Shadowfires

by Dean R. Koontz

  Julio could do nothing to relieve their anguish, but he inspired trust and hope for justice, perhaps because his special commitment to Ernestina was clear and convincing. Perhaps because, in his soft-spoken way, he conveyed a hound-dog perseverance that lent conviction to promises of swift justice. Or perhaps his smoldering fury at the very existence of death, all death, was painfully evident in his face and eyes and voice. After all, that fury had burned in him for many years now, since the afternoon when he had discovered rats chewing out the throat of his baby brother, and by now the fire within him must have grown bright enough to show through for all to see.

  From Mr. Hernandez, Julio and Reese learned that Ernestina had gone out for an evening on the town with her best girlfriend, Becky Klienstad, with whom she worked at a local Mexican restaurant, where both were waitresses. They had gone in Ernestina's car: a powder-blue, ten-year-old Ford Fairlane.

  “If this has happened to my Ernestina,” Mr. Hernandez said, — "then what's happened to poor Becky? Something must have happened to her, too. Something very terrible.”

  From the Hernandez kitchen, Julio telephoned the Klienstad family in Orange. Becky — actually Rebecca — was not yet home. Her parents had not been worried because she was, after all, a grown woman, and because some of the dance spots that she and Ernestina favored were open until two in the morning. But now they were very worried indeed.

  * * *

  1:20 a.m.

  In the unmarked sedan in front of the Hernandez house, Julio sat behind the wheel and stared bleakly out at the magnolia-scented night.

  Through the open windows came the susurration of leaves stirring in the vague June breeze. A lonely, cold sound.

  Reese used the console-mounted computer terminal to generate an APB and pickup order on Ernestina's powder-blue Ford. He'd obtained the license number from her parents.

  “See if there're any messages on hold for us,” Julio said.

  At the moment he did not trust himself to operate the keyboard. He was full of anger and wanted to pound on something — anything — with both fists, and if the computer gave him any trouble or if he hit one wrong key by mistake, he might take out his frustration on the machine merely because it was a convenient target.

  Reese accessed the police department's data banks at headquarters and requested on-file messages. Softly glowing green letters scrolled up on the video display. It was a report from the uniformed officers who'd gone to the morgue, at Julio's direction, to ascertain if the scalpel and bloodstained morgue coat found in the dumpster could be traced to a specific employee on the coroner's staff. Officials at the coroner's office were able to confirm that a scalpel, lab coat, set of hospital whites, surgical cap, and a pair of antistatic lab shoes were missing from the morgue's supplies closet. However, no specific employee could be linked with the theft of those items.

  Looking up from the VDT, gazing at the night, Julio said, “This murder is somehow tied to the disappearance of Eric Leben's body.”

  “Could be coincidence,” Reese said.

  “You believe in coincidence?”

  Reese sighed. “No.”

  A moth fluttered against the windshield.

  “Maybe whoever stole the body also killed Ernestina,” Julio said.

  “But why?”

  “That's what we must find out.”

  Julio drove away from the Hernandez house.

  He drove away from the fluttering moth and the whispering leaves.

  He turned north and drove away from downtown Santa Ana.

  However, although he followed Main Street, where closely spaced streetlamps blazed, he could not drive away from the deep darkness, not even temporarily, for the darkness was within him.

  * * *

  1:38 a.m.

  They reached Eric Leben's Spanish-modern house quickly, for there was no traffic. Night in that wealthy neighborhood was respectfully still. Their footsteps clicked hollowly on the tile walkway, and when they rang the doorbell, it sounded as if it were echoing back to them from the bottom of a deep well.

  Julio and Reese had no authority whatsoever in Villa Park, which was two towns removed from their own jurisdiction. However, in the vast urban sprawl of Orange County, which was essentially one great spread-out city divided into many communities, a lot of crimes were not conveniently restricted to a single jurisdiction, and a criminal could not be allowed to gain time or safety by simply crossing the artificial political boundary between one town and another. When it became necessary to pursue a lead into another jurisdiction, one was required to seek an escort from the local authorities or obtain their approval or even enlist them to make the inquiries themselves, and these requests were routinely honored.

  But because time was wasted going through proper channels, Julio and Reese frequently skipped the protocol. They went where they needed to go, talked with whomever they needed to talk, and only informed local authorities when and if they found something pertinent to their case — or if a situation looked as if it might turn violent.

  Few detectives operated that boldly. Failure to follow standard procedures might result in a reprimand. Repeated violations of the rules might be viewed as a dismal lack of respect for the command structure, resulting in disciplinary suspension. Too much of that, and even the finest cop could forget about further promotions — and might have to worry about hanging on to collect his pension.

  The risks did not particularly concern Julio or Reese. They wanted promotions, of course. And they wanted their pensions. But more than career advancement and financial security, they wanted to solve cases and put murderers in prison. Being a cop was pointless if you weren't willing to put your life on the line for your ideals, and if you were willing to risk your life, then it made no sense to worry about small stuff like salary increases and retirement funds.

  When no one responded to the bell, Julio tried the door, but it was locked. He didn't attempt to void the lock or force it. In the absence of a court order, what they needed to get them into the Leben house was probable cause to believe that criminal activity of some kind was under way on the premises, that innocent people might be harmed, and that there was nothing less than a public emergency.

  When they circled to the back of the house, they found what they needed: a broken pane of glass in the French door that led from the patio into the kitchen. They would have been remiss if they had not assumed the worst: that an armed intruder had forced his way into the house to commit burglary or to harm whoever resided legally within.

  Drawing their revolvers, they entered cautiously. Shards of broken glass crunched underfoot.

  As they moved from room to room, they turned on lights and saw enough to justify intrusion. The bloody palmprint etched into the arm of the white sofa in the family room. The destruction in the master bedroom. And in the garage… Ernestina Hernandez's powder-blue Ford.

  Inspecting the car, Reese found bloodstains on the back seat and floor mats. “Some of it's still a little sticky,” he told Julio.

  Julio tried the trunk of the car and found it unlocked. Inside, there was more blood, a pair of broken eyeglasses — and one blue shoe.

  The shoe was Ernestina's, and the sight of it caused Julio's chest to tighten.

  As far as Julio knew, the Hernandez girl had not worn glasses. In photographs he had seen at the Hernandez home, however, Becky Klienstad, friend and fellow waitress, had worn a pair like these. Evidently, both women had been killed and stuffed into the Ford's trunk. Later, Ernestina's corpse had been heaved into the dumpster. But what happened to the other body?

  “Call the locals,” Julio said. “It's time for protocol.”

  * * *

  1:52 a.m.

  When Reese Hagerstrom returned from the sedan, he paused to put up the electric garage doors to air out the smell of blood that had risen from the open trunk of the Ford and reached into every corner of the long room. As the doors rolled up, he spotted a discarded set of hospital whites and a pair of antistatic sh
oes in one corner. “Julio? Come here and look at this.”

  Julio had been staring intently into the bloody trunk of the car, unable to touch anything lest he ruin precious evidence, but hoping to spot some small clue by sheer dint of intense study. He joined Reese at the discarded clothes.

  Reese said, “What the hell is going on?”

  Julio did not reply.

  Reese said, “The evening started out with one missing corpse. Now two are missing — Leben and the Klienstad girl. And we've found a third we wish we hadn't. If someone's collecting dead bodies, why wouldn't they keep Ernestina Hernandez, too?”

  Puzzling over these bizarre discoveries and the baffling link between the snatching of Leben's corpse and the murder of Ernestina, Julio unconsciously straightened his necktie, tugged on his shirt sleeves, and adjusted his cuff links. Even in summer heat, he would not forsake a tie and long-sleeve shirt, the way some detectives did. Like a priest, a detective held a sacred office, labored in the service of the gods of Justice and Law, and to dress any less formally would have seemed, to him, as disrespectful as a priest celebrating the Mass in jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Are the locals coming?” he asked Reese.

  “Yes. And as soon as we've had a chance to explain the situation to them, we've got to go up to Placentia.”

  Julio blinked. “Placentia? Why?”

  “I checked messages when I got to the car. HQ had an important one for us. The Placentia police have found Becky Klienstad.”

  “Where? Alive?”

  “Dead. In Rachael Leben's house.”

  Astonished, Julio repeated the question that Reese had asked only a few minutes ago: “What the hell is going on?”

  * * *

  1:58 a.m.

  To get to Placentia, they drove from Villa Park through part of Orange, across a portion of Anaheim, over the Tustin Avenue bridge of the Santa Ana River, which was only a river of dust during this dry season. They passed oil wells where the big pumps, like enormous praying mantises, worked up and down, a shade lighter than the night around them, identifiable and yet somehow mysterious shapes that added one more ominous note to the darkness.

  Placentia was usually one of the quietest communities in the county, neither rich nor poor, just comfortable and content, with no terrible drawbacks, with no great advantages over other nearby towns except, perhaps, for the enormous and beautiful date palms which lined some of its streets. Palms of remarkable lushness and stature lined the street on which Rachael Leben lived, and their dense overhanging fronds appeared to be afire in the flickering reflection of the red emergency beacons on the clustered police cars parked under them.

  Julio and Reese were met at the front door by a tall uniformed Placentia officer named Orin Mulveck. He was pale. His eyes looked strange, as if he had just seen something he would never choose to remember but would also never be able to forget. “Neighbor called us because she saw a man leaving the house in a hurry, and she thought there was something suspicious about him. When we came to check the place but, we found the front door standing wide open, lights on.”

  “Mrs. Leben wasn't here?”

  “No.”

  “Any indication where she is?”

  “No.” Mulveck had taken off his cap and was compulsively combing his fingers through his hair. “Jesus,” he said more to himself than to Julio or Reese. Then: “No, Mrs. Leben is gone. But we found the dead woman in Mrs. Leben's bedroom.”

  Entering the cozy house behind Mulveck, Julio said, “Rebecca Klienstad.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mulveck led Julio and Reese across a charming living room decorated in shades of peach and white with dark blue accents and brass lamps.

  Julio said, “How'd you identify the deceased?”

  “She was wearing one of those medical-alert medallions,” Mulveck said. “Had several allergies, including one to penicillin. You seen those medallions? Name, address, medical condition on it. Then, how we got onto you so fast — we asked our computer to check the Klienstad woman through Data Net, and it spit out that you were looking for her in Santa Ana in connection with the Hernandez killing.”

  The Law Enforcement Data Net, through which the county's many police agencies shared information among their computers, was a new program, a natural outgrowth of the computerization of the sheriff's department and all local police. Hours, sometimes days, could be saved with the use of Data Net, and this was not the first time Julio found reason to be thankful that he was a cop in the Microchip Age.

  “Was the woman killed here?” Julio asked as they circled around a burly lab technician who was dusting furniture for fingerprints.

  “No,” Mulveck said. “Not enough blood.” He was still combing one hand through his hair as he walked. “Killed 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 s
he 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 think so.”

  “Yes,” Reese agreed.

  “Good God,” Mulveck said, “do you realize how black, how bitter, how deep this hatred must be? Whoever he is, what could Mrs. Leben possibly have done to make him hate her like that? What sort of enemies does she have?”

  “Very dangerous enemies,” Julio said. “That's all I know. And… if we don't find her quickly, we won't find her alive.”

  The photographer's camera flashed.

  The corpse seemed to twitch.

  Flash, twitch.

  Flash, twitch.