Her feet led her forward, into the short hall past the half bath and toward the living room. At the room’s entry she paused, struck by another oddity. Michael had closed all his shutters? She didn’t know him to do that. Yet both sets of big paned windows were shuttered, allowing no light to pass through.
It was very quiet. She could hear the thud of her own heartbeat in her ears. She licked her lips, suddenly dry. Her palms, in contrast, were moist.
“Michael?” She spoke in a half whisper, not really expecting a reply.
Tentatively she edged further into the room, her hands outstretched so she wouldn’t bump into any furniture. Her right mule stuck on the hardwood and her foot slipped out of it, setting down on the floor.
It was sticky.
The air smelled different suddenly. Heavy. Leaden.
She lurched forward, losing her other mule in the effort, aiming for the closest shuttered window. Sticky, sticky, all the way. She jerked the shutter open, nearly knocking a lamp off a table, and moonlight beamed onto her face. She turned around.
Blood. Pools of it, spatters of it, streams of it. Walls, floors, furniture. She raised her eyes. Ceiling.
Oh my God, no ...
In front of the fireplace, in the center of hell, Michael. Gaping huge hole where his throat should be. Body tilted grotesquely, partly off his wheelchair but not quite. Head thrown back, eyes frozen forever staring to the left, mouth open in a silent scream.
Blood all over him, black now, black as death.
She ran toward him, slipping, falling to the floor, knees in the stickiness, both hands too. She scrambled to her feet. She reached him, shut her eyes, whimpered, opened them again. He was still there. Hell breathed here on earth, here in this living room.
“Michael?” It was a sob, a moan, no longer a name.
“Michael?” Louder, still no answer. Nevermore an answer.
Trembling, panting, clutching his hand—it was still his hand even though it belonged to this horribly mutilated shell of him—rocking back and forth, “Oh my God,” such meaningless words, such meaninglessness everywhere.
A crashing sound behind her. She jolted to her feet and spun around.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A second later she realized what had made the sound.
The lamp. The lamp fell.
The brass lamp near the front window had pitched over. She’d probably knocked it off kilter when she opened the shutter.
What do I do now? What do I do?
Trembling, she stared at the lamp, the ivory silk of its shade resting in a puddle of blood. Already a crimson stain was seeping into the elegant fabric, like a cancer claiming one innocent cell after the next.
It was grotesque, as was everything else in the room, the gracious living room that had morphed into a torture chamber.
Michael … Reluctantly she turned back around to face him, hoping the image would be different this time. It wasn’t. The nightmare continued to spool out in unrelenting horror, Michael as still as a shipwreck, his body twisted, she noticed now, as if he’d attempted to get away.
Stop shaking, she ordered herself. Yet she couldn’t stop. She tried; she failed. What do I do now?
Poor Michael. He’d been so afraid, though he’d tried to hide it. This poor vulnerable man … She hoped he hadn’t suffered but knew that he had. Maybe it hadn’t been for long. Maybe at the very end he’d seen Renee’s face and been delivered …
She started to sob. What do I do now? How senseless it all was! All this time the cops had been questioning her, digging frogs out of her back yard and analyzing them, while the killer jeered at their stupidity and stalked his next prey.
And I was right here. The realization froze her. She’d been so close. If she’d woken earlier, come into the house sooner …
Maybe I could have saved him.
Or maybe I would have been killed, too.
She squeezed her eyes shut, wrapped her arms around her body to try to stop the trembling. In the distance a siren wailed. Annie listened to it fill the hollow night, its arcing sound rising and falling. A second siren picked up the strident refrain, then a dog joined the chorus with a low baying howl.
Maybe they’re coming here. The idea relieved her. She took a deep breath and took a few unsteady steps toward the front door. Michael could be tended to, returned to some dignity, sprung from this hellhole. Then a new realization hit and she halted, her outstretched hand inches from the doorknob.
What will they think when they find me here?
Slowly she turned her hand palm up and gaped at it as if it belonged to a stranger. It was smeared with blood, as were her bare feet and her tee shirt and, she was sure, her face. Anyone would think she was the torturer, the wielder of the knife, a modern-day Lizzie Borden who in a fit of rage had killed someone she used to love.
They already suspect me. And now here I am.
With the slashed body of the latest victim.
At any moment the police might show up, surround the property to pounce on her, maybe even tipped off by the killer. It was possible.
There was no time to waste. She couldn’t erase her presence here; that was hopeless. Her DNA was everywhere, a road map to her identity. And so many people had seen her with Michael in the little downtown the day before.
The sirens receded. Apparently they were summoned to another catastrophe. Annie turned again to face the accursed tableau. She told herself it was no betrayal to leave Michael like this. She had little choice. She told herself she would have time to mourn: she would have a lifetime. But still she felt like a traitor as she tiptoed past him, taking time only to mouth a sobbing prayer for godspeed.
Then she stumbled toward the guesthouse.
*
Cynthia Rowell opened her eyes and lay in bed while her pupils adjusted to the semi-dark of her nocturnal bedroom. Shapes began to emerge from the shadows. The scratched-up pine bureau against the wall, a hand-me-down from Arlie’s mother, his underwear in unkempt mounds poking from the partly opened top drawer. Their framed I HAVE A DREAM poster, with Martin’s perspiring brow and forefinger raised in defiance. The pile of dogeared books on her nightstand, next to the Stones tickets she’d been so happy to get that afternoon, even if it had taken hours in line.
Then she heard it, what must have waked her. The phone, ringing in the kitchen.
She frowned, raised her head to see the clock beside the ticket envelope. About 2:20. Beside her Arlie snored, dead to the world.
The floorboards protested beneath her bare feet and her long gray braid swung behind her head as she raced across the Berkeley bungalow in her frayed flannel nightgown. She swiped the phone in mid-ring, for once hoping for a crank call. Not the other kind that tended to come in the middle of the night. “Hello?”
A voice broke through a sob. “Mom?”
So this call was one of the other kind. Cynthia’s heart nosedived. “What is it, sweetie?”
“Something terrible’s happened.”
“I’m coming over.” She nearly hung up, then heard the thin disembodied voice through the phone line.
“You can’t. I’m not home.”
Cynthia returned the receiver to her ear and clutched it with both hands, wanting to hold on tight to something. “Wait a minute, are you in the car? Where are you? I don’t care where it is, I’m coming.”
“No, Mom, I mean it. You can’t.”
Annie was really crying now. Listening to the wracked sobs, tears rose to Cynthia’s own eyes. It never got easier, it never did. Her child was thirty years old but still it twisted her gut to hear her pained cries; still she’d go to the ends of the earth to stop them. These days that might be what it took. The problems were so much harder now, nothing that could be easily patched over, like scraped knees or dolls with twisted limbs.
Annie was speaking. “I’m all right, Mom. But you’re not going to see me for a while.”
“Why not? What are you talking about?”
“It’s Mi
chael.” Annie’s voice sputtered and choked. “He’s … he’s dead.”
God, no. Though a part of her had guessed it even before the words were spoken.
“You’re going to hear things,” her daughter said. Her voice steadied then, as if she were getting down to business. “I didn’t do it, Mom.”
“I know you didn’t, honey.”
“Everyone will think I did. I have to prove I didn’t.”
Cynthia didn’t like the sound of that. She began to shake her head. “No. You can’t do that on your own. Come home and we’ll—”
“I can’t come home. They’ll arrest me.”
Cynthia couldn’t argue with that. She knew it was true. Cops with their rules and their uniforms and their tear gas and their closed minds. They’d never listened to her or Arlie or any of their friends; why would they listen to her daughter?
Arlie came into the kitchen then, his gray hair mussed, wearing the threadbare drawstring sweatpants he’d been sleeping in for a decade. He scratched the back of his head, his brow furrowed in drowsiness and confusion. His once-black chest hair had turned to salt and pepper and the skin on his belly sagged. My husband is an old man, Cynthia thought, for a moment torn from her daughter’s concerns. When had that happened? Yesterday they’d both been young.
Through the phone line, Cynthia heard Annie say the words she’d said to her own mother in years past, the words that never accomplished what they tried. “Don’t worry.”
“Annie, just come home.”
“I can’t. I have to go. But don’t worry, I have a plan.”
Cynthia heard the whoosh of another car passing Annie’s vehicle. She sensed her daughter distancing herself, getting set to do what she felt she must. Cynthia wanted to hold on but couldn’t. Like the years, there was nothing to grasp, no way to stop the forward motion.
Another passing car noise. Then, “I love you. Arlie, too,” and with a parting sob Annie disconnected.
Cynthia didn’t have to move far across the worn linoleum to find her husband’s arms, which despite the decades were still warm and strong. He wasn’t her daughter’s father but he’d been doing the job like a pro for years, far better than the so-called “real dad” ever had. Cynthia saw the love in her man’s welling eyes before she lay her head against his chest and let her tears moisten his skin.
*
Reid didn’t think Hollywood showed to advantage in sunlight, even the soft dewy sunlight that crept over the LA basin at 7 AM. He halted his Ford pickup at a red light and surveyed the trash scattered in the gutters, the toppling Cyclone fences surrounding empty rock-strewn lots, the pawn shops and bail bondsmen and barred-up convenience stores that called Hollywood home. It was ironic that this place got labeled Tinseltown. He figured it couldn’t have been a local who’d come up with that moniker.
He often sneaked a dawn peek at La La Land since he liked to get to work early, even if he knew the day would run well into the evening. Holdover from his cop era, he supposed. It was impossible for him to feel on top of things if he was strolling in at noon. Plus, with what they paid him, he couldn’t justify 8-hour days. It was so much more than he used to earn as a cop and in those days he’d worked a hell of a lot harder. He could never put in enough hours to make his Crimewatch salary make sense. So a lot of it he gave away, usually to charities related to law enforcement or victims’ rights. Maybe that made him a one-trick pony. He didn’t much care. He just wanted to do what he could to forward law and order, try to put some justice back in the world.
The light turned green and his foot found the accelerator. He cruised down a nearly deserted Sunset Boulevard, heading for the Crimewatch studios and pondering the two private entities to which he also regularly contributed. One was his family, only some of whom resisted his generosity. The other was Donna’s.
Not that it made up for anything, he knew. What they wanted was their girl back and that he could never give them. Still, if he could make sure—and he could—that their mortgage payments were met, that the family could swing a few weeks’ vacation every summer, that her mom could manage the occasional Nordstrom shopping spree, he’d do it. Gladly. Wishing he could do more.
As for his family, most of his largesse was aimed at his parents but little of it hit the mark. His father, retired from the LAPD, was as proud as his first-born son and even more stubborn. Though he’d softened a bit of late.
Briefly Reid shut his eyes. The prostate-cancer diagnosis was about as good as those things got. His dad had the slow-moving kind, the leave-it-alone-because-it-won’t-be-what-kills-you kind. Still. It was a jolt to the family, who was much more used to enemies you could see, enemies you battled with your gun and your badge, and beat every time you ended a shift still breathing.
Reid’s dad hadn’t thought much of his son’s Crimewatch gig at first. Robert Gardner’s idea of good TV was live sports, classic syndicated shows like M*A*S*H, and for some mysterious reason the Weather Channel. Plus, the elder Gardner thought that cops should do what cops should do, the old-fashioned way, which had nothing to do with cameras and klieg lights. But when Crimewatch started nabbing fugitives and got a few takedowns straight off the FBI’s Most Wanted List, Reid’s dad started singing a different tune. Now he loved Crimewatch and had all the merchandise to prove it: the tee shirt, the mug, the bumper sticker. He had to be the show’s biggest fan, a fact which made Reid smile every week he taped a new installment.
Reid made a left onto the side street where the studios were housed in a nondescript two-story commercial building without signage. Unlike the local news stations that dotted the area, there was no splashy billboard on the corner advertising this as Crimewatch territory. For security purposes, the show preferred to keep a low profile. Safety concerns explained the tall iron fence, topped by barbed wire, that delineated the perimeter, and the bars on every window, including those on the second floor. In an hour or so, the security-guard detail would show up for duty. There was one huge piece of equipment that did mark the structure as a broadcast facility: a massive satellite dish out back. Still, in Hollywood that didn’t garner much notice.
Reid halted the truck midway down the ramp that sloped to the subterranean garage and fumbled for the key card that would retract the locked door. Maybe, he thought, he should go with his dad to the next oncologist appointment. That way he could pose a few questions to someone who might actually give him a few straight answers. He was extending his left arm out the truck’s open window toward the key-card box, considering his schedule for the next few weeks, when a hand reached out from nowhere and grabbed his wrist.
“Shit!” He yanked his arm free as a woman’s face—pale, haggard—appeared at his window. “Dammit!” He cursed himself, his heart pumping like a racehorse’s crossing the finish line. He had too many enemies to be letting down his guard, particularly right outside the studios, the first place anybody hunting him would look. Then he focused on the face outside his truck and couldn’t believe who he was seeing. “Annie?”
She looked around frantically. “You’ve got to help me, Reid. I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
Christ, she looked like she’d just escaped the asylum. Hair every which way, eyes wild, rust-colored smears on her cheeks. And, he noticed, on her neck and arms.
He frowned. “What’s that you’ve got on you?”
“Blood.” Her eyes welled. “Michael’s blood. He’s dead.” Then she executed another of those crazed spins, looking around as if she were a trapped animal desperately seeking a way out.
“What?” His brain was having trouble processing the words she’d spoken. “Michael, your friend in the wheelchair? He’s dead?”
Now she was grabbing onto the door handle. Quickly she got the door open and hoisted herself inside the truck’s cab. “You’ve got to help me in,” she repeated as she clambered over him. “There’re too many people around. I can’t let anybody see me.”
She was unbelievably nimble. That, combined with her small si
ze and his morning-slow reaction time, allowed her to crawl over him and get into the passenger seat. As she passed, stinking of blood and sweat, she nearly gave him a shiner with her elbow.
By this point he wasn’t sure he wanted this woman within a mile of him, let alone in the cab of his truck. But there she was. “How the hell did you get Michael’s blood on you?” he demanded.
She turned her head away to stare out the windshield. Her lower lip trembled. “I was staying at his house. I found him after he was …” She stopped.
“After he was what?”
She swallowed. “Stabbed.”
“Are you telling me he was murdered?”
The tears welled again, this time spilled over. Still she kept her face straight ahead. “Yes. Last night.”
“And how did you find me?”
“Your business card, remember? You gave it to me.”
Yes, he had. In what now seemed like another life, when he hadn’t harbored doubts about this woman. And her innocence in what had apparently become an even longer list of serial killings.
Behind him, a horn honked. He leaned out his open driver’s-side door to see Sheila’s white Jetta poised at the top of the ramp. Great. Exactly what he needed. She opened her window and called out. “Doesn’t the key-card thing work?”
“I’ve been having a little trouble with it,” he lied, then turned back around. “Get down,” he muttered to Annie, but she’d already inserted herself into the footwell, contorting her body into an impressively tight ball of flesh and bone. She looked up at him with those big green eyes that had caused his heart to skip in recent weeks, but for entirely different reasons than it had this morning. “I’ll try again,” he called back to Sheila, then made a big show of finally! when the door to the subterranean garage rose as usual.
He waited to advance the truck so that his rear bumper would be just inside when the door began to slide down again. He wanted Sheila to have to use her own key card to drive through. It would buy him a few extra seconds, to do what he didn’t know.
Chasing Venus Page 9