Silent Masquerade Read online

  Satisfied that he was alone in the halls of the fifth floor, he went to the door marked Stairs and eased it open. Quietly he crept up the tiled staircase to the sixth floor. He held his ear to the door and listened before opening it onto the foyer across from the sixth-floor elevators.

  By the time he reentered their room, his chest hurt from holding his breath for so long. He let it out on a long, relieved sigh, forgetful of the sleeping figure in the bed.

  Cara sighed in response to the sound she heard through her sleep, and she turned on her side and hugged the pillow against her breasts.

  Bill put the briefcase on the top shelf of the closet and slid out of his clothes before creeping back to ease into the bed beside Cara.

  She sighed again and turned back, discarding the pillow and pushing her naked body against Bill’s.

  She came awake with a jolt, crying out in response to the unexpected coldness of his flesh.

  “Why so cold?” she mumbled, rubbing his chest, as if to warm him with her hand.

  “Covers must have slipped off,” Bill whispered, hoping she’d go right back to sleep.

  Her hand moved down his body. “What’s with the shorts, Bill?” she murmured.

  “Got up to go to the bathroom.” He waited, thinking she’d fall back asleep now. Her hand rested on his abdomen, warm through the cloth of his briefs. Inert. Heavy.

  He began to breathe easier, just as her hand suddenly began to move. And then he found himself praying she wouldn’t go back to sleep.

  * * *

  THE MAID FOUND THEM entwined in each other’s arms, sleep-drugged from the previous day’s dichotomous mix of horrors and wonders.

  Cara came awake first, at the muffled cry of surprise from the maid.

  “I knocked,” the woman said, clearly embarrassed and frightened that her faux pas might cost her job.

  “S’okay,” Cara mumbled, pushing her tawny hair off her face. “We were up late.”

  “I’ll come back,” the maid said nervously, backing out of the room.”

  “Hour,” Cara promised sleepily.

  She laid her head back down, but by then Bill was awake.

  “I’ve got to get up, hear the news,” he said, sounding almost brisk for having just that moment come awake. “Do you need the bathroom, love?”

  “Mmm-hmm... You first,” Cara mumbled, snuggling farther into the warmth of the bed.

  Bill got up and went into the bathroom. The sound of the shower snatched Cara back from sleep, Bill’s words echoing in her thoughts.

  The news. She jumped from the bed and turned on the TV as she wound the bedspread around her body in a makeshift sarong.

  Bill was just coming out of the bathroom, his torso wrapped in a towel, as the announcer described the explosion of the day before. “And at this time, the authorities confirm that the explosion was caused by a gas leak in the boiler that served the building with hot water. Fortunately, no one was killed in the incident,” the anchor said, turning to his cohostess with a smile.

  Bill turned off the set and went to the window.

  “It’s okay, isn’t it, Bill?” Cara asked as she came up behind him.

  Bill looked out over the city and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hand me a cigarette, will you, Cara?” he asked, without turning around.

  “Uh-oh,” Cara said, “that’s a bad sign, isn’t it?”

  Bill turned to face her. “What?” His sober look changed to one of amusement, and he laughed. “Oh, right. No, don’t worry, that was just an ex-smoker on automatic pilot. Forget the cigarette, love.”

  Cara studied his face, his eyes, looking for the truth. “It is all right, isn’t it? You do believe it was an accident?”

  “Believe it? Sure. It’s not likely the authorities would cover it up, if it were anything else.”

  “So we can go back to work?”

  Bill brushed the riot of gold curls off her face and kissed her nose. “I’ll call us in, let them know we’re all right, in case they’ve heard the news and are worried about us. And we’ll need the day off to look for another apartment and to shop for new clothes.”

  “Okay, I’ll shower while you call.” Cara kissed his cheek, tugging affectionately on his beard, and went to the bathroom.

  Bill stood a moment longer at the window. He thought he could almost make out the lingering smoke above the apartment building across town. So it was an accident, after all. That added up to coincidence. He didn’t like that. And yet it made perfect sense. A faulty boiler in an old building that the owner didn’t spend a lot of money on for upkeep. The super was so lazy, he’d have overlooked any warning that the boiler was leaking gas.

  Bill’s chest tightened as he thought of the tenants in the building. It was some kind of miracle that those people had escaped with their lives intact. He had to believe that even Alvaretti was incapable of ordering a hit of such magnitude. It would take a real monster to wipe out all those innocent folks just to get at Bill Spencer.

  Alvaretti was mean, evil, but even he wouldn’t do anything that sloppy and unnecessary. He had access to enough good marksmen that he could get Spencer without taking out a whole building.

  Bill turned to the phone. For the moment, he was still safe, and his life with Cara could go on as before. He heard the shower go on in the bathroom, and then the sound of Cara humming a show tune. Well, maybe not quite as before.

  Better. Definitely better.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a miracle that nobody had been killed. Cara silently thanked God for the umpteenth time as she listened to the newscast while folding their new clothes into the suitcases they’d purchased. The people on the roof had suffered various injuries, but none of them were life-threatening, and none of the other tenants had been in their apartments when the boiler went off.

  She and Bill had found a small furnished house for rent just a few blocks farther from the boardwalk. It was a tiny house on a minuscule lot, so close to its neighbors that in some ways it would be like living in the apartment building. Many of the streets in Santa Cruz were like that, with houses seeming to topple over on one another, as though there just weren’t enough land for all the houses that needed to be built there. It reminded Cara of resort towns on the East Coast, where lake and ocean property was at a premium, and people were desperate to have even a tiny part of the land abutting the water.

  Cara worried that it was too expensive, but Bill had argued that it was worth it, that it was safer. Safer how, she hadn’t questioned. After their lovemaking last night, she was feeling putty-soft in the hands of the man who had proven to be an extremely exciting and tender lover.

  But even that aside, so far he’d established that he was able to take care of both of them, though she thought he went a little overboard on the side of caution. His reaction to the explosion was a good example. He’d certainly overreacted there. Of course, it wouldn’t have seemed so if he’d turned out to be right.

  She put the last of the suitcases by the door, ready for when Bill returned to get her.

  She decided to keep busy by checking the room to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything. She looked under both beds and found one of her earrings. Feeling justified in her thoroughness, she searched the bathroom and then the nightstands.

  Nothing else. She was about to sit down when she thought of the closet.

  That was where she found the briefcase.

  She pulled it down off the shelf and stared at it. Was it Bill’s? It looked like the one Bill had carried when they first met.

  She hadn’t seen it since...

  Funny, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen it.

  She carried it to the bed nearest the window and set it down.

  “Not since we moved into the apartment,” she remembered suddenly.

  But was it the same one? Was it Bill’s? If it wasn’t, it ought to be turned in to the desk, so that the rightful owner could reclaim it when he discovered he’d left it behind. But, of cou
rse, first she should wait to ask Bill if it was his.

  She left it where it was and went to sit in a chair.

  She watched a couple of minutes of a game show, but found her attention being distracted by the briefcase.

  Black leather. Was Bill’s black? She thought so, but maybe she was mistaken. Maybe it was brown.

  She got up and changed the channel. Another news show. This time the reporter was talking about a rash of arson cases in Palo Alto. Arson. That was when someone deliberately set fire to a building. For profit, for kicks, to cover other crimes. Like murder.

  She shivered and turned the dial again. A talk show. Not her usual fare, but harmless entertainment.

  At first, she couldn’t get a handle on the show’s topic, but after a few minutes it became clear that one of the women on the show had been married to a serial killer and hadn’t had a clue until the police came to arrest him.

  Cara stood in front of the screen, her hand inches from the off button, but she didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off the picture.

  “Come on,” the show’s host argued, “are you saying that you could live with this guy, sleep with him, for ten years, and never even guess he was that kind of monster?”

  The woman was almost in tears. “He wasn’t a monster around us,” she insisted. “Bruce is one of the most sensitive, caring guys I’ve ever met, and any of our kids or friends would say the same.”

  The host turned to another woman on the dais. “Let’s ask our expert, police psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Fein. What do you say, Dr. Fein, could Bruce have been the angel Meg says he was at home and then go out and kill other women?”

  “Serial killers are twisted on the inside, not on the outside, where it shows, Michael,” the police psychiatrist said. “If they didn’t appear to be normal—even sensitive and caring, in some cases—it’d make our job of tracking them down a lot easier. They don’t have outward signs that point them out as murderers, unfortunately. You can’t point at any given felon and say that’s a bank robber, that’s a car thief, that’s a child molester.”

  She wasn’t aware of pushing the button, of the screen going dark and blank, of the silence filling the room. The words of the psychiatrist reverberated in her head.

  They don’t have outward signs that point them out as murderers.

  Her heart seemed to have leaped into her throat, and her ears filled with the sound of her own blood rushing through her veins. She literally felt her way to the chair, unable to focus on the room around her.

  At what point had she decided to overlook all the warning signs and join forces with a stranger, one who was obviously running for his life? When had she forgotten that Bill was, in all probability, a criminal of some kind? Bile rose in her throat and her stomach lurched as she thought of last night’s intimacy.

  Desperately her mind searched for alternatives. It wasn’t only a sexual thing. She’d also been attracted by his thoughtfulness, his many kindnesses, his obvious intelligence.

  If they didn’t appear to be normal—even sensitive and caring, in some cases—it’d make our job of tracking them down a lot easier.

  She was reminded of Douglas Harvard. He’d certainly pulled the wool over her mother’s eyes. Her mother was an intelligent woman, and yet she’d been swept away by the charismatic Harvard, while at the same time he’d shown an entirely different face to Cara.

  A sob caught in Cara’s throat. Was she destined to meet only men who were wicked or weak? And which was Bill Hamlin? Wicked? Weak?

  Helplessly she gazed around the room. How could she have let herself get caught up in a relationship with a dangerous stranger?

  Her gaze came to rest on the briefcase. It was Bill’s. She was sure of it now. And for some reason she was sure it held the secrets Bill was hiding.

  There was no hesitation on her part when she went to the briefcase. She was going to look inside.

  It was locked. No surprise there. And no deterrent to her determination. She went to her purse and retrieved the little Swiss army knife she’d won at the arcade when she played the electric crane machine.

  It took some effort, and more than one of the tools to pop the lock. She was surprised by her success, jumping in alarm at the sound of the lock snapping open.

  The contents were even more surprising. First of all, there were three thick stacks of currency, two of them made up of hundred-dollar bills. Mouth agape, she stared at the stack in her hand, wondering how someone came to carry this much cash. And then her eyes fell on the gun, its handle sticking out from under a letter-size manila envelope. She lifted the envelope to make sure that it was actually a gun she was looking at. She’d never seen a handgun in her life. It looked lethal. She shuddered and backed away from the briefcase, then laughed harshly. Did she think the gun could go off on its own?

  She could visualize the gun in Bill’s large, capable hand, pointed at some unseen victim. After all, everyone knew you didn’t have a gun around unless you were prepared to use it. And this was a concealed weapon. Wasn’t it a felony to carry a concealed weapon?

  She became aware that she was still holding the manila envelope. She felt no qualms about looking inside. She’d already seen enough to prove Bill was a felon. Felons had no rights. Certainly not the right of privacy.

  There were three different sets of identification inside, each banded together with rubber binders, each containing a driver’s license, a social security card, a passport and job résumés. Each in a different name.

  She carried the papers to the chair and fell onto the seat.

  Thomas Martin Jacobsen. William Allen Spencer. Gerald Victor Gaither.

  Was any of them real? Was “Bill Hamlin” Bill’s real name...and these others...

  She looked at the driver’s licenses. All had the same picture on them. It was like the old shell game. She shuffled the packets. Which one was the real Bill Hamlin?

  Her mind drifted over the preceding weeks, starting with her meeting with Bill—or whatever his name was—on the bus.

  To be fair, he’d warned her not to ask questions, not to expect any kind of friendship with him. Actually, his keeping to himself so completely should have been the first sign that he was dangerous. And then there was that fiasco at the motel in Mount View. So what if he’d had second thoughts and come back to untie her—his trussing her up like stuffed poultry and treating her like a foreign spy should have told her he was paranoid beyond redemption. It was the sure sign of a madman.

  “I’m the one who should be locked up,” she growled, jumping to her feet, oblivious of the papers falling to the floor. She stepped over them and began pacing the room, stopping to peer out the window every few laps.

  “I walked right into his trap.” She hit herself on the thigh. “I even suggested we join forces and live together as a couple.”

  She stopped at the window, craning her head to look down at the cars against the building in the lot. No sign of Bill yet. She still had time to decide what to do next.

  She started back across the room as she considered her options. She could call the police, have them there waiting for Bill when he returned. Her heart lurched strangely at the thought. She pivoted, retracing her steps. She could grab her own bags and get the hell out of there before he got back.

  “Yeah!” She spun around and went to the door, reaching for one of the suitcases. “No.” She slumped against the door and put her hands in her face. That was the coward’s way out. She was tired of being a victim, being a coward.

  She’d run from Doug Harvard, from facing her mother with the truth. She’d left Doug access to her mother and her mother’s money with nobody there to stop him.

  She went back to the window. She would confront Bill, warn him that if he didn’t turn himself in, she’d do it for him.

  “Ha!” A bitter laugh became a strangled sob in her throat. Oh, yeah, and of course the big bad man would just throw up his hands and promise to turn himself over to the law and mend his ways, if only the
little girl would believe in him. “Right.”

  She was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she didn’t hear the key in the lock, didn’t see the knob turn.

  She screamed when Bill suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  It didn’t take Bill more than a split second to read the scene before him.

  His briefcase open on the bed, money and gun spilling out onto the chenille bedspread, his papers strewn across the floor, the look of terror on Cara’s face, her scream...

  He strode to the bed and grabbed the gun. “Shut up!” he snapped. “Sit down!”

  The gun, together with the harsh tone of his voice, was better than a slap in the face at averting impending hysteria.

  Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Cara collapsed onto the chair behind her, and her second scream froze in her throat, becoming instead a gurgle of fright.

  Or so he thought. He made the mistake of turning his back on her as he swept currency back into piles and searched for the rubber binders.

  She was on him instantly, her fists pummeling his back and head, her voice spitting words of derision, some he hadn’t even known she knew.

  “You...you...”

  He dropped both money and gun, and spun around to grab her wrists.

  Her body was flush against his, her head was bent back in submission, and for a fleeting instant he was reminded of their lovemaking the night before.

  The memory disappeared as she hissed, “You bastard, you’re going to pay for this.”

  “For what?” He pulled her closer, his face only inches from hers. “What am I going to pay for Cara?”

  “You’re a...a monster!”

  Bill’s short spurt of laughter only underlined his anger. “Yeah, and what is it that makes me a monster in your view?”

  “You’re a killer!”

  He had to admit he was taken aback at that. He held both of her wrists with one hand, bent his knees and felt around behind him for the gun. He found it and waved it over his head. “Because of this? You found a gun in my things, and that makes me a killer?”

  He didn’t know if he was more outraged at her snooping or at her slanderous attack on his character.