sight of those damp rusty-scarlet stains on the pastel-blue cotton made
her breath come quicker, too quick. Hyperventilating, she slumped
against the Subaru, closed her eyes, hugged herself, and clenched her
teeth. She was determined not to faint. She strove to hold in each
shallow breath as long as possible, and the very process of changing the
rhythm of her breathing was a calming influence.
Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their cars in
the snarl of stalled traffic. Some of them asked her if she was all
right, and she nodded, others asked if she needed medical attention, and
she shook her head-no.
If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust beneath
his heel. It had been a long time since she’d even liked him. Moments
before the accident, he’d revealed a pure and terrifying hatred of her,
so she supposed she should have been utterly unmoved by his death. Yet
she was badly shaken. As she hugged herself and shivered, she was aware
of a cold emptiness within, a hollow sense of loss that she could not
quite understand. Not grief. Just. .. loss.
She heard sirens in the distance.
Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop entirely.
The sirens grew nearer, louder.
She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed clean
and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day, and in its
wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast that reminded
her more of sulfur than of honey.
Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police sedan
approached along the northbound lanes.
“Rachael?”
She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric’s personal attorney, with whom
she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had
liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows
that were now drawn together in a single bar.
“One of my associates.. . returning to the office…
saw it happen,” Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me.
My God.”
Yes,” she said numbly.
“My God, Rachael.”
“Yes.”
“It’s too . . . crazy.
“Yes.”
“But…”
“Yes,” she said.
And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she had
told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric’s fortune but
would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the
fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage,
the entire thirty million plus his cunrently unvalued stock in the
company would almost certainly, by default, come into her sole
possession.
SPOOKED The hot, dry air was filled with the crackle of police radios, a
metallic chorus of dispatchers’ voices, and the smell of sun-softened
asphalt.
The paramedics could do nothing for Eric Leben except convey his corpse
to the city morgue, where it would lie in a refrigerated room until the
medical examiner had time to attend to it. Because Eric had been killed
in an accident, the law required an autopsy.
“The body should be available for release in twenty-four hours,” one of
the policemen had told Rachael.
While they had filled out a brief report, she had sat in the back of one
of the patrol cars. Now she was standing in the sun again.
She no longer felt sick. Just numb.
They loaded the draped cadaver into the van. In spots, the shroud was
dark with blood.
Herbert Tuleman felt obliged to comfort Rachael and repeatedly suggested
that she return with him to his law office. “You need to sit down, get
a grip on yourself,” he said, one hand on her shoulder, his kindly face
wrinkled with concern.
“I’m all right, Herb. Really, I am. Just a little shaken.”
“Some cognac. That’s what you need. I’ve got a bottle of Remy Martin
in the office bar.”
“No, thank you. I guess it’ll be up to me to handle the funeral, so
I’ve got things to attend to.”
The two paramedics closed the rear doors on the van and walked
unhurriedly to the front of the vehicle. No need for sirens and