held minor roles. Nevertheless, he had been drawn to her and Lindsey,
and his own master apparently judged them to be suitable sacrifices.
The house was so still that he would have to move as quietly as a cat.
He could manage that.
He glanced back at the girl on the bed, able to see her better in the
darkness than he could see most of the details of the too-bright
hallway.
She was still unconscious, one of her own scarves wadded in her mouth
and another tied around her head to keep the gag in place. Strong
lengths of cord, which he had untied from around storage boxes in the
garage attic, tightly bound her wrists and ankles.
Control.
Leaving Regina's door open behind him he eased along the hallway,
staying close to the wall, where the plywood sub-flooring under the
thick carpet was least likely to creak.
He knew the layout. He had cautiously explored the second floor while
the Harrisons had been finishing dinner.
Beside the girls room was a guest bedroom. It was dark now. He crept
on toward Lindsey's studio.
Because the main hallway chandelier was directly ahead of him, his
shadow fell in his wake, which was fortunate. Otherwise, if the woman
happened to be looking toward the hall, she would have been warned of
his approach.
He inched to the studio door and stopped.
Standing with his back flat to the wall, eyes straight ahead, he could
see between the balusters under the handrail of the open staircase, to
the foyer below. As far as he could tell, no lights were on downstairs.
He wondered where the husband had gone. The tall doors to the master
bedroom were open, but no lights were on in there. He could hear small
noises coming from within the woman's studio, so he figured she was at
work. If the husband was with her, surely they would have exchanged a
few words, at least, during the time Vassago had been making his way
along the hall.
He hoped the husband had gone out on an errand. He had no particular
need to kill the man. And any confrontation would be dangerous.
From his jacket pocket, he withdrew the supple leather sap, filled with
lead shot, that he had appropriated last week from Morton Redlow, the
detective. It was an extremely effective-looking blackjack. It felt
good in his hand. In the pearl-gray Honda, two blocks away, a handgun
was tucked under the driver's seat, and Vassago almost wished he had
brought it. He had taken it from the antique dealer, Robert Lofiman, in
Laguna Beach a couple of hours before dawn that morning.
But he didn't want to shoot the woman and the girl. Even if he just
wounded and disabled them, they might bleed to death before he got them
back to his hideaway and down into the museum of death, to the altar
where his offerings were arranged. And if he used a gun to remove the
husband, he could risk only one shot, maybe two. Too much gunfire was
bound to be heard by neighbors and the source located. In that quiet
community, once gunfire was identified, cops would be crawling over the
place in two minutes.
The sap was better. He hefted it in his right hand, getting the feel of
it.
With great care, he leaned across the doorjamb. Tilted his head.
Peeked into the studio.
She sat on the stool, her back to the door. He recognized her even from
behind. His heart galloped almost as fast as when the girl had
struggled and passed out in his arms. Lindsey was at the drawing board,
charcoal pencil in her right hand. Busy, busy, busy. Pencil making a
soft snaky hiss as it worked against the paper.
No matter how determined she was to keep her attention firmly on the
problem of the blank sheet of drawing paper, Lindsey looked up
repeatedly at the window. Her creative block crumbled only when she
Darkness beyond the glass. Her face like the countenance of a ghost
engaged in a haunting. When she added the spider web in the upper
right-hand corner, the concept jelled, and suddenly she excited. She
thought she might title it The Web of Life and Death, and use a surreal
series of symbolic items to knit the theme into every corner of the
canvas. Not canvas, Masonite. In fact, just paper now, only a sketch,
but worth pursuing.
She repositioned the drawing tablet on the board, setting it higher.
Now she could just raise her eyes slightly from the page to look over
the top of the board at the window, and didn't have to keep raising and
lowering her head.
More elements than just her face, the window, and the web would be
required to give the painting depth and interest. As she worked she
considered and rejected a score of additional images.
Then an image a- almost magically in the glass above her own reflection:
the face that Hatch had described from nightmares. Pale.
A shock of dark hair. The sunglasses.
For an instant she thought it was a supernatural event, an apparition in
the glass. Even as her breath caught in her throat, however, she
realized that she was seeing a reflection like her own and that the
killer in Hatch's dreams was in their house, leaning around the doorway
to look at her. She repressed an impulse to scream. As soon as he
realized she had seen him, she would lose what little advantage she had,
and he would be all over her, slashing at her, pounding on her,
finishing her off before Hatch even got upstairs. Instead, she sighed
loudly and shook her head as if displeased with what she was getting
down on the drawing paper.
Hatch might already be dead.
She slowly put down her charcoal pencil, letting her fingers rest on it
as if she might decide to pick it up again and go on.
If Hatch wasn't dead, how else could this bastard have gotten to the
second floor? No. She couldn't think about Hatch being dead, or she
would be dead herself, and thin Regina. Dear God, Regina.
She reached toward the top drawer of the supply cabinet at her side, and
a shiver went through her as she touched the cold chrome handle.
Reflecting the door behind her, the window showed the killer not just
leaning around the jamb but stepping boldly into the open doorway.
He paused arrogantly to stare at her, evidently relishing the moment.
He was unnaturally quiet. If she had not seen his image in the glass,
she would have had no awareness whatsoever of his presence.
She pulled open the drawer, felt the gun under her hand.
Behind her, he crossed the threshold.
She drew the pistol out of the drawer and swung around on her stool in
one motion, bringing the heavy weapon up, clasping it in both hands,
pointing it at him. She would not have been entirely surprised if he
had not been there, and if her first impression of him only as an
apparition in the windowpanee had turned out to be correct. But he was
there, all right, one step inside the door when she drew down on him
with the Browning.
She said, "Don't move, you son of a bitch."
Whether he thought he sa
w weakness in her or whether he just didn't give
a damn if she shot him or not, he backed out of the doorway an-into the
hall even as she swung toward him and told him not to move.
"Stop, damn it!"
He was gone. Lindsey would have shot him without hesitation, without
moral compunction, but he moved so incredibly fast, like a cat springing
for safety, that all she would have gotten was a piece of the doorjamb.
Shouting for Hatch, she was off the high stool and leaping for the door
even as the last of the killers black shoe, his left foot-vanished out
of the door frame. But she brought herself up short, thinking he might
not have gone anywhere, might be waiting just to the side of the door,
expecting her to come through in a panic, then stepping behind her and
pound her across the back of the head or push her into the stair railing
and over and out and down onto the foyer floor. Regina. She couldn't
delay. He might be going after Regina. A hesitation of only a second,
then she crashed through her fear and through the open door, all- this
time shouting Hatch's Looking to her right as she came into the hall,
she saw the guy going for Regina's door, also open, at the far end. The
room was dark beyond when there ought to have been lights, Regina
studying. She didn't have time to stop and aim. Almost squeezed the
trigger. Wanted to pump out bullets in the hope that one of them would
nail the bastard. But Regina's room was so dark, and the girl could be
anywhere. Lindsey was afraid that she would miss the killer and blow
away the girl, bullets flying through the open doorway.
So she held her fire and went after the guy, screaming Regina's name now
instead of Hatch's.
He disappeared into the girls room and threw the door shut behind him, a
bell of a slam that shook the house. Lindsey hit that barrier a second
later, bounced off it. Locked. She heard Hatch shouting her name-thank
God, he was alive, he was alive-but she didn't stop or turn around to
see where he was. She stepped back and kicked the door hard, then
kicked it again. It was only a privacy latch, lIimsy, it ought to pop
open easily, but didn't.
She was going to kick it again, but the killer spoke to her through the
door. His voice was raised but not a shout, menacing but cool, no panic
in it, no fear, just businesslike and a liNe loud, terrifyingly smooth
and calm: "Get away from the door, or I'll kill the little bitch."
Just before Lindsey began to shout his name, Hatch was sitting at the
desk in the den, lights off, holding Arts American in both hands. A
vision hit him with an electric sound, the crackle of a current jumping
an are, as if the magazine were a live power cable that he had gripped
in his bare hands.
He saw Lindsey from behind, sitting on the high stool in her office, at
the drawing board, working on a sketch. Then she was not Lindsey any
more. Suddenly she was another woman, taller, also seen from behind but
not on the stool, in an armchair in a different room in a strange house.
She was knitting. A bright skein of yarn slowly unraveled from a
retaining bowl on the small table beside her chair. Hatch thought of
her as "mother," though she was nothing whatsoever like his mother. He
looked down at his right hand, in which he held a knife, immense,
already wet with blood. He approached her chair. She was unaware of
him. As Hatch, he wanted to cry out and warn her. But as the user of
the knife, through whose eyes he was seeing everything, he wanted only
to savage her, tear the life out of her, and thereby complete the task
that would free him. He stepped to the back of her armchair. She
hadn't heard him yet. He raised the knife high. He struck. She
screamed. He struck. She tried to get out of the chair. He moved
around her, and from his point of view it was like a swooping shot in a
movie meant to convey flight, the smooth glide of a bird or bat. He
pushed her back into the chair, struck. She raised her hands to protect
herself. He struck. He struck. And now, as if it was all a loop of
film, he was behind her again, standing in the doorway, except she
wasn't "mother" any more, she was Lindsey again, sitting at the drawing
board in her upstairs studio, reaching to the top drawer of her supply
cabinet and pulling it open. His gaze rose from her to the window.
He saw himself-pale face, dark hair, sun glasses and knew she had seen
him. She spun around on the stool, a pistol coming up, the muzzle aimed
straight at his chest "Hatch!"
His name, echoing through the house, shattered the link. He shot up
from the desk chair, shuddering, and the magazine fell out of his hands.
"Hatch!"
Reaching out in the darkness, he unerringly found the handgrip of the
Browning, and raced out of the den. As he crossed the foyer and climbed
the stairs two at a time, looking up as he went, trying to see what was
happening, he heard Lindsey stop shouting his name and start screaming
"Regina!" Not the girl Jesus, please, not the girl.
Reaching the top of the stairs, he thought for an instant that the
slamming door was a shot But the sound was too distinct to be mistaken
for , and as he looked back the hall he saw Lindsey bounce off the door
to Regina's room with another crash. As he ran to join her, she kicked
the door, kicked again, and then she stumbled back from it as he reached
her.
"lemme try," he said, pushing her.
"No! He said back off or he'll kill her."
For a couple of seconds, Hatch stared at the door, literally shaking
with frustration. Then he took hold of the knob, tried to turn it
slowly. But it was locked, so he put the muzzle of the pistol against
the base of the knob plate.
"Hatch," Lindsey said plaintively, "he'll kill her."
He thought of the young blonde taking two bullets in the chest, flying
backward out of the car onto the freeway, tumbling, tumbling along the
pavement into the fog. And the mother suffering the massive blade of
the butcher knife as she dropped her knitting and struggled desperately
for her life.
He said, "He'll kill her anyway, turn your face away," and he pulled the
trigger.
Wood and thin metal dissolved into splinters. He grabbed the brass
knob, it came off in his hand, and he threw it aside. When he shoved on
the door, it creaked inward an inch but no farther. The cheap lock had
disintegrated. But the shank on which the knob had been seated was
still bristling from the wood, and something must have been wedged under
the other knob on the inside. He pushed on the shank with the palm of
his hand, but that didn't provide enough force to move it; whatever was
wedged against the other side-most likely the girls desk chair-was
exerting upward pressure, thereby holding the shank in place.
Hatch gripped the Browning by its barrel and used the butt as a hammer.
Cursing, he pounded the shank, driving it inch by inch back through the
door.
Just as the shank flew free and clattered to the floor inside, a vivid
series of images flooded
through Hatch's mind, temporarily washing away
the upstairs hall. They were all from the killer's eyes: a weird angle,
looking up at the side of a house, this house, the wall outside Regina's
bedroom.
The open window. Below the sill, a tangle of trumpet-vine running A
hornlike flower in his face. Latticework under his hands, splinters
digging into his skin. Clutching with one hand, searching with the
other for a new place to grip, one foot dangling in space, a weight
bearing down hard over his shoulder. Then a creaking, a splitting sound
A sudden sense of perilous looseness in the geometric web to which he
clung Hatch was snapped back to reality by a brief, loud noise from
beyond the door: clattering and splintering wood, nails popping loose
with tortured screeches, scraping, a crash.
Then a new wave of psychic images and sensations surged through him.
Falling. Backward and out into the night. Not far, hitting the ground,
a brief flash of pain. Rolling once on the grass. Beside him, a small
huddled form, lying still. Scuttling to it, seeing the face.
Regina. Eyes closed. A scarf tied across her mouth "Regina!" Lindsey
cried.
When reality clicked into once again, Hatch was already sag his shoulder
against the bedroom door. The brace on the other side fell away. The
door shuddered open. He went inside, slapping the wall with one hand
until he found the light switch. In the sudden glare, he stepped over
the fallen desk chair and swung the Browning right, then left. The room