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread, which issued from one of the glittery restaurants preparing to open their doors for dinner.
At the end of the block, the dog halted once more, turning its head to stare.
Though her voice was muffled by distance, screened by the sizzle of rain and the swish of passing traffic, the woman could be heard saying, “Tink, let’s go.” She repeated the command twice before the dog began to move again, picking up the slack in its leash.
The trio disappeared around the corner.
Arriving at the red zone near the end of the block, where he had [162] parked illegally, Ethan hesitated under the last awning. He monitored the approaching traffic until he saw a long gap between vehicles.
He stepped into the rain and crossed the sidewalk. He jumped over the dirty racing current in the gutter.
Behind his SUV, he thumbed the lock-release button on his key fob. The Expedition chirruped at him.
Having waited until there was no passing traffic to splash him, he rounded the back of the vehicle while a chance remained that he could avoid an immediate need for a dry cleaner.
Approaching the driver’s door, he realized that he had not taken a close look at the SUV itself from the shelter of the final awning, and suddenly he was convinced that this time, when he got behind the wheel, he would discover Dunny Whistler, dead or alive, waiting for him in the passenger’s seat.
The real threat lay elsewhere.
Entering from the cross street at too high a speed, a Chrysler PT Cruiser fishtailed in the intersection. The driver tried to resist the slide instead of steering into it, the wheels locked, and the Cruiser spun out.
In the spin, the left front bumper rapped Ethan hard. Clipped, flipped, he slammed into the Expedition, shattering the side window with his face.
He wasn’t aware of ricocheting off the SUV, collapsing to the pavement, but then he was down on the wet blacktop, tumbling, with the smell of exhaust fumes, with the taste of blood.
He heard brakes shriek, but not the Cruiser. Air brakes. Loud and shrill.
Something loomed, huge, a truck, loomed and immediately arrived, tremendous weight on his legs, hideous pressure, bones snapping like dry sticks.
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