THE HYENA SLEPT IN A CLEAN DEN, UNSOILED by mementos of his killings. No articles of clothing stained with the victims’ blood that he could press to his face to savor the scent of death. No items of women’s jewelry that he could fondle. No Polaroid photos of Justine Laputa or Mina Reynerd after he tested their mortality with a fireplace poker and a bronze-encrusted marble lamp. Nothing.
After a quick but meticulous search of the walk-in closet, the bureau drawers, the nightstands, and every place else in the bedroom where Laputa might have hidden the kind of pornography that appealed not to prurient interest but to an obsession with violence, Hazard turned up no evidence of either a crime or psychopathy.
As before, the most notable thing about the Laputa house was the scrupulous cleanliness, which rivaled that in any hermetically sealed and frequently sanitized biochemical-weapons lab, and the fetishistic alignment and geometry of every object large and small. Not only the items on open display but also the contents of drawers were placed as though with the aid of micrometer, protractor, and straightedge. The socks and sweaters appeared to have been folded and stowed away by a precision-programmed robot.
[549] Again, Hazard sensed that, for Vladimir Laputa, this house was a desperate refuge from the messiness of the world beyond its walls.
He retreated from the bedroom, into the upstairs hall, where he stood for a moment, listening intently, hearing only the tepid tattoo of the diminishing rain on the roof. He glanced at his watch, wondering how much time, if any, he had to pore through the other second-floor chambers.
Instinct seldom failed Hazard, but it told him nothing now. The professor might return at any moment or not for hours, days.
He tried the first door past the master bedroom, on that same side of the hall, snapped on the light.
Judging by appearances, this was a storeroom. Plain cardboard cartons emblazoned only with red stenciled numbers were stacked three high, in well-ordered rows.
A quiver of interest drew Hazard a few steps past the threshold. Then he realized that the boxes were sealed with precisely applied strips of strapping tape. If he tore open a few, he would not be able to restore them to the degree necessary to conceal the fact of his unauthorized explorations.
Approaching the last room on that side of the hall, he detected an unpleasant odor. By the time he reached the open door, the malodor had become a stench.
Central to the stink, Hazard recognized the smell of corrupted flesh, of which he’d had more than a little experience in his career with Robbery/Homicide. He suspected that here he would find at least one of Laputa’s mementos that would make him wish he had not stopped earlier for cheeseburgers and fries.
The glow from the hall sconces spilled only a short distance into the room. Hazard couldn’t see much.
When he stepped across the threshold and flipped up the wall switch, a nightstand lamp came on. For a moment he thought the man in the bed, less than half concealed by a sheet, must be a corpse.
[550] Then the bloodshot eyes, which were fixed on him in pitiful appeal, blinked.
Hazard had never before seen firsthand a living human being in such wretched condition as this. Here was what the starved slave laborers in concentration camps looked like when, at last worked to death, they were tumbled into raw graves.
In spite of the IV rack and catheter-fed urine jar, Hazard knew at once that in this situation Professor Laputa was not a caregiver tending to a family member. The man in the bed had been afforded none of the tenderness due a patient but all the brutality that could be rained upon a prisoner by a demented jailer.
Both windows had been boarded over and sealed with caulking to keep out daylight and to hold in all sound.
On the floor in one corner were tumbled chains and handcuffs and ankle shackles. Surely these bonds were from the early days of the imprisonment, when the man in the bed had been strong enough to require restraints.
Hazard had been speaking aloud for a while before he quite heard himself. He had been reduced to the childhood prayers that Granny Rose had taught him long ago.
Here was evil as pure as he had ever seen it, forever beyond the understanding of a simple sinner like himself. This way a wicked thing had come and gone, and would come again, a demon on sabbatical from Hell.
The uncommon neatness and order elsewhere in the house didn’t represent Laputa’s need for a refuge from the disorder of the world outside. It was instead a desperate denial of just how apocalyptic was the chaos that churned within him.
By the time that Hazard reached the side of the bed, each breath he drew further sickened him. Weeks’ worth of dried sweats, rancid body oils, and festering bedsores raised a nauseating stench.
Nevertheless, Hazard gently took hold of the nearer of the [551] stranger’s fragile hands. The man had insufficient strength to lift his arm, and he could barely squeeze his rescuer’s hand in return.
“It’s all right now. I’m a cop.”
The stranger regarded him as though he might be a mirage.
Although instinct had failed Hazard a minute ago in the hall, it served him well now. He was surprised, but then at once not, to hear himself say, “Professor Dalton? Maxwell Dalton?”
The widening of the withered man’s rheumy eyes confirmed his identification.
When the prisoner strove to speak, his voice proved to be so thin, so dry, so cracked and reedy, that Hazard had to bend close to puzzle meaning from the words: “Laputa ... killed my wife ... daughter.”
“Rachel? Emily?” Hazard asked.
Dalton squeezed his eyes shut in grief, bit his lower lip, and nodded shakily.
“I don............