'That was frightening. It was a Saturday, and Red and Becky had taken the kids to town. I was in my studio trying to sketch in a canvas when he came by. I was preoccupied with what I was doing and disturbed by my realization that I had five months of garbage to make up for, and so I was abrupt with him—I just told him I couldn't go on, it was over, and went on sketching. When I turned around a minute later, he was still sitting on the bed, but he was so angry, so furious, it stunned me. His eyes… And he seemed to fill the whole room. I thought—I knew—that he was going to get up and come over and hit me, beat me up, but I couldn't move. I just waited for I don't know how long, and then all of a sudden his face changed and he started to smile, and it was like the smile he had when he was going to take me to bed but different— horrible, cruel. And he stood up, and I knew he was going to kill me, and he came over to me and he kissed me, with his teeth, and he said, 'If that's the way you want it, babe,' and he went out and got on his motorcycle and roared off. And every time I saw him after that he smiled that same way, like some brutish little boy pulling wings off a fly.'
'How long before you began to think he'd had something to do with Jemma Brand's death?'
'I wondered, even during the trial, because of a look he gave me the first day—a satisfied, 'I told you so' kind of look.
But I decided it had to be my imagination. I couldn't believe Andy would do something so, so—pathological. He was very good to me; he could be gentle when he wanted. How could I imagine him doing such a thing? I still find it difficult.' Sagging now with fatigue she looked at Kate. 'Have I answered your questions?'
'Yes, thank you,' said Kate, and she thought, which still leaves a hundred others, but not tonight.
Vaun rose like an old woman, and stood studying them.
'It occurs to me that I haven't thanked you for all that you've done for me. Not that any thanks could be adequate.'
'It has been a great joy,' said Lee simply.
'I agree,' said Kate. 'I'll be sorry when it's over, though I won't be sorry when it ends.' She listened to her words, and scratched her head. 'I think I need some coffee. Want some?'
'No thanks,' said Vaun. 'I just want to crawl into bed.'
'Lee?'
'Yes, thanks. Make a whole pot, why don't you. Jon, my client, will probably want a cup. Maybe I should turn on the lights in the front rooms—he'll be here in a few minutes.' She moved off down the hallway and Kate turned toward the kitchen. Vaun started up the stairs, and then stopped and turned back to follow Kate.
'All that talking,' she explained as she reached for a glass. 'I'm thirsty.' She scooped some ice cubes into the glass, the bottle of spring water gurgled, and she drank gratefully.
Kate measured the beans into the grinder and switched it on just as the doorbell sounded. She turned off the grinder.
'I'll get it,' Lee called. She sounded distracted, and Kate wondered how closely she would listen to the problems of Jon Samson, ne Schwartz. Kate turned back to the coffee, and a sudden anxiety struck her. She moved quickly past Vaun towards the door.
'Don't forget to—' she started to warn Lee, but she was too late, and it was too late, for when she reached the hall Lee's hand had already released the bolt, and in the slow motion of horror Kate saw the door explode inward, sending Lee staggering back against the wall, and the figure that stepped in looked for an instant like Lee's client with his snug trousers and neatly clipped moustache, but it was not Jon Samson, it was Andy Lewis, Andy Lewis with a .45 automatic in his right hand, Andy Lewis with the eyes and stance of a pit bull zeroing in on his victim, Andy Lewis looking past Kate to where Vaun stood waiting.
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Kate's first frozen thought was that he was smaller than she remembered, shorter perhaps than Vaun, certainly more compact and concentrated than the hairy mountain man she had seen at Vaun's door.
His eyes and the gun stayed rock steady on Vaun where she stood behind Kate's right shoulder, not moving a millimeter as his left hand pushed the door shut, found the bolt, slid it home. For the space of five heartbeats nobody moved, or breathed, until finally his lips curled.
'Hello, Vaunie.'
The quiet, sure menace in his voice washed like ice through Kate's veins and sent her mind yammering like a mad monkey against the bars of its cage, screaming at her to run, fly, dive for cover, leap for the drawer three feet away and get her hands on the gun there
At his words Lee, staring horrified from where she had fetched up against the wall, shifted her gaze from the gun to his face, but Vaun seemed not to see the gun or hear the menace. Neither of them made a move to touch the forgotten alarm buttons they wore. At his greeting she seemed to relax, and Kate heard her exhale in what sounded like a happy little sigh.
'Hello, Andy.' Her voice was calm, even warm, a simple greeting at the mildly surprising appearance of an old friend. His smile deepened and Kate saw the face that Vaun had described when he walked out of her studio three weeks before Jemma Brand had died—amused, cruel, and utterly sure of himself.
'Good of you all to wait up for me like this. Damn stupid time for an appointment with a shrink, but I couldn't very well change it, could I?'
'What—' Lee shrank back under the stab of his eyes, but the gun did not waver, and she pushed the words out. 'What happened to Jon?'
To Kate's surprise he laughed, a hearty sound, full of amusement, incongruous from a tidy man with murder in his eyes.
'I used some of his own toys on him. He'll be all right, unless he struggles too much. In fact, he's probably having a fine time, all trussed up like a pig. And speaking of which,' he said, and looked at Kate, all his humor instantly gone, 'you'll have a gun. Where is it?'
'Upstairs,' she lied automatically. There was a chance that in moving them around he would leave himself vulnerable for an instant. He studied her, eyes narrowed, and seemed to hear her thoughts, for he smiled again, as if at the feeble efforts of a child.
'No, it isn't. Well it doesn't matter, so long as it's not on you.' He ran his eyes over her T-shirt and jeans, which could hardly conceal a penknife, much less a police revolver. 'Still, I'd better have a check. Vaun, you come on out into the hall. That's right, by that table. And you, next to her.' He nodded curtly to Lee, who obeyed. 'Now you, come here, hands against the wall. Get your feet further back. That's better.' Kate felt a sudden sharp pressure against her spine, and he spoke past her. 'Now, if you two don't want your cop friend to have a big hole in her, you'll stay very still.'
Kate braced herself, but the search was impersonal, if thorough. In a minute he stood back, satisfied, and looked down the hallway toward the opening and the expanse of drapery.
'That's the living room?' he asked Vaun, and she nodded. 'Right. You first, Vaunie, then you. Now you, cop.'
Vaun turned smoothly to the door, the glass of ice water still tinkling gently in her hand. Lee followed with a curiously old-maidish stance, her hands clasped together between her breasts, hunched over in feeble defense or fear or cold. Kate moved down the hall, feeling the tingle in her back where the cold metal of the gun had pressed, and took great care not to stumble. She did not glance at what Lewis had referred to as a table, a decorative Indian apothecary's chest with a telephone and address book on top and her own familiar gun yearning from the top right-hand drawer, as useless to her as if it were on the bottom of the Bay. With a wrench she pulled her mind off the gun and off regrets and demanded that it get to work.
In the living room she moved directly to the first sofa and sat with her back to the dining area. Lewis hesitated, his instincts against allowing her any choice or independent move, but he studied the room and realized that there was no place she could have hidden a gun and that her position would put him with his back in the corner, away from the room's only internal entrance, the long windows, tightly draped, and two small, high windows that obviously looked into nothing but the neighbor's trees. He subsided, told Lee to take the other sofa and sat Vaun in the chair between them, facing the fireplace. Good, thought Kate. Now to get him talking.
'How did you find her?' she asked, and was pleased to hear just the right shade of querulous amazement in
