on which Rachael Leben lived, and their dense overhanging fronds
appeared to be afire in the flickering reflection of the red emergency
beacons on the clustered police cars parked under them.
Julio and Reese were met at the front door by a tall uniformed Placentia
officer named Orin Mulveck. He was pale. His eyes looked strange, as
if he had just seen something he would never choose to remember but
would also never be able to forget. “Neighbor called us because she saw
a man leaving the house in a hurry, and she thought there was something
suspicious about him. When we came to check the place out, we found the
front door standing wide open, lights on.”
“Mrs. Leben wasn’t here?”
“No.”
“Any indication where she is?”
“No.” Mulveck had taken off his cap and was compulsively combing his
fingers through his hair. “Jesus,” he said more to himself than to
Julio or Reese. Then, “No, Mrs. Leben is gone. But we found the dead
woman in Mrs. Leben’s bedroom.”
Entering the cozy house behind Mulveck, Julio said, “Rebecca Klienstad.”
“Yeah.”
Mulveck led Julio and Reese across a charming living room decorated in
shades of peach and white with dark blue accents and brass lamps.
Julio said, “How’d you identify the deceased?”
“She was wearing one of those medical-alert medallions,” Mulveck said.
“Had several allergies, including one to penicillin. You seen those
medallions? Name, address, medical condition on it. Then, how we got
onto you so fast-we asked our computer to check the Klienstad woman
through Data Net, and it spit out that you were looking for her in Santa
Ana in connection with the Hernandez killing.”
The Law Enforcement Data Net, through which the county’s many police
agencies shared information among their computers, was a new program, a
natural outgrowth of the computerization of the sheriff’s department and
all local police. Hours, sometimes days, could be saved with the use of
Data Net, and this was not the first time Julio found reason to be
thankful that he was a cop in the Microchip Age.
“Was the woman killed here?” Julio asked as they circled around a burly
lab technician who was dusting furniture for fingerprints.
“No,” Mulveck said. “Not enough blood.” He was still combing one hand
through his hair as he walked. “Killed somewhere else and… and
brought here.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see why. But damned if you’ll understand why.”
Puzzling over that cryptic statement, Julio trailed Mulveck down a
hallway into the master bedroom. He gasped at the sight awaiting him
and for a moment could not breathe.
Behind him, Reese said, “Holy shit.”
Both bedside lamps were burning, and though there were still shadows
around the edges of the room, Rebecca Klienstad’s corpse was in the
brightest spot, mouth open, eyes wide with a vision of death. She had
been stripped naked and nailed to the wall, directly over the big bed.
One nail through each hand. One nail just below each elbow joint. One
in each foot. And a large spike through the hollow of the throat. It
was not precisely the classic pose of crucifixion, for the legs were
irnmodesfly spread, but it was close.
A police photographer was still snapping the corpse from every angle.
With each flash of his strobe unit, the dead woman seemed to move on the
wall, it was only an illusion, but she appeared to twitch as if
straining at the nails that held her.
Julio had never seen anything as savage as the crucifixion of the dead
woman, yet it had obviously been done not in a white-hot madness but
with cold calculation. Clearly, the wbman had already been dead when
brought here, for the nail holes weren’t bleeding. Her slender throat
had been slashed, and that was evidently the mortal wound.
The killerr killers-had expended considerable time and energy finding
the nails and the hammer (which now lay on the floor in one corner of
the room), hoisting the corpse against the wall, holding it in place,
and precisely driving the impaling spikes through the cool dead flesh.
Apparently the head had drooped down, chin to chest, and apparently the
killer had wanted the dead woman to be staring at the bedroom door (a