“Look,” Kathryn said after a few minutes, holding her new sandal. “The sole’s coming off. I’m going to exchange them at La Tabaqueria. Do you want anything?”
“Sí, un coco-frío.”
Dave dived into A Painted House, which spawned a new perspective on the stories his parents told about life in rural Arkansas, reminiscent of the Chandler family, before they gave up and moved west to find work in San Diego’s aircraft industry.
When Kathryn came back, he said, “Let’s name our kid Luke.”
“If it’s a boy, I like David.”
He sucked the watered-down juice out of the coconut through a peppermint-striped plastic straw. “Me too, but he’d always be ‘Junior.’ Did you get new sandals?”
“No problem, they exchanged the old ones for a new pair.” She held her feet up for him to see. “These fit better, anyway.”
“Why didn’t you buy the pair that fit best to start with?”
“The other pair went with my swimsuit.”
He chose not to pursue her reasoning. “You were gone a long time. What else did you do?”
“I figured we might want to get out of the resort for dinner at least once—the concierge made nine P.M. reservations at a seafood restaurant in Manzanillo Centro. Do you plan to read all day, or would you like to do something healthful?”
“I can read tonight.” He inserted a marker and dropped the book in their beach bag. “I don’t want to work out at their health club, but I wouldn’t mind getting some exercise.”
“Good—I reserved a three o’clock tee time to play nine holes at Las Hadas Golf Links.”
“I haven’t golfed in thirty years and you’ve been taking lessons—you’ll kick my butt.”
“Probably. I’ll make you feel better if I beat you too badly.”
“How?”
“Use your imagination.”
The back nine at Las Hadas Golf Links was par thirty-six. Teeing up at hole 12, Kathryn was at eleven strokes, Dave at thirty-two, although she had permitted him numerous free drops to get out of the trees, the sand, and the abundant roughs.
“Problem is, I need left-handed clubs,” he told her. They rode the cart back to the clubhouse, where he exchanged clubs with the help of a bemused attendant.
Southpaw clubs didn’t help. By the time they finished hole 16, he had stopped counting his strokes at ninety-two, not including the free drops and the swings Kathryn hadn’t witnessed.
He was also down to his second-to-last ball, a beat-up orange reject he’d picked up along the way. Long before, he had declared the balls, the clubs, the groundskeeper, the weather, and the putting greens to be at fault.
On 17, Kathryn doubled over in laughter when he plunked his grungy orange ball into a water hazard after digging up half a dozen divots. He reserved his final new ball for 18 by walking up to the 17 pin and dropping the ball in the cup. It took him three tries.
“I’ll make up the strokes on the eighteenth,” he promised.
Hole 18 at Las Hadas is a short hundred forty yards, but reaching the green requires a straight hundred-yard tee shot over a nasty surf and two riprap sea walls.
Dave teed up and drove a divot thirty yards into the near seawall. “That stroke doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t lose the ball.”
“I don’t think that matters.” Kathryn’s eyes were blurry with tears of laughter.
“I still have the tee, too.”
“That’s good. If there’s ever a worldwide golf tee shortage, you’ll be the first link in the supply chain.”
“Don’t scoff.”
She shrieked, and when she finally stopped laughing, took a deep breath. “We need to laugh more often.”
He laughed, too. “Easy for you to say, I’m the one being laughed at.”
“I’m not laughing at you, honey, I’m laughing with you.”
“Sure.”
He wound up with a 3-wood, smacked himself on the back of the head, then connected with his longest drive of the day. His last ball covered ninety of the requisite hundred yards to get on the green before splashing unceremoniously into the unforgiving ocean.
He slammed his clubs into the bag. “Driving the cart’s a hoot, and I really enjoy the scenery, but this is a dumb game. I quit.”
“I want to play through and finish,” Kathryn told him. “Will you caddy for me?”
“Sure, my machismo’s shot anyway.”
She teed up, rocked back and forth, planted her feet, flexed her knees, and lofted a perfect drive that arched onto the green and landed twenty-five feet from the 18 pin.
They drove across the footbridge, he handed her the club, and she two-putted the treacherous par-three hole.
“What did you shoot for the entire nine?” he asked as he steered the cart past the newly constructed, Mayan-inspired Karmina Palace.
“Fifty,” she answered proudly.
“A golfer’s only as good as her caddy.”
Dave parked, handed his clubs to the attendant, and said enthusiastically, “¡Gracias! The left-handed clubs really improved my game.”
“¡Excelente, señor! ¿Cuantos golpes?”
Dave shook his head in disgust, as if he might have shot in the low thirties if he hadn’t used the wrong clubs on holes 10 and 11. “Fifty-two.”
“¡Muy bueno!” The attendant nodded in admiration. “Y Señora?”
“My wife shot fifty—beat me by two strokes.”
Chapter 28
“YOU’RE SUCH A LIAR,” Kathryn told him.
For an extra twenty dollars, the taxi driver agreed to tour Manzanillo on the way to the restaurant. To the taxi’s right, between a dirty brown beach and the highway, cargo cranes loomed over the waterfront like disjointed blue and white hawks, and an overloaded diesel locomotive tugged a mile-long string of car carriers toward the city.
“I’d be surprised if you shot under two hundred,” she added.
“Me too.”
The driver circled the wrought-iron-fenced plaza and crept through dirty one-way streets lined by throngs of shoppers; open-air clothing, shoe, and appliance stores; auto repair shops; bars and restaurants; portable food carts; and a fleet of rusting, abandoned cars.
When they had seen enough, he headed toward the beach. As the cab neared the plaza’s back side, the driver slowed and pointed upward.
“Mira. Muchos pájaros.”
Thousands of small-bodied pigeons perched wing to wing on every power line, telephone wire, pole cross arm, fence, and hotel balcony rail. Thick, gooey, smelly guano coated every horizontal surface.
“Nice town,” Dave murmured under his breath.
Going into the restaurant he tripped, fell down the stairs, and opened a small gash over his eyebrow.
“Damn loose step.” He couldn’t tell Kathryn he’d suddenly felt dizzy and lost his balance. The restaurant’s owner, a skinny man sipping a Pepsi, gave him a Band-Aid.
An hour later, as they headed back to the resort, Kathryn said, “The food was terrible, wasn’t it?”
He stared vacantly and didn’t answer.
“Dave?”
He snapped his head around as if jolted from a deep sleep. “Huh?”
“I said the food was terrible.”
He was sweating heavily. He wiped his forehead and the bubbles from the corners of his mouth, grateful for the dark interior of the taxi. His stomach churned and his dizzy head pounded with a horrifying, merciless fury he’d never before felt.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
As a cop, he feared for his life at times, but this was different—real fear—an inexplicable terror of an untamed evil deep within that he could neither control nor understand. He dared not admit that he had no memory whatsoever of the time between his fall and that instant.
“I’m fine, just full of food and tired,” he lied.
“Let’s eat in the resort’s restaurants every night, rather than waste time going out.”<
br />
“Good idea.”
He glanced at his wife, who was watching the lights of Manzanillo’s suburban strip malls slide past the cab’s open window. The nausea and confusion had waned, the headache had subsided to a dull ache. “Kate?”
“Yes?”
He struggled to sweep away the mental cobwebs. “I don’t care whether we have a son or a daughter, I just care that Emma’s happy and you and the baby come through it healthy and safe.”
“I know.”
When the cab dropped them off, they strolled through the lobby, around the pool, over the wood-planked rope bridge that Dudley Moore stumbled across while pursuing his Perfect 10, past the piano bar, through Plaza de Doña Albina, and back toward their suite.
“I was wondering,” Dave said.
“Wondering what?”
“You promised that if you beat me badly on the links, you’d assuage my bruised and battered male ego. Is a beating of fifty to two hundred bad enough?”
“I thought you were tired.”
“I feel fine now. I was wondering what assuagement you came up with.”
She slowed her pace and let her hand brush against the front of his trousers, which were stretched taut over his growing lust.
“Trust me,” she told him, squeezing gently, then promised, “You’ll like it.”
Chapter 29
THEY SETTLED INTO a lazy routine of sleeping late and making love, with the added indulgences of eating fresh-fruit breakfasts, lounging on the beach, taking warm late-afternoon walks and cool early-evening showers.
Their nights started with beer, pretzels, and intimate conversation in El Palmar Piano Lounge, followed by a leisurely dinner at Los Delfines, where the maitre d’ had learned their names, which table they preferred, and their favorite food. He said the chef knew how to cook more than three dishes, but they stuck with red snapper, spicy mahimahi, and coconut flan in a fuzzy coconut shell.
On Sunday morning, they arose early, packed, walked to the beach, and claimed their favorite palapa near the Oasis Bar for their last few hours.
Just before noon, Kathryn said, “I feel sad. It was too short.”
“The biggest gifts come in the smallest packages—thanks for the best vacation of my life.”
“You’re welcome.” Kathryn kissed the tip of her finger and leaned over to touch it to his lips. “I’m not ready to go home either, but it’s time to check out.”
They dropped off their beach towels at the toallero, trudged reluctantly up the hill to their suite, stacked their suitcases by the door, and waited for a bellman’s cart to shuttle them to the front desk.
The concierge flagged a cab. “Is your last day at Las Hadas, no?” he asked as he loaded their luggage in the trunk.
“How did you know?” Kathryn asked.
“You look so sorrowful, señora.”
Lost in their private thoughts, they rode to the airport without noticing the speed-bump stops; melon, lime, and papaya farms; banana and coconut plantations; green-canopied papaya groves; or the villages with thatch-roofed homes that lined the busy two-lane road.
The Boeing 737 rumbled south on the lone runway, lifted off, and nosed up into a deep blue cloudless sky above a long, skinny stretch of virgin shoreline crowded into the surf by mangrove swamps. After the flaps retracted, the pilot banked inland over dense jungle and continued the slow circle until all they could see below was the shimmering Pacific.
As the plane climbed toward cruising altitude, Kathryn skimmed a month-old Alaska Airlines Magazine, a SkyMall catalog, and a Consumer Reports that someone had left on the empty center seat. Dave absorbed the final melancholy-sweet pages of A Painted House.
When the plane turned north along Baja California’s western coastline, he closed it and slipped it into his carry-on.
“Finished?” Kathryn asked.
“’Fraid so.” He adjusted the air vent, switched off the overhead light, reclined the seat, and listened to the big jet engines eat up the miles between paradise and San Francisco.
Eventually, he turned sideways in his seat so he could see his wife’s face. Her eyes were closed.
“Are you asleep?” he whispered.
“No, I was thinking what a wonderful time we had.”
“We sure did.” He paused. “I’m going to be the best husband to you, and the best father to Emma and the baby, for as long as I can.”
Kathryn turned to face her husband. “Why would you say such a strange thing?”
“I just wanted to tell you before we get home, in case I don’t get another chance.”
“Is there something you aren’t telling me?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t you get a lot more chances?”
“Just covering all the bases—you know how afraid I am of flying.” His hands gripped the arm rest tightly.
She reached over and covered his left hand with hers. “You know it’s an irrational fear. Flying’s safer than driving a car, especially in the Bay Area.”
“Tell that to the people who were aboard those four airplanes that crashed on September Eleventh.”
Chapter 30
MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 8:30 A.M.
MACKAY WAS SHUFFLING through a lopsided stack of papers when Inspector Escalante carried in two cups from the Starbucks cart in the courthouse atrium, handed a decaf to Mackay, and dropped into a leather chair and crossed one long leg over the other. As usual, she wore impeccably tailored trousers and an expensive jacket.
“Welcome back,” she greeted her boss. “How was your trip?”
“Couldn’t have been better. Thanks for telling me about Las Hadas, it was perfect.”
“Someday I’d like to spend a few days there with a special man.”
“You have someone in mind?”
Escalante paused. “Maybe, I’m not sure.” Then she emptied a cream container into her cup and asked, “You told Sheriff Granz you’re pregnant?”
“Yes, he was waiting when the lab opened at seven o’clock this morning, to have blood drawn.”
Mackay patted the pile of newspapers, memos, mail, and reports on her desk. “No priest murders while he and I were in Mexico. Maybe we’ve seen the last of them.”
Escalante blew on her coffee and sipped cautiously.
“Don’t bet on it. We’d better catch this wacko fast, or there’ll be more.”
“Unfortunately, I agree. Did DOJ come up with anything helpful?”
“The slug in Thompson’s head can be matched to the Beretta .25 that fired it, if we can find it. Same with Duvoir—the bullets can be matched if we can find the rifle.”
“What kind of rifle?”
“A .308 Remington.”
“That narrows it down.”
“A little. A hundred thousand of that model have been manufactured for civilian hunting, and thousands more in a modified version for worldwide military and police sniper duty.”
“So, it’s as common as the Beretta?”
“Not quite, but finding either weapon would be like—how do you say looking for a small thing?”
“Searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“That’s it. We could start by test-firing weapons belonging to all licensed hunters in the county.”
“It’d be a waste of time unless we did the same for members of the military. What else?”
“The shoe prints at Holy Cross gymnasium are men’s Nike Airliners, also identifiable. But we have the same problem—locating the shoes for comparison.”
“Dave wears old Nike Airs on weekends, just like thousands of other men.”
“James too.”
Mackay froze, cup halfway to her lips. “James?”
“I meant Lieutenant Miller.”
“Fess up .”
“What do you mean, Ms. Mackay?”
“Kathryn,” she corrected. “When you call a man by his first name, something’s going on besides work.”
“No big deal, we went out a few times while you were in Mexico.” A hint of color crept int
o her bronze cheeks and climbed to her ears. “We worked, too,” she tacked on unnecessarily.
It sounded feeble to Mackay. “You’re blushing.”
“I’m not!” The purple flush spread to her neck and chest. “He’s a gifted musician and an even better cook.”
“A man doesn’t cook for a woman unless—”
“It was just a couple of dinners.” She unconsciously flicked her tongue over her lips.
Escalante swallowed the last of her coffee, squished the empty cup, tossed it into the wastebasket, and changed the subject. “I should drink it without cream—fewer calories.”
“As if you need to worry. Did you get over the hill to see your credit-card-investigator friend?”
“We figured a phone call would be faster.”
“Uh-huh,” Mackay said skeptically. “What did you find out?”
“R-O-L deposits its credit card receipts at Silver State Bank on Plumb Lane in Reno. I phoned the bank’s branch manager. Deposits come by mail, never over the counter.”
“Are they ever made at an ATM?”
“I didn’t ask, why?”
“Deposits are date-and-time stamped and ATMs have cameras. Federal law requires banks to archive their tapes.”
“¡Maldita sea! I should have thought of that. We might catch a glimpse of the person who made the deposit.” Escalante jotted a reminder in her notebook.
“Whose name’s on the account and signature cards?” Mackay asked.
“The bank manager told me it’s in the name of Howard Ira Roller—H.I. Roller—I don’t think she got it.”
“High Roller—cute. Where does the bank send the monthly statements?”
“Mail Boxes Etc on Smithridge Lane in Reno.”
“Did you check it out?”
“One of my old Police Academy friend’s a Washoe County homicide detective. She interviewed the mail drop’s owner—High Roller’s address is a vacant lot on Rock Boulevard in Sparks.”
“Figures,” Mackay commented. “Who picks up from Mail Boxes Etc?”
“Nobody. Once a week they package the mail up and ship it to another drop in Carson City.”
Until Judgment Day Page 11