“Things to do myself,” he said. “We’ll get together again later.”
She seemed subdued as they went back inside; she probably thought he was mad at her, even though he’d said he wasn’t. Disappointed was closer to the truth. She was so damn dependent on men, the wrong kind, like Pierce and Rakubian. If only she had a little more backbone, a little better judgment.
She said, “Should I tell Ryan you want to see him?”
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
Kenny was paying no attention to them, sitting cross-legged in front of the television, up close, cartoon images assailing his eyes and cartoon voices assaulting his eardrums. Angela pried him away, brought him over for a quick hug and kiss good-bye. “See you, Granpa,” he said, and hurried back to the TV.
“He’s a cartoon junkie,” Angela said apologetically. “Cartoons and computers, that’s all he ever thinks about. But he loves you, Dad. So do I, a lot. Really … a lot.”
More than Pierce, I hope. Enough to forgive me when all this is over.
Pierce’s sister and her family lived on the east side, in one of the endless sprawling tracts that had spread like a blight over what had once been rich agricultural land. Tract houses, tract planning, even the more upscale variety, offended his architect’s eye. Bland conventional design, corner-cutting by greedy developers that too often resulted in slipshod construction and serious problems within a few years. Starter homes, some of them; fulfilled aspirations for other suburbanites. Little slices of the downsized American dream. He couldn’t fault those who were unable to afford something better; the high cost of living in California had forced many to settle for less. But the majority nowadays had been brainwashed into believing conformity and mediocrity were something better, all that they needed or deserved.
The only way to do battle against that kind of mind-set, in his professional view, was to try to educate the people by providing better home design, better overall planning, better construction, even if it meant shaving profits. Not the people like Shelby Chesterton, the affluent minority, who could afford the very best and for whom Hollis could now and then indulge his esthetic vision to the fullest. People like the seniors who would inhabit the Dry Creek Valley development, which was why he felt it was important for Mannix & Hollis to be given the job. And they would be, he was sure. Gabe felt the same way; they had agreed that a good portion of their profit margin should be sacrificed in favor of architectural integrity. Do quality work and you’d continue to get quality jobs, and in some small way maybe you could make a difference in the long run.
He remembered the street Rhona Pierce Collins lived on, but not the number, so he stopped in one of the nearby malls (so insipidly conventional it might have been a shopping center anywhere in the country) and looked it up. When he got to the equally uniform three-bedroom tract he didn’t see Pierce’s pickup; but he stopped anyway, went up, and rang the bell.
Rhona was a female counterpart of her brother, except that she’d put on at least twenty pounds since Hollis had last seen her, the result of two children, poor diet, and not enough exercise. Yes, she said, Ryan had been there, but he’d left more than an hour ago. No, she didn’t know where he’d gone. Then, as Hollis was about to turn away, she beamed at him and said, “Well, I guess congratulations are in order, Mr. Hollis.”
“Congratulations?”
“Angela and Ryan getting back together, getting married again.” He said nothing, but his expression was enough to turn her smile upside-down. “Gee, I hope I didn’t let the cat out of the bag. You did know about it, you and your wife?”
“Yes,” he said, “thanks, Rhona,” and put his back to her before she could read the full message in his face and eyes.
Sunday Afternoon
He couldn’t find Pierce anywhere. He looked for the Dodge downtown, on another pass by Angela’s apartment, a few other places, and then drove out Western Avenue Extension to Chileno Valley Road. The Gugliotta ranch was seven miles out, a beef and dairy cattle operation on several thousand acres spread over the rocky foothills. The Dodge wasn’t there, either; and old Fred Gugliotta, whom he knew slightly, told him he hadn’t seen Pierce since Friday afternoon.
Frustration rode heavily with him on the way back to town. He ached to get this business over and done with; the longer it went on the more stressed he would be, and another of Stan Otaki’s warnings had been to avoid stressful situations. For the third time he did a drive-by at Angela’s. Still no sign of the pickup.
It was nearly one by then, and he was tired and hungry. He gave up the hunt and headed home. Later he’d call Angela, and if Pierce had returned he’d arrange to meet him somewhere. Just the two of them, alone, with the Colt Woodsman in his pocket as backup.
Cassie was home from church and a lunch date afterward; he parked beside her van in the driveway. As soon as he shut off the engine he could hear Fritz barking his fool head off inside the house. Terrific. While Angela was in Utah, Cassie had worked with the Doberman to control his high-strung nature, the worst part of which was incessant barking. Mostly, now, the dog stayed quiet when they were home or arriving home. Something must have set him off.
Fritz wasn’t confined to his usual place on the back porch; Hollis could hear him moving around and making his racket on the other side of the front door. He said loudly, “Shut up, boy, it’s me,” as he opened it. The Doberman backed off to let him enter the hallway, but then stood quivering with hackles up, a low growl in place of the barks. Hollis frowned. “What’s the matter with you? You forget who puts the Alpo in your food dish?” He spoke the words in a quiet voice, but the dog kept right on growling.
“Cass?” he called. “What’s got Fritz so stirred up?”
No answer.
The muscles in his back and neck began a slow bunching. He called her name again, louder, and again there was no response. He sidled past the Doberman, went ahead into the living room.
And stopped dead, slam-frozen with shock.
The room was a shambles.
Worse than that … it had been systematically, brutally raped.
The fabric on the couches and chairs had been slashed by some sharp object, with such viciousness that there was little left except strips like flayed flesh. Stuffing bulged through the wounds in his armchair, gouts of it like white-and black-streaked blood. End tables were overturned, Cassie’s glass-fronted curio cabinet toppled and shattered, the glass top of the coffee table smashed, bar stools savaged and tossed aside, bottles broken on the floor behind the wet bar. And over everything, the furniture and the carpet and the walls, a mad pattern of stripes and swirls of shiny black spray paint. Now that he was in here he could smell both the paint and the spilled liquor. The odors closed his throat, intensified the sudden blood-throb in his temples.
Cassie was there in the midst of the wreckage, slumped against a torn couch armrest. She stared straight ahead, not moving in any way; in profile her face had the splotchy white consistency of buttermilk. One arm was raised in front of her, the fingers extended, and he realized she was pointing.
The wall on the far side of the fireplace. A once-beige wall decorated with two watercolors by local artists, now defaced by the black paint. But the marks there were not meaningless like the rest; they formed crude letters a foot high—
18
HE picked his way across the room, trying to avoid the still-sticky paint, to Cassie’s side. Except for lowering her arm, she remained immobile; did not look at him when he bent to grip her shoulders. Her eyes had a moist, glassy shine. Her body seemed to have no softness or resiliency, as if he were touching petrified wood. He tried to turn her against him, but she wouldn’t yield—not resisting, just not responding.
“Cass? You all right?”
“I haven’t been home long,” she said, as if she were answering a different question. “Fritz was barking. I went out to the porch to quiet him, but he broke away and came running in here.”
“The rest of the house …”
“I don’t know. This … I couldn’t …”
“I’ll check. You stay here.”
“It’ll never be the same again,” she said as he released her and straightened up. “No matter what we do. Never the same again.”
His gaze went again to the spray-painted wall. Rage boiled to the surface, came spilling out before he could stop it. “That son of a bitch. He’ll pay for this. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born.”
Now she was looking at him, with a kind of laser intensity. “Rakubian,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He stepped away from her, around behind the couch and along the inside wall into the hallway. Fritz was still there, no longer growling, but the muscled body still quivering. Hollis sidestepped him and went upstairs first to look into the master bedroom, then Angela’s and Eric’s old rooms. None of them had been violated. Downstairs again, he checked the dining room, TV room, his study, the kitchen. Intact, untouched. The Doberman followed him here, toenails clicking loudly on the hardwood floor.
All that barking, he thought. Scared Pierce off before he could do any more damage. Unless the living room was his only intended target. Tear it apart, leave his goddamn message, get out quick. The whole thing could have been done in less than ten minutes. Destroy an entire room … less than ten minutes.
The side kitchen window was open a few inches. Left that way after breakfast, carelessly, or left unlatched—Pierce could have gotten in through there. Or he could have come in through the front door. Hollis was sure he’d locked it when he left, but Pierce could have taken Angela’s key without her knowing it, walked right up, let himself in.
He quit the house by the patio door, went around to the front and into the Archers’ yard. There was no answer when he rang their bell. The Lippmans, their neighbors on the north, weren’t home, either. He crossed the street to the Changs’. They were in, but they had nothing to tell him; they’d been working in their backyard all morning.
Well, it didn’t really matter, did it? Pierce … who else but Pierce? And he couldn’t go to the police anyway. On the way back he had a strong impulse to get into the car, go hunting again. He fought it off. The state he was in now, it would be foolish, even dangerous, to brace Pierce.
Cassie was still in the living room, but she had gotten over the worst of her shock. She stood by the wet bar, color in her cheeks again, sparking anger in place of the glassy shine in her eyes.
She asked, “Did anybody see him?”
“No. Archers and Lippmans aren’t home.”
“He’s lucky as well as crazy. The police … maybe they can find something in this mess to prove it was him.”
“You didn’t phone them?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
He took a breath before he said, “I’m not going to report this.”
“Why not? Rakubian—”
“Rakubian didn’t do it.”
“Of course he did.”
Another breath, and then the big plunge because he could not hide the truth any longer. “Rakubian’s dead, Cass.”
“Dead? You … dead?”
“For two months.”
“How do you know that? My God, you didn’t …”
“No, I didn’t kill him. But I have a pretty good idea who did. The same person who sent those notes, who did this.”
She was staring at him as if she had never seen him before. “Who?”
“I’d better tell you the whole story first.”
“Yes, you’d damn well better.”
“Not in here. In the kitchen.”
She led him out there, sat down at the dinette table, and waited for him to do the same before she said, “All right, Jack. The whole story.”
He told her. The truth and nothing but the truth, withholding only what he’d kept from Eric. She reacted just twice, first with a pained grimace when he explained his belief in Eric’s quilt, then with a jerky nod when he said of his cover-up, “I had to do it to protect him.” Otherwise she sat and listened and stared at him in stoic silence.
The silence went on after he was done. And when she finally did say something, it was not at all the reaction he’d expected.
“Goddamn you, Jack Hollis.” In a coldly furious voice. “You make me so fucking mad sometimes, I could scream.”
“Cass, I’m sorry, but I thought I was doing the right thing—”
“The right thing.”
“Yes.”
“By lying to me, keeping me in the dark.”
“I wanted to protect you, too—”
“There, that’s what I mean. That’s it exactly. It’s not Rakubian or what you did that’s got me so upset, it’s you. You and that Superman compulsion of yours.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Superman, Superdad, Superhusband. Protect Eric, Angela, me. Shoulder all the responsibility, make all the decisions, take all the risks. Try to be better than your father in every damn way.”
“My father? What does he have to do with this?”
“He has everything to do with it. Your whole life has been one constant struggle to prove to yourself that he was wrong about you, that you’re a better man than he was. Smarter, stronger, more capable, more compassionate, more protective, more loving, more nurturing, more everything. But you’re not the strong, silent, macho type. You’re Jack Hollis, not Bud Hollis, and you try too hard and lose judgment and perspective and make mistakes and shut people out because you can’t admit that you need help or advice, that you’re even a little bit weaker than hard-as-nails Bud Hollis.”
The accusations stung him. Denial surged hot into his throat, but he had no words to express it.
“The cancer, too, that’s another thing. You’re so full of rage and anxiety at what’s happening inside your body that it’s clouded your reason.”
“That’s not true!”
“It is true. You think I don’t know, don’t understand? You’re angry and bitter and afraid, and there’s a part of you that needs to lash out at something or somebody … Rakubian, for instance. But you can’t admit it to yourself, it’s not an acceptable attitude, so you’ve shifted it around to something that is acceptable—protecting your family at all cost, making sure we survive because you’re afraid you won’t survive yourself.”
“My God,” he said in a choked voice.
“I’m right, you know I am. Can’t you see it? Those are the real reasons you’ve been trying to deal with all this on your own … your father, the cancer. But you can’t deal with it alone, you never could, and you don’t have to. They’re my problems as well as yours. I’m your wife, your partner, your coconspirator if necessary, and whether you like it or not I’m just as angry as you are, just as tough and capable, and more clearheaded in a crisis. I don’t deserve to be treated as a weakling or an inferior, because I’m neither one. I don’t deserve to be treated the way your father treated you.”
He shook his head, more reflex than anything else, and got to his feet. Stood indecisively for a few seconds, then sank back down again. All at once he was very tired; his arms and legs had a boneless feel.
“I know all that hurt you,” Cassie said in softer tones, “but it had to be said. You’ve hurt me, too.”
“I … never meant to hurt you.”
“A sin of omission is still a sin.”
“All right. All right. Why the hell have you stayed married to me if you think I’m such a loser, if I offend you so much?”
“For God’s sake, don’t start pitying yourself. I stay with you because I love you and I need you, flaws and all. I’m not attacking you, Jack, I’m only trying to make you see things the way they are so we can move on.”
He saw, he really did see; the denial was no longer hot, not even lukewarm. She was right. Everything she’d said, right on the mark. But all he could make himself say was, “Move on to where?”
“Jack … you …” Her voice had grown hoarse; she cleared her throat. “My mouth is so dry I c
an’t …” He watched her get to her feet, move to the refrigerator. With the door open she said, “Do you want anything?”
“No.”
She poured a tumblerful of milk, swallowed half before she sat down again. “Better,” she said. Then she said, “You haven’t told Angela yet. About Rakubian.”
“Not yet.”
“Do you intend to?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
He shook his head.
“It’s cruel to keep it from her. You know how frightened she is. You have to tell her—we have to tell her. As soon as possible. Tonight.”
“She can’t come here. The living room …”
“We’ll go to her apartment.”
“I won’t do it in front of Pierce.”
“For heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Who do you suppose killed Rakubian? Wrote those notes, did all the damage here today?”
“You think it’s Ryan?”
“Who the hell else?”
“What possible reason—?”
He told her what possible reason.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“You don’t believe it. He’s a shining example of manhood in your eyes, is that it? Unlike me. The new, improved Ryan Pierce.”
“That’s the anger talking again.”
“Is it? Not if I’m right about him.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“Then what’s got you so convinced he’s guilty?”
He was silent.
“You don’t like him and you want him to be the one? You were sure it was Eric and you were wrong. Now you’re sure it was Ryan and you can be just as wrong about him.”
“Who else could it be? Tell me that.”
“I can think of somebody right off the top of my head. You won’t like it, but he’s got just as much motive as Ryan.”
“Who?”
“Gabe Mannix.”
“Gabe?” he said incredulously. “That’s ridiculous.”
“He’s in love with Angela, you know that.”
“So he’s in love with her. From a distance. My God, we’ve known the man more than twenty years. He’s my best friend. You can’t honestly believe he’s capable of all this lunacy?”
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