The landscape favoured geometry over spontaneity: circular beds of white roses; barbered privet hedges; ballon-pedestal topiary; marching columns of Italian cypress. It was the kind of stuff that required constant attention, and attention had been lacking recently, as evidenced by stray shoots, wayward boughs, wilted petals, and dry patches
that seemed especially scabrous against the velvet of the lawn.
A black-and-white, an unmarked Plymouth, and a pearl grey Mazda RX-7 were parked at the base of the steps. I pulled up next to the Mazda, got out, and walked through an open courtyard toward white-lacquered double doors. A man and woman were standing by the doors, leaning against a replica of Michelangelo's David, laughing and smoking. The woman wore a BHPD uniform, snugly tailored; the man, a hound's-tooth jacket over black slacks. I picked up a snatch of conversation ('Yeah, Sagittarians are always like that') before they heard me and turned. The man's eyes were obscured by aviator shades. I recognised him: Richard Cash, the detective who'd come to my house with Whitehead.
'Hey, Doc,' he said amiably, 'ready for the grand tour?' 'Anytime you are.'
'Okay,' he said, and ground out his cigarette on the marble floor. Turning to the female officer, who was young and blonde, he smiled and smoothed back his hair. 'All right, Dixie, let's definitely do it, catch you later.'
'Sounds exceptional, Dick.' She grinned and, after tucking a loose strand of hair under her hat, saluted and walked away.
Cash observed her retreating form and gave a low whistle.
'Love that affirmative action.' He winked and pulled open one of the doors.
We walked into a snowdrift. Everything - walls, floors, ceilings, even the woodwork - had been painted white. Not a subtle off-white softened by hints of brown or blue but the . pure, pitiless gleam of calcimine.
'Pretty virginal, huh?' said Cash as he led me past a circular staircase, under a marble arch and through a bright, wide foyer that divided a cavernous living room from an equally cavernous dining room. The milk-bath motif continued: white furniture; white carpeting; white mantel; white porcelain vases filled with albino ostrich plumes. The only exceptions to the glacial surfaces were
occasional patches of mirror and crystal, but the reflections they projected accentuated the absence of colour.
'There are thirty-five rooms in this place,' said Cash. 'I assume you don't want to see all of them.'
'Just where it happened.'
'Righto.'
The foyer ended at a wall of glass. Cash hooked to the right, and I followed him into a large atrium backed by a pillared loggia. Beyond the loggia was an acre of terraced lawn and more topiary. Below the terrace an Olympic- sized rectangular swimming pool sparkled turquoise. The decking around the pool was white marble, and naked cherubs were stationed at either end. Each cherub held aloft an urn brimming with white petunias. A white sea horse had been painted at the bottom of the pool, which ran to the edge of the property and appeared to float into the sky. The cityscape below was obscured by brownish pinkish vapour.
'Here we are,' said Cash in a bored voice.
There were no plants in the atrium. The room was high-ceilinged, floored with hardwood painted white and furnished in white rattan. Several chairs were overturned, and a leg on one of the sofas was broken. Suspended from the ceiling were whitewashed crossbeams. An inch-wide grey mark bisected one of them.
'That where the rope was knotted?'
'Uh-huh.'
The white walls were mottled with rusty stains that repeated themselves across the glossy floor in Rorschach splotches and pinpoint spatters. So much blood. Everywhere. As if a washerwoman had entered with a mopful of it and splashed with abandon. Cash watched me take it in and said:
'Finally some colour, huh?'
The outline of a human body had been drawn across the floor, but instead of white chalk, a black grease pencil had been used. The outer perimeters of the outline were smeared with rust. An especially large dark stain was situated below the rope mark. Speckles of blood dotted the crossbeams. Even in this desiccated state the stains conjured up horrific images.
I walked forward. Cash restrained me with his arm.
'Look, no touch.' He smiled. Starbursts of light bounced off his shades. The arm smelled of Brut.
I drew back.
At the rear of the atrium were sliding glass doors. One had been left slightly ajar, but no breeze entered from the loggia. The room smelled stale and metallic.
'All of it happened here?' I asked.
'Basically.'
'Was there any ransacking elsewhere?'
'Uh-huh, but that's off-limits.'
'Anything taken?'
He smiled, condescendingly.
'This was no burglary.'
'Where'd the rope come from?'
'One of the pool lifesavers.'
'What kinds of weapons were used?'
'Stuff from the kitchen: butcher knife; meat skewer; cleaver. A little purple silk thrown in for fun. Hellacious wet scene.'
'Multiple wounds?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Same as the other Slasher murders?'
Cash's thin lips parted. His teeth were cosmetically perfect but nicotine-mottled.
'Love to get into that with you, but I can't.'
I stared some more at the room, then let my gaze wander through the glass doors. Dead leaves and brown- edged petunia petals floated on the surface of the pool. Somewhere in the distance a crow squawked.
Cash took a cigarette and lit it. Casually he let the match fall to the floor.
'That about do it?' he asked.
I nodded.
I drove back home, went down to the garden, sat on a moss-bordered rock, and fed the koi. The sound of the waterfall lulled me into a trancelike torpor - alpha state, like one of Sarita Flower's hyperactive train runners. Sometime later the sound of human voices snapped me out of it.
The noise was coming from the front of the house. I climbed halfway up the terrace - high enough to look down but still out of sight.
Milo and another man were talking. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but their body postures and the looks on their faces said it wasn't a friendly chat.
The other man was in his early forties, deeply bronzed, medium-sized, and solidly built. He wore designer jeans and a glossy black windbreaker over a flesh-coloured T-shirt that nearly succeeded in simulating bare skin. His hair was coarse and dark and cut military-short. A full, thick beard covered two-thirds of his face. The chin hairs were grey, the rest of the beard reddish brown.
The man said something.
Milo responded.
The man sneered and said something else. He shifted his hand toward his jacket, and Milo moved with incredible quickness.
In a second the man was down, flat on his stomach, with Milo's knee in the small of his back. Deftly the detective jerked his arms back and cuffed him, patted him down, and came up with a gravity knife and a nasty- looking handgun.
Milo hefted the weapons and said something. The man arched his back, raised his head, and laughed. He'd scraped his mouth going down, and the laughter emerged through bloody lips.
I climbed back down, quickly jogged back through the garden, and out to the front of the house.
The man on the ground was still laughing. When he saw me, he laughed harder.
