But he had no idea what he was getting into.
She folded her arms. “You cannot be alone with him. I’ll go back to my apartment and meet him myself before I let you do that.”
“You can’t!” Margaret cried.
“No, you won’t.” The sereneness in her grandfather’s expression astounded her.
In that instant his soul shimmered, then blazed before her, as if the sun itself chased away its shadows. Kaitlan went weak.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He understood the danger. And that was a chance he was willing to take.
For her.
Part 3
Deception
forty-four
Margaret opened her eyes to sickly dawn.
Her night had been fitful, plagued by wraithlike dreams not fully formed. As she gazed blearily at the ceiling she couldn’t remember a single detail, but they haunted her just the same.
The clock read 6:45 p.m. Four hours of sleep. Her head felt like mush.
She and D. and Kaitlan had talked past 2:00 a.m., discussing D.’s scheme. There wasn’t much to it, really, and that’s what petrified Margaret. Yet he insisted it would work.
They could not unequivocally prove Craig did the murders. But they could gather enough circumstantial evidence for the California State Police to be forced to take a look at the situation.
Especially with the media involved.
Craig’s biggest mistake was hacking into D.’s manuscript—and using Leland Hugh’s black and green fabric for the killings. D. had already gathered information from some key phone calls. The hacking was likely on his own computer, he reported, not the online data storage site, which would employ heavy encryption to guard against such theft. The house’s internal wireless network had long been secured, but it wasn’t completely infallible. Still, the hacker would have faced the challenge of “pushing” a Trojan Horse or some other kind of spyware onto D.’s computer.
Margaret could believe his own computer was the vulnerable point. He wouldn’t let her on it, and likely he hadn’t kept up with security updates.
He could prove the hacking with the help of a savvy computer crimes technician, D. said. The tech would need a couple hours to run his software, looking for the spy program. The harder issue was tracing where it had come from, but thanks to brand-new technology that could now be done.
D. would present this proof to Craig, threatening to call the Sheriff’s Department over the theft unless Craig admitted what he’d done and promised to stop. Craig’s confession would be secretly filmed by a local TV reporter. A copy of that tape and D.’s manuscript—along with the photos Craig had so thoughtfully chosen to give them—would be taken to the state police. Kaitlan would tell them her full account. They would have to investigate. With the TV station blowing the story wide open, the Gayner chief of police wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on evidence they hadn’t pursued. Public pressure would mount to find the truth.
“But why would Craig admit to the hacking in the first place?” Kaitlan had pressed. “He knows that manuscript could tie him to the fabric.”
D. smiled sagely. “But he doesn’t know I know about the fabric. He has to meet my demand and confess in order to contain me. If I pressed charges, the media would be all over the story. Every point of my manuscript—including the fabric—could be made public. And some homicide detective on the Gayner police force would wonder at the coincidence.”
Amazing, Margaret had thought—that D. had been able to logic through all this.
Kaitlan thought the plan absurd. “So you tell him that’s why you really brought him here, get his confession, and see him to the door. And you expect this maniac, the guy who wants to kill me, to just go along with it?”
D. reared back his head. “I write dialogue for a living, girl! I’ll finesse the conversation. I’ll look at his manuscript first and give him some pointers. When I bring up the hacking it’ll be with disappointment, not anger. Just an unfortunate detail I choose to deal with quietly, between him and me. He’ll do what I ask because he’ll want to keep it that way.”
“Something will go wrong.”
“No, it won’t.”
“You don’t know that!”
D.’s features blackened. “How many evil antagonists do you think I’ve created in my lifetime, girl? You think I can’t keep a step ahead of this one?”
“This isn’t a book!”
“I know that!”
The argument boiled over. D. and Kaitlan shot points back and forth, back and forth. Margaret didn’t say much—Kaitlan covered it all.
D. pounded his cane. “Unless you come up with some other bright idea, I’m through talking about this!”
“But I don’t want to end up on TV!” Kaitlan burst. “Everybody will be looking at me, my privacy gone.”
D. growled. “Don’t be a fool, Kaitlan. You lost your privacy the minute you found that body on your bed. What do you think—Craig’s going to be arrested and tried in secret?”
That did it. Kaitlan was beaten down. Margaret could see the fight drain from her limbs. Besides, D. was right—they had no other plan.
Feet on the couch, Kaitlan pulled her knees up and buried her face.
D. looked utterly spent. He slumped in his chair, piercing the floor with an angry stare. Soon it smoothed to hollow-eyed blankness.
Margaret hadn’t liked the plan then. Now in the light of day it seemed nothing short of insane. A frail elderly man facing down a killer one third his age?
She had to talk D. out of it.
Throwing back the covers she slid from bed.
She showered and dressed by rote, her mind on the list of arguments to abort the plan. Too much could go wrong. They had no fallback. All three of them could get killed. The more she envisioned Craig Barlow here, in this house, the more her muscles tied in knots. By the time her makeup and hair were done, she vowed to go to the police herself rather than let D. carry out his harebrained idea.
Except she had no absolute proof yesterday’s murder ever happened. What if they believed the photos had been staged—all for publicity for a has-been writer?
The news.
Margaret slapped down her brush and trotted over to turn on the television, weak hope floundering in her chest. If by some miracle the victim at least had been found …
She punched the remote to Channel Seven, where Good Morning America would cut away at intervals to a minute or two of local news.
Commercials.
Margaret massaged her neck and waited. Come on, give me something.
The familiar face of local anchor Matt Hagerty appeared. He clipped through stories of an Oakland attorney indicted for trying to bribe a judge, a string of home burglaries in San Francisco’s Marina District. Traffic conditions on local freeways. “And now,” he nodded, “back to Good Morning America.”
Margaret’s shoulders fell.
Punching off the TV, she strode to her desk in the far corner of her room. It was less likely the papers would carry anything about the murder this quickly, but she’d look anyway. She turned on her computer, idling with impatience as it booted. She clicked to the San Jose Mercury News website and scanned its headlines.
Nothing.
Margaret returned to Google and searched for “Gayner homicide victim”—the same words she’d run yesterday for D.
No breaking stories. Only those of the last two victims.
She typed in “Gayner missing woman.” Her heart leapt at the returned hits, but again none of them linked to current news.
Who was this woman, that no one had even reported her missing?
Margaret made a face at the computer. This was useless.
As she exited the bedroom she left the computer running.
In the kitchen she made coffee and choked down some toast. The house screamed the silence of a tomb. Darell had instructed her to wake him at nine.
Margaret prowled the kitchen, coffee in hand, unease a leaden block in her ches
t. How to convince Darell to change his mind? When the man decided something his feet set in concrete.
And even if she did convince him—what then? They’d be back where they started, with Kaitlan trapped here, helpless.
Toting her coffee cup, Margaret returned to the computer. She refreshed the San Jose Mercury page for updates. Nothing new.
She stared out the window into thick fog. The backyard lay obliterated.
Maybe she should go back to perusing D.’s old novels. Yesterday she only read the opening chapters of the first ten. How driven she’d been. But that strong urge had been swept aside amid the events of last night.
Perhaps within one of the books lay an idea not to help Darell catch Craig Barlow after all, but to talk him out of trying.
As Margaret considered that possibility, the urge returned.
She pushed back from the computer. Eight-twenty. She had forty minutes—enough time to scan through the openings of ten or so novels.
In the kitchen Margaret refilled her coffee mug. With purpose she headed to the library and planted herself before the bookcase holding D.’s first editions. An empty space spoke of the novel she’d been reading last night.
Margaret fetched the book from the desk where it lay and returned it to its place on the shelf. She stared at the next novel, D.’s eleventh. Out of Time.
Appropriate title.
Breathing a prayer, she slipped it off the shelf.
forty-five
In and out of fog Leland Hugh ran, chased by phantoms. Cloud wisps wound around his head, squeezing his thoughts to cotton. Somewhere he’d lost his way. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt no earth below his feet. His muscular arms pumped, pumped …
Both biceps crumbled. His fingers turned inward, gnarled, the legs beneath him now wobbly and stiff. His mind thickened, and he didn’t know what to do, where to go, his thoughts gauzy and white, while something, something snatched at his hand, calling him, pulling him —
“D.” A voice out of the ether.
His hand jiggled.
“D., wake up.”
Darell’s eyes opened. He lay in bed, Margaret standing over him. Anxiety tangled her expression.
The dream roiled in his mind. Leland Hugh. The fog. The confusion.
He blinked.
“It’s nine o’clock,” Margaret said. “Time to get up.”
Memory poured over him. Craig Barlow. Kaitlan.
Darell pushed up on one elbow and tossed back the covers. “Okay. Right.”
Margaret stood back as he finagled his feet to the floor. Detritus from the dream drifted fitfully in Darell’s mind like sand settling after the tide. Hugh, lost and alone, becoming him.
Why?
A sense of urgency rose within Darell. So much to do. So many details. He reached for his cane, throwing Margaret an impatient glance. “Go on, I don’t need your help. I’ve got to make that call right away.”
She folded her arms, determination etching her face. “D., I don’t want you to do it.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not going to lure that killer here.”
What a way to put it. He gawked at her. “Have you gone mad, woman?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I have to save Kaitlan.”
“We’ll find another way.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yes, let the police handle it. Like we should have done in the first place.”
“Oh, right. They’re doing a real good job.”
She shook her head impatiently. “I was reading your old novels, thinking one of them might give us an idea of what to do. That’s why one was lying out in the library last night—”
“What are you blathering about, woman?” One of his books off its shelf? He had no memory of any such thing.
“See?” Margaret hunched forward as if she’d scored a major point. “You can’t even remember that. Yet you think you can outwit this killer—”
“I know I can outwit him!” Darell waved his cane.
“D.—”
“Stop talking to me like I’m an old man!” He lurched to his feet. “My only grandchild needs saving, and I’m going to do it.”
Margaret stood her ground, vertical lines puckering around her tightened lips. “Is this really about Kaitlan? Or is this about proving yourself—to you?”
The words stabbed to the core of him. Darell’s face went hot. He threw back his shoulders and stalked around her with all the dignity he possessed. “Out of my path, woman, I’ve got work to do.”
She reached for his arm. “D., please—”
He yanked from her grip. Stepped sideways to push his face into hers. “Do not say another word!”
Darell jerked around and steamrolled for the bathroom. Once inside he slammed the door.
Rage rattled in his chest. He glared at himself in the mirror, seeing nothing but a grizzled man, his eyebrows moldy gray bundles of straw, white hair tufted and wild.
He had not seen a book out of place in the library last night. Margaret was making things up just to confuse him.
How dare she question his abilities? Even worse, his motives?
Leland Hugh materialized in his thoughts. Hugh in the fog, lost. Turning into him.
“Aah!” Darell thwacked the mirror with his palm and wrenched away. Bent over his cane, he fumed at the beige tile floor. Hugh was turning into more of a mystery than ever. Darell’s last hope for finishing his book could well lie in Craig Barlow’s manuscript. Tonight before he trapped the man if he could just glean some insight …
Hugh’s voice echoed in his head. Joined by Margaret and Kaitlan and Craig. Soon all four clamored, jumbling Darell’s brain. Concentration started slipping, slipping …
Darell buffed his face. What was that first thing he had to do?
His eyes rose to twin blue towels hanging on their gold rack. He frowned at them, through them …
Tonight’s meeting. He had to call Craig to set it up.
Just like that a moving pathway in Darell’s mind cleared. He stepped upon it. But as he rode along, purpose morphed to fear. What this day would demand of him.
At the sink he splashed his face, dried his hands, his movements jerky, nervous. By the time he left the bathroom his heart thwacked his ribs.
Ridiculous. This is only the phone call.
Margaret had moved across the hall to plant herself in the office doorway. Her face still scrunched with worry, one hand pressed to the side of her neck. “D., I’m sorry. I’m just … scared.”
“You ought to be. Sorry, I mean.” He made a move to brush around her but she stayed firm. He threw her a withering look. “Let me by.”
She slapped both palms against the doorposts, blocking the entrance. “Remember your book Over the Waters? About the couple on a cruise ship and the wife disappeared?”
“No. I don’t. Now move before I make you.”
“One of the stewards was involved. The husband knew it and set this elaborate plan to catch him. And the whole thing went awry—” “That’s a story, Margaret!” He banged his cane so hard against the floor shock waves jittered up his arm. “This is real!”
“I know. But what if—”
“Get out of my way!”
Movement in Darell’s peripheral vision turned his head. Kaitlan stood halfway down the hall, shoulders drawn inward, round-eyed. Her clothes looked thrown on, her hair mussed.
Margaret followed his gaze. The vibrations from her smoothed out, as if she’d been caught making a scene. Her hands fell from the doorposts. “Good morning, Kaitlan.” She forced a wan smile.
Kaitlan approached warily, head half turned, looking at them askance. “What’s going on?”
Darell glared sideways at Margaret. “We were just discussing today’s plans.”
“Nothing’s changed, right? We’re going through with this insanity?” Kaitlan pulled up beside him, hugging herself. Her cheek mixed deeper shades of purple and red, streaks down to
her chin. The scrapes she’d taken from her fall stood out angry and rough.
Margaret sucked in air at the sight of her.
Kaitlan touched her fingers to the area and winced. “I know. I look terrible.”
Her vulnerability ripped at Darell’s chest. What Craig had done to her. And her cheek screamed only of the surface pain.
He would get her out of this.
“Absolutely no change, Kaitlan.” Darell planted a hand on Margaret’s shoulder and firmly pushed her aside. “I’m calling Craig right now as a matter of fact. And I need total silence”—he hitched his eyebrows in a glower at Margaret—“from the two of you.”
Nose in the air, he thumped his way across the office with rank determination. His heart rat-tatted—and that infuriated him.
He reached his desk, feeling like a prisoner approaching the noose.
forty-six
Darell sank into his desk chair and surveyed the phone. He could feel the eyes of the two women at his back. Margaret and her dread of his failure. Kaitlan’s life dependence on his success.
Calm yourself, man. Collect your thoughts.
He picked up the receiver. Mentally he scrabbled for last night’s reasoning about his plan.
How serendipitous that Craig Barlow had possessed the nerve to hack into his manuscript. For once being thought old and infirm had worked to Darell’s advantage. The kid wouldn’t have dared such a thing three years ago, when Darell’s work was still being published.
Darell half turned. “Kaitlan, do you know the number to the Gayner Police?”
“No. I would just call Craig on his cell phone.”
“Okay, doesn’t matter.”
But somehow it did. That small unknown—a portent.
Darell dialed 411 and requested the number to the Gayner Police Station.
“Is this an emergency?” the operator asked.
Only my granddaughter’s life. “No, the front desk will be fine.”
As the computer-generated voice intoned the seven digits, he wrote them down, then disconnected. He stared at the receiver in his hand.
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