Viner stared at the screen, then shook his head. “Could’ve been stolen before we got to the scene. What the hell he was doing down there at that time of night …” He sighed again. “Beaners, that’s who shot him, and odds’re we’ll never get the perp. If they stuck up something like the Berlin Wall at the border, it’d make my job a hundred percent easier.”
I ignored that, merely said, “I’d be glad to try to make an I.D.”
“Okay, you go on up there to the county center. I’ll call and let them know you’re on the way. Report back to me afterward.”
I stood and started for the door.
“McCone,” he called after me.
“Yes?”
“Can you still turn a cartwheel?”
“What?”
“A cartwheel, like you girls did every time the team scored.” His smile was tinged with both nostalgia and lustfulness. “God, I used to wait for those touchdowns! You wore the prettiest little bikini pants of anybody on the squad.”
Amazed, I just stared at him for a moment. Then I turned and headed for the county morgue.
* * *
The day had warmed fast, and the air conditioning at the severely functional County Operations Center up north near NAS Miramar wasn’t working worth a damn. In spite of how cold such places usually feel, it was warm even in Building 14, which housed the medical examiner’s office—formerly the coroner’s office, a sign on the street had told me as I’d turned off Overland Avenue.
I waited in the viewing room for the unidentified man’s body to appear on the TV screen, glad that I didn’t need to look at it up close in the cold room, my stomach knotted tight enough as it was, my breath coming shallow. Even at such a remove the sight of the dead is unsettling, more so if the person is someone dear to you.
“Ready, Ms. McCone?” the attendant asked.
I nodded, realizing I held the arm of the chair in a steely grip.
The man appeared on the screen then: surreally bluish green, through some flaw in the transmission. He was tall, slender. Had dark blond hair, a droopy mustache, razor-sharp features. In death he looked peaceful, almost serene.
He wasn’t Hy.
He wasn’t Timothy Mourning.
I’d never seen him before.
* * *
I used the attendant’s phone to call Gary Viner. “It’s not my clients’ son. I have no idea who he is.”
“You sure you’re not holding anything back, McCone?”
Only the killer’s name, a kidnapping, a botched two-million-dollar ransom payment, and a disappearance. “I’m sure. The people I talked with misled me.”
“Beaners.” Viner sighed. “Fuckin’ stupid beaners. Well, thanks for trying.”
“De nada,” I said ironically, and hung up.
* * *
Back at my father’s house, I sat down at the little desk in the family room, where my mother used to pay the bills. Found a scratch pad in the center drawer and began to doodle as I thought.
No ideas came, and my mind drifted to the previous night and my confrontation with Marty Salazar. Salazar had lied, of course, giving me a description that was a composite of Hy and the man in the morgue. Which proved one thing: he’d gotten a good look at both of them before committing the murder.
I wished I could feel certain Hy was alive, but I knew that wasn’t necessarily the case. Salazar might have killed him too, disposed of his body but been prevented from removing the other man’s by the arrival of the police. Or Hy could have escaped wounded and by now be dead or dying. In truth, the only thing my trip to the morgue had given me was a faint hope coupled with a sense of extreme urgency. I had to move on this investigation, move fast.
My fingers were gripping the pencil I’d been doodling with; now it snapped in two. I threw the pieces into the wastebasket so hard that one bounced out again. I was angry, and not just with Salazar. I was angry at myself for not heeding what Abrego had said before we met with the man he quite rightfully described as slime.
“Part of it’ll be true, part’ll be lies. You keep what you can use, throw the rest away.” But I hadn’t done that. I’d kept it all, failed to listen critically. I’d allowed my emotions to overrule my professionalism.
Well, my emotions were stabilized now, and it was time to proceed. From here on out, I’d rely on logic. Another indulgence I wouldn’t permit myself was trying for a connection to Hy. My previous failures to achieve one meant absolutely nothing; sometimes, for whatever reasons, the best of connections aren’t in service.
So get started. Start with a name—no, two names. Brockowitz and Ann Navarro.
Not much to go on with either. Navarro was a fairly common surname. Brockowitz wasn’t, but the person to whom it belonged could be male or female. I dug out the phone directories for both city and county from the desk drawer and hunted through them. No Brockowitzes. One A. C. Navarro. I called the number; the man who answered said nobody named Ann lived there. I checked Information for new listings. None.
After eating a sandwich made from fixings I’d bought on the way back here, I drove back to the county center and spent several tedious hours exploring their various records. I found a birth certificate for an Edward Brockowitz, but a further check revealed a death certificate as well. An Analisa Navarro had been born at Balboa Naval Hospital in 1961, but the records contained no further trace of her. No one of either name had ever registered to vote, filed a fictitious business name statement, applied for a business license or other permit, or paid property taxes.
I left the center deeply discouraged. Navarro and Brockowitz didn’t have to be from San Diego County or even from California. Normally I would have carried my line of inquiry to other counties, state agencies, federal agencies, but not in this case. That process was slow, time-consuming, and guaranteed nothing.
I’d thought of one person who might be able to help me, but for safety’s sake I wanted to limit my contact with her to one call. Tired as I was, I might forget to ask something, overlook the obvious question. My reactions were slowing; if I went on this way, I’d be in danger of making a potentially fatal mistake. Even though it was only four in the afternoon, I decided to go back to my father’s house and sleep on the problem. Maybe my ever overactive subconscious would provide a solution.
* * *
An unidentifiable sound woke me. I sat upright on the family room sofa, saw it was full dark. The temperature had dropped markedly; a cold breeze rustled the draperies next to the patio door. I got up and went over there, looked out and saw nothing. Then I felt my way to the desk and peered at the clock. Nearly half past eleven. I’d slept over six hours.
The sound came again—somewhere out back. An animal creeping up from the canyon? Or a human creeping up on the house?
I moved to the door again and felt to make sure the screen was latched—not that it would present much of an obstacle for someone determined to get inside. Then I stood very still, scarcely breathing, and studied the patterns of light and shadow.
Another sound, and now I saw some motion—far to the right, opposite the kitchen. Just a dark ripple against the foliage, and then it went away. But not before I could tell it was a human figure. For five minutes more I waited there; then I slid the inner glass door shut and moved the security bar into place. I’d check the kitchen door next—
The phone shrilled.
Don’t answer it, I thought. But what if it was important? No, that couldn’t be. John was the only person who knew I was here. I’d let it ring to give whoever was outside the impression the house was unoccupied, then call him back.
After eight rings it stopped. I crossed to the desk and punched out John’s number. He answered immediately. “So you are there. You okay?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“Your Mr. Renshaw just paid me a visit. He said—”
I cut him off. “Hang up. Get out of there and go to a pay phone. Call me back.”
Without a word he did as I told him. I locked the
kitchen door, checked windows, waited. When the phone rang fifteen minutes later, I snatched up the receiver.
John’s voice spoke over a babble of background music. “Okay, I’m at a place called Pinky’s. Somebody followed me, but they haven’t come inside yet. I don’t see how they could’ve tapped my phone when Renshaw just—”
“We don’t know how long they’ve known about you; they could have been watching the house all day. We’d better talk fast. What did Renshaw say?”
“Gave me a message for you. If you go in to their La Jolla office and turn over the money he paid you, plus whatever information you’ve got on Ripinsky, they’ll call it a wash.”
Sure they would. “That’s all?”
“That’s all I let him say. I told him you and I haven’t spoken in years and threw him out.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Couldn’t tell. But I don’t think he knows about … where you are. Under his tough-guy act he seemed kind of desperate.”
That was good on one level, disconcerting on another. If the person I’d glimpsed outside wasn’t an RKI operative, who could he or she be? One of the kidnappers? One of Salazar’s “people”? Someone whose existence I wasn’t yet aware of?
“Shar,” John said, “if they can find me, they can find—”
“I know. I’m going to get out of here. I need a favor, though. I’ll put the key to my room at the Bali Kai in the mail to you. Go there and collect the stuff I left. Leave the room key in the express checkout and then take the rental car—the key’s in the room—back to the airport. Just keep my stuff at your house.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you when this is over.”
There was a long pause. Then he said, “Okay, you bitch. You don’t want to meet me for a drink, screw you,” and hung up. The tail had come close enough to overhear his end of the conversation.
For a moment I fretted, then reminded myself that my brother could take care of himself. Besides, Gage Renshaw knew that leaning on John wouldn’t get them what they wanted—namely me.
I got up, took Pa’s .45 from the end table where I’d placed it before going to sleep that afternoon, and began to prowl through the house, looking out the windows. From the empty, echoing living room I spotted a cat parked down the street that hadn’t been there the past two nights—an old dark-colored Datsun, shabbier than what most of the neighbors drove. The license plate was unreadable, and a big pepper tree cast confusing shadows. I crouched on the floor by the front window for quite some time before I felt reasonably certain the car was unoccupied.
That didn’t reassure me much, though. After a few hours of tossing and turning, I gave up on further sleep. Got dressed and packed my things, plus the clothing of Karen’s that I’d borrowed, in a bag I found in the closet of Charlene and Patsy’s old room. Then I finished off the sandwich fixings and huddled in the quilts on the family room couch, waiting for the windows to grow light, for the coo of mourning doves in the canyon, for the faint hum of freeway traffic that would tell me the exodus of commuters from the neighborhood was about to begin.
Insulated as I was by thick walls and darkness, the now familiar feeling of being spied on returned. Threads of a story began to drift through my mind—one of the nightmare-provoking bedtime tales often told us by our creepy aunt Clarisse. Little remained of it except the repeated warning, echoing yet in my aunt’s dramatically pitched voice: “Beware of the wolf in the shadows. He is watchful and patient, and when he catches you he will eat you up—skin and bones and heart.”
I’d thought I was done with such stories—had found real life ultimately more scary—but now I realized their atavistic fears still had power over me. Well, we all harbored wolves in the shadows of our psyches, didn’t we? And mine were bound to be fiercer, more bloodthirsty than most. But what happened when one’s wolf assumed human form?
Maybe when I had the answer to that question, I’d be done with stories for good.
Part Two
Monday, June 14
4:54 A.M.
Gray dawn was breaking as I reached the top of the high embankment. The shapes of the rocks and scrub vegetation on the other side had begun to take on definition. The cold sea wind blew more strongly in this unsheltered place. I lay flat on my stomach, then slowly raised my head and looked around.
Things moved down below: they could have been animals, polios, human coyotes—or merely branches stirring in the wind. Like the phantom wolves of my childhood bedtime stories, they slipped in and out of the shadows, eluding identification. For a moment my calm deserted me; I wanted to scramble back down the embankment and run as blindly as I had from the wolves in my long-ago nightmares.
Then the calm reasserted itself, and I knew I was done with stories for good.
I took out my father’s .45 and braced it experimentally on the mound of earth in front of me. Checked my watch again. Nearly five minutes had gone by. I scanned the surrounding terrain, saw no one. Listened. Waited.
Then there were sounds below, echoing in the drainage pipe. I tensed, peering through the half-light. Sniper’s light, they call it—
And there was a sniper.
Seventeen
Friday, June 11
The best hiding places, I thought as I carried my bag into the bungalow, are often so blatantly obvious that no one would bother to look there.
The little motel sat on one of La Jolla’s narrow streets—only miles from the newish office park that housed RKI’s headquarters. Stucco with a red tile roof overgrown by gnarled wisteria vines, it was an old auto court dating from the forties and had been the scene of many a tryst—including a few of mine. Only two blocks from Prospect, the main street of La Jolla’s commercial district, the real estate was prime, pricey eateries and shops encroaching on either side. The only reason the motel hadn’t been torn down or tricked up was that the old woman who owned it stubbornly refused to entertain offers. Her similar refusal to upgrade its appointments had kept rates at a level I could afford.
I’d had my choice of bungalows, since only a few of the dozen were occupied, and opted for one at the rear of the court, screened by a big jacaranda tree whose fernlike branches brushed my head as I walked by. When I stepped inside, my breath caught; as I’d thought, this was the same unit where, during one magical summer home from college, I’d spent nights with a much older man, a staff member at nearby Scripps Institute, for whom I’d entertained a brief but wild passion. The terra-cotta floor, unadorned whitewashed walls, tiny primitive kitchen, and equally ancient bath looked the same; only the jacaranda tree had grown and changed. The jacaranda and me.
I shut the door and set my bag on a luggage rack at the foot of the lumpy bed, then went into the kitchen and looked out the window. It opened onto the alley where I’d parked my rental car; a back door gave access. I tested its lock, noted the window was painted shut, tested the front door and other windows. Reasonably certain the bungalow was secure, I went to the small desk and rooted through its drawer, looking for an envelope.
I’d escaped Mission Hills that morning in the flow of commuter traffic, but spotted a tail as I drove toward downtown. Once there, I turned into the garage of Horton Plaza, parked the Scout on one of the lower levels, and left by a side exit. In a nearby restaurant I forced myself to choke down breakfast and drink several cups of coffee while pretending to study the Union-Tribune but actually studying the other patrons and people outside the windows. A man in a Padres cap who loitered for half an hour on the sidewalk looked suspect, so I whiled away the time until ten, then walked down Broadway toward Huston’s department store, where I used to work in security. The man followed.
To a shopper, a department store’s layout may seem straight-forward enough, although the rest rooms are usually in a baffling and barely accessible location. But an employee—particularly one who’s worked security—knows dozens of hidey-holes, indirect routes, and alternative exits that aren’t necessarily off limits to the gene
ral public. I made use of all of them, thanking God that Huston’s hadn’t done any renovations in the years since my tenure there; when I stepped onto a side street some ten minutes later, my tail was no longer with me. I then merged into the crowd of early shoppers and walked several blocks before boarding the first of three buses that took me on a circuitous route to Imperial Beach.
On Wednesday morning I’d noticed an establishment on Palm Avenue called Clunkers ’n’ Junkers Rent-All. The sign spoke the truth. The blue Buick Skylark that I rented for a nominal daily fee wasn’t all that old but had been ill-used: there was a dent in the driver’s side; the upholstery was torn; the windshield had a jagged crack; rust showed in the seams of the metal. The clerk hastened to assure me that everything worked mechanically and none of the car’s more obvious defects would get me stopped by the Highway Patrol, so I left the remainder of the money John had advanced me as a deposit, then drove to Coronado and withdrew most of RKI’s advance from my checking account at Bank of America. On my way to La Jolla, I stopped by the Horton Plaza parking garage and picked up my suitcase from the Scout.
Now I located a rumpled envelope in the desk drawer, smiling when I saw it wasn’t printed with the motel’s name— La Encantadora—but apparently had been pilfered from the Hotel del Coronado. I sealed my room key from the Bali Kai and the key and claim check for the Scout into it. Three stamps from the compartment in my wallet where I keep extra postage, and it was ready to go.
I felt a fiendish pleasure as I envisioned the flurry of activity that particular envelope might set in motion. If RKI’s operatives decided to intercept John’s mail in their attempt to trace me—an easy enough task, since the box was at the foot of his long, steep driveway—they probably wouldn’t believe I was stupid enough to use an envelope from a place where I was actually staying, but as a matter of routine they’d have to check it out. Especially if they had a contact who could monitor my account at B of A or had somehow managed to tap into the bank’s computer network. Then my transaction at the Coronado branch would send them scurrying to Hotel Del. Still smiling, I stuffed the stamped envelope into my purse and sat down cross-legged on the bed with the phone in front of me. Then I sobered; time to get to work.
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