Read Online Seven Kinds of Death by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online

blind.
    “Don’t touch that,” Constance said in a low voice to Spence, who was reaching for a slip of paper. He was as white as the newly painted walls, his eyes seemed not to be focusing properly. Constance looked back at the group still in the doorway, and realized that Ba Ba was still screaming, over and over. She said sharply to Max, “Get them out of here and call the police.” He nodded and just then Paul Volte started to move toward Constance and toward Victoria. He walked like a man in a trance. Constance caught Spence’s arm, pulled him back a step from the body, and said in a very brusque voice, “Get Paul out of here. Take care of him.”
    Spence looked at the body, at Constance, and ran his hands down his face; then he seemed to focus his eyes again, and he moved toward Paul and took him by the arms. Max had already herded the others out the doorway. “Come on, old buddy,” Spence said. “Can’t do anything for her now. Come on. Let’s go.” Slowly he got Paul turned around, moving in the opposite direction. Constance doubted that Paul would remember any of this. Without touching the body on the floor or anything else, she also moved to the door, where she stood studying the room.
    A conference table and chairs were in the center, covered with tarpaulins. Opposite the door was floor-to-ceiling glass, with a balcony beyond it. No drapes or curtains were at the windows. She could see into another room with another long table with blueprints and a typewriter on it. A temporary office apparently. It looked as though more tarps were on the floor in that room, and now she could smell the paint, and she could smell death. She turned and followed the others into the foyer, back into the elevator, and down to the lobby to wait for the police.
    This time the sheriff came with the deputies. Bill Gruenwald, he said, examining them all very carefully and quickly. He looked like a man who took good care of himself; he was muscular and trim, in his early forties, with a brush mustache and short brown hair neatly cut.
    Ba Ba had stopped screaming to take up moaning. Gruenwald turned his gaze to her, and she said, “I knew it would happen. I knew it would. I had a premonition of evil. I usually listen, but my own sister called me to come, and I did. But—”
    “Ba Ba, shut up,” Tootles snapped. “Sheriff, can we please go back to the house?”
    He sent a deputy to follow them, and they all rode in the station wagon.
    “I have to tell Toni,” Tootles said when they entered the house. “My God, just my God!” She started to walk toward the studio; the deputy made a motion as if to stop her, and she looked at him in a way that made him flinch and move aside. She went on, and in less than a minute Janet screamed, and she and Toni ran from the studio, up the stairs, and banged a door closed.
    Johnny Buell arrived only seconds after that; he shook his head in disbelief when Max told him Victoria was dead.
    “Murdered? Why? How did anyone get in the building? That unit? I was over there at seven, I took Debra and Phil and Sunny, and got my briefcase. A little after seven. And I locked up, but anyway Pierce was working by then. We saw him. How did she get in?”
    He stopped abruptly. He had looked stunned, disbelieving, but now a different expression crossed his face. He suddenly looked sick. “I have to call people,” he said dully. “How long will it be before we can get into Six, clean it up, make it accessible again?”
    Max glared at him, and Paul left the living room abruptly. After a moment, Johnny walked out.
    When the sheriff finally came to the house, he was met by his deputy, who talked to him in a low voice on the porch.
    Sheriff Gruenwald looked particularly grim when he entered the living room, grim and angry.
    “John Buell?” He looked at Johnny who had come from the studio area when the car drove up. Johnny nodded. “You went to the condo last night with some other people?”
    “That’s