“I can’t believe our son stole this money and hid it here,” he said. “But how else could he have gotten his hands on this much cash?”
Right, Julia thought, how else?
“Do you have a safe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s put it there until I figure out what to do about this.”
* * * *
SATURDAY, JULY 19
* * * *
JULIA RAFAEL
T
he late supper Judy Peeples had promised her had been good, their guest room was super-comfortable, but it was too damn quiet in the country. She could sleep through the wail of sirens and the grumbling of buses and people shouting on the city streets, but here in rural Sonoma County, where the only sound was a rooster that kept crowing all night, she tossed and turned. Weren’t roosters supposed to crow only at dawn? What was wrong with the thing?
Around three in the morning she got up and sat on the window seat looking out at the oak grove between the house and the stables. She focused on the slight movement of the branches in the breeze, and after a while she felt sleepy. The bird had finally shut up. Maybe she could—
Motion under the oak trees.
Julia tensed up. An animal? What wild kinds did they have here? Deer, raccoons, opossums. For all she knew, coyotes and mountain lions. Well, she was safe inside...
But this shape didn’t move like an animal, it moved like a human. Larry or Judy Peeples, going to check on the horses? No, she’d have seen them or heard the back door close if they’d left the house.
The dark figure kept moving. In the direction of the stables?
She got up quickly, pulled on jeans, and tucked her sleep shirt into them. Went out into the hall. A night-light burned there, showing her the way to the stairs. She crept down them, guided by another light on the first floor, then felt her way back to the door off the kitchen.
The night air was warm and felt like silk against her skin. Something tickled her nostrils, and she had to stifle a sneeze. From her second-floor bedroom the night hadn’t seemed so dark because of a scattering of stars, but out here it was inky. She started toward the oak grove, and the damn rooster went off again. Nearly made her jump a foot.
She moved through the grove, keeping to the path, wishing she’d thought to put on shoes.
Estúpida. When will you learn?
The stones cut into her soles; a couple of times she had to hop on one foot. Finally the stables came into view. Dark, but the horses sounded restless.
So here she was—barefoot and unarmed. Unarmed because after all the violence she’d seen growing up on the streets of the Mission district, she hated guns and had opted out of getting firearms-qualified. And suddenly scared. What had she been thinking of, coming out here like this?
Movement by the stables—slow, stealthy. A bulky shape slipping off to the left. Unarmed or not, Julia took off running in pursuit.
The person—she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman— plunged into the vineyard that bordered the stables, heading toward the road. Feet pounded the dirt between the plants, branches snapped and rustled. Julia followed through the rows of gnarled old vines.
After a moment she stopped to get her bearings. The person she was following must’ve stopped too: there was no noise except for the distant cry of the rooster. Then another bird joined the chorus. No one moved among the vines.
Julia wiped beads of sweat from her forehead, looked around. Blackness, crouching shadows. Narrow paths stretching in all directions. Then, off to her left, a faint rustling. The intruder was on the move again.
She went toward the sound, took a path, and ran down it, kicking up clods of dirt. The intruder’s footsteps now sounded uneven, labored.
Julia was gaining, gaining—
Then in the darkness something slammed into her. An upright grape stake. Pain erupted on the bridge of her nose, and she fell to the ground, the gnarled vines scratching on her way-down. She lay there stunned for a few seconds. By the time she regained her senses and her feet, a car’s engine had started up in the distance.
Lost them, whoever he—or she—was.
Mierda.
She put her hand to her nose, felt blood welling. Injury to insult. This was a great beginning to her day.
* * * *
SHARON McCONE
P
ale pinkish light seeping around the drawn blinds. Must be very early in the morning. There’s been a shift in the weather, I can feel it. Today will be beautiful.
But not for me.
I lay there, depression gathering again. After the nightmare flashback to when I’d been shot, I’d had a peculiar dream in which Hy was looking into my eyes, but he couldn’t speak any more than I could. Then others appeared—Mick, Rae, Ted, Ma—and they couldn’t speak either. And finally I realized it wasn’t that they couldn’t—they wouldn’t. Keeping something from me.
I thought back to Hy’s behavior the day before. At first he’d been elated to connect with me. Then they’d done a CT scan and some other tests, and he was a little subdued but still upbeat. But later he’d been quiet, wrapped up in his own thoughts, and his smile was slightly off.
Definitely holding something back. Something those tests had revealed.
Dammit, if that was the case, I deserved to know. When he came in today, I’d ask him—
Right. I couldn’t ask him anything. All I could do was respond to questions.
All I could do was lie here. Silent. Motionless. Afraid.
* * * *
CRAIG MORLAND
T
he sky was glowing over the eastern hills when he awoke, cramped and cold, in his SUV at a pullout on Highway 1 near Big Sur. He’d driven almost to the Spindrift Lodge, where San Francisco’s president of the board of supervisors and the state representative had arranged their secret meeting, then parked about ten miles north. No reason to arrive in the middle of the night and roust the innkeeper from his or her bed; no need to attract attention to himself. Amanda Teller and Paul Janssen would probably check in in the afternoon, and by then he’d be tucked away, hopefully in an adjoining unit.
He ran his hands over his face and hair, then got out of the car and breathed in the crisp salt air. Fog misted the gray sea; its waves smacked onto the rocks some thousand feet below. But the pink light to the east indicated the day would clear. He turned that way and looked up: towering pine-covered slopes, through which a waterfall had cut a channel. Now, because of the dry summer conditions inland, its flow was barely a trickle. Come the rainy season, it would be a torrent.
All around there were reminders of the 2008 wildfire, sparked by lightning, that had burned more than 160,000 acres in the area: blackened sections, redwoods with charred branches, deadfalls. Many residents had lost their homes, even more had been evacuated, and the Pacific Coast Highway had been closed to traffic. People in the Big Sur area were strong and resilient, though; it had always been subject to floods, mudslides, and avalanches. Often in winter it was cut off from the surrounding territory, but no matter how bad the disaster the community clung together and regrouped quickly.
Craig loved Big Sur, but he and Adah had spent little time there. It was remote, down a very dicey part of the coast highway, and there really wasn’t much to do. Better to go to Carmel, with its interesting shops and good restaurants, for a getaway. Still, there was something magical about this long stretch of tall trees and rugged sea cliffs; if he were a believer, he’d say being here was akin to a religious experience.
But he wasn’t a believer. His exposure to religion had been limited to Christmas Eve and Easter services at the Methodist church in Alexandria, Virginia, where he’d been raised. He never contemplated the existence of a deity or eternal life; it simply wasn’t in his makeup. Adah was the same: she’d been reared in the religion of her parents—communism—but she hadn’t taken her radical parents’ beliefs too seriously. In fact, when they’d become disillusioned and begun labeling the
mselves as “wild-eyed liberals,” she’d been relieved.
He thought of Shar: what did she believe? She’d been raised Catholic, but he’d never known her to go to church. And the beliefs of her Indian ancestors hadn’t been passed on to her. He hoped if she had any faith at all she was leaning heavily on it now, during the toughest battle of her life.
Nature called. He went into a stand of pines clinging to the clifftop, out of eyeshot of early passing motorists. Returning, he looked at his watch. Six-thirty. He’d grab breakfast somewhere, even if it meant driving north, then play tourist till around ten, a respectable time to arrive at the Spindrift Lodge for a spontaneous weekend getaway.
* * * *
RAE KELLEHER
S
he was starting her search for Bill Delaney, the name she’d found in the phone book in Callie O’Leary’s hotel room, when the fog showed signs of breaking over the Golden Gate. Delaney’s cellular had been out of service consistently when she’d called it last night during breaks in a family evening with Ricky and the girls.
She was surprised how much she enjoyed the times when Molly and Lisa, their older sister Jamie, and even their troubled brother Brian were in residence. The eldest girl, Chris, was a student at Berkeley and dropped in often. So did Mick.
Family had never played a big part in Rae’s life—unless you counted the people at All Souls and, later, at the agency. Her parents had died in an accident when she was just a kid, and she’d been raised by her grandmother in Santa Maria—a cold, begrudging woman who had died of a heart attack while trying to murder a perfectly good rosebush.
Maybe that was why she could put up with the trials and tribulations of the Little Savages: they were so much more of a family than Nana, as the old lady had insisted Rae call her.
Of course, there was Jamie’s abortion last year: Rae had finessed that so Ricky hadn’t made it more stressful than was warranted upon his second daughter. And while Brian’s OCD, which had surfaced shortly before Charlene and Ricky divorced, was difficult to deal with, he was a sweet-natured boy and lately Rae had become close to him. Brian seemed better all the time; he did get manic once in a while, dusting and washing everything in sight, but Rae kind of appreciated that. In spite of their having a full-time housekeeper and a maid, chores at the Kelleher-Savage home were often left undone, what with the band members and recording company people and friends constantly traipsing through the house.
Back to the search for Bill Delaney. She’d called his cellular minutes ago. Same lack of response. No way of knowing whether it was Callie who’d written down the number or when. The phone could’ve been a throwaway or the account canceled long ago. With no information on Delaney, an ordinary name in this city with its high Irish population, locating him wouldn’t be easy.
Okay, if a hooker had his cell number, what could he be?
A fellow sex worker. A pimp. Someone in the porn industry. A lawyer...
Yes!
Google search of ABA members. Many Delaneys. She worked her way through them, both in the city and around the state. Narrowed it down by type of law practice. Came up with two possibles, one on Forty-eighth Avenue near Ocean Beach, the other on Shotwell Street, close to where the former All Souls Victorian stood on Bernal Heights. It was Saturday, but ambulance chasers who bailed hookers out of jail were always reachable.
As she passed through the living room on the way out, she called to Ricky, Molly, and Lisa, “When you go to the zoo, tell the baby giraffe hello for me.”
Ricky had an arm around either daughter. They were watching something on TV that sounded nonsensical. He grinned and said, “Good hunting, Red.”
* * * *
HY RIPINSKY
S
he has got to be told today, before the visitors start coming,” he said to Dr. Saxnay.
The older man sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’ll give her the weekend to take it in, then allow the first visitors on Monday.”
“I’d rather they start coming right away.”
“The diagnosis is going to be a shock.”
“She’s aware it’s bad. All that time when she could hear and no one knew it. Besides, with Sharon, even knowing the worst is better than uncertainty.”
Ralph Saxnay said, “Well, you can attest to that better than I.” He got up from the desk and led Hy toward McCone’s room. “You go in first.”
It was an attractive room—he hadn’t paid attention to that before—with pale blue walls and matching blue upholstery on the visitors’ armchair near the high hospital bed. None of this backache-making plastic hospital-room stuff that he could swear was designed to drive family and friends away. Today the room was fragrant, filled with the flowers and plants from well-wishers that had arrived steadily since word got out that she’d been admitted here. The blinds were raised, giving a view of the silver-leafed eucalyptus grove, and the nursing staff had apparently completed their morning routine.
Shar was awake, propped against the pillows. He went to her, kissed lips that were moist with Chap Stick. Looked into her eyes.
She was blinking frantically.
Yeah, she knows something’s wrong. And she wants me to tell her what.
Saxnay had come up behind him. He seemed to intuit what was going on.
“I’ve come to talk with you about your CT scan results,” he began, moving to where Sharon could see him.
McCone blinked once.
“Frankly, they are not as good as we’d hoped. Now that we know you’re conscious and aware, we can put a name to your condition: locked-in syndrome.”
The doctor proceeded to explain: the same litany of symptoms and causes Hy had been given: awareness, ability to reason, to feel emotion and touch. Saxnay didn’t downplay the seriousness of the prognosis, and throughout his speech, McCone’s gaze remained fixed and unblinking on the doctor’s.
“I don’t mean to say your condition is hopeless,” Saxnay concluded. “Patients have made partial recoveries. Much depends on you—your spirit, your determination. And, of course, you have friends and family to rally round you. That means a lot.” He paused. “Have I explained clearly enough for now?”
McCone blinked once.
“Then I’ll leave you two alone.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Hy said, and pulled the upholstered chair close to the bed.
A single tear slipped down his wife’s right cheek. Gently he wiped it away, then did the same with one that appeared on her left cheek. He touched her arm, wished he could take her hand, but it was under the covers, stuck with an IV.
“This isn’t as bad as he made it sound,” he said.
No blink or eye movement.
“We’ll get through it.”
No response.
“Doctors don’t know everything.”
Eye movement—questioning the statement, he thought. “Would you like me to go? Be alone for a while?”
Two blinks.
“Then I’ll stay and tell you what the folks at the agency are doing to ID whoever did this to you.”
* * * *
SHARON McCONE
A
vegetable. A fucking vegetable.
I remember when I was younger, laughing at people with disabilities, the horrible words we used: feeb, spaz, veg.
Well, join the club. For the rest of your life, somebody somewhere’ll be laughing at you.
Tears slipped down my cheeks again. God, I hadn’t cried this much in my life!
Actually, what I felt like when the doctor was talking to me was a lab rat in a cage. Saxnay seemed like a good surgeon, but in my case he didn’t have much to work with and he knew it.
A lab rat. No, that wasn’t right. Lab rats could move, make sounds, eat on their own. I was more like a mummy. I liked that term better than the veg word.
The effort the agency people were putting into my case touched me, though. At least I was a cherished mummy. Hy said they’d be coming by and starting to report to me tomorrow; relati
ves would arrive, too.
Ma ... At first I’d thought, Jesus Christ, not Ma on the first day! But Hy had said he’d arrange for the RI jet to pick her up in San Diego tomorrow afternoon; he’d take her to dinner and put her up at an expensive boutique hotel downtown that she liked. The former Katie McCone had become used to her creature comforts since she’d remarried and become Kay Hunt, but she still had a good heart and I loved her. It was just the drama I couldn’t take.
Locked In - [McCone 29] Page 7