ajar an inch. He pushed it open all the way with the barrel of the
shotgun and went through with his customary caution.
Guarding the rear, Rachael remained in the living room, where she could
see the open front door, the two closed doors, the kitchen arch, but
where she also had a view of the room into which Benny had gone.
It was a bedroom, wrecked in the same way that the bedroom in the Villa
Park mansion and the kitchen in the Palm Springs house had been wrecked,
proof that Eric had been here and that he had been seized by another
demented rage.
In the bedroom, Benny gingerly rolled aside one of the large mirrored
doors on a closet, looked warily inside, apparently found nothing of
interest. He moved across the bedroom to the adjoining bath, where he
passed out of Rachael’s sight.
She glanced nervously at the front door, at the porch beyond, at the
kitchen archway, at each of the other two closed doors.
Outside, the gusty breeze moaned softly under the overhanging roof and
made a low, eager whining noise.
The rustle of wind-stirred trees carried through the open front door.
Inside the cabin, the deep silence grew even deeper.
Curiously enough, that stillness had the same effect on Rachael as a
crescendo in a symphony, while it built, she became tenser, more
convinced that events were hurtling toward an explosive climax.
Eric, damn it, where are you? Where are you, Eric?
Benny seemed to have been gone an ominously long time. She was on the
verge of calling to him in panic, but finally he reappeared, unharmed,
shaking his head to indicate that he had found no sign of Eric and
nothing else of interest.
They discovered that the two closed doors opened onto two more bedrooms
that shared a second bath between them, although Eric had furnished
neither chamber with beds. Benny explored both rooms, closets, and the
connecting bath, while Rachael stood in the living room by one doorway
and then by the other, watching. She could see that the first room was
a study with several bookshelves laden with thick volumes, a desk, and a
computer, the second was empty, unused.
When it became clear that Benny was not going to find Eric in that part
of the cabin, either, Rachael bent down, plucked up a few sheets of
paper-Xerox copies, she noted-from the floor, and quickly scanned them.
By the time Benny returned, she knew what she had found, and her heart
was racing. “It’s the Wildcard file,” she said 50110 voce. “He must’ve
kept another copy here.”
She started to gather up more of the scattered pages, but Benny stopped
her. “We’ve got to find Eric first,” he whispered.
Nodding agreement, she reluctantly dropped the papers.
Benny went to the front door, eased open the creaky screen door with the
least amount of noise he could manage, and satisfied himself that the
plank-floored porch was deserted. Then Rachael followed him into the
kitchen again.
She slipped the tilted chair out from under the knob of the basement
door, pulled the door open, and backed quickly out of the way as Benny
covered it with the shotgun.
Eric did not come roaring out of the darkness.
With tiny beads of sweat shimmering on his forehead, Benny went to the
threshold, found the switch on the wall of the stairwell, and flicked on
the lights below.
Rachael was also sweating. As was surely the case with Benny, her
perspiration was not occasioned by the warm summer air.
It was still not advisable for Rachael to accompany Benny into the
windowless chamber below. Eric might be outside, watching the house,
and he might slip inside at the opportune moment, then, as they returned
to the kitchen, they might be ambushed from above when they were in the
middle of the stairs and most vulnerable. So she remained at the
threshold, where she could look down the cellar steps and also have a
clear view of the entire kitchen, including the archway to the living
room and the open door to the rear porch.
Benny descended the plank stairs more quietly than seemed humanly