I’ve dangled from too many rooftops to suffer much from serious vertigo, but the narrow road that curved around the rocky outcropping on the left side and plunged thousands of feet to the valley below on the right still made a nerve in my neck tingle and made me happy I wasn’t in the passenger seat next to the drop. Even in my new Miata, nice and low to the road and with splendid maneuverability, I was more than happy to stay within the speed limit, which at some of the hairpinnier turns slowed to ten miles per hour.
Okay, maybe I would put the car to more of a test on the way down, but I wasn’t going to say this to Carlo. Despite my being poisoned, attacked by a therapy dog, and splashed with the guts of a serial killer—and that just since we were married—I still felt he worried unnecessarily about my safety. More than once, and especially these days, I thanked my lucky stars that Carlo had never actually seen me in action and what happens to the other guy at those times.
Back to the mountain. Everyone thinks of the desert as just hot and hotter. The fact is, thanks to a stronger than usual El Niño the Arizona temperatures were already in the forties at night. With the higher elevation, Kitt Peak promised to be colder than that after sunset, and it was already freezing on the summit on the afternoon we arrived. I was secretly glad that I was dropping Carlo off and taking Gemma-Kate out for a late dinner and a show. I had given her the choice of a new Bruce Willis movie or a live performance of The Nutcracker, which neither of us had ever seen. I was also glad she chose the movie.
As you come around the last curve you begin to see immense glowing white buildings that feel like an alien way station. There should be that music from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Really impressive, so I didn’t just dump Carlo off and run. I stayed long enough to show an interest in the huge complex, which he shared with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old at Disney World. His glee was contagious, and I willingly walked up the hill to the elaborate four-story structure through which you could view the sun without being blinded. Then over to the opposite side of the compound, passing a low building with a sign outside that said, QUIET, ASTRONOMERS SLEEPING, and from there onto a narrow service road that curved along the cliff from which the big momma rose.
You take an elevator up to the top of this observatory where the telescope thrusts itself at the heavens in a way that seems arrogant. As if it could really see what can never be seen. The scope itself is about thirty feet tall and ten feet wide, so big that when you’re standing on one of the observation decks next to it, you can see the eyepiece. The observatory is not heated. The heat waves would create too much shimmer.
“It’s f-freezing up here,” I said, trying to draw my down jacket closer but never getting it close enough. We were standing on an inside catwalk that went all the way around the tower with windows overlooking miles of harsh desert punctuated with mountain ranges, and far off to the east, where the city lights couldn’t cause pollution in the dark sky, a glimpse of Tucson. “Are you sure you have enough warm clothes?” I asked.
Carlo lifted his sweatshirt to show another beneath it. “You should know. I think you emptied the coat closet into that duffle bag we brought,” he said, and then paused, something more interesting coming to his mind. “Your nose is so cute when it’s pink. You look like a bunny.” I put on my tough broad face, but he bent down from his considerable height to my inconsiderable one, and kissed said nose. The man does not let me get away with myself.
We had a bit of a better cuddle later when he walked me out to the car.
“It’s getting on to dusk,” he said. “You should start down.”
I gave him a final hug and said, “You stay warm, and I’ll be back to get you after breakfast. Breakfast is part of the package, right?”
He smiled and nodded.
I thought about how married couples are, how they look after each other in small ways. But I didn’t get all mushy. “Have a wonderful time, and happy anniversary,” I said.
“Same to you, and don’t let that Jerry come prowling around,” Carlo said with a wink. While I had neglected to mention lifting the print, I had remembered to tell Carlo that I was certain Jerry was living with a girlfriend and that men always mentioned their mate to show they weren’t on the prowl. After some consideration, Carlo had said that was likely a hasty generalization.
There were a few other cars in the parking lot, but they were either staying there the whole night, or else would be driving down the mountain after a ten P.M. viewing. Once on the road the descent started almost immediately, at about a six percent grade. Even being able to see well enough, I decided I’d take it slow, figuring I’d put the Miata through her paces on another day, and this time live to pick up Carlo in the morning.
Because of that six percent grade I tapped my brakes a couple of times to make sure they were working, and when the road got steeper I down-shifted into third and then second gear to make the engine do some of the work. There was no moon; we had planned it that way to optimize the viewing. It was the last smidgen of day, the sun having set but leaving a reluctant red-orange stripe just above the horizon line. With my headlamps off, a Kitt Peak rule to avoid light pollution, I could still make out the boulders going slowly by on my right inches from my passenger door, and was glad the drop-off into the valley was on the other side of the road. Even with my lights on I might not have seen the patch of black ice. It hadn’t been there on the ride up, or else was only forming on the opposite side of the road.
I felt my wheels lose traction but didn’t panic. Rather than trying to apply the brakes—a dangerous move that could have made me skid off the edge of the cliff—I concentrated all my attention on keeping the car on one side of the road or the other, preferably close to the wall of rock. But the car was thrust forward and I barely made it around a sharp curve going twice as fast as the probable speed limit on a sign I couldn’t see. I felt my wheels skid over the narrow dirt shoulder on the left side of the road. Then I felt the wheels grip the macadam again.
Feeling confident that I was past the danger, but still unsettled, I ignored the rule about keeping the lights off after dark and turned on my headlamps, at the same time applying the brakes to stop and let my gut simmer down after a close call.
The brakes didn’t engage.
Twenty–six
Seven days had gone by between the time Beaufort decided that the Quinn woman needed to be eliminated, and now. Enough time for Yanchak to locate a guy in Arizona who was willing to do the job, and enough time for Beaufort to case a couple of homes he thought were likely candidates for him to hit. It was simple, just discover the pattern of the inhabitants, when they were in and when they were out. Watch what couples left for work in the morning and hit there. The first house, in the development east of the one where the DiForenzas lived, he’d done three days ago. The second one, by the Lago del Oro Parkway, he’d done yesterday. It was secluded, up one of those steep driveways where you practically needed four-wheel drive just to visit. Surrounded with nothing but hills and arroyos, wild saguaros, prickly pear cactus, and chollas, no one would see his car if he stayed up there all day. And no one to see while he took his time with the lock on the door leading from the back porch. No security. Lovely view. It took him less than an hour.
Today he got to the third house as dusk was descending. Right on time.
Just to be on the safe side, in case their paths should cross, Beaufort had taken Gloria’s car that morning with the promise of getting the oil changed, and he had kept his promise. The car was one of those lime green Volkswagens that must have been popular in another decade. Now you didn’t see so many of them. It was a sign of Gloria’s clinging to the edges of middle class that she hadn’t traded hers in. Beaufort thought it was a little noticeable, but it was better than someone tracking his own license plate.
He drove two streets beyond his destination, turned left, and parked the Beetle on the side of the road in one of the undeveloped lots. A cop drove by on Golder Ranch, possibly looking for signs of whoever had burgl
arized the first two homes, but didn’t even turn his head. Beaufort smiled, thinking, Who would suspect a lime green Beetle? He grabbed his backpack, pretty empty right now, from the passenger’s seat and drew it over one shoulder. Then he marked the time on his watch to see how long it would take him to walk quickly but not run, which would draw attention to himself from any passing vehicle. In just one minute he had walked across the street and into the area of cacti and ravines where he had first walked with Achilles. This time, though, instead of keeping to the high ground, he entered a deep arroyo that ran fairly parallel to the yard lines of the neighboring houses and hid him from sight.
In another three minutes he had climbed up out of the arroyo and walked the ten or so paces to the low wall that separated the DiForenza house from the wildness of the desert. He stepped up onto the concrete block at the top of the wall and boosted himself over the fence attached to it, glad as always that he had kept in shape. The telescope on the pad nearer to the fence, with its protective cover, provided a good shield so he could glance around to make sure no one saw him. A hound barked in the yard next door, but otherwise the neighborhood was quiet. Everyone minding their own business, not staring out of windows.
He checked his watch again. It had taken just six minutes from the car to here. He had to keep that in mind if he needed to make a sudden getaway, if someone spotted him. Once he was inside the house he should have plenty of time, as nobody was going to be coming home. He stepped carefully over the gravel, noting that he didn’t make any prints among the larger stones. He avoided an area of smaller gravel where that would be the case.
When he got to the back door he drew from the backpack a couple of tools he’d learned to use while in prison. The bolt lock gave him some trouble. He was rustier than he thought, and considered that he should have practiced on one of Gloria’s doors. Luckily, the second lock, a spring, hadn’t been engaged.
The dogs inside knew him well enough to remember he was the Treat Man. From his pocket he withdrew a gallon-sized plastic bag and dumped some cubed cheese on the living room carpet after giving both the dogs a brief belly rub. While he did one belly the other one waited his turn. These were a couple of well-behaved dogs. And boy, could they eat. “Achilles sends his greetings,” Beaufort told them as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He was pleased that a few lights had been left on, probably for the dogs. That meant that Brigid had intended to come home after dark. She had no idea.
First: The bedroom was the most likely place to go to make it look like the other jobs. There was the jewelry box on the dresser in there. He was careful to grab a random handful of the junk and leave one or two things that looked real. He wanted to make it look like he was not a gem expert, but only some punk. He shoved the items into the plastic bag that had held the dog’s treats. He pulled out a couple of drawers and left the contents, mostly women’s accessories here, men’s underwear there, scattered on the floor. The bedside tables yielded something better. Third down on the right contained a box with a gun. That would be taken, of course, no matter who the burglar was. He checked the chamber and found it unloaded but didn’t waste time finding the ammo. He could always get some. He put the weapon in the bag with the jewelry.
To make it more realistic he coursed through the other rooms in the house, making a little mess here and there, too. Take a butcher knife from the kitchen? That seemed authentic. No, waste of time. Overthinking it, Gloria would have said, with that new talk he was learning.
The dogs ignored him, engaged as they were in licking the cheese residue off the carpet.
With the can of red spray paint from his backpack, he made a mark on the wall leading to the master suite. It was distinctive without being too complex. A circle with two lightning strikes through the center.
Now for the real part. He went first into the most apparent room of the house, the priest’s office. Only when he got there he discovered it wasn’t his office at all. Awards hung on the wall and photographs, good God, was that one of her shaking hands with Ronald Reagan? Much, much younger, but unmistakable. This was her office, a business office where she did her private investigating work. Maybe they shared that file cabinet.
She didn’t bother with a lock, luckily, and he went through all the hanging folders in each of the four gray drawers. Difficult to move quickly. Many of the folders had crime scene photos in them and they distracted him from the task at hand. He looked at his watch. Just to keep up the look of the invasion he pulled out half a dozen folders from the last drawer and threw them across the floor. Random mess, like a punk would make.
The doorbell rang.
Somehow all the plans had failed. Brigid, at least, had returned. This is what he thought.
The blinds were open, and the window of the office looked out to the front walk. What happened next happened within seconds. Beaufort looked at the driveway, but there was no car parked there. He swung his eyes right to the front door. He saw a man at the door, angled with his back to him. He didn’t have enough time to recognize whether the man was Carlo or not, because on their own his legs buckled. He let himself drop to the floor and crawled on his stomach closer to the wall, rolling over and pressing his back against it, in case the man looked in the window.
The dogs started barking, then ran into the office to see if Beaufort was going to do anything about this. He stared at them staring at him. “Scram,” he muttered under his breath. Finding him useless, they ran back into the living room and recommenced their protest.
Without a response to the bell, the man tried knocking on the security screen door, which reverberated throughout the house and made the dogs bark even more loudly. “Carlo?” he called. Waited. “Brigid?”
Idiot, he told himself. If it had been one of them they wouldn’t have rung the doorbell. Beaufort found himself holding his breath as if the man would be able to hear him. The blinds next to the door were open, too, weren’t they? Was the man nosy enough to look inside? If he did, would he see the red mark he had painted on the wall? What would he do then?
Idiot, he thought again. He’d made the mark in a side hall where the man would never be able to see it no matter what window he looked in.
The man finally left, but there was no telling what he had seen or what he would do next. Beaufort had better make the most of the next few minutes and then hightail it out of this dump.
The library was daunting, but it was the only room left. Beaufort, nervous after the unexpected visitor, practically ran down the four or five aisles of books, as much as one could run in such a tight space, scanning the titles for one that would provide a clue that the thing was tucked inside between the pages. But he didn’t know what title that would be, nor if the thing was actually small enough to be contained within a book. In frustration he kicked the books on one of the bottom shelves so hard they tumbled out the other side. That was okay, it just looked like more vandalism.
He turned this way and that, seeing nothing as the shelves in the middle of the room extended up to within a foot of the ceiling. The only thing left in the room was a closet with two sliding doors.
He looked at his watch. What the hell was he doing looking at his watch? What difference did the time make? With a shrug he pushed the door on the right to the left.
Shelves in there as well, from the ceiling of the closet down to the floor.
More books. More. Fucking. Books.
He seized the sliding door and ripped it off its track, with a curse throwing it down one of the aisles where it bounced off a shelf and landed on the floor. First frightened by the unexpected visitor, and now enraged by his failure to find what he was looking for in his carefully plotted search of the house: These were feelings Beaufort was not accustomed to. He imagined Hickock and Smith somewhere in hell, Hickock laughing at him.
Beaufort slumped on the floor and looked at his watch and wondered where the woman was right now.
Twenty–seven
I was on an eight percent grade now, going ar
ound a turn, and aware from the trip up that the road continued like this for over a mile before entering a long straightaway that led from the mountain. I pumped the brakes to get as much out of the hydraulic system as possible. Nothing.
Speeding up now with the mass of the car on a downward slope, I didn’t dare to look at my speedometer but figured I was doing almost forty miles per hour and the emergency brake would only zig or zag the car ferociously. Zigging I go over the cliff. Zagging I hit the boulders on my right—and then bounce off and go over the cliff.
If I tried turning off the ignition I’d lose my power steering and at this speed would never be able to make the hairpin turns.
I had already put the car in its lowest gear when I downshifted on the fly, and couldn’t brake the engine itself any more than it was already. Except for some real fancy driving, the only other thing I could do was to roll all the windows down and create some wind resistance. Fat lot of help that would do, but I pressed the button anyway.
And kept on. One curve after another, taking them at speeds far exceeding the limit but thank God for the sporty chassis that kept my center of gravity as low to the ground as possible. You’re halfway there, Quinn. Just focus. And hope this thing can still hug the road doing forty miles an hour on a hairpin turn. Just as I thought that, the tires squealed as if the car itself was expressing its doubt.
Jesus, it was cold with the windows down and the air rushing in.
I rounded the next turn and was beginning to congratulate my reflexes, which hadn’t slowed as much as I might have feared, even if I had left my heart about a half mile back.
We Were Killers Once Page 13