person lay dying, the brain produced hormones intended to induce a sense of well-being. This supposedly explained why some on their deathbeds hallucinated ministering angels and why those who briefly died and came back often spoke of a tunnel leading to a welcoming light and a world of wonder beyond.
He saw no angels, no tunnel leading to a light. But as tendrils of smoke began to slither through the room, a long-repressed memory returned to John, and his heart raced with unexpected delight as images from the past flooded through his mind. He was six years old when his father brought Daisy home, a two-year-old golden retriever that he had rescued from the pound expressly for the boy. Daisy and young John enjoyed many adventures together, and for a while there was a reliable source of joy in a house that otherwise was filled with suspicion, contention, and loud arguments. The marriage didn’t last, and one year to the day after Daisy came into the Verbotski home, she died in young John’s arms. To his alcoholic mother, Daisy was an avatar of her hated husband, and that was sufficient reason for her to poison the dog. What had been a year of wonder became, with the death of Daisy, too painful for him to recall. Now the fire reached for him, and with the blaze were memories brighter than the flames, memories repressed no longer, recollections of tenderness and laughter and love that he had never experienced before that long-ago year and had never known again in the days that followed.
129
Amory Cromwell, estate manager of the five-acre property in Tiburon, was not a stupid man, quite the opposite, and neither was he a coward.
When he returned to the house on Monday morning, after four nights in a superb resort in Pebble Beach, he arrived at seven o’clock, an hour ahead of the staff, as was his policy. He stopped inside the big roll-up door and got out of the BMW that had been provided with his position, and he disarmed the alarm system with the Crestron panel embedded in the wall. As the door rolled down, he parked in that part of the vast garage reserved for employees, separate from the carousels of collectible cars. When he got out of the BMW this time, he heard the distant yet raucous music of forty-six pinball machines, which were housed in the arcade on the same level of the house as the subterranean garage, the movie theater, and the two-lane bowling alley.
Dorian Purcell’s habit, when he spent a weekend here, was to leave Sunday night. On the aboveground floors, when the house was uninhabited, the lights and TVs and music system were programmed to turn off and on in a pattern that suggested to any burglar casing the residence that it was occupied by three or four people. The machines in the arcade were not part of that ruse.
This suggested to Amory Cromwell that Purcell must still be here.
And this deviation from the Great Man’s customary practice further suggested that something might be wrong.
Having had martial arts and weapons training as part of his preparation for his profession, and aware that he was being paid not merely for his expertise but also for his discretion, Cromwell did not at once consider calling the police. The überwealthy paid men like Cromwell also to prevent their follies from becoming public knowledge, at least until those follies became felonies. He went to a gun safe concealed in the cabinetry associated with the mechanic’s shop that was part of the garage, and he obtained a 12-gauge shotgun that fired slugs. He loaded one shell in the breach, three more in the magazine, and dropped two spares in a coat pocket.
In the arcade, he found Dorian Purcell’s body in less than ideal condition. In addition to other evidence of extreme violence and cannibalism, the billionaire’s head was missing.
At this point, Cromwell might have called the police if he had not been a man who recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one.
Shotgun at the ready, he followed a trail of bloody footprints and bits of unthinkable debris, which led upstairs to the library on the main floor.
The man, who didn’t seem to be strictly a man, who appeared to be something out of an H. P. Lovecraft story by way of a Tim Burton movie, was sitting in an aisle between two rows of bookshelves, his back to one set of stacks, his feet