minutes, for an average speed of eighty miles an hour, which should have
given Rachael a sense of speed.
But she continued to feel that she was creeping snail-slow, falling
farther and farther behind events, losing ground by the minute.
Summer, with its blazing desert heat, was’ a somewhat less busy tourist
season in Palm Springs than other times of the year, and at one-fifteen
in the morning the main street was virtually deserted. In the hot and
windless June night, the palm trees stood as still as images painted on
canvas, illuminated and slightly silvered by the streetlights. The many
shops were dark. The sidewalks were empty. The traffic signals still
cycled from green to yellow to red to green again, although hers was the
only car passing through most of the intersections.
She almost felt as if she were driving through a postArmageddon world,
depopulated by disease. For a moment she was half convinced that if she
switched on the radio, there would be no musicnly the cold empty hiss of
static all the way across the dial.
Since receiving the news of Eric’s missing corpse, she had known that
something terrible had come into the world, and hour by hour she had
grown more bleak.
Now even an empty street, which would have looked peaceful to anyone
else, stirred ominous thoughts in her. She knew she was overreacting.
No matter what happened in the next few days, this was not the end of
the world.
On the other hand, she thought, it might be the end of me, the end of my
world.
Driving from the commercial district into residential areas, from
neighborhoods of modest means into wealthier streets, she encountered
even fewer signs of life, until at last. she pulled into a Futura Stone
driveway and parked in front of a low, sleek, flat-roofed stucco house
that was the epitome of clean-lined desert architecture. The lush
landscaping was distinctly not of the desert-ficus trees, benjamina,
impatiens, begonias, beds of marigolds and Gerber daisies-green and
thick and flower-laden in the soft glow of a series of Malibu lights.
Those were the only lights burning, all the front windows were dark.
She had told Benny that this was another of Eric’s houses-though she had
been closemouthed about the reason she had come. Now, as she switched
off the headlights, he said, “Nice little vacation retreat.”
She said, “No. This is where he kept his mistress.”
Enough soft light fell from the Malibu fixtures, rebounded from the lawn
and from the edge of the driveway, penetrated the windows of the car,
and touched Benny’s face to reveal his look of surprise. “How did you
know?”
“A little over a year ago, just a week before I left him, sheCindy
Wasloff was her name-she called the house in Villa Park. Eric had told
her never to phone there except in the direst emergency, and if she
spoke with anyone but him, she was supposed to say she was the secretary
of some business associate. But she was furious with him because, the
night before, he’d beaten her pretty badly, and she was leaving him.
First, however, she wanted to let me know he’d been keeping her.”
“Had you suspected?”
“That he had a mistress? No. But it didn’t matter.
By then I’d already decided to call it quits. I listened to her and
commiserated, got the address of the house, because I thought maybe the
day would come when I might be able to use the fact of Eric’s adultery
to pry myself loose from him if he wouldn’t cooperate in the divorce.
Even as ugly as it got, it never got quite that tawdry, thank God. And
it would have been exceedingly tawdry indeed if I’d had to go public
with it… because the girl was only sixteen.”
“What? The mistress?”
“Yes. Sixteen. A runaway. One of those lost kids, from the sound of
her. You know the type. They start doing drugs in junior high and just
seem to… burn away too many gray cells. No, that’s not right, either.
The drugs don’t destroy brain cells so much as they… eat away at their
souls, leave them empty and purposeless. They’re pathetic.”