Chaos Theory by Graham Masterton Page A

it.
    ‘It could be that some thieves broke in, and attacked them,’ said Silja. ‘That happened to a friend of mine in Venice, right in the middle of the day. They tied her up and made both of her eyes black.’
    Noah went through to the den. Mo’s brown leather chair was set at an angle, as if he had suddenly pushed it back and stood up. There were more crumpled-up balls of paper on the floor, and also a pair of spectacles. Noah bent down and picked them up.
    ‘It’s beginning to look like you’re right. Somebody did come in here and attack them.’
    It was gloomy in the living room, with the drapes drawn tight. Silja tugged them open, while Noah looked around. There were no signs of a struggle – no chairs knocked over, no cushions on the floor. On the gilt-painted coffee table in the centre of the room there was a neat stack of Hollywood Reporters and a box of Caramel Matzoh Crunch.
    They looked into the master bedroom. The king-size bed was covered in a pink satin throw with ruffles all around the edges, and two pink-and-white stuffed penguins were propped on the pillows, but again there was no indication of any violence.
    ‘This is like the goddamned Marie Celeste ,’ said Noah.
    They went into Leon’s bedroom. It was catastrophically messy, but only in the way of any other college student’s room, with DVDs and socks and discarded jeans all over the floor, and a wall covered with pin-ups of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and basketball pennants and photographs of Leon’s last trip to Israel.
    Then Noah tried the bathroom. He had to push the door hard to open it because the bathmat was rucked up. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Silja.
    As soon as he saw the shower he knew at once that something terrible had happened here. The glass partition was decorated with a palm-tree-shaped pattern of dried blood, and there was a dark shape hunched in the shower tray.
    He pushed the door wider. To his left, in the white bathtub itself, lay the pallid body of Mo’s wife, Trina. She was naked, with her arms and legs twisted at awkward angles underneath her. Her throat had been cut so deep and wide that she had almost been decapitated, and her neck was hanging open like a huge, leering grin.
    The bottom of the bathtub was an inch deep in brown, congealed blood, as dark as molasses.
    ‘Noah?’ said Silja. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Don’t come in,’ he told her, turning around.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Don’t come in. They’re here. They’re both dead. Somebody’s killed them.’
    Silja covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Oh my God! Oh, Noah.’
    Noah carefully crossed the bathroom floor. The small white tiles were covered in bloody handprints and bloody footprints, as if Mo and Trina had been playing a macabre game of Twister while they bled to death.
    He opened the shower door. Mo was sitting there, staring at him with his eyes wide open. He was wearing only a grey turtleneck sweater, the front of which was black with blood. He had been emasculated, too. Between his hairy white thighs there was a nothing but a gaping wound, as dark as pigs’ liver.
    Noah stood and stared at Mo for nearly half a minute, as if he expected him to say something. But then a blowfly landed on Mo’s lip, and started to walk across it, rubbing its proboscis together, and all Noah could do was turn around and leave the bathroom and close the door behind him.
    Silja was in the kitchen, talking on her cellphone.
    ‘Who are you calling?’ he asked her.
    ‘The police. What else?’
    ‘Of course. You’re absolutely right, yes. Go ahead. God!’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    Noah leaned against the counter. The kitchen seemed to shrink all around him, and Silja sounded as if she were talking to him from another room.
    ‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Just give me a minute.’
    ‘You look terrible.’
    He pulled out a high-legged stool and sat down. ‘I can’t believe this. First Jenna, now Mo and Trina. What the hell is going on here,