ripped and then apparently stomped. Enormously valuable paintings had
been wrenched from the walls and slashed to ribbons, damaged beyond
repair. Of a pair of graceful Klismosstyle chairs, one was upended, and
the other had been hammered against a wall until it had gouged out big
chunks of plaster and was itself reduced to splintered rubble.
Ben felt the skin on his arms puckering with gooseflesh, and an icy
current quivered along the back of his neck.
Initially he thought that the destruction had been perpetrated by
someone engaged upon a methodical search for something of value, but on
taking a second look, he realized that such was not the case. The
guilty party had unquestionably been in a blind rage, violently trashing
the bedroom with malevolent glee or in a frenzy of hatred.
The intruder had been someone possessed of considerable strength and
little sanity. Someone strange.
Someone infinitely dangerous.
With a recklessness evidently born of fear, Rachael plunged into the
adjacent bathroom, one of only two places in the house that they had not
yet searched, but the intruder was not there, either. She stepped back
into the bedroom and surveyed the ruins, shaky and pale.
“Breaking and entering, now vandalism,” Ben said.
“You want me to call the cops, or should you do it?”
She did not reply but entered the last of the unsearched places, the
enorruous walk-in closet, returning a moment later, scowling. “The wall
safe’s been opened and emptied.”
“Burglary too. Now we’ve got to call the cops, Rachael.”
“No,” she said. The bleakness that had hung about her like a gray and
sodden cloak now became a specific presence in her gaze, a dull sheen in
those usually bright green eyes.
Ben was more alarmed by that dullness than he had been by her fear, for
it implied fading hope. Rachael, his Rachael, had never seemed capable
of despair, and he couldn’t bear to see her in the grip of that emotion.
“No cops,” she said.
“Why not?” Ben said.
“If I bring the cops into it, I’ll be killed for sure.”
He blinked. “What? Killed? By the police? What on earth do you
mean?”
“No, not by the cops.”
“Then who? Why?”
Nervously chewing on the thumbnail of her left hand, she said, “I should
never have brought you here.”
“You’re stuck with me. Rachael, really now, isn’t it time you told me
more?”
Ignoring his plea, she said, “Let’s check the garage, see if one of the
cars is missing,” and she dashed from the room, leaving him no choice
but to hurry after her with feeble protests.
A white Rolls-Royce. A Jaguar sedan the same deep green as Rachael’s
eyes. Then two empty stalls. And in the last space, a dusty,
well-used, ten-year-old Ford with a broken radio antenna.
Rachael said, “There should be a black Mercedes 560
SL.” Her voice echoed off the walls of the long garage.
“Eric drove it to our meeting with the lawyers this morning. After the
accident… after Eric was killed, Herb Tuleman-the attorney-said he’d
have the car driven back here and left in the garage. Herb is reliable.
He always does what he says. I’m sure it was returned. And now it’s
gone.”
“Car theft,” Ben said. “How long does the list of crimes have to get
before you’ll agree to calling the cops?”
She walked to the last stall, where the battered Ford was parked in the
harsh bluish glare of a fluorescent ceiling strip. “And this one
doesn’t belong here at all.
It’s not Eric’s.”
“It’s probably what the burglar arrived in,” Ben said.
“Decided to swap it for the Mercedes.”
With obvious reluctance, with the pistol raised, she opened one of the
Ford’s front doors, which squeaked, and looked inside. “Nothing.”
He said, “What did you expect?”
She opened one of the rear doors and peered into the back seat.
Again there was nothing to be found.
“Rachael, this silent sphim act is irritating as hell.”
She returned to the driver’s door, which she had opened first. She
opened it again, looked in past the wheel, saw the keys in the ignition,
and removed them.
“Rachael, damn it.”
Her face was not simply troubled. Her grim expression looked as if it