Whispers (4 page)

"I'll be okay, Wally. Really."

"A beautiful woman like you, on a night like this, with so much to celebrate--there ought to be candlelight, soft music, good wine, a special someone to share it with."

She grinned. "Wally, you're a closet romantic."

"I'm serious," he said.

She put one hand on his arm. "It's sweet of you to be concerned about me, Wally. But I'm perfectly all right. I'm happy when I'm alone. I'm very good company for myself. There'll be plenty of time for a meaningful relationship with a man and skiing weekends in Aspen and chatty evenings at The Palm after The Hour of the Wolf is finished and in the theaters."

Wally Topelis frowned. "If you don't learn how to relax, you won't survive for very long in a high-pressure business like this. In a couple of years, you'll be as limp as a rag doll, tattered, frayed, worn out. Believe me, kid, when the physical energy is all burnt up, you'll suddenly discover that the mental energy, the creative juice, has also evaporated with it."

"This project is a watershed for me," she said. "After it, my life won't be the same."

"Agreed. But--"

"I've worked hard, damned hard, single-mindedly, toward this chance. I'll admit it: I've been obsessed with my work. But once I've made a reputation as a good writer and a good director, I'll feel secure. I'll finally be able to cast out the demons--my parents, Chicago, all those bad memories. I'll be able to relax and lead a more normal life. But I can't rest yet. If I slack off now, I'll fail. Or at least I think I will, and that's the same thing."

He sighed. "Okay. But we would have had a lot of fun at The Palm."

A valet arrived with her car.

She hugged Wally. "I'll probably call you tomorrow, just to be sure that this Warner Brothers thing wasn't all a dream."

"Contracts will take a few weeks," he told her. "But I don't anticipate any serious problems. We'll have the deal memo sometime next week, and then you can set up a meeting at the studio."

She blew him a kiss, hurried to the car, tipped the valet, and drove away.

She headed into the hills, past the million-dollar houses, past lawns greener than money, turning left, then right, at random, going nowhere in particular, just driving for relaxation, one of the few escapes she allowed herself. Most of the streets were shrouded in purple shadows cast by canopies of green branches; night was stealing across the pavement even though daylight still existed above the interlaced palms, oaks, maples, cedars, cypresses, jacarandas, and pines. She switched on the headlights and explored some of the winding canyon roads until, gradually, her frustration began to seep away.

Later, when night had fallen above the trees as well as below them, she stopped at a Mexican restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard. Rough beige plaster walls. Photographs of Mexican bandits. The rich odors of hot sauce, taco seasoning, and corn meal tortillas. Waitresses in scoop-necked peasant blouses and many-pleated red skirts. South-of-the-border Muzak. Hilary ate cheese enchiladas, rice, refried beans. The food tasted every bit as good as it would have tasted if it had been served by candlelight, with string music in the background, and with someone special seated beside her.

I'll have to remember to tell Wally that, she thought as she washed down the last of the enchiladas with a swallow of Dos Equis, a dark Mexican beer.

But when she considered it for a moment, she could almost hear his reply: My lamb, that is nothing but blatant psychological rationalization. It's true that loneliness doesn't change the taste of food, the quality of candlelight, the sound of music--but that doesn't mean that loneliness is desirable or good or healthy." He simply wouldn't be able to resist launching into one of his fatherly lectures about life; and listening to that would not be made any easier by the fact that whatever he had to say would make sense.

You better not mention it, she told herself. You are never going to get one up on Wally Topelis.

In her car again, she buckled her seatbelt, brought the big engine to life, snapped on the radio, and sat for a while, staring at the flow of traffic on La Cienega. Today was her birthday. Twenty-ninth birthday. And in spite of the fact that it had been noted in Hank Grant's Hollywood Reporter column, she seemed to be the only one in the world who cared. Well, that was okay. She was a loner. Always had been a loner. Hadn't she told Wally that she was perfectly happy with only her own company?

The cars flashed past in an endless stream, filled with people who were going places, doing things--usually in pairs.

She didn't want to start for home yet, but there was nowhere else to go.

***

The house was dark.

The lawn looked more blue than green in the glow of the mercury-vapor streetlamp.

Hilary parked the car in the garage and walked to the front door. Her heels made an unnaturally loud tock-tock-tock sound on the stone footpath.

The night was mild. The heat of the vanished sun still rose from the earth, and the cooling sea wind that washed the basin city in all seasons had not yet brought the usual autumn chill to the air; later, toward midnight, it would be coat weather.

Crickets chirruped in the hedges.

She let herself into the house, found the entranceway light, closed and locked the door. She switched on the living room lights as well and was a few steps from the foyer when she heard movement behind her and turned.

A man came out of the foyer closet, knocking a coat off a hanger as he shouldered out of that confining space, throwing the door back against the wall with a loud bang! He was about forty years old, a tall man wearing dark slacks and a tight yellow pullover sweater--and leather gloves. He had the kind of big, hard muscles that could be gotten only from years of weightlifting; even his wrists, between the cuffs of the sweater and the gloves, were thick and sinewy. He stopped ten feet from her and grinned broadly, nodded, licked his thin lips.

She wasn't quite sure how to respond to his sudden appearance. He wasn't an ordinary intruder, not a total stranger, not some punk kid or some shabby degenerate with a drug-blur in his eyes. Although he didn't belong here, she knew him, and he was just about the last man she would expect to encounter in a situation of this sort. Seeing gentle little Wally Topelis come out of that closet was the only thing that could have shocked her more than this. She was less frightened than confused. She had met him three weeks ago, while doing research for a screenplay set in the wine country of Northern California, a project meant to take her mind off Wally's marketing of The Hour of the Wolf, which she had finished about that time. He was an important and successful man up there in the Napa Valley. But that didn't explain what the hell he was doing in her house, hiding in her closet.

"Mr. Frye," she said uneasily.

"Hello, Hilary." He had a deep, somewhat gravelly voice which seemed reassuring and fatherly when she had taken an extensive private tour of his winery near St. Helena, but which now sounded coarse, mean, threatening.

She cleared her throat nervously. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to see you."

"Why?"

"Just had to see you again."

"About what?"

He was still grinning. He had a tense, predatory look. His was the smile of the wolf just before it closed hungry jaws on the cornered rabbit.

"How did you get in?" she demanded.

"Pretty."

"What?"

"So pretty."

"Stop it."

"Been looking for one like you."

"You're scaring me."

"You're a real pretty one."

He took a step toward her.

She knew then, beyond doubt, what he wanted. But it was crazy, unthinkable. Why would a wealthy man of his high social position travel hundreds of miles to risk his fortune, reputation, and freedom for one brief violent moment of forced sex?

He took another step.

She backed away from him.

Rape. It made no sense. Unless.... If he intended to kill her afterwards, he would not be taking much of a risk at all. He was wearing gloves. He would leave no prints, no clues. And no one would believe that a prominent and highly-respected vintner from St. Helena would drive all the way to Los Angeles to rape and murder. Even if some would believe it, they'd have no reason to think of him in the first place. The homicide investigation would never move in his direction.

He kept coming. Slowly. Relentlessly. Heavy steps. Enjoying the suspense. Grinning more than ever as he saw comprehension enter her eyes.

She backed past the huge stone fireplace, briefly considered grabbing one of the heavy brass implements on the hearth, but realized that she would not be quick enough to defend herself with it. He was a powerful, athletic man in excellent physical condition; he would be all over her before she could seize the poker and swing it at his damned thick skull.

He flexed his big hands. The knuckles strained at the snug-fitting leather.

She backed past a grouping of furniture--two chairs, a coffee table, a long sofa. She started moving toward her right, trying to put the sofa between her and Frye.

"Such pretty hair," he said.

A part of her wondered if she were losing her mind. This could not be the Bruno Frye she had met in St. Helena. There had been not even the slightest hint of the madness that now contorted his broad, sweat-greased face. His eyes were blue-gray chips of ice, and the frigid passion that shone in them was surely too monstrous to have been concealed when she last saw him.

Then she saw the knife, and the sight of it was like a blast of furnace heat that turned her doubts to steam and blew them away. He meant to kill her. The knife was fixed to his belt, over his right hip. It was in an open sheath, and he could free it simply by popping the metal snap on a single narrow leather strap. In one second, the blade could be slipped from the holder and wrapped tightly in his fist; in two seconds, it could be jammed deep into her soft belly, slicing through warm meat and jelly organs, letting loose the precious store of blood.

"I've wanted you since I first saw you," Frye said. "Just wanted to get at you."

Time seemed to stop for her.

"You're going to be a good little piece," he said. "Real good."

Abruptly, the world was a slow-motion movie. Each second seemed like a minute. She watched him approach as if he were a creature in a nightmare, as if the atmosphere had suddenly become as thick as syrup.

The instant that she spotted the knife, Hilary froze. She stopped backing away from him, even though he continued to approach. A knife will do that. It chokes you up, freezes your heart, brings ah uncontrollable tremor to your guts. Surprisingly few people have the stomach to use a knife against another living thing. More than any other weapon, it makes you aware of the delicacy of flesh, the terrible fragility of human life; in the damage that he wreaks, the attacker can see all too clearly the nature of his own mortality. A gun, a draught of poison, a firebomb, a blunt instrument, a strangler's piece of rope--all can be used relatively cleanly, most of them at a distance. But the man with a knife must be prepared to get dirty, and he must get in close, so close that he can feel the heat escaping from the wounds as he makes them. It takes a special courage, or insanity, to slash at another person and not be repelled by the warm blood spurting over your hand.

Frye was upon her. He placed one large hand on her breasts, rubbed and squeezed them roughly through the silky fabric of her dress.

That rude contact snapped her out of the trance into which she'd fallen. She knocked his hand away, twisted out of his grasp, and ran behind the couch.

His laugh was hearty, disconcertingly pleasant, but his hard eyes glinted with a macabre amusement. It was a demon joke, the mad humor of hell. He wanted her to fight back, for he enjoyed the chase.

"Get out!" she said. "Get out!"

"Don't want to get out," Frye said, smiling, shaking his head. "I want to get in. Oh yeah. That's it. I want to get in you, little lady. I want to rip that dress off your back, get you naked, and get right up in there. All the way up, all the way inside where it's warm and wet and dark and soft."

For a moment, the fear that made her legs rubbery and turned her insides to water was supplanted by more powerful emotions: hate, anger, fury. Hers was not the reasoned anger of a woman toward an arrogant man's usurpation of her dignity and rights; not an intellectual anger based on the social and biological injustices of the situation; it was more fundamental than that. He had entered her private space uninvited, had pushed his way into her modern cave, and she was possessed by a primitive rage that blurred her vision and made her heart race. She bared her teeth at him, growled in the back of her throat; she was reduced to an almost unconscious animal response as she faced him and looked for a way out of the trap.

A low, narrow, glass-topped display table stood flush against the back of the sofa. Two eighteen-inch-high pieces of fine porcelain statuary rested upon it. She grabbed one of the statues and hurled it at Frye.

He ducked with a primitive, instinctual quickness of his own. The porcelain struck the stone fireplace and exploded like a bomb. Dozens of chunks and hundreds of chips of it rained down on the hearth and on the surrounding carpet.

"Try again," he said, mocking her.

She picked up the other porcelain, hesitated. She watched him through narrowed eyes, weighed the statue in her hand, then faked a pitch.

He was deceived by the feint. He dipped down and to one side to avoid the missile.

With a small cry of triumph, she threw the statue for real. He was too surprised to duck again, and the porcelain caught him on the side of the head. It was a glancing blow, less devastating than she'd hoped, but he staggered back a step or two. He didn't go down. He wasn't seriously injured. He wasn't even bleeding. But he was hurt, and the pain transformed him. He was no longer in a perversely playful mood. The crooked smile disappeared. His mouth was set in a straight, grim line, lips tightly compressed. His face was red. Fury wound him up as if he were a watch spring; under the strain, the muscles in his massive neck popped up, taut, impressive. He crouched slightly, ready to charge.