Eye of the Beholder

  Joy was standing over Mike, hunched and breathing laboriously, a bloody knife clutched in her hand. Even as Joshua watched in amazement, she lunged at Mike again, stabbing at his hand, his arm, and then his chest. The sucking thunk of the knife as it plunged in up to the hilt and the click as it connected with bone jarred Joshua’s ears, and bile rose in his mouth. Again and again she stabbed as the big man tried to fend her off, his face a horrified mask of incredulity, but finally, with a choking gurgle as though his throat had filled with blood, he sank down and lay still.

  Joshua recovered himself enough to reenter the grisly scene. He fought his way to his feet and came around behind Joy. Her skin was burning to the touch, but he wrapped his arms around her, pinning both of hers down, and started to croak through his damaged throat, “Stop, Joy, stop. It’s over; he’s dead. It’s over; it’s okay. Stop.”

  He felt her go limp in his arms, and, unable to bear even his own weight, he sank down with her to the freezing ground, Joy with the blood-covered knife still in her hand, Joshua clutching her tightly against him.

  For a few minutes he was aware only of the sound and feeling of his own booming heartbeat and tortured gasping. But as he settled down and both his and Joy’s panting subsided, he became aware of the quiet in the clearing. All he could hear were crickets, wind, and the grateful, even breathing of two people as the warmth of their living breath mingled with the frosty air of the forest.

  Chapter 76

  The parking area was awash with vehicles as Joshua guided the truck down the dirt road, including—he was relieved to note—an ambulance. Joy lay with her head in his lap. He had argued that they should go straight for medical help, but she had begged pathetically to see her dad. It was only a few miles farther, and Joshua—feeling that she needed her father’s support as much as a doctor’s—had consented.

  As he came around the last curve, he laid a palm on the horn and didn’t let go until he pulled to a stop.

  The doors of both Luke’s and his mother’s houses opened and a stream of people came out. A well of emotion surged up in Joshua, and he put the truck in park. Letting his head fall back against the headrest, he began to weep. He felt Joy’s hand come up to touch his face.

  “It’s okay,” she said weakly. “You did good.”

  His door was ripped open, and Joshua saw he was facing two SWAT team members and their guns. “Get your hands up where we can see them!” one of them shouted.

  But another voice from behind them barked a different order: “Put your guns down; it’s the kid!”

  Joshua recognized Detective Sheridan as he stepped into the light from the cab of the truck, and then he felt hands reaching in to pull him down out of the car.

  “Joy, help Joy,” he insisted, fighting away the hands.

  “It’s okay, son,” the detective was saying to him. “It’s okay. We’ve got her.”

  Joshua looked over to see that the passenger-side door was open and an EMT was climbing up into the cab. The man began to pull back the bloodstained coat, searching her chest for the source of the wound.

  “No, that’s not her blood. Her leg is bad, though, and she’s really hot,” Joshua mumbled.

  The paramedic looked up at Joshua and smiled reassuringly. “We’ll take care of her.” Then he turned and spoke to his partner, who was standing just outside. “Let’s get a backboard and some oxygen in here. We need to take a look at this kid’s eye too.”

  Joshua raised his hand to his left eye. It was swollen and painful to the touch. He hadn’t even thought about his own injuries. He must look horrible. He was suddenly afraid for his mother to see him this way.

  “Let’s go inside,” said Detective Sheridan. “Your mother’s here. Can you walk?”

  “Yeah, I can walk,” Joshua told him, but when his feet touched the ground he would have fallen if it weren’t for the steady arm of the solid detective.

  “Joshua, thank God you’re all right!” Greer had come to support him from the other side. She would not allow herself to cry over her son when he and Joy needed help, but she had to fight for control. They started moving toward the house.

  Luke and Whitney were standing nervously just behind the EMTs.

  “Wait,” Joshua said. And they stood and watched as Joy was carefully lifted from the car seat onto the stretcher. Whitney and Luke were beside her in a moment; her father was holding her hand and stroking her hair.

  “Oh, baby.” He smiled, tears streaming down his face.

  Joy opened her eyes and started to cry. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

  “Hush—there isn’t anything to be sorry for. Now be quiet and save your strength.”

  At that moment another woman pushed Whitney aside and forced herself up against the stretcher, effectively blocking the working paramedic. “Get out of my way. I’m her mother!”

  She looked down at the battered girl and then glared up at Luke. “Look at her! This is your fault; look what you’ve done to her!” Joy’s eyes fluttered and she cringed away. “And you!” Pam said venomously to her daughter. “This is what you get for being stupid!”

  It happened very fast. One minute Pam was standing, and the next minute Whitney’s fist had made contact with the other woman’s jaw and she had crumpled to the ground. Whitney stepped over her to resume her place next to Luke and comfort Joy, and everyone else turned their attention back to the girl as the stretcher was moved to the waiting ambulance.

  Pam got up from the ground holding her jaw with a stunned expression. She looked wildly around and fixed on Detective Sheridan. “You saw that! She assaulted me! I want her arrested for attacking me!”

  Detective Sheridan got a better grip on Joshua’s belt loop, and he and Greer started moving forward again. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t see anything except justifiable self-defense.” They moved a few feet along, and then he stopped and turned back to the fuming woman, whose mouth was opening and closing speechlessly. “By the way,” he told her, “I’d like a word with you later about using a minor to procure illegal substances.”

  Sheridan waited until Joshua had been examined, cleaned up, and wrapped in a warm blanket with a mug of hot chocolate in his hand before he questioned him. Joshua told him, as best he could, where the rangers could find Mike’s body. He told him, in a voice that broke frequently, how he had found Joy, how Mike had picked them up, and how stupid he’d been not to have read the obvious signs before.

  Sheridan could only shake his head. “You weren’t stupid. You were brave, and you were smart. Hell, you told me the same signs and I didn’t really even believe you, much less figure them out.”

  Greer was stroking her son’s hair, and she looked up mischievously at the detective. “I thought you believed us at the hospital.”

  “No,” Sheridan confessed. “As a detective I had to consider all the possibilities, including that I might be overly skeptical, but I still had trouble buying it.”

  “Then when?”

  “When Mrs. Caldwell tried to kill herself.”

  Greer gasped, “Is she . . . ?”

  Sheridan shook his head. “She’s all right. We had the nurse keeping an eye on her, and she took an overdose of painkillers, but not enough to kill her.”

  Joshua was watching the detective, and he could see the sadness in the man’s face. “Zoe didn’t make it, did she?” he asked softly.

  “No,” said Sheridan. “She didn’t.”

  Joshua was nodding. His mother had put her face in her hands. “It’s okay, Mom. I knew she was going. Sarah was waiting to take her.” He couldn’t understand it, but somehow he had a calm, knowing feeling that it was all right. That nobody ever died alone.

  “Well.” Sheridan got to his feet and closed his note-pad. “That’s all I’m going to bother you with tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough to get through the piles of paperwork.” He twisted suddenly, raising a hand to his waist. “Sorry, I need to take this.” He pulled out his vibrating beepe
r and asked, “May I?”

  “Please, help yourself.” Greer gestured to the phone. She and Joshua sat in grateful silence for a few moments, listening to the murmur of the detective’s voice.

  He came back and returned the phone to its cradle, then said, “I need to go to the hospital and have another chat with Vince Slater. Something else has come up.” He didn’t exactly smile, but he looked pleased.

  Greer looked up at him and asked hopefully. “He won’t be able to hurt Leah anymore, will he?”

  “No, ma’am, he’s going away for a long time. That call was from my partner, who’s working with the investigation team at Mike’s house. Guess what they turned up?”

  Joshua and Greer waited, afraid to ask.

  “The deed to a little house on Sutter Street, so he took a ride over there. Turned out to be the meth lab we’ve been looking for. And there was a transaction book titled, ‘Slater.’ Looks like Vince and Mike have had a very profitable little business going for a couple of years now.”

  Greer was shaking her head. “So they were connected?”

  “Must have been, but they were smart enough to hide it. Funny how people find each other. I must say, it’s been a productive night.” Detective Sheridan’s eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled, just slightly, but he actually smiled.

  And something else. Something felt different. Then he realized that, for the first time in weeks, his stomach wasn’t burning.

  Chapter 77

  Dario and Sterling had both waited patiently in the den, and now, with the first light of day showing through the windows, they came in to see the detective off. The phone rang, and it was Whitney calling from the hospital. She told Greer that Joy was out of danger; her fever had come down, and she was sleeping peacefully. The doctors had cleaned and stitched up her leg, and, with luck, she’d be headed home in a day or two. Greer relayed the news to a round of relieved sighs and cheers.

  “How about breakfast?” Sterling asked. “I’ll cook.”

  Joshua was so tired his head was almost nodding against his chest, but he was ravenously hungry. “Yes, please!” he exclaimed. “I think I can stay awake just long enough to shovel down some eggs and bacon.”

  “That would be great, thanks,” Greer said. She didn’t want to leave her son’s side yet. When he slept it would be all right, but not just yet.

  “I’ll help you,” Dario offered, and the two of them set to work, making small talk about anything, everything, feeling the exaltation that only a sense of perspective could give.

  Joshua leaned against his mom and watched the light rise outside the window. The bacon was sizzling, and everyone had fallen into a happy, quiet lull when he saw him.

  It was still dark enough outside to make the window reflective, and the figure of the man was just over his mother’s right shoulder. Joshua pulled away from her and turned to face her. She looked at him curiously.

  “What?”

  “He’s here,” Joshua said, smiling. “Dad. He’s here.”

  At the sink Dario stopped and spun around. Sterling took the skillet off the flame very slowly and quietly, so as not to be distracting, and they all waited.

  “Where?” Greer asked.

  “Just over your right shoulder. He’s holding something in his hand. It’s a bird, a white bird.”

  Dario made a small exclamation, but said nothing further.

  “He’s holding it up . . . Now he’s opened his hand and the bird is flying away.” The figure of his father pointed first at Greer and then at Dario, and then repeated the motion of releasing the bird. “I know what he means,” Joshua said, smiling. “He means that it’s time for both of you to let go and move on. He’s okay, he’s moved on, and he wants you to be okay too.”

  Slowly, Joshua watched his father’s face, glowing with love, pride, and a kind of indescribable joy, fade away, and he knew that that love and pride would forever remain a part of him. He felt the unbreakable connection to his father.

  “He’s gone,” Joshua said to the three silent, amazed faces he found concentrating on him. “He’s gone,” he repeated. But the words didn’t feel sad; they felt peaceful, okay.

  Greer and Dario looked at each other. “He’s right, you know,” she said to him. “It’s not just me; it’s you too.”

  Dario nodded, his masculine face tight with contained emotion. “I know. I keep acting like you need to find someone else, but it’s just an excuse to keep me from doing it.”

  Greer’s eyes went shyly to Sterling, who was beaming at her. “I’ve got a feeling,” he said, “that this is going to be a terrific Thursday.”

  They all laughed and eased slowly back into making breakfast, and sipping tea, and talking softly.

  Dario had started to hum to himself as he made pancakes, Sterling was telling a funny story about eating eggs cooked in beer at the pub, and as Greer listened she watched her son.

  His face was bruised, swollen, and lopsided. His lower lip protruded, and there were two small black cuts where his own teeth had cut into it. He wasn’t a pretty sight, but Greer thought he was the most glorious thing she had ever seen. She knew that Luke and Whitney felt the same way about Joy.

  It’s true, she thought, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  Read ahead for a sneak peek at the next Greer Sands novel, coming in fall 2008.

  The wind, hot and fierce, swept across the brown-green sage, bending the brittle branches and tugging the roots from the parched soil. It pushed ruthlessly at the skeletal leaves of the sycamores in the dry river-bed, and threw its vicious weight against the arid hills of Angeles Crest Forest.

  Every year it came, sweeping the heat from the desert to Los Angeles with punishing, dehydrating gusts, and every year it came at the worst time. After almost six months without a drop of rain it came, turning the desert landscape into acres of kindling, vast swaths of dry brush leading to heartier fuel: drought-weakened trees and thousands of homes.

  Greer Sands stood at the window, watching the wind blast the shriveled landscape. Behind her, a rite as old as childbirth was being played out as a community of women celebrated the expected birth of a new child; yet she felt drawn away from the women laughing and sharing their wisdom, pulled toward the unstable weather outside. It was impossible for anyone who lived in fear of fire to ignore the threat of those winds, but for Greer it was something more.

  The winds strummed a melody, both forlorn and ominous, that reverberated in her marrow. It brought a feeling of being at the mercy of things greater than herself. Greer bowed her head in acknowledgment of the greatness she perceived, then exhaled the shakiness that had possessed her.

  “Greer,” said her friend Whitney’s voice softly behind her, “are you okay?”

  Greer smiled back at Whitney and hastened to reassure her. “I’m fine. It’s just this wind. It’s hard for me not to listen to it.”

  Whitney nodded, easily understanding the meaning beneath her friend’s surface explanation. She moved closer and asked in a quiet voice, “Everything copacetic?”

  Focusing on the question brought a quiver to Greer’s breastbone. She placed a palm flat against it and half closed her eyes, letting the quiver expand until she could read it, see it as a color or a shape. It glowed, undulating in her mind’s eye like a huge cloud of light, multicolored, with dark, impenetrable sections. “I don’t know,” Greer said slowly. “I can feel something huge. . . .”

  “Oh my God, how cute is that!” came a voice from the sofa. It was accompanied by oohs and ahs in a range of soprano notes.

  Happily distracted, Greer and Whitney turned to admire the blue sleeper that their friend Jenny was holding up over her swelled stomach. Even seven months pregnant, Jenny looked sexy. Her Hispanic descent was serving her well through her pregnancy: Her golden skin glowed with a sunny flush, and the extra weight added to her natural baby-fat curves in a flattering way.

  “Oh.” She beamed. “Louis is going to love this. He so wants it to be a boy.�
�� She smiled a little sadly. “I wish he was here.”

  “No boys allowed!” someone shouted.

  “I just wish he could feel every kick like I do,” Jenny purred.

  Mindy’s voice dropped to a sarcastic growl. “That feeling gets stronger when you go into labor, except you’ll wish you were the one kicking him.”

  The group of women shared a laugh that cut off abruptly as the kitchen door opened and a male figure entered the room. The burly man in a cowboy hat stopped when he saw the dozen women focused on him. His eyes scanned the room and then, turning his large palms up, he asked exasperatedly, “What?”

  The women burst into laughter again, and Mindy got up and crossed over to her husband.

  “I’m sorry, honey, it’s not you; it’s just your timing. I think everyone’s met my husband, Reading, except you.” Mindy pointed to Greer. “Reading, this is Whitney’s new neighbor, Greer.”

  “You have a lovely home,” Greer said, gesturing to the spacious vaulted ceiling of the ranch house before reaching out to shake hands. As her soft skin met his rough fingers, a distinctly unpleasant jolt went through her fingers. It didn’t travel up her arm, as sometimes happened when she met a person intent on harm, but the jolt caused her to look more deeply at the man. His eyes were guarded, but she sensed nothing more.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Reading was saying. He released Greer’s hand, and she wondered whether her reaction had been only a residual effect of her overall unease. “Well, I’ve got to go out and hose off a couple of the horses. They get overheated in this infernal devil wind, and it must be damned uncomfortable.” Reading turned to Jenny. “You want me to give Le Roi a hose-down?”

  “Yes, please.” Jenny looked relieved. “I worry about him so much in this weather, but I don’t know how you can stand to work outside in this dry heat.”

  Reading looked up at her with a glint of mean humor in his eyes. “It’s either heatstroke out there or estrogen radiation in here. I can tell you which one will drop me faster.”