From the wall above the file cabinets, McVeigh, Manson, and Atta watched me as if with conscious awareness.
At the desk, I sifted through the contents of the drawers once more, seeking names. On my previous visit, I had considered the small address book to be of little value, but this time I paged through it with interest.
The book contained fewer than forty names and addresses. None resonated with me.
I didn’t peruse the bank statements again, but I stared at them, thinking about the $58,000 in cash that he’d withdrawn over the past two months. More than four thousand had been in his pants pockets when I found his body.
If you were a rich sociopath interested in funding well-planned acts of mass murder, how big a circus of blood could you purchase for approximately $54,000?
Even sleep-deprived, with a caffeine headache and a sugar buzz, I could answer that one without much consideration: big. You could buy a three-ring circus of death—bullets, explosives, poison gas, just about anything short of a nuclear bomb.
Elsewhere in the house, a door closed. Not with a bang. Quietly, with a soft thump and click.
Moving stealthily but quickly, I went to the open door of the study. I stepped into the hall.
No intruder in sight. Except me.
The bathroom and bedroom doors stood open, as they had been.
In the bedroom, the closet door was a slider. That couldn’t have made the sound I heard.
Aware that death is frequently the reward for the reckless and the timid alike, I moved with cautious haste into the living room. Deserted.
The swinging door to the kitchen could not have been what I heard. The entry door to the house remained closed, as it had been.
In the front left corner of the living room, a closet. In the closet: two jackets, a few sealed cartons, an umbrella.
Into the kitchen. No one.
Maybe I had heard an intruder leaving. Which meant someone had been in the house when I arrived and had crept out when certain that I was distracted.
Perspiration prickled my brow. A single bead quivered down the nape of my neck and traced my spine to the coccyx.
The morning heat was not the sole cause of my sweat.
I returned to the study and switched on the computer. I sampled Robertson’s programs, surfed his directories, and found a library of sleaze that he had downloaded from the Internet. Files of sadistic porn. Child porn. Still others were about serial killers, ritualistic mutilation, and satanic ceremonies.
None of it seemed certain to lead me to his collaborator, at least not quickly enough to resolve the current crisis favorably. I switched the computer off.
If I’d had some Purell, the sanitizing gel that the nurse used at the hospital, I might have poured half a bottle on my hands.
During my first visit to this casita, I had conducted a quick search, which concluded when I’d made enough disturbing discoveries to take my case against Robertson to the chief. Although a countdown clock ticked in my head, this time I went through the house more thoroughly, grateful that it was small.
In the bedroom, in one drawer of a highboy, I found several knives of different sizes and curious design. Latin phrases were engraved in the blades of the first few weapons that I examined.
Although I don’t read Latin, I sensed that the character of the words would prove, on translation, to be as wicked as the sharpness of each razor-edged blade.
Another knife featured hieroglyphics from the hilt to the point. These pictographs meant no more to me than did the Latin, although I recognized a few of the highly stylized images: flames, falcons, wolves, snakes, scorpions ...
Searching a second drawer, I discovered a heavy silver chalice. Engraved with obscenities. Polished. Cool in my hands.
This unholy chalice was a hateful mockery of the communion cup that held consecrated wine in a Catholic Mass. The ornate handles were inverted crucifixes: Christ turned on His head. Latin encircled the rim, and around the bowl of the cup were engraved images of naked men and women engaged in various acts of sodomy.
In the same drawer, I found a black-lacquered pyx likewise decorated with pornographic images. On the sides and the lid of this small box, colorful hand-painted scenes of lurid degradation depicted men and women copulating not with one another but with jackals, hyenas, goats, and serpents.
In an ordinary church, the pyx contains the Eucharist, communion wafers of unleavened bread. This box brimmed with coal-black crackers flecked with red.
Unleavened bread exudes a subtle, appealing aroma. The contents of this pyx had an equally faint but repellent odor. First whiff—herbal. Second whiff—burnt matches. Third whiff—vomit.
The highboy contained other satanic paraphernalia; but I’d seen enough.
I couldn’t fathom how adults could take seriously the Hollywood trappings and hokey rituals of glamorized satanism. Certain fourteen-year-old boys, yes, because some of them were washed half loose from reason by shifting tides of hormones. But not adults. Even sociopaths like Bob Robertson and his unknown pal, as enthralled by violence and as crackbrained as they were, must have some clarity of perception, surely enough to see the absurdity of such Halloween games.
After replacing the items in the highboy, I closed the drawers.
A knocking startled me. The soft rap of knuckles.
I looked at the bedroom window, expecting to see a face at the glass, perhaps a neighbor tapping the pane. Only the hard desert light, tree shadows, and the brown backyard.
The knocking came again, as quiet as before. Not just three or four brisk raps. A stutter of small blows lasting fifteen or twenty seconds.
In the living room, I went to the window beside the front door and carefully parted the greasy drapes. No one waited on the stoop outside.
Mrs. Sanchez’s Chevy was the only vehicle at the curb. The weary dog that had slouched along the street the day before now traveled it again, head held low, tail lower than its head.
Recalling the racket of the quarrelsome crows on the roof during my previous visit, I turned from the window and studied the ceiling, listening.
After a minute, when the knocking didn’t come again, I stepped into the kitchen. In places, the ancient linoleum crackled underfoot.
Needing a name to put to Robertson’s collaborator, I could think of no place in a kitchen likely to contain such information. I looked through all the drawers and cupboards, anyway. Most were empty: only a few dishes, half a dozen glasses, a small clatter of flatware.
I went to the refrigerator because eventually Stormy would ask if this time I had checked for severed heads. When I opened the door, I found beer, soft drinks, part of a canned ham on a platter, half a strawberry pie, as well as the usual staples and condiments.
Next to the strawberry pie, a clear plastic package held four black candles, eight-inch tapers. Maybe he
