“This kind.”
He took the three sheets from his pocket, the one to Angela and the two he’d received, and laid them side by side in front of his son. Eric’s face seemed to harden as he read them, as if his flesh were solidifying from within. When he raised his head his eyes were angry.
“Rakubian,” he said.
“You know it’s not Rakubian.”
“How would I know that? Who else—?”
Hollis said nothing, watching him.
“They sound like his kind of crap,” Eric said. “But this one … ‘What did you do with his body?’ What does that mean?”
“What do you suppose it means?”
“Somebody thinks you had something to do with him disappearing, is that it?”
“Well?”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“Dammit, you know I didn’t kill him.”
“Dad … I never thought you did.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Hollis said wearily. “No more lies or evasions.”
Eric blinked at him. “Hey, wait a minute. What made you think I might’ve sent those notes? I wouldn’t care if you’d chopped Rakubian up into little pieces and fed ’em to Fritz—”
“That’s not one bit funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you or Angie—”
“Not if you were thinking clearly.”
Strained silence for a clutch of seconds. Then, slowly, “You’re afraid I had something to do with whatever happened to Rakubian. That’s why you had me fly up here.”
“It’s time, son. Past time.”
“For what?”
“To get it out into the open. All of it, on both sides.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Eric, I know. I’ve known all along. I was there not long after you. I found him where you left him.”
“Where I—”
“Who did you think cleaned up his house, got rid of the body? You must’ve guessed it was me.”
Eric sat without moving, his eyes round but showing nothing of what he was feeling or thinking.
“You can tell me how it happened or not,” Hollis said. “That’s up to you. The one thing I have to know is whether you went there with the intention of killing him. Did you?”
No answer. Not even an eyeblink.
“Did you, Eric?”
“When?” The word seemed to come from deep within; his lips barely moved.
“When what?”
“When was he killed? When did you find him?”
“I just told you—”
“Dad, you answer me now. When did all this happen? What day?”
The sudden sharpness in Eric’s voice, more than his words, brought the first stirrings of doubt. Hollis said, “The Saturday before Angela left for Utah.”
“The day I found the box in the garage.”
“You had every right to be furious—”
“Sure I was furious. But not enough to kill him. I couldn’t kill anybody, not even to save Angie. You never did understand who or what I am, did you?” Eric’s body seemed to loosen all at once; he leaned forward so abruptly that his elbows banged the table, rattled the coffee cups. “Listen to me, Dad. That day I did exactly what I told you and Mom I did—drove out to the coast, then up along the Russian River. I didn’t go to San Francisco. I didn’t see Rakubian.”
“You … didn’t …”
“I didn’t kill him. It wasn’t me.”
The truth.
Hollis knew it, accepted it all at once. Certain knowledge replacing the false belief, the rush to misjudgment.
Somebody else had gone to Rakubian’s home that afternoon, somebody else with a powerful reason to hate him and to want him dead. Somebody else had picked up the raven statuette and crushed his skull. Somebody else …
And the corpse, the blood, the carpet, the garbage bags, the cleanup, the nightmare drive, the cop, the gravedigging, the burial, all of it, all of it … for nothing.
He’d covered up somebody else’s murder.
He sat stunned, the truth like a hammer beating at his senses. There was relief in him … Eric was innocent… but in these first moments it had been dwarfed by the weight of his own mordant guilt.
“Eric,” he said thickly, “get me a brandy. Double shot.”
“You’re not supposed to drink ….”
“Just get it. Please.”
Eric hesitated, then lifted to his feet. He seemed to be gone a long time. Then the snifter was in Hollis’s hand, the brandy inside him in two convulsive swallows. Its spreading heat let him think again.
“Dad? You believe me?”
“Yes. I believe you.”
“Why’d you wait so long to talk to me? All those questions at home the day after, on the phone the other day … why didn’t you say something either of those times?”
“I thought it’d be easier if we just pretended … if we kept our own secrets.…” He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “You were right—I never did know you very well, did I.”
“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I didn’t, either.”
He nodded. I’m a goddamn fool, he thought.
After a little time Eric asked, “What happened that Saturday? Did you go to Rakubian’s place because you thought I had?”
“Yes.” He explained about Cassie’s phone call, his discovery of the body. The words came in a rush, hot and acidulous in his mouth. “His skull was crushed … and I remembered you saying that was what you wanted to do to him, crush his skull. It never occurred to me that somebody else might’ve done it. I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.”
“If I’d been in your place,” Eric said slowly, “I’d’ve thought the same thing. So then you cleaned up everything, to protect me.”
“No other reason.” Hollis told him the rest of it, everything except the exact location of the grave. Purging himself. When he was done, Eric seemed to be looking at him in a new way. But he couldn’t tell whether he’d gained or lost stature in his son’s estimation, just that he’d been reevaluated.
“It must’ve been pretty bad,” Eric said. “If that cop had looked in the trunk …”
“Might’ve been better if he had.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I screwed up. Not just that day—before and since, all the way down the line.”
“What do you mean, before that day?”
He felt the urge to confess his original plan. I was going to kill him myself, he wanted to say, shoot him down like a dog. And I might have if somebody else hadn’t done the job for me. That’s the really ironic thing here, you see? Somebody else killed him, not me, not you, a third party took care of the problem, and all I had to do when I found him was walk away or call the police and it would’ve been over then and there. We might have been suspected, you and I, but there would have been no proof because we’re innocent and eventually they’d have found out who did it … some little piece of evidence I took away or destroyed. Now it’s too late. Now we can’t call the cops, we can’t dig up Rakubian, and the person responsible not only got away with it but may be stalking us now, like Rakubian stalked us but for no comprehensible reason. All I’ve done is exchange a known threat for an unknown one.
He put none of this into words. His insane plan to take Rakubian’s life—and it was insane, he knew that now—was his own private cross. No good purpose would be served in sharing it with his son, with anyone ever.
“Before, after, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I screwed up, that’s all. Maybe put us all right back in jeopardy again.”
“You think whoever wrote those notes is the person who killed Rakubian?”
“Has to be. No one else knows he’s dead.”
“ ‘What did you do with his body?’ Yeah. Killed him and left the body there in the house, and the next thing he knows the body’s gone and everything’s cleaned up. Must’ve been so
me shock when he found that out.”
“A shock, yes.”
“But how’d he know it was you? He wouldn’t’ve still been hanging around when you got there.”
“May have come back for some reason, saw my car. Or guessed it was me somehow.”
“What I don’t get is why he waited two months, why he started sending those notes. I mean, he was home free. What’s the point of hassling you and Angie?”
Hollis shook his head.
“He sent this one to her at her new apartment,” Eric said. “She’s been living there less than a week. How’d he know where to find her?”
The answer to that was plain enough. Hollis said nothing, let Eric come to it on his own. It didn’t take him long.
“Somebody we know,” he said.
“I don’t see any other explanation.”
“Who? Jeez, Dad, I can’t imagine anybody we know hating us that much.”
I can. One person.
“Who’d want Rakubian dead besides us? Or care what you did with his body? Or want you and Angie to suffer any more than you already have?”
One person, one motive that makes any sense.
He shook his head again. A headshake was neither a lie nor an evasion.
Eric said, “What’re we going to do?”
“We’re not going to do anything. You’re going back to Santa Barbara on the five-fifty flight.”
“Listen, I—”
“No argument, please. There’s nothing you can do at home.”
“I can help find out who’s doing this.”
“How? What can you do that I can’t?”
“… If you identify him, what then?”
“Cross that bridge when the time comes.”
“You can’t turn him in without implicating yourself. He knows you got rid of the body, covered up, he’d tell the police—”
“His word against mine,” Hollis said. “He can’t be absolutely certain it was me and he can’t have any idea where Rakubian is buried. He’d never be able to prove he didn’t do it himself.”
“The cops might still believe him.”
“I won’t turn him in if I can avoid it. The threat of it alone might be enough to get him off our backs.”
“Suppose it isn’t? What if he tries something … if he has a gun or a knife?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Dad … you’re not thinking of going after him with a weapon?”
Another headshake that was neither lie nor evasion. “There are other ways to protect myself. I may have cancer, but I’m not a cripple yet.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Eric’s mouth tightened; Hollis could almost see the shutter come down behind his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Hollis said, picking his words carefully now. “I know you’re concerned, I know you want to help. But this thing could drag on for a while, turn out to be a hell of a lot less dangerous than it seems. You can’t quit your job, put your life on hold indefinitely.”
No response.
“Let me handle it. If there’s anything you can do, I’ll call you right away. I mean that—right away.”
Another dozen beats. Then, “What about Mom? Does she know?”
“About the notes, yes.”
“But not about Rakubian being dead or what you did.”
“No. It would’ve meant telling her I believed you were guilty, and I couldn’t do that to her.”
“You going to tell her now?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“I am,” Eric said. “She has a right to know the whole story. So does Angie. Tell them both, Dad. We’re all in this together.”
Eric’s gaze was intense, and Hollis understood that the need for family unity was just as important to him. He’d been able to teach him that much, at least. He understood, too, that if the closeness, the new bond that had formed between them here was to be maintained, he must neither argue nor fail to follow through. He nodded, gripped his son’s arm.
“You’re right,” he said. “We’re all in this together, we all need to know what we’re dealing with.”
Somebody we know.
Ryan Pierce.
Driving home, looking at it from different angles as objectively as he could, he came up with Pierce every time. Motive for killing Rakubian: the same as Hollis’s, as Eric’s—to eliminate the threat to Angela and Kenny. The old Pierce might not have been capable of violence, but the new Pierce was a different story. He’d changed, all right, only not in the way Angela and Cassie believed; hardened into a man with definite convictions and a twisted set of values. And the one thing he wanted more than anything else seemed to be a new life with his ex-wife and his son. Motive for sending the notes: to make Angela dependent on him, leverage to convince her to remarry him. Secondary motive: to punish Hollis for standing against him.
It had to be Pierce. He wanted it to be Pierce, because then there was no immediate danger to anyone in the family and the solution to the problem was relatively clear-cut. The only real danger was in his sticking around, manipulating Angela. Confront him, then, and threaten him—with the law, but also with telling her he was a murderer. Point out that even if he tried to shift the guilt to Hollis, it wouldn’t work because she was still Daddy’s girl—she would never take his word over her father’s. Convince him that his only choice was to pack up and move away and never come near any of them again.
But be careful, don’t just bull ahead. Think through how he was going to handle Pierce, exactly what he would say to him. The more prepared he was, the greater the leverage to pry him out of their lives once and for all.
He felt better by the time he reached the Los Alegres exit—empowered again. He had decided something else, too, by then. He was not going to tell Cassie or Angela what he’d told Eric, not just yet. He was still committed to no more lies or evasions; he would simply withhold the truth a while longer. Until he talked to Pierce. Until he had him good and tight by the short hairs.
17
Sunday Morning
CASSIE went to church at ten o’clock.
Hollis went to the garage to clean, oil, and load the Colt Woodsman.
When he was done he rewrapped the .22 and put it in the Lexus’s glove compartment. Then he left a note for Cassie, saying he’d gone on an errand, and drove to Angela’s apartment.
She and Kenny were there; Pierce wasn’t. But Hollis would have known he’d spent the night even if Kenny hadn’t blurted it out three minutes after his arrival. Angela was calm today, smiling, the picture of Sunday-morning domesticity. She poured him a cup of coffee, another for herself, while Kenny climbed onto his lap and chattered about some new video game Pierce had given him. That was when the boy made his slip.
“Dad’s gonna live with us all the time,” he said.
“Oh, he is. Did he tell you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When?”
“Last night when he tucked me in.”
Angela was staring into her cup, two spots of color high on her cheekbones. He watched her until she raised her head, but she wouldn’t quite meet his gaze. She said to Kenny, “Honey, you can watch the Cartoon Channel if you want to.”
“Hey, cool!”
And then to Hollis, “We can sit in the garden.”
The “garden” was a twenty-foot square enclosed by a board fence draped in scraggly wisteria. Brown lawn, a couple of pyracantha shrubs, two strips of flower bed that were mostly hard-packed dirt. She deserves better than this, Hollis thought. Kenny deserves better than this.
They sat in a pair of molded plastic chairs on a tiny rectangle of cracked concrete. Angela asked tentatively, “Are you mad at me, Daddy? About Ryan?”
“No.”
“I needed somebody. Not just for protection … I mean …”
“I know what you mean.”
“You understand, don’t you?”
“When is he moving in permanently? Be pretty cramped in such a small spa
ce, won’t it?”
“It’s not like that,” she said.” At least not yet.”
“He seems to think it is, from what he told Kenny.”
“He wants it that way, the three of us together again. Very much. Last night … he asked me to marry him again.”
Even though he insisted he wouldn’t yet. “And?”
“I didn’t give him a definite answer. I’m not sure it’s what I want. I still care for him … a lot. And Kenny does, too. But marriage so soon after David … and the situation the way it is … I don’t think it’s the right time to be making that kind of decision.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Ryan says he understands. But …”
“But what? Is he pressuring you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then, exactly?”
“He’s so sure it’s the right thing. He swears he loves us, and I know he means it. I can’t be as absolutely certain of my own feelings, that’s all.”
“Did you tell him about the note?”
She nodded. “I felt he should know.”
“What was his reaction?”
“He said he’d make sure nothing happens to us.”
“Uh-huh. Where is he now?”
“He left about nine. He had some things to do.”
“What things?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Be back when?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Just went off and left you and Kenny alone.”
“He can’t watch over us every minute.…”
“I want to talk to him,” Hollis said.
“About his proposal? Please, Daddy, don’t interfere. It won’t do any of us any good.”
“That isn’t what I want to talk about. You have any idea where he went?”
“Well, Rhona’s, maybe. Most of his things are still there.…”
Right, he thought. No need to move them over here just yet. A razor, a toothbrush, some clean underwear, a couple of packages of condoms—what else would he need?
He stood. “I’d better be going.”
“Can’t you stay a while longer?”
This was the last place for his showdown with Pierce; it had been a mistake to think he could manage it anywhere near Angela and Kenny. Neutral ground, someplace where he could stay focused and maintain a tight grip on his emotions.
In an Evil Time Page 15