The Last Temptation

by Gerrie Ferris Finger

  “Then, yes. Talk to me in vino veritas.”

  He looked sober and serious. He said, “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you. I knew why you couldn’t commit to loving me, and I understood. I loved Linda when I married her; I knew you loved your fiancé. It takes time when you lose someone you love, by either divorce or death. Am I making sense?”

  “Um-hum.”

  “I thought in time—the sex was good, wasn’t it?”

  “Very good.”

  “First comes sex, then love, I think.”

  “Ummmm.”

  “I’m not doing good.”

  “You’re doing very good.”

  “I didn’t do good when you were nearly killed. I’m so very, very sorry.”

  “Neither of us did good with that,” I said, touching his cheek. “I thought everybody considered me a crazy woman, imagining things.”

  He wound his arms around me. “I knew you weren’t. But you had to recover on your own. It’s your strength that makes you who you are. My mealy-mouthing wouldn’t have convinced you that you were whole again. You had to force the truth to the surface to be sure of yourself.”

  I was treading on fluffy clouds, my chest filled with his words. “You mean you were mean to me on purpose.”

  “Something like that.”

  The clock said three before we were too exhausted to heap love on top of love.

  * * * * *

  My eyes popped open. Lake sat beside me, a tray of goodies at the bottom of the bed. Coffee. Juice. Sweet rolls. “For sleeping beauty,” Lake said, handing me coffee. He kissed my toes. “Sorry, I can’t be more original.”

  “You’ve never kissed my toes before. I call that original.”

  “Your cell phone has been a symphony all morning,” he said.

  “Oh, God. Who?”

  “I haven’t taken to answering your phones or opening your mail. Give me a week.”

  Lake handed me the cell and went to shower.

  Fifteen voice mails. Portia, Portia, Webdog, Web, Portia, Arlo, Corlee, Web, Portia. “Criminy.”

  Something told me I didn’t want to talk to Portia, or Gila Joe, or Arlo. I punched up Webdog’s last message: “If you ever get this, call. It’s important.”

  When I called, Webdog asked, “Where you been?”

  “Sleeping,” I said. “I have to sometimes. My inner self makes me.”

  “Judge Devon’s crazy to get hold of you,” he said.

  “She’s left messages. I’ll call her.”

  “I don’t know if you want to,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “She’s going to tell you to come home, now.”

  “Why?”

  “They took the DNA of Whitney’s sister and compared it with the guy who died in the fire in New Orleans. They exhumed him. No match.”

  “So now we know for certain that Harry Whitey’s alive and doing us all mischief.”

  “Yes, well . . . Judge Devon said the FBI is taking over the case. It’s theirs and theirs only.”

  “Harry robbed a bank truck. So, okay, but we’re in this to get Kinley home.”

  “Judge Devon says you have no client now that Whitney’s dead, and the state is terminating you—for your own good.”

  “Shit.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Web, you haven’t heard from me, okay?”

  “One hundred percent okay. But—please, stay safe.”

  Lake was coming out of the bathroom, rubbing himself with a towel, looking vulnerable, and yet staring at my nakedness with a hunger that took my breath away. I said to Web, “I will. I have to.”

  Lake sat beside me and draped the towel over my nakedness. “Do we have to go rushing off somewhere?” he asked.

  “That was Webdog. Whitney’s sister’s DNA didn’t match the New Orleans body. It’s not Harry.”

  “Who didn’t know that. But it’s good to confirm. So where’s Harry?”

  “Where’s Dartagnan?”

  Lake shrugged and took away the towel.

  Afterward, I told him what I thought we needed to make happen.

  “Whether we like him or not, we need to get Corlee in on this, too,” he said.

  Since the FBI was taking full control, Gila Joe would see to it that we were on the next plane to Atlanta. I said, “Let’s give it one more go ourselves.”

  “I trust your instincts.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So let’s go have us a picnic.”

  58

  On our ride into the desert that afternoon, we talked about what we knew and what we’d set up. But would our killer show, like the black-bottomed high-tops riding in from the west behind us?

  “You sure we weren’t followed?” I asked Lake.

  “This killer’s good.”

  “He knows the desert. He knows where we’re going.”

  “Yeah and he knows what we’re up to.”

  “Yeah,” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “He knows it’s him or us.”

  We rode, keeping to our own thoughts, until Lake said, “What produces a man like Bradley Dewart Whitney, and his repulsive siblings? Nature or nurture?”

  We’d come to Lost Coyote Canyon. The four-wheeler jostled on the tuff bed. I said, “Nature gave little Dewey his brains. But nurture gave him his desires. His family was incestuous, which is all right if you live in the hills all your life and follow the ways that everyone accepts, or at least doesn’t complain about.”

  “So when his folks got themselves killed, and he had to move to Little Rock, he began to see his leanings weren’t in line with society’s way of thinking.”

  “Or the law’s. So since Dewey was a genius, he knew he had to hide what he was. Compartmentalize. He set goals, probably wrote them down.”

  “Which were?”

  “Of utmost importance was to acquire money.”

  “Armored cars have lots of money. Lots of risk, but lots of reward.”

  “Also he needed a place to hide once he’d gotten the millions.”

  “Nobody’s looking for bank robbers in college classrooms.”

  “That was the practical part of Whitey.”

  The four-wheeler jostled across the desert floor, climbing up the canyon. The walls hid the western sun. I rolled down my window. The high-tops had assembled and marched across the sky, gathering darkness. We passed the gold mine. I mentally made the sign of the cross. Three men, on Harry’s payroll—one named Rowall—had lost their lives there.

  “Do you believe Whitney never killed anyone himself?”

  “Whitney didn’t have to kill when he had Harry around. Or his sister.”

  “I don’t think I admire Whitney as much as you do.”

  I draped my hand across the back of the driver’s seat, touching Lake’s neck. “It’s not admiration, my darling. He was a curious madman, one who talked of redemption.”

  “All the while exacting retribution.”

  “He died because of it,” I said, rubbing the muscles of his back.

  We were passing Ripple Rock. I felt the phantom tug of heavy, rushing water, the bumping and swooshing on the way down . . .

  “Are you sorry you killed him?” he asked quietly.

  It was the first time Lake had asked me that, but I’d known he would, in time. Now was the right time. I considered the man I loved, his strong arms outstretched on the wheel of a jouncing four-wheeler, listening for an honest answer.

  “I’ll never regret firing that bullet into his brain. It was for all the innocents who are the prey of madmen.”

  Lake reached for my hand and kissed it.

  The tuff road ended at the top of the canyon. Desert dirt grabbed the tires, and we passed the rock cairn and the junipers that led into the palm oasis and to Heart’s Friend Rock. As it had been with Tess those many days ago, it felt good to get out and stretch the muscles after the grinding drive through the canyon.

  We leaned against the rocks surrounding the hot spring. I said, “I re
member that day here with Tess. We drank dreadful creosote tea from small clay cups that were twenty subtle shades of blue and green. Stick birds were etched into them. Tess said they were religious symbols, and that she couldn’t explain them. Bad luck, she said. I thought then that I didn’t want any bad luck. We ate guacamole by the hot—”

  Something moved in the thornscrub. A small animal, but it made me cry out.

  Lake said quickly, “What?”

  We hurried toward the brush, and something caught my notice. I knelt and picked up a piece of leather, a piece I recognized. Grinning, I rose and handed Lake the leather scrap from Tess’s jacket and explained how I’d torn the piece the night of the moon ritual. “It came out of my pocket here.” I looked over the landscape. “This is where I crawled that night after the Jeep burned. I looked out through this very scrub, and saw Tess and the three men. That night, I didn’t recognize it as the palm oasis where Tess and I ate. God only knows how long I wandered in that storm.”

  I pushed through the brush and trudged through the sandy dirt.

  Lake spoke behind me. “Too much time, and rain, for there to be evidence of the burning Jeep.”

  But something was protruding from the sand, and I hurried to it. Lake came up behind me and pulled the piece of chrome and glass from the sand. “A tail light fragment.” He turned it over. “Jeep.” He looked at me, his eyes earnest. “I told you, I’ve always been a believer.”

  I let out a loud, “Yes.”

  Lake said, “Exoneration looks good on you.”

  I took his hand, and we walked through the oasis to the geode artwork. I placed my foot where it had sunk into the desert dirt and put my weight on it. No sinking this time.

  Lake’s stared at me. “What are you doing?”

  I told him, “A subset of the Mission Hills Indians used to dig graves and line them with brush. They’d lay the deceased in the grave. For three days they’d burn the body. Then for three days they’d let it cool. They celebrated the spirit of the dead by singing and dancing.”

  “Is this a grave?”

  “I think it’s Eileen’s. Heart’s Friend Rock.”

  “They burnt her body for three days?”

  “That’s the old ritual. I believe they buried her in her sable coat. A symbolic gesture.”

  Lake knelt and put his hand on a stone, then drew it back. “I can’t dig here now.”

  “It’s consecrated, even if not by our standards.”

  He rose and brushed his hands together. Then, with a tenderness that comes from deep devotion, he held me until the winds swept over us. I made the sign of the cross, and we left Heart’s Friend Rock.

  We got to the four-wheeler, boarded, and headed for the Adobe Flats.

  I dialed Portia’s cell.

  She came on the line like a spitfire, and I crossed my fingers that she wasn’t reminded of the Bentley.

  “Portia,” I said, “I know who has Kinley. When we get the killer, we’ll bring her home.”

  “If you had returned my phone calls, you’d have learned something very significant,” she said. Goodbye Bentley.

  “What?”

  “Kinley is already home.”

  “What?”

  Lake jumped at the sound of my voice. He braked as if he might need to render aid.

  Portia said, “Tess flew from LA to Birmingham and drove to Atlanta with her.”

  I laughed, and threw the cell to Lake. “I’m hearing things. Ask her?”

  He listened, his smile growing as big as the canyon.

  He gave the phone back to me.

  “Where is she now?” I asked Portia.

  “With me. So is Tess. Quite a young woman.” I could practically see Portia’s dark eyes gleaming with delight. “But Tess can’t have Kinley.”

  “I know. So does Tess.”

  “She’s trying to make her case.”

  “Give Adele Carter another chance,” I said.

  I listened to dead air for several seconds. “You’re serious,” Portia said.

  “As a crutch. Porsh, she’s blood kin, and deep down, she cares.”

  “Get on back here and convince me.”

  59

  Helicopters fly over the desert constantly. There’s the Marine Corps base at Twenty-Nine Palms and a lot of tourist services. But the lone helicopter chopping the air this evening was unusual because a storm was fast approaching. “He’s nuts,” I said.

  “Looks like he’s accepted our invitation,” Lake said.

  We sat on the mud-brick stoop and watched the helicopter disappear to the north. The black clouds swirled and descended, creating angry skies like in one of Goya’s landscapes where villagers go to a funeral to laugh at Death.

  I said, “Heidi saw a white car that afternoon. She thought it was Eileen’s, but it wasn’t. Eileen’s car was in the garage, and the white car Heidi saw was that of Eileen’s killer.”

  “He took a chance. It could have been recognized.”

  “A Camry isn’t a Lexus, but at a distance, and to someone who doesn’t know cars, they can be mistaken. Besides, he’s everywhere in The Springs.”

  Suddenly a spray of water hit my face. We fled into the dark flats. Inside the dark hall, I felt a presence and said, “The ghosts will always be here.”

  “This is a perfect place for them.”

  “Where else could they go?”

  We went into a first-floor room that had a window facing west and a small chest leaning beneath it. Shards of lightning lit beer cans, bottles, food litter. We checked out three other small rooms on the first floor, then went back into the first room.

  Lake said, “This is as good a place as any.”

  I stood next to Lake, holding his hand, hearing thunder gods hurl lightning bolts through the shadows.

  The time came when Lake said, “Did you hear that?”

  I strained my ears but couldn’t tell if it was rotors or wind whipping the air. Lake reached for the gun in his waist holster. I bent down for the Glock in its ankle holster. I wrapped both hands around the automatic and held it shoulder-height. Lake liked to point both hands toward the ground. We walked to the door. He stood on one side of the frame. I, on the other.

  The fast-moving storm was abating, but thunder still moaned and caroused overhead. Our invitee wouldn’t need excessive stealth if he had an attack in mind. Maybe he just wanted to talk. The man could talk.

  I heard silence. The silence of acute awareness, of anticipation that something vital was about to happen, and knowing that Lake and I would have to do a perfectly timed pas de deux if the killer had more in mind than a verbal dance. The intensity was as palpable as my very life.

  All of a sudden, a man stumbled through the doorway.

  What the . . . ?

  He crashed to the ground, face down, soaking wet, his hands tied behind his back, his feet in walking shackles. He cried out. “Run. Get out.”

  Dartagnan. I thought him dead already.

  His right foot rubbed the dirt floor, trying for a foothold to raise himself, but his shoe couldn’t get a grip. He cursed hoarsely and rocked back on his stomach, trying to flip his body over. This happened in seconds. Lake and I looked at each other. Neither of us had expected this. Lake gave a quick, negative shake of his head, meaning, don’t move. I felt the same presence he did. It stood just outside the door, out of sight, waiting for someone—me, us—to run to Dartagnan’s aid.

  A voice said, “Throw down the guns, detective, or I will shoot him now.”

  “Gun,” Lake called out. “One gun.”

  I jerked my shirt out of my jeans and pushed the barrel of my gun into the hollow of my left hip bone, gun butt above the waistband.

  The unseen presence snapped on a bright lantern and said, “Throw your gun between Dartagnan’s legs.” The lantern spot-lit the expected zone.

  Lake bent his knees and flipped his Beretta onto Dartagnan’s butt, close to his tied hands.

  “Hands in the air, detective. Kick t
he gun between his legs. Now.”

  Lake brushed the gun from Dartagnan’s backside; it slid between his legs.

  “I want to see four hands high in the air.”

  I raised mine, maneuvering to Lake’s right.

  “Walk toward Dartagnan’s head.”

  We took small, cautious steps as an oblique bolt of lightning lit the room. Dartagnan lay between the killer and us. Dartagnan kicked the floor and cried out, “No, no, don’t let him—”

  “Shut up.” A leg flew out and smashed into Dartagnan’s foot.

  I flexed my hips and torso, feeling the gun rise a fraction higher.

  “Now turn and face the light. No stunts. I am quick.”

  “Like with Bellan and Larry?” Lake asked.

  “You get the picture,” the voice said.

  The lantern blinding my eyes kept me from seeing the man’s face, but we knew who our adversary was. He may have come to talk, but I made out the large automatic he waved from Lake to me. “I have come as you have summoned—to give you a pistol.”

  “Philippe,” I said. “You’ve lost your accent. You sound more like Harry.”

  “You are a funny one. You forgot to pick up the gun I left you at Joshua Tree.”

  Lightning flickered in the room. The storm was leaving a little memory of itself. I said, “We were just leaving for Joshua Tree. We weren’t expecting you this early.”

  He held the lantern lower and looked into my eyes, which were no longer blinded. He said, “You lured me. But I turned les tables.”

  Lake spoke up. “What the hell do you think you’re going to do to us?”

  “What do you think?” he said, thrusting the big handgun at Lake.

  “You won’t get away with it. Your cover’s blown, and the feds are on your ass.”

  “I have no fear. I will merely change into another character.”

  I asked, “Why didn’t you kill Dartagnan, bury him, and let people think the PIs’ killer left town?”

  “I was going to, but then, the mademoiselle, she changes my plan.” Harry had played the part of a phony French chef for so long, he couldn’t drop the act. Either that, or he liked to hide behind it.

  “How?” I asked.

  “New Orleans.”

  “You mean I accidentally struck a chord?” I laughed hard enough to make the gun creep upward, but I didn’t want the thing going off.