The Walker in Shadows by Barbara Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

Hendricks. To her cars were a means of transportation; to Mark, they were practically a religion.
    Ballet was not one of the interests they shared, and it was to the ballet Pat went on the following Thursday, picking up a friend in Chevy Chase and going on to Kennedy Center, where Barishnikov was appearing in Swan Lake. After the performance she stopped for a cup of coffee with Amy, then drove home through the perfumed spring night in a dazzle of remembered pleasure. The white dogwood trees slipped past the car windows like slim Swan maidens fleeing an enchanter, and the lovely, saccharine music echoed in her ears.
    Friday was not a working day for her, but it was for most of the residents of Magnolia Drive. The street was dark and quiet when she turned off the highway, with only a few squares of lighted windows burning against the dark. The drive curved. Not until she neared its end did she see something that made her foot move instinctively from gas pedal to brake.
    Normally Halcyon House was as dark as the other houses on the street by this time of night. Now lights began to blaze out, one after the other-first the big oriel in the master bedroom, then the windows of the upper hall, then the fanlight over the front door, as if someone were running through the house pressing the light switches as he went.
    Pat glanced at the clock. It was after one a.m. She looked then at her own house. Everything was normal there; Mark had left the porch light on for her, as he always did when she was out late.
    Her car had just had its spring tune-up, courtesy of Mark. The engine purred softly. When the first scream tipped through the night, there was no louder sound to combat it.
    Pat was out of the car before the sound died. In fact, she was through the gate and halfway up the walk before it stopped, as abruptly as if it had been cut off. It was a terrible sound-wordless, but requiring no words-a peremptory demand for help. And the voice had been that of a woman.
    The ground-floor windows of Halcyon House were open to the spring air. No wonder the voice had carried so well. As Pat bounded up the porch steps, taking them two at a time, the scream came again. She threw her weight against the door and was somehow not surprised when the heavy portal yielded.

III
    The mind works far more quickly than conventional measurements of time can reckon. Pat's mind had already painted a picture of what she expected to see; the reality was so like the vision that she was momentarily paralyzed, as a dreamer would be to find his dream a reality.
    The hallway of Halcyon House, the duplicate of her own, was as wide as a normal room, with the carved walnut balustrade of the stairs rising at the rear. The hardwood floor, dark with age but freshly waxed, re-llected the bulbs of the antique crystal chandelier. On the floor, practically at her feet, was a tableau that might have come out of Popular Detective , or some other sensational sex-and-violence tabloid.
    Kathy's fair hair spilled like shining water across the dark floor. Her thin blue nylon nightgown was twisted around her hips and her slim bare legs thrashed, kicking the floor. Friedrichs knelt beside her, his hands on her shoulders. As the door burst open he looked up. His face was ashen, bleeding from scratches that marred one cheek, and his expression was so distorted that Pat scarcely recognized him. For a moment the hope flashed through her mind that the man attacking the prostrate girl was not that girl's own father, but a stranger, an intruder… But the shock of black hair was Friedrichs', the heavy shoulders and hard, bruising hands…
    Her paralysis could not have lasted more than a second or two. She saw the marks of fingers white against the girl's blotched cheeks, and knew why the scream had been cut off so abruptly. Kathy drew a long, choking breath and again cried out. Her father struck her across the mouth.
    Pat launched herself like a missile, all one hundred and ten pounds of her