Whispers (42 page)

“I think I recognize all of them,” Tony said. “They belong to people who live here.”

“Positive?”

“Not entirely.”

“See anybody in any of them?”

He squinted. “I can’t tell with the sun shining on the glass.”

“Let’s take a closer look,” she said.

Down in the parking area, they found the cars were empty. There wasn’t anyone hanging around who didn’t belong.

“Of course,” Tony said, “even as bold as he is, it’s not likely that he’d stand a watch right on our doorstep. And since there’s only one driveway in and out of these apartments, he could keep an eye on us from a distance.”

They walked out of the walled complex, onto the sidewalk, and looked north, then south along the tree-shaded street. It was a neighborhood of garden apartments and townhouses and condominiums, nearly all of which lacked adequate parking; therefore, even at that hour of a weekday morning, a lot of cars were lined up along both curbs.

“You want to check them out?” Hilary asked.

“It’s a waste of time. If he has binoculars, he’ll be able to watch this driveway from four blocks away. We’d have to walk four blocks in each direction, and even then, he could just pull out and drive away.”

“But if he does, then we’ll spot him. We won’t be able to stop him, of course, but at least we’ll know for sure that he followed us. And we’ll know what he’s driving.”

“Not if he’s two or three blocks from us when he splits,” Tony said. “We wouldn’t be close enough to be sure it was him. And he might just get out of his car and take a walk, then come back after we’ve gone.”

To Hilary, the air seemed leaden; she found it somewhat taxing to draw a deep breath. The day was going to be very hot, especially for the end of September; and it would be a humid day, too, especially for Los Angeles, where the air was nearly always dry. The sky was high and clear and gas flame-blue. Already, wriggling ghost snakes of heat were rising from the pavement. High-pitched, musical laughter sailed on the light breeze; children were playing in the swimming pool at the townhouse development across the street.

On such a day as this, it was difficult to maintain a belief in the living dead.

Hilary sighed and said, “So how do we find out if he’s here, watching us?”

“There’s no way to be sure.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

Hilary looked down the street, which was mottled with shadow and light. Horror cloaked in sunshine. Terror hiding against a backdrop of beautiful palm trees and bright stucco walls and Spanish-tile roofs. “Paranoia Avenue,” she said.

“Paranoia
City
until this is over.”

They turned away from the street and walked back across the macadam parking area in front of his apartment building.

“Now what?” she asked.

“I think we both need to get some sleep.”

Hilary had never been so weary. Her eyes were grainy and sore from lack of rest; the strong sunlight stung them. Her mouth felt fuzzy and tasted like cardboard; there was an unpleasant film of tartar on her teeth, and her tongue seemed to be coated with a furry mold. She ached in every bone and muscle and sinew, from her toes to the top of her head, and it didn’t help to realize that at least half of the way she felt was the consequence of emotional rather than physical exhaustion.

“I
know
we need to sleep,” she said. “But do you really think you can?”

“I know what you mean. I’m tired as hell, but my mind’s racing. It’s not going to shut off easily.”

“There’s a question or two I’d like to ask the coroner,” she said. “Or whoever performed the autopsy. Maybe when I get some answers I’ll be able to take a nap.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “Let’s lock up the apartment and go to the morgue right now.”

A few minutes later, when they drove away in Tony’s blue Jeep, they watched for a tail, but they were not followed. Of course, that didn’t mean Frye wasn’t sitting in one of those parked cars along that tree-lined street. If he had followed them from Hilary’s house earlier, he didn’t need to trail after them now, for he already knew the location of their lair.

“What if he breaks in while we’re gone?” Hilary asked. “What if he’s hiding in there, waiting, when we come back?”

“I’ve got two locks on my door,” Tony said. “One of them is the best deadbolt money can buy. He’d have to chop down the door. The only other way is to break one of the windows that faces on the balcony. If he’s waiting in there when we come back, we’ll know it long before we set foot inside.”

“What if he finds another way in?”

“There isn’t one,” Tony said. “To get in through any of the other windows, he’d have to climb to the second floor on a sheer wall, and he’d have to do it right out in the open where he’d be sure to be seen. Don’t worry. Home base is safe.”

“Maybe he can pass through a door. You know,” she said shakily. “Like a ghost. Or maybe he can turn into smoke and drift through a keyhole.”

“You don’t believe garbage like that,” Tony said.

She nodded. “You’re right.”

“He doesn’t have any supernatural powers. He had to break a windowpane to get into your house last night.”

They headed downtown through heavy traffic.

Her bone-deep weariness undermined her usually strong mental defenses against the pernicious disease of self-doubt, leaving her uncharacteristically vulnerable. For the first time since seeing Frye walk out of the dining room, she began to wonder if she truly had seen what she thought she had seen.

“Am I crazy?” she asked Tony.

He glanced at her, then back at the street. “No. You’re not crazy. You saw something. You didn’t wreck the house all by yourself. You didn’t just imagine that the intruder looked like Bruno Frye. I’ll admit I thought that’s what you were doing at first. But now I know you aren’t confused.”

“But . . . a walking dead man? Isn’t that too much to accept?”

“It’s just as difficult to accept the other theory—that two unassociated maniacs, both suffering from the same unique set of delusions, both obsessed with a psychotic fear of vampires, attacked you in one week. In fact, I think it’s a little easier to believe that Frye is somehow alive.”

“Maybe you caught it from me.”

“Caught what?”

“Insanity.”

He smiled. “Insanity isn’t like the common cold. You can’t spread it with a cough—or a kiss.”

“Haven’t you heard of a ‘shared psychosis’?”

Braking for a traffic light, he said, “Shared psychosis? Isn’t that a social welfare program for underprivileged lunatics who can’t afford psychoses of their own?”

“Jokes at a time like this?”

“Especially at a time like this.”

“What about mass hysteria?”

“It’s not one of my favorite pastimes.”

“I mean, maybe that’s what’s happening here.”

“No. Impossible,” he said. “There’s only two of us. That’s not enough to make a mass.”

She smiled. “God, I’m glad you’re here. I’d hate to be fighting this thing alone.”

“You’ll never be alone again.”

She put one hand on his shoulder.

They reached the morgue at quarter past eleven.

 
At the coroner’s office, Hilary and Tony learned from the secretary that the chief medical examiner had not performed the autopsy on the body of Bruno Frye. Last Thursday and Friday, he had been in San Francisco on a speaking engagement. The autopsy had been left to an assistant, another doctor on the M. E.’s staff.

That bit of news gave Hilary hope that there would be a simple solution to the mystery of Frye’s return from the grave. Perhaps the assistant assigned to the job had been a slacker, a lazy man who, free of his boss’s constant supervision, had skipped the autopsy and filed a false report.

That hope was dashed when she met Ira Goldfield, the young doctor in question. He was in his early thirties, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and a lot of tight blond curls. He was friendly, energetic, bright, and obviously too interested in his work and too dedicated to it to do less than a perfect job.

Goldfield escorted them to a small conference room that smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and cigarette smoke. They sat at a rectangular table that was covered with half a dozen medical reference books, pages of lab reports, and computer print-outs.

“Sure,” Goldfield said. “I remember that one. Bruno Graham . . . no . . . Gunther. Bruno Gunther Frye. Two stab wounds, one of them just a little worse than superficial, the other very deep and fatal. Some of the best developed abdominal muscles I’ve ever seen.” He blinked at Hilary and said, “Oh yes. . . . You’re the woman who . . . stabbed him.”

“Self-defense,” Tony said.

“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Goldfield assured him. “In my professional opinion, it’s highly unlikely that Miss Thomas could have initiated a successful assault against that man. He was huge. He’d have brushed her away as easily as one of us might turn aside a small child.” Goldfield looked at Hilary again. “According to the crime report and the newspaper accounts that I read, Frye attacked you without realizing you were carrying a knife.”

“That’s right. He thought I was unarmed.”

Goldfield nodded. “It had to be that way. Considering the disparity in body sizes, that’s the only way you could have taken him without being seriously injured yourself. I mean, the biceps and triceps and forearms on that man were truly astounding. Ten or fifteen years ago, he could have entered body building competitions with considerable success. You were damned lucky, Miss Thomas. If you hadn’t surprised him, he could have broken you in half. Almost literally in half. And easily, too.” He shook his head, still impressed with Frye’s body. “What was it you wanted to ask me about him?”

Tony looked at her, and she shrugged. “It seems rather pointless now that we’re here.”

Goldfield looked from one of them to the other, a vague, encouraging smile of curiosity on his handsome face.

Tony cleared his throat. “I agree with Hilary. It seems pointless . . . now that we’ve met you.”

“You came in looking so somber and mysterious,” Goldfield said pleasantly. “You pricked my interest. You can’t keep me hanging like this.”

“Well,” Tony said, “we came here to find out if there actually had been an autopsy.”

Goldfield didn’t understand. “But you knew that before you asked to see me. Agnes, the M.E.’s secretary, must have told you . . .”

“We wanted to hear it from you,” Hilary said.

“I still don’t get it.”

“We knew that an autopsy report had been filed,” Tony said. “But we didn’t know for certain that the work had been done.”

“But now that we’ve met you,” Hilary said quickly, “we have no doubt about it.”

Goldfield cocked his head. “You mean to say . . . you thought I filed a fake report without bothering to cut him open?” He didn’t seem to be offended, just amazed.

“We thought there might be an outside chance of it,” Tony admitted. “A long shot.”

“Not in
this
M.E.’s jurisdiction,” Goldfield said. “He’s a tough old SOB. He keeps us in line. If one of us didn’t do his job, the old man would crucify him.” It was obvious from Goldfield’s affectionate tone that he greatly admired the chief medical examiner.

Hilary said, “Then there’s no doubt in your mind that Bruno Frye was . . . dead?”

Goldfield gaped at her as if she had just asked him to stand on his head and recite a poem. “Dead? Why, of course he was dead!”

“You did a complete autopsy?” Tony asked.

“Yes. I cut him—” Goldfield stopped abruptly, thought for a second or two, then said, “No. It wasn’t a complete autopsy in the sense you probably mean. Not a medical school dissection of every part of the body. It was an extremely busy day here. A lot of incoming. And we were short-handed. Anyway, there wasn’t any need to open Frye all the way up. The stab wound in the lower abdomen was decisive. No reason to open his chest and have a look at his heart. Nothing to be gained by weighing a lot of organs and poking around in his cranium. I did a very thorough exterior examination, and then I opened the two wounds further, to establish the extent of the damage and to be certain that at least one of them had been the cause of death. If he hadn’t been stabbed in your house, while attacking you . . . if the circumstances of his death had been less clear, I might have done more with him. But it was clear there wasn’t going to be any criminal charges brought in the case. Besides, I am absolutely positive that the abdominal wound killed him.”

“Is it possible he was only in a very deep coma when you examined him?” Hilary asked.

“Coma? My God, no! Jesus, no!” Goldfield stood up and paced the length of the long narrow room. “Frye was checked for pulse, respiration, pupil activity, and even brainwaves. The man was indisputably dead, Miss Thomas.” He returned to the table and looked down at them. “Dead as stone. When I saw him, there wasn’t enough blood in his body to sustain even the barest threshold of life. There was advanced lividity, which means that the blood still in his tissues had settled to the lowest point of the body—the lowest corresponding, in this case, to the position in which he’d been when he’d died. At those places, the flesh was somewhat distended and purple. There’s no mistaking that and no overlooking it.”

Tony pushed his chair back and stood. “My apologies for wasting your time, Dr. Goldfield.”

“And I’m sorry for suggesting you might not have done your job well enough,” Hilary said as she got to her feet.

“Hold on now,” Goldfield said. “You can’t just leave me standing here in the dark. What’s this all about?”

She looked at Tony. He seemed as reluctant as she was to discuss walking dead men with the doctor.

“Come on,” Goldfield said. “Neither of you strikes me as stupid. You had your reasons for coming here.”

Tony said, “Last night, another man broke into Hilary’s house and attempted to kill her. He bore a striking resemblance to Bruno Frye.”