Shadowfires

had been wrenched from the walls and slashed to ribbons, damaged beyond repair. Of a pair of graceful Klismos- style chairs, one was upended, and the other had been hammered against a wall until it had gouged out big chunks of plaster and was itself reduced to splintered rubble.

Ben felt the skin on his arms puckering with gooseflesh, and an icy current quivered along the back of his neck.

Initially he thought that the destruction had been perpetrated by someone engaged upon a methodical search for something of value, but on taking a second look, he realized that such was not the case. The guilty party had unquestionably been in a blind rage, violently trashing the bedroom with malevolent glee or in a frenzy of hatred. The intruder had been someone possessed of considerable strength and little sanity. Someone strange. Someone infinitely dangerous.

With a recklessness evidently born of fear, Rachael plunged into the adjacent bathroom, one of only two places in the house that they had not yet searched, but the intruder was not there, either. She stepped back into the bedroom and surveyed the ruins, shaky and pale.

“Breaking and entering, now vandalism,” Ben said. “You want me to call the cops, or should you do it?”

She did not reply but entered the last of the unsearched places, the enormous walk-in closet, returning a moment later, scowling. “The wall safe's been opened and emptied.”

“Burglary too. Now we've got to call the cops, Rachael.”

“No,” she said. The bleakness that had hung about her like a gray and sodden cloak now became a specific presence in her gaze, a dull sheen in those usually bright green eyes.

Ben was more alarmed by that dullness than he had been by her fear, for it implied fading hope. Rachael, his Rachael, had never seemed capable of despair, and he couldn't bear to see her in the grip of that emotion.

“No cops,” she said.

“Why not?” Ben said.

“If I bring the cops into it, I'll be killed for sure.”

He blinked. “What? Killed? By the police? What on earth do you mean?”

“No, not by the cops.”

“Then who? Why?”

Nervously chewing on the thumbnail of her left hand, she said, “I should never have brought you here.”

“You're stuck with me. Rachael, really now, isn't it time you told me more?”

Ignoring his plea, she said, “Let's check the garage, see if one of the cars is missing,” and she dashed from the room, leaving him no choice but to hurry after her with feeble protests.

* * *

A white Rolls-Royce. A Jaguar sedan the same deep green as Rachael's eyes. Then two empty stalls. And in the last space, a dusty, well-used, ten-year-old Ford with a broken radio antenna.

Rachael said, “There should be a black Mercedes 560 SEL.” Her voice echoed off the walls of the long garage. “Eric drove it to our meeting with the lawyers this morning. After the accident… after Eric was killed, Herb Tuleman — the attorney — said he'd have the car driven back here and left in the garage. Herb is reliable. He always does what he says. I'm sure it was returned. And now it's gone.”

“Car theft,” Ben said. “How long does the list of crimes have to get before you'll agree to calling the cops?”

She walked to the last stall, where the battered Ford was parked in the harsh bluish glare of a fluorescent ceiling strip. “And this one doesn't belong here at all. It's not Eric's.”

“It's probably what the burglar arrived in,” Ben said. “Decided to swap it for the Mercedes.”

With obvious reluctance, with the pistol raised, she opened one of the Ford's front doors, which squeaked, and looked inside. “Nothing.”

He said, “What did you expect?”

She opened one of the rear doors and peered into the back seat.

Again there was nothing to be found.

“Rachael, this silent sphinx act is irritating as hell.”

She returned to the driver's door, which she had opened first. She opened it again, looked in past the wheel, saw the keys in the ignition, and removed them.

“Rachael, damn it.”

Her face was not simply troubled. Her grim expression looked as if it had been carved in flesh that was really stone and would remain upon her visage from now until the end of time.

He followed her to the trunk. “What are you looking for now?”

At the back of the Ford, fumbling with the keys, she said, “The intruder wouldn't have left this here if it could be traced to him. A burglar wouldn't leave such an easy clue. No way. So maybe he came here in a stolen car that couldn't be traced to him.”

Ben said, “You're probably right. But you're not going to find the registration slip in the trunk. Let's try the glove compartment.”

Slipping a key into the trunk lock, she said, “I'm not looking for the registration slip.”

“Then what?”

Turning the key, she said, “I don't really know. Except…”

The lock clicked. The trunk lid popped up an inch.

She opened it all the way.

Inside, blood was puddled thinly on the floor of the trunk.

Rachael made a faint mournful sound.

Ben looked closer and saw that a woman's blue high-heeled shoe was on its side in one corner of the shallow compartment. In another corner lay a woman's eyeglasses, the bridge of which was broken, one lens missing and the other lens cracked.

“Oh, God,” Rachael said, “he not only stole the car. He killed the woman who was driving it. Killed her and stuffed the body in here until he had a chance to dispose of it. And now where will it end? Where will it end? Who will stop him?”

Badly shocked by what they'd found, Ben was nevertheless aware that when Rachael said “him,” she was talking about someone other than an unidentified burglar. Her fear was more specific than that.

7 NASTY LITTLE GAMES

Two snowflake moths swooped around the overhead fluorescent light, batting against the cool bulbs, as if in a frustrated suicidal urge to find the flame. Their shadows, greatly enlarged, darted back and forth across the walls, over the Ford, across the back of the hand that Rachael held to her face.

The metallic odor of blood rose out of the open trunk of the car. Ben took a step backward to avoid the noxious scent.

He said, “How did you know?”

“Know what?” Rachael asked, eyes still closed, head still bowed, coppery red-brown hair falling forward and half concealing her face.

“You knew what you might find in the trunk. How?”

“No. I didn't know. I was half afraid I'd find… something. Something else. But not this.”

“Then what did you expect?”

“Maybe something worse.”

“Like what?”

“Don't ask.”

“I have asked.”

The soft bodies of the moths tapped against the fire-filled tubes of glass above. Tap-tap-tick- tap.