Shadowfires

her
fear, for it implied fading hope. Rachael, his Rachael, had
never seemed capable of despair, and he couldn't bear to see her in the grip of that emotion.
    “No cops,” she said.
    “Why not?” Ben said.
    “If I bring the cops into it, I'll be killed for sure.”
    He blinked. “What? Killed? By the police? What on earth do you
mean?”
    “No, not by the cops.”
    “Then who? Why?”
    Nervously chewing on the thumbnail of her left hand, she said, “I
should never have brought you here.”
    “You're stuck with me. Rachael, really now, isn't it time you told
me more?”
    Ignoring his plea, she said, “Let's check the garage, see if one of the cars is missing,” and she dashed from the room, leaving him no choice but to hurry after her with feeble protests.
A white Rolls-Royce. A Jaguar sedan the same
deep green as Rachael's eyes. Then two empty stalls. And in the last space, a dusty, well-used, ten-year-old Ford with a broken radio antenna.
    Rachael said, “There should be a black Mercedes 560 SEL.” Her
voice echoed off the walls of the long garage. “Eric drove it to our
meeting with the lawyers this morning. After the accident… after Eric
was killed, Herb Tuleman-the attorney-said
he'd have the car driven back here and left in the garage. Herb is reliable. He always does what he says. I'm
sure it was returned. And now it's gone.”
    “Car theft,” Ben said. “How long does the list of crimes have to
get before you'll agree to calling the cops?”
    She walked to the last stall, where the battered Ford was parked
in the harsh bluish glare of a fluorescent ceiling strip. “And this
one doesn't belong here at all. It's not Eric's.”
    “It's probably what the burglar arrived in,” Ben said. “Decided to swap it for the Mercedes.”
    With obvious reluctance, with the pistol raised, she opened one of
the Ford's front doors, which squeaked, and looked inside. “Nothing.”
    He said, “What did you expect?”
    She opened one of the rear doors and peered into the back seat.
    Again there was nothing to be found.
    “Rachael, this silent sphinx act is irritating as hell.”
    She returned to the driver's door, which she had opened first. She opened it again, looked in past the wheel, saw the keys in the ignition, and removed them.
    “Rachael, damn it.”
    Her face was not simply troubled. Her grim expression looked as if
it had been carved in flesh that was really stone and would remain
upon her visage from now until the end of time.
    He followed her to the trunk. “What are you looking for now?”
    At the back of the Ford, fumbling with the keys, she said, “The
intruder
wouldn't have left this here if it could be traced to him. A burglar wouldn't
leave such an easy clue. No way. So maybe he came here in a stolen
car that couldn't be traced to him.”
    Ben said, “You're probably right. But you're not going to find the
registration slip in the trunk. Let's try the glove compartment.”
    Slipping a key into the trunk lock, she said, “I'm not looking for the registration slip.”
    “Then what?”
    Turning the key, she said, “I don't really know. Except…”
    The lock clicked. The trunk lid popped up an inch.
    She opened it all the way.
    Inside, blood was puddled thinly on the floor of the trunk.
    Rachael made a faint mournful sound.
    Ben looked closer and saw that a
woman's blue high-heeled shoe was on its side in one corner of the shallow compartment. In another corner lay a woman's
eyeglasses, the bridge of which was broken, one lens missing and the
other lens cracked.
    “Oh, God,” Rachael said, “he not only stole the car. He killed the
woman who was driving it. Killed her and stuffed the body in here
until he had a chance to dispose of it. And now where will it end?
Where will it end? Who will stop him?”
    Badly shocked by what they'd found, Ben was nevertheless aware that when Rachael said “him,” she was talking about someone other than an unidentified burglar. Her fear was more specific than that.

----
7 NASTY
LITTLE GAMES
    Two snowflake moths swooped around the
overhead fluorescent light, batting against the cool bulbs, as if in
a frustrated suicidal urge to find the flame. Their shadows, greatly
enlarged, darted back and forth across the walls, over the Ford,
across the back of the hand that Rachael held to her face.
    The metallic odor of blood rose out of the open trunk of the car.
Ben took a step backward to avoid the noxious scent.
    He said, “How did you know?”
    “Know what?” Rachael asked,