“I’m afraid her prime objective is just me and my soul.”
“You can’t extort a soul from someone.”
“I didn’t think so either, but I underestimated her. It’s really simple, Carmen. What has been my core belief for most of my life?”
“The Church.”
“How have I honored it?”
“By being a priest, until lately.”
She still was oddly obtuse. He had never confessed a true sin that made him feel as slimy and ashamed as Kathleen O’Connor’s method of extracting, extorting his soul. He was glad they were both in the dark, locked in a ritual room from their common past.
“Yes?” Molina demanded.
“I suppose it’s a simple thing to most people. No big deal. But she knew how to find the one thing…What’s the hallmark of a Roman Catholic priest, laicized, as I have been, or not?”
“Religion. The collar, bingo night?…” Her joke found no response and he could hear her squirming on her side of the linen curtain. Funny, confessees usually squirmed, not confessors.
“Oh. That,” she said at last, absolving him of putting it into words.
A long silence.
“It is fiendish,” she whispered, almost thinking aloud. “Isolating. Abusive. Like something out of a melodrama, only with a role reversal. This woman is mad.”
“I asked Kinsella for help. He checked out my place for bugs. There was nothing. Yet. But she left a package there while I was out of town.”
“Right. It could have been a bomb.”
“I don’t think she wants to hurt me. At least not physically. Not anymore. She’s made her mark. It’s just others. I didn’t tell him what her price was. I was afraid he’d tell me to pay it.”
“You can’t.” Molina’s voice was crisp. Certain. “You know what I’d do if someone was putting Mariah in that position?”
“I’m not a child. I’m not helpless.”
“Yes, you are, which is why you wouldn’t let the Mystifying Max in on your ugly secret. We’re all helpless, Matt, if someone wants to destroy us badly enough. This is fiendish. You can hardly dare go to anyone for help, you can’t associate with friends…. Has she targeted Temple Barr?”
“I don’t know. She said something about watching her, but it was more to prove that she was watching me. I think she knows who my friends are, but she doesn’t know—”
“Who you really care about. That’s good. Keep it that way. She seems to be aiming at the women around you, like the jealous bitch she probably is.”
“Carmen!”
“Sorry. I forgot where we were. Where I am. You know how hard it is to stop a stalker. Legally.”
“I know. And she’s too smart to attack me physically again, although if I hurt her back, a man against a woman, who’d support me?”
“Fiendish.”
“I wonder,” he began, then stopped.
“What?”
“Oh, speaking of role reversal. I hunted Cliff Effinger down. Probably drew the wrong people’s attention to him and got him killed. I wonder if this isn’t a case of just deserts.”
“Forget it! Effinger brought on his own death by associating with a crooked crowd. Besides, this woman…what does she look like anyway?”
“Great. Beautiful. A late-twenties Elizabeth Taylor. And don’t say—”
“‘Just relax and enjoy it?’ No, I won’t. Heard that about too many rape victims to think any age or gender welcomes abuse. Looks have nothing to do with the crime, but they might have something to do with the criminal. With looks like that, she could get almost any man she wanted. Why fixate on the one man who doesn’t want her, won’t succumb. It’s a power thing, as usual. All about me, me, me, even as they fixate on you, you, you. Can you get me an image of her?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I had Janice do one.”
“Oh, Janice. You’ve been busy. Do I sense a wee hesitation there?”
“I was trying to see Janice lately.”
“Trying? Guess this woman fixed that.”
“And I have the note and envelope the ring came in. Kinsella suggested you might want prints.”
“‘Kinsella suggested.’ Who is he? Mr. Police Expert now? I’ll take it. And what ring is this?”
“What she sent me. She demanded I wear it.”
“I begin to get her MO. What kind of ring?”
“A gold image of a serpent eating its own tail.”
“Seen something like that.”
“It’s called the worm Ouroboros. Ancient infinity symbol going back to the Greeks.”
“So. You wearing it?”
“Just what she called to ask. I told her yes.”
“Must stick in your craw.”
“No. On my keychain.”
Matt had seldom heard laughter from the confessor’s side, but he did now.
“That’s right. Fight her with the letter of her own law. She can’t think of everything, Matt. She’s not supernatural. She’s just ahead of the average person because she’s spending all her time and energy on tormenting you. You know what you have to do?”
“Concentrate on finding and stopping her just as hard. I’m a stalker again.”
“Bingo. Okay, hand over the physical evidence. You’ve got it with you, I assume. Just leave it in your cubicle when you go. Mail me that sketch Janice did. Follow your regular work and travel routine. See only who you have to, and very briefly. Visit the library and look up books on surveillance, bugging, police and covert techniques. Don’t check them out, just read them there and make notes if you have to. Web-crawl the law enforcement sites.”
“Web-crawl! I have to buy a computer too?”
“The wail of an immaterial man being made flesh.”
“You’re saying I have to become her to overcome her.”
“I’m saying you’ve got a new full-time job. I’ll look into what I can, but it won’t turn up much. She sounds like she’s been doing this for a while. If she’s done this before, if she’s left a trail, if she insists on breaking in and getting caught, you could maybe have her put away for a few months.”
“What’s her ultimate goal? What does she really want?”
“There’s only one way to find out, and you don’t want that route.”
“What’s that.”
“Sleep with her and see what she does after.”
“I doubt anyone has ever gotten that advice from a confessor before.”
“It’s not advice. It’s reality, but, hey, you don’t have to give in to reality. It’s not a law.”
He was going to protest when he heard something else he’d never heard in a confessional before.
The yodel of a cell phone.
“Is there no sanctuary anywhere?” Molina growled to herself and her phone. “Yeah? Yeah. At the ranch? Shooting? Right away. This is one denouement I don’t want to miss.”
Matt heard her rise. “Come on. Let’s give your stalker something to chase. Some friends of yours are in mucho hot water out in the desert.”
Chapter 50
Action Traction
Temple came running into the clearing, using her high heels like the pitons she had claimed they were, driving her forward faster than even she believed possible, the security man and his ponderous boots tamping sand behind her.
Leonora had stayed behind in the front seat of the Storm, the door open, her delicate shoes planted on the desert sand, quivering.
But she had ordered—ordered—the man to go with Temple and do what she said.
The scene in front of them wasn’t chaotic, but it was like a stage with three spotlit acts, a three-ring circus: you didn’t know where to look first.
The three dusty wayfaring strangers trilling like a Salvation Army chorus in front of a loose panther was the most riveting vignette.
They were singing, she thought, the song about the lion sleeps tonight. The panther had obviously not been sleeping today.
The lon
e man on the right, on his knees holding a bleeding face in two blood-gloved hands, caught her attention next, and held it.
Behind her, Rafi’s footsteps veered away and toward his fallen fellow guard.
And then there was the third scene stage right: Max coated in sand dust, beside another fallen man.
Temple couldn’t tell whether he was helping the man, or holding him in custody, or both.
Max’s eyes flicked across Temple, their expression changing from something dark and unreadable to relief, then to wariness as they moved on to Rafi, helping up the stricken guard across the clearing.
Max looked around farther, then focused back on her.
Her eyes questioned him, so he nodded toward the guard’s bleeding face. “Louie’s work.”
“My Louie?”
“You know another?”
She stared at the man in Max’s grasp. He was bleeding from the mouth and his head was turned away. “Your work?”
“His own.” Max kicked the rifle toward Temple, then unlatched his belt and pulled it through its loops like a whip.
Temple thought for a moment he was going to take it to the man, but instead he crouched and bound the guy’s wrists behind his back.
“This might hold him, it might not. So if I were you I’d pick up the rifle and make like a guard.”
A rifle? It was to laugh. But Temple squatted beside it, picked up the stock, being careful not to get near the trigger, and stood, pointing the lethal barrel at the ground. That was where she intended to leave it.
“I take it,” Max said, “that you’ve called for reinforcements.”
“I left my cell phone with Leonora. Don’t worry, I used a spare battery for it, and gave her Molina’s personal number. Several times.”
Max, oddly indifferent to his prisoner, instead watched Rafi.
Temple could see calculations moving across his mobile face. Not all of them were pretty. Were anyone else other than she watching, he wouldn’t let even that much show.
“It’s up to you,” Max said abruptly. “You need to get that Rafi guy the hell out of here. Tell him…the cops are coming and this is a mess and he’s best out of it.”
Max turned to go.
“And this is—?” Temple gestured gingerly with the rifle.
Max nodded. “The killer. In more ways than one.” His voice was drenched in disgust. “God have mercy on his soul. I certainly wouldn’t.”
He turned and scaled the rocks, disappearing into their dun-colored contours and then over their crest like a lizard.
Temple looked from vignette to vignette. The panther, burnished red-black by the westering sun, had settled on its belly, licking a paw. Apparently the singing had quieted it.
Raf had ripped a sleeve off his shirt and dabbed at the other man’s face until the scratches beneath the blood were revealed, nasty but not serious.
The bound man on the ground stayed still, knees tented, head bowed into them, face obscured.
Rafi, his fellow worker tended to, suddenly saw Temple with the rifle.
“Hey! Little lady, you can’t do that! Just stand there and let me take that thing off your hands.”
Temple would have been happy to relinquish the weapon. It was darn heavy, for one thing, but she remembered Max’s instructions. He had given them brusquely, against his druthers, she could tell. She had a feeling he was being more merciful to Rafi than to the killer, for some reason of his own.
“Thanks.” Temple lowered her voice as Rafi neared. “The police are coming. In force. You’ve been so helpful, I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble. I think this guy killed Mr. Van Burkleo.”
Rafi’s features sharpened like a hunt dog’s. He swept the rifle out of her grip anyway.
“Killed him, huh? Who belted his wrists behind him? Not you?”
Temple blinked. “I don’t know—” She meant she hadn’t thought up a good story yet. “A masked man?”
“It’s not a joking matter. Murder.”
“Neither are the police, if there’s some reason you’d prefer not to get involved with them.”
It was odd, but Temple saw the same indecision and calculations crossing Rafi’s face that she had seen on Max’s only moments before.
Both men were torn, she suspected, between considerations not quite visible to anyone around them.
Rafi suddenly gave Temple a, well…raffish grin. “Yeah. Never good to let the minions of the law get too hard a grip on you.” He looked over at the threesome still making a human fence in front of the panther. “Hey! Peaceniks. Any one of you fur freaks know how to handle a rifle? We got a human hunter needs watching until the authorities come.”
They stopped singing, stunned. Finally the lone woman stepped forward.
“You mean cover the lowlife who tried to shoot the panther? I can do it in a New York minute.”
Raf eyed her lean, mean, sixtyish form. “I bet you can, Iron Grandma. Here.”
He held out the rifle. The woman marched forward and took it, aiming it at the sitting man.
Raf turned to Temple. “Thanks, Red. I do like to keep a low profile.”
He turned and headed back on a long, circling-around arc that would keep him safely on the fringes until out of sight.
Temple wondered if he and Max would cross paths in their joint but separate surreptitious getaways. No, too surreal.
In the distance, a scream of sirens wailed their intention to get up close and personal.
Temple braced herself for explanations of the inexplicable.
She looked around one last time at the animal fair.
The panther and the killer were there.
By the light of the sun,
The panther was the one,
Who was combing his auburn hair.
Chapter 51
Cops in Khaki
Matt’s penance had been one of the most strenuous ever assigned.
First he’d used Molina’s cell phone on the run to call the convent and call off dinner. Something urgent (it was) but not serious (not for him, anyway) had come up, he’d said truthfully, and he’d explain later.
Then he’d been a door-clutching passenger in some junker stick-shift heap that Molina manhandled to within a block from the police parking ramp. A cell phone had hugged her ear all the way, though Matt had thought that there were laws against driving while doing that sort of thing.
He had trailed her, running, into the ramp, where she had claimed a Crown Victoria and gunned it down the exit spiral. Now she was interacting intensely with the onboard computer screen and mobile police radio.
If the police drove like this, he didn’t want to know what they arrested ordinary citizens for driving like.
By the time they turned off the highway onto the darkening desert road, three police cars all boasting blinking headache bands up top and an unmarked car with a portable blinking cherry stylishly off-center on its roof joined the procession.
Matt’s head was beginning to throb from the jolting and the constant squawk of radio traffic and the piercing sound effects.
They converged on…oh, Lord! Temple’s car. The little aqua Storm, marooned in the desert.
A woman with a monstrous face sat on the passenger side, hysterical. When swarmed by Molina and company, she pointed ahead.
A uniformed officer stayed behind while the others forged forward on foot. Molina looked over her shoulder at him. “Come on!”
Matt did, feeling like a spaniel trotting behind bloodhounds.
Temple? his mind protested. Why would she be here? On what was obviously a major crime scene.
Then, again, why wouldn’t she be here?
Matt trotted into a clearing crowded with police personnel.
He could barely pick Temple out of the milling mess, much less Molina. For once he had forgotten Kitty O’Connor. No way could she be here, or could she have followed this circuitous trail. In an unexpected way, he was momentarily free.
It felt wonderful, despite the
chaos, and despite seeing a man in a khaki bike-police-type outfit being led away with a raw, scratched face.
More men in khaki were coaxing a handsome black panther into a cage.
Matt glanced around, anxious. Where was Temple?
There, being loomed over by Lieutenant Molina.
That was a fate he wouldn’t wish on anyone, particularly Temple, who was sensitive about her lack of height.
He hurried over, just in time to catch Molina’s “Who is this guy again?”
Temple was shaking her little red head like the little red hen.
“I just can’t believe it. The last person in the world you’d suspect. Maybe it’s a mistake. But why else would he be trying to kill the panther. You’re going to need to talk to animal trainers on this one.”
“I am an animal trainer,” Molina retorted in a harassed tone. “This is a zoo. Okay, we’ve got the guy in custody. Now you give us a reason why. Shooting at a panther on a canned-hunt ranch isn’t reason enough.”
Matt joined the pair and Molina frowned at him. “This is an official interview, Devine. Butt out.”
“I haven’t said a word.”
“Keep it that way.” She let him stay and focused again on Temple. “Just tell me the facts.”
Ma’am.
“His name is Kirby Granger. He runs the Animal Oasis for confiscated, lost, and abused animals of all kinds, domestic or exotic. That’s why I can’t believe—”
“The hunt breakers have already said they saw him aiming at the panther.”
“But that’s…heresy for someone like him. He wasn’t even working with performing animals anymore, like he used to just a couple of years ago when…”
“When?” Molina asked.
Temple glanced at Matt.
“No side consultations,” Molina said. “You distract the witness again, Devine, and you’re walking home.”
“Oh.” Temple was very interested. “Matt came with you?”
Molina’s blue eyes flashed with wicked humor. “I take the Fifth on that, Miss Barr. Now. Answer my questions. You can ask your own later. Why would an animal-rights advocate shoot at a virtually helpless animal?”
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