“Who is this?”
“It’s Jack Morgan. I believe you rang. I’m right outside, Hal. Now open the door.”
Chapter 49
HAL OPENED THE door, said, “What took you so long?”
His thick, white hair was sticking out at wild angles. His eyes were red. His belly was hanging over the sash of his maroon silk robe.
He wasn’t normally a drunk, but right now, his breath was so saturated with alcohol, I could almost see the fumes.
I stepped into the pool house, said, “Stay out of my way for a couple of minutes, okay, Hal? I’m going to look at this place like a cop would look at it.”
“Want something? I’m drinking scotch.”
“I need to work fast, Hal. Sit down somewhere.”
The so-called pool house would be most people’s idea of a palace. It was built along the same general theme as the main house: the stone floors, the vaulted mahogany-and-bamboo ceiling. The wide-open, freaking fantastic view of the city way the hell down there, making it seem like the pool house was in the clouds.
There were a couple of lounge chairs facing the canyon’s cliff side, a table between them, a baby watermelon cut into slices. There was also a pricey bottle of scotch, two glasses, a crystal ice bucket.
I went toward the changing room, careful not to touch any evidence, and stopped cold in the doorway.
The late Mrs. Harold Archer was lying faceup on the soft, blood-soaked carpet. She was wearing a small bikini, pale blue, pulled up over her breasts, covered with blood. She had been stabbed and slashed repeatedly.
I couldn’t count the number of wounds, but they looked like they’d been delivered in a moment of high passion and fury.
Tule’s left hand was flung out to her side. There was a gigantic diamond ring on her ring finger, and there was a kitchen knife six or seven inches away from her chest. The knife, her hand, her body, the white carpet, the cream-colored walls—everything was spattered, splashed, and sprayed with blood.
A man’s bathing suit and a boxy printed shirt were flung over the arm of a chair. The clothes were so bloody I couldn’t tell the color of the fabric.
Beyond the body, bloody footsteps led to the bathroom.
I followed the prints to the doorway and stood outside the room. I could see everything in this uncluttered space. Red footprints led to a shower stall with a lot of heads, a marble floor, and a glass wall facing the view. Bloody water was still pooled around the drain, and large handprints were on the marble, the soap, the shampoo bottle, and the glass.
Hal had cleaned up, put on his robe, and called me.
I saw the one knife that had been used to cut the melon and murder Tule Archer. And nothing else that could have been used as a weapon.
Hal was going to have a tough time proving self-defense.
Chapter 50
I’D BEEN INSIDE the pool house for only a couple of minutes, and in another two or three, I was going to be obstructing justice. It wasn’t going to take a forensic genius to figure out what had happened here, but I wanted Sci to see the scene anyway.
I left the changing room the way I found it, went back out to the larger room, where Hal had draped his large sloppy self in a lounge chair and was looking at the view. The sun was going down leaving a bloody swath of sky.
I came up behind him and said, “Hal, tell me what happened.”
He spoke without turning. I had to strain to understand his slurred speech.
“She said she was thinking about my heart. That she visualized it before she went to sleep every night. That she could see all the arteries and where they went into the valves and she could see the scars where the arteries were stitched into place.”
He turned to look up at me over his shoulder.
“You see what she was doing, Zhack?
“She said she was picking at the scars every night, pulling the tissue loose. She was going to pull out the arteries with her mind. She could do it. She was a wicked girl.”