“Okay. What happens if she doesn’t bite?”

“Maybe she’ll bite,” Eddie said hopefully.

They went back through the hall to the stairs. Karen was there, standing as if all life, all emotion, had drained out of her. Her eyes seemed set deep in her head, burned dark with strain. She said in a little above a whisper, “Let her go, Skip.”

“Sure,” Skip agreed. “We’re going to let her go. Right now.” He ran up the stairs with Eddie following, and crossed Mrs. Havermann’s room and threw open the closet door. Mrs. Havermann’s contorted form fell out into the room, dragging some fallen clothes with her. Somehow, after he’d shut the door on her, she’d writhed around to lie against it. Skip bent over her, got a good look at her, and he knew.

Mrs. Havermann was dead.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Skip and Eddie looked at the dead, contorted face and then slowly at each other; and the silence was like the ear-bursting backslap of an explosion or like the vast sucking up after a great wind had passed or like the final stillness after the toppling of a tidal wave.

Eddie said unbelievingly, “I stood right here and let you do it!”

“What do you mean, let me do it?” Skip’s mouth thinned to an ugly line and his hands balled to fists. “Hell, you were in it; you helped me get her into the closet where she suffocated.”

“You murdered her,” Eddie said slowly.

Skip’s fists knotted tightly, and he knocked Eddie down with one blow. Eddie had been dazed, not looking, too shocked to react, to protect himself. He hit the wall and slid down, and then in an automatic response to terror he started to scramble for the door. Skip had run out swiftly. He collided with Karen at the top of the stairs, and they half fell part of the way down before they could stop and disentangle themselves. Karen cried, “What’s wrong up there? What’s happened?” Her face was wild with fear.

“Go to hell.” Skip stiff-armed her, and she toppled away and staggered on down to the lower hall.

Eddie came out of the room, got to his feet, stood there hanging horrified on the railing. He looked down at Karen. “She’s dead. The gag was too tight, and it choked her to death.”

Karen gave a choked scream and tried to run back up the stairs, and again Skip stiff-armed her and she backed away, crying breathlessly, holding her stomach.

“We’re leaving, you sap. Aren’t you coming?” Skip said to her.

He ran past her, on down the hall. Eddie came downstairs quickly. Karen looked at him with stunned, uncomprehending eyes and said, “It isn’t true, is it? She’s all right.”