by Judith Gould
In his Ferrari, Duncan Cooper kept the gas pedal floored. He had thrown caution to the winds and his face held an expression of grim concentration. He was oblivious of the fast beep-beep-beep of the built-in radar detector. Fear gnawed at his gut. Billie was in danger. What else could the cut-off phone call mean? “I’m coming, Billie!” he vowed aloud, willing his thoughts to reach her telepathically. “Everything’s going to be all right, baby! I’m not gonna let anything happen to you!”
He glanced at the luminous green glow of the speedometer and the dashboard clock. He’d covered sixty miles already; he had another sixty to go. With luck, he’d reach Southampton in under twenty minutes.
Twenty of the longest minutes of his life. And that was with breaking every Manhattan-Hamptons speed limit—and record—he knew of.
Distant flashing lights strobed in his rearview mirror. “Good luck, Smokey,” he muttered to himself, and drew his lips back over his teeth. “There’s no way you’re gonna catch this baby!”
11:59 P.M.:
On the deserted Long Island Expressway, Fred Koscina’s right-rear tire blew, and it was all he could do to wrestle his speeding Dodge under control. After he pulled over and stopped, he slammed his fist on the steering wheel in frustration. Fuck! Of all the times to have a goddamn blowout! He hadn’t even left Queens yet, and even at this late hour, with the LIE virtually deserted, it would take him a good hour and a quarter to reach Southampton—and that was if he pushed the lousy car to its limits.
Changing the flat would make him even later.
He grabbed the mike of his police-band radio and took a chance that he could still get through to Central from this far outside his precinct frequency. “Nineteen Charlie to Central,” he called in. “Nineteen Charlie to Central.” Come on, he thought impatiently. He had to get through. If he didn’t . . .
The radio was quiet. Dead quiet. Then a weak crackle of static came and went. Koscina tried again. “Nineteen Charlie to—”
And miraculously the dispatcher’s laconic voice came through intermittent bursts of static.
“Central, Nineteen Charlie.”
Hot damn! He sat up straight. Now, this was more like it! Maybe someone upstairs was looking out for him, after all. “Nineteen unit needs a helicopter,” he said tonelessly.
“Sorry, Nineteen Charlie. All available aircraft are currently searching the harbor for small-craft survivors.”
Fred Koscina slammed his fist on the steering wheel a second time. Just my luck. Why can’t I come up with two lucky strikes in a row? And why is it that with this case, one thing or another is constantly conspiring against me?
He sat there for a moment, searching his mind for a solution. There had to be another way to get out to Southampton fast. If his hunch was right, every minute counted—and his hunch now told him that Billie Dawn and any other woman who happened to be caught in the showhouse was liable to become—
I can’t allow myself to think of it; it’s too hideous to imagine.
—a scalped corpse.
Chapter 71
She had been wrong. The abrupt darkness held far more menace than the eerie lights and stark shadows of a moment before. Now, with her eyes yet to adjust to the blackness, and only the lights spilling out from the mansion’s windows to guide her, she felt immediately threatened. What should she do? Go back inside the house? At least try the front door before making her way around to the back?
She heard the snapping of another dry twig—this time somewhere to her left.
She swiveled in that direction. “Who’s there?” she called out again.
As before, the only reply Edwina got was the rattling of branches, the rustling of leaves, the roaring of the surf. And, from a pond somewhere on the other side of Meadow Lane, crickets and cicadas shrilling mockingly.
Swallowing nervously, she tried once more. “Officer Moody, please don’t play these games. They’re really not very funny.”
She waited.
Still nothing.
Sighing, she shrugged her shoulders and carefully felt her way along the uneven flagstone path. Twice she tripped and nearly went sprawling.
Slowly her night vision came, and she could make out the shapes of jet-black trees and bushes against the slightly paler blackness all around. When she reached the end of the path, the hard paving stones gave way to the softer asphalt of the newly surfaced drive. She stopped for a moment, hands on her hips, and looked around in the darkness.
Now what?
Look for Billie Dawn’s cops, she answered herself.
But where would undercover cops be parked? Not directly in front of the house; that would be too obvious a place for plainclothesmen trying to keep a low profile. A little down the road, then. Probably. Yes. At least it was a start.
The circular drive was short, no more than seventy or eighty feet. She had nearly reached the end of it when she thought she felt someone’s presence and heard soft laughter.
She stopped and whirled around again. She was facing a bank of shrubbery. Leaves lifted as the breeze gusted.
“Officer Moody?” Her voice quavered.
Only the wind. Only the leaves scratched. Only the crickets and cicadas shrilled.
“Officer Moody, I told you! I don’t find this funny!”
Again nothing.
Fear tripped the hammers of her heart. She couldn’t remember ever having felt this frightened. It was as if every bone and nerve ending, every muscle and circuit within her was on full alert.
The urge to flee was overwhelming—and yet she knew there was no concrete reason why she should feel this way. There was nothing rational to explain it—yet. Just a scream and the outdoor lights being doused. The front door being slammed. The phone going dead. And yet the urgency to flee was overwhelming. Everything inside her warned of danger.
Run! Run now! While you still have the chance!
“No!” she told herself sharply. “You are not going to chicken out. You are not going to let anything scare you off. You are going to follow this through.”
Futilely, she wished there was at least some traffic. After the big noisy city, the utter solitude and quiet were unnerving. She wondered how anyone could live out here. Well, with a big family and enough servants and friends . . . maybe. But of one thing she was certain. This wasn’t the type of place she’d want to live. Not alone. Not in this house. No, siree, thank you very much.
Reaching the road, she stood there and looked first one way and then the other. She squinted into the dark. Was that a car way down there on the right, parked by the shoulder? Or was her night vision playing shadow tricks on her?
Only one way to find out, old girl, she told herself. And started toward it.
As she approached it, her steps quickened purposefully. It was a car. No, not a car; there were two. One parked behind the other.
When she nearly reached them, she could hear the idling engine of the first and make out the rooftop arch of the second. The strange shadow atop it was the turret light.
So it was Officer Moody! She had a good mind to kill him for scaring her half to death! She was ready to throttle him, really! In fact, she—
Reaching the first car, she pecked her fingernails on the window of the driver’s side. When she got no response, she cupped her hands against the cold glass and tried to see inside. The window vibrated from the idling motor. She could just barely make out the shapes of two men sleeping, their heads tilted sideways.
So these are the guys who’re supposed to be guarding Billie Dawn? she asked herself. Some cops to depend on! I wouldn’t want to have to entrust my life to them!
She rapped again, this time with her knuckles: harder. But they kept right on sleeping.
What was it with them?
“Hey!” she yelled, slapping her palms down on the car roof. “Wake up in there!”
When there was still no response, she tried the driver’s door.
It was unlocked, and as she swung it open, the overhead lig
ht clicked on inside. She started to lean in and give the driver a good shake, when she suddenly drew back. The interior of the car was a bloodbath; the copper stench of carnage assaulted her.
“Oh, God!”
A flapping slit, like an obscenely grinning mouth, curved under the plainclothes cop’s chin, reaching from one ear to the other. Sticky fresh blood soaked everything. Him. The seat. The dashboard. Drying droplets, like rivulets of red rain, were spattered all over the inside of the windshield.
She forced herself to stare at his companion.
Also dead. Also brutally murdered.
His throat identically slit.
She staggered back in horror, slammed the door shut, and took deep, ragged breaths. Her legs were weak and trembly, her ears pounding, her stomach churning. She tried to fight the rising bile. Then suddenly she could no longer hold it in. She doubled over, and everything came up in a rush.
Finally the worst of the nausea passed. Numbly she stumbled to the rear of the car and propped herself against the trunk. After retching, she found it difficult to breathe. Her mouth tasted sour and her throat felt raw and swollen. Her eyes watered.
She was facing the hood of Officer Moody’s patrol car.
Officer Moody. She had to check . . .
No! She couldn’t! She just couldn’t!
She had to.
She staggered toward it and wrenched his door open. Jumped back as he slumped out headfirst.
Oh, God!
Just then the landscape lights around the mansion clicked back on. For a moment Edwina stared blankly down the road at the floodlit house and grounds. She knew what the lights meant. They were bait.
Someone is playing cat and mouse with me, she thought. Someone murderously dangerous.
She didn’t want to go back to that house. Every instinct told her to run in the opposite direction—and not stop running until she got to town and found the police station.
But Anouk was in the house. And not only Anouk. Billie Dawn too. And, above all, Hal.
She moaned aloud, panic threatening to crush her.
Suddenly she straightened with a steely resolve. Her eyes were like flints. You bastard!
“Over my dead body!” she said aloud from between determinedly clenched teeth.
Without even thinking, she squatted down and struggled to get at Officer Moody’s revolver. Grabbing the heavy weapon, she hoped to hell it was loaded. Then she ran. Not toward the town’s police station.
Straight back to the house.
In the deserted parking lot of the Queens Plaza Shopping Center, Fred Koscina watched as the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter belonging to Eyewitness News nosed down to a neat landing. Ducking his head and doubling over to avoid the whacking blades and gusts of rotor wash, he ran toward it.
Before he reached it, the door on the passenger’s side opened and the familiar face of a copper-haired female crime reporter leaned out. “Sure this isn’t a wild-goose chase, Koscina?” She had to yell to make herself heard above the racket.
“Shit, Babs, you know me better’n that,” he hollered back. “How many times I ever steer you wrong?”
“It’s happened.” She gave him her hard green-eyed-bitch look. “What is it this time?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
She shook her head of copper ringlets. “Tell me now or we’re going after that missing small craft.”
Christ Almighty! Here he was, every second counting, and he had to take the time to tell a goddamn story! Reporters. He couldn’t stand them. Couldn’t get along without them at times, either. Especially times such as now.
“It’s the psycho who’s been butchering the models,” he yelled.
Babs Petrie didn’t hesitate. “Then why didn’t you say so in the first place? Haul your ass in here and let’s go!”
The front door was open wide.
As if it had never been slammed shut.
Yellow light flooded out, rippling down the front steps.
Like vomit flowing from a rectangular mouth.
Edwina never slowed. She ran straight toward it, never once considering her own welfare. A maternal fire of volcanic magnitude burned within her, stoked by every yard of distance she covered. Her breath came in rasps from the exertion; her pulse pounded like kettledrums.
She wanted to yell to let Hallelujah know she was coming, but every ounce of her energy had to be expended in doing, not saying.
As she neared the bright doorway, it seemed to grow in size before her eyes, the foyer beyond growing larger and wider and more hellishly yellow, and then she burst past the door and into the dazzling light. Skidding to a halt on the zodiac-inlaid marquetry, she looked quickly to the left, then the right. Instinctively she raced down the hall, back to the ballroom. She could hear Basia’s bossa nova blaring at full blast. Too loud; too distorted. Hal and Billie Dawn would never turn it up like—
Be there! she prayed. Oh, please, you guys, be there! I’ll get you out! Your ma’s coming, sweetie! Your ma’s going to kiss the boo-boo and make all the hurt go away. She’s not going to let anything happen to you, baby—
The ballroom was deserted.
She keened in frustration.
Where could Billie and Hal have disappeared to? She looked around in a panic. Were they hiding? But if so, where? God, this house was so goddamned big! It would take forever to search it thoroughly.
First things first.
She raced over to the cassette recorder and switched it off.
The sudden silence was unearthly. Like that of a tomb.
“Hal!” she called out, her voice reverberating and echoing. “Hal! Billie!”
The silence seemed to mock her.
In desperation she ran in and out of adjoining rooms, then sped back to the foyer. Barely hesitating, she bounded up the curving staircase with its banister of flaming bronze suns and moons.
“Hal!” she roared. “Billie!”
And then, just as she reached the second-floor landing, from somewhere—she wasn’t quite sure where—she could hear a plaintive cry.
‘“Ma!”
“Hal!” she screamed. “Hal, baby, where are you?”
“Maaaaa . . .”
The voice came from her right! Yes! She tore off toward it.
“Ma!” Suddenly she stopped. Now it was coming from somewhere behind! She was running in the wrong direction! In confusion, she looked around.
“Ma!” So it was coming from the right!
“Ma!” No! It was coming from the other end of the hall! What the—
A convulsion of fear flip-flopped her stomach. Hal couldn’t be in both places at once! Which meant that only one of the voices was her sweetie’s. The other had to be a mimic’s.
No, not a mimic’s.
The killer’s!
Oh, God! Her grip tightened on the heavy revolver.
“Ma!” From her right.
“Ma!” From her left.
Edwina’s head swiveled with each word.
“Hal!” she screamed. “Hal, sweetie, which one is you?”
“Me, Ma!”
“No, Ma, me!
Edwina couldn’t tell which was which. Was that possible? Could both voices sound so genuinely like Hal’s?
Try the nearest one first! she told herself grimly. Then double-time back if it isn’t.
She continued down the hallway at supersonic speed. She had to rescue Hal, had to save her from—
No! She couldn’t think of it! Then she burst into the library and stumbled over—
—Anouk! And sanity suddenly tilted and the world crashed out of orbit. She shrank back, barely able to believe her eyes. Anouk! Oh, God, no! Oh, Christ, no! Where was her hair? Sweet baby Jesus—
What did that monster do to her goddamn scalp?
“Hal!” she screamed, and started to race back out. But a fleeting shadow stepped in her way, and the moment before she collided with it, a savage elbow rammed into her chest. The air whooshed out of her lungs and sh
e went flying backward, the revolver jumping out of her hand.
“Hal!” she tried to scream again, but she had no breath left, not even for a whisper. She took a deep lungful of air and began to struggle to her feet.
And suddenly shrank back.
The monster was right there, towering above her. All black nylon and smeared makeup and dried blood and—God, no!—wearing Anouk’s bloody scalp!
Miss Bitch smiled down at her and said in a perfect imitation of Hallelujah’s voice, “Are you like trying out for the Olympics, Ma?”
Desperately Edwina’s eyes searched the carpet for the revolver, but it must have landed too far away. She couldn’t see it.
She did the next best thing. Dug her elbows into the carpet and tried to crab-crawl her way backward.
And then Miss Bitch screeched falsetto laughter and boink!, bashed something down on her skull.
Edwina didn’t see stars. Her eyes simply rolled up inside their sockets until only the whites showed and everything went black.
She never heard the snarling roar of the Harley as Snake jumped his bike over the threshold downstairs, riding right into the house.
Chapter 72
And theeeeere goes Johnny!” R.L. said. He aimed the remote at the TV set and hit the Off button.
Johnny Carson, grinning boyishly from behind his desk, disappeared with a burst of static as the picture on the tube imploded.
R.L. tossed the remote on the nightstand and eyed the small polished brass Tiffany alarm clock. It was past midnight. Small wonder the big colonial bed felt so empty!
He let his head drop on the crisp cotton pillows. He was feeling lonely and deserted, dammit! What could be keeping her?
He stared up at the ceiling and sighed to himself. He’d borrowed this house in the Hamptons for the weekend from a business associate, figuring that he and Edwina would at least be able to enjoy a little R&R between the flurries of activity the fashion show elicited.
Well, obviously he’d been wrong.
Turning his head sideways, he eyed the extension phone and considered calling the showhouse. Immediately he decided against it. No. A call would only communicate his impatience and add to her pressures; that was the last thing on earth Edwina needed right now. And besides, hadn’t she warned him that she might be back very late?