Blood Relations

by Jonathan Moore

  After Ventura, the highway hugged the coast again and the traffic thinned to nothing. I had a full tank, so I gave the engine whatever it wanted, crossing my fingers that the California Highway Patrol was somewhere else tonight. I didn’t realize there were railroad tracks adjacent to the highway until I chased down, and then overtook, the Pacific Surfliner train making the run between Carpinteria and Santa Barbara.

  One hour and twenty minutes after the helicopter dusted off, the phone rang. I glanced at the screen, then answered.

  “Did he land?”

  “Five minutes ago,” Reese said. “Looks like the middle of nowhere. You ever heard of San Simeon?”

  “Hearst Castle.”

  “Close,” he said. “Do you have a pen?”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Pull over,” he said. “I’m going to give you some GPS coordinates.”

  I let the car’s momentum fall off. Then I drifted over to the shoulder and braked to a stop.

  “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  He read out the digitized longitude and latitude coordinates. I typed them into Elijah’s phone, thanked him, and hung up. Then I opened the map and pasted the coordinates into it. It pinned a location a hundred and thirty-seven miles to the northwest.

  I drove through the night. Around three thirty in the morning I got to the turnoff. I slowed to thirty miles an hour and flicked on my high beams.

  The land was treeless. Barren, except for waist-high grass. The ocean was somewhere nearby on the left, but I couldn’t see it. I could smell it, though. That, and the wet grass, and the late-spring flowers that grew along the roadside. There seemed to be hills on the right, but I couldn’t see how high they were or whether there was anything up there. It was a while until dawn.

  I had the phone on the dashboard so that I could see the map. When I drew even with the pinned spot, I saw an unmarked gravel driveway. The wooden gate was ten feet high, and made of planks so thick that a truck might not have been able to ram through it. But the stone wall stretching off to either side was only five or six feet high. I had tried to sneak into the Creekside on foot, with disastrous results. I imagined it’d be about the same this time. I parked the car so that it blocked the gate. Then I called Elijah. I might have woken him up, but I didn’t think he had hit the minibar too hard.

  “Yeah?”

  “You got something to write with?”

  “Sure. Hang on.”

  “Take this down,” I said.

  I gave him Larsen’s phone number, and then GPS coordinates.

  “What is this, Lee? Insurance?”

  “Pretty much. If you don’t hear from me by noon, leave a note on Frank Chang’s desk next time you’re going through Homicide Detail. Tell him the man he’s looking for is named Stefan Larsen.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  “We’ll see. Hopefully he doesn’t have a dozen guys on the other side of this wall.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Sure.”

  I got out of the car and locked it. Then I went to the wall, boosted myself to the top, and slipped off the back side, into Larsen’s property. The driveway led away from the road and then curved behind a hill. I walked as quietly as I could up the driveway, following its curve, and stopped when I saw the house. It was all cantilevered concrete and plate glass. Like something stacked together by a toddler. A little way up the hillside, there was a landing pad for the helicopter. It was sitting there, rotors tied down to concrete chocks. Next to the landing pad was a small storage building. Tools and parts for helicopter maintenance, I imagined. Perhaps a bunk for the pilot. I turned my attention back to the house. A flagstone turnabout circled around the front. There was a three-car garage, and a koi pond with lilies floating in the center. I remembered reading somewhere that koi could live a couple of hundred years. I supposed Larsen might want company, aside from his mother.

  As I approached the house, a pair of lights flicked on to illuminate the path to the driftwood front door. I walked up, not sure what I was going to do until I actually got there. What was clear, walking up, was that this was the man’s house. It might have been his office, too, but it was foremost a home. I could see through the glass wall into the living room. There were low black leather couches lit from above by lights recessed in the concrete ceiling. A painting hung above the wet bar: driftwood strewn along a fogbound beach. The fireplace was an open-air affair, like a rock garden in the middle of the vast room. A half-empty tumbler of whiskey sat on a low boulder near the gas-fed flames.

  Larsen must have turned in before finishing his drink.

  There was no doubt he had an alarm, and cameras. No matter what I did, he was going to be coming downstairs. Probably with a gun.

  I already had the Walther PPK in my hand, so I raised it and fired three shots at the floor-to-ceiling window next to the door. The glass went opaque around the bullet holes, and webs of cracks shot out all around. I picked up a rock the size of a volleyball and used it to smash the glass out of its frame.

  I stepped through, dropped the rock on the floor, and crossed the living room. I went behind the bar, because it was made out of polished concrete and would be the best place to stand in a gunfight.

  I didn’t hear any alarms. I didn’t hear the cavalry charging. I waited a minute. Then I picked up a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka from the rail, unscrewed the cap, and pitched it into the center of the fire pit. It shattered on the rocks, and there was an instantaneous whoosh as a blue fireball went as high as the ceiling. Next up was a bottle of Bacardi, which did the same thing. If Larsen’s burglar alarm wouldn’t bring him running, maybe his fire alarm would.

  But everything above the flames was made of poured concrete. There was nothing to catch fire. I waited a full minute and watched the flames die out. Finally, I heard footsteps coming down a set of stairs.

  Larsen came into the room. His curly blond hair was disheveled. He was wearing flannel pajamas, and had a sleep mask pushed up over his forehead. He also had a slender automatic pistol in his left hand. He surveyed the broken glass on the floor, then the misplaced rock, and finally the window. He had his back to me.

  “Drop it, Larsen,” I said.

  So he knew I meant it, I fired the Walther and put a bullet into the floor between his feet.

  Larsen was a quick study. He dropped the gun and put his hands up without having to be told twice.

  “Turn around.”

  He turned, seeing me face to face for the first time.

  “What’s my name?” I asked him.

  “I haven’t the faintest.”

  “You bugged my place and tossed my office. I already talked to your mother, up at the Creekside. So come on.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You also murdered Claire Gravesend, and you’ll answer for that tonight. How you answer for it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how quickly you give me Madeleine.”

  He did his best to look at me with pity.

  “Do you need money for drugs?” he asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I’d take an Excedrin if you’ve got one. But I’m doing fine for money. Maybe not by your standards.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I already told you,” I said. “Let’s cut the bullshit. Give me Madeleine and I’ll make it easy. I’ll call the cops. Otherwise, it’s just you and me.”

  Just in time to shift my stance and change my aim, I saw a flash of movement behind him. A man came hurtling through the broken window, and after that, everything happened at once. I saw a muzzle flash and heard the suppressed bang of a silenced handgun. A bottle exploded behind my head. I ducked, and fired back.

  I didn’t miss.

  My bullet caught the man in his chest. He didn’t scream or fly back like in the movies. It was as though a puppeteer had cut his strings. He ended up on his side, so that his back was to me. He had blond hair, like the men who’
d driven me from the Creekside. On the back of his neck, above his T-shirt, there were two circular scars. I had no doubt what the coroner’s assistants would find when they cut his clothes off and turned him over.

  Three seconds had passed. It would have been plenty of time for Larsen to grab his gun off the floor and dart outside. But he was frozen where he stood, hands still in the air. I turned the gun back to him.

  “That was your pilot?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s you, isn’t he?” I asked. “A younger you. A disposable vessel.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “How many of them did you make?”

  “You’d never understand. I could show you everything and it would be beyond you. Intellectually. Financially. You’re out of your depth.”

  “And somehow I keep one step ahead of you,” I said. “Starting with that guy you sent to Boston. I killed him with his own knife.”

  He just stared at me. Behind him, embedded in the concrete wall, was another ouroboros stone. A black snake curled into a circle so that it could consume itself.

  “You know, Meredith Miles said something interesting to me about all this,” I said. “How can you live forever if you’re not careful? If you don’t watch where you’re going, you could get hit by a bus, or a train—or a bullet.”

  Before he could process that, and maybe think to dive out of the way, I adjusted my aim and pulled the trigger. I’d hit the other man dead center in his sternum, but I got Larsen midway between his right knee and his hip. He went down hard, scrabbling in a circle as his other leg kicked. I stepped around the bar and used my foot to sweep the nearest gun away from him.

  Then I stood over him and put a bullet into his other leg. His cry was far louder than the gunshot. I wasn’t worried about it. We were a long way from the road, and the nearest house was probably Hearst Castle, eight or ten miles to the south.

  “You won’t live forever if you bleed to death, Larsen.” I sat down on one of the larger rocks by the fire pit. I rested my elbows on my knees but kept the gun trained on his face. “And I’ll make sure you bleed to death, if that’s what I have to do. I’ll just sit here and watch.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the wind. It came off the ocean and through the high grass, and it parted roughly around Larsen’s concrete house—the first real obstacle it had encountered in five thousand miles.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  It was just a whisper. His jaw was a vise. His teeth might have cracked under the pressure.

  “I already told you. I want Madeleine. Get her to me and I’ll give you my belt for a tourniquet. We’ll figure out something else for the other leg.”

  “I don’t know a Madeleine.”

  “And I don’t know anything about anatomy,” I said. “No clue how many arteries are there. Maybe I got lucky and a bullet hit your femur. You got any idea what that would do? Because I don’t.”

  “You can’t get her without me,” he said.

  “Then you’d better hurry up.”

  “Get me the tourniquets.”

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “If I die, so will she.”

  “Okay.”

  He looked past me, his eyes going unfocused for a second. I thought he might start to cry. If he had, it wouldn’t have surprised me. He wasn’t supposed to die on the floor with a two-bit private investigator looking down on him. He was supposed to outlive the redwoods in his Creekside grove. He was going to watch the pyramids turn to sand.

  “You’re really just going to sit there,” he whispered.

  “As long as it takes.”

  It took about ten minutes.

  He never wept openly, but there were tears running down his cheeks. I didn’t talk to him at all. He knew what I wanted, and he’d give it to me if he felt like it.

  “Please,” he said, once.

  That was the last thing, and then he closed his eyes. I stood up and nudged him in the hip with my foot. He didn’t move. I tapped on his knee with my toe. Nothing.

  I stooped and grabbed him by the ankles, then dragged him away from the mess of his blood. I wanted to be able to kneel and work without ruining my new pants.

  I took off my belt and looped it around his right leg. I pulled it as tight as I could get it, then roughly cinched it off. I looked around. The man I’d shot was wearing a pair of sweatpants. There was a cotton-rope drawstring around the waist. With a hitch knot, it could work just fine.

  Tending to his other leg took about two minutes. I checked his pulse, and put a finger under his nose to feel his breath. At the moment, he was alive. I had no idea how much trouble he might have been in. At least I could be certain he wasn’t going to come sprinting after me if I left the room. I picked up the dead man’s silenced pistol, which was a match to the one I was already carrying. Then I took Larsen’s slender automatic from the floor.

  By then I was pretty well armed. I had four guns, and would have taken a fifth or sixth if I’d come across one, but I didn’t. And I searched the whole house.

  I wasn’t looking for guns, though. I was looking for Madeleine. Barring that, I was looking for a paper trail that might lead me to her. I gave the kitchen and the dining rooms cursory tosses, and spent a little more time in the study. The problem with the study was that, unlike Jim, Larsen was not a paper collector. He did everything on his computers, and without the passwords, they were useless to me. Ultimately, this room was more interesting for what it lacked than for what it contained. There were no diplomas, or family photos, or decorative pen sets with the names of appreciative companies stenciled on a plaque. There was no desk drawer full of knickknacks—in fact, there were no drawers. Just a glass desk and a floor-to-ceiling window. There were four big screens and two keyboards. There was a sleek-looking camera, for running video conferences.

  The rest of the house was the same. Larsen may have wanted to live forever, but he had no desire to hold on to the past. He didn’t keep mementos. He must have traveled, but he brought home no souvenirs. I could have debated him about the value of prolonging a life that wasn’t worth remembering. But he was unconscious in a pool of blood, and I had a house to search.

  36

  Larsen’s bedroom was vast, clean, and cold. Polished concrete, tinted glass. The sheets on the surprisingly narrow bed were dark burgundy. It looked like the kind of prison cell a deposed fascist might have designed for himself. There were no clocks, and no mirrors, even in the bathroom.

  I left that room and went to the other end of an enormous walkway that overlooked the kitchen and den from thirty feet up. There was a door at the end. I pushed it open and stepped inside, my gun’s muzzle leading the way.

  I was face to face with Larsen’s mother.

  She was asleep, flat on her back with her arms beside her. She wore a white bra, matching underwear, and an entire display case of jewelry. Her hair was combed out onto the white sheet. There was a small white device clipped to her index finger, a blue light slowly blinking at the tip. Her head was tilted to the side.

  But none of that compared to the bed itself, if you could call it that. She lay inside a glass tube, capped at either end by heavy steel doors. The tube sat on top of a metal box about the size of a coffin. There was a small control panel on the outside of the box. Dials and lights, and what might have been an intercom speaker. I walked carefully up to the machine. A digital display showed barometric pressure. Another showed O2 saturation.

  I tapped the barrel of the gun on the glass. She didn’t stir. I thought about taking her out of the machine and asking her questions, but I wasn’t sure what would happen. If I’d read the display right, she was in there under several times the normal atmospheric pressure. If I popped the door open and yanked her out, she might die of the bends on the floor in front of me, her blood bubbling up like a can of warm soda. And if she didn’t, then I’d have an even less savory range of choices. I couldn’t picture myself shooting a
woman to make her talk.

  The oxygen chamber’s round hatch could be opened from the outside by turning a heavy chrome handle. I didn’t see a lock, but there was another way I could keep her from getting out. I chose a pistol, ejected its magazine, and jammed the gun between the door handle and the chamber’s steel rim. I backed out of the room, never taking my eyes off her. If Claire had lived a little bit longer, she might have looked like the woman in front of me. Which made my skin crawl in ways I couldn’t begin to explain.

  I searched the rest of the house, and then the garages. I found no trace of Madeleine, no hint as to what might have happened to her. The only places left to search were the helicopter, and the little maintenance shed built up against the hill next to the landing pad.

  I checked on Larsen once more—still alive, and still unconscious. I tightened his tourniquets. Then I went outside. I followed the path up the hill and slid open the helicopter’s side door. There was nothing inside it that I didn’t expect. Supple white leather upholstery. Flatscreen televisions and burled walnut trim. I found life jackets and fire extinguishers under the seats. There was a compartment with an inflatable life raft, and a canister with an orange plastic flare gun. I left the doors open and went to the maintenance shed.

  The man I’d shot must have come running when he’d realized his boss was in danger. In doing so, he’d left the steel door ajar. I peered inside, then stepped in and turned on a light. Half of the space was an apartment. There were two sets of bunk beds, a kitchenette, and a circular table. There was a bathroom with a stall shower and two sinks. I saw three toothbrushes on the counter, three sticks of deodorant in the cabinet behind the mirror.