At 2:25 Thursday morning, Bruno Frye drove slowly past the Thomas place. The fog was into Westwood now, but it was not as turbid as it was nearer the ocean. He could see the house well enough to observe that there was not even the faintest light beyond any of the front windows.
He drove two blocks, swung the van around, and went by the house again, even slower this time, carefully studying the cars parked along the street. He didn’t think the cops would post a guard for her, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The cars were empty; there was no stakeout.
He put the Dodge between the pair of Volvos two blocks away and walked back to the house through pools of foggy darkness, through pale circles of hazy light from the mist-cloaked streetlamps. As he crossed the lawn, his shoes squished in the dew-damp grass, a sound that made him aware of how ethereally quiet the night was otherwise.
At the side of the house, he crouched next to a bushy oleander plant and looked back the way he had come. No alarm had been set off. No one was coming after him.
He continued to the rear of the house and climbed over a locked gate. In the back yard, he looked up at the wall of the house and saw a small square of light on the second floor. From the size of it, he supposed it was a bathroom window; the larger panes of glass to the right of it showed vague traces of light at the edges of the drapes.
She was up there.
He was sure of it.
He could sense her. Smell her.
The bitch.
Waiting to be taken and used.
Waiting to be killed.
Waiting to kill me? he wondered.
He shuddered. He wanted her, had a fierce hardon for her, but he was also afraid of her.
Always before, she had died easily. She had always come back from the dead in a new body, masquerading as a new woman, but she had always died without much of a struggle. Tonight, however, Katherine had been a regular tigress, shockingly strong and clever and fearless. This was a new development, and he did not like it.
Nevertheless, he had to go after her. If he didn’t pursue her from one reincarnation to the next, if he didn’t keep killing her until she finally stayed dead, he would never have any peace.
He did not bother to try opening the kitchen door with the keys he had stolen out of her purse the day she’d been to the winery. She had probably had new locks installed. Even if she hadn’t taken that precaution, he would be unable to get in through the door. Tuesday night, the first time he had attempted to get into the house, she had been at home, and he had discovered that one of the locks would not open with a key if it had been engaged from inside. The upper lock opened without resistance, but the lower one would only release if it had been locked from outside, with a key. He had not gotten into the house on that occasion, had had to come back the next night, Wednesday night, eight hours ago, when she was out to dinner and both of his keys were useable. But now she was in there, and although she might not have had the locks replaced, she had turned those special deadbolts from the inside, effectively barring entrance regardless of the number of keys he possessed.
He moved along to the corner of the house, where a big mullioned window looked into the rose garden. It was divided into a lot of six-inch-square panes of glass by thin strips of dark, well lacquered wood. The book-lined study lay on the other side. He took a penlight from one pocket, flicked it on, and directed the narrow beam through the window. Squinting, he searched the length of the sill and the less visible horizontal center bar until he located the latch, then turned off the penlight. He had a roll of masking tape, and he began to tear strips trom it, covering the small pane that was nearest the window lock. When the six-inch square was completely masked over, he used his gloved fist to smash through it: one hard blow. The glass shattered almost soundlessly and did not clatter to the floor, for it stuck onto the tape. He reached inside and unlatched the window, raised it, heaved himself up and across the sill. He barely avoided making a hell of a racket when he encountered a small table and nearly fell over it.