The Final Kill

by Meg O'Brien

  At this, Jancy’s eyes lit up. It was easier to see that they were a brilliant green, now that most of the makeup had worn off.

  “You have horses here?”

  “Four of them. Do you like to ride?”

  “I love it!” But her smile turned to a frown. “I guess I won’t be here that long, though, huh? You’ve got to find somebody else to take me.”

  “One day at a time,” Abby said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

  She washed up their dishes, and Jancy surprised her by offering to dry. After that, Abby invited the girl to join her while she practiced for her black belt in Kenpo.

  “What the heck is Kenpo?” Jancy asked.

  “It’s a form of martial arts. I need to work on it every morning, if I’m ever going to get that belt.”

  “You’re not going to practice on me, are you?” Jancy said somewhat cautiously.

  “Well, I hadn’t planned on it, but since you’re here…” From her expression, Abby wasn’t sure if Jancy knew she was kidding.

  They went down the hall to the gym Abby had installed, and found Davis Bowen, her Kenpo teacher, waiting patiently in a meditative state in front of the small rock fountain he’d urged her to include in her remodeling plans. His own house was high on a hill above Clint Eastwood’s Mission Ranch Inn, and the view along the coastline was drop-dead gorgeous. Davis also had flowers and three different fountains in his courtyard.

  “We need all the beauty we can get in this world,” he’d told Abby long ago. “I think if everyone lived surrounded by nature and beauty, there would be no wars.”

  “Same thing if everyone got a massage every day,” Abby had reminded him, smiling.

  “Ah, yes…another one of my dreams for creating peace on earth.”

  She left Jancy with Davis and went to the locker room to change into her white gi and brown belt. She’d made her way to brown fast, pouring her angry energies into working up from blue after Marti was murdered and she herself had nearly fallen to the same fate. If anyone ever came after her again, she swore, they wouldn’t stand a chance. “First black belt” had stumped her so far, though.

  Jancy watched her work out with Davis awhile, but a few minutes later, when Abby turned toward where she’d been, she saw her in front of the fountain instead. She was in a lotus position, palms up and resting on her knees, eyes closed.

  Abby shot a surprised look at Davis and caught him smiling just before she sent him a Twisting Vine—including the kick to the groin and fingertips to the eyes. Davis was perfectly capable of protecting himself, so she didn’t do any damage. However, it gave her some small sense of satisfaction that she’d almost managed to catch him off guard. Not that she didn’t love Davis, but when they practiced she went into a zone where he became just one more enemy needing to be struck down.

  They continued like that for another half hour. When they’d finished, Jancy was looking around the walls at the black-and-white framed photos Sister Liddy had taken of Davis and Abby training. Usually, when people looked at those pictures, they had something nice to say about them. Even flattering.

  Not Jancy, though.

  “I can tell from these pictures, and just from watching you today,” Jancy said matter-of-factly, “that you’re trying way too hard. That’s why you can’t get your black belt.”

  “What do you mean?” Abby asked, only slightly offended that Jancy didn’t comment on how wonderful she was to have made it this far at all.

  “Well,” Jancy said, shrugging, “it seems to me that you’re learning all these moves so you can know how to hurt someone—not just to defend yourself. So you’re going at it way too hard.”

  “You think so?” Abby said testily.

  Jancy shrugged again. “It shows that you’re insecure. Maybe you should practice meditation. Meditating could help build your self-confidence.”

  “Well, thank you so much for the advice,” Abby said sweetly. “Do you think meditating could get you to stop shrugging so damned much?”

  “Abby?” Davis said.

  She bit her lip and turned to him.

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with your young friend here,” he said mildly. “Whatever those pictures are in your mind while we’re working out, maybe they need to be a bit more…friendly. I nearly lost all hope of having children today.”

  Abby flushed. “Oh, God, Davis, I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

  He grinned. “Abby, the point is moot. I’m gay, remember?”

  “Oh…right.”

  “So I won’t be having progeny. I sure would like to know who you’re thinking of, though, when you go off in that world of yours.”

  Abby could have told him. A three-hundred-and-sixty-degree, clockwise-twisting circle down the opponent’s arm? Jeffrey.

  Left foot to six o’clock, in a right cat stance facing twelve o’clock? Jeffrey.

  Right kick to the groin, fingers stabbing the eyes? Who else but her former bastard husband…Jeffrey?

  She sometimes thought of Marti, the horrors of her final hours, but that took her to places that made her truly afraid of what she might do.

  “Sorry,” Abby said again. “Really. I’ll work on that.”

  When Davis left, she gave Jancy a pair of her own black jeans and a black jersey top to wear. Then she pinned the girl’s multicolored hair up and covered it with a small veil borrowed from Narissa, one of the expostulants at the Prayer House. Giving her a once-over, Abby said, “Okay. That looks pretty good—you could pass for a nun in this getup.”

  They headed out to the stables. Now that it was daylight, she could see that there were no agents or cops nearby. If anyone happened to be watching from one of the surrounding hills or roads, they just might take Jancy for one of the young sisters.

  When they got inside the stables, Jancy talked to the horses, asked their names and rubbed their noses. She clearly loved the animals, but no longer seemed interested in riding.

  “I just don’t feel like it right now,” she said, sliding down into a sitting position and leaning her back against the outside of the stall.

  She’s depressed, Abby thought. Nearly all the young girls who came through here with moms on the run were depressed, to some extent.

  “Maybe someday I’ll take vows and all that,” Jancy said, her fingers twisting in the veil as if it were hair. “It must be easier than living in this stupid world.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want,” Abby said, sitting beside her.

  “All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story,” she said.

  “Really? All your life?” Abby smiled. “You’re fourteen, Jancy. When did you see that movie?”

  Jancy blushed. “Last year, on video. But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. I became a nun at eighteen.”

  “You?”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised. It was a temporary fling,” Abby said.

  “Wow. I never would have thought that you…I mean, my mom told me about you once, and I thought you were rich. You know…one of those society matrons.”

  Abby laughed. “A society matron? God forbid.” “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Have you informed your parents of your plans to become a Bride of Christ?” Abby asked.

  “Once. We were driving by a convent and I told my dad. But he pointed at bars on the windows. He said they lock the nuns up in there.”

  Attaboy, Gerry. Keep the kid off that vocational track.

  “It does seem that way to some,” Abby said. “But actually, in those convents where there are bars on the windows it’s because the nuns want to lock the world out.”

  “Really? On purpose?”

  “On purpose.”

  Jancy seemed to think about that. “Those people last night were looking for us, weren’t they? Mom said if they catch us they’ll lock her up.”

  Abby saw no point in telling her anything but the truth. “They said you and your mom had something to do with a man w
ho was found dead at the Highlands Inn last night. They want to question her. And you, too, since you were with her.”

  She let that sink in a moment before she asked bluntly, “Did Alicia kill him, Jancy?”

  The girl gave a small jump. “No way! We just found him like that!”

  “Can you tell me how you and your mom ‘just found him like that’?”

  Jancy shook her head and didn’t answer.

  “You must know you can trust me by now,” Abby said. “I won’t repeat a word to anyone.”

  Jancy hesitated, but then it began to pour out. “He…the guy…he was some sort of reporter. I don’t remember his name, but that’s what Mom said. Some old guy.”

  “Old?”

  “Fifty, at least.”

  Abby tried hard not to smile. “So did your mom know this guy well?”

  “I guess. He was eating in the restaurant, and so were we. Mom went over and talked to him. I don’t know what they talked about, but he seemed pretty mad. He got up and walked out, and when she got back to our table she was mad, too. I wanted to go into Carmel and walk around the shops after dinner, but she said no, she had business to take care of. So I sat in the lobby while she made a phone call, and when she got done she said we were going to visit somebody.”

  She wiped her eyes, as if to clear them of unpleasant images. “It was awful. We went outside and up the driveway to some room that looked like a private condo from the outside. You know, not in a hallway like a hotel. Mom knocked on the door. Nobody answered, but the door was open a little, so Mom pushed it open more and we went inside. She called out a couple of times—”

  “What name did she call?” Abby asked.

  Jancy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening, because I felt like somebody could walk in any minute and shoot us for trespassing. All I wanted to do was get out of there.” She took a breath, and her voice began to shake. “Then we saw him. This guy, the same one in the restaurant, that reporter. There was one of those big square tubs with jets right in the middle of the bedroom, and he was there—”

  She gave a shudder. “There—there was blood in the water all around him. It looked like somebody had—had cut his throat.”

  “My God, Jancy! What a horrible thing to see.”

  She began to cry, covering her face with her hands.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Abby said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Look, I just have one more question, then we’ll table all this and do whatever you want. Okay?”

  Jancy nodded and wiped her face on her sleeves.

  “Did your mom call the police?” Abby asked. “Or did someone else?”

  “I think it was the maid. She came in with towels or something, and when she saw us and this dead guy, she started screaming. She ran out, and Mom said she’d tell the police about us and we had to get away as fast as we could.”

  “And that’s when you came here?” Abby asked.

  “Yeah. Mom said this was the one place in the world she knew I’d be safe.”

  Abby started. “She said it just that way? That you’d be safe?”

  “Yeah, just like that. At the time I didn’t think it was odd, but now…I guess we’re thinking the same thing, huh?”

  “I guess we are,” Abby said. And kudos to this bright little girl for figuring out that Alicia had planned to leave her daughter with me all along.

  Now the question was: Why?

  6

  Eleven men and one woman—Kris Kelley—sat around an interview table in the Carmel police station. It was just before dawn.

  “Pass these along, please,” said a twelfth man, who was clearly in charge. He stood at the end of the table, passing slender blue folders to the man on his right.

  The lead agent was over six feet tall, with a ruddy tan and eyes like polished nickel. His taut physique was that of a man in his twenties, belying his actual age of fifty-six. The deep lines in his face and the untouched gray hair were the only telltale signs that Robert James Lessing had lived a difficult life. Those who didn’t know him might assume he belonged to a country club and played tennis every day—an incorrect assumption that served him well in his work.

  He took a seat at the long table next to Ben Schaeffer. “You’ve all met Carmel’s chief of police?” he asked the assemblage.

  They nodded. Every eye scanned Ben, but no one smiled. Lessing turned to Ben. “I understood the sheriff would be here, as well.”

  “He will be,” Ben said. “Soon as he can. MacElroy’s putting together a tactical team.”

  “All the more reason he should be here,” Lessing said with an edge.

  “This is the way it’s done in Monterey County,” Ben replied coolly. He didn’t much like being here, either. “Granted, we don’t have many murders in Carmel, but this one at the Highlands seemed routine—at least, until you folks showed up. The sheriff is following standard practice in bringing together a tactical team from the various law enforcement agencies in the county.”

  Lessing spoke dryly. “The murder at the Highlands Inn was anything but routine, Chief.”

  “Yeah, I’ve pretty much figured that out.” Ben looked at the other agents, who were busily writing in pocket-size notebooks. “And since I’m already on the tactical team,” he continued, “maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on. You’ve got agents swarming all over the place, knocking on doors in the middle of the night—”

  “One specific door,” Lessing corrected sharply. “Which, aside from the fact that you’ve been kind enough to lend us your facilities, is the only reason you are privy to this conversation.”

  Ben stifled his anger. This was his ground they were stomping all over, and he hadn’t loaned them his facilities willingly. The fact of the matter was, they’d commandeered them.

  It only made matters worse that they had come down on Abby and the Prayer House that way.

  “My hospitality—and my facilities—” he said, his brown eyes fixed on the agent with an unmistakable warning, “won’t last long if you don’t tell me what you’re really here for and what the hell you want.”

  “I thought I’d made that clear,” Lessing replied. “We’re here because of the murder at the Highlands Inn. And, of course, we’d like your cooperation.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me a damned thing,” Ben said. “To begin with, you’ve admitted that the murder at the Highlands was far from routine. I already knew that. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here. As I understand it, the victim was a journalist for a Washington, D.C., newspaper. A Woodward-and-Bernstein type, probably digging into some sort of government secrets. My guess is he got too close to the truth about someone or something, and got his throat cut before he could write a book about it. As I hear it, that’s not exactly something new.”

  Lessing sighed and glanced at Kris Kelley. “There are a few people here other than Chief Schaeffer who haven’t been filled in yet. Would you like to do the honors? I really don’t think we can wait any longer for the sheriff.”

  Kris nodded and stood, smoothing her skirt. Ben knew she couldn’t have slept much all night, any more than anyone else. Yet she looked crisp and fresh in a beige suit she’d somehow managed to change into. He couldn’t help noticing it was almost the same color as her collar-length hair. He supposed she was nice looking, especially with that great tan. Abby’s dark hair and creamy complexion were just the opposite—

  He shook himself mentally. What the hell am I doing?

  “As some of you know,” Kris said, “the woman we’re looking for is Alicia Gerard, the wife of multimillionaire H. Palmer Gerard. So far, we’ve discovered that the victim was attempting to blackmail Ms. Gerard, and that she was seen having an angry conversation last night with him at the Pacific’s Edge restaurant in the Highlands Inn. A short time later, she was observed knocking on the door of the victim’s room, a room he’d reserved for three nights. Last night was his second night there.”

  She cleared her thro
at and took a sip of water, then began again. “At ten-twenty or so last night, the hotel maid walked into the room and found Alicia Gerard and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Jancy, standing over the victim. He was lying in a whirlpool tub and his throat had been slashed. In fact, he was nearly beheaded. It was a brutal crime.”

  She paused and swallowed hard, as if the scene she’d witnessed the night before was too dreadful to return to, even in her mind. “The minute Alicia and her daughter saw the maid they ran, but the maid later identified them from photos we found in the victim’s room—”

  “Hang on,” Ben said. “Since when do maids deliver clean towels at ten-thirty at night?”

  “Way ahead of you,” Lessing said. “The victim called and asked for them. Said housekeeping hadn’t cleaned the bathroom that morning. Kris?”

  The agent began again. “The photos were of Alicia Gerard and her daughter, Jancy—candid shots taken on the street, at a mall, one of Jancy outside her school. Obviously taken by someone who’d been observing them over a period of time. The husband, H. P. Gerard, wasn’t in them.”

  “Hold on,” Ben said. “H. P. Gerard’s wife is who you were looking for at the Prayer House? So this reporter guy is viciously murdered at the Highlands Inn, presumably by the wife and/or child of one of the biggest movers and shakers in this country, and all of a sudden a lightbulb goes on and you say, ‘Oh, that’s where the killers are! At a convent out in Carmel Valley.’” He laughed shortly. “Yeah, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.”

  Agent Kelley answered him in a scathing tone. “It does if your girlfriend is one of Alicia Gerard’s oldest friends—and if your girlfriend takes in women and children on the run.”

  “Which you wouldn’t even have known if I hadn’t—”

  “Confirmed it for us,” she said firmly. “We knew about Abby Northrup’s work long before you decided to enlighten us, Chief Schaeffer. We hardly had to rely on you to inform us—”

  “Like hell,” Ben said, interrupting angrily.

  “Easy,” Lessing said quietly. “Let’s keep personalities out of this.”