by D. F. Bailey
As Toby studied the view of the exterior wall he glimpsed two shadows under the oak tree. What was that? He leaned forward and adjusted the camera to show the interior wall. A moment later the two shadows dropped to the ground and crouched next to the rhododendron shrubs. His eyes followed them as they approached the garage and peered through the window.
When they reached the front of the garage Toby clicked to the fixed camera that always focused on the garage doors. There stood two figures with hoodies draped over their heads. Who? Someone and … Eve Noon.
From his hip pocket he drew a black pebble, inserted it under his tongue and sucked on its polished surface. Then he walked back to the desk, clicked off the lamp, strolled into Mr. W’s closet and pulled a golf club from the upright bag stowed next to the locked vault. He tested the heft of the club head in his free hand. A stainless steel driver. Should do the job.
In the shuttered darkness he padded along the tiled hallway, turned past the lower bathroom, by the laundry room, through the unlit side door and onto the perfectly trimmed lawn. As he made his way in the moonless shadows he realized he’d left the side door unlocked and forgotten to reset the security alarm. Deal with it later, he mumbled as he walked along the crest of the hill towards his cottage. He crept across the yard swinging the club in his right hand, practice strokes that swept above the manicured grass. From his other wrist the two cameras dangled from their straps and clacked together lightly with each step he took. Why did everything have to be on video these days, he wondered. Twenty years ago, his troubles wouldn’t have been noticed by a soul. Now all these cameras bore the evidence of his misery.
“Bloody nuisance,” he whispered and rolled the pebble between his left molars and pressed his teeth together until he felt the familiar crunch of enamel grinding on stone.
※ — SIXTEEN — ※
AS THEY WALKED toward Whitelaw’s body in the parkade Will and Eve considered how to revive him. They hunched over his corpse and examined the pea-size tunnel drilled into his skull.
“Jesus,” Finch whispered. “Dead before he hit the ground.”
He ran his gloved fingers over the three bullet holes blasted through the old man’s right coat pocket. What had he been thinking?
“What’s that smell?” Eve asked as she pressed her nose above Whitelaw’s leather coat and sniffed.
Finch drew a breath. “Tobacco? Cigars, maybe.”
They both gazed into Whitelaw’s deeply etched face. He bore a look of depleted exhaustion. Or perhaps, Finch thought, an expression of deliverance.
“We should call the cops,” he said when he regained some composure.
“Believe me, they’ll find him soon enough.” Eve pawed through his pockets, found both pistols, but left them in place. “The first thing they’ll do is send a detail over to his home in Sausalito. We’ve got to beat them to it.”
“We could be charged with leaving a crime scene.” He took a step away from the wall, wondering what sort of law might land them in jail. The cops had dozens of options. “That or some other damn thing.”
“Not if they can’t see us.” She pulled on the beak of his ball cap and tugged his hoodie forward. “No one knows who we are,” she whispered, her voice softening to reconcile him to the job still ahead of them.
“I guess not.”
Clasping his arm, Eve ushered them down the four flights of stairs and out of the parkade, explaining the urgency of following the Mercedes as she went. By the time she pulled the F-150 back onto the Beach Street, the limousine had a five- or ten-minute head start.
“I’m telling you, he’s the creep who broke into my condo. The one driving Whitelaw’s car. The one who slugged me in Gianna’s condo.”
“Then it’ll be his DNA from your condo,” he said. He refused to add, and from Gianna. “If we can get one more swab from him, the evidence will be irrefutable.”
“Yeah. He’s the one,” she insisted. “It’s him. I know it.”
Finch didn’t doubt her, and as they drove back to Sausalito, she repeated the same claim two or three times as her obsession grew. Will didn’t respond to anything she said. He simply let the passing moments fly through him as they rolled along the asphalt, through the round, illuminated hole of the Rainbow Tunnel and then forward into the suburban splendor of Sausalito. Finally she stopped the F-150 opposite the Whitelaw compound in the exact spot where she’d parked it two hours earlier. She set the emergency brake, cut the engine and glanced at Finch.
“Gloves?” She held a pair of surgical mitts in her hand.
“Got my own,” he said and rummaged through his courier bag.
They took a moment to tug the latex over their hands, plucking at the separate finger sleeves and pulling the webs tight between their fingers.
“Ready?” Her eyes narrowed. She peered through the windshield with focussed concentration.
Finch adjusted his baseball cap. They pulled the hoodies over their heads and tugged the draw strings tight. He nodded and they slipped out of the car.
“Let’s climb over the wall beside that tree.” She pointed to a fifteen-foot high leather oak tree that stood between the sidewalk and the stuccoed barricade surrounding the estate. The leafy branches cascaded over the top and provided a natural swing that they used to rappel down the inside wall.
Once they landed on the dirt path inside the property, they hunched behind one of the six-foot high rhododendrons that lined the length of the fence beside the garage. Eve waved a hand and they stepped through the darkness to the garage window. Finch pressed his head to the glass. He could barely make out the limo. He cupped his gloved hand around the visor of his cap. Yes, there it stood. A black Mercedes-Benz S 600 Pullman Guard.
“The wolf is back in his lair,” he whispered.
Eve leaned her head against the window and peered through the glass. She motioned him toward the front of the garage where they stood and began to study the surroundings.
“See that cabin?” She crooked a thumb towards the cottage overlooking the hill. A set of chairs and a small table stood on the outside deck next to an uncovered barbecue. “Looks like someone lives there full time.”
Finch pointed to the mansion at the opposite end of the sloping lawn. “And look at the light on the top floor. Apart from the porch lamp, it’s the only light in the entire building.”
“Tell you what. Let’s split up for ten minutes. You try the house for any unlocked doors. I’ll deal with the cottage. Meet back here in ten minutes.”
“All right.”
“Here. Take this.” From her bag she pulled an eight-inch steel baton with a leather loop fixed to one end. She slipped the coil over her hand. With a flick of her wrist the telescopic baton shot out another fourteen inches. She collapsed the bar and passed it to Finch.
He’d seen police batons many times before. A few of the MPs in Iraq liked to sport them around the streets of Baghdad, flicking them open to intimidate the locals. He slipped the baton strap over his right wrist and gave it a taut snap. With a slippery metallic slap the two inside tubes shot through the hand grip and locked into place.
“It’s not a toy,” she whispered. Then she drew the snub-nosed pistol into her hand.
“Neither is that. What is it?”
“A Colt Cobra .38 Special.”
The same pistol she’d brandished in the parkade.
“Discreet, but it gets the job done.”
“I bet.” He looked away, tried to scan the darkness for signs of life.
“Ten minutes, no more.” She held his eyes and forced a smile to her lips.
He collapsed the baton and checked his watch. Then he stepped back into the shadows of the rhododendrons and made his way along the stucco wall toward the mansion.
As he approached the lighted porch he paused to study the surrounding bushes. After a moment he decided to try the door. Locked. He skirted back into the cover of the shrubs and then he worked his way to the south side of the house, once again disa
ppearing into the shadows of the starless night. He reached a side door and touched the lever with his hand. It opened.
He set his foot onto the floor tiles and took three steps into the interior of the basement. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to the unlit hallway. A few feet ahead a wool carpet ran the length of the corridor. As he waited he heard a light flushing noise. He turned his head to the ceiling and tried to pinpoint the sound. Running water somewhere above.
He pulled an LED flashlight from his bag and switched it on. Somewhere beyond the end of the hall he could make out a vague orb of light. He inched forward tentatively, testing each step to ensure he didn’t stumble on the rug. When he reached the corner, he looked down another corridor and saw the opaque illumination of a night light plugged into a wall outlet eighteen inches above the floor. From there he could see a staircase that led up to the main floor.
Gripping the truncheon in his right fist and the flashlight in his left, he eased along the staircase. As he rose to the landing he felt like a cat: weightless, invisible, silent. Diffused light flowed from the exterior street lamps through the sheer curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living and dining rooms. Beside each window stood five- and six-foot statues, human figures cut from stone. The walls held dozens of paintings: portraits, landscapes, still life flowers. All of it European, dated, classically conservative. Nothing avant-garde here, Finch told himself and moved forward.
He followed a corridor that led through the main floor into the kitchen then past a study, a bathroom, and two lavishly decorated guest rooms that Finch assumed hadn’t hosted a visitor in weeks. All empty. Again he listened to the sound of running water. A steady trickle. Maybe a toilet valve stuck open.
When he found the stairs leading up to the top floor, he gripped the baton with a sense of the inevitable. The closer he got to the lighted room above, the more likely he’d encounter someone. As he stood on the top floor landing he convinced himself that the sound of running water came from a toilet. He’d heard it a hundred times, the tight throttle of water as it coughed through a half-inch pipe.
The landing opened onto a wide space with an overhead skylight that barely illuminated the doors leading into two bedrooms and a hallway bathroom. Again the light was gray, dull, filtered from the moonless sky above. He checked the bathroom. Nothing.
He stuck his head through the nearest bedroom doorway and sniffed the air. Perfume. A hint of eau de cologne. The bed was made, unoccupied for days, he figured. Again, he sensed that the house had been abandoned and immediately scrubbed clean. Several sheer nighties hung from a bank of ornate, ivory clothes hooks. Two statues struck modest poses to cover their nudity. Between the sculptures a door led to a private ensuite bathroom. Everything in this home revealed a curated opulence. A lifetime spent collecting rarities and mounting them on walls and shelves or poised in display cases and balanced on marble plinths. The sort of wealth most people never imagined. But so wealthy that Whitelaw could leave it all unguarded, the basement door ajar?
The question made him realize that he hadn’t tripped any security alarms. At least not yet. Could it be possible? Or had someone entered the house before him, keyed in the security code and then set a trap?
He turned back to the hall and entered the second bedroom. A heavy bouquet of tobacco filled the air. He inhaled it tentatively, tasting the thick spoor at the back of his nostrils. He recognized the stench of cigar tobacco emanating from the corpse on the parkade floor. Mr. Whitelaw himself and now this, his private domain. As he stepped into the bedroom, Finch saw a wedge of light from the ensuite bathroom on the far side of the bed. This was it: the light he’d seen as he stood on the lawn beside the garage with Eve. He switched off his flashlight and checked his watch. Nine minutes had passed.
He paused to assess the noise from the toilet. He couldn’t make out any other sounds. No heavy breathing, no whisper of death. He advanced across the bedroom carpet to the bathroom and peered around the doorframe. Just outside the shower stall, suspended from a ceiling fixture, a heat lamp illuminated the room. As he stepped onto the bathroom tiles the heat from the lamp radiated over his head and onto his chest. He held a hand up to shield himself.
Finch tried to determine what had happened. Whitelaw had taken a shower and then flushed the toilet. But it had stuck. Obviously he’d been in a hurry of some kind. Or maybe just pre-occupied on his way to meet the kid in the parkade. In his rush he’d left the lamp on.
He studied the rows of medications arrayed on the glass shelf above the sink: Prednisone, Aleve, Naprosyn, Voltaren, Cataflam — and more. Whitelaw had been living in a haze of pain-killing medication and a fog that had blinded him to reality. Maybe that’s why he’d left the light on and the toilet running. And why he’d arranged to meet a kid in the parkade and tried to shoot him through his jacket pocket. It was absurd. Madness.
Shaking his head to shrug off so many mysteries, Finch stepped forward and tapped the toilet handle with his gloved index finger. The flushing ceased. Then he flicked off the switch to the heat lamp and the room collapsed into the black hole of night. In the dark quietude which now surrounded him he listened for something new.
Then he heard it. A muffled cry from somewhere outside. “Uhhhhgg.”
He stood next to bathroom window and gazed onto the compound below. The vast gray lawn stretched across the estate past the swimming pool to the cottage at the lip of the slope leading down to Sausalito and San Francisco Bay.
A moment later the living room lights in the cottage clicked on. And then off. He squeezed the baton in his hand and then bolted from Whitelaw’s bathroom down the two sets of stairs, through the basement and into the yard.
※
Toby Squire spat a pebble onto the lawn and hunched behind the rock sculpture that he’d assembled the year after he’d been hired as the estate chauffeur and moved into the cottage. Mr. and Mrs. W had seemed delighted with the idea. “Always wonderful to welcome new art into our lives,” Mrs. W had exclaimed when Toby sketched out the design and showed her photographs of the inuksuks in his illustrated dictionary.
With the help of the senator’s twin sons, he’d assembled the sculpture from seven granite rocks on the lawn just beyond Toby’s living room window. The figure rose on two stout stone legs. Two more rocks set horizontally above the legs comprised the belly and chest. On top of these pieces he balanced one long stone that resembled a pair of extended arms — the tapered right hand pointing to the Pacific Ocean in the distance. He set a round, flat rock above the arms to provide a neck. Then they hoisted a seventh stone, the head, into place and stood back to admire their handiwork. The inuksuk stood over eight feet and if you knew where to look, you could see it from the deck of the ferry as it neared the dock in Sausalito. Stone Eater, he called it without ever letting on to anyone the private meaning of these two words. It provided a memory of his baiting back in South Shoreditch and the distance he’d come from that secret terror. It reflected his success. His esteem.
Now he could see the storm gathering above. Black, dense anvil clouds coming off the ocean bearing precious rain. He squatted behind the statue, slipped the cameras from his left hand onto the lawn and studied the front door to his cottage. He’d wait here for Eve Noon, he decided. Wait until she appeared from the shadows. Then he’d slip across the lawn, silent as a lamb. He plumped the steel head of the golf club in his palm and wondered what sort of force it might take to put her down.
As he prepared, he pondered the horrible fate of his master. Did he still lie shot and bleeding on the concrete stall in the parkade? Had someone called the police, an ambulance taken him to a hospital? Not yet, he reasoned, otherwise the police would have been knocking on the front door by now. But soon. And soon he’d have to dispose of Eve Noon and make his way to Oakland.
Then he saw Eve step from behind the propane tank at the side of his cottage. He thought she looked like a cat stalking a wounded bird. She wore a black hoodie, but in the surv
eillance camera he’d caught a glimpse of her beautiful face as she looked up to the camera. Yes, it’s her, he assured himself and he eased around Stone Eater towards her.
Walk like a ghost, he murmured as his feet whispered above the dry grass toward her. He noticed that she held a small pistol in her right hand. A large bag of some kind hung from her left shoulder. He lifted the golf club over his shoulder and prepared to strike her. A chill breeze gusted up from the bay and he shuddered.
Then for an instant, in a moment of hesitation, he wondered if she was warm enough. His head tilted to one side and he felt an urge to tap her on the shoulder and ask if she felt comfortable with her fate. As they crept forward, the urge to tell her what was coming pressed the words into his throat and mouth. The necessity to warn her: You are about to die.
Finally it happened. An intuition maybe. The feeling you have when you’re parked at a stop light, he thought, when you turn to see the driver in the next car is staring at you. Yes, just like that, she paused and turned and saw his face and as she cried out, he drove the golf club against the side of her head above her left ear.
But because of her hoodie, Toby couldn’t be certain exactly where the blow landed. It didn’t matter. The girl collapsed on the lawn like a sack of snakes. He’d heard that expression a hundred times. But now it made perfect sense. If you held a sack of snakes upside-down and pulled the burlap bag straight into the air, the serpents would instantly slither to the ground and squirm about without anything holding them together.
That’s what’s happening to the girl, he thought, as her limbs began quaking in an uncontrollable frenzy. As if her head and arms and legs were trying to shake themselves free of her torso. A fit, he told himself when her convulsions seemed to worsen. She’s having a seizure. The pistol fell from her hand, the strap on her bag coiled around her neck.