"Betty!" Dane said.
"Where's her room?"
"Fourth level."
"Let's go."
The door opened at their approach, though not fast enough, forcing them to crouch and scuttle under it. They burst into the hallway and ran to the nearest elevator, found that it was in use, turned to a lift farther along the corridor and leaped inside of that. Dane punched a button on the control panel. The doors clapped shut, and the elevator dropped forty feet in one sickening lurch, grooved into horizontal rails and carried them sideways for a moment before opening its doors again on the main corridor of the fourth level. They stepped into the hall, listened, heard nothing.
That struck St. Cyr as being the worst thing they could have heard — anything but silence.
"This way," Dane said.
He led St. Cyr to a side corridor where they came upon Hirschel, who was pounding at a concealed door and calling Betty's name.
"What happened?" the cyberdetective asked.
The hunter shook his head. "I was going into my room upstairs when I heard her scream; knew immediately who it was. I just got here a moment ago."
"Is there any way to open the door?" St. Cyr asked.
Dane said, "We have private voice-coded locks. But Teddy can get in if he has to."
"Call him, then."
"No need, sir," Teddy said close behind them. He had drifted down the corridor without making a sound. "If you'll stand back, I'll get you in." When they followed his instructions, he slid to a point just under the recessed slot that marked the entrance, and he emitted a high, keening tone that was almost beyond the range of human hearing. The door slid open at this unsyllabled command.
At the far end of the corridor Jubal Alderban appeared, dressed in pajamas and a robe, his head bent forward and his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears, not running and yet not taking his time, either. He seemed afraid to react — as if, running, he would generate the reason he had to run, and if walking, he would somehow anger the Fates by taking their portents too casually. Alicia followed him, plainly tired, resigned.
"Keep them out of her room," St. Cyr told Hirschel.
He and Dane went into the suite, where only a table lamp burned near a writing desk, leaving most of the room in deep shadow.
"Betty?" Dane called.
She did not reply.
"The patio," St. Cyr told him, indicating the open glass doors.
Dane started forward.
"Wait!" St. Cyr dipped into his chamois holster and drew his pistol. "You stay well behind me."
"My sister has just—"
"Stay behind me," St. Cyr said, his voice loud but brittle, no tone to debate. "I'm not one of the family, not marked like the rest of you seem to be."
Reluctantly, Dane obeyed, falling into step behind the detective as St. Cyr crossed the room and stepped through the double glass doors. As he placed one foot on the patio, the detective turned and shoved him backwards into Betty's room, almost knocking him down.
"What's the idea—"
"She's dead," St. Cyr told him. He blocked the patio entrance.
"Betty?"
"Yes."
Dane tried to say something, moved his lips without making a sound.
"No need for you to see her."
Slowly the boy's face dissolved, working its way from fear into horror, slowly through the horror into an emotion that would last, into grief. In a few minutes, it would not be a face any longer, just a pale wet mass of doughy flesh.
St. Cyr told him to get the police and to make it quick.
Dane turned slowly and, numbed, not nearly so agile as he had been only a short while ago, started for the door.
St. Cyr added: "And tell everyone to stay together, right in the corridor outside. No one is to wander off by himself. If Tina hasn't heard the commotion by now, two of you go and fetch her back here."
Dane nodded and went through the open doorway, weaving from side to side; he bawled something unintelligible to the others.
St. Cyr turned away from him and walked onto the patio again, careful not to touch anything or to step in the blood. He looked at the corpse and fought down the nausea it caused. Several very sharp tines — claws? — had caught her at the base of her slim neck, just above the collarbone, gouged deep and then ripped straight up with awful force, nearly tearing her head loose.
Everywhere: blood. Blood looked black in the darkness.
At the patio railing, not daring to lean against the bars for fear of smearing some trace of the killer, St. Cyr looked down on the well-kept lawn, at the lumps of shrubbery, the well-groomed trees and the hedge-bordered flagstone walkways. It was all so manicured, so still and perfect in outline, that it might have been made of wax, a stage setting. He looked beyond the boundaries of the estate, at the rangier valley floor where all manner of scrub grew, beyond that at the foothills and the mountains in the distance, the peaks from which that afternoon's dark thunderhead clouds had come. So far as he could see in the dim light of the two tiny moons, nothing moved in that adumbrative landscape.
He knelt beside the corpse and peered into the wide, glassy eyes that stared at the patio ceiling. Her fixed stare reminded him of the trophies on Hirschel's wall, and from there it was an easy second step to visualize Betty's head ranked among the others, posed between the snarling, wild-eyed boar heads…
Suddenly, thanks to the bio-computer, St. Cyr recalled that the suite had been in darkness when he and Dane had first entered — still was, for that matter. Taking his gun out of the holster again, he stepped off the patio into the sitting room again, called up the overhead lights, which reacted to vocal stimuli. In two minutes he had been in every closet in all three rooms and bath, and he had not encountered anyone.
He put his gun away once more.
He had known it would not be that easy.
Dane appeared in the doorway, still holding himself together, much to St. Cyr's surprise. "I called the police."
"How long until they'll be here?"
"Always been fast — other times. No more than twenty minutes by helicopter."
"Tina?"
"She's in the corridor, with everyone else."
"Keep her company."
Dane went away, and no one else tried to enter. Alicia Alderban was sobbing loudly, and Jubal seemed to be trying to console her. Both of them sounded distant, faint. If Betty had been killed indoors, rather than on the open patio, the noise would never have carried far enough to alert anyone. The sound-proofing truly was excellent.
St. Cyr pulled a chair up next to the open glass doors and sat down to wait for the authorities. He did not join the family because he wanted time to think, to sort out these recent developments and decide what they meant
One thing: Dane must be innocent, for he was with St. Cyr when Betty was killed. Forget him as a suspect, then.
Do not completely forget him, the bio-computer qualified.
And why not? He could not possibly have torn the girl's throat out; he could not have been two places at once.
He could be an accomplice. If two persons are involved, it could have been Dane's responsibility to see that you were occupied during the murder — and to be certain that you quickly identified the screamer. Without him, you would not have reached her room as quickly, for you do not know the way without a map. He may have been assigned to lead you to the scene.
To what purpose?
The bio-computer shell, still tapped into his spine, its gossamer fingers still splayed throughout his flesh, offered no further postulation.
St. Cyr thought, forming the segments of the thought rigidly as if trying to convince himself more than anyone else: Dane would not have any reason to lead me to Betty's room if he were mixed up in the murders.