Because of the open window and the blood smeared on the frame, I had
assumed I was alone in the house with Angela’s body. I was wrong. An
intruder was still present-waiting between me and the stairs.
The killer couldn’t have slipped out of the master bath by way of the
bedroom; a messy trail of blood would have marked his passage across
the cream-colored carpet. Yet why would he have escaped from the
upstairs only to return immediately through a ground-floor door or
window?
If, after fleeing, he had changed his mind about leaving a potential
witness and had decided to come back to get me, he wouldn’t have turned
on the light to announce his presence. He would have preferred to take
me by surprise.
Cautiously, squinting against the glare, I stepped into the hallway.
It was deserted.
The three doors that had been closed when I had first come upstairs
were now standing wide open. The rooms beyond them were forbiddingly
bright.
Like blood out of a wound, silence welled from the bottom of the house
into this upstairs hall. Then a sound rose, but it came from outside:
the keening of the wind under the eaves.
A strange game seemed to be under way. I didn’t know the rules. I
didn’t know the identity of my adversary. I was screwed.
Flicking a wall switch, I brought forth a soothing flow of shadows to
the hall, which made the lights in the three open rooms seem brighter
by comparison.
I wanted to run for the stairs. Get down, out, away. But I didn’t
dare leave unexplored rooms at my back this time. I’d end up like
Angela, throat slashed from behind.
My best chance of staying alive was to remain calm. Think.
Approach each door with caution. Inch my way out of the house.
Make sure my back was protected every step of the way.
I squinted less, listened more, heard nothing, and moved to the doorway
opposite the master bedroom. I didn’t cross the threshold but remained
in the shadows, using my left hand as a visor to shade MY eyes from the
harsh overhead light before me.
This might have been a son’s or daughter’s room if Angela had been able
to have children. Instead, it contained a tool cabinet with many
drawers, a bar stool with a back, and two high worktables placed to
form an L. Here she spent time at her hobby: doll making.
A quick glance along the hallway. Still alone.
Keep moving. Don’t be an easy target.
I pushed the hobby-room door all the way open. No one was hiding
behind it.
I stepped briefly into the brightly lighted room, staying sideways to
the hall to cover both spaces.
Angela was a fine dollmaker, as proved by the thirty dolls on the
shelves of an open display cabinet at the far end of the hobby room.
Her creations were attired in richly imagined, painstakingly realized
costumes that Angela herself had sewn: cowboy and cowgirl outfits,
sailor suits, party dresses with petticoats. . . . The wonder of the
dolls, however, was their faces. She sculpted each head with patience
and real talent, and she fired it in a kiln in the garage. Some were
matt-finish bisque. Others were glazed. All were hand-painted with
such attention to detail that their faces looked real.
Over the years, Angela had sold some of her dolls and had given many
away. These remaining were evidently her favorites, with which she had
been most reluctant to part. Even under the circumstances, alert for
the approach of a psychopath with a halfsharp knife, I saw that each
face was unique-as though Angela wasn’t merely making dolls but was
lovingly imagining the possible faces of the children whom she had
never carried in her womb.
I switched off the ceiling fixture, leaving only a worktable lamp.
In the sudden swelling of shadows, the dolls appeared to shift on the
shelves, as if preparing to leap to the floor. Their painted eyes-some
bright with points of reflected light and some with a fixed inky
glare-seemed watchful and intent.
I had the heebie-jeebies. Big time.
The dolls were only dolls. They were no threat to me.