“Are you . . .” Coltrane filled his oxygen-starved lungs.
“I think I’m . . .” Her chest rose and fell in alarming turmoil. “I think I’m all right. He had me trapped. If you hadn’t climbed to the top . . .”
“How the hell did he know where we’d be?”
“He shouldn’t have. We were careful.”
“I don’t understand. What did we do wrong?”
“Somehow he followed us.”
“I can’t believe I’m still alive.”
Trembling, Tash held him.
“I was sure I was going to fall,” Coltrane said.
“Alive.” Tash held him tighter. “My God, I was so scared. I am scared.” Her mouth was suddenly on his, and the pain of the pressure against his mangled lips was nothing compared to the life-affirming force of their embrace. Alive, Coltrane thought.
14
B UT HE COULDN ’ T STOP FEELING NUMB AND HOLLOW .
“Talk to me,” Tash said.
He kept shaking his head, staring out the window.
“What are you thinking?”
The car seemed filled with the smell of fear and death.
“Get it out of you,” Tash said.
“We can’t leave him like this.”
“We can’t take him with us.”
Coltrane frowned toward the ruins.
“All those snakes. You’re not suggesting we go back there and get his body.”
“Of course not,” Coltrane said. “But we can’t just drive away. Somebody has to be told.”
“The police? No way.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“You bet we do,” Tash said. “We can get back to the States as fast as we can. The Mexican police scare me to death. They have a different kind of law down here. It’s based on the Napoleonic Code. You’re not innocent until proven guilty, the way we’re used to. The reverse. You’re guilty until you prove you’re innocent, and this might not look like self-defense to them. They might decide it’s manslaughter. What if someone thinks you pushed him onto those snakes? Down here, they don’t believe in the right to a speedy trial.”
“But the village knows we went up here,” Coltrane said. “It’s a safe bet they’re also aware of another stranger in the area, that Nolan went up here. So what are they going to think when you and I come down but Nolan doesn’t? Some of them are going to get curious enough to hike up and look around. As soon as they find Nolan’s body, the police will be looking for two outsiders in a car that fits this one’s description. They’ll be waiting for us at the airport. Because we tried to run, we really will look guilty. Don’t you see that we have to go to the police before the police come to us?”
15
A RED P ONTIAC WITH A RENTAL - CAR STICKER ON IT WAS PARKED among ferns at the bottom of the overgrown lane. Nolan must have left it there and hiked up, Coltrane thought. That’s why we didn’t hear him. The rumble of the surf muffled his footsteps as he walked up behind me.
About to turn left onto the jungle-lined road that led into the village, he had to wait for an exhaust-spewing yellow bus to rattle past. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tash fidgeting. Sweat stuck his back to the seat.
“Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop,” Tash said.
“What for?”
“If the driver says it’s going farther north to Acapulco, I’m getting on it.”
“Getting on it?” Coltrane looked at her in astonishment.
“A woman with my features isn’t going to have a pleasant time in a Mexican jail.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll spend any time in a Mexican jail.”
“I’m not going to take the chance.” Tash kept hugging herself. “I saw the way those soldiers looked at me when they were checking for drugs and guns.”
“Tash, nothing’s going to happen.”
“You bet it isn’t—because the Mexican and U.S. police are going to sort this out after I get home.”
“But the local police will find out we were together.”
“Not if you tell them you went up there alone, that I wasn’t feeling well and took the bus back to Acapulco.”
“Tash—”
“Please. I’m asking you. Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop.”
16
T HAT VINE IS WHERE HE TRIPPED ,” Coltrane said. His mouth throbbed where he had been punched. “Be careful. There were snakes inside that building the last time I was here.”
“Yes, I see one in the corner.”
“What?”
“An especially nasty type.”
Coltrane’s skin turned cold. He had needed all of his willpower to guide the policeman through ferns and flowers toward this spot. Now he needed even stronger willpower not to bolt back to the car.
“A team of medical experts will have to drive here from Acapulco to examine the body before they move it.” The policeman, the only one in the village, was middle-aged and heavy, with a thick dark mustache and solemn eyes. “You say you had a fight.”
“Yes.”
Coltrane had considered inventing a story in which he had happened to find Nolan already dead, but he couldn’t think of a way to explain his mangled lips, not to mention the bruises that the medical examiner would find on Nolan’s groin.
“Over a woman,” the policeman said.
“Yes.”
“And this woman . . .”
“Isn’t here. As I explained, she wasn’t feeling well. She took a bus back to Acapulco while I came up here.”
“But meanwhile, this man . . .”
“Came up here also.”
“He followed you from Los Angeles.”
“Yes. He was very angry about the woman. He and I had a similar argument about her back in Los Angeles.”
“But this time, while you tried to defend yourself, he stumbled back and . . .” The policeman gestured toward motion inside the building.
“I never meant for that to happen.”
“Of course.”
“There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“The dead man is a U.S. police officer.”
17
I T TOOK A WEEK TO STRAIGHTEN THINGS OUT . Coltrane endured most of that time in a crowded, noxious-smelling cell, not in the village, which was too small to have a jail, but in Acapulco, where his belongings were brought from the hotel, and where he learned that Tash had flown to the United States the day Nolan died. In Los Angeles, she had hired an attorney to fly to Acapulco and consult with a Mexican attorney about gaining Coltrane’s freedom. The Los Angeles Police Department was disturbed that another of its officers had died, and equally disturbed about Nolan’s behavior. For the sake of public relations and morale, it was decided to say only that Nolan had been on vacation and had died by misadventure: snakebite. Privately, the policeman whom Coltrane had first spoken to expressed severe reservations about Tash’s sudden departure from Mexico the day of the death—“She was extremely ill,” Coltrane emphasized—but the Mexican attorney earned his substantial fee, and Coltrane was eventually on a plane to Los Angeles. He had suffered doubts about how soon he would be released. He had definitely suffered from the privations of a Mexican jail. But throughout he had kept his emotional strength.
Because Tash had not gone to jail.
TWELVE
1
T HE NUMBER YOU HAVE CALLED IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE ,” a computerized voice said.
In his kitchen, Coltrane set down the phone and frowned. His travel bag was at his feet. I must have rushed and pressed the wrong numbers, he thought. He picked up the phone and tried again.
“The number you have called is no longer in service.”
This time, he knew that he hadn’t made a mistake. What the . . . As soon as he had been released from jail in Acapulco, he had called Tash’s cellular phone but had failed to get an answer. At LAX, he had phoned her again and had still not gotten an answer. Now, in the forty minutes it had taken a
taxi to drive him home in the congestion of evening traffic, her phone had been disconnected. What on earth was going on?
At once, he realized that he had another way to try to contact Tash: Walt.
“The number you have called is no longer in service.”
This is crazy, he thought.
He tried the Malibu sheriff’s station. “I need to get in touch with Walt Halliday. Is he on duty tonight?”
“No, sir, and he won’t be on duty tomorrow, either. He isn’t with us anymore.”
“Isn’t with . . .”
“He resigned a couple of days ago.”
Speechless, Coltrane set down the phone.
2
E XCEPT FOR A LIGHT OVER THE FRONT DOOR AND THE GARAGE , Tash’s house was in darkness, its modernistic assemblage of cubes silhouetted against the moonlit sky. No lamp was on in any of the windows. That wouldn’t have been unusual in the middle of the night, but the time was only ten after nine, and even if Tash had gone out, Coltrane would have expected her to do what most people did—leave a few lights on. There was absolutely no sign that anyone was at home. But there was a sign of a different sort. Leaving his headlights on, Coltrane got out of his car to study it: FOR SALE , OCEAN REALTY .
This can’t be happening, he thought. He walked quickly to the front door, rang its doorbell, listened to the hollow echo from inside, and pounded on the door. “Tash!” he yelled. The front of the house was scorched from the fire that had been set on New Year’s Day. Peering through the metal fence that enclosed the incinerated flower garden, he strained to get a view through a window. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the room was totally empty, its furniture removed. “Tash!” Dismayed, he ran to the end of the street and along the fence to the water, hurrying toward her house from the back. The deck light wasn’t on. The only illumination was from the stars and moon. He tripped on the deck stairs but ignored the pain and scrambled the rest of the way up, his urgent footsteps reverberating as he ran to a window. The metal shutters had not been lowered. Staring in, straining to decipher the blackness, he realized that there wasn’t any furniture in this room, either. “Tash!” Despite the chill of the ocean breeze, sweat poured off him, soaking his clothes.
3
I ’ M NOT COMFORTABLE GIVING OUT THAT INFORMATION ,” the severe-faced woman said. She was in her forties, had frosted hair and long red fingernails, and wore a black designer pantsuit with a blue silk scarf.
“But I’m a friend of hers. I didn’t know she’d moved. I’m trying to get in touch with her.” It was nine in the morning. Coltrane stood in one of the cubicles in the Ocean Realty office. Outside, trucks rumbled by on the Pacific Coast Highway. “Surely she gave you the phone number and the address where she moved.”
“She also gave me strict instructions not to let anyone else know it.” Behind her desk, the woman pressed her back rigidly against her chair, as if wanting to keep as much distance as possible between Coltrane and her. “She told me one of the reasons she was moving was that she’d been threatened by a stalker.”
“I know. I helped identify the man who was doing it.”
“Then I’m sure you can appreciate my dilemma.”
“I don’t understand.”
“For all I know, you’re the man who was stalking her. She instructed me not to give out her new phone number and address.”
“For Christ sake.”
The woman flinched.
“Okay,” Coltrane said. “I understand your obligation to your client. But would it be violating any confidence if you phoned Tash, gave her my name, and told her I wanted to speak to her? I really am a close friend of hers.”
“I happen to know she won’t be in today. I’ll phone her tomorrow and tell her you want her to get in touch with you.”
Tomorrow? Coltrane mentally groaned.
4
J UST IN TIME , Coltrane steered from the PCH as Lyle came out of the coffee shop and approached his cruiser. After skidding to a stop, the squeal of his tires attracting Lyle’s attention, Coltrane hurried from his car and reached the heavyset officer, whom he had never seen in uniform before and who seemed even more heavyset with all the equipment on his gun belt.
Lyle’s hair was cut short, military-style. He looked as wary as the woman in the real estate office.
“The dispatcher at the station told me you usually have coffee here about this time,” Coltrane said. “I’m glad I caught up to you.”
For his part, Lyle didn’t look glad at all. He just nodded and waited.
“Listen, I’m confused about a couple of things,” Coltrane said. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
Lyle shrugged, nothing relaxed about the gesture.
Coltrane had to raise his voice to be heard above the passing traffic. “I’ve been trying to find Tash Adler.”
“She moved.”
“I know that. Do you have any idea where?”
“No.”
“Why did Walt Halliday resign from the sheriff’s department?”
“He didn’t tell me. We weren’t really that close. I just assumed it was on account of the stress of the job.”
“Well, maybe he knows where Tash moved. I tried phoning, but his number’s out of service. Do you have any idea where he lives, so I can talk to him?”
“Lived.”
“Excuse me?”
“The same day Walt resigned, he left town.”
“What?”
“He said he needed a change of scene.”
The asphalt of the parking lot seemed to ripple, threatening to swallow Coltrane. “I don’t get it. What the hell is happening?”
“Seems obvious to me,” Lyle said.
“How?”
“It’s too big a coincidence, both of them making a sudden decision to move at the same time. I had a suspicion there was something between them.”
“What?”
“Even if there wasn’t, it isn’t any mystery why she would have moved: the stress of being stalked.”
“But that’s over. Now that you know Duncan Reynolds was doing it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Duncan Reynolds. Didn’t Tash explain to you?”
“Who the hell is Duncan Reynolds?”
“She didn’t show you the photographs?”
“What photographs?”
Perplexed, Coltrane did his best to organize his thoughts, explaining.
“And you found something in these photographs?” Lyle asked.
“A man taking pictures of her. Duncan Reynolds. I know him. Tash met him once, but he used a different name.”
“So where are these pictures?”
“Tash has them.” The briefcase containing them had not been with Coltrane’s travel bag when the Acapulco police had brought his belongings from the hotel. He had assumed that Tash had gone to the hotel to get her things before she went to the airport, that she had taken the briefcase back to Los Angeles with her—to show the police and make sure Duncan Reynolds didn’t threaten her anymore. “Or maybe . . .”
“What?”
“Maybe she doesn’t have them. Maybe they were lost when the Mexican police brought my stuff from the hotel. That would explain why she didn’t tell you. She forgot to bring them with her, so she decided to wait until I came back with the proof. In the meantime, Duncan Reynolds kept harassing her, and she moved.”
“Without even a hint to us that she knew who was after her? Does that make sense?”
“No. Not when you put it that way.”
“And you don’t have the photographs, either?”
The asphalt beneath him seemed more unsteady. Instantly, he felt on solid footing. “I have the negatives at home. I can make others.”
“Then make them and bring them to me. But I have to tell you, I think this is bullshit.”
Coltrane blinked as if he’d been slapped.
“I heard about what you claim happened with Carl Nolan in Mexico. He was a damned fine police officer. I
f you expect me to believe he was jealous of you and flew down to Mexico to get even with you—”
“But that’s the truth.”
“Sure. Except Tash told me a different version. She said Carl went down to rescue her. From you.”
Coltrane’s mind reeled.
“She said she was moving because you were smothering her so much that she had to get away from you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
The parking lot seemed to spin. “Jesus Christ, am I losing my mind?”
5
C OLTRANE ALMOST DIDN ’ T CLOSE HIS FRONT DOOR , so great was his need to rush down to the vault, grab the negatives he had stored there, and hurry into the darkroom to make new prints of Duncan Reynolds spying on Tash.
But after unlocking and opening the vault, Coltrane stood frozen in place, his mouth agape. The envelope of negatives that should have been on the nearest shelf wasn’t there. Telling himself that he must have forgotten which shelf he had put the negatives on, he charged into the vault and examined every shelf, but he still didn’t find them. The darkroom, he thought. I must have left them in . . . He rushed to search it, but they were gone.
6
I ’ M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU .” Hoping that his eyes didn’t look as wild as he felt, Coltrane pointed toward Tash’s house next door. “Your neighbor moved recently.”
The spectacled gray-haired woman held an artist’s brush, wore a painter’s smock, and looked annoyed that Coltrane had rung her doorbell. “The day before yesterday. I saw the van.”
“Did she happen to give you her new address? I’m supposed to deliver some legal documents to her and—”
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