Shadowfires

finger to the ugly stain, instantly snatched her hand away, and shuddered. “Damp. My God, it's damp.”
    “ Who's been here?” Ben asked. “What's happened?”
    She stared at the tip of her finger, the one with which she had
touched the stain, and her face was distorted with horror. Slowly she
raised her eyes and looked at Ben, who had stooped beside her, and
for a moment he thought her terror had reached such a peak that she
was prepared, at last, to tell him everything and seek his help. But
after a moment he could see the resolve and self-control flooding
back into her gaze and into her lovely face.
    She said, “Come on.
Let's check out the rest of the house. And for God's sake, be
careful.”
    He followed her as she resumed her search. Again she held the
pistol in front of her.
    In the huge kitchen, which was nearly as well equipped as that of
a major restaurant, they found broken glass scattered across the
floor. One pane had been smashed out of the French door that opened
onto the patio.
    “An alarm system's no good if you don't use it,” Ben said. “Why
would Eric go off and leave a house like this unprotected?”
    She didn't answer.
    He said, “And doesn't a man like him have servants in residence?”
    “Yes. A nice live-in couple with an apartment over the garage.”
    “Where are they? Wouldn't they have heard a break-in?”
    “They're off Monday and Tuesday,” she said. “They often drive up to Santa Barbara to spend the time with their daughter's
family.”
    “Forced entry,” Ben said, lightly kicking a shard of glass across
the tile floor. “Okay, now hadn't we better call the police?”
    She merely said, “Let's look upstairs.” As the sofa had been stained with blood, so her voice was stained with anxiety. But worse: there was a bleakness about her, a grim and sombrous air, that made it easy to believe she might never laugh again.
    The thought of Rachael without laughter was unbearable.
    They climbed the stairs with caution, entered the upstairs hall,
and checked out the second-floor rooms with the wariness they might
have shown if unraveling a mile of tangled rope with the knowledge
that a poisonous serpent lay concealed in the snarled line.
    At first nothing was out of order, and they discovered nothing
untoward-until they entered the master bedroom, where all was chaos.
The contents of the walk-in closet-shirts, slacks, sweaters, shoes,
suits, ties, and more-lay in a torn and tangled mess. Sheets, a white
quilted spread, and feather-leaking pillows were strewn across the
floor. The mattress had been heaved off the springs, which had been
knocked halfway off the frame. Two black ceramic lamps were smashed,
the shades ripped and then apparently stomped. Enormously valuable
paintings had been wrenched from the walls and slashed to ribbons,
damaged beyond repair. Of a pair of graceful Klismos-style chairs,
one was upended, and the other had been hammered against a wall until
it had gouged out big chunks of plaster and was itself reduced to
splintered rubble.
    Ben felt the skin on his arms puckering with gooseflesh, and an
icy current quivered along the back of his neck.
    Initially he thought that the destruction had been perpetrated by
someone engaged upon a methodical search for something of value, but
on taking a second look, he realized that such was not the case. The
guilty party had unquestionably been in a blind rage, violently
trashing the bedroom with malevolent glee or in a frenzy of hatred.
The intruder had been someone possessed of considerable strength and
little sanity. Someone strange. Someone infinitely dangerous.
    With a recklessness evidently born of fear, Rachael plunged into
the adjacent bathroom, one of only two places in the house that they
had not yet searched, but the intruder was not there, either. She
stepped back into the bedroom and surveyed the ruins, shaky and
pale.
    “Breaking and entering, now vandalism,” Ben said. “You want me to
call the cops, or should you do it?”
    She did not reply but entered the last of the unsearched places,
the enormous walk-in closet, returning a moment later, scowling. “The
wall safe's been opened and emptied.”
    “Burglary too. Now we've got to call the cops, Rachael.”
    “No,” she said. The bleakness that had hung about her like a gray
and sodden cloak now became a specific presence in her gaze, a dull
sheen in those usually bright green eyes.
    Ben was more alarmed by that dullness than he had been by