“Paul, no,” Nicole whispered desperately. “Please, God, don’t let him have done this.”
She stared at the figure. It wasn’t just still. It was rigid. Rigor mortis. This was death. But whose? And when had he been hanged?
“I have to cut him down,” she murmured, her stomach turning as she stared at the hood covering a head tilted on a broken neck. She turned and headed back to the house, wondering where she’d put the stepladder, which knife would be strong enough to cut the rope. She stepped on a rock with her bare foot. Pain shot up her leg, and with it mental clarity.
Cut him down? What did she think she was doing? Tampering with evidence, that’s what she would have been doing. It was bad enough that she’d gone so close to the body. She could have already destroyed a small piece of evidence.
Normal emotion and reason flooding back through her like a charge of electricity, she ran into the house, slamming the back door behind her. Dashing into the bedroom, she spotted the phone receiver lying on the bed. She picked it up, listening to the rapid pulsing noise of a broken connection. Carmen had hung up.
Although Nicole’s hands shook so violently she could hardly hold the receiver, she managed to punch the reset button, then 911. Eight days ago she’d done the same thing when her father shot himself in the head.
A hundred questions they asked. Three minutes into the call, Nicole snapped, “For God’s sake, there’s a dead body in my backyard. Do I have to solve the murder myself before I can get the cops here?” Then she slammed down the phone on the still-chattering operator.
She looked at her flimsy nightgown. A robe? No, the police would be here soon, hopefully, and nightclothes made her feel too vulnerable. She reached for jeans, but they reminded her of last night and she tossed them on the floor. Finally she grabbed her gray sweatpants, then thought of her bloodstained feet. She couldn’t face the police without a quick shower.
Nicole had scrubbed herself nearly raw last night after the attack, and the soap and hot water this morning was hardly soothing. She washed as quickly as possible, unable to ignore the dark water that ran beneath her feet. Last night that blood had given someone life. Now it was swirling uselessly down the drain with soapsuds. How fragile life could be, she realized with fright, how easily disposed of were its vital elements.
Uniformed police were the first to arrive, just as Nicole was tying the laces of her Reeboks. She ran to open the front door and watched the patrol car pull into the driveway. Then she looked down the block and saw another patrol car—the same one she’d seen parked there in the early hours of morning. Frowning, she looked at the clock. Eight-thirty. He should have been long gone. If she’d known he was still out there, she would have gone to him immediately.
She walked outside, her gaze, like those of the two officers who had just arrived, trained on the patrol car by the curb. One officer began striding toward the car. The other, a female, watched Nicole as she hurried across the lawn. “What’s he still doing here?” Nicole asked. “Why isn’t he getting out of the car?”
“I don’t know.” The officer was young and very pretty and trying hard to look tough.
Nicole stood mesmerized as the young woman also began walking toward the other patrol car. By then the male officer was looking through the patrol car’s open window. In a moment he withdrew his head as if he’d received an electric shock.
“He’s dead!” he shouted. “Shot through the head!”
The female officer stopped cold. Nicole’s breath left her in a long sigh and the scenery began spinning around her. A patrolman sent to protect her had been murdered. An unknown man had gotten into her house and been murdered, maybe just a few feet from her bedroom door, and then hanged in her backyard, all while she slept, dreaming of Magaro and Zand.
She collapsed into a lotus position and bent her head forward, willing the blood back to her brain. Forcing air into her lungs, she chanted, “I will not faint. I will not faint,” like a mantra.
She was still sitting and chanting when someone put a hand on her shoulder. Nicole gasped and looked up to see Carmen, her face pale, her hair carelessly pulled back with a rubber band, her forehead creased. “You nearly scared me to death on the phone. What in God’s name is going on here?”
“Is Shelley all right?” Nicole whispered.
“Of course. Bobby took her to school.”
“Oh,” Nicole managed. With death all around her, her main concern was her child’s safety.
Carmen kneeled beside her, taking her chin in her large, lovely hands and forcing Nicole to meet her eyes. “What is it? Why are the police here? What’s happened?”
“They’re dead. Both of them.”
“Who’s dead?”
“The policeman in the car. The man in the backyard.”
“The man in the backyard?”
“The one hanging from the tree.” Nicole’s voice quavered.
Carmen’s face slackened. Then she gave Nicole a firm shaking. “Snap out of it. You’re not making any sense. Who is dead in your yard?”
“I told you I don’t know.” The world was coming back into focus for Nicole and along with it her temper. Couldn’t Carmen give her a moment to pull herself together? “Back off for a minute and let me get my thoughts straight.”
People were coming out of their houses, and Nicole watched the uniformed officers begin to control the crime scene, backing people away, talking to them calmly. I’d be a terrible cop, Nicole thought I could never keep my cool that way.
“Nicole?” Carmen persisted.
Nicole took a deep breath. “After you left last night, I was mugged.”
“What?” Carmen trumpeted, drawing the attention of the neighbors and the police.
“Carmen, are you going to let me tell this or keep shouting at me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, the guy who mugged me got my keys and identification. Ray DeSoto, the detective I told you about at dinner last night, brought me home, then posted someone out here to watch the house. Someone got in anyway. When I got up, there was blood in the hall—so much blood—and I looked in the backyard and there was a man, dead, wearing a hood. A black hood. He’s hanging from my tree. I called the police. When I came out to meet them, the patrol car from last night was still here. And they went to see why and…”
“And the officer is dead.”
Nicole nodded. “Shot in the head.”
Carmen sat down beside her on the grass, her mouth slightly open, her eyes dazed. “Nicole, are you sure about all this?” she said finally.
Nicole looked at her incredulously. “Do you think it was a dream?” Another patrol car pulled up, closely followed by a third unmarked car with a flashing light. “The black-baked man getting out of the car is Sergeant Ray DeSoto. Believe me now?”
Ray approached Nicole first. “Are you all right?” he asked, worry in his tone although his face was impassive. “Have you been hurt?”
“No, she’s just frightened,” Carmen answered for her.
Ray looked at Carmen. “And your name is?”
“Mrs. Carmen Vega. Nicole and I have been friends since childhood.”
Ray nodded. “Would you two mind staying out here until we’re ready to look at the other guy?”
“Why?” Carmen asked.
“So we won’t disturb evidence,” Nicole answered dully. “We’re all right, Ray. Do what you need to.”
Ray joined the officers at the patrol car containing the dead policeman. “I know this is a terrible time to say it, but he’s great-looking,” Carmen murmured. “It’s obvious he likes you, too.”
“You’re right—this is an awful time, Carmen. But he is good-looking. However, he’s just being nice to me.”
“No he’s not. I can tell.”
“You can not. Besides, the last thing on my mind right now is romance. Can we talk about something else?”
“What? Dead bodies?”
Nicole closed her eyes. “I give in. Your subject is better.”
Carmen jabbed her in the ribs and she looked up to see that Ray had returned. “Can you take me in the house now?”
“Yes, I think so.” She and Carmen both rose.
“Mrs. Vega, I’d rather you stay out here,” Ray said. “The fewer people we have contaminating evidence the better.”
“I wouldn’t mess up anything,” Carmen protested, sounding disappointed.
Nicole looked at her. “Carmen, believe me, you don’t want to see the house or the body. It’s not like watching this kind of thing on television.”
Carmen nodded. “Sure. I sounded like a ghoul.”
Ray smiled at her. “That was just perfectly natural curiosity, Mrs. Vega.” He took Nicole’s arm. “Ready?”
“No, but I guess I have no choice.”
As they walked back in the house, she noticed that Ray had taken out a notebook and he wore thin plastic gloves. He stopped in the middle of the living room, his expression baffled. “Did you put on music before or after you found the body?”
“I didn’t put it on,” Nicole said haltingly. “It was playing when I woke up.”
Ray raised his eyebrows, then turned toward the stereo. “It’s a cassette tape of Paul Dominic playing Gershwin at Carnegie Hall,” she said.
Ray looked at her. “Your tape?”
“No. I have none of Paul’s music.”
Their gazes held for a moment. Then Ray wrote in his notebook, pressed the Stop button on the stereo with the end of his pen, and looked at the cassette case. “Dominic, Gershwin, and Carnegie Hall. His last concert. His last recording.”
“How did you know that?”
“I’ve had reason to do research on Dominic lately.” His eyes traveled beyond her to the large dark spot in the hallway. “Someone lost a lot of blood there.”
“There’s a trail leading into the backyard,” Nicole explained. “I think he was killed or injured here, then pulled outside. I was out of it from the attack and the Seconal, but he still couldn’t have made much noise. At least I don’t think so. And I’ve told you I walked right through the blood, opened the back door, and ran barefoot to the body.”
“By the way you keep referring to ‘the body,’ I’d say you’ve never seen this man before.”
Nicole blinked at him. “I guess I never said anything to anyone except Carmen. Ray, I don’t know who it is. He’s wearing a black hood.”
“A black hood?”
“Yes,” Nicole said shakily. “Sound familiar?”
“Like the hoods over the heads of Magaro and Zand. Same material and everything?”
She lowered her eyes. “I never actually saw those hoods, just pictures. I never even understood their significance.”
“The hanging and the hoods are what made some people think it was some kind of cult killing, like the Tate-LaBianca murders. Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were hanged from a chandelier. Only back then, it was a bloody towel that covered Jay Sebring’s face, not a hood.”
“My, what a memory,” Nicole said weakly, her stomach turning at the thought.
“I was fascinated by that case. It’s one of the things that made me want to be a cop.”
“But you would have been so young to have followed the case.”
“Manson keeps coming up for parole and it’s always carried by the news. It’s hard to forget him or those murders.” He glanced at the back door. “You went out that way.”
“Yes. I woke up—actually, Shelley’s phone call awakened me—and I heard the music and ran in here. I didn’t even notice the blood on the carpet in the hall. Then I saw the cassette. Then I saw the blood. I followed the trail into the yard.”
“Which is what we’re going to do now.”
“You want me to go with you?”
Ray’s surly middle-aged black partner joined them. “Not necessary for you to go now. You’ll just mess up the crime scene.”
Ray shot the man an icy stare. “It is necessary for her to go, Waters. She might be able to identify him. And she won’t mess up anything.”
Nicole could almost hear Waters’s teeth grinding in irritation. He was the same detective who was with Ray the morning her father had been found. She guessed him to be in his late forties or early fifties, slightly overweight and graying at the temples, with a large face and eyes that seemed as if they could look right into your soul. He’d be nice-looking if he’d smile, Nicole thought. Smiles didn’t seem to come easily to Waters, though.
They skirted the circular bloodstain, which Nicole guessed was at least two feet across, and Ray opened the back door. “No breaking and entering.”
“Did you leave the door unlocked last night?” Waters asked.
“No. I’m certain I didn’t,” Nicole said with more assurance than she felt. She’d been such a mess last night. She always checked the doors before bed, but she didn’t actually remember doing it several hours ago.
“Don’t touch anything,” Waters ordered as they headed toward the body.
“Lighten up,” Ray snapped. “I don’t think you two have been properly introduced. Nicole, this is Sergeant Cyrus Waters. Waters, her name is Mrs. Chandler and she knows not to touch anything.”
“Well, excuse the hell outta me,” Waters muttered.
Nicole smiled at him. “I’ll be careful.”
Looking slightly placated, Waters put his hands in his pockets and turned down his scowl a notch.
Nicole’s footsteps slowed as they neared the body. The beat-up cowboy boots looked pathetic pointed outward. A fresh bird dropping glistened on the ragged jeans. The fingers of the hanging hands were dirty and stiff.
“Recognize him?” Waters asked.
“You haven’t raised the hood,” Nicole said.
Ray pulled her a step closer to the body. “We can’t until we get pictures. But is there anything you can see now that would give us a clue—”
“The smell,” Nicole interrupted. “Mildew.”
“Mildew?” Waters repeated incredulously.
“She’s got an incredible sense of smell,” Ray said.
Waters rolled his eyes and looked at her as if she were an idiot. “Maybe she should be in the canine corps. How are you at sniffing out cocaine, Mrs. Chandler?”
“Probably as good as I am at sniffing the garlic you had for dinner on your breath,” Nicole retorted, Waters’s sarcasm sparking her own.
Incredibly, Waters’s mouth twitched as if he were actually going to smile. “Anything else?”
“There are also dog bites. This guy’s right wrist has a dog’s teeth marks. And look at his left jeans leg. It’s torn near the knee. I think you’ll find more bites under the tear.” Nicole looked at Ray. “It’s the man who mugged me on the River Walk last night.”