Eyes of Prey Read Free Page A

strange thumping as he toweled himself after his shower. The sound was unnatural, violent, arrhythmic, but it never crossed his mind thatStephanie had been attacked, was dying there on the kitchen floor. She might be moving something, one of her heavy antique chairs maybe, or perhaps she couldn’t get a jar open and was rapping the lid on a kitchen counter—he really didn’t know what he thought.
    He wrapped a towel around his waist and went to look. He walked straight into the nightmare: A man with a beast’s face, hovering over Stephanie, the broken bottle in his hand like a dagger, rimed with blood. Stephanie’s face . . . What had he told her, there in bed, an hour before? You’re a beautiful woman, he’d said, awkward at this, touching her lips with his fingertip, so beautiful . . . .
    He’d seen her on the floor and he’d turned and run. What else could he do? one part of his mind asked. The lower part, the lizard part that went back to the caves, said: Coward.
    He’d run up the stairs, flying with fear, reaching to slam the bedroom door behind him, to lock himself away from the horror, when he heard the troll slam out through the breezeway door. He snatched up the phone, punched numbers, a 9, a 1. But even as he punched the 1, his quick mind was turning. He stopped. Listened. No neighbors, no calls in the night. No sirens. Nothing. Looked at the phone, then finally set it back down. Maybe . . .
    He pulled on his pants.
    He cracked the door, tense, waiting for attack. Nothing. Down the stairs, moving quietly in his bare feet. Nothing. Wary, moving slowly, into the kitchen. Stephanie sprawled there, on her back, beyond help: her face pulped, her whole head misshapen from the beating. Blood pooled on the tile around her; the killer had stepped in it, and he’d left tracks, one edge of a gym shoe and a heel, back toward the door.
    Stephanie Bekker’s lover reached down to touch her neck, to feel for a pulse, but at the last minute, repelled, he pulled his hand back. She was dead. He stood for a moment, swept by a premonition that the cops were on the sidewalk, werecoming up the sidewalk, were reaching toward the front door . . . . They would find him here, standing over the body like the innocent man in a Perry Mason television show, point a finger at him, accuse him of murder.
    He turned his head toward the front door. Nothing. Not a sound.
    He went back up the stairs, his mind working furiously. Stephanie had sworn she’d told nobody about their affair. Her close friends were with the university, in the art world or in the neighborhood: confiding details of an affair in any of those places would set off a tidal wave of gossip. They both knew that and knew it would be ruinous.
    He would lose his position in a scandal. Stephanie, for her part, was deathly afraid of her husband: what he would do, she couldn’t begin to predict. The affair had been stupid, but neither had been able to resist it. His marriage was dying, hers was long dead.
    He choked, controlled it, choked again. He hadn’t wept since childhood, couldn’t weep now, but spasms of grief, anger and fear squeezed his chest. Control. He started dressing, was buttoning his shirt when his stomach rebelled, and he dashed to the bathroom and vomited. He knelt in front of the toilet for several minutes, dry heaves tearing at his stomach muscles until tears came to his eyes. Finally, the spasms subsiding, he stood up and finished dressing, except for his shoes. He must be quiet, he thought.
    He did a careful inventory: billfold, keys, handkerchief, coins. Necktie, jacket. Coat and gloves. He forced himself to sit on the bed and mentally retrace his steps through the house. What had he touched? The front doorknob. The table in the kitchen, the spoon and bowl he’d used to eat her cherry cobbler. The knobs on the bedroom and bathroom doors, the water faucets, the toilet seat . . .
    He got a pair of Stephanie’s cotton underpants from her