There was nothin' I could do,” he aid miserably.
“I know,” she said.
“Nothin' at all. He run in front of me. Didn't look. Nothin' I could do.”
At first Rachael had difficulty breathing. Then she realized she was absentmindedly scrubbing her blood-covered hand on her sundress, and the sight of those damp rusty-scarlet stains on the pastel-blue cotton made her breath come quicker, too quick. Hyperventilating, she slumped against the Subaru, closed her eyes, hugged herself, and clenched her teeth. She was determined not to faint. She strove to hold in each shallow breath as long as possible, and the very process of changing the rhythm of her breathing was a calming influence.
Around her she heard the voices of motorists who had left their cars in the snarl of stalled traffic. Some of them asked her if she was all right, and she nodded, others asked if she needed medical attention, and she shook her head — no.
If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust beneath his heel. It had been a long time since she'd even liked him. Moments before the accident, he'd revealed a pure and terrifying hatred of her, so she supposed she should have been utterly unmoved by his death. Yet she was badly shaken. As she hugged herself and shivered, she was aware of a cold emptiness within, a hollow sense of loss that she could not quite understand. Not grief. Just… loss.
She heard sirens in the distance.
Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop entirely.
The sirens grew nearer, louder.
She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed clean and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day, and in its wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast that reminded her more of sulfur than of honey.
Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police sedan approached along the northbound lanes.
“Rachael?”
She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric's personal attorney, with whom she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows that were now drawn together in a single bar.
“One of my associates… returning to the office… saw it happen,” Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me. My God.”
Yes,” she said numbly.
“My God, Rachael.”
“Yes.”
“It's too… crazy.
“Yes.”
“But…”
“Yes,” she said.
And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she had told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric's fortune but would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage, the entire thirty million plus his currently unvalued stock in the company would almost certainly, by default, come into her sole possession.
2
SPOOKED
The hot, dry air was filled with the crackle of police radios, a metallic chorus of dispatchers' voices, and the smell of sun-softened asphalt.
The paramedics could do nothing for Eric Leben except convey his corpse to the city morgue, where it would lie in a refrigerated room until the medical examiner had time to attend to it. Because Eric had been killed in an accident, the law required an autopsy.
“The body should be available for release in twenty-four hours,” one of the policemen had told Rachael.
While they had filled out a brief report, she had sat in the back of one of the patrol cars. Now she was standing in the sun again.
She no longer felt sick. Just numb.
They loaded the draped cadaver into the van. In spots, the shroud was dark with blood.
Herbert Tuleman felt obliged to comfort Rachael and repeatedly suggested that she return with him to his law office. “You need to sit down, get a grip on yourself,” he said, one hand on her shoulder, his kindly face wrinkled with concern.
“I'm all right, Herb. Really, I am. Just a little shaken.”
“Some cognac. That's what you need. I've got a bottle of Remy Martin in the office bar.”
“No, thank you. I guess it'll be up to me to handle the funeral, so I've got things to attend to.”
The two paramedics closed the rear doors on the van and walked unhurriedly to the front of the vehicle. No need for sirens and flashing red emergency beacons. Speed would not help Eric now.
Herb said, “If you don't want brandy, then perhaps coffee. Or just come and sit with me for a while. I don't think you should get behind a wheel right away.”
Rachael touched his leathery cheek affectionately. He was a weekend sailor, and his skin had been toughened and creased less by age than by his time upon the sea. “I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I'm fine. I'm almost ashamed of how well I'm taking it. I mean… I feel no grief at all.”
He held her hand. “Don't be ashamed. He was my client, Rachael, so I'm aware that he was… a difficult man.”
“Yes.”
“He gave you no reason to grieve.”
“It still seems wrong to feel… so little. Nothing.”
“He wasn't just a difficult man, Rachael. He was also a fool for not recognizing what a jewel he had in you and for not doing whatever was necessary to make you want to stay with him.”
“You're a dear.”
“It's true. If it weren't very true, I wouldn't speak of a client like this, not even when he was… deceased.”
The van, bearing the corpse, pulled away from the accident scene. Paradoxically, there was a cold, wintry quality to the way the summer sun glimmered in the white paint and in the polished chrome bumpers, making it appear as if Eric were being borne away in a vehicle carved from ice.
Herb walked with her, through the gathered onlookers, past his office building, to her red 560 SL. He said, “I could have someone drive Eric's car back to his house, put it in the garage, and leave the keys at your place.”
“That would be helpful,” she said.
When Rachael was behind the wheel, belted in, Herb leaned down to the window and said, “We'll have to talk soon about the estate.”
“In a few days,” she said.
“And the company.”
“Things will run themselves for a few days, won't they?”
“Certainly. It's Monday, so shall we say you'll come see me Friday morning? That gives you four days to… adjust.”
“All right.”
“Ten o'clock?”
“Fine.”
“You sure you're okay?”
“Yes,” she said, and she drove home without incident, though she felt as though she were dreaming.
She lived in a quaint three-bedroom bungalow in Placentia. The neighborhood was solidly middle-class and friendly, and the house had loads of charm: French windows, window seats, coffered ceilings, a used-brick fireplace, and more. She'd made the down payment and moved a year ago, when she left Eric. Her house was far different from the place in Villa Park, which was set on an acre of manicured grounds and which boasted every luxury; however, she liked her cozy bungalow better than his Spanish-modern mansion, not merely because the scale seemed more human here but also because the Placentia house was not tainted by countless bad memories as was the house in Villa Park.
She took off her bloodstained blue sundress. She washed her hands and face, brushed her hair, and reapplied what little makeup she wore. Gradually the mundane task of grooming herself had a calming effect. Her hands stopped trembling. Although a hollow coldness remained at the core of her, she stopped shivering.