In the kitchen she put ice cubes into a cheap plastic vase, and filled it three quarters with cold water. The doorbell rang, and she put the vase on the dining room table, tightened the knot in her robe so the delivery man wouldn’t get the wrong idea, and opened the front door.
“Miss Blanchard?”
Filling her doorway was a tall, muscular man in a brown uniform. A cap covered most of his head, his eyes hidden behind a pair of space-age wraparound shades. Sybil glanced at the veins popping in his neck and grouped him with the would-be actors at her gym who spent their afternoons pumping weights instead of learning The Method.
“That’s me.”
Sybil ushered him in. Smiling, he handed her his clipboard and pen. She took up two spaces signing her name.
“Thanks,” he said, handing her the flower box. “Can I use your phone to call my office? I’m having trouble with my van, and my cell phone’s on the blink.”
“It’s on the wall beside the fridge.”
He found it after a moment’s confusion. Dialing, he said, “You acted like you were expecting them. Birthday?”
“No, but it is a special occasion. I just landed...”
“Congratulations,” he said and began talking into the phone.
The flower box was taped together and she felt its contents shift. A small envelope was taped to the lid. Written on it was her name, her surname spelled wrong. That’s the way it’s spelled on the directory downstairs, she thought.
In the kitchen the flower man was still complaining about his van, and she told herself she was just imagining the darkness creeping around her, and popped the sides and removed the lid. A faint gurgle escaped her throat, and her knees began to buckle. Swathed in white tissue paper was a dead bird with its tongue sticking out of its beak.
“Surprised?” the flower man asked, coming out of the kitchen wielding a butcher knife.
Screaming as loud as she knew how, Sybil ran toward her bedroom. In the drawer of her bedside table was another of her dad’s presents, a.38 Smith and Wesson, and she thanked God that she always kept it cleaned and fully loaded.
The flower man tackled her in the hallway, sending them both down hard. She kicked at him viciously and he hopped on her, his knees pressing her chest to the carpeted floor, knocking the wind out of her. Grinning wickedly, he brought the knife down and stopped, the point of the blade hovering inches above her face.
“Look at me,” he whispered. “Look hard.”
His left hand simultaneously swept off his cap and sunglasses, giving her the full horror show. His misshapen head had no hair, and his eyes popped grotesquely out of his head like high wattage bulbs. He could have made his living working in a carnival side show, or gotten himself cast in plenty of C-grade monster movies. He was that frightening.
“Goddamn... freak.”
“Call me names,” he said.
Sybil grasped the knife with both hands before he could plunge it down. In the medicine cabinet were the pills she took for her irregular heart beat. Without them, she was doomed.
She locked her arms together as he pressed down, refusing to give him this last pleasure. She concentrated on her hands, not giving an inch, the knife frozen above her.
“I win,” she gasped.
Her breath grew short, and then she felt her heart stop. It was a strange feeling, like someone turning off the lights, and throwing her into darkness.
“No—!” he said belligerently. “You can’t do this...!”
“You can’t... murder... a dead woman...”
Closing her eyes, Sybil saw her dead mother standing before her, then in rapid succession her Dad at his desk writing a legal brief, she and Rex running barefoot down Venice beach, then a snow-covered field behind her elementary school in Ketchum, the drifts enveloping the tops of the slides and metal swings, turning everything she could see a blinding, absolute white; then nothing.
Harry Wondero was getting nowhere with the genetic bouillabaisse that occupied the second floor of the Santa Monica apartments in Westwood. He had banged on twenty doors and flashed his faded badge at the assorted freaks and sleepy twilight dwellers who’d bothered to answer. To judge by the notes he’d taken, he learned next to nothing about the three Chicanos who had resided in 22F. According to their neighbors, the trio were nocturnal, hardly had a civil word to say, and had never put in an appearance at the apartment swimming pool. And that’s where the celebrity club had barbecues and cocktails every weekend, smoked a little grass and played friendly games of water polo. Nodding, Wondero had scribbled away, not believing that people took him for such a horse’s ass. 22F was a drugstore, and that kind of thing didn’t go unnoticed in an apartment complex with cardboard thin walls. Liars, every one, he told himself as the half-naked woman in curlers said she had to go, and closed the door in his face. At least he had something to put in the homicide report.
He took an elevator to the parking lot to wait for the forensic crew. His partner of six years, Casey Rittenbaugh, was upstairs questioning the two uniformed officers who had first arrived on the scene. One of the Chicanos, hardly older than his son, had taken a slug in the forehead that had separated his eyes about two inches more than normal, and Wondero wanted to sit in the car a few minutes to chase the image out of his mind. For a full minute he blasted the air conditioner and took deep breaths.
Beneath the dashboard the radio squawked. He called in to check on the forensic crew. They were in transit, and to the dispatcher Wondero said, “Tell them to hurry, would you?”
He dabbed at his eyes with a Kleenex. Driving in that morning he’d heard a smog alert, the retardate disc jockey advising him and the rest of L.A. not to breath today. When it got really heavy his eyes teared up, making him look vulnerable. His wife had said that, and Wondero, who didn’t like the image of a six-foot-two, two hundred thirty pound plainclothes detective blubbering in public, usually tried to hide his face whenever he felt an attack coming on.
The gray forensic van pulled into the lot and parked in a Handicapped spot. Two fingerprint men and a police photographer got out, followed by Doc Silverman, the ME, who cornered Wondero as he got out of his car.
“I should have known,” Silverman said. “What’s the rush Harry? We’re dealing in corpses, right? Nothing I learned in medschool can change that.”
Wondero put his finger on the fresh spot of jam on Silverman’s shirt, then into his mouth. “Strawberry. Let me guess. IHOP, or Burger King?”
“Never a minute’s peace with you.” Silverman got his pen started on a clipboard. “What have we got?”
“Three Chicano males, ages ranging between twenty and thirty, shot at close range with an automatic weapon. Two of them had their ankles and wrists bound together with copper wire. The third got shot taking a bath. No sign of struggle or forcible entry.”
“Any discernable motive?”
“Bag of ludes, a mirror with a few anthills of coke and a couple grand in cash strewn around the apartment. Casey also found a modified Uzi with a hundred rounds of ammo. Luckily no one had a chance to use it.”
“If they had,” Silverman said, still busy writing, “maybe one of your corpses would be talking.”
“Bullet from an Uzi can pass through three, sometimes four walls,” Wondero said, forgetting he wasn’t talking to another cop. “Instead of three stiffs you could have had ten. Then you would have had to skip breakfast and lunch.”