He waited. A minute, two minutes passed. Then the woman rose up just a little farther, and he could see the flash of bright satin red from her costume as she crawled out on her hands and knees.
Was she another devil?
And stood up.
But then why was her right breast bare?
She reached for her quiver, and Cody pulled his hunting knife.
The wolf howled soulfully, as though it were not far off. She and Cody both reacted.
In the same instant, they both heard the subtler sound as the arrow whirred toward its target.
Victoria turned her head sharply.
But she was too late.
Hamilton’s arrow had already found its mark. It pierced his lover’s neck, pinning her to the ground at the edge of the hole.
Marking the direction from which the arrow originated, Cody rushed forward.
He had no doubt it was Victoria, her face pressed into the damp earth.
The arrow was embedded up to its shaft in the back of her neck-an almost superhumanly perfect shot, between the occiput and C-1, cleanly severing the spinal cord. Cleanly transecting the heart-shaped tattoo.
Cody did not expect to find a pulse, and in fact did not.
Victoria Mansfield had died instantly. She was Number Five!
He thought of turning her over, but knew that he’d never hear the end of it from Wolfsheim-or Kate, for that matter-for disturbing the victim’s body. He could see from the side that the nipple on her exposed perfect breast was hard as a pebble.
And that the costume she was wearing was not that of a devil after all, but more likely that of an Amazon. That would explain the exposed breast.
The perfect evening wear for death by archery.
The arrow could only have issued from a cross-bow like the one he found next to her body. She had been lying in wait-for Ward Hamilton? Or for him?
Cody noted that the flap button on the woman’s sheaf was opened. She was about to reach for an arrow of her own-too late-when she was struck. Cause of death: Slashing/stabbing/puncturing with a sharp instrument?
Or did Hamilton’s arrow only conceal another mechanism of death?
Exactly what kind of satanic game was this he’d found himself in the middle of?
Cody had concluded that the socialite and the writer were just a pair of self-infatuated lovebirds, their own dual species of creatures of the night.
Now it appeared what they had constructed was an autoerotic euthanasia pact.?
He trotted toward where he’d marked Hamilton’s ambush position through the thick brush-deeper into the unforgiving wilderness in the darkest heart of this untamed city.
He came to the cold stream that fed the Pond.
Listen. Sometimes when you are alone it is okay to think about what has gone before. In your life, I mean. To understand why the past has become the present. Sometimes it is okay to think about where the trail will lead you, and why you are following it at all. Old Man’s words haunted him.
But Cody was too focused for further reflection. Tonight he was hunting in earnest, hunting for a hunter who enjoyed the hunt.
He followed the invisible trail, the only clues instinct alone. Ahead of him he could hear a waterfall, and moved faster through the trees. His instincts led him downward, into a small ravine. His night vision was sharper than ever, no need for infrared.
It was beginning to rain.
He would have to find a decent shelter. A cave, perhaps, to keep the weather at bay.
Any tracks he might have detected were now disappeared with the rain.
Charley was whimpering. Charley didn’t like the rain. It rendered his prodigious nose impotent.
Counter-intuitively, Cody decided to follow the stream farther down the hill. His eyes moved constantly in the darkness as he trotted through the woods. Always walk an inch off the ground so nothing will hear you.
Charley barked, his whine becoming eager again. He pulled Cody toward the stream, which was at this point barely three feet wide. They both leaped across, Charley returning his nose to the ground.
Cody knelt down to inspect the rock. No footprints, but a tiny fiber caught in a fissure so small only a nose like Charley’s could have found it. A blue-green fiber.
Barely visible, beneath a fallen elm a few yards away, he saw where Charley was heading. Nearly concealed by the elm and the surrounding brush, was an opening under an overhang.
It was the entrance to a cave. Charley made a bee-line for it, but Cody held him back.
He pulled his knife out. And signaled Charley for silence.
Listen. Patience is the virtue of the hunter.
There was a rumble of thunder. Cody watched the cave opening. Perhaps Charley was wrong. But Charley strained at his leash, not to be dissuaded.
In the distance, the wolves resumed their warning howls.
Charley responded with a low howl of his own. When Cody moved toward the entrance, Charley held his ground. He had mistaken the shepherd’s signals as urging him to go in. Instead, Charley was trying to keep him back, trying to protect him from what lay in wait inside the cave.
But the warrior would not be deterred. “Stay,” he commanded.
Charley whined in protest, but obeyed his master, hunkering down to wait beneath the sheltering tree.?
The opening was small but large enough to crawl through. On his hands and knees, he entered the cave. He looked in, sniffing the stagnant air.
Once he’d cleared the entrance, he found the cave enlarged. It was almost tall enough to stand, so Cody moved to a half-upright crouch as he headed forward into the pitch darkness.
The odor was feral, but the cave was too dark even for his sharp eyes. He sniffed the air again. Was it fur? A fox perhaps? Was he intruding on its domain?
The cave was long and Cody was walking into its inky recesses blind, and even more vulnerable because he was backlit by a distant light in the Park.
But his steps on the slippery stone pavement were firm, instincts strong enough to tell him he was not alone.
He was aware he was being watched. An overwhelming sense of evil washed over him, and Cody walked toward the presence as though under its control.
Then his nose identified the smell. It was perspiration, mixed with an expensive cologne. He flashed back to the Ladies Auxiliary Ball, recalling where he had smelled it before.
A bolt of lightning startled him and cast a blue glow through the cave opening. His ears ringing from the crack of thunder, Cody was startled to hear the hesitation in his voice. “Hamilton?”
By answer Cody heard the feathery whisper of his death flying toward him. His mouth dried up.?
Before he could duck, the arrow had missed him by an inch.
Cody immediately realized that this was intentional.
He heard the writer’s ghastly laughter.
“Woops. Missed!” Hamilton emerged from the depths, eerily illuminated with a hellish orange light. He was carrying a child’s flash light shaped like a jack o’lantern.
“Detective Cody,” Hamilton said. “We have got to stop meeting like this. One would think you were stalking me.” The outlandish laughter again.
“You missed me on purpose,” Cody said. “Cliche or not, you’re a writer. You need to talk.”
This time the laugh was more like a cackle.
“You killed your lover!”
“Oh, don’t fret your handsome head about her. It was instantaneous. I couldn’t bear for her to suffer. She doesn’t want to live without me, you know. Fiercely loyal to the last.”
“She was the vampire woman in red at the Yellow Door,” Cody said.
Hamilton nodded. “Good, Micky. Now you’re thinking. She met Handley there to pick up the key and to make sure she passed muster. He was picky about his illicit rendezvouses.”
“Why Handley? Why did you pick him?”
“The town will read all about him and his sister when they find my masterpiece on Number Five’s body.”