She made a strangled sound, an attempted scream that never rose higher than her severed windpipe. A bright splash of blood decorated the alley wall, the dirty pavement, but Hare, strategically positioned at her back, was left unsoiled. The arterial spray geysered briefly, then slowed to a dribble as her heart gave out. She went limp in his arms.

No one had seen or heard. He could take his time with her, unsex her wholly, explore her inmost parts.

He lowered her to the ground and knelt, throwing back her skirt. He was surprised to see she wore an undergarment of some kind. Most whores did not. Looking closer, he saw that it was no garment, merely a wadded rag, stuffed inside her private parts like a cork in a bottle. He pulled at it, and it came free, clotted with blood. For a baffled moment he wondered how a wound to her throat could have made her bleed down there. But of course it couldn’t have. This was menstrual blood.

He knew something of a woman’s tidal changes, though the subject was never discussed in polite society. Vaguely he knew that Maddie wore some such garment as this for a few days each month. Naturally he had not laid eyes on her in that condition. He was careful never to see his wife in any state of undress, a practice greatly simplified by their separate bedrooms.

Now he understood why the john hadn’t wanted this one. Having discovered she was bleeding, he’d given her the brush-off. Normally a whore would not proffer her services when she was bloody, but this one must have needed the money more than most.

Curious, he unfolded the rag for a better look at what it contained.

So much blood.

The blood of her reproductive parts, the blood that would nourish new life in the womb. Her lifeblood, far more so than her heart’s blood, because this was the seedbed of the race.

A mother’s blood.

He allowed himself to touch it, feel its wetness. It tingled on his fingers’ ends.

His dreams came back to him, the dreams that started it all. In the summer of ’88 he was plagued by dreams of dark red blood spurting like ichor from between women’s thighs, dousing him, staining his hands....

On impulse he lathered his hands with the rag, swabbing the rich scarlet elixir over his fingers and knuckles and palms. He poked inside her and his fingers came out steeped in blood. He inhaled its odor. Life in its chemical essence. The mystery of creation, the secret power of the female. Nutritive, generative, miraculous.

He knelt for a long time, hands dripping, the knife forgotten on the pavement. Finally he roused himself, aware of a brightening, the arrival of dawn.

He looked at his hands, coated in gore. A line of Shakespeare recurred to him: And almost thence my nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

Quickly he wiped his hands on her clothes, recovered his knife, and escaped from the alley, having left her body intact and undefiled.

A few blocks away he caught a Red Car trolley. He headed north, then east, changing cars more than once. In South Pasadena he got off and completed his journey on foot. The sun was up, and no doubt his wife had risen with it.

They lived in a rented house, a situation that was merely temporary. Business reversals had delayed his acquisition of a home of their own. For the moment the little bungalow with its two bedrooms and its small garden would have to do. Maddie seemed pleased with it, even if she was pleased with nothing else.

He reached the house and entered through the front door. In the kitchen he found Maddie frying eggs on the stove. She glanced at him, her face registering a mixture of regret and contempt.

“Out tomcatting again,” she said. It was not a question.

He stopped a few feet away. He stared in silent fascination until she turned.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Are you bleeding?”

“What did you say?”

“Is it your time of the month?”

“You can’t ask such a thing. It’s horrid.”

“Just tell me.”

“I certainly will not.” She turned back to her eggs on the stove. “The very idea. You must be sotted, as usual—”

He seized her from behind, as he had seized the Chinese whore, and tilted up her head so her eyes stared into his.

“Are you?”

She hitched in a gasp. “Yes, if you must know.”

It was what he wanted to hear. What he had hoped for, fairly prayed for, throughout his ride home.

He threw her to the floor, straddling her, unhooking her nightgown, his fingers fumbling until in frustration he tore the damned thing off. He removed the sanitary towel she wore in lieu of a rag and cast it aside, smelling blood, the intoxicating odor of it, the scent of birth and life.

She chattered in hysteria. “My God, what are you doing, what are you doing—”

“Taking you,” he grunted, “as my wife.”

He thrust inside, his manhood spearing her. She cried out, a sound that was very nearly a scream, and he shot his hot seed in a surge of painful pleasure that left him spent.

He pulled free. She trembled all over, dazed and scared.

“There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now we’re joined in holy union.”

His toothache, he observed, had entirely disappeared.

thirty-four

Jennifer stood in a corner, her eyes closed against the bedlam around her, aware of nothing but pain.

With the building manager’s cooperation, a vacant apartment two doors down from Maura’s unit had been commandeered as a command post and now hosted a swarm of cops, uniformed and plainclothes. Forensic technicians worked the crime scene. The assistant district attorney had shown up, and a pathologist was on the way. The captain of the Pacific Area station was here, as was his overboss, the commander of Operations-West.

Arriving personnel were logged in by a patrol officer posted at the elevator. As residents drifted home from work, they were intercepted by detectives in the lobby and questioned. The tenants on Maura’s floor had been kept away from their homes for the time being.

Everything was being handled according to procedure. She might have found some reassurance in that fact. At other crime scenes, she would listen to the chatter of police radios and take comfort in the imposition of order on chaos. Death had struck, but life went on. That was what she would tell herself. She didn’t believe it now.

A memory came to her, Maura’s voice calling her “kiddo,” the word as sharp and clear as if it had been spoken in her ear.

She’d suffered other shocks and traumas, but none of them had been like this. Whatever loss she had endured, she’d always felt she could recover.

Not this time. This time she was numb to the point of catatonia. She felt as if she’d died along with Maura, and what was left of her was only a shell, a hollow vessel. She thought of the glass jars that tumbled off her mantel during the earthquake. She was like that—shattered, in pieces—and there was no one to sweep up the mess.

Distantly she told herself to get it together. She couldn’t be out of action, relegated to the sidelines while Richard’s fate was decided. The words sounded right, but she couldn’t make them real. She was worn out. She was done.

“I don’t think we want to go public yet.” That was Casey, his voice rising over the babble of conversation.

He was arguing with a man she didn’t recognize. She tuned in to the discussion and gathered that it concerned the possible release of Richard’s photo to the media. The other man wanted the photo shown on the late TV news. Maybe an alert viewer would call in a tip. Casey didn’t agree. They would have to set up a telephone hotline. They would be deluged with false sightings. It would be a waste of resources.

“The public needs to be involved,” the other man insisted.