he actually was blinded by his anger. Or maybe it was the brilliant June sunlight flashing on every shiny surface that interfered with his vision. Whatever the reason, he dashed across the southbound lanes of Main Street, which were at the moment without traffic, and kept on going into the northbound lanes, directly into the path of a city garbage truck that was doing forty miles an hour.
Too late, Rachael screamed a warning.
The driver tramped his brake pedal to the floorboards. But the shriek of the truck's locked wheels came almost simultaneously with the sickening sound of impact.
Eric was hurled into the air and thrown back into the southbound lanes as if by the concussion wave of a bomb blast. He crashed into the pavement and tumbled twenty feet, stiffly at first, then with a horrible looseness, as if he were constructed of string and old rags. He came to rest facedown, unmoving.
A southbound yellow Subaru braked with a banshee screech and a hard flat wail of its horn, halting only two feet from him. A Chevy, following too close, rammed into the back of the Subaru and pushed it within a few inches of the body.
Rachael was the first to reach Eric. Heart hammering, shouting his name, she dropped to her knees and, by instinct, put one hand to his neck to feel for a pulse. His skin was wet with blood, and her fingers slipped on the slick flesh as she searched desperately for the throbbing artery.
Then she saw the hideous depression that had reshaped his skull. His head had been staved in along the right side, above the torn ear, and all the way forward past the temple to the edge of his pale brow. His head was turned so she could see one eye, which was open wide. staring in shock, though sightless now. Many wickedly sharp fragments of bone must have been driven deep into his brain. Death had been instantaneous.
She stood up abruptly, tottering, nauseated. Dizzy, she might have fallen if the driver of the garbage truck had not grabbed hold of her, provided support, and escorted her around the side of the Subaru, where she could lean against the car.
There was nothin' I could do,” he aid miserably.
“I know,” she said.
“Nothin' at all. He run in front of me. Didn't look. Nothin' I could do.”
At first Rachael had difficulty breathing. Then she realized she was absentmindedly scrubbing her blood- covered hand on her sundress, and the sight of those damp rusty-scarlet stains on the pastel-blue cotton made her breath come quicker, too quick. Hyperventilating, she slumped against the Subaru, closed her eyes, hugged herself, and clenched her teeth. She was determined not to faint. She strove to hold in each shallow breath as long as possible, and the very process of changing the rhythm of her breathing was a calming influence.
Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their cars in the snarl of stalled traffic. Some of them asked her if she was all right, and she nodded, others asked if she needed medical attention, and she shook her head — no.
If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust beneath his heel. It had been a long time since she'd even
She heard sirens in the distance.
Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop entirely.
The sirens grew nearer, louder.
She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed clean and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day, and in its wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast that reminded her more of sulfur than of honey.
Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police sedan approached along the northbound lanes.
“Rachael?”
She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric's personal attorney, with whom she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows that were now drawn together in a single bar.
“One of my associates… returning to the office… saw it happen,” Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me. My God.”
Yes,” she said numbly.
“My God, Rachael.”
“Yes.”
“It's too… crazy.
“Yes.”
“But…”
“Yes,” she said.
And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she had told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric's fortune but would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage, the entire thirty million plus his currently unvalued stock in the company would almost certainly, by default, come into her sole possession.
2
SPOOKED
The hot, dry air was filled with the crackle of police radios, a metallic chorus of dispatchers' voices, and the smell of sun-softened asphalt.
The paramedics could do nothing for Eric Leben except convey his corpse to the city morgue, where it would lie in a refrigerated room until the medical examiner had time to attend to it. Because Eric had been killed in an accident, the law required an autopsy.
“The body should be available for release in twenty-four hours,” one of the policemen had told Rachael.
While they had filled out a brief report, she had sat in the back of one of the patrol cars. Now she was standing in the sun again.
She no longer felt sick. Just numb.
They loaded the draped cadaver into the van. In spots, the shroud was dark with blood.
Herbert Tuleman felt obliged to comfort Rachael and repeatedly suggested that she return with him to his law office. “You need to sit down, get a grip on yourself,” he said, one hand on her shoulder, his kindly face wrinkled with concern.
“I'm all right, Herb. Really, I am. Just a little shaken.”
“Some cognac. That's what you need. I've got a bottle of Remy Martin in the office bar.”
“No, thank you. I guess it'll be up to me to handle the funeral, so I've got things to attend to.”
The two paramedics closed the rear doors on the van and walked unhurriedly to the front of the vehicle. No need for sirens and flashing red emergency beacons. Speed would not help Eric now.
Herb said, “If you don't want brandy, then perhaps coffee. Or just come and sit with me for a while. I don't think you should get behind a wheel right away.”
Rachael touched his leathery cheek affectionately. He was a weekend sailor, and his skin had been toughened and creased less by age than by his time upon the sea. “I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I'm fine. I'm almost ashamed of how well I'm taking it. I mean… I feel no grief at all.”
He held her hand. “Don't be ashamed. He was my client, Rachael, so I'm aware that he was… a difficult man.”
“Yes.”
“He gave you no reason to grieve.”
“It still seems wrong to feel… so little. Nothing.”
