“Don’t, Jack.”
“I’m not looking forward to this.”
“You think I am?”
Quiet summer morning in the Wood: dog walkers in the park, mailman making his deliveries, sun-hatted woman working in her garden in the block below Rakubian’s. Cassie parked directly in front of the Spanish stucco, no reason not to. The property seemed subtly different to him dappled in sunlight and shadow, less imposing, less bleak. Just another expensive home in one of the city’s best neighborhoods. Yet the tension remained as they got out, walked up onto the porch.
The alarm system was on; he shut it off with Angela’s key. Cassie was looking in the mailbox. “Empty,” she said, “but he must still be getting mail. I wonder what’s happened to it.”
“Police made arrangements for a temporary hold, probably.”
“I don’t suppose there’d be anything in it anyway.”
“Doubtful.”
When he opened the door he expected a heavy, closed-up feel and smell, but that wasn’t the case. Cold air, faintly damp, faintly musty. Cassie noticed it as well. “Feels as though the place was aired out not long ago,” she said.
He didn’t answer. His memory had begun to flare open, to disgorge images from that nightmare Saturday. Ghosts, baby phantoms. In his mind, and in the cold stillness and shadowy corners in here. But they couldn’t hurt him unless he permitted it to happen, and he would not.
He located the light switch, flicked it. The electricity was still on; a pale amber glow chased away some of the gloom in the foyer and hallway.
“That’s a relief,” Cassie said. “I thought we might have to do this by flashlight. Who do you suppose is paying the bill?”
“May have paid it himself a month or two in advance. Even if he didn’t, it hasn’t been long enough for PG&E to shut the power off.”
“Where should we start?”
“Library, I guess.”
“Is that where—?”
“Where I found him. It’s also where he kept most of his papers.”
They moved ahead, their shoes clicking on the terracotta tiles. At the library arch he hesitated, but only for an instant before he stepped through. Cassie was a pace behind him, so that when he stopped abruptly, staring at the floor in front of Rakubian’s desk, she bumped into him.
“What’s the matter?”
“The carpet,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“What carpet?”
Memory flash: The tiles so bare after he dragged the body out and wiped up the blood; didn’t look right, so he’d rolled up the smaller but similar Sarouk in the formal living room and spread it out in here. Now the tiles were bare again. He pivoted around past Cassie, hurried up the hall.
The three-by-five Sarouk had been put back in its original spot in front of the fireplace. And the furniture... all of it was placed as it had been before he’d shifted it around, back to Rakubian’s original arrangement.
“My God,” he said.
“Jack?”
He explained as they returned to the library. She said, “The police wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“No. They’d have no way of knowing the original placement anyhow.”
“Why would somebody else...?”
His gaze roved the dark room. The wall hangings, the screaming souls in the Goya “black” seemed to stare back at him. And on the fireplace mantel—
Black statuette.
A bird, a raven — Poe’s Raven.
Dry-mouthed, he stepped over for a closer look. Replica of the murder weapon and the statuette in Rakubian’s office, except that this one was slightly larger and more ornate. It even had a Nevermore! plaque.
“It’s as if somebody is trying to erase what happened,” he told Cassie. “Not for the reason I did, to cover up... By putting everything back as it was, as though the murder never happened at all.”
“His killer?”
“Nobody else would have a reason.”
“Then it has to be a woman,” she said. “Somebody full of guilt and remorse... somebody who loved and hated him both. The hate killed him, the love drove her back here. To the scene of her crime.”
They hunted through Rakubian’s desk, the rest of the library. Paper files, computer disks — all neatly arranged. The woman again: the police would not have left everything in such pristine order. There were a few obvious gaps, items taken away by Macatee for one reason or another and still in his possession. None of the paper files revealed anything. The disks were all labeled with year and month and content — bills, business expenses, charitable donations. Any that might have contained personal references were missing, appropriated by either Macatee or the woman. There didn’t seem to be much point in going through the remainder, here or later at home.
There was nothing else to find in the living room. The guest bathroom seemed the same as he’d left it two months ago; the spare bedroom and small sitting room next to it were dusty, musty, and empty of anything revealing. They went across the hall to the master bedroom. The door was shut; Cassie pushed it open.
“Oh!” she said.
Incense. That was the first thing that struck him — the faint but still pungent odor of burnt incense. Then his eyes adjusted to the gloom in there, and he saw what Cassie, with better vision, had seen immediately.
Candles.
Dozens of them, fat and thin, tall and short, in a variety of dishes and holders. On the furniture, on the carpet ringing the bed, on every flat surface in the room.
“Lord,” Cassie murmured, “it’s like a shrine.”
He put the ceiling light on. The big double bed was made, but the counterpane lay crooked and a little wrinkled at the bottom. The doors to the walk-in closet and master bath were closed. That was all there was to see except for the candles; they dominated the room, phallic images in red, white, green, and yellow wax. Even the bowl on the dresser where the incense had been burned had a long taper jutting from its center.
“She’s been sleeping in here,” he said.
“In his bed. Yes.”
“How often, that’s the question.”
“It’s hard to tell. Not every night... I don’t think she’s living here, at least not regularly. The incense odor isn’t fresh.”
“Sick. Certifiable.”
“Unstable to begin with,” Cassie said, “and killing him pushed her over the edge. All that love and hate mixed up together.”
He crossed to the closet doors, swung them wide. Suits, shirts, ties, a few items of casual wear — all Rakubian’s, all carefully arranged on hangers and racks and shelves. Untouched since his death, probably. A small section at the rear contained women’s clothes, a rack of women’s shoes. Cassie went in to look through them.
“Angela’s,” she said. “This silk blouse — we gave it to her for Christmas two years ago.”
“All of the clothing hers?”
“I think so. Everything she left behind.”
They searched the bathroom. The shower stall and circular tub were both dry. The only item that seemed to have been used recently was a toothbrush; its bristles were dry, but it lay beside the sink rather than in the chromium holder with two others. The medicine chest held nothing that could not have belonged to Rakubian or to Angela.
In the bedroom again they opened dresser drawers, nightstand drawers. Same thing: all the contents were his, could have been Angela’s.
The incense, a smell he’d never liked, was making his sinuses ache. He left Cassie still poking around the bedroom, went to check the kitchen. The refrigerator was empty; so was the trash container under the sink. The woman was not eating her meals here, or if she was, she brought them in with her and took the remnants away when she left. Cassie joined him and they examined drawers, cupboards, cabinets there and on the rear porch. But they were only going through the motions and they both knew it.