1
The next few hours were a blur for Nicole. People appeared from all directions, a man helped her to her feet, a woman buttoned her blazer over her bare breasts, someone drove her to the police station. Was there someone she wanted to call? they asked. Roger? she thought, and almost laughed in spite of her condition. Her mother? No, she’d been through too much lately. Carmen? Carmen had her own troubles with Bobby. No, she didn’t want to call anyone.
Later all she remembered was bitter coffee, questions about who might want to hurt her, more questions about what the guy looked like, and finally a grilling about how much she’d had to drink and what she was doing down there. “You always dress that way to stroll the River Walk alone at night?” a beefy, particularly offensive officer named Erwin asked. Time spun backward for Nicole. It was fifteen years ago. “You always wear tight jeans and prowl the town at night?” this cop’s clone had asked.
“I want DeSoto,” she said flatly.
Erwin looked at her with interest. “DeSoto?”
“Sergeant Raymond DeSoto.”
“You two special friends?”
Nicole gave him a glacial stare. “You said I could call someone. I want Sergeant DeSoto.”
“Well, I’m afraid he’s not on duty, little lady. Got any other cop friends? Why don’t you just talk to me?”
Nicole, battered, on the verge of tears, shaken to the core of her being, leaned toward Erwin and spoke softly. “If you don’t call DeSoto, I’m going to scream down the walls of this place and claim you made sexual advances toward me.”
“Nobody would believe you,” Erwin said, his face puffing with anger although he didn’t sound too sure of himself.
Nicole smiled challengingly. “Let’s try it and see.” The man’s eyes wavered. “Call DeSoto now.”
Fifteen years ago, another cop like Erwin had reduced her to sobbing humiliation. Now she wasn’t about to let this lout demean her. I guess you have changed, she thought. Maybe the change was more drastic than she’d realized.
Twenty minutes later, Ray DeSoto approached her wearing jeans, a University of Texas sweatshirt, and a tan jacket. Erwin watched them closely, as if expecting them to throw themselves into each other’s arms. Instead, Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Another night in paradise.”
“So I see,” Ray said, taking in her torn clothing, red cheeks, and the swelling under the eye. “What happened?”
“She got mugged wanderin’ around on the River Walk,” Erwin intervened. “I got the notes here.”
“Thanks.” DeSoto took the notes but barely glanced at them. “Want to tell me what happened from the beginning?”
Nicole sketched in her dinner with Carmen, mentioning the scene between Roger and his girlfriend, knowing she was doing it to explain why she’d stayed so late and drunk so much more than usual. Then she told him about hearing the footsteps behind her and the attack.
“So he just pushed you down, ripped your clothes, roughed you up some, and ran off with your purse?”
“He didn’t run off voluntarily—”
“She says he was attacked by a dog,” Erwin interrupted. He sounded as if he found this highly unlikely, but DeSoto’s eyes met Nicole’s.
“A Doberman?”
She nodded silently. “Hey, how’d you know what kind of dog?” Erwin asked.
“First thing that came to my mind,” Ray said easily. “Did the dog do much damage?”
“It grabbed his arm hard enough to pull the hand off my throat, then it got his right calf. He kicked the dog. There was…a pause while it recovered,” she said, skipping for now the part about the owner stopping the attack until he saw that the dog was all right before he ordered it to pursue.
“What did the guy look like?”
Nicole closed her eyes. “Wiry but very strong. Narrow face. One front tooth missing. The right front and…the left was gold. Long, dark, greasy hair.”
“Eyes?”
“I’m sorry, I’m blank. What really sticks out in my mind is how filthy he was. And his smell—it was like mildew.”
DeSoto looked up from his notes. “Mildew?”
“Yes. I know it sounds odd, but have you ever been in a dank, dirty bathroom and smelled the plastic shower curtain?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Ray said, a smile tugging at his lips. “Smelled a shower curtain, that is.”
“Well, I don’t make a habit of it, either.” Nicole felt her face coloring. She sounded foolish. “Anyway, he smelled like mildew,” she said stubbornly, “and really old perspiration. I’m sure he hadn’t had a shower for days.”
“Approximately what age?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said tiredly. “Anywhere from early to late thirties.”
DeSoto frowned. “That type doesn’t usually hang around the River Walk. Market Square, yes, but not River Walk.”
“Believe me, he was there.”
“What did he get from you?” Ray asked.
“My purse. In spite of the dog attack, he didn’t drop it. People looked everywhere around the area for it, but no luck.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“So he’s got money, credit cards, and keys.”
“Great,” Nicole groaned. “I can’t drive my car or get in my house.”
“You don’t have any extra keys?”
“No extra house keys. Extra car keys at the house.”
“Then it looks like I’ll be driving you home. But first you’re going to the hospital.”
“I don’t need the hospital. Just a couple of aspirin.”
Ray looked at her sternly. “Have you taken a good look at yourself? He knocked your head against a concrete wall and then slapped the hell out of you. Your eye is swelling half-shut. You could have a concussion. You should have been taken to the hospital immediately.”
Nicole was too tired to argue although it was past midnight. However, she started to shake when the hospital examination began, remembering the last time she’d been brought in after an attack. Then she had lain on a table for what seemed hours, shivering and filthy until the humiliation of the rape-kit procedure had begun. She remembered her mother standing beside her, her face deathly white, her glacial blue eyes refusing to meet Nicole’s. And she remembered feeling ashamed.
But this time was different. The examination was brief, the young doctor and nurse both jovial, trying to lift her spirits. Finally, after being poked and prodded and X-rayed, she was pronounced bruised but otherwise healthy, without a concussion, without so much as a cut or scrape. “You don’t even have to worry about HIV,” the young doctor told her. “But I doubt if you’re going to sleep very well tonight.” He put a pill in a small envelope. “This is Seconal. Don’t take it until immediately before bed, but do take it. You need the sleep.”
“Now you can go home,” Ray said as she was released and trudged into the waiting room.
“Thank goodness Shelley is at Carmen’s and I don’t have class until early afternoon,” she told him when they reached the car. “But how will I get into the house? No keys, remember?”
Ray winked at her. “Don’t spread it around, but I pick locks.”
“Thank goodness,” Nicole breathed. “I don’t want to call a locksmith tonight.”
As they drove toward northern San Antonio, Ray said, “What did you think of Erwin?”
“I found him delightful,” Nicole returned hotly. “God, what a sexist! You know, I see guys running in mesh T-shirts and shorts that barely cover their behinds but no one thinks they’re out to get raped.”
“That’s true,” Ray said mildly.
“Look, I’ve been really depressed since Christmas. Last night I felt good. I felt young and I wanted to have fun so I dressed young. I had the audacity to wear tight jeans, so Erwin seems to think I got what I deserved. Hell, if I’d worn a dirndl skirt and combat boots, would he have had some sympathy for me?”
“Not if you’d bothered to brush your hair and put on lipstick.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” Nicole said, recovering. “I know I’m ranting. It’s just that I’ve been through this before and guys like Erwin make me furious.”
“You should have been talking to a woman, but Erwin loves to pounce on these cases. It just makes his evening to embarrass some poor woman and make her feel guilty.”
“I pity his wife.”
“Don’t. He’s scared to death of her.”
Nicole laughed. A moment later Ray asked casually, “You ready to tell me the whole story now?”
She looked at his profile. “How did you know I wasn’t being completely open earlier?”
“You seemed to be picking your words carefully. Feel like you can trust me?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I didn’t just see the Doberman, Ray. Paul was there.”
Ray’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Dominic attacked you?”
“No. The dog, Jordan, saved me. After it ran off the guy, Paul appeared. He said I was safe. He called me chérie and kissed me on the forehead.”
Ray frowned. “Nicole, you were scared to death, you’d received a hard blow to the head. Maybe you just saw someone who looked like Dominic—”
“He put this silver and turquoise cross around my neck,” she interrupted. “It was Paul’s.”
Ray glanced sideways as she held out the cross on its silver chain. “Do you know how many silver and turquoise crosses there are in this area?”
She turned it over. “Not like this one. Paul’s had wings engraved on the back, wings symbolic of spirituality and inspiration because of his musical genius. It also has the tiny initials R. V.—Raoul Vega. I know because I had Mr. Vega make the cross for Paul’s twenty-ninth birthday.”
2
After Ray had gotten her back into the house, he checked both the first floor and the basement to make sure no one was hiding inside. Then he made her promise to cancel her credit cards, put a stop on her checks, and apply for a new driver’s license and Social Security card the next day. Finally, after her many assurances that she wasn’t afraid to stay alone, he left.
Nicole immediately went to the back door to let in Jesse. The dog, who wasn’t used to staying out past eight, didn’t run to her when she opened the door. “Asleep in his doghouse,” she muttered. She walked outside and looked in his little house. Empty. “Jesse?” she called. “Are you hiding?”
Then she saw it—the fence gate swinging open. Nicole rushed toward it and let out a cry when she saw the smashed padlock. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “Damn, damn, damn!” She ran through the open gate and out to the street. “Jesse?” she yelled. “Jesse!”
No high-pitched bark answered her. Without a car, she couldn’t drive around looking for him. Instead, she walked two blocks in one direction and two in the other. Finally, exhausted by the evening, her legs trembling, she gave up and went home.
Inside, she flopped facedown on the couch. Jesse had escaped once before and returned unharmed, but luck didn’t seem to be with her tonight, especially since the padlock was smashed. She didn’t think any of the local kids would do that. Had the creep in the wolf mask come back and taken out his sick fantasies on a defenseless little dog? “Oh, please, no,” Nicole moaned. “Please not that.” If anything happened to Jesse, Shelley would be devastated. First her father, then her grandfather, then her beloved dog. All gone. Nicole’s eyes filled with tears. “Why did I go out tonight?” she asked the walls, pounding her fists on the ugly couch Roger had bought and left behind as a reminder of himself and his lies. “Why tonight?”
She fumbled in her pocket until she found the envelope containing a red Seconal, knowing that taking it was the only way she would get any sleep. And tomorrow was a full day. She had to get back her car, have the locks changed, teach two classes, and worst of all, tell Shelley her dog was missing if he hadn’t returned by the time school was dismissed.
She took a long shower, then looked at herself in the mirror. Red marks circled her throat where hands had clutched, and her eye was swelling. She didn’t feel comfortable about Shelley being at Carmen’s with Bobby, whom she no longer trusted. At the same time, she was glad Shelley wasn’t here to see her in this condition.
Nicole slipped on panties and a filmy nightgown that wouldn’t rub harshly against her sore body, tossed her blouse and bra in a trash can in the garage, went back inside to the kitchen, wrapped an ice cube in a washcloth, and peeked out the window. A patrol car was parked down the street. She managed a smile. She knew when she’d told Ray she wasn’t afraid to be alone, he’d given in too easily. He’d sent someone to watch the house, and she was glad. The bum on the River Walk had taken her keys. There was no way she could lock him out.
She poured a glass of milk and downed the Seconal. Back in her bedroom, she turned on the bedside lamp, made sure the blind was pulled down, piled pillows behind her head, and lay back, holding the cold washcloth against her swollen eye. Drowsy already, she picked up the cross that lay on the bedside table. It was slender, the carving delicate, the piece of turquoise small and beautifully mounted, hanging from a gleaming twenty-inch chain. She turned it over. There were the wings, exquisitely engraved by Raoul Vega, a master of his craft.
She’d been so proud of herself for thinking of the special touch, and Paul had been impressed with her creativity. “This is a bond between us,” he’d said. “One or the other of us will wear it all the time.” And yet, after the car wreck fourteen years ago that had supposedly claimed Paul’s life, she’d never heard of a silver cross found on the body or with the effects belonging to Paul.
She turned off the bedside lamp and, for the first time in years, drifted off to sleep without turning on the night-light. Suddenly she saw the image of Raoul Vega the way he looked a few hours ago, his face wreathed with smiles. “Did you marry him?” he’d asked. “The handsome one I made the cross for?” And then, “Such a talented man. A genius…he appreciated art.”
She jerked awake, her vision blurry. Back then I told Mr. Vega I was having the cross made for my cousin Ellen, she thought. I never told him it was for a man, especially a man he would describe as talented, a genius. But he knew who it was for. He knew.
So who had informed him? she asked herself as she dozed back to sleep, but she already had the answer. She had told only one person about her relationship with Paul, she had told only one person for whom she was having the necklace made.
Carmen.
3
Izzy Dooley cruised slowly down the street in his twelve-year-old Plymouth. He spotted the small white brick house with no lights burning inside. He also spotted the patrol car parked one house down. His heart did an uncomfortable little flip at the sight. He settled down, though, when he saw the profile of the cop inside. His head was bent forward—asleep on the job, Izzy thought with a smirk. To Protect and to Serve—right. To eat doughnuts and to sleep was more like it. Izzy glanced at his watch. It was 3:20 A.M. Some guys just weren’t night people, not like him.
Izzy thought of himself as a vampire, a creature of the night, moving around dangerously only after the sun went down. In fact, he’d seen the movie Interview With the Vampire five times and even decided he looked like Louis, played by Brad Pitt. Of course, in the movie Brad had all his teeth and a few less wrinkles, but the resemblance was definitely there, especially when Izzy’s hair was clean and swung freely around his shoulders. He was always surprised more people didn’t comment on it.
Izzy drove around the block and parked on the street behind the white house. Then he moved through the yard of the brown house facing the street, reached the fence surrounding the white brick, and half crawled, half ran around to the gate. It swung open, not even latched, and on the handle hung a smashed padlock. Izzy stole a look back at the motionless profile of the cop in the patrol car, then entered the backyard.
He froze when he saw the doghouse. It was a small doghouse, certainly not one that could shelter a Doberman like the maniac that had attacked him earlier. He’d gotten away from it, but his arm and his calf still throbbed from the bites.
Shaken by his earlier canine experience, Izzy waited five full minutes near the gate before he was certain no dog was going to charge him. Then he assured himself that even if a dog were in that little house, it would be small enough for him to handle. He was being overly cautious, wasting time.
He pulled the gate shut and latched it. Then he looked at the windows of the house. The blinds were pulled, but absolutely no light spilled around the sides. Even the dusk-to-dawn light was weak—just a five-foot pole topped by a glass ornament with a hundred-watt lightbulb inside. With the gate closed, the yard encircled by a tall wooden fence, no light inside the house, and the outside light so feeble it couldn’t reach the corners of the yard, he felt safe. Nothing to worry about here.
He removed a switchblade from his pocket along with a ring of keys. He slipped forward to the back door and gently tried a key. It didn’t fit. There weren’t many others. He picked a second key. It slipped into the lock. Grinning, he turned it. The door opened with only a slight squeak.
He stepped in and stood quietly for a moment. Absolute silence. He left the door open behind him, not wanting to take a chance on making another unnecessary squeak when he closed it. An open door also meant a hastier retreat.
Izzy took three more steps into the house, stopping when he reached two doorways. He peered into the one on his right. Unfortunately, a vampire trait he’d not yet acquired was the ability to see in the dark. He squinted, as if this would help. It didn’t. He couldn’t resist creeping in a few inches. His foot collided with something large and soft and to his shame he almost screamed, thinking of the Doberman. But it was a stuffed animal. Some kind of big stuffed animal. Probably a kid’s room, but he didn’t hear the sound of breathing. Sorry, no one home.
He backed out of the room and turned toward the other one. He heard something and stiffened. What was that sound? Not a light being switched on. Not a telephone receiver being lifted. But a whisper of movement…
Blinding pain shot through his lower back at the same time a hand covered his mouth. Something—a knife—had plunged into the base of his spine, severing vital nerves with one powerful, vicious puncture.
Izzy fell to his knees, then slammed forward onto his face. He tasted blood from his broken nose, felt it running down his throat. Before he realized what was happening, a figure flipped him on his back and stuffed a big terry washcloth into his mouth so far back it brushed his throat, making him gag. By now his eyes had adjusted a bit to the darkness and he could see faintly. The figure above him sat back, and Izzy’s eyes widened in complete shock. A couple of grunts escaped him before a fist drove the washcloth farther into his mouth, cutting off most of his air. He shut up.
He felt himself being dragged. The lower half of his body was paralyzed so there wasn’t much he could do but flail his arms. He tried to shout, but the effort only made the dry washcloth rub against his soft palate, choking him.
When they reached the door to the outside, Izzy tried to grab the door frame. He was able to hold on for a few seconds, but a hard yank finally pulled him free. His head thudded sickeningly as it bounced off the step onto the concrete walkway, landing sideways. From this angle he saw the little doghouse. For the first time he wished it weren’t empty. A dog, even a small one, would cause a racket that could save him, rescue him from this totally unexpected and undoubtedly fatal turn of events.
But there was no dog. There was no sound except his body being dragged over the stiff, cold grass. Finally the dragging stopped. He looked up at the stars and mysteriously dredged up the ancient memory of his mother singing “When You Wish Upon a Star” to him before he went to sleep. How little he had been, how young and sick she had been. And then she was gone and no one ever sang to him again.
He felt the upper half of his body being lifted, then propped against the wooden fence. A small circle of metal pressed against his temple. He didn’t have to see to know what that was. He felt strangely calm, as if his vampire spirit had moved outside his body.
He paid no attention to the gun. Instead he looked up. There were thousands of stars—distant, beautiful, but unlike in the song, uncaring. He made no wishes. Instead, he merely gazed longingly at the sparkling orbs until, for Izzy Dooley, their magic light suddenly blinked out forever.
4
Her feet were cold—so cold. It was so hard to see. But she could hear them.
“She thought she had us,” Magaro was saying.
“She almost did,” Zand answered, snorting something.
“No she didn’t. It would have been better if we could have killed her like I wanted—”
Ringing. More ringing.
Nicole kicked, put her hands over her ears, then opened her eyes. Everything was blurry and dim.
Ring.
“Phone,” she mumbled, throwing a hand over her eyes while she reached for the receiver with the other. “ ‘Lo.”
“Mommy!” Shelley’s voice, almost unbearably shrill and cheerful. “Were you still asleep?”
“Yeah. ‘Fraid so. Something wrong?”
“No. Aunt Carmen thought you might like for me to call and say hi before I go to school.”
“She was right.” Nicole swallowed around the dry lump that was her tongue. “Have a good day, honey.”
“Mommy, you sound funny.”
“I do? Guess I’m just sleepy.”
“No, you sound sick. What? Uh, wait a minute. Aunt Carmen wants to talk to you.”
Nicole would have killed for a small cup of water by her bed. She felt like she’d eaten sand. In a moment Carmen came on the line. “Nicole?”
“Um-humm.” She was aware of noise in the background. Something rhythmic.
“You sound awful. What’s wrong with you?”
The sound was clearer. Music. “Can’t ‘splain right now.”
Carmen lowered her voice. “Are you with a man?”
Nicole sat up in bed. “No! For heaven’s sake, Carmen, I—” She broke off when she realized the music wasn’t coming over the phone. It was in her own house.
“Nicole—”
“Shhh!” She listened. She recognized. She went cold all over.
“Nicole, you’re scaring me! What—”
Nicole dropped the receiver and jumped out of bed. She weaved as her feet hit the floor and all the memories of the night before flooded over her. The attack. The police station. The hospital. The Seconal. The visual memories slid across her mind quickly, wiped away by the auditory memories conjured up by the familiar music coming from her living room.
“God, what’s going on?” she mumbled, heart pounding.
“Nicole! Nicole!” she could hear Carmen shouting. “Answer me!”
She ignored Carmen’s pleas and ran barefoot into the hall, then the living room. The stereo was on, the sound much lower than she usually set it, but still easily heard by anyone fully awake. Easily heard and dreadfully familiar.
“Rhapsody in Blue.”
Nicole walked slowly to the stereo. She was used to listening to CD’s, but what played was a cassette tape. The plastic container lay on a shelf beside the amp. She picked it up, knowing what she would see. Inside the front cover was a picture of Paul Dominic wearing a tuxedo and sitting at a Steinway grand piano. The title of the cassette read Dominic, Gershwin, and Carnegie Hall. “The new tape he played for me the last night we were together,” Nicole whispered, dropping the cassette container onto the soft blue carpeting.
How long had the music been playing? It could have been hours, because the tape player would automatically flip sides and play a tape endlessly until it was removed.
She stood still, listening to the four-bar passage that bridges the long piano cadenza into the famous Andantino moderate melody. Then the music soared as the song moved into the development of the slow theme, the piano trading off with the orchestra until the rhapsody was brought to its spectacular conclusion.
Nicole closed her eyes, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts. There was a pause as the tape flipped sides. Then began “The Man I Love.” She dropped to her knees, a deep, ragged moan escaping her. She wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked back and forth as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Paul,” she cried, remembering this song playing in the background as they lay close together in the big, beautiful room on the third floor of the Dominic house, the room filled with roses and stereos, and Paul’s grand piano.
“Paul, did you come into my house and put on this tape?” she asked aloud. “If you did, what does it mean? You’re following me. Why? To love me or to torment me?”
She put her head down again, this time not closing her eyes. It was then she saw her bare feet and froze. The soles bore dark red streaks and smudges. She touched them gingerly, although she already knew she wasn’t hurt. There was no pain. But instinctively she knew the stains were blood.
Not bothering to turn off the stereo, she stood and crept back into the hall, flipping on the light. Suddenly something seemed to coil and move in her stomach like a snake. She stared for what seemed an endless time at the huge circle of darkness on her pale blue carpet. A trail led from the circle to the back door.
Still barefoot, she walked through the stain and opened the back door, which was unlocked. First she looked at Jesse’s empty doghouse. Then she looked at her futile attempts at a flower garden. Finally she looked at the figure hanging from a branch of the oak at the back of her yard.
Without hesitation, her face immobile, she drifted across the dry grass, the breeze blowing her flimsy nightgown around her legs. Her eyes were open, but she felt as if it were not sight leading her forward. The body was like a magnet, drawing her inexorably toward it. She didn’t stop until her head bumped into a boot.
Suddenly she snapped back to acute consciousness. She gazed at the two booted feet, turning outward. Above them were jeans with ragged hems. Above the jeans, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. And above the leather jacket was a black hood.
A black hood exactly like the ones found fifteen years ago on the bodies of Ritchie Zand and Luis Magaro.