Shadowfires

somewhere else and… and
brought here.”
    “Why?”
    “You'll see why. But damned if you'll understand why.”
    Puzzling over that cryptic statement, Julio trailed Mulveck down a
hallway into the master bedroom. He gasped at the sight awaiting him
and for a moment could not breathe.
    Behind him, Reese said, “Holy shit.”
    Both bedside lamps were burning, and though there were still
shadows around the edges of the room, Rebecca Klienstad's corpse was in the brightest spot, mouth open, eyes wide with a vision of death. She had been stripped naked and nailed to the wall, directly over the big bed. One nail through each hand. One nail just below each elbow joint. One in each foot. And a large spike through the hollow of the throat. It was not precisely the classic pose of crucifixion, for the legs were immodestly spread, but it was close.
    A police photographer was still snapping the corpse from every
angle. With each flash of his strobe unit, the dead woman seemed to
move on the wall; it was only an illusion, but she appeared to twitch
as if straining at the nails that held her.
    Julio had never seen anything as savage as the crucifixion of the
dead woman, yet it had obviously been done not in a white-hot madness
but with cold calculation. Clearly, the woman had already been dead
when brought here, for the nail holes weren't bleeding. Her slender throat had been slashed, and that was evidently the mortal wound. The killer-or killers-had expended considerable time and energy finding the nails and the hammer (which now lay on the floor in one corner of the room), hoisting the corpse against the wall, holding it in place, and precisely driving the impaling spikes through the cool dead flesh. Apparently the head had drooped down, chin to chest, and apparently the killer had wanted the dead woman to be staring at the bedroom door (a grisly surprise for Rachael Leben), so he had looped a wire under the chin and had tied it tautly to a nail driven into the wall above her skull, to keep her facing out. Finally he had taped her eyes open-so she would be staring sightlessly at whomever discovered her.
    “I understand,” Julio said.
    “Yes,” Reese Hagerstrom said shakily.
    Mulveck blinked in surprise. Pearls of sweat glistened on his pale
forehead, perhaps not because of the June heat. “You've got to be joking. You understand this… madness? You see a reason for it?”
    Julio said, “Ernestina and this girl were murdered primarily
because the killer needed a car, and they had a car. But when
he saw what the Klienstad woman looked like, he dumped the other one
and brought the second body here to leave this message.”
    Mulveck nervously combed one hand through his hair. “But if this
psycho intended to kill Mrs. Leben, if she was his primary target,
why not just come here and get her? Why just leave a… a message?”
    “The killer must have had reason to suspect that she wouldn't be at home. Maybe he even called first,” Julio said.
    He was remembering Rachael Leben's extreme nervousness when he had questioned her at the morgue earlier this evening. He had sensed that she was hiding something and that she was very much afraid. Now he knew that, even then, she had realized her life was in danger.
    But who was she afraid of, and why couldn't she turn to the police for help? What was she hiding?
    The police photographer's camera click-flashed.
    Julio continued: “The killer knew he wouldn't be able to get his hands on her right away, but he wanted her to know she could expect him later. He-or they-wanted to scare her witless. And when he took a good look at this Klienstad woman he had killed, he knew what he must do.”
    “Huh?” Mulveck said. “I don't follow.”
    “Rebecca Klienstad was voluptuous,” Julio said, indicating the
crucified woman. “So is Rachael Leben. Very similar body types.”
    “And Mrs. Leben has hair much the same as the Klienstad girl's,” Reese said. “Coppery brown.”
    “Titian,” Julio said. “And although this woman
isn't nearly as lovely as Mrs. Leben, there's a vague resemblance, a
similarity of facial structure.”
    The photographer paused to put new film in his camera.
    Officer Mulveck shook his head. “Let me get this straight. The way
it was supposed to work-Mrs. Leben would eventually come home and
when she walked into this room she would see this woman crucified and
know, by the similarities, that it was her this psycho really
wanted to nail to the wall.”
    “Yes,” Julio said, “I