“Believe it or not, I can handle just about any teenage girl who wants to throw a punch at me.”
“It's not the mistress I'm worried about,” she said sharply.
“Then who?”
Tight-lipped, holding her pistol at the ready, she led the way through the house, turning on lights as they went.
The uncluttered ultramodern decor — more futuristic than in any of Eric's other habitats — bordered on stark-ness and sterility. A highly polished terrazzo floor that looked as cold as ice, no carpet anywhere. Levolor metal blinds instead of drapes. Hard-looking chairs. Sofas that, if moved to the depths of a forest, might have passed for giant fungi. Everything was in pale gray, white, black, and taupe, with no color except for scattered accent pieces all in shades of orange.
The kitchen had been wrecked. The white-lacquered breakfast table and two chairs were overturned. The other two chairs had been hammered to pieces against everything else in sight. The refrigerator was badly dented and scraped; the tempered glass in the oven door was shattered; the counters and cabinets were gouged and scratched, edges splintered. Dishes and drinking glasses had been pulled from the cupboards and thrown against the walls, and the floor was prickled and glinting with thousands of sharp shards. Food had been swept off the shelves of the refrigerator onto the floor: Pickles, milk, macaroni salad, mustard, chocolate pudding, maraschino cherries, a chunk of ham, and several unidentifiable substances were congealing in a disgusting pool. Beside the sink, above the cutting board, all six knives had been removed from their rack and, with tremendous force, had been driven into the wall; some of the blades were buried up to half their lengths in the dry wall, while two had been driven in to their hilts.
“You think they were looking for something?” Benny asked.
“Maybe.”
“No,” he said, “I don't think so. It's got the same look as the bedroom in the Villa Park house. Weird. Creepy. This was done in a rage. Out of fierce hatred, in a frenzy, a fury. Or by someone who takes pure, unadulterated pleasure in destruction.”
Rachael could not take her eyes off the knives embedded in the wall. A deep sick quivering filled her stomach. Her chest and throat tightened with fear.
The gun in her hand felt different from the way it had felt just a moment ago. Too light. Too small. Almost like a toy. If she had to use it, would it be effective? Against
They continued through the silent house with considerably greater caution. Even Benny had been shaken by the psychopathic violence that had been unleashed here. He no longer taunted her with his boldness, but stayed close at her side, warier than he had been.
In the large master bedroom, there was more destruction, though it was not as extensive or as indicative of insane fury as the damage in the kitchen. Beside the king-size bed of black-lacquered wood and burnished stainless steel, a torn pillow leaked feathers. The bedsheets were strewn across the floor, and a chair was overturned. One of the two black ceramic lamps had been knocked off a nightstand and broken, and the shade had been crushed. The shade on the other lamp was cocked, and the paintings hung askew on the walls.
Benny stooped and carefully lifted a section of one of the sheets to have a closer look at it. Small reddish spots and a single reddish smear shone with almost preternatural brilliance on the white cotton.
“Blood,” he said.
Rachael felt a cold sweat suddenly break out on her scalp and along the back of her neck.
“Not much,” Benny said, standing again, his gaze traveling over the tangled sheets. “Not much, but definitely blood.”
Rachael saw a bloody handprint on the wall beside the open door that led into the master bedroom. It was a man's print, and large — as if a butcher, exhausted from his hideous labors, had leaned there for a moment to catch his breath.
The lights were on in the large bathroom, the only chamber in the house that had not been dark when they'd reached it. Through the open door, Rachael could see virtually everything either directly or in the mirrors covering one wall: gray tile with a burnt-yellow border, big sunken tub, shower stall, toilet, one edge of the counter that held the sinks, bright brass towel racks and brass-rimmed recessed ceiling lamps. The bathroom appeared deserted. However, when she crossed the threshold, she heard someone's quick, panicked breathing, and her own heartbeat, already trotting,
Close behind her, Benny said, “What's wrong?”
She pointed to the opaque shower stall. The glass was so heavily frosted that nothing could be seen of the person on the other side, not even a tenebrous form. “Somebody' s in there.”
Benny leaned forward, listening.
Rachael had backed against the wall, the muzzle of the thirty-two aimed at the shower door.
“Better come out of there,” Benny said to the person in the stall.
No answer. Just quick, thin wheezing.
“Better come out right now,” Benny said.
“Come out, damn you!” Rachael said, her raised voice echoing harshly off the gray tile and the bright mirrors.
From the stall came an unexpectedly woeful mewling that was the very essence of terror. It sounded like a child.
Shocked, concerned, but still wary, Rachael edged toward the frosted glass.
Benny stepped past her, took hold of the brass handle, and pulled the door open. “Oh, my God.”
Rachael saw a nude girl huddled pathetically on the tile floor of the shadowy stall, her back pressed into the corner. She looked no older than fifteen or sixteen and must be the current mistress in residence, the latest — and last — of Eric's pitiable “conquests.” Her slender arms were crossed over her breasts more in fear and self-defense than in modesty. She was trembling uncontrollably, and her eyes were wide with terror, and her face was pale, sickly, waxen.
She was probably quite pretty, but it was difficult to tell for sure, not because of the gloominess of the enclosed shower stall but because she had been badly beaten. Her right eye was blackened and beginning to swell. Another ugly bruise was forming on her right cheek, from the corner of the eye all the way down to the jaw. Her upper lip had been split; blood still oozed from it, and blood covered her chin. There were bruises on her arms as well, and a big one on her left thigh.
Benny turned away, clearly as embarrassed for the girl as he was alarmed by her condition.
Lowering her pistol, stooping at the shower door, Rachael said, “Who did this to you, honey? Who did this?” She already knew what the answer must be, dreaded hearing it, but was morbidly compelled to ask the question.
The girl could not respond. Her bleeding lips moved, and she tried to form words, but all that came out was that thin grievous whining, broken into chords by an especially violent siege of the shivers. Even if she had spoken, she would most likely not have answered the question, for she was obviously in shock and to some degree disassociated from reality. She seemed only partially aware of Rachael and Benny, with the larger part of her attention focused on some private horror. She met Rachael's eyes but didn't really seem to see her.
Rachael reached into the stall with one hand. “Honey, it's all right. Everything's all right. No one's going to hurt you anymore. You can come out now. We won't let anyone hurt you anymore.”
The girl stared through Rachael, murmuring softly but urgently to herself, shaken by a wind of fear that blew through some grim inner landscape in which she seemed trapped.
Rachael handed her gun to Benny. She stepped into the big shower stall and knelt beside the girl, speaking softly and reassuringly to her, touching her gently on the face and arms, smoothing her tangled blond hair. At the first few touches, the girl flinched as if she'd been struck, though the contact briefly broke her trance. She looked
“We've got to get her to a hospital,” Rachael said, wincing when she got a better look at the poor child's injuries in the brighter light of the bathroom. Two fingernails on the girl's right hand had been broken back almost to the cuticle and were bleeding; one finger appeared to be broken.
