Allie backed away, stepped on something soft—the hand on the floor—and whimpered. Leaped to the side and froze like a startled, terrified animal. She stared at the stained sheets and recognized the smell in the room as blood. Bile surged bitterly at the back of her throat, a burning column of acid. Her stomach contorted so that she actually felt it roll against her belt. She retched and ran bent over to the bathroom, flung open the door, and automatically switched on the light.
More blood!
On the tiles. The white toilet seat. The white porcelain tank. A smeared red handprint on the curved edge of the bathtub. Allie saw that a trail of blood led from the bathroom toward the bed. Her jogging shoes were stained red.
The stench in the bathroom was overwhelming. She gagged, sank down on her knees before the toilet bowl, and vomited when she saw feces and a pudding of clotted blood in the water. Sam must have been attacked while he was sitting there, during a bowel movement. That was how it appeared, anyway. So violently did she vomit that some of what was already in the porcelain bowl splashed up in her face.
Trembling, moaning, she scrambled to her feet and twisted the faucet handles of the wash basin. She scooped handfuls of cold water over her face, listening to the cool, pure sound of it falling back into the basin. She kept scooping water until, with great effort, she made herself stop. Then she washed her hands thoroughly with the small white bar of hotel soap, though they were unsoiled. She staggered from the bathroom, noticing that the carpet was soggy and gave beneath her soles. Her heart slamming against her ribs, she ran to the door.
She didn’t remember dashing down the hall to the elevator.
Riding the elevator down to the lobby.
The Hispanic woman at the switchboard stared at her and frowned with black, unplucked brows. She was peering into Allie’s eyes as if there were something disturbing behind them that she’d never seen before. The tall gray-haired desk clerk stopped what he was doing with some crinkled yellow forms at the far end of the desk and glided toward her, his features aging with each step and with his growing apprehension. He’d been around a long time and knew trouble when he saw it.
He said, “Miss…?”
Allie leaned with both hands on the desk, her head bowed. She gave the desk clerk a from-down-under look and said, “Room Ten twenty-seven. Dead.” Didn’t sound like her voice. Someone high, floating, imitating her.
The switchboard operator had stood up and was crowding the desk clerk, as if she might want to hide behind him. Didn’t seem much taller standing. She said, “What? What’d you say, hon?”
Allie tried to speak again but couldn’t. Her throat was constricted. She heard herself croak unintelligibly.
“Somebody dead in Ten twenty-seven?” the desk clerk asked in a distant, amazingly calm voice. As if dead guests were part of hotel-biz; one or two every night.
Allie nodded.
“You sure?”
She could manage only another nod.
He stared at her like a stern, impossible father about to ask an important question, warning her in advance that he wanted the truth but he didn’t want to hear anything unpleasant. “You mean he died of a heart attack? Something like that? Right?”
“Murdered,” Allie made herself say. “Cut up in pieces.”
The switchboard operator said, “Madre de Dios!”
The desk clerk straightened up so he was standing as tall as possible and, still with his calm gaze fixed on Allie, called, “Will!”
An elderly black bellhop appeared. The old desk clerk casually reached into a side pocket and tossed him a key. It must have been a pass key. Its metal tag clinked against it as the bellhop caught it with one gnarled hand.
“Run on up to Ten twenty-seven,” the desk clerk said. “See what there is to see and then phone down.”
The bellhop glanced at Allie. He had sad, very kind eyes. He said, “Got somethin’ all over your shoes.”
Allie heard herself say, “Huh? Oh, that’s blood.”
The bellhop’s face got hard with fear and a kind of resolve. Or was it resignation? “Seen that before,” he said, and walked over and got in the elevator she’d just ridden down. “Seen you before, too,” he said as the door slid shut.
But he hadn’t, she was sure.
It took Allie a few seconds to realize what he’d meant.
And its significance.
It was Hedra he’d seen. Hedra wearing her Allie wig. Wearing her Allie clothes. Inside Allie’s blue coat. Walking her Allie walk.
Not Allie! Hedra!
Within a couple of minutes the switchboard buzzed urgently and a tiny red light began blinking. An insistent code: Murder! Murder! Murder!
The Hispanic woman drifted toward it. Her eyes were brown pools of fear. The desk clerk shuffled over to stand by her. He leaned over with his gray hair near her dark hair, as if he wanted to hear firsthand what was being said on the receiver pressed to the woman’s ear.
While they were standing facing away from her, Allie fled from the lobby and into the street.
Chapter 27
SHE didn’t realize until she was inside and had shut the apartment door that this wasn’t shelter. She’d been stupid to come here. Sam might have something on him that would tell the police where she lived. Hedra might have seen to that.
Hedra! Would Hedra have returned here?
A few feet inside the door, Allie stood in darkness, listening. The apartment was silent.
Even if the police learned her identity and address, she was sure she had some time. She walked into the living room and switched on a lamp.
There was her empty cup where she’d left it on the folded Village Voice on the table. The remote control for the TV rested where she remembered, on the arm of the sofa. The phone sat on the floor next to the wing chair. Where she’d left it.
Everything seemed to be exactly as it was when she’d hurried out of the apartment.
She switched on more lights and moved toward the hall to the bedrooms. In the glow cast from so many sources, a dozen dim shadows moved with her. Her legs felt rubbery but she wasn’t tired. There was an engine in her chest; she was running on adrenaline.
She glanced in the bathroom and felt a sudden nausea, remembering the bathroom at the Atherton Hotel.
At the door to Hedra’s old bedroom she stopped. She reached around the doorjamb, into the room, and groped across rough plaster for the plastic wall switch, found it, and flicked it upward.
The overhead fixture winked on.
Allie almost expected to find something hideous inside. Some further manifestation of Hedra’s madness. But this room, too, was as she’d left it. There was, in fact, a special kind of blankness about it, as if, like Hedra, it yearned to be imprinted with personality.
Knowing her time inside the apartment was limited, Allie decided to pack some of her clothes in her carry-on and then get out fast. She’d fetch her red-and-white TWA bag down from her closet shelf and quickly stuff it with whatever seemed appropriate. She wanted only to get clear of the Cody Arms before the police arrived, to run and hide somewhere so she could take time and try to think this nightmare through, figure a way out.
Allie was having difficulty breathing, as if she were being crushed in a vise. She knew there was nothing of Hedra anywhere in the apartment. She felt like screaming, but she covered her mouth with her hand and willed herself to be silent. Slumped on the mattress, she sat with her elbows on her knees, meshing her fingers so tightly they ached. She sat paralyzed, still trying to fully comprehend what had happened, what it meant. On the opposite wall she saw a spider racing diagonally toward the molding up near the ceiling, seeking shelter in shadow.
Then something deep in her stirred to life. A quiet rage and a primal determination to survive. Ancient voices speaking.