If everyone were like him, Mary thought, the word “clumsy” wouldn’t exist.
He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “Will you be able to get back to sleep?”
“I doubt it.”
“Drink up.”
She sipped the Scotch. It burned her throat.
“What are you worrying about?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re worrying about the vision.”
“Not at all.”
“Look, worry accomplishes nothing,” he said. “And whatever you do, don’t think about a blue giraffe standing in the center of a giant custard pie.”
She stared at him, incredulous.
Grinning, he said, “What are you worrying about now?”
“What else? A blue giraffe in a custard pie.”
“See? I stopped you from worrying about the vision.”
She laughed. He had such a stern, forbidding face that his humor always came as a surprise.
“Speaking of blue,” he said, “you look perfect in that robe.”
“I’ve worn it before.”
“And every time you wear it you’re breathtaking. Perfect.”
She kissed him. She explored his lips with her tongue, then teasingly drew back.
“You look perfect in it, but you’d look even better out of it.” He put his drink beside her on the nightstand and untied the sash that was knotted at her waist, opened the long blue robe.
A pleasant tremor passed through her. The cool air caressed her bare skin. She felt soft, vulnerable; she needed him.
With his heavy hands, now light as wings, he traced lazy circles on her breasts, cupped them, pressed them together, gently massaged them. He got on his knees before her, nuzzled her cleavage and kissed her nipples.
She took his head in her hands, pushed her fingers through his lush, shining hair.
Alan was wrong about him.
“My lovely Max,” she said.
He moved his lips down her taut belly as she lay back, kissed her thighs, delicately licked the warm center of her. He slipped his hands under her buttocks, lifted slightly.
After many minutes during which her murmurs rose and fell, rose and fell again like the enigmatic susurration of the sea, he raised his head and said, “I love you.”
“Then love me.”
He took off his robe and joined her on the bed.
Agreeably exhausted, they separated at midnight, but the spell was not broken. Still enchanted, eyes closed, she drifted. In some ways she was more intensely aware of her body than she had been during intercourse.
Within minutes, however, memories of the vision returned to her: bloodied and crumpled faces. With her eyes closed, the backs of her lids were like twin projection screens on which she saw nothing but carnage.
She opened her eyes and the dark room appeared to crawl with strange shapes. Although she didn’t want to disturb Max, she couldn’t keep herself from tossing and turning.
Eventually he switched on the light. “You need a sedative.” He swung his legs out of bed.
“I’ll get it,” she said.
“Stay put.”
A minute later he came back from the bathroom with a glass of water and one of the capsules that she too frequently required.
“Maybe I shouldn’t take it on top of liquor,” she said.
“You drank only half of your Scotch.”
“I had vodka before that.”
“The vodka’s through your system by now.”
She took the sedative. It stuck in her throat. She choked it down with another swallow of water.
In bed again, he held her hand. He was still holding it when the chemically induced sleep finally began to creep over her.
As consciousness spun away from her like a child’s ball rolling down a hillside, she thought about how wrong Alan was about Max, how terribly and completely wrong.
Tuesday, December 22
6
“ANAHEIM POLICE.”
“Are you a police officer, Miss?”
“I’m the receptionist.”
“Could I speak to an officer?”
“What’s the nature of your complaint?”
“Oh, no complaint. I think you people do a wonderful job.”
“I meant, are you reporting a crime?”
“I’m not sure. A very strange thing happened here.”
“What is your name?”
“Alice. Alice Barnable.”
“Your address?”
“Peregrine Apartments on Euclid Avenue. I’m in apartment B.”
“I’ll connect you with someone.”
“Sergeant Erdman speaking.”
“Are you really a sergeant?”
“Who’s this?”
“Mrs. Alice Barnable.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Are you really a sergeant? You sound too young.”
“I’ve been a policeman for twenty years. If you—”
“I’m seventy-eight, but I’m not senile.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“So many people treat us senior citizens as if we’re children.”
“I don’t, Mrs. Barnable. My mother’s seventy-five, and she’s sharper than I am.”
“So you better believe what I’ve got to tell you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Four nurses share an apartment above mine, and I know they’re in some sort of bad trouble. I called up there, but no one answers the phone.”
“How do you know they’re in trouble?”
“There’s a puddle of blood in my spare bathroom.”
“Whose blood? I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“You see, the water pipes that serve the apartment above mine are exposed, and they run up one corner of my spare bath. Now, I don’t want you to think I live in a cheap place. The pipes are painted white, hardly noticeable. The building’s old but elegant in its way. It’s not cheap. It’s quaint. My Charlie left me enough to let me live very comfortably.”
“I’m sure he did, Mrs. Barnable. What about the blood?”
“Those pipes run through a hole in the ceiling. The hole’s a tiny bit bigger than it needs to be. Just a quarter of an inch of space all the way around the pipe. During the night, blood dripped out of that hole. The pipes are streaked with it, and there’s a large sticky spot on my floor.”
“You’re sure it’s blood? It might be rusty water or—”
“Now you’re treating me as if I’m a child, Sergeant Erdman.”
“Sorry.”
“I know blood when I see it. And what I wondered—I wondered if maybe your people should take a look upstairs.”
Patrolmen Stambaugh and Pollini found the door to the apartment ajar. It was spotted with fingerprints that were cast in dried blood.
“Think he’s still in there?” Stambaugh asked.
“Never can tell. Back me up.”
Pollini went inside with his gun drawn and Stambaugh followed.
The living room was inexpensively but pleasantly furnished with wicker and rattan. On the white walls were colorful framed prints of palm trees and native villages and bare-breasted, nut-brown girls in striped sarongs.
The first body was in the kitchen. A young woman in black and green pajamas. On the floor. On her back. Long yellow hair streaked with clotted red bands spread around her like a fan. She had been stabbed—and kicked in the face more than once.
“Christ,” Stambaugh said.
“Something, huh?”
“Don’t you feel sick?”
“Seen it before.”
Pollini pointed to several items on the counter by the sink—a paper plate, two slices of bread, a jar of mustard, a tomato, a package of cheese.
“Important?” Stambaugh asked.
“She woke up during the night. Maybe she was an insomniac. She was making a snack when he came in. Doesn’t look like she put up a fight. He either surprised her, or she knew and trusted him.”
“Should we be talking like this?”
“Why not?”
Stambaugh gestured toward the rooms that they hadn’t yet investigated.
“The killer? He’s long gone.”
Stambaugh greatly admired his partner. He was eight years younger than Pollini. He’d been a cop only six months, while the older man had been on the force for seven years. In his view, Pollini had everything that a great lawman required—in—telligence, courage, and street wisdom.
Most important of all, Pollini was able to do his job without letting it touch him. He didn’t flinch at the sight of shattered bodies, not even when he encountered the most pathetic victim of all—the battered child. Pollini was nothing less than a rock.
Although he tried to imitate his mentor, Stambaugh usually got sick to his stomach in the midst of too much spilled blood.
“Come on,” Pollini said.
He led Stambaugh back through the hall to the spare bath, where the harsh light glared on blood-splashed porcelain and on the hideously stained white vanity top.
“There was a struggle this time,” Stambaugh said.
“But not much of one. It was over in seconds.”
Another young woman, wearing only panties, was curled fetally in a corner of the bathroom. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the breasts and stomach, back and buttocks. There were between fifty and a hundred wounds.
Her blood had pooled around the pipes that came up from Alice Barnable’s first-floor apartment.
“Funny,” Pollini said.
“Funny?”
Stambaugh had never seen such slaughter. He could not comprehend the violent mind behind it.
“Funny that he didn’t rape either of them.”
“Is that what he should have done?”
“His kind does, ninety percent of the time.”
Across the hall the spare bedroom contained two unmade beds but no bodies.
In the master suite they found a nude redhead on the bed nearest the door. Her throat had been cut.
“No struggle at all,” Pollini said. “He caught her while she was sleeping. Doesn’t look like he raped this one either.”
Stambaugh nodded. He was unable to speak.
Both women in the master bedroom appeared to be Catholics who were, if not devout, at least attentive to their faith. A number of religious objects were scattered on the floor.
A damaged crucifix lay beside the redhead’s nightstand. The wooden cross had been broken into four pieces. The aluminum image of Christ was bent at the waist, so that its crown of thorns touched its bare feet
;
and its head was twisted around so that Christ was looking over his shoulder.
“This wasn’t just broken in a scuffle,” Pollini said, stooping over the remains of the icon. “The killer pulled this off the wall and spent a good bit of time demolishing it.”
Two small religious statues had been on the redhead’s dresser. These were also broken. Some of the pieces had been ground into chalky dust
;
there were a few white heel prints on the carpet.
“He sure has something against Catholics,” Pollini said. “Or against religion in general.”
Stambaugh reluctantly followed him to the last bed.
The fourth dead woman had been stabbed repeatedly and strangled with a rosary.
In life she had been beautiful. Even now, naked and cold, her hair matted with blood, nose broken, one eye swollen shut, face dark with bruises, there were still traces of beauty. Alive, her blue eyes would have been as clear as mountain lakes. Washed and combed, her hair would have been thick, lustrous. She had long shapely legs, a narrow waist, a flat belly and lovely breasts.
I’ve seen women like her, Stambaugh thought sadly. She would have walked with her shoulders back, with evident pride in herself, with joy apparent in every step.
“She was a nurse,” Pollini said.
Stambaugh looked at the uniform and cap that were on a chair near the bed. His legs felt weak.
“What’s the matter?” Pollini asked.
Stambaugh hesitated, cleared his throat. “Well, my sister’s a nurse.”
“This isn’t your sister, is it?”
“No. But she’s about my sister’s age.”
“You know her? She work with your sister?”
“Never saw her before,” Stambaugh said.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“This girl might have been my sister.”
“You cracking up on me?”
“I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“You’ll get used to this stuff.”
Stambaugh said nothing.
“This one was raped,” Pollini said.
Stambaugh swallowed hard. He was dizzy.
“See that?” Pollini asked.
“What?”
“On the pubic hair. It’s semen.”
“Oh.”
“I wonder if he had her before or after.”
“Before or after what?”
“Before or after he killed her.”
Stambaugh hurried into the master bath, dropped to his knees before the toilet, and threw up.
When his stomach spasms passed, he knew that in the past ten minutes he had learned something important about himself. In spite of what he’d thought this morning, he
never
wanted to be like Ted Pollini.
7
MAX CAME BACK to the room at eleven-thirty, just as she finished dressing. He kissed her lightly on the mouth. He smelled of soap, shaving lotion, and the cherry-scented pipe tobacco that he favored.
“Out for a walk?” Mary asked.
“When did you wake up?”
“Only an hour ago.”
“I was up at eight-thirty.”
“I slept
ten
hours. When I finally managed to throw myself out of bed, I felt dopey. I shouldn’t have taken the sedative on top of liquor.”
“You needed it.”
“I didn’t need to feel the way I felt this morning.”
“You look wonderful now.”
“Where have you been?”
“At the coffee shop downstairs. Had some toast and orange juice. Read the papers.”
“Anything that’s connected with what I saw last night?”
“The local paper has a nice story. You and Barnes catching The Slasher. They say Goldman is already off the critical list.”
“That’s not what I meant. The dead women in the vision. What about them?”