“There was an autopsy,” Clarise said. “No brain tumour, brain lesions, no medical condition that might explain what she did.”
“You mentioned a second time when she showed some emotion.”
“Just before she… before she stabbed herself. It was just a flicker, even briefer than the first. Like a spasm. Her whole face wrenched as if she were going to scream. Then it was gone, and she remained expressionless to the end.”
Jolted by a realization he had failed to reach when Clarise had first described the video, Joe said, “You mean she never screamed, cried out?”
“No. Never.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Right at the end, when she drops the knife… there’s a soft sound that may be from her, hardly more than a sigh.”
“The pain…” Joe couldn’t bring himself to say that Nora Vadance’s pain must have been excruciating.
“But she never screamed,” Clarise insisted.
“Even involuntary response would have—”
“Silent. She was silent.”
“The microphone was working?”
“Built-in, omnidirectional mike,” Bob said.
“On the video,” Clarise said, “you can hear other sounds. The scrape of the patio chair on the concrete when she repositions it. Bird songs. One sad-sounding dog barking in the distance. But nothing from her.”
Stepping out of the front door, Joe searched the night, half expecting to see a white van or another suspicious-looking vehicle parked on the street in front of the Vadance place. From the house next door came the faint strains of Beethoven. The air was warm, but a soft breeze had sprung up from the west, bringing with it the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine. As far as Joe could discern, there was nothing menacing in this gracious night.
As Clarise and Bob followed him onto the porch, Joe said, “When they found Nora, was the photograph of Tom’s grave with her?”
Bob said, “No. It was on the kitchen table. At the very end, she didn’t carry it with her.”
“We found it on the table when we arrived from San Diego,” Clarise recalled. “Beside her breakfast plate.”
Joe was surprised. “She’d eaten breakfast?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Clarise said. “If she was going to kill herself, why bother with breakfast? It’s even weirder than that, Joe. She’d made an omelette with Cheddar and chopped scallions and ham. Toast on the side. A glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. She was halfway through eating it when she got up and went outside with the camcorder.”
“The woman you described on the video was deeply depressed or in an altered state of some kind. How could she have had the mental clarity or the patience to make such a complicated breakfast?”
Clarise said, “And consider this—the Los Angeles Times was open beside her plate—”
“—and she was reading the comics,” Bob finished.
For a moment they were silent, pondering the imponderable.
Then Bob said, “You see what I meant earlier when I said we have a thousand questions of our own.”
As though they were friends of long experience, Clarise put her arms around Joe and hugged him. “I hope this Rose is a good person, like you think. I hope you find her. And whatever she has to tell you, I hope it brings you some peace, Joe.”
Moved, he returned her embrace. “Thanks, Clarise.”
Bob had written their Miramar address and telephone number on a page from a note pad. He gave the folded slip of paper to Joe. “In case you have any more questions… or if you learn anything that might help us understand.”
They shook hands. The handshake became a brotherly hug.
Clarise said, “What’ll you do now, Joe?”
He checked the luminous dial of his watch. “It’s only a few minutes past nine. I’m going to try to see another of the families tonight.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“I will.”
“Something’s wrong, Joe. Something’s wrong big time.”
“I know.”
Bob and Clarise were still standing on the porch, side by side, watching Joe as he drove away.
Although he’d finished more than half of his second drink, Joe felt no effect from the 7-and-7. He had never seen a picture of Nora Vadance; nevertheless, the mental image he held of a faceless woman in a patio chair with a butcher knife was sufficiently sobering to counter twice the amount of whiskey that he had drunk.