Shadowfires

and dry. The vault of the clear desert sky was
spangled with an incredibility of stars. The air was still, and all
was silent but for crickets singing in the shrubbery.
    Too much shrubbery. She looked around nervously at all the looming
dark forms and black spaces beyond the glow of the Malibu lights.
Lots of hiding places. She shivered.
    The door was ajar, which seemed an ominous sign. She rang the
bell, waited, rang again, waited, rang and rang, but no one
responded.
    At her side, Benny said,
“It's probably your house now. You inherited it with everything else, so I don't
think you need an invitation to go in.”
    The door, ajar as it was, provided more invitation than she would
have liked. It looked as if it were the open door on a trap. If she
went inside in search of the bait, the trap might be sprung, and the
door might slam behind her.
    Rachael took a step back, kicked out with one foot, knocking the
door inward. It swung back hard against the wall of the foyer with a
shuddering crash.
    “So you don't expect to be welcomed with open arms,” Benny said.
    The exterior light above the door shed pale beams a few feet into
the foyer, though not as far as she had hoped. She could see that no
one lurked in the first six or eight feet, but beyond lay darkness
that might shelter an assailant.
    Because he didn't know everything she knew and therefore didn't
appreciate the true extent of the danger, because he expected nothing
worse than another Vincent Baresco with another revolver, Benny was
bolder than Rachael. He stepped past her into the house, found the
wall switch in the foyer, and snapped on the lights.
    Rachael went inside and moved past him. “Damn it, Benny,
don't be so quick to step through a doorway. Let's be slow and
careful.”
    “Believe it or not, I can handle just about any teenage girl who
wants to throw a punch at me.”
    “It's not the mistress I'm worried about,” she said sharply.
    “Then who?”
    Tight-lipped, holding her pistol at the ready, she led the way
through the house, turning on lights as they went.
    The uncluttered ultramodern decor-more futuristic than in any of
Eric's other habitats-bordered on starkness and sterility. A highly polished terrazzo floor that looked as cold as ice, no carpet anywhere. Levolor metal blinds instead of drapes. Hard-looking chairs. Sofas that, if moved to the depths of a forest, might have passed for giant fungi. Everything was in pale gray, white, black, and taupe, with no color except for scattered accent pieces all in shades of orange.
    The kitchen had been wrecked. The white-lacquered breakfast table
and two chairs were overturned. The other two chairs had been
hammered to pieces against everything else in sight. The refrigerator
was badly dented and scraped; the tempered glass in the oven door was
shattered; the counters and cabinets were gouged and scratched, edges
splintered. Dishes and drinking glasses had been pulled from the
cupboards and thrown against the walls, and the floor was prickled
and glinting with thousands of sharp shards. Food had been swept off
the shelves of the refrigerator onto the floor: Pickles, milk,
macaroni salad, mustard, chocolate pudding, maraschino cherries, a
chunk of ham, and several unidentifiable substances were congealing
in a disgusting pool. Beside the sink, above the cutting board, all
six knives had been removed from their rack and, with tremendous
force, had been driven into the wall; some of the blades were buried
up to half their lengths in the dry wall, while two had been driven
in to their hilts.
    “You think they were looking for something?” Benny asked.
    “Maybe.”
    “No,” he said, “I don't think so. It's got the same look as the
bedroom in the Villa Park house. Weird. Creepy. This was done in a
rage. Out of fierce hatred, in a frenzy, a fury. Or by someone who
takes pure, unadulterated pleasure in destruction.”
    Rachael could not take her eyes off the knives embedded in the
wall. A deep sick quivering filled her stomach. Her chest and throat
tightened with fear.
    The gun in her hand felt different from the way it had felt just a
moment ago. Too light. Too small. Almost like a toy. If she had to
use it, would it be effective? Against this adversary?
    They continued through the silent house with considerably greater
caution. Even Benny had been shaken by the psychopathic violence that
had been unleashed here. He no longer taunted her with his boldness,
but