The previous night, he had waited with Rocky in the Explorer, outside The Red Door, until two o’clock in the morning, and had followed Valerie when she drove home shortly after closing time. Because of his surveillance training, he knew how to tail a subject discreetly. He was confident that she hadn’t spotted him.
He was not equally confident, however, about his ability to explain to her — or to himself—
In fact, it was more than a desire. It was a need, and he was compelled to satisfy it.
Although his intentions were innocent, he was mildly ashamed of his budding obsession. The night before, he had sat in the Explorer, across the street from her house, staring at her lighted windows; all were covered with translucent drapes, and on one occasion her shadow played briefly across the folds of cloth, like a spirit glimpsed in candlelight at a seance. Shortly before three-thirty in the morning, the last light went out. While Rocky lay curled in sleep on the backseat, Spencer had remained on watch another hour, gazing at the dark house, wondering what books Valerie read, what she enjoyed doing on her days off, what her parents were like, where she had lived as a child, what she dreamed about when she was contented, and what shape her nightmares took when she was disturbed.
Now, less than twenty-four hours later, he headed to her place again, with a fine-grain anxiety abrading his nerves. She was late for work. Just late. His excessive concern told him more than he cared to know about the inappropriate intensity of his interest in this woman.
Traffic thinned as he drove farther from Ocean Avenue into residential neighborhoods. The languorous, liquid glimmer of wet blacktop fostered a false impression of movement, as if every street might be a lazy river easing toward its own far delta.
Valerie Keene lived in a quiet neighborhood of stucco and clapboard bungalows built in the late forties. Those two- and three-bedroom homes offered more charm than space: trellised front porches, from which hung great capes of bougainvillea; decorative shutters flanking windows; interestingly scalloped or molded or carved fascia boards under the eaves; fanciful rooflines; deeply recessed dormers.
Because Spencer didn’t want to draw attention to himself, he drove past the woman’s place without slowing. He glanced casually to the right, toward her dark bungalow on the south side of the block. Rocky mimicked him, but the dog seemed to find nothing more alarming about the house than did his master.
At the end of the block, Spencer turned right and drove south. The next few streets to the right were cul- de-sacs. He passed them by. He didn’t want to park on a dead-end street. That was a trap. At the next main avenue, he hung a right again and parked at the curb in a neighborhood similar to the one in which Valerie lived. He turned off the thumping windshield wipers but not the engine.
He still hoped that he might regain his senses, put the truck in gear, and go home.
Rocky looked at him expectantly. One ear up. One ear down.
“I’m not in control,” Spencer said, as much to himself as to the curious dog. “And I don’t know why.”
Rain sluiced down the windshield. Through the film of rippling water, the streetlights shimmered.
He sighed and switched off the engine.
When he’d left home, he’d forgotten an umbrella. The short dash to and from The Red Door had left him slightly damp, but the longer walk back to Valerie’s house would leave him soaked.
He was not sure why he hadn’t parked in front of her place. Training, perhaps. Instinct. Paranoia. Maybe all three.
Leaning past Rocky and enduring a warm, affectionate tongue in his ear, Spencer retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment and tucked it in a pocket of his jacket.
“Anybody messes with the truck,” he said to the dog, “you rip the bastard’s guts out.”
As Rocky yawned, Spencer got out of the Explorer. He locked it with the remote control as he walked away and turned north at the corner. He didn’t bother running. Regardless of his pace, he would be soaked before he reached the bungalow.
The north-south street was lined with jacarandas. They would have provided little cover even when fully dressed with leaves and cascades of purple blossoms. Now, in winter, the branches were bare.
Spencer was sodden by the time he reached Valerie’s street, where the jacarandas gave way to huge Indian laurels. The aggressive roots of the trees had cracked and canted the sidewalk; however, the canopy of branches and generous foliage held back the cold rain.
The big trees also prevented most of the yellowish light of the sodium-vapor streetlamps from reaching even the front lawns of the properties along that cloistered avenue. The trees and shrubs around the houses also were mature; some were overgrown. If any residents were looking out windows, they would most likely be unable to see him through the screen of greenery, on the deeply shadowed sidewalk.
As he walked, he scanned the vehicles parked along the street. As far as he could tell, no one was sitting in any of them.
A Mayflower moving van was parked across the street from Valerie’s bungalow. That was convenient for Spencer, because the large truck blocked those neighbors’ view. No men were working at the van; the move-in or move-out must be scheduled for the morning.
Spencer followed the front walkway and climbed three steps to the porch. The trellises at both ends supported not bougainvillea but night-blooming jasmine. Though it wasn’t at its seasonal peak, the jasmine sweetened the air with its singular fragrance.
The shadows on the porch were deep. He doubted that he could even be seen from the street.
In the gloom, he had to feel along the door frame to find the button. He could hear the doorbell ringing softly inside the house.
He waited. No lights came on.
The flesh creped on the back of his neck, and he sensed that he was being watched.
Two windows flanked the front door and looked onto the porch. As far as he could discern, the dimly visible folds of the draperies on the other side of the glass were without any gaps through which an observer could have been studying him.
He looked back at the street. Sodium-yellow light transformed the downpour into glittering skeins of molten gold. At the far curb, the moving van stood half in shadows, half in the glow of the streetlamps. A late-model Honda and an older Pontiac were parked at the nearer curb. No pedestrians. No passing traffic. The night was silent except for the incessant rataplan of the rain.
He rang the bell once more.
The crawling feeling on the nape of his neck didn’t subside. He put a hand back there, half convinced that he would find a spider negotiating his rain-slick skin. No spider.
As he turned to the street again, he thought that he saw furtive movement from the corner of his eye, near the back of the Mayflower van. He stared for half a minute, but nothing moved in the windless night except torrents of golden rain falling to the pavement as straight as if they were, in fact, heavy droplets of precious metal.
He knew why he was jumpy. He didn’t belong here. Guilt was twisting his nerves.
Facing the door again, he slipped his wallet out of his right hip pocket and removed his MasterCard.
Though he could not have admitted it to himself until now, he would have been disappointed if he had found lights on and Valerie at home. He
His need to know everything about Valerie was perilously close to an adolescent longing. At the moment, his judgment was not sound.
He frightened himself. But he couldn’t turn back.
By inserting the MasterCard between the door and jamb, he could pop the spring latch. He assumed there would be a deadbolt as well, because Santa Monica was as crime-ridden as any town in or around Los Angeles, but maybe he would get lucky.
He was luckier than he hoped: The front door was unlocked. Even the spring latch wasn’t fully engaged. When he twisted the knob, the door clicked open.
Surprised, stricken by another tremor of guilt, he glanced back at the street again. The Indian laurels. The
