Put your father on.
He's in California taking depositions. If you give me a number where he can reach you, I'll have him call tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be too late. There's something that I have to show him right away.
The best I can do is give my father your message.
No, you don't understand. It's about the murders.
What about them?
Amanda heard heavy breathing as Cardoni whispered into the telephone.
I know who committed them. I' m at the cabin in Milton County. Get up here, right away.
The cabin? I don't
You're my lawyer, goddamn it. I pay your firm to represent me, and I need you up here. This is about my case.
Amanda hesitated. Frank would never refuse to help a client who sounded this desperate. If she didn't go, how could she explain her inaction to her father? How could she practice criminal law if she would not help a client because he frightened her? Criminal lawyers represented rapists, murderers and psychopaths every day. They were all frightening people.
I'll leave right away.
The line went dead, and Amanda instantly regretted telling Cardoni she would meet him. It was midnight, and it would take her a little over an hour to drive to the cabin. That meant that she would be alone with Cardoni in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Her stomach churned. Amanda remembered what had happened in that cabin. She saw Mary Sandowski's face drained of all color and all hope. What if Cardoni had done those things? What if he wanted to do them to her?
Amanda went downstairs to the den. Frank liked guns, and he' d had her on a pistol range as soon as she was old enough to hold one. Amanda enjoyed target practice and knew her way around weapons. Frank kept a .38 snubnose in the lower drawer of his desk. Amanda loaded it and slipped it in her jacket pocket. She had never shot a handgun off a range. She' d heard and read that shooting a person was totally different from shooting at a metal cutout, but she was not going to meet Vincent Cardoni in the woods after midnight without protection.
The temperature was in the thirties, so Amanda had thrown her ski jacket over jeans and a dark blue turtleneck. The rain started shortly before one and changed to snow near the pass. Amanda had four-wheel drive, so she was not worried, but she was still relieved when the snow fell away to a light rain. She was within eyesight of the turnoff to the cabin when a car suddenly swept out of the narrow dirt road and sped past her. Amanda thought she recognized the driver in the brief moment when the two cars were side by side. Then the taillights of the other car faded in her rearview mirror.
As soon as her headlights illuminated the house Amanda was certain that something was wrong. The lights were on in the living room and the front door was wide open. The wind had picked up and was blowing sheets of rain slantwise into the house. Common sense told her that she should turn the car around and speed toward safety, but she knew her father wouldn't turn tail and run. Amanda sucked in a deep breath, took her gun out of her pocket and walked toward the cabin.
The first thing that Amanda noticed when she entered the house was the blood that dampened the planks of the hardwood floor in the living room. The stain was not large, but it was wide enough to let her know that something bad had happened in the room.
Dr. Cardoni, Amanda called in a trembling voice. There was no response. She scanned the large front room cautiously and saw nothing else that was odd. The other lights on the main floor were off, but the lights were on in the stairwell that led to the bottom-floor operating room. A blood trail led toward the stairs.
Amanda eased down the stairway, the .38 leading the way. The door to the operating room was wide open. Amanda edged along the wall. She stopped opposite the entrance to the horror chamber and stood in the door frame, her heart hammering in her chest.
It took a moment for Amanda to understand what she was seeing. The operating table was covered with a fresh white sheet. Drops of blood radiated outward from one large stain that covered the middle of the sheet. In the center of the stain was a severed hand.
Amanda bolted up the stairs and through the door. She covered the space between the house and her car in a flash and dove inside. The ignition would not catch. Amanda panicked. She looked toward the house while she fumbled with the key, half expecting to see an apparition streaking toward her, blood pumping from its severed limb.
The engine started. The car burned rubber. Amanda was shaking. She was cold. Terror forced her to drive faster, never slowing even when the road curved or the car went airborne after bouncing out of a pothole. She stared in the rearview mirror and almost fainted with relief when she did not see headlights bearing down on her. She brought her eyes forward and spotted the highway. The car careened onto it, and she drove as fast as she could for five minutes before her heart rate slowed and she started to think about what she would do next.
Amanda parked in front of the cabin and waited for the sheriff's deputies to pull in before getting out of her car. Fred Scofield had ridden from Cedar City to the cabin with her. He got out of the passenger side and turned up his collar against the wind, which had turned fierce while Amanda was giving her statement at the sheriff's office. The DA gestured through the storm toward the still-open front door.
Are you sure you want to go back in there? Scofield asked solicitously.
I' m fine, Amanda answered with more confidence than she really felt.
Let's go, then.
Clark Mills and four deputies fought their way through the gusts of snow and entered the cabin. Amanda and Scofield followed the policemen inside. Amanda surveyed the brightly lit front room. As far as she could see, except for a dusting of snow just inside the front door, everything was as she had left it.
Scofield looked over his shoulder at the front yard. It's too bad that the snow waited until after that car drove off. We might have gotten some tracks. He looked back at Amanda. How certain are you that the driver was Art Prochaska?
My window was streaked with rain, the interior of the other car was dark and it went by very fast. All I had was a momentary impression. I don't know if I could swear that it was Prochaska in court. But I think the man I saw was bald and his head was unusually large.
This floor is clear, Sheriff Mills said to Amanda and Scofield after his deputies completed a sweep. We're going downstairs. You can wait up here if you like, Miss Jaffe.
Let's go.
Amanda hung back and let the sheriff, the DA and two armed deputies precede her down the stairs. When she reached the lower hall, she saw that the door to the operating room was still open and the lights inside were still on.
Everyone but Clark please wait in the hall, Scofield said before entering the room. The men who crammed the narrow hallway blocked Amanda's view. She edged along the wall behind them until she found a spot where she could see between two of the deputies.
The hand still sat in the center of the operating table. Drained of blood, it looked chalky white. Scofield and Mills approached it cautiously, as if afraid that it might spring from the table and grab them. They leaned over it and stared intently. The amputated hand was large and a man' s, judging from the hair on the back. Scofield lowered his head until he could make out the letters on a ring that covered part of one finger. Vincent Cardoni had graduated from the medical school in Wisconsin whose name was engraved on the ring.
Amanda crossed the Multnomah County line a little after four in the morning and, without a second thought, headed toward Tony Fiori's house. The house was dark when she parked in Tony's driveway at four-thirty. She walked onto the porch and rang the doorbell. A light went on after the third ring, and Amanda heard faint footsteps coming down the stairs. A moment later Tony peered through the glass panel in the front door. Then he opened the door a crack.
What are you doing here? Tony asked uncomfortably, and she knew instantly that she' d made a big mistake. Over Tony's shoulder, Amanda saw a woman wrapped in a silk dressing gown descending the stairs. The gown parted to reveal bare legs. Amanda looked from the woman to Tony. Then she backed away from the door.
I' m sorry ... I I didn't know, Amanda stuttered, turning to go.
Wait, Tony said. What's wrong?
