The car doors opened. Two uniformed policemen got out warily, their bodies stiff with tension.
From the backseat Miss Wendy Alden emerged, looking tired and bedraggled, a blanket wrapped incongruously over her night things. A bandage on her throat marked the garrote’s work. Rood hoped the wound hurt.
“Hello, my dear,” he whispered. “So nice to see you again.”
The front door of the house banged open. A man hurried down the steps into the twin funnels of the patrol car’s headlights. He was tall, about thirty, with wire-frame glasses and sandy hair standing up in dry patches that spoke of interrupted sleep.
“And hello, Mr. Pellman,” Rood said.
Mr. Pellman embraced Miss Alden briefly, perhaps a shade self-consciously in the presence of the two cops.
“What happened to you?” the boyfriend asked as they parted. His voice carried clearly in the night stillness.
She shook her head. “Later.” She turned to the policemen and handed them the blanket. Now she was clad only in the robe and pajamas Rood remembered. “Thank you, Officer Sanchez. Officer Porter. Thanks for everything.”
“Our pleasure,” replied the one she’d called Officer Sanchez.
Mr. Pellman took Miss Alden’s hand and led her inside, shutting the door with a solid thump that reminded Rood, most appropriately, of the closing of a casket lid.
The two cops lingered in the driveway, beaming flashlights first at the bushes in the front yard, then at the encircling eucalyptus trees. Each man kept a hand on his hip, where a gun was holstered. Rood was suddenly glad he hadn’t chosen to conceal himself close to the house.
Finally Officers Sanchez and Porter seemed satisfied. Switching off their flashlights, they climbed inside the squad car, which backed out into the street.
“Good night, officers,” Rood breathed. “And thank you very much for a job well done.”
Naturally he expected the car to execute a U-turn and drive off, down the mountain, back to the station or to wherever cops went when they were through delivering delightful young ladies to their death. And that was why he was so badly disappointed when, instead, the patrol car swung into the turnout, tires crunching on dirt like hungry mouths, and parked ten yards from Rood’s hiding place. The engine was silenced, the headlights darkened. He heard a low creak as the windows were cranked down, then the quiet conversation of the two men inside.
They weren’t leaving. They were going to stay all night. Stay and watch the house.
Rood pursed his lips, fighting an absurd and quite undignified urge to cry. It wasn’t fair. Miss Alden was so close-he could see her silhouette dancing on the window shade along with Mr. Pellman’s now-so tantalizingly close, yet still out of reach.
Then he steadied himself. He was Franklin Rood. He was a man superior to all others. His temporary failure with Miss Alden had shaken his confidence, true, but that was all the more reason to persevere and redeem himself.
He must not be denied. He must have his revenge. And he must have it tonight.
There had to be a way.
Calm once more, relaxed and in control, he contemplated his next move. It occurred to him that he had one advantage over Officers Sanchez and Porter. He knew exactly where they were and what they were doing, while they had no idea that he was even in the area, let alone that he was positioned thirty feet from their car. Nor were they likely to discover him, even if he crept closer. Their attention would be focused on the house and the road, not on the dry brush rustling at their backs.
A plan of action was already forming in his mind.
Rood replaced the binoculars, then rummaged in the bag till he found Miss Alden’s kitchen knife. A good weapon, as he ought to know. More efficient than the garrote. Perfect for a swift, silent kill.
He shoved the bag behind a patch of weeds, out of sight. Later he would come back for it; now he needed to be unencumbered as he wriggled on his stomach through the dirt, snaking toward the car and the two men inside it, who were still speaking softly, trading jokes and sharing laughter and watching the empty road.
16
Wendy didn’t feel really safe until she was inside Jeffrey’s house with the door shut and locked to keep out the darkness.
Aimlessly she circled the living room, grateful for the table lamps blazing everywhere. Like the rest of the rented house, the room was small and musty and cluttered. The white walls were covered with photographs, some framed, most simply tacked up with pushpins, all of them Jeffrey’s own work and all of them in black and white, a medium he preferred for complex, idiosyncratic reasons he’d once explained to her at tedious length. A few sticks of worn, mismatched furniture were scattered across a lusterless hardwood floor patterned with an intaglio of decades-old scratches. The floorboards creaked under her restless motion.
“All right,” Jeffrey said briskly, clapping his hands once. “The first thing to do is get you into something dry to wear. Sound okay?”
“I think I’d like to freshen up a little. Wash my face. I want to
… feel clean.”
He looked at her, his face an unasked question.
“No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not sure what to think.”
“I just feel dirty. Like I’ve been touched by”- death-“something bad.”
“You can take a shower.”
“Uh-uh.” She touched her neck. “The doctor said I can’t get the bandages wet for twenty-four hours. Just a washcloth and a sink full of water will be fine.”
“Well, I believe I can arrange that. Follow me.”
“Oh, wait a second. I want to check on something.”
She peeled back a corner of the window shade and peered out through the security bars. She saw Sanchez and Porter slamming the doors of the squad car. As she watched, the car reversed out of the driveway, then parked in a weedy lot across the road.
“What is it?” Jeffrey was right behind her.
“Those policemen who brought me here-they’re going to watch the house.”
“Watch it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What for?”
“It’s just a precaution.”
She expected him to press her for details, as anybody would; but strangely he didn’t. When she turned away from the window at last, she read distance in his eyes, distance and what might have been pain.
He seemed to realize she was staring at him. His expression cleared.
“Ready to get cleaned up now?” Jeffrey asked, his voice normal, too normal.
“You bet.”
He led her down the hall. More photographs glided by, interrupted by the doorway to the half-bath Jeffrey had converted into a darkroom, then the closed door of the guest bedroom, which, Wendy knew, contained no furniture, only cartons of junk he’d never bothered to unpack. In the one-car garage he used as his studio, still more boxes were piled high against the walls. He’d once told her, while working on his third bottle of beer, that he saved all his notes and conceptual sketches because he believed his photographs would make him famous someday, and then his papers would be of historical value.
At the end of the hall Jeffrey opened the door to the master bedroom and showed her inside. The bed was scattered with tangled sheets and blankets hastily thrown aside.
“Sorry I had to call so late,” Wendy said pointlessly. “You must have been sound asleep.”
“Actually, no. I got a wrong number just about five minutes before you called me. That’s what woke me up.”
Adjacent to the bedroom was the master bath. Jeffrey opened the bathroom door and switched on the overhead light. The ceiling fan came on simultaneously with a rattle and whir.
“Your wash basin, madam. As for a change of clothes, I’m afraid the selection of outfits available at Chez Pellman is limited, basically, to blue jeans or pajamas.”