quick to step through a doorway.
Let’s be slow and careful.”
“Believe it or not, I can handle just about any teenage girl who wants
to throw a punch at me.”
“It’s not the mistress I’m worried about,” she said sharply.
“Then who?”
Tight-lipped, holding her pistol at the ready, she led the way through
the house, turning on lights as they went.
The uncluttered ultramodern decor-more futuristic than in any of Eric’s
other habitats-bordered on starkness and sterility. A highly polished
terrazzo floor that looked as cold as ice, no carpet anywhere. Levolor
metal blinds instead of drapes. Hard-looking chairs. Sofas that, if
moved to the depths of a forest, might have passed for giant fungi.
Everything was in pale gray, white, black, and taupe, with no color
except for scattered accent pieces all in shades of orange.
The kitchen had been wrecked. The white-lacquered breakfast table and
two chairs were overturned. The other two chairs had been hammered to
pieces against everything else in sight. The refrigerator was badly
dented and scraped, the tempered glass in the oven door was shattered,
the counters and cabinets were gouged and scratched, edges splintered.
Dishes and drinking glasses had been pulled from the cupboards and
thrown against the walls, and the floor was prickled and glinting with
thousands of sharp shards. Food had been swept off the shelves of the
refrigerator onto the floor, Pickles, milk, macaroni salad, mustard,
chocolate pudding, maraschino cherries, a chunk of ham, and several
unidentifiable substances were congealing in a disgusting pool. Beside
the sink, above the cutting board, all six knives had been removed from
their rack and, with tremendous force, had been driven into the wall,
some of the blades were buried up to half their lengths in the drywall,
while two had been driven in to their hilts.
“You think they were looking for something?” Benny asked.
“Maybe.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. It’s got the same look as the bedroom
in the Villa Park house. Weird. Creepy. This was done in a rage. Out
of fierce hatred, in a frenzy, a fury.
Or by someone who takes pure, unadulterated pleasure in destruction.”
Rachael could not take her eyes off the knives embedded in the wall. A
deep sick quivering filled her stomach. Her chest and throat tightened
with fear.
The gun in her hand felt different from the way it had felt just a
moment ago. Too light. Too small. Almost like a toy. If she had to
use it, would it be effective? Against this adversary?
They continued through the silent house with considerably greater
caution. Even Benny had been shaken by the psychopathic violence that
had been unleashed here.
He no longer taunted her with his boldness, but stayed close at her
side, warier than he had been.
In the large master bedroom, there was more destruction, though it was
not as extensive or as indicative of insane fury as the damage in the
kitchen. Beside the kingsize bed of black-lacquered wood and burnished
stainless steel, a torn pillow leaked feathers. The bedsheets were
strewn across the floor, and a chair was overturned. One of the two
black ceramic lamps had been knocked off a nightstand and broken, and
the shade had been crushed.
The shade on the other lamp was cocked, and the paintings hung askew on
the walls.
Benny stooped and carefully lifted a section of one of the sheets to
have a closer look at it. Small reddish spots and a single reddish
smear shone with almost preternatural brilliance on the white cotton.
“Blood,” he said.
Rachael felt a cold sweat suddenly break out on her scalp and along the
back of her neck.
“Not much,” Benny said, standing again, his gaze traveling over the
tangled sheets. “Not much, but definitely blood.”
Rachael saw a bloody handprint on the wall beside the open door that led
into the master bedroom. It was a man’s print, and large-as if a
butcher, exhausted from his hideous labors, had leaned there for a
moment to catch his breath.
The lights were on in the large bathroom, the only chamber in the house
that had not been dark when they’d reached it. Through the open door,