Racking the microphone, Tony looked at Frank and said, “I knew it! Dammit, I knew she wasn’t lying about the whole thing.”
“Don’t preen your feathers yet,” Frank said disagreeably. “Whatever this new development is, she’s probably making it up like she made up all the rest of it.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“Not when I know I’m right.”
A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of the Thomas house. The circular driveway was filled with two press cars, a station wagon for the police laboratory, and a black-and-white.
As they got out of their car and started across the lawn, a uniformed officer came out of the house and walked toward them. Tony knew him; his name was Warren Prewitt. They met him halfway to the front door.
“You guys answered this call last night?” Prewitt asked.
“That’s right,” Frank said.
“What is it, do you work twenty-four hours a day?”
“Twenty-six,” Frank said.
Tony said, “How’s the woman?”
“Shaken up,” Prewitt said.
“Not hurt?”
“Some bruises on her throat.”
“Serious?”
“No.”
“What happened?” Frank said.
Prewitt capsulized the story that Hilary Thomas had told him earlier.
“Any proof that she’s telling the truth?” Frank asked.
“I heard how you feel about this case,” Prewitt said. “But there is proof.”
“Like what?” Frank asked.
“He got into the house last night through a study window. A very smart job it was, too. He taped up the glass so she wouldn’t hear it breaking.”
“She could have done that herself,” Frank said.
“Broken her own window’?” Prewitt asked.
“Yeah. Why not?” Frank said.
“Well,” Prewitt said, “she wasn’t the one who bled all the hell over the place.”
“How much blood?” Tony asked.
“Not a whole lot, but not a whole little,” Prewitt said. “There’s some on the hall floor, a big bloody handprint on the wall up there, drops of blood on the stairs, another smeared print on the downstairs foyer wall, and traces of blood on the doorknob.”
“Human blood?” Frank asked.
Prewitt blinked at him. “Huh?”
“I’m wondering if it’s a fake, a hoax.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Tony said.
“The boys from the lab didn’t get here till about forty-five minutes ago,” Prewitt said. “They haven’t said anything yet. But I’m sure it’s human blood. Besides, three of the neighbors saw the man running away.”
“Ahhh,” Tony said softly.
Frank scowled at the lawn at his feet, as if he were trying to wither the grass.
“He left the house all doubled up,” Prewitt said. “He was holding his stomach and shuffling kind of hunched over, which fits in with Miss Thomas’s statement that she stabbed him twice in the midsection.”
“Where’d he go?” Tony asked.
“We have a witness who saw him climb into a gray Dodge van two blocks south of here. He drove away.”
“Got a license number?”
“No,” Prewitt said. “But the word’s out. There’s a want on the van.”
Frank Howard looked up. “You know, maybe this attack isn’t related to the story she fed us last night. Maybe she cried wolf last night–and then this morning she really was attacked.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as just a bit too coincidental?” Tony asked exasperatedly.
“Besides, it must be related,” Prewitt said. “She swears it was the same man.”
Frank met Tony’s stare and said, “But it can’t be Bruno Frye. You know what Sheriff Laurenski said.”
“I never insisted it was Frye.” Tony said. “Last night, I figured she was attacked by someone who resembled Frye.”
“She insisted–”
“Yeah, but she was scared and hysterical,” Tony said. “She wasn’t thinking clearly, and she mistook the look-alike for the real thing. It’s understandable.”
“And you tell me I’m building a case on coincidences,” Frank said disgustedly.
At that moment Officer Gurney, Prewitt’s partner, came out of the house and called to him! “Hey, they found him. The man she stabbed!”
Tony, Frank, and Prewitt hurried to the front door.
“HQ just phoned,” Gurney said. “A couple of kids on skateboards found him about twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Way the hell down on Sepulveda. In some supermarket parking lot. He was lying on the ground beside his van.”
“Dead?”
“As a doornail.”