grisly surprise for Rachael Leben), so he had looped a wire under the
chin and had tied it tautly to a nail driven into the wall above her
skull, to keep her facing out. Finally he had taped her eyes open-so
she would be staring sightlessly at whomever discovered her.
“I understand,” Julio said.
“Yes,” Reese Hagerstrom said shakily.
Mulveck blinked in surprise. Pearls of sweat glistened on his pale
forehead, perhaps not because of the June heat. “You’ve got to be
joking. You understand this…
madness? You see a reason for it?”
Julio said, “Ernestina and this girl were murdered primarily because the
killer needed a car, and they had a car. But when he saw what the
Klienstad woman looked like, he dumped the other one and brought the
second body here to leave this message.”
Mulveck nervously combed one hand through his hair.
“But if this psycho intended to kill Mrs. Leben, if she was his primary
target, why not just come here and get her? Why just leave a.
. . a message?”
“The killer must have had reason to suspect that she wouldn’t be at
home. Maybe he even called first,” Julio said.
He was remembering Rachael Leben’s extreme nervousness when he had
questioned her at the morgue earlier this evening. He had sensed that
she was hiding something and that she was very much afraid. Now he knew
that, even then, she had realized her life was in danger.
But who was she afraid of, and why couldn’t she turn to the police for
help? What was she hiding?
The police photographer’s camera click-flashed.
Julio continued, “The killer knew he wouldn’t be able to get his hands
on her right away, but he wanted her to know she could expect him later.
Her they-wanted to scare her witless. And when he took a good look at
this Klienstad woman he had killed, he knew what he must do.”
“Huh?” Mulveck said. “I don’t follow.”
“Rebecca Klienstad was voluptuous,” Julio said, indicating the crucified
woman. “So is Rachael Leben. Very similar body types.”
“And Mrs. Leben has hair much the same as the Klienstad girl’s,” Reese
said. “Coppery brown.”
“Titian,” Julio said. “And although this woman isn’t nearly as lovely
as Mrs. Leben, there’s a vague resemblance, a similarity of facial
structure.”
The photographer paused to put new film in his camera.
Officer Mulveck shook his head. “Let me get this straight. The way it
was supposed to work-Mrs. Leben would eventually come home and when she
walked into this room she would see this woman crucified and know, by
the similarities, that it was her this psycho really wanted to nail to
the wall.”
“Yes,” Julio said, “I think so.”
“Yes,” Reese agreed.
“Good God,” Mulveck said, “do you realize how black, how bitter, how
deep this hatred must be? Whoever he is, what could Mrs. Leben possibly
have done to make him hate her like that? What sort of enemies does she
have?”
“Very dangerous enemies,” Julio said. “That’s all I know. And… if we
don’t find her quickly, we won’t find her alive.”
The photographer’s camera flashed.
The corpse seemed to twitch.
Flash, twitch.
Flash, twitch.
When the right front tire blew, Benny hardly slowed.
He wrestled with the wheel and drove another half block.
The Mercedes thumped and shuddered and rocked along, crippled but
cooperative.
No headlights appeared behind them. The pursuing Cadillac had not yet
turned the corner two blocks back.
But it would. Soon.
Benny kept looking desperately left and right.
Rachael wondered what sort of bolthole he was searching for.
Then he found it, a one-story stucco house with a FOR SALE sign in the
front yard, set on a big half-acre lot, grass unmown, separated from its
neighbors by an eightfoothigh concrete-block wall that was also finished
in stucco and that afforded some privacy. There were lots of trees on
the property as well, and overgrown slrtiibhery in need of a gardener’s
attention.
“Eureka,” Benny said.
-He swung into the driveway, then pulled across one corner of the lawn
and around the side of the house. In back, he parked on a concrete
deck, under a redwood patio cover. He switched off the headlights, the