But it was here.
"I will not think about it this morning," Natalie said to Blaine as the dog finished her breakfast and Natalie went to the front door. The newspaper lay on the lawn. She sighed. The paperboy was a star pitcher on the high school baseball team, but he could not seem to get the rolled newspaper anywhere near the front porch. Ever. Natalie clutched her robe around her and padded down the front walk on bare feet. A white car was parked across the street. A man sat behind the wheel. He paid no attention to her, but embarrassed in just her robe, she turned and quickly ran inside.
She sat down at the table with a second cup of coffee and unrolled the paper. Headlines screamed the news of Alison's attack. The story was scanty-reporters had had barely enough time to gather a few details before the paper was put to bed at ten o'clock. By now they were besieging Viveca at the hospital. Natalie could imagine her distress as reporters dug for details of Alison's background and mental history, and she was oddly relieved that her father was there to help Viveca, since Oliver seemed to have stepped out of the picture.
She glanced up at the kitchen clock. 8:45. The locksmith was due at nine. Natalie hurried through a shower and pulled on jeans and a tank top. Her hair hung long and wet as she rushed to answer the doorbell. A middle-aged man with graying curly red hair and a gold front tooth faced her. "Gary of Gary's Locksmiths!" he announced, grinning ferociously. A locksmith on speed, Natalie thought. Or maybe he just loved his job. Or perhaps he was showing off his gleaming tooth. Whatever the case, Andrew had described Gary to her, so she didn't worry that he was the killer posing as a locksmith. "Come right in," she said. "We need a new lock on the front door, the back door on the garage, and the sliding glass doors leading to the patio."
"Yep. Doc already told me. I'm gonna put a bolt on the sliding glass doors. Slickest thing you've ever seen." Gary grinned again, looking expectantly for an ecstatic reaction to his amazing sliding glass door bolt. "I'm rarin' to go!"
Good Lord, Natalie thought. She motioned him in, glancing at the man in the white car. He sat perfectly still, looking straight ahead with his head tilted slightly to the left. Maybe he was waiting for the young couple who had recently moved into the gray house across the street. But he'd been waiting for twenty minutes.
And he hadn't moved a fraction.
Natalie stepped past Gary onto the front walk. She gazed at the man, transfixed as an icy feeling settled in her stomach, radiating shuddery cold. Suddenly she felt as if she could stand under a white-hot desert sun for hours and still not feel warm.
Slowly she walked toward the car. From what seemed a great distance she heard Gary yapping about replacement pins and tumbler cylinders. Natalie ignored him. If he'd started shouting at her she still wouldn't have turned around. Something waited for her in that car. Something as irresistible as it was awful.
Natalie halted at the car and stared in the window. No movement. The unnatural angle of the head. The white shirt with a blood-soaked collar.
Unable to stop herself, she clasped the door handle. Pausing, she drew a deep breath, then opened the door.
The body of Jeff Lindstrom tumbled from the car, landing at her feet, his glassy brown eyes staring up at the beautiful blue sky.
18
"Good God Almighty! What the hell! Is he drunk?" Gary blustered from the doorway. Harvey Coombs' wife Mary had materialized in the street. She took one look at the gaping neck wound, gagged, and ran for home. Natalie kneeled and lifted a wrist searching for a pulse. The arm was beginning to stiffen. Given the temperature, she would say Jeff had died about three or four hours ago. She glanced in the car at the congealing blood covering the cloth upholstery seat. So much blood. His throat had been slashed in the car where he'd been left to bleed to death.
All of this ran through Natalie's mind as she pressed lightly on his lids, closing his eyes. She knew she shouldn't touch the body, but she could not leave those sightless eyes open, vulnerable like Tam's had been.
She looked up. Gary still stood gaping at the front door. "Call the police," she yelled. He didn't move. " Gary, call the police! Ask for Sheriff Meredith or Ted Hysell. Tell them to get here immediately." Gary was frozen. " Gary, now!"
Gary jerked as if jolted by electricity. The young couple from the nearby house appeared on their front walk, dressed in identical red-white-and-blue running suits. Both were tall and blond and looked like brother and sister. The young man walked toward Natalie. "What's going on?" He circled around the front of the car, looked down at the bloody body and quailed, all color draining from his ruddy face. "Did you do this?"
The absurdity of the question snapped Natalie out of her numbness. "Do you think I'd cut this guy's throat, then leave him outside my house so I could stand over him, gazing at my handiwork?" she asked coldly.
The young man backed off, obviously considering more strongly the possibility that this loony woman had indeed killed the man. "I was only trying to help."
"I didn't hear any offer to help." Tears suddenly filled Natalie's eyes and she began to tremble. "Do you have a blanket we can throw over him?"
He turned and ran back to his wife. After a murmured exchange she exclaimed, "I'm not ruining one of my good blankets!" In measured strides they retreated to their house and firmly closed the door. In less than a minute their faces appeared at the front window.
"Love thy neighbor," Natalie muttered as she sank down beside Jeff's body, suddenly dizzy. Three times in one week she had stood guard over the victims of savage violence. It was absurd. It was horrible. She felt as if she'd fallen off the edge of the world.
Mary Coombs dashed out of her house bearing a blanket that she tossed over the crumpled form of Jeff Lindstrom. Then she sat down on the pavement beside Natalie and poured a cup of coffee from a Thermos. "Drink this, honey. You're shaking like it's thirty degrees out here."
The coffee was thick with cream and sugar. Natalie liked her coffee black, but she drank obediently. Mary put her arm around Natalie's shoulders, and slowly the shaking began to subside. "Did you know him?" Mary asked.
"Slightly. He wasn't a friend." She shuddered. "He was left here for me to find."
"Now, Natalie, you're just scared."
"I know what I'm talking about." She looked at the pleasantly weather-worn face of the woman who'd offered love and sympathy ever since Kira deserted her so long ago. "Mary, did you see his throat?"
"Yes, horrible. This is nasty business, Natalie, but it doesn't have anything to do with you. Not a thing in the world."
But it did. Natalie knew with sickening certainly that it had everything to do with her.
She wasn't sure how long she and Mary sat silently beside the white car before the first police car arrived. Nick Meredith emerged, his expression grim, his eyes surrounded by bluish circles. Natalie doubted if he'd gotten a full night's sleep since the murder of Tamara. He looked at the blanket, then at Natalie. "Know who it is?"
"Jeff Lindstrom."
He drew in a quick breath. "Okay, besides Natalie, how many people have trampled on the crime scene?" he demanded.
"Only me," Mary returned indignantly, "and I didn't trample."
"The guy who lives in the gray house was here," Natalie told him. "He didn't come within six feet of the body, though, and I didn't see him touch anything."
Nick looked around. "Pretty boy standing at his window clutching a woman?"
"Yes. Gary didn't come over."
"Who's Gary?"
"The locksmith gawking at you from the doorway of my house. He made the call after I found the body."