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closely or for too long.
The smell was not merely blood. Dying, she had fouled herself.
A draft bathed me in the stench.
 A casement window was cranked all the way open. It wasn't a typically
small bathroom window but large enough to have provided escape for the
killer, who must have been liberally splashed with his victim's
blood.
Perhaps Angela had left the window open. If there was a firststory
porch roof under it, the killer could have entered as well as exited by
this route.
Orson had not barked-but then this window was toward the front of the
house, and the dog was at the back.
Angela's hands were at her sides, almost lost in the sleeves of the
cardigan. She looked so innocent. She looked twelve.
All her life, she had given of herself to others. Now someone,
unimpressed by her selfless giving, had cruelly taken all that was
left.
Anguished, shaking uncontrollably, I turned away from the bathroom.
I hadn't approached Angela with questions. I hadn't brought her to
this hideous end. She had called me, and although she had used her car
phone, someone had known that she needed to be silenced permanently and
quickly. Maybe these faceless conspirators decided that her despair
 made her dangerous. She had quit her job at the hospital. She felt
that she had no reason to live. And she was terrified of becoming,
whatever that meant. She was a woman with nothing to lose, beyond
their control. They would have killed her even if I had not responded
to her call.
Nevertheless, I was awash in guilt, drowning in cold currents, robbed
of breath, and I stood gasping.
Nausea followed those currents, rippling like a fat slippery eel
through my gut, swimming up my throat and almost surging into my
mouth.
I choked it down.
I needed to get out of here, yet I couldn't move. I was half crushed
under a weight of terror and guilt.
My right arm hung at my side, pulled as straight as a plumb line by the
weight of the gun. The penlight, clutched in my left hand, stitched
jagged patterns on the wall.
I could not think clearly. My thoughts rolled thickly, like tangled
masses of seaweed in a sludge tide.
 On the nearer nightstand, the telephone rang.
I kept my distance from it. I had the queer feeling that this caller
was the deep-breather who had left the message on my answering machine,
that he would try to steal some vital aspect of me with his bloodhound
inhalations, as if my very soul could be vacuumed out of me and drawn
away across the open telephone line. I didn't want to hear his low,
eerie, tuneless humming.
When at last the phone fell silent, my head had been somewhat cleared
by the strident ringing. I clicked off the penlight, returned it to my
pocket, raised the big pistol from my side-and realized that someone
had switched on the light in the upstairs hall.
Because of the open window and the blood smeared on the frame, I had
assumed I was alone in the house with Angela's body. I was wrong. An
intruder was still present-waiting between me and the stairs.
The killer couldn't have slipped out of the master bath by way of the
bedroom; a messy trail of blood would have marked his passage across
the cream-colored carpet. Yet why would he have escaped from the
upstairs only to return immediately through a ground-floor door or
window?
If, after fleeing, he had changed his mind about leaving a potential
witness and had decided to come back to get me, he wouldn't have turned
 on the light to announce his presence. He would have preferred to take
me by surprise.
Cautiously, squinting against the glare, I stepped into the hallway.
It was deserted.
The three doors that had been closed when I had first come upstairs
were now standing wide open. The rooms beyond them were forbiddingly
bright.
Like blood out of a wound, silence welled from the bottom of the house
into this upstairs hall. Then a sound rose, but it came from outside:
the keening of the wind under the eaves.
A strange game seemed to be under way. I didn't know the rules. I
didn't know the identity of my adversary. I was screwed.
Flicking a wall switch, I brought forth a soothing flow of shadows to
the hall, which made the lights in the three open rooms seem brighter
by comparison.
I wanted to run for the stairs. Get down, out, away. But I didn't
dare leave unexplored rooms at my back this time. I'd end up like
Angela, throat slashed from behind.
 My best chance of staying alive was to remain calm. Think.
Approach each door with caution. Inch my way out of the house.
Make sure my back was protected every step of the way.
I squinted less, listened more, heard nothing, and moved to the doorway
opposite the master bedroom. I didn't cross the threshold but remained
in the shadows, using my left hand as a visor to shade MY eyes from the
harsh overhead light before me.
This might have been a son's or daughter's room if Angela had been able
to have children. Instead, it contained a tool cabinet with many
drawers, a bar stool with a back, and two high worktables placed to
form an L. Here she spent time at her hobby: doll making.
A quick glance along the hallway. Still alone. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]