If she was there, he would fall down at her feet and beg her to have him, if only to douse the burning in his veins. He was smoldering, yet he still had hope. The hope just made the burning worse.
But when he walked into the house, reeking of six hours of agony and horror, Lenka, Zuzana, and Margaret greeted him with hollow eyes and shaking hands. Dani had not come home, and the police had been slow to respond.
“She went to the morgue, just like she always does, but she never came back. And Mr. and Mrs. Raus are out of town.”
“Her wagon is here, by the back door,” Zuzana said. “She must have come back.”
“It was there when I arrived this morning,” Margaret interjected. “There was a bit of paper in it. A few lines from a poem, something in her hand. But I never saw Daniela.”
“She was not at breakfast,” Lenka moaned.
“She must have come home last night . . . but her bed has not been slept in,” Zuzana said.
“We didn’t know she wasn’t home.” Lenka shook her head, aghast. “We ate supper without her last night and retired early.”
“I heard that damnable squeaking, though. It woke me up. I know she came home,” Zuzana insisted.
The women were piling the details one on top of the other, and he threw up his hands, silencing them.
He started at the beginning, making sure he understood the timeline.
“Dani went to the morgue on Mead Avenue yesterday?” Yesterday.
Lenka nodded. “She left at five, when we closed the shop.” Thirty-one hours ago.
“You’re sure?”
“I watched her leave when I locked the front door. She was pulling her wagon,” Lenka said.
“Mr. Raus is out of town, and the building is locked,” Zuzana insisted again.
“She must have come home. Her wagon’s here,” Margaret reminded.
“Let me see the paper that you found in the wagon,” Malone directed. Margaret pulled it from her apron pocket and handed it to him.
“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality,” he read. It was in Dani’s handwriting, a slip of paper like the ones she tucked into the pockets of her dead. He stared at it, helpless. The paper was creased and soiled, and when he lifted it to his nose, it carried the sticky, sweet smell of rotting flesh. He recoiled violently.
“It’s Emily Dickinson,” Margaret said. “I know that. Just yesterday she was reading a book of her poems. She must have liked that one and copied it down.”
“She didn’t write this yesterday,” he whispered.
“We rang the safety director . . . but he hasn’t responded,” Lenka added, shaking her head.
“They’ve found another body,” Margaret blurted out, and Lenka broke down.
“Two. They found two,” Zuzana said. “At the dump near the Exposition site. That’s why no one has come to help us. Nobody has time for two old women when the Butcher’s been busy.”
“Oh no,” he groaned. “Oh no. Oh, Dani.”
“But you’ll help us, won’t you, Michael?” Lenka asked, tears winding their way through her wrinkles and dripping from her trembling chin.
“I should have let her go,” Zuzana said, her voice dull. “I should have let her go with you. It’s all my fault. I was afraid to be alone. Now she’s dead. The Butcher got her. I know it. The Butcher got her.”
The man was standing by his car when Malone rushed from the house, after telling the distraught women he would get help. He had to find Eliot, and he had to see the bodies. He had to know whether there was anything left to search for.
Malone skidded to a halt.
“What happened to Dani?” the man said, his Cork accent as marked as it must have been three decades before. He held his hat in his hands, and even in the darkness, his fear was evident.
Malone didn’t answer but approached the man with careful tread. The man asked the question again, his voice adamant.
“Tell me what happened to Dani. I heard the women crying. They’ve been up and down the block today, talking to the neighbors. They can’t find her. And now you’re back. Where did you go?”
“We don’t know where she is,” Malone said, hardly able to admit the words out loud. “She’s missing. Do you know anything that might help us find her?”
“I’m always too late,” the man moaned. “I’m never where I need to be. I didn’t know she was in trouble.”
“What’s your name?” Malone asked, but he already knew.