The Face

night.

CHAPTER 80
        
        BEFORE COMMITTING AN ILLEGAL ENTRY, Hazard rang the doorbell. When no one responded, he rang it again.
        Darkness in the Laputa house didn’t mean that the place was deserted.
        Rather than slinking around to the back of the residence, where his furtive behavior might catch the attention of a neighbor, Hazard entered boldly by the front. With the Lockaid, he popped both locks.
        Pushing the door inward, he called out, “Anyone home or is it just us chickens?”
        This was prudence, not comedy. Even when silence greeted his question, he crossed the threshold cautiously.
        Immediately upon entering, however, he located the wall switch and flicked on the foyer-ceiling fixture. In spite of the rain and fog, some passing motorist or pedestrian might have seen him enter. The unhesitating use of lights would establish his legitimacy in suspicious minds.
        Besides, if Laputa came home unexpectedly, he would be alarmed to see one lamp lit that had not been on when he’d left, or the beam of an inquiring flashlight in the darkness, but he would be disarmed [511] to find the house blazing with light. The success of an operation like this depended upon boldness and quickness.
        Hazard closed the door but didn’t lock it. He wanted easy exit in the event of an unexpected confrontation.
        The ground floor most likely did not contain the incriminating evidence that he sought. Murderers tended to keep mementos of their crimes, gruesome and otherwise, in their bedrooms.
        The second-favorite repository for their treasures was the basement, often in concealed or locked rooms where they were able to visit their collections without fear of discovery. There, in an atmosphere of calculated dementia, they could dreamily relive the bloody past without fear of discovery.
        In respect of land prone to earthquakes and mud slides, houses in southern California seldom had basements. This one, as well, had been built on a slab, with no door that opened to a lower darkness.
        Hazard toured the ground floor, not bothering to search cabinets and drawers. If he found nothing upstairs, he would take a second pass at these rooms, probing them with greater care.
        Right now he cared only about establishing that no one lurked in any of these chambers. He left lights on everywhere behind him. Darkness was not his friend.
        In the kitchen, he unlocked the back door and left it standing ajar, providing himself with a second unobstructed exit.
        Tentacles of fog wove through the open door, drawn by the warmth but dissipating in it.
        Everything in the house appeared to have been scoured, scrubbed, vacuumed, polished, and buffed to a degree that approached obsession. Collections of decorative items-Lalique glass, ceramic boxes, small bronze figures-were arranged not with an artful eye but with a rigid sense of order reminiscent of a chess set. Every book on every shelf stood precisely half an inch from the edge.
        The house seemed to be a refuge against the messiness of the world beyond its walls. However, in spite of conveniences aplenty, in [512] spite of comfortable furnishings, in spite of cleanness and order, the place was not welcoming, with none of the warmth of hearth and home. Instead, entirely apart from the tension that Hazard felt due to being here illegally, an air of edgy expectation was endemic to the place, and a desperation not quite nameable.
        The only clutter on the ground floor lay on the dining-room table. Five sets of charts or blueprints, rolled and fastened with rubber bands. A long-handled magnifying glass. A yellow, lined tablet. Rolling Writer pens-one red, one black. Although these items had not been put away, they had been arranged neatly side by side.
        Satisfied that the lower rooms held no nasty surprises, Hazard climbed to the upper floor. He was confident that his activities thus far would have drawn an inquiry if anyone were home, so he proceeded without stealth, switching on the lights in the upper hall.
        The master bedroom was near the head of the stairs. This, too, proved antiseptically clean and almost eerily well organized.
        If Laputa had killed his mother and Mina Reynerd, and if he had kept tokens of remembrance, not of the women but of the violence, he would most likely have chosen pieces of their jewelry, bracelets or lockets, or rings.