Relentless Read online

  While I had been reading, gunmetal clouds had armored the sky. They did not billow, neither did they churn, but looked as flat and motionless as a coat of paint.

  Because we lived in the safest neighborhood of a low-crime community, we were in the habit of leaving our most-used doors unlocked during the day. That would change.

  Bewildered by Waxx’s intrusion, I closed the French door and engaged the deadbolt.

  Abruptly, I realized that the critic might have done more than pass through the house. If he had left by the family room, he could have entered elsewhere—and could have done some kind of damage.

  Engaged in strange science, Milo was upstairs in his bedroom with Lassie.

  In her second-floor studio, Penny painted the wide-eyed, sharp-beaked owl that hunted the band of heroic mice in her current book.

  Although the dog had not barked and though no one had cried out in pain or terror, my mind insisted on the most unlikely scenario, on bludgeoned heads and cut throats. Our modern world is, after all, full of flamboyant violence; as often as not, the evening news is as disturbing as any slasher film.

  I climbed the back stairs two at a time.

  Milo’s bedroom door stood open, and he sat at his desk, alive and beguiled by electronic gizmos that meant less to me than would ancient tablets of stone carved with runes.

  On the desk, watching her master at work, sat Lassie. She looked up as I entered, but Milo did not.

  “Did you see him?” I asked.

  Milo, who can multitask better than a Cray supercomputer, stayed focused on the gizmos but said, “See who?”

  “The man … a guy wearing a red bow tie. Did he come in here?”

  “You mean the man with three eyes and four nostrils?” he asked, revealing that perhaps he had been more aware of my spy game at the restaurant than I had realized.

  “Yes, him,” I confirmed. “Did he come in here?”

  “Nope. We would have freaked if he did.”

  “Shout if you see him. I’ll be right back.”

  The door to Penny’s studio was closed. I flung it open, rushed inside, and found her at the easel.

  So dimensional was the image of the villain owl that it seemed to be flying at me from out of the canvas, beak wide to rend and eyes hot for blood.

  Certain that she knew the cause of my breathless entrance, Penny spoke before I could say a word: “Did the coffeemaker assault you or have you used the dishwasher again and flooded the kitchen?”

  “Big problem,” I said. “Milo. Come quick.”

  She put down her brush and hurried after me. When she saw Milo tinkering in peace and Lassie without hackles raised, Penny sighed with relief and said to me, “The punch line better be hilarious.”

  “Stay here with him. Brace the door with that chair when I leave.”

  “What? Why?”

  “If someone asks you to open the door, even if it sounds like me, don’t open it.”

  “Cubby—”

  “Ask something only I would know—like where we went on our first date. He probably can’t imitate my voice—I mean, he’s not a comic-book supercriminal, for God’s sake—but you never know.”

  “He who? What’s wrong with you?”

  “There was an intruder. I think he’s gone, but I’m not sure.”

  Her eyes widened as might those of a mouse in the sudden shadow of a swooping owl. “Call 911.”

  “He’s not that kind of intruder.”

  “There isn’t any other kind.”

  “Besides, I might have imagined him.”

  “Did you see him or not?”

  “I saw something.”

  “Then it’s 911.”

  “I’m a public figure. The media will follow the cops, it’ll be a publicity circus.”

  “Better than you dead.”

  “I’ll be okay. Use the chair as a brace.”

  “Cubby—”

  Stepping into the shorter of the two upstairs hallways, I pulled the door shut. I waited until I heard the headrail of the straight-backed chair knock against the knob as she jammed it into place.

  Dependable Penny.

  Reason argued that a renowned critic and textbook author like Shearman Waxx was not likely to be a psychopath. Eccentric, yes, and perhaps even weird. But not homicidal. Reason, in its true premodern meaning, had served me well for many years.

  Nevertheless, from a hall table, I seized a tall, heavy vase with a fat bottom and a narrow neck. Flat-footed athlete that I am, I held it as I would have held a tennis racket—awkwardly.

  In addition to Milo’s quarters, this back hall served two small guest rooms, a bath, and a utility closet. Quickly, quietly, I opened doors, searched, found no one.

  As I turned toward the longer of the two second-floor hallways— off which lay the master suite, Penny’s studio, and another bedroom that we used for storage—I heard a noise downstairs. The short-lived clatter rose through the back stairwell, from the kitchen, and the silence in its wake had an ominous quality.

  Ceramic vase held high, as if I were a contestant in a Home and Garden Television version of a reality show like Survivor, defending my home with any available decorative item, I cautiously descended the stairs.

  Waxx wasn’t in the kitchen or in the family room beyond. All appeared to be in order.

  The swinging door between the kitchen and the downstairs hall was closed. I didn’t think it had been closed earlier.

  As I eased open the door, I saw Waxx at the far end of the hallway, exiting my study on the right, crossing the foyer.

  “Hey,” I called to him. “What’re you doing?”

  He didn’t reply or glance at me, but disappeared into the library.

  I considered calling 911, after all, but the nonchalance with which Shearman Waxx toured our house began to seem more weird than menacing. When Hamal Sarkissian called Waxx strange, he most likely meant eccentric.

  In his reviews he assaulted with words, but that did not mean he was capable of real violence. In fact, the opposite was usually true: Those who trafficked in hostile rhetoric might inspire others to commit crimes, but they were usually cowards who would take no risk themselves.

  Still armed with the vase, I followed the hallway to the foyer and pursued Waxx into the library.

  In some higher-end Southern California neighborhoods, a library is considered as necessary as a kitchen, a symbol of the residents’ refinement. About a third of these rooms contain no books.

  In those instances, the shelves are filled with collections of bronze figurines or ceramics. Or with DVDs. But the space is still referred to as the library.

  In another third, the books have been bought for their handsome bindings. They are meant to imply erudition, but a visitor’s attempt to have a conversation about any title on display will inspire the host either to talk about the movie based on the book or to retreat to the bar to mix another drink.

  Our library contained books we had read or intended to read, a desk, a sofa, two armchairs, and side tables, but it did not contain Shearman Waxx. Evidently he had gone through the door between the library and the living room.

  As I stepped into that adjacent chamber, I saw movement beyond the double doors to the dining room. Waxx entered the china pantry that insulated the dining room from the kitchen, and the door swung shut behind him.

  By the time I crossed the living room and half the dining room, I saw Waxx through a window. He was outside now, walking toward the front of the house.

  When I dashed to the next window and rapped on a pane as he passed, the critic did not deign to look at me.

  I put down the vase and hurried into the living room once more. Waxx was not running, just walking briskly, but he passed the windows before I could get to one of them to rap for his attention.

  In the library, through a window that faced the street, I saw him crossing the front lawn toward a black Cadillac Escalade parked at the curb.

  Library to foyer to front door, I said, “
No, no, no. No you don’t, you syntax-challenged sonofabitch.”

  As I came out of the house onto the stoop, I saw Waxx behind the wheel of the SUV.

  Again the day was becalmed. The dead air felt thick, compressed under the flat leaden sky. In the gray light of late afternoon, the fronds of the phoenix palms hung as motionless as if they were cast iron.

  Later, I could not recall hearing the engine of the Escalade. The SUV pulled slowly into the street and began to glide away like a ghost ship glimpsed cruising a strange sea.

  On the lawn, a flock of large black crows appeared not to have been disturbed by the critic’s passage. As I stepped from the stoop onto the walkway, the birds erupted from the grass in a tribulation of wings so great that my eardrums shivered.

  Hoping to catch up with Waxx when he braked for the stop sign at the corner, I ran into the street. Without pause, he accelerated through the intersection, and pursuit was pointless.

  The crows shrieked into the sullen sky, but were silenced by altitude, and as I returned to the house, a single black feather floated down past my face.

  Stepping through the front door, I smelled a thin but repulsive metallic odor. In the hallway, the odor swelled into a stink. In the kitchen, it was a stench.

  The Advantium oven was set on SPEED COOK at the highest power level. Tendrils of gray smoke slithered from the vent holes on the bottom of the unit.

  I stooped down, switched it off, and peered through the view window. Within a cowl of pale smoke, fire flickered.

  Deprived of oxygen, the flames quickly died out. I opened the door, waving away the fumes that plumed into my face.

  In the oven, a silver frame held a five-by-seven photograph. The fabric-covered backing board had caught fire. The glass was cracked, and the photo under it was slightly discolored.

  The frame should have been on the desk in my study. The photo was of Penny, Milo, Lassie, and me.

  In the men’s room at the restaurant, Waxx had said the word doom without punctuation. This business with the photo seemed to add an exclamation point.

  After walking the house to lock every window and door, after setting the security alarm, I felt safe enough to leave Milo in his room with Lassie, while Penny and I huddled at the kitchen table, at the center of which stood the damaged photo in the silver frame.

  “So you knew Waxx would be there for lunch,” she said. “But you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wondered about that at the time.”

  “Are you still wondering about it?”

  “No, I’ve figured it out.”

  “Share with me.”

  “I didn’t want you to talk me out of going.”

  “You knew better than to confront him.”

  She wasn’t angry, just disappointed in me.

  I wished that she would get angry instead.

  “I didn’t confront him,” I assured her.

  “Seems like something must have happened.”

  “I just wanted to get a look at him. He’s so reclusive.”

  Her blue gaze is as direct as the aim of an experienced bird hunter in his blind, her double-barreled eyes tracking the truth. My determination always to meet her extraordinary gaze has made a better man of me over the years.

  “So what does he look like?” she asked.

  “Like a walking slab of concrete with white hair and a bow tie.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I didn’t approach him. I watched him from a distance. But then at the end of lunch, after I paid the check, Milo needed to pee.”

  “Is the pee germane to the story, or are you vamping to delay telling me about the confrontation with Waxx?”

  “It’s germane.” I told her the rest of the tale.

  Frowning, she said, “And Milo didn’t sprinkle him?”

  “No. Not even a drop.”

  “Waxx said ‘Doom’? What do you think he meant by it?”

  “At first I thought he meant he’ll rip my next book even worse.”

  Indicating the framed photo that I had rescued from the oven, she said, “Now what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. This is crazy.”

  For a moment we sat in silence.

  Night had fallen. Evidently, Penny distrusted the darkness at the windows as much as I did. She got up to shut the pleated shades.

  I almost told her that she should stand to the side of the window when she pulled the cord. Backlit, she made an easy target.

  Instead, I got up and dropped two of the shades.

  She said, “I need a cookie.”

  “Before dinner? What if Milo sees you?”

  “He already knows I’m a hypocrite when it comes to the cookie rules. He loves me anyway. You want one?”

  “All right. I’ll pour the milk.”

  In times of trouble, in times of stress, in times of doubt, in times when even a vague sense of misgiving overcomes her, Penny turns to the same mood elevator: cookies. I don’t know why she doesn’t weigh five hundred pounds.

  She once said just being married to me burns up seven thousand calories a day. I pretended to believe she meant I was a total stud. I love to make her laugh.

  At the table once more, with glasses of cold milk and chocolate-chip-pecan cookies as big as saucers, we restored our confidence.

  “Most critics are principled,” she said. “They love books. They have standards. They tend to be gentle people.”

  “This guy isn’t one of them.”

  “Even the biased and mean ones—they don’t generally wind up in prison for violent crimes. Words are their only weapons.”

  I said, “Remember Josh McGintry and the magazine?”

  Josh is a friend and writer. His Catholicism is an implicit part of his novels.

  Over the course of a year, he received a venomous hate letter once a week from an anti-Catholic bigot. He never responded to them.

  When his new novel came out, the same hater reviewed it in a national weekly magazine for which he was a staff writer. The guy did not reveal his prejudice, but he mocked the book and Josh’s entire career in an outrageously dishonest fashion.

  Josh is married to Mary, and Mary said, “Let it go.”

  Women have been saying “Let it go” since human beings lived in caves; and men responded then pretty much as they respond today.

  Instead of letting it go, Josh wrote the editor in chief of the magazine, copying him on the hate letters. The editor defended his staff writer and suggested Josh could have forged the correspondence.

  Emboldened, the bigot wrote to Josh on magazine stationery. The envelopes were stamped with one of the magazine’s postage meters.

  When Josh copied the editor on this new evidence, he received no reply. But a year later, when his subsequent book was published, the review in the magazine was not written by the same man.

  This vicious review was written by a different bigot, a friend of the first one, who began also to send hate letters to Josh.

  Again, Mary told him to let it go. Josh listened to her this time, though ever since he’d been grinding his teeth in his sleep so assiduously that he needed to wear a soft-acrylic bite guard.

  “Neither of those guys showed up at Josh’s house,” Penny said. “They prove my contention—their only weapons were words.”

  “So you don’t think Waxx will come back?”

  “If he were a true nut, wouldn’t he have already shot you?”

  “It would be nice to think so.”

  “Anyway, you can’t report him to the cops. I didn’t see him. Only you saw him. He’ll deny having been here.”

  “It’s just—the whole thing was so freaky.”

  “Clearly, he’s arrogant and eccentric,” she said. “Some little thing you said set him off.”

  “All I did was apologize for Milo nearly peeing on him.”

  “He misinterpreted something. So he’s had his payback. Probably the worst he’ll do now is trash every book you ever
write.”

  “Swell.” I locked eyes with her. “You really think it’s over?”

  She hesitated but then said, “Yes.”

  As a truth detector, her double-barreled gaze works both ways. When she did not blink, I knew she was being a straight shooter.

  “Cubby, he thinks you were spying on him, you violated his personal space. So he violated yours. Now, sweetie, let it go.”

  I sighed. “I will. I’ll let it go.”

  Penny’s smile could power a small city.

  Together, we prepared salads, ravioli, and meatballs. Milo never knew that we had indulged in cookies and milk before dinner. But I’m pretty sure Lassie, with her exceptional sense of smell, detected the truth on our breath, because her mismatched eyes said guilty.

  Later that night, I had difficulty falling asleep. When at last I slept, I found myself in another lost-and-alone dream: the infinite library with the winding aisles.

  I had been prowling those byways for a while, in anticipation of a momentous discovery, when a serpentine turn in the stacks brought me to a place where the shelves held no books. Displayed instead, in big jars sealed with corks and wax, was a collection of severed heads in preservative fluid.

  From floor to ceiling, onward past another turn and another, men and women peered out of their glass ossuaries, eyes wide but fixed. None wore an expression of agony or horror. Instead, they appeared to be either astonished or contemplative.

  These bodiless multitudes, breathless in formaldehyde, disturbed me for obvious reasons but also for a reason I could not identify. As I began to realize that I knew them—or at least some of them—my heart raced in rebellion against the pending revelation.

  Suspecting that the way ahead would never bring me again to any books, but only to additional heads in jars, I turned back toward the true library out of which I had wandered. Although I hurried farther than I had come, I found only heads behind me.

  I first recognized Charles Dickens, bearded behind a curve of glass, and then Truman Capote. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Heinlein, Zane Grey, Raymond Chandler. The creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Virginia Woolf. Somerset Maugham. Mickey Spillane.