Darkfall

“Too soon to say.”

“It's the same case,” he insisted.

“You sound so certain.

“I feel it.”

“Don't get mystical on me like you did yesterday.”

“I never.”

“Oh, yes, you did.”

“We were only following up viable leads yesterday.”

“In a voodoo shop that sells goat's blood and magic amulets.”

“So? It was still a viable lead,” he said.

They studied the corpse in silence.

Then Rebecca said, “It almost looks as if something bit him about a hundred times. He looks… chewed.”

“Yeah. Something small,” he said.

“Rats?”

“This is really a nice neighborhood.”

“Yeah, sure, but it's also just one big happy city, Jack. The good and the bad neighborhoods share the same streets, the same sewers, the same rats. It's democracy in action.”

“If those're rat bites, then the damned things came along and nibbled at him after he was already dead; they must've been drawn by the scent of blood. Rats are basically scavengers. They aren't bold. They aren't aggressive. People don't get attacked by packs of rats in their own homes. You ever heard of such a thing?”

“No,” she admitted. “So the rats came along after he was dead, and they gnawed on him. But it was only rats.

Don't try to make it anything mystical.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You really bothered me yesterday.”

“We were only following viable leads.”

“Talking to a sorcerer,” she said disdainfully.

“The man wasn't a sorcerer. He was—”

“Nuts. That's what he was. Nuts. And you stood there listening for more than half an hour.”

Jack sighed.

“These are rat bites,” she said, “and they've disguised the real wounds. We'll have to wait for the autopsy to learn the cause of death.”

“I'm already sure it'll be like the others. A lot of small stab wounds under those bites.”

“You're probably right,” she said.

Queasy, Jack turned away from the dead man.

Rebecca continued to look.

The bathroom door frame was splintered, and the lock on the door was broken.

As Jack examined the damage, he spoke to a beefy, ruddy-faced patrolman who was standing nearby. “You found the door like this?”

“No, no, Lieutenant. It was locked tight when we got here.”

Surprised, Jack looked up from the ruined door. “Say what?”

Rebecca turned to face the patrolman. “Locked?”

The officer said, “See, this Parker broad… uh, I mean, this Miss Parker… she had a key. She let herself into the house, called for Vastagliano, figured he was still sleeping, and came upstairs to wake him. She found the bathroom door locked, couldn't get an answer, and got worried he might've had a heart attack. She looked under the door, saw his hand, sort of outstretched, and all that blood. She phoned it in to 911 right away. Me and Tony — my partner — were the first here, and we broke down the door in case the guy might still be alive, but one look told us he wasn't. Then we found the other guy in the kitchen.”

“The bathroom door was locked from inside?” Jack asked.

The patrolman scratched his square, dimpled chin.

“Well, sure. Sure, it was locked from inside. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had to break it down, would we? And see here? See the way it works? It's what the locksmiths call a 'privacy set.” It can't be locked from outside the bathroom.”

Rebecca scowled. “So the killer couldn't possibly have locked it after he was finished with Vastagliano?”

“No,” Jack said, examining the broken lock more closely. “Looks like the victim locked himself in to avoid whoever was after him.”

“But he was wasted anyway,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah.”

“In a locked room.”

“Yeah.”

“Where the biggest window is only a narrow slit.”

“Yeah.”

“Too narrow for the killer to escape that way.”

“Much too narrow.”

“So how was it done? “

“Damned if I know,” Jack said.

She scowled at him.

She said, “Don't go mystical on me again.”

He said, “I never.”

“There's an explanation.”

“I'm sure there is.”

“And we'll find it.”

“I'm sure we will.”

“A logical explanation.”

“Of course.”

IV

That morning, something bad happened to Penny Dawson when she went to school.

The Wellton School, a private institution, was in a large, converted, four-story brownstone on a clean, tree- lined street in a quite respectable neighborhood. The bottom floor had been remodeled to provide an acoustically perfect music room and a small gymnasium. The second floor was given over to classrooms for grades one through three, while grades four through six received their instruction on the third level. The business offices and records room were on the fourth floor.

Being a sixth grader, Penny attended class on the third floor. It was there, in the bustling and somewhat overheated cloakroom, that the bad thing happened.

At that hour, shortly before the start of school, the cloakroom was filled with chattering kids struggling out of heavy coats and boots and galoshes. Although snow hadn't been falling this morning, the weather forecast called for precipitation by midafternoon, and everyone was dressed accordingly.

Snow! The first snow of the year. Even though city kids didn't have fields and country hills and woods in which to enjoy winter's games, the first snow of the season was nevertheless a magic event. Anticipation of the storm put an edge on the usual morning excitement.

There was much giggling, name-calling, teasing, talk about television shows and homework, joke-telling, riddle-making, exaggerations about just how much snow they were supposed to be in for, and whispered conspiracy, the rustle of coats being shed, the slap of books on benches, the clank and rattle of metal