Chapter 1

A lonely street at high noon in southern California is a landscape by Di Chirico. The blinding sun reveals the same eerie absence of human life on an endless ribbon of shimmering pavement. There is the same tomb-like silence.

On this particular day, a solitary girl entered the empty palm-lined street wheeling a shopping cart. She was pretty and dark-haired with long, slim legs and tiny ankles. Since it was very hot, she wore only light blue shorts and a thin white halter. As she reached the door of her house, she scanned the street on both sides. It was a precaution she took daily now when she went out alone.

As she shut the door behind her, the windows blazed with lightning flashes. The girl moved to a long green couch and sprawled there miserably for a few moments. The moist, stifling heat in the room was unbearable. She thought of opening the locked windows and then changed her mind.

What she needed most, Penny Bruce decided, was a cool shower. A long, delicious, cool spray followed by a cool salad and a cool nap in the darkened bedroom that would prepare her for the art class that evening. She rose and slowly removed her clothes.

Once she was free of them she felt better. A glimpse of her body in the glass over the mantelpiece made her smile. She was too big in the hips, maybe, but she could still model for the art class, she thought. Some of the models looked like Giacomotti figures, long, lank, almost fleshless creatures. The thought of how Cliff would react to her modeling made her shiver. Her husband indulged her in the art school only because she had made a scene.

After a few moments, the blanket of sweltering air in the room was insufferable and she moved toward the bathroom in the rear. As she passed the front window, she could see a tall man dressed in a business suit approach. She stared for a moment at the moving figure through the thin gauze curtain. Something about the man's gait or his looks seemed oddly familiar but she did not recognize him.

Suddenly, realizing that the man was only a few yards from the window now and facing her as he advanced, she moved back frighteningly. Instinctively she jumped away from the glass. He had seemed to be staring right at her. Her heart began to hammer as she moved back to the couch on the other side of the room. For a long moment, she held her breath, letting it escape slowly only when the door did not open.

A few seconds later she felt foolish. The newspaper headlines about the damned noontime prowler scare was reducing every woman on the block to the level of a terrified school girl. PROWLER AT NOON, PROWLER AT NOON, the papers kept shouting. It had come to the point where even walking in an empty street at noon frightened her. That was bad enough. But when her teeth rattled because a man walked toward her house in broad daylight, the situation had reached the point of absurdity. The next step was to sit in her kitchen with a rifle across her knees as she shelled peas.

Don't be a damned idiot, she told herself as she lit a cigarette to steady her nerves. Staying out of the line of vision from the street, she peered through the window again. There was no sign of anyone. He had obviously just walked past the house on the way to some place. She sat down on the couch and drew several slow puffs on the cigarette. The man had just been walking past the house, she repeated to herself to steady her nerves. He had not even looked into the window.

And what if he had? All he could see was a blob of dark. She laughed as she thought of how her husband would scream if he saw her sitting undressed by the window. Cliff was terrified that a prowler would attack her like the girl who'd been murdered earlier that week. He was convinced that Los Angeles was full of sex fiends who jumped women they saw in brassieres and panties.

The black headlines about the woman who had been raped three blocks away in broad daylight had exploded all his accumulated fears. He even fretted about her shopping costume-a flimsy halter and shorts.

"Nobody's made of wood," Cliff complained. "I watch the way these guys give you the eye in the market or that school. Like they've been starved for weeks. I don't want it happening to you. So stop going around half-naked."

Seeing the taut expression on her face, he laughed nervously and kissed her. She turned her face away, annoyed.

"I just don't want anything happening to you, hon," he said affectionately. "So wear a dress out, huh?"

Afterwards he had given her the usual jazz about moving from the Hollywood area into the San Fernando Valley where he worked as an engineer. In a little place like Granada Hills, about an hour from town, she could hop around in her sunsuit all day.

"What about my art class?" she said tartly.

His thin face had reddened dangerously. He was jealous by nature and the art class was a constant goad.

"I think you're nuts to keep going there," he retorted angrily. Cliff had never recovered from the shock of seeing grown men ogling a nude while they molded clay.

The nights he accompanied her to art class he felt he was at one of the stag smokers he occasionally attended with his poker club in Indiana. Blowouts where they had girls strip in a circle of beery smoke. Pucci's studio was like that. A lot of guys playing with clay, drinking out of beer cans and smoking while they stared at a naked model. He always expected the cops to come whistling down the stairs.

"Those bums worry me," he said. "Like that big gink always jumping around the undressed model doing close-ups with a camera. What the hell kind of artist is he?"

"Steiner," Penny laughed. "Ah, he's harmless. I don't think he's got it all upstairs. He stares at you like his mind was a million miles off. The only guy I don't like is Lynton Brendt."

"Who? Oh, that bald actor? He smells like a zoo."

"I know. I asked Pucci to kick him out. A lot of the girls did. He smells and drinks and he's always bothering you when you're trying to work. Why are you always worried about the big guys?" she asked teasingly. "You never worry about the shorties. Some of those little guys stare at me, too."

A second later she wanted to bite her tongue. Cliff's dark, protuberant eyes had suddenly gone angry. She seldom thought of Cliff as short anymore though he came barely to her eye level. But he was still sensitive about his height.

"You can take care of shorties," he said finally. "You sure took care of me when I tried to take you in that hayloft in South Bend years ago. But these big bimbos have the weight and reach on you. Don't ever let any of them see you home. I mean that. Every time I read about a prowler attacking a woman, I get knots inside. And this town's full of them. Seems every time I open a paper, some woman's laying up in the hills with her face purple."

Cliff's words came back now as she felt the icy needle shower attack her bare flesh and she shuddered. She was glad they had moved from the lonely place near Silver Creek Boulevard to the Hollywood area. Up in those hills she had always been afraid at night. The view was wonderful in the daytime. But at night, she felt as if she were living on the moon. The emptiness of the streets bothered her. Every crunch of tires near the house made her pringle. Dog barks exploding from a neighbor's house would make her tremble.

Here within minutes of the busy Hollywood shopping district, she felt more secure. No prowler would dare anything around here. It was true that after the men left in the mornings the streets became quiet and empty, but then that was true of many residential districts in this vast, sprawling city. At least there were closer neighbors if anyone did come. She laughed as she thought of the grim turn her thoughts were taking and turned up the water.

She screamed with delight as a hard stream of cool water hit her bare skin. Her neighbor, an elderly woman who suffered from arthritis, heard her, and forgot her pain for a moment.