by Dean Koontz
“Feds,” Julio said as he cruised by the stakeout.
“Sharp’s men? DSA?” Reese wondered.
“Must be.”
“A little obvious, aren’t they?”
“I guess they don’t really expect Shadway to turn up here,” Julio said. “But they have to go through the motions.”
Julio parked half a block behind the stakeout, putting several cars between him and the DSA’s Ford, so it was possible to watch the watchers without being seen.
Reese had participated in scores of stakeouts with Julio, and surveillance duty had never been the ordeal it might have been with another partner. Julio was a complex man whose conversation was interesting hour after hour. But when one or both of them did not feel up to conversation, they could sit through long silences in comfort, without awkwardness—one of the surest tests of friendship.
Tuesday afternoon, while they watched the watchers and also watched the offices of Shadway Realty, they talked about Eric Leben, genetic engineering, and the dream of immortality. That dream was by no means Leben’s private obsession. A deep longing for immortality, for commutation of the death sentence, had surely filled humankind since the first members of the species had acquired self-awareness and a crude intelligence. The subject had a special poignancy for Reese and Julio because both had witnessed the deaths of much-loved wives and had never fully recovered from their losses.
Reese could sympathize with Leben’s dream and even understand the scientist’s reasons for subjecting himself to a dangerous genetic experiment. It had gone wrong, yes: the two murders and the hideous crucifixion of the one dead girl were proof that Leben had come back from the grave as something less than human, and he must be stopped. But the deadly result of his experiments—and the folly of them—did not entirely foreclose sympathy. Against the rapacious hunger of the grave, all men and women were united, brothers and sisters.
As the sunny summer day grew dreary under an incoming marine layer of ash-gray clouds, Reese felt a cloak of melancholy settle upon him. He might have been overwhelmed by it if he had not been on the job, but he was on the job in spite of also being on sick leave.
They—like the DSA stakeout team—were not expecting Shadway to arrive at his headquarters, but they were hoping to identify one of the real-estate agents operating out of the office. As the afternoon wore on they saw several people entering and leaving the premises, but one tall, thin woman with a Betty Boop cap of black hair was the most noticeable, her angular storklike frame emphasized by a clinging flamingo-pink dress. Not pale pink, not frilly pink, but bold flame-hot pink. She came and went twice, both times chauffeuring middle-aged couples who had arrived at the office in their own cars—evidently clients for whom she was tracking down suitable houses. Her own car, with its personalized license plate—REQUEEN, which most likely stood for Real Estate Queen—was a new canary-yellow Cadillac Seville with wire wheels, as memorable as the woman herself.
“That one,” Julio said when she returned to the office with the second couple.
“Hard to lose in traffic,” Reese agreed.
At 4:50, she had again come out of the Shadway Realty door and had hurried like a scurrying bird for her car. Julio and Reese had decided that she was probably going home for the day. Leaving the DSA stakeout to its fruitless wait for Benjamin Shadway, they followed the yellow Cadillac down First Street to Newport Avenue and north to Cowan Heights. She lived in a two-story stucco house with a shake-shingle roof and lots of redwood balconies and decking on one of the steeper streets in the Heights.
Julio parked in front as the pink lady’s Caddy disappeared behind the closing garage door. He got out of the car to check the contents of the mailbox—a federal crime—in hope of discovering the woman’s name. A moment later he got back into the car and said, “Theodora Bertlesman. Apparently goes by the name Teddy, because that was on one of the letters.”
They waited a couple of minutes, then went to the house, where Reese rang the bell. Summer wind, warm in spite of the winter-gray sky from which it flowed, breathed through surrounding bougainvillea, red-flowered hibiscus, and fragrant star jasmine. The street was still, peaceful, the sounds of the outside world eliminated by the most effective filter known to man—money.
“Should’ve gotten into real estate, I think,” Reese said. “Why on earth did I ever want to be a cop?”
“You were probably a cop in a previous life,” Julio said dryly, “in another century when being a cop was a better scam than selling real estate. You just fell into the same pattern this time around, without realizing things had changed.”
“Caught in a karma loop, huh?”
A moment later, the door opened. The stork-tall woman in the flamingo-pink dress looked down at Julio, then only slightly up at Reese, and she was less birdlike and more impressive close up than she had been from a distance. Earlier, watching her from the car, Reese had not been able to see the porcelain clarity of her skin, her startling gray eyes, or the sculpted refinement of her features. Her Betty Boop hair, which had looked lacquered—even ceramic—from fifty yards, now proved to be thick and soft. She was no less tall, no less thin, and no less flamboyant than she had seemed before, but her chest was certainly not flat, and her legs were lovely.
“May I help you?” Teddy Bertlesman asked. Her voice was low and silken. She radiated such an air of quiet self-assurance that if Julio and Reese had been two dangerous men instead of two cops, they might not have dared try anything with her.
Presenting his ID and badge, Julio introduced himself and said, “This is my partner, Detective Hagerstrom,” and explained that they wanted to question her about Ben Shadway. “Maybe my information is out of date, but I believe you work as a sales agent in his firm.”
“Of course, you know perfectly well that I do,” she said without scorn, even with some amusement. “Please come in.”
She led them into a living room as bold in its decor as she was in her dress but with undeniable style and taste. A massive white-marble coffee table. Contemporary sofas upholstered in a rich green fabric. Chairs in peach silk moiré, with elaborately carved arms and feet. Four-foot-tall emerald vases holding huge stalks of white-plumed pampas grass. Very large and dramatic modern art filled the high walls of the cathedral-ceilinged room, giving a comfortable human scale to what could have been a forbidding chamber. A wall of glass presented a panorama of Orange County. Teddy Bertlesman sat on a green sofa, the windows behind her, a pale nimbus of light around her head, and Reese and Julio sat on moiré chairs, separated from her by the enormous marble table that seemed like an altar.
Julio said, “Ms. Bertlesman—”
“No, please,” she said, slipping off her shoes and drawing her long legs up under herself. “Either call me Teddy or, if you insist on remaining formal, it’s Miss Bertlesman. I despise that ridiculous Miz business; it makes me think of the South before the Civil War—dainty ladies in crinolines, sipping mint juleps under magnolia trees while black mammies tend to them.”
“Miss Bertlesman,” Julio continued, “we are most eager to speak to Mr. Shadway, and we hope you might have an idea where he is. For instance, it occurs to us that, being a real-estate developer and investor as well as broker, he might own rental properties that are currently vacant, one of which he might now be using—”
“Excuse me, but I don’t see how this falls in your jurisdiction. According to your ID, you’re Santa Ana policemen. Ben has offices in Tustin, Costa Mesa, Orange, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Laguna Niguel, but none in Santa Ana. And he lives in Orange Park Acres.”
Julio assured her that part of the Shadway-Leben case fell into the jurisdiction of the Santa Ana Police Department, and he explained that cross-jurisdictional cooperation was not uncommon, but Teddy Bertlesman was politely skeptical and subtly uncooperative. Reese admired the diplomacy, finesse, and aplomb with which she fielded probing questions and answered without saying anything useful. Her respect for her boss and her determination to p
rotect him became increasingly evident, yet she said nothing that made it possible to accuse her of lying or harboring a wanted man.
At last, recognizing the futility of the authoritarian approach, apparently hoping revelation of his true motives and a blatant bid for sympathy would work where authority had failed, Julio sighed, leaned back in his chair, and said, “Listen, Miss Bertlesman, we’ve lied to you. We aren’t here in any official capacity. Not strictly speaking. In fact, we’re both supposed to be on sick leave. Our captain would be furious if he knew we were still on this case, because federal agencies have taken charge and have told us to back off. But for a lot of reasons, we can’t do that, not and keep our self-respect.”
Teddy Bertlesman frowned—quite prettily, Reese thought—and said, “I don’t understand—”
Julio held up one slim hand. “Wait. Just listen for a moment.”
In a soft, sincere, and intimate voice far different from his official tone, he told her how Ernestina Hernandez and Becky Klienstad had been brutally murdered—one thrown in a dumpster, the other nailed to a wall. He told her about his own baby brother, Ernesto, who had been killed by rats a long time ago in a faraway place. He explained how that tragedy had contributed to his obsession with unjust death and how the similarity between the names Ernesto and Ernestina was one of the several things that had made the Hernandez girl’s murder a special and very personal crusade for him.
“Though I’ll admit,” Julio said, “if the names weren’t similar and if other factors weren’t the same, then I’d simply have found different reasons to make a crusade of this. Because I almost always make a crusade of a case. It’s a bad habit of mine.”
“A wonderful habit,” Reese said.
Julio shrugged.
Reese was surprised that Julio was so thoroughly aware of his own motivations. Listening to his partner, contemplating the degree of insight and self-awareness at which these statements hinted, Reese acquired an even greater respect for the man.
“The point is,” Julio told Teddy Bertlesman, “I believe your boss and Rachael Leben are guilty of nothing, that they may be just pawns in a game they don’t even fully understand. I think they’re being used, that they might be killed as scapegoats to further the interests of others, perhaps even the interests of the government. They need help, and I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that they’ve sort of become another crusade of mine. Help me to help them, Teddy.”
Julio’s performance was astonishing, and from anyone else it might have looked like exactly that—a mere performance. But there was no mistaking his sincerity or the depth of his concern. Though his dark eyes were watchful, and though there was a shrewdness in his face, his commitment to justice and his great warmth were unmistakably genuine.
Teddy Bertlesman was smart enough to see that Julio was not shucking and jiving her, and she was won over. She swung her long legs off the sofa and slid forward to the edge of it in a whispery rustle of pink silk, a sound that seemed to pass like a breeze over Reese, raising the small hairs on the backs of his hands and sending a pleasant shiver through him. “I knew darn well Ben Shadway was no threat to national security,” Teddy said. “Those federal agents came sniffing around with that line, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing in their faces. No, in fact, it was all I could do to keep from spitting in their faces.”
“Where might Ben Shadway have gone, he and Rachael Leben?” Julio asked. “Sooner or later, the feds are going to find them, and I think that for their sake Reese and I had better find them first. Do you have any idea where we should look?”
Rising from the sofa in a brilliant hot-pink whirl, stalking back and forth across the living room on stiltlike legs that ought to have been awkward but were the essence of grace, looking incredibly tall to Reese because he was still sitting on the moiré chair, pausing now and standing provocatively hip-shot in thought, then pacing again, Teddy Bertlesman considered the possibilities and enumerated them: “Well, okay, he owns property—mostly small houses—all over the county. Right now … the only ones not rented … let me see … One, there’s a little bungalow in Orange, a place on Pine Street, but I don’t figure he’d be there because he’s having some work done on it—a new bathroom, improvements to the kitchen. He wouldn’t hide where there’re going to be workmen coming and going. Two, there’s half of a duplex in Yorba Linda …”
Reese listened to her, but for the moment he did not care what she said; he left that part to Julio. All Reese had the capacity to care about was the way she looked and moved and sounded; she filled all his senses to capacity, leaving no room for anything else. At a distance she had seemed angular, birdlike, but up close she was a gazelle, lean and swift and not the least angular. Her size was less impressive than her fluidity, which was like that of a professional dancer, and her fluidity was less impressive than her suppleness, and her suppleness was less impressive than her beauty, and her beauty was less impressive than her intelligence and energy and flair.
Even when her pacing took her away from the window wall, she was surrounded by a nimbus of light. To Reese, she seemed to glow.
He had felt nothing like this in five years, since his Janet had been killed by the men in the van who’d tried to snatch little Esther that day in the park. He wondered if Teddy Bertlesman had taken special notice of him, too, or whether he was just another lump of a cop to her. He wondered how he could approach her without making a fool of himself and without giving offense. He wondered if there could ever be anything between a woman like her and a man like him. He wondered if he could live without her. He wondered when he was going to be able to breathe again. He wondered if his feelings showed. He didn’t care if they showed.
“ … the motel!” Teddy stopped pacing, looked startled for a moment, then grinned. An amazingly lovely grin. “Yes, of course, that would be the most likely place.”
“He owns a motel?” Julio asked.
“A run-down place in Las Vegas,” Teddy said. “He just bought it. Formed a new corporation to make the purchase. Might take the feds a while to tumble to the place because it’s such a recent acquisition and in another state. Place is empty, out of business, but it was sold with furnishings. Even the manager’s apartment was furnished, I think, so Ben and Rachael could squirrel away there in comfort.”
Julio glanced at Reese and said, “What do you think?”
Reese had to look away from Teddy in order to breathe and speak. With a funny little wheeze, he said, “Sounds right.”
Pacing again, flamingo-pink silk swirling around her knees, Teddy said, “I know it’s right. Ben’s in that project with Whitney Gavis, and Whitney is maybe the only man on earth Ben really, fully trusts.”
“Who’s this Gavis?” Julio asked.
“They were in Vietnam together,” she said. “They’re tight. As tight as brothers. Tighter, maybe. You know, Ben’s a real nice guy, one of the best, and anyone’ll tell you so. He’s gentle, open, so darn honest and honorable that some people just plain don’t believe him for a while, until they’ve gotten to know him better. But it’s funny … in a way … he holds almost everybody at arm’s length, never quite reveals himself completely. Except, I think, with Whit Gavis. It’s as if things happened to him in the war that made him forever different from other people, that made it impossible for him to be truly close to anyone except those who went through the same thing he went through and came out with their minds in one piece. Like Whit.”
“Is he close in the same way with Mrs. Leben?” Julio asked.
“Yes, I think so. I think he loves her,” Teddy said, “which makes her about the luckiest woman I know.”
Reese sensed jealousy in Teddy’s voice, and his heart felt as if it broke loose and plummeted down through his chest.
Apparently Julio heard the same note, for he said, “Forgive me, Teddy, but I’m a cop, and I’m curious by nature, and you sounded as if you wouldn’t mind if he’d fallen for you.”
She blinked in surprise,
then laughed. “Me and Ben? No, no. For one thing, I’m taller than he is, and in heels I positively tower over him. Besides, he’s a homebody— a quiet, peaceful man who reads old mystery novels and collects trains. No, Ben’s a great guy, but I’m far too flamboyant for him, and he’s too low-key for me.”
Reese’s heart stopped plummeting.
Teddy said, “Oh, I’m just jealous of Rachael because she’s found herself a good man, and I haven’t. When you’re my size, you know from the start that men aren’t going to flock to you—except basketball players, and I hate jocks. Then, when you get to be thirty-two, you can’t help feeling a bit sour every time you see someone catch a good one, can’t help it even when you’re happy for them.”
Reese’s heart soared.
After Julio had asked a few more questions about the motel in Las Vegas and had ascertained its location, he and Reese got up, and Teddy accompanied them to the door. Step by step, Reese wracked his mind for an approach, an opening line. As Julio opened the door, Reese looked back at Teddy and said, “Uh, excuse me, Miss Bertlesman, but I’m a cop, and asking questions is my business, you know, and I was wondering if you’re …” He didn’t know where to go with it. “ … if you’re maybe … uh … seeing anyone particular.” Listening to himself, Reese was amazed and dismayed that Julio could sound so smooth while he, trying to imitate his partner’s cool manner, could sound so rough and obvious.
Smiling up at him, she said, “Does this have bearing on the case you’re investigating?”
“Well … I just thought … I mean … I wouldn’t want you mentioning this conversation to anyone. I mean, it’s not just that we could get in trouble with our captain … but if you mentioned the motel to anyone, you might jeopardize Mr. Shadway and Mrs. Leben and … well …”