‘Yeah, no judge is going to allow evidence into court if some cop barfed on it,’ Manuello said.
Dan ignored them. If he felt like barfing, he’d be sure to do it on Wexlersh and Manuello.
He stepped over a heap of mangled books that were saturated with spilled jasmine oil, and he moved toward the assistant medical examiner who was crouched over a shapeless crimson thing that was the last of Joseph Scaldone.
* * *
Working on the theory that the calico cat might have detected a stealthy sound too soft to be detected by human hearing and might have been frightened by the presence of an intruder in another part of the house, Earl Benton went from room to room, checking windows and doors. He searched in closets and behind the larger pieces of furniture. But the house was secure.
He found Pepper in the living room, no longer frightened but wary. The cat was lying on top of the television. She allowed herself to be petted, and she began to purr.
‘What got into you, puss?’ he asked.
After being petted awhile, she stretched one leg over the side of the TV and pointed at the controls with one paw. She gave him a look that seemed to inquire if he would be so kind as to switch on the heater-with-pictures-and-voices, so her chosen perch would warm up a bit.
Leaving the TV off, he returned to the kitchen. Melanie was still sitting at the table, as animated as a carrot.
Laura was at the counter where Earl had left her, still holding a knife. She didn’t seem to have been working on dinner while he’d been gone. She’d just been waiting, knife in hand, in case someone else returned in Earl’s place.
She was obviously relieved when she saw him, and she put the knife down. ‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’
The refrigerator door suddenly came open of its own volition. The jars, bottles, and other items on the glass shelves began to wobble and rattle. As though touched by invisible hands, several cupboard doors flew open.
Laura gasped.
Instinctively, Earl reached for the gun in his holster, but he had no one to shoot at. He stopped with his hand on the butt of the weapon, feeling slightly foolish and more than a little perplexed.
Dishes jiggled and clattered on the shelves. A calendar, hanging on the wall by the back door, fell to the floor with a sound like frantic wings.
After ten or fifteen seconds, which seemed like an hour, the dishes stopped rattling, and the cupboard doors stopped swinging on their hinges, and the contents of the refrigerator grew still.
‘Earthquake,’ Earl said.
‘Was it?’ Laura McCaffrey said doubtfully.
He knew what she meant. It had been similar to the effects of a moderate earthquake yet … somehow different. An odd pressure change had seemed to condense the air, and the sudden chill had been too harsh to be attributed entirely to the open refrigerator door. In fact, when the trembling stopped, the air warmed up in an instant, even though the refrigerator door was still open.
But if not a quake, what had it been? Not a sonic boom. That wouldn’t explain the chill or the pressure in the air. Not a ghost. He didn’t believe in ghosts. And where the hell had such a thought come from, anyway? He’d run Poltergeist on his VCR a couple nights ago. Maybe that was it. But he was not so impressionable that one good scary movie would make him reach for a supernatural explanation here, now, when a considerably less exotic answer was so evident.
‘Just an earthquake,’ he assured her, although he was far from convinced of that.
* * *
They figured he was Joseph Scaldone, the owner, because all the paper in his wallet was for Scaldone. But until they got a dental-records confirmation or a fingerprint match, the wallet was the only way they could peg him. No one who knew Scaldone would be able to make a visual identification because the poor bastard didn’t have a face left. There wasn’t even much hope of getting an ID based on scars or on other identifying marks, because the body was smashed and torn and flayed and gouged so badly that old scars or birthmarks were lost in the bloody ruins. Splintered ribs poked up through holes in his shirt, and a jagged lance of bone had pierced both his leg and trousers.