Lifting the heavy shoulders, getting the trash bag over the head and upper body was stomach-churning work. Sticky blood on his hands when he finished, sweat matting his clothing to his skin. Stuffing legs and lower torso into the second bag wasn’t as bad, but his hands shook so much by then that he had trouble looping twine around the corpse, tying the bags together in the middle and at both ends. Done, finally. He groped his way to the black leather sofa, sat there with his stained hands clasped between his knees until the shaking stopped.
The sweat continued to seep out of him. Too warm in there... Rakubian kept the heat turned up, no matter what the weather. Thrived on it like a frigging spider. Hollis remembered Angela telling him how sometimes at night she would wake up unable to breathe and beg Rakubian to turn the heat down or at least to let her open a window. Of course, he’d refused and berated her for being childish. Everything for himself, always.
Not anymore.
Hollis stood, went past the body without looking at it. In the bathroom he washed his hands, washed them a second time, then scrubbed out the sink and soap dish to make certain there were no traces of blood left. He dried off on one of the guest towels, used the towel to wipe the toilet bowl, vanity counter, sink and the faucet handles, then folded and replaced it on the rack. For the first time he grew aware of an insistent pressure in his bladder; he nudged the seat up with a knuckle and urinated... tried to urinate. Interrupted flow, burning. He flushed the evidence away.
On the utility porch again, he unlocked the outside door and tested the knob to satisfy himself that it was open. Back to the library. The .22 had become a heavy dragging weight in his pocket; he shrugged out of the jacket, laid it on the couch. Then he opened the third garbage bag, used a piece of paper towel to prod the raven statuette inside. Nevermore!
He knelt with the towel roll, scrubbed at the drops and spatters on the tiles. The stains were mostly dry; they wouldn’t clean up fully without water. To the bathroom once more to wet a few of the paper towels. More scrubbing, and dry sheets to dry the floor afterward. Used towels into the garbage bag. Crawl around on hands and knees, looking for any stains he might have missed. Blip of himself doing it: grisly image with the bagged corpse there beside him, like a scene from a horror movie.
When he was satisfied he stood and scanned the room. No signs of violence remained. The only false note was that the floor in front of the desk seemed unnaturally bare with the carpet moved away. Do something about that later. He bent to grasp the fringed edge of the Sarouk, began to drag it and its burden into the hallway.
His cell phone went off.
In the too warm silence, the eruption of sound was startling enough to jerk his fingers loose from the rug. His heart skipped, banged, skipped; it took a few seconds to pull his breathing under control. Ring. Ring. All right, get a grip, it’s probably Cassie. And for God’s sake don’t let her hear anything in your voice. He blew out a breath, yanked the phone from his belt and clicked on.
“Hollis.”
“Jack, Eric’s home. He came in five minutes ago.”
Careful, now. Careful. “Where was he?”
“He went for a long drive, he said — the Russian River, out to the coast. To cool off.”
“You believe him?”
“I want to.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Yes, but still... you know how he gets. Closemouthed, withdrawn. He still seems to be on edge, wrought up.”
On edge, wrought up. He crushed a man’s skull this afternoon.
“I’ll talk to him later,” Hollis said. “Main thing is, he’s home safe and nothing happened.”
“This time,” she said.
“Everything else okay? You know what I mean.”
“So far. When will you be home?”
“I... don’t know yet. I may be late.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Nick Jackson wants me to have dinner with him.”
“Beg off, can’t you?”
“It’s more business than social, so I’d better not. There’s no good reason for me to, is there?”
“I suppose not, but—”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said, and disconnected. Before he replaced the unit he switched it all the way off. No more calls until he was finished with Rakubian. No more little shocks, no more big lies.
He caught hold of the carpet again, dragged it down the hall and through the kitchen onto the porch. Left it near the outside door, then retraced his route to make sure there were no telltale marks on the floor. Some ridges and speckles of dust was all; these he erased with more dampened paper towels.
At the front there was a formal living room, seldom used, as darkly furnished as the library. Two Oriental rugs in there, the largest of them, three by five feet, spread out before the fireplace. He moved a couple of tables, rolled the rug, rearranged the tables and two chairs so that the empty floor space didn’t seem conspicuous. Shouldn’t matter anyhow. Rakubian had permitted only a handful of visitors in the first few months of his marriage, and none at all in the last four or five. A loner — no close friends, few acquaintances. His home was his castle, the kind with a moat around it. Who’d notice anything out of place in here? Or in the library, but Hollis knew he’d never feel secure unless another carpet covered the space where Rakubian had died.
He wiped the tiles in front of the fireplace, took all the soiled paper towels to the porch, and stuffed them into the open trash bag. Carried the rolled carpet into the library and laid it down. Better, much better. It didn’t seem too small for the space, and its pattern resembled the blood-soaked one’s.
Finished. This part of it.
The rest... Don’t think about the rest yet.
He put his jacket on, zippered it to the throat. In the foyer he cracked the front door and peered out at the street. Nobody in sight. He stepped through quickly, shutting the door behind him. When he came out to the sidewalk he saw someone in the park, an overcoated man walking a dog on a leash, but the man wasn’t looking his way. Still he felt exposed, vulnerable as he turned up the street.
Eyes front, same measured pace as before: a man who belonged in this neighborhood as much as the dog-walker. The cold wind beat at him, moaning in his ears, freezing his sweat. By the time he reached the Lexus he was chilled.
Inside, he locked the .22 in the glove compartment. Panicked moment then: he couldn’t find his keys. They weren’t in either jacket pocket, what if they’d fallen out in the library? Right pants pocket, no, left pants pocket... why had he put them there, he never put his keys there. He fumbled the ignition key into the slot.
A car came down Monterey behind him; he heard it, then saw it in the rearview mirror. Passenger car, nondescript, two people inside. He turned his head as it passed, as if he were hunting for something on the seat. It continued on without slowing. He waited until it was two blocks away before he started the engine.
Downhill past Rakubian’s driveway, stop, reverse — telling himself to do this casually, not too fast or too slow, he had every right to be here. He cut the wheel too sharp on the first try, almost ran into the bushes bordering the drive. Come on, come on! Second pass was better, in more or less straight; adjust, back up slow and straight. The street in front of him remained empty. Stop a few feet from the garage... there.