At eleven-thirty that night, Candra let herself into her apartment. She usually loved parties, but she hadn’t been able to enjoy the one tonight, even though it had been attended by a lot of her favorite people. She couldn’t stop thinking about the coming day. Tomorrow, she would sign the papers on the divorce settlement, and she couldn’t help thinking that the best part of her life was over. She would likely never see Richard again. Perhaps someday she would meet another man who could compare with him, but she didn’t really think so.
He had won. If there was a winner, there had to be a loser, and she was it. She had played him all wrong, because her mistake was in trying to play him at all. If she had simply given him his freedom with the least fuss possible, and tried to salvage some dignity for herself, he would likely have been more generous. Richard couldn’t be coerced; it was that simple.
She felt ineffably weary. Even though she had no doubt Carson would come through with the money, at the moment she couldn’t summon up much enthusiasm for the future.
She had left lamps on in the living room and foyer because she didn’t like walking into a dark apartment. Once she hadn’t worried about anything like that, because Richard had been with her. Sometimes, when she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone, she would have Kai spend the night, but tonight she would rather be alone than be with him. He seemed to enjoy seeing Richard get the best of her. She would fire him, she thought. His looks were undoubtedly an asset to the gallery, but there were a lot of good-looking young men in New York who were looking for an in to the art world, and a side door was as good as a front one.
She dropped her tiny antique beaded purse on the hall table and set the locks. Her heels tapped on the faux marble tiles as she crossed the foyer and stepped onto the plush oatmeal-colored Berber pile of the living room carpet. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled, panic momentarily robbing her of her voice. Pressing her hand to her chest as if she could calm her racing heart, she said, “How in hell did you get into the building?”
“I have a key. Convenient, isn’t it?”
“A key! I don’t believe you. How would you get a key to my apartment?”
“You know the old saying, it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.”
“I don’t care who you know; no one has a key to this apartment but me.”
“Obviously, my dear, you’re wrong.”
The smugness rasped on Candra’s nerves. She let her gaze drift downward, and put a hint of contempt in her tone. “Are you going to a costume party, or have you mistaken the date for Halloween?”
“I’m not the one who’s made a mistake. You are.”
There didn’t seem to be any point in pretending ignorance. Candra was too tired and too angry to try, anyway. “This is because of the money. Look, it isn’t personal. I need money, a lot of it, and this is the only way I can think of to get it. It’s a one-time thing.”
Her assurance seemed to pass unheard. “Did you really think I’d let you wreck what I’ve worked so hard for?”
“You knew what you were getting into, so don’t play the victim.”
“What I know is that if there’s a victim, I won’t be it.” The words were soft, almost serene. The approach was not.
Suddenly alarmed, Candra backed up. “Get away from me! Get out of my apartment.”
“You aren’t giving the orders now, darling.” A gloved hand lifted, and in it was a long-bladed kitchen knife.
Candra made an instant decision, feinting to her left as if she would make a break for the door. Immediately she cut back right and dived for the telephone. It wasn’t a cordless; she had gone for style over convenience and chosen an ornate European desk model. She had time to punch in the 9 before the blade slashed downward, catching her on the arm. She screamed and threw herself backward, catching her right heel on the leg of the telephone table and sprawling on her back. She rolled, still screaming, and managed to gain her feet before the knife plunged into her back. An agony that was both icy and burning-hot speared through her, almost making her faint.
Desperately, her vision dimming, Candra threw herself forward, away from that searing blade. “No no no,” she heard herself babbling. She lurched to the side, trying to throw herself over the back of the sofa to gain some time, but she was clumsy from shock. Her elegant high heel caught on the carpet and her ankle turned with a sickening wrench that almost overrode the pain in her back. The shoe twisted off, and she fell on her hands and knees. Another tongue of cold fire pierced her, below her right shoulder blade. And again, farther down in her side.
The pain convulsed her, drew her body tight with agony. She couldn’t even scream. Her mouth gaped open in a silent battle for air, but her lungs refused to cooperate. Somehow she rolled again, gained her hands and knees, and crawled. The effort was superhuman, and yet she knew it wasn’t enough. She knew.
She toppled over onto the thick carpet and feebly kicked out. Through a dark haze she saw the blade flashing down again, and she managed to raise her left arm. She felt the shock of the blow, but no pain. Then there was another thud, this time in her chest; her ribs gave under the force of the impact. Another blow, into the soft flesh of her belly.
She gasped, flopping on the carpet like a landed fish. Time slowed to a feeble crawl, or perhaps it only seemed as if a long time passed. The terrible pain ebbed, to be replaced by a growing lassitude. Something must have happened to all the lamps; all she could see was a faint glimmer of light coming through the darkness. She needed to move . . . The knife . . . but the knife wasn’t there anymore. She could just lie there, in the dark, feeling an odd coldness spread through her body, feeling her heartbeat slow. . . slow. . . slow. . . stop.
Her assailant watched the moment of death. The disgusting release of bladder and bowels was somehow pleasing; the bitch deserved to be found in her own embarrassing waste.
The scene had already been set. The apartment had been thoroughly searched, but no interesting packet had turned up, damn it. That was a problem, a big one. It was a good thing they had been smart enough to take precautions.
Thank God for the phone call warning that Candra had left the party early and was on her way home, otherwise the outcome could have been very different. What money Candra kept in the apartment, as well as her jewelry, had been gathered. The refrigerator door was open, which would suggest a burglar had been in the kitchen when Candra surprised him. That would also explain the use of one of the knives from the expensive set Candra kept next to the cutting board: a weapon of opportunity.
The gloved fingers opened, let the knife drop to the floor beside the body. The knife belonged here; it couldn’t be tied to anyone but the victim.
A screwdriver was taken from a hip pocket. A few minutes at the door with the tool made the lock look as if it had been carefully jimmied. No real damage done, not enough for a woman coming home to a dimly lit hallway to notice, but the police certainly would. An unforced entry would mean she either opened the door herself, which would imply she knew the person, or that a key had been used. A forced entry would indicate a stranger.
The money and the jewelry—mostly jewelry, very little cash—were in a small black bag. That bag would be put in a very, very safe place—just in case it were ever needed.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Sweeney left her bed a little after three A.M. She made the trip through the dark apartment without stumbling or hesitating. Her expression was calmly distant; she scarcely blinked. Her heartbeat was slow and regular.
When she reached the unfinished painting, still propped on the easel, she stood before it for a long time with her head slightly tilted, as if listening to some unseen voice.
Her movements were slow, dreamy, as she mixed a rich brown pigment and then darkened it with black. When the shade was that of dark, lustrous mink, she began to paint, her precise brushstrokes re-creating a fan of dark hair, spread in disarray across an oatmeal carpet.
The face was
much more difficult, the expression not one she had ever seen. The late summer dawn crept closer as she painstakingly filled in a lovely face that had turned ashen, dark eyes open and glazed in death, lipsticked mouth slack. The studio was already filling with light when she methodically put her brushes into a can of turpentine, capped the tubes of paint, and returned to bed as quietly as she had left it.
The sun was streaming brightly in the window when Sweeney woke. She was huddled in a tight ball, her arms wrapped around herself in an unconscious effort to conserve heat. The chill was incredible, colder and deeper than it had ever been before. She was shaking so violently the bed trembled.
Richard. She needed Richard.
Whimpering, she managed to crawl to the side of the bed. The red numerals on the digital clock were dimmed by the bright light, but they were undoubtedly a one, a zero, a three, and a four. Ten-thirty-four.
Why hadn’t Richard called?
He should have called. If she didn’t call him, then he called her. How fast their routine had been established! She had come to rely on him even faster. His absence shook her, rattled a newborn security that she was just beginning to believe.
“Richard,” she whispered, as if she could call him to her. Her voice was thin and weak.
Don’t panic, don’t panic, she thought. She could do this. She wasn’t likely to die, she reassured herself; she just thought that she would. Whatever weird rules governed this psychic stuff, she had never heard that practicing it killed off the practitioner. Not that she’d had time to research clairvoyance or anything like that; she had concentrated on ghosts. Maybe a psychic only got one shot, like a male praying mantis.
Call Richard. Maybe he overslept. He had probably been out late on that business dinner.
She reached for the bedside phone, but as she did a sickening certainty shot through her. The painting. She was beginning to notice a trend: the more work she did, the colder she was when the reaction hit her. This was the coldest she had been.
During the night, she had put a face on the victim.
Urgency drove her to her feet. She stumbled to the studio, her coordination slow and clumsy. She had to know, she had to know now. Every second could count. Richard thought she did the work after the fact, but deep inside she wasn’t certain, and that uncertainty kept her feet moving, even though they felt as if they didn’t belong to her and didn’t go quite where she wanted to place them. She wobbled across the room, wincing at the effort it took to move, at the deep internal aches that were beginning to make themselves felt.
Then she reached the painting, and wished she hadn’t. She hung in front of it, blood roaring in her ears, shaking so hard she clenched her teeth to keep from breaking them.
Candra.
She stared at the canvas until her eyes hurt, hoping the features would suddenly rearrange themselves into someone else’s. She was mistaken. She was seeing only a superficial likeness, and because Candra was so prominent in her life these days, naturally she jumped to that conclusion.
But the face was eerily accurate, with the photographic quality of a Gerhard Richter painting. And Sweeney knew she was very, very good at portraits.
Candra.
Oh God, oh God.
She didn’t know Candra’s number. It would be unlisted, because Candra had once said she never allowed her number to be published. The gallery. She should be at the gallery, and Sweeney knew that number.
She made it to the living room and the cordless phone. But the phone rang and rang, and finally an answering machine picked up. Frustrated, Sweeney disconnected. Her hands shook so violently she dropped the phone, and when she bent to pick it up, her strength seemed to give out and she just kept going, down to the floor.
She landed on the phone, a hard plastic corner digging into her ribs. Groaning, she managed to sit up and cradled the phone in her lap while she punched in Richard’s number.
One of his assistants answered, her voice strangely muted.
“This is S-Sweeney. Is Richard in?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Sweeney, but he won’t be in today.” She hesitated, then said, “Mrs. Worth—Candra—has been killed.”
“No,” Sweeney moaned, almost weeping.
“The housekeeper found the . . . the body when she arrived this morning. Mr. Worth is with the police right now.”
She was crying after all, Sweeney discovered. She gulped, and in a thick voice said, “Tell Richard I c-called.”
“I will, Ms. Sweeney, as soon as possible.”
So Richard had been right; she couldn’t help, couldn’t stop anything. Sobbing, Sweeney rested her head on her drawn-up knees. What good was any of this, then, if she couldn’t do anything about the horrors she painted? Why suffer this savage chill, when there was no opportunity to keep bad things from happening? There should be a payback, something to make this pain worthwhile.
Her leg muscles suddenly protested their prolonged tension and knotted into cramps so vicious she cried out. Panting, crying, she dug the heels of her hands into her thighs and stroked toward her knees, trying to knead the muscles into relaxing. Over and over she did it, but her muscles seemed to knot again just behind the stroking motion.
Once she had seen a trainer rub a cramp out of the calf of a football player. He had used both hands in a back-and-forth motion. She held her breath to steady herself and placed both hands on one thigh. She could feel the knotted muscle between her palms. A half-cry of pain burst from her throat as she began that brisk washing motion, but within seconds the pain began to ebb, at least in that thigh.
With that leg finally relaxed, she did the same thing to her right thigh. That cramp was more stubborn, returning as soon as she stopped the massage. She kept at it for five minutes and finally her thigh relaxed. Her entire body felt like a balloon with a leak; she toppled over, going boneless, without the strength to sit up any longer.
Heat. She had to have heat. Richard wouldn’t be coming. He was still legally Candra’s husband; he would be giving information to the police, filling out reports, probably identifying Candra’s body, making arrangements. Sweeney had his cell phone number, but calling him was out of the question. She had to take care of this herself.
The electric blanket wouldn’t help. Hot coffee would help a little, but not enough. Body heat was moist heat, because the body was mostly water. That was what she needed: moist heat. The shower wouldn’t be enough. She needed to immerse herself in hot water.
She crawled into the bathroom, dragging herself like a wounded animal. Her arms and legs barely functioned, and she could feel her thoughts slowing.
She never took a tub bath; she always showered. She stared at the lever that closed the drain for several long moments before she figured out how to work it, though of course she knew. The cold was making her stupid.
She turned the hot water on full blast and watched steam begin to fill the air. A remnant of common sense kicked in, and she turned on the cold water, too. If she got the water too hot, she would scald herself, and even if it wasn’t hot enough to scald, it could still kill; a lot of people had died in hot tubs when prolonged immersion caused heart failure. She had to be careful.
She put her hand under the faucet, and blessed heat poured over her fingers. It felt so good she put the other hand under the faucet, too, lying with her body draped over the edge of the tub because she didn’t have the strength to sit up.
When the water was deep enough to reach the overflow drain, she turned off the faucet and crawled into the tub without bothering to take off her pajamas. She almost howled as she sank into the hot water, the heat was so intense. Her toes throbbed. She stared at her bare feet through the clear water; they looked white with cold, almost shrunken.
She sank down until her chin touched the surface of the water. Tendrils of hair floated around her shoulders. Her trembling sent little wavelets sloshing to-and-fro. “Please please please,” she heard herself saying, over and over. Please let this work. If it didn’t, she would ha
ve to call 911. Probably she should already have done it, but a part of her just couldn’t believe a chill was serious.
She began to warm. It was a gradual process, the heat of the water transferring to her flesh. The shivering began to dwindle, so that it wasn’t ceaseless, letting her relax between the episodes. Exhausted, she laid her head against the sloping back of the tub. Always before, when she was warm, she got sleepy, and the colder she had been the sleepier she got. She would have to be careful not to fall asleep in the tub.
The water began to cool. Her fingers and toes grew pink and wrinkled. She let out some of the water, then turned on the hot water to refill the tub, but she forced herself to sit up. The danger of falling asleep was a real one, and so was staying in the water too long. Just a few more minutes, she promised herself.
Sometime during those few minutes she began crying again. Like most people, Candra had been neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Until she had seen Sweeney and Richard together, she had always been warm and friendly. Candra’s support had meant a lot to Sweeney’s career.
Sweeney regretted the way they had parted. She didn’t, couldn’t, regret her involvement with Richard, but the timing could have been better. If the divorce had been final, if Candra hadn’t been bitter about the settlement—There were so many things to which she could tack an “if,” and not one of them could be changed.
She didn’t dare stay in the water any longer. She opened the drain and hauled herself, trembling, to a standing position. Her muscles felt like boiled noodles. She removed her dripping pajamas, peeling them off and hanging them over the shower curtain rod to drip. Toweling off required immense effort. She finally had to sit down on the toilet lid to finish drying her legs and feet.
She blotted the dripping ends of her hair. She had to go back to bed, at least for a while, but she didn’t want to do it with wet hair. That seemed to be asking for another chill. Her eyelids drooped, and she sagged sideways, catching herself at the last moment.
She couldn’t wait for her hair to dry, either. She could always cut it off, she thought, and then shook her head as a measure of common sense kicked in again. She plucked a dry towel from the stack and wrapped it around her head, tucking all the wet ends up under the cloth. That was the best she could do.