Dead.
Beside him in the bed the woman lay facedown.
Blood everywhere. She hadn’t died instantly.
I stepped toward the bathroom, illuminating the interior with the light.
Standing there wide-eyed, white as a ghost, was Marisa Petrou. She had a gun in her hand, and it was pointing at me.
Blinded by my flashlight, she demanded harshly, “Who are you?” “Tommy Carmellini.” She wrapped both arms around her chest, the pistol apparently forgotten. The gun looked like a little Walther, not a cannon but deadly enough to do the job at close range. I grabbed it from her unresisting hand and tossed it into the bedroom.
I ran the penlight over her hands and arms, trying to see if she had blood on them, then inspected her robe, a white cotton thing that went from her neck to her ankles. I jerked her arms down and pulled the front of the robe open. She started to resist and stopped. I saw no blood, which only meant that she had no big stains. If she knifed those folks, there might be tiny droplets that a lab could find.
I turned away and went back to the bed. Touched the blood. Fresh as a flower. Still oozing around the knife.
“They’re dead,” she said without inflection. If there were ever a superfluous comment, that was it.
I grabbed a corner of the sheet and used it to keep my fingers from touching the handle. Pulled at the knife. It was really jammed in there, and apparently stuck. I headed for the hallway. Whoever had jimmied that door was probably still in the building, and I was in the mood to do some shooting.
“Wait,” she called. “Don’t leave me here.”
I ignored her. Checked the hallway, then stepped out into it and went directly to the door of the room Marisa was sharing with Isolde.
I tried the knob. Locked. Spun around and found she had followed me. Barefooted, she was quieter than the damned cat.
“Unlock it, quickly now,” I demanded. I grabbed her arm and pulled her up in front of the door.
She had the key in her pocket. She put it in the lock. I shoved her aside and opened the door.
Isolde Petrou was very much alive and sitting up in bed. “Marisa?” she asked.
I backed out. Paused to think.
If the knifeman was still in the house, he was probably downstairs. I walked along the hallway to the head of the grand staircase. Stood there in the darkness listening and looking. Couldn’t see anything … or hear anything.
I m not sure how long I stood there, trying to become one with the night and the old building.. trying to feel the presence of other human beings.
Finally I could stand inactivity no longer. I began easing my way down the staircase, one slow step at a time, pausing after every step to look and listen.
Four bodies — and Marisa standing near two of them holding a pistol. I thought it unlikely she scared off a killer with that popper she had in her hand. Did she lead the killer to Zetsche, or was she holding Zetsche at gunpoint until the killer arrived with his sticker? Or was she trying to find the knifeman to shoot at him?
I heard the cat running along the hallway below me. Then silence again.
Something scared it.
It sounded as if the cat came from behind the staircase, from the kitchen and dining room area. The Dead Zoo and parlor were in the other direction.
I gained the lower floor and stayed low, hunkered down, looking and listening. Unfortunately all the outside windows were in rooms one entered from this interior hallway, which was as black as Hitler’s heart.
Time was passing, and if the killer was out of the house and making a getaway, my sneaking around inside hunting him was going to prove unproductive, to say the least. On the other hand, acting as if he were gone when he wasn’t seemed like an excellent way to become victim number five.
I decided to give him a few more minutes. Time was riding him the hardest. For all he knew, Marisa or I had called the cops. I wondered if she had.
Something was out there in that hallway. I could feel it.
Something that moved, then stopped for a while, then moved again. Something that was as alert as I was. I could feel him…
The sound of glass breaking shattered the silence. The vase! Then another sound, a tumbling. A heavy weight, thump thump thump.
I sprinted for the door to the basement staircase. Got there with my penlight just in time to see a formless shape moving at the bottom of the stairs. The bastard had tripped over the vase and tumbled all the way to the bottom.
I rushed the first shot. The little pistol kicked viciously. The muzzle flash blinded me and the report nearly blew my eardrums out. Unable to see a damn thing, I pulled the trigger three more times as the small automatic tried to tear itself from my hand. Blind and deaf, I stopped shooting and used the light again, trying to see if there was anything still down there at the bottom of the stairs to shoot at.
I was peering into the darkness, the gunpowder smell heavy in my nostrils, when I heard a noise behind me. Started to turn, and something slammed into my head.
Stunned, I went to the floor. Dropped the penlight. In the glare I could see a white shape above me, drawing something back to whack me again. I kicked. Got her in the knee. She fell heavily. It was Marisa.
I rose, retrieved the penlight and staggered down the stairs. Glass crunched under my feet. A splash of blood in the entryway.
The door was standing open. Lying ten feet out into the snow was a man. I walked out, held the pistol ready to drill the bastard again and turned him over with my foot.
He had been hit twice. Once in the back and once in the arm. Scanned the light around… and saw a set of tracks leading away from the house. A man’s tracks, it looked like, running. So this clown I shot was number two.
I killed the light and moved to one side. Squatted, trying to make myself a small, invisible target. Nothing seemed to be moving. I looked, letting my eyes adjust, as I held the pistol in both hands, ready to shoot.
The only sound was my breathing.
Whoever he was, he was over the wall and gone, or he was out there behind a tree, waiting for a fool — me, for instance — to come looking for him. Then he would drill the searcher and leave at his convenience.
Like most folks, I have done my share of foolish things and will probably do some more dumb stuff in the future. Not this night, though. I didn’t like the odds.
I slipped over to the man lying on the white, wet ground, bent down, put the pistol against his ear and felt for a pulse in his neck. There wasn’t one.
I shined,the penlight full in his face. His mouth was half open. Lifeless eyes stared into infinity.
He might be an Arab, I thought, and young. Not over twenty-five, I would say. I took another quick look, trying to decide. Ethnic identifications are not my thing, and after all, this guy was dead. Perhaps he was an Arab. Or perhaps not.
I went back inside, leaving the door open, and mounted the stairs. Marisa was standing in the hallway. If she still had a gun, it was in her pocket. I hit her with the back of my hand and she slammed into the wall. Didn’t go down.
“You’re in this to your eyes, you fucking bitch.”
“You don’t know anything,” she hissed, then turned and ran.
I was standing there with my cell phone in my hand, holding the penlight in one hand and trying to focus on the little keypad, trying to get my breathing under control, when a man came running down the hallway. I put the light on his face.
The butler, I thought.
“What—” he began, but I cut him off.
“Herr Zetsche and his girlfriend are dead. Murdered in their bed. One of the killers is lying in the snow. Call the police.”
His mouth made a big O. I gave him a little shove in the chest. “Go, find a phone and call the police. Now!”
