“Save a lot of back-and-forth,” she agreed. She hurried across the road and started down the driveway.
“Doesn’t she need my key?” Deana asked.
“She can call from the car.” Mace put away his knife. Getting down on his hands and knees, he lowered his head almost to the pavement and looked under the car. Then he stood up. He brushed gravel off his palms.
“What now?” Leigh asked.
“We wait for the lab people to do their work. It won’t take long to find out whether the blood down here matches up with the Powers boy.”
“Shouldn’t somebody search Del Mar?” Leigh asked.
“This car has been here for hours. He’s long gone. But he left the car behind, and that was a big mistake. It’ll help us nail him.”
“It’s probably stolen,” Deana said.
“Undoubtedly. But we’ll get some physical evidence from it. Maybe fingerprints, maybe hair samples, maybe fabric particles. When we run down the car owner, we might find out if he witnessed the theft—if that’s what it was. All this will take time, though. I don’t want you two staying in the house.”
Leigh felt her stomach flip as if the street had suddenly dropped from under her feet.
Mace looked from Leigh to Deana. His gaze settled on Leigh’s eyes. “I don’t want to alarm you, but…”
“You’re going to do it anyway.”
He smiled a bit. “Afraid so. You know what it means, of course, the car being here.”
“Exactly what does it mean?” Leigh heard a tremor in her voice.
“It means, A, the killer knows where Deana lives, and B, he paid her a visit.”
“Why?”
“Unfinished business.”
“Jesus,” Deana muttered.
“He was here,” Leigh said, “so why didn’t he do something?”
“We don’t know what he did or didn’t do.”
“I can think of a couple of things he didn’t do,” Deana said, and tried for a smile. The corner of her mouth trembled for an instant. She licked her lips, wiped them with the back of her hand.
“He might have left the car here as a message,” Mace suggested. “A warning that he can get to you if he wants. Or maybe he’s toying with you.”
“Toying?”
“This guy is not a normal person. He’s probably totally different from anyone in your experience.”
“You mean like a psycho?” Deana asked.
“That’s what I mean.”
“Move over, Norman Bates.”
“So there’s no telling what he might do.”
“You think he left it here just to scare us?” Leigh asked.
“Anything’s possible. But…”
“They’re on the way,” Mattie said, striding across the street.
“What were you about to say?” Leigh asked Mace.
“I think you should check into a motel, unless you have friends or relatives who wouldn’t mind putting you up for a while.”
“That isn’t what you were going to say,” Leigh challenged him. “It was something about the car and why it’s here. To scare us or what?”
“It would just be a guess.”
“I want to hear it.”
“All right.” He looked uncomfortable. He lowered his eyes for a moment, then met Leigh’s gaze. “That unfinished business I mentioned earlier? I think he came here intending to finish it. Last night. But something went wrong. The car’s still here. I suspect the reason it’s here is because it quit on him. He realized he couldn’t count on it for his getaway. That’s why he didn’t go through with his plan.”
NINE
“Do you have a plastic bag large enough for this?” Mace asked, looking down at the thick edition of the Sunday newspaper that lay flat on the stoop, tied with string.
“A wastebasket liner?” Leigh asked.
“That’d be perfect.”
“You want to get one for us?” she asked her daughter. The girl went to the door.
“Why do you need the paper?” Leigh asked.
“There’s a good chance your visitor put it here.” He stepped onto the grass, and Leigh followed him along the front of the house. “Maybe he was good enough to leave us some prints.”
“Can you get fingerprints off newspapers?”
“These days, you can get them off almost anything. Our lab people have chemicals that interact with the body oils left by… Look here.” Stopping, he pointed down at the flower bed. The soft soil had been mashed down by shoes.
A glance at Leigh’s feet convinced him that she hadn’t made these impressions. Her feet were too small. And the daughter, who was only a bit taller than Leigh, probably didn’t have feet this large, either.
The footprints led through the flower bed to the guest-room window.
Mace looked at Leigh. She was standing rigid, gazing at the ground, the fingertips of one hand stroking her lower lip.
He felt sorry for her. He could imagine what she must be feeling—scared and vulnerable. The bastard had actually crept right up to her house last night while she and her daughter were inside, maybe fast asleep. Maybe he’d even seen them.
From where Mace stood, he couldn’t spot any damage to the window or frame. “It doesn’t look as if he tried to break in.”
“But he could’ve,” Leigh said, “couldn’t he?”
“It wouldn’t have been too difficult.”
Leigh shook her head slowly. “It’s just getting worse. What do you… Do you think he wants to kill her?”
“Either that or take her. I think I mentioned Friday night that he might have some kind of obsession. Maybe he wants her.”
“God,” Leigh muttered.
“Don’t worry. We’ll see that he doesn’t get another chance.”
They both turned toward Deana as the girl approached with a white plastic bag. “What’s up?” she asked. “Did you find something?”
“He was here,” Leigh said. She pointed to the ground.
Deana looked at the footprints. “Oh, wonderful,” she muttered.
“We should be able to get a good estimate of his height and weight from these,” Mace said.
“Not to mention his shoe size,” Deana added in a quiet voice. She didn’t like the way things were turning out.
Mace led the way to the stoop. Taking the bag from Deana, he crouched over the newspaper and carefully slipped his fingers under one of its strings without touching the “Blondie” comic strip beneath. When he raised it, the paper tilted.
Out of its folds slipped a small, white knob, maybe a bone or a polished rock. It hung at the edge of the newspaper, held in place by a rawhide strip that ran through its center and stayed trapped inside the paper.
With a ballpoint from his shirt pocket, Mace hooked the rawhide and eased it out.
The thong was knotted at its ends. It swung from the tip of his pen like a strange, primitive necklace.
“Mom!”
Mace looked, saw Leigh with her eyes rolled upward, her knees folding. He sprang at her, thrust his hands under her armpits, and slowed her fall as she sank to the stoop, unconscious.
TEN
When she got home late that afternoon, she had a story ready: A purse snatcher had grabbed her shoulder bag when she came out of the movie theater on Market Street, she had fought him off, and that’s how the sleeve of her granny dress got torn.
One look at her parents and Leigh knew that the story wouldn’t wash. They were standing in the living room like a couple of mannequins left behind in a hurry—Dad sideways near the window, head down and turned her way, one hand on the back of his neck, Mom in front of the fireplace, facing her, the fingers of both hands mashing her lower face. Mom’s eyes were red, accusing. Dad’s eyes were haggard, blank.