Staring at Magda’s determined face, she answered her own question.
“No, not embezzlement. She got me here knowing that I can’t stand the idea of a world that treats women like sidewalks, the idea that someone brutally mutilated a helpless, peace-loving sister and dumped her in the forest.”
Magda looked back to the woods, maybe for threats, maybe because Caitlin finally saw the truth.
Caitlin grabbed both of Promise’s shoulders. “Magda didn’t read my books because she wanted to know me but because she needed to know how best to use me. She betrayed Daya to save your life. Without proof of Daya’s corruption, she can’t go back to Desmond and the Daughters. If she can’t go back, she can’t ascend on the day of the Cataclysm, which is more important to her than you or I ever will be.”
Another look Magda’s direction told Caitlin she wasn’t just close to right; she’d hit a bull’s-eye with a cannon.
“She’s lied to you the whole time, Promise, making you believe that you can’t trust the police, but you can. I’ll make sure that you can. If not here, then I’ll take you with me.”
Promise looked back and forth between the two, a pendulum of doubt.
Magda broke the stalemate. “Caitlin’s right,” she said, letting go of the girl’s arm. “I’ll move faster on my own.”
She raised her hands to cradle Promise’s face. “You are protected by the Light, Promise Larsen. Wherever you go, the Spirit will follow.” She looked over at Caitlin. “And though she doesn’t believe in the Light, Caitlin will take care of you.”
The girl looked over at Caitlin with tears in her eyes.
Caitlin took her by the hand. “Your father will never touch you again. Now let’s go.”
“Caitlin,” Magda called. “You may not understand me or believe me, but I’m doing this for you.”
Caitlin turned back. “I believe”—she gave her mother one last look—“that you believe that’s true. Good-bye, Mama Maya.”
* * *
She led the girl down the dirt- and branch-covered asphalt as fast as humanly possible, no conversation, no playing back her last interactions with Magda, only the thought of getting Promise to safety. The single-lane road cutting halfway into the hillside looked neglected rather than damaged. After two switchbacks, they came to the washout, though landslide might have been the more accurate term. For forty feet, the pavement had given out and the land beneath had slid down the hillside. In addition, several massive trees and boulders from the hill above the road had fallen down into the chasm, giving the impression of an avalanche that had cascaded into a sinkhole. Dangerous, but even in the moonlight, it seemed hard to believe it was irreparable.
“Follow the logs,” Caitlin said, pointing to a fallen tree toward the right of the collapse.
Promise went first, stepping past a tree’s exposed broccoli-stalk clump of roots and onto its two-foot-diameter trunk. The girl’s weight did nothing to the tree, and the only sound of falling dirt came from the spots where her hand briefly touched the sloping hillside for balance.
“It’s safe,” she said, doubling her speed, then hopping onto a second log ten feet from the other end of the washout.
Caitlin stepped on after her. The log felt secure enough.
Down the hill to her left, a burst of gunfire echoed through the night.
Seconds later, someone returned two shots with a handgun.
Caitlin moved fast, one hand out to her right. Twenty feet in, she noticed that Promise stood on safe land, staring down the hillside.
“What is it? Can you see them?”
The girl shook her head. “It’s a light.”
Caitlin neared the intersection of the two logs, then steadied herself to climb onto the second. Again, the impasse showed no sign of shifting. She joined Promise at the edge.
Promise pointed down at a small circle of dim light. “Do you see it?”
Caitlin caught her breath. Twenty feet down, under a clump of rocks half covered by dirt, a two-inch circle glowed the same color as the moonlight.
“It’s a mirror,” Caitlin said.
“Why would a mirror be down there?”
“I think it’s a car. Can’t tell in this light.” Caitlin looked down the road. Like the previous section, several tree branches covered the pavement, but it seemed safe enough. “Whatever it is, it’s no help to us now. Let’s go.”
They’d gone another quarter of a mile when a second volley of gunfire broke through the otherwise silent night.
“Further this time,” Caitlin said, concentrating on a break in the pavement two hundred feet further downhill. “The road’s just down there.”
They sneaked their way to the edge of the trees at the driveway’s intersection with the main road.
The same sedan they’d passed half an hour earlier, blue with a primer-gray hood, had parked in the opening to the path they’d taken the truck up, lights on but engine not running.
“Is that Tammy?” Caitlin said, pointing to a single woman pacing in front of the car, eyes up the path.
Promise nodded. “She got fat.”
“She’s not fat.” Caitlin sighed. “She’s pregnant.”
“So we’re not going to be able to hit her over the head, are we?”
CHAPTER
49
LAKSHMI CHECKED HER binoculars again. For the last three hours, she’d seen waves of LAPD officers come and go from the Sperry property, first in uniforms, then in suits, then in coveralls. Originally she’d watched from the top of the hill past the entrance, but she’d quickly realized she needed to move if she was going to see anything useful. So she’d driven down past the gate, fighting the temptation to simply stop and tell the officers the parts of the story she knew.
This was about helping Caitlin, not telling the story. Plus, giving the officers anything would lead to questions about Beverly and also Tanner, and Beverly had insisted that neither should be involved.
“Why?” Lakshmi’d asked. “What’s so special about a man you haven’t seen for twenty years—who held me at gunpoint, I might add?”
After explaining that Tanner’s shotgun had never been loaded, Beverly answered, “You don’t know how hard it was to leave that life, to give up all that you held dear, the people you’d loved, to know that they were still under the control of Desmond and Daya.”
After they’d run away from God’s Hill together, Beverly had abandoned him and latched on to the first wealthy man she could to find some stability. Without her guidance, Tanner had returned to Linda’s house, only to be recruited by Desmond to become a caretaker of sorts, to get the mail as he called it, monthly financial documents in Linda Sperry’s name that he would forward to God’s Hill in exchange for free rent and a thousand dollars a month.
“I owe him, Lakshmi,” Beverly had added, watching Tanner pack his few things into a trash bag and load them into the trunk of her Mercedes. She’d convinced him to disappear and was prepared to supply financial help to make that happen. “Your showing up in my garden reminded me that I owe them all.”
Beverly hadn’t wanted lovable but dim-witted Tanner to be the fall guy when Linda Sperry’s body was found. Since the other stipulation of his deal with Desmond included that he always have something growing in Linda’s flower bed, both Beverly and Lakshmi agreed that her remains had to be six feet under a crop of weed. Ultimately, Lakshmi conceded that the man seemed worthy of a head start. An anonymous call to the local police from Tanner’s throwaway phone would lead the authorities toward Linda Sperry’s bones easily enough.
Hours later, following the winding road down into a canyon, Lakshmi’d found a vantage point that revealed most of the property’s backyard. Eventually, a team of technicians set up shop around Linda’s hillside garden, their movements marked by the dancing dots of flashlights but no big floodlights or tents.
By eleven at night, the flashlights and vehicles had disappeared. Either they’d found nothing, or they’d found enough to come back in
the light of morning.
Lakshmi drove east toward her apartment and, more importantly, toward cell phone service. A single message from Caitlin popped up. She played back the voice mail.
“Mother alive. Missing runaway found. Driving the pair back to compound. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow morning, call Sheriff Martin and tell him everything.”
Lakshmi sent a text at the first stoplight she hit, then pulled over and called Caitlin’s cell for her turn to go straight to voice mail.
She let it go until she got back to her apartment in Koreatown. First thing in the door, she powered up her laptop and checked her email, sent another text, and called again.
Still nothing. Caitlin had literally said not to worry until the morning. Was she obsessing? She’d done this before, not just with Caitlin, but in relationships, or more accurately, relationships that had failed because of a ridiculous number of phone calls and texts.
On the other hand, it’d been hours since their failed call, and Caitlin might need to know about both Beverly Chandler’s version of things and Linda Sperry’s body, especially if she was going back to the Dayan compound. Now there was no answer.
Lakshmi could handle being called pushy. She could even live with losing her mentor for overreacting. But if her fear of being called obsessive meant someone hurt Caitlin Bergman, she’d never forgive herself.
Where is that number?
Lakshmi looked up Caitlin’s text from her trip to the Dayan compound, found and called the number of the Coos County Sheriff’s Department, got the automated switchboard, and chose accordingly. A man answered after two rings.
“Sheriff Martin.”
“Really?” Lakshmi said. “It’s almost midnight.”
“I should say the same thing. Who is this?”
Lakshmi explained who she was and how Caitlin had mentioned going away with the Dayans.
“Just what do you think I can do about it, Miss—?”
“Anjale, Sheriff. Someone needs to tell Caitlin that Linda Sperry’s body has been found, well, is going to be found—”
“I have to stop you right there. The reason I’m answering the phone right now is that my whole department is out giving evacuation notices. Half of the damned county is on fire, and it’s moving fast. I don’t have time to be Caitlin Bergman’s answering service. If I were you, I’d make sure I was good and safe tonight.”
“I’m in Los Angeles,” Lakshmi answered.
“Then stop wasting my time.”
“Bugger,” she said, double-checking her phone. Sure enough, the man had hung up on her.
CHAPTER
50
“TAMMY,” PROMISE LARSEN said, running out onto the road. “Thank God you’re here.”
The pregnant woman turned fast, her third-trimester belly leading seconds ahead of her nickel-wide eyes, her right hand clutching a lit-up cell phone. “Promise? Is that you?”
Promise closed the distance in seconds, throwing her arms around Tammy. “You’ve got to get me out of here. Do you have a gun?”
“What? No,” Tammy stammered, the expectant mother not much older than the teenager. “Where’s Tom?”
Promise ignored the question, sticking to the plan. She took the phone from Tammy’s hand and stepped toward the car. “Does this thing work?”
Tammy reached out for her phone. “Not out here. Where’s Tom?”
Caitlin jogged out of the woods, looking back like she might be followed. “He rescued us from the Dayans. Let’s go.”
Tammy took two steps back, her belly one. “Who the hell are you?”
Promise pulled the woman back her direction. “That’s Caitlin. She saved me.”
“I thought Tom saved you.”
“He saved us both.” Caitlin reached for the driver’s side front door, found it unlocked. “But we’ve got to move. Tom wants us to get help.”
Promise grabbed Tammy’s hand and yanked her toward the back door.
Tammy’s eyes lingered on the hillside. “I heard shooting. Is he okay?”
“Okay?” Caitlin got in the driver’s seat, found keys still in the ignition, and started the car. “The father of your baby is a real American hero. Get in.”
Promise opened the door and ushered the pregnant woman into the back seat.
“Stupid Tom’s not the father,” Tammy said, her eyes following Promise around the outside of the car. “I might be a tramp, but I’m not an idiot.”
Promise turned away, powered down Tammy’s phone, and got in the passenger side. “Then what are you doing with him?”
“I needed a ride home from the club and he’s into preggos; then all of a sudden he gets a call from your daddy and we take this freaking detour. What the hell is going on?”
Caitlin looked at the pregnant nineteen-year-old stripper in the back seat and decided the woman could handle the truth.
“Dumbass Tom is Johnny Larsen’s stooge. Johnny Larsen’s into teens, and he doesn’t care what their last name is. We’ve got to get Promise out of here before he shows up.”
Tammy’s face glazed over with a look too strange to read. “You’re that reporter, aren’t you? The Jew they were talking about?”
Good lord, what a time for random antisemitism.
“Yes, Tammy. I am the legendary Jewess Caitlin Bergman.”
“You stood up to Johnny Larsen at some hotel,” she said, almost in reverence. “Got him thrown into jail? Tom said the Proud Sons were out looking for you. Of course, there’s really only three or four Proud Sons, but you’re the one they’re looking for?”
Caitlin didn’t love where this was going, but girl code was stronger than race, right? “That’s correct, Tammy, and now I’m going to take this car and get Promise somewhere safe. You got a problem with that?”
“Yeah.” Tammy reached for the door.
Would she run? Call Johnny Larsen?
Caitlin reached for her own handle, ready for anything.
The young woman pointed to the passenger seat. “I need to sit up front. The seat belt’s better for the baby.”
Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief. After Tammy and Promise switched seats, she pulled out toward Coquille.
Tammy reached for Caitlin’s arm. “Where are you going?”
“Sheriff’s office. We’ll be safe there.”
“Not tonight we won’t. There’s a big-ass wildfire moving north. Everything southwest of Coquille’s being evacuated, and half the roads are closed. That’s how come me and Tom were taking this way in the first place. Turn around. I’ll get you back to Coos Bay from the other side.”
Caitlin pulled a U-turn and gunned it. As fast as she took the turns, she still had thirty minutes of driving to debate where to go. The sheriff was out, for now. Her first solution: rent the girl a hotel room. Too risky. Caitlin wouldn’t know which hotels had employees that might know Promise, or worse, Johnny Larsen. Plus, the girl had run away before.
“Tammy,” she said, thinking out loud. “Any chance Promise can crash at your place?”
“Hell no.” Tammy checked her own attitude and came back apologetic. “Sorry, it’s just you don’t mess with the Larsens. Shit, I was gonna tell Tom you held me at gunpoint just so I don’t get my ass beat.” Her hands slid down around her belly. “Or worse.”
“Stupid Tom would hit a pregnant woman?”
Tammy raised her eyebrows toward the back seat. “If her daddy said to.”
Caitlin started to ask Promise about other options but caught herself. The less Tammy knew, the safer all around. When Caitlin’s phone chimed with voice mail alerts ten minutes later, she fought the same urge again and didn’t listen to her messages.
The sound didn’t go unnoticed, however.
“Hey, Promise,” Tammy said, turning to the back seat. “Gimme my phone.”
Caitlin watched Promise’s eyes in the rearview. The girl didn’t look worried.
“I don’t think it’s working.” Promise handed the cheap model over. “Still s
ays no signal.”
“No signal?”
Tammy stared at the screen, tapped a few options, even went so far as to give the thing a shake. “What the shit?”
“Maybe it’s the fire,” Caitlin said. “Sometimes cell towers are on top of hills.”
Tammy looked more concerned about her nonfunctional phone than she had about abandoning Stupid Tom. “But yours works. Who do you have, Sprint?”
“Is that who you have?”
Tammy nodded.
Caitlin smiled. “Then I’ve got AT&T. It’ll probably start working when you get home.”
Tammy spent another confusing minute squeezing her buttons before looking up. “Damn, turn here.”
The signs of civilization returned in the form of a church, a liquor store, and a work truck headed the opposite direction. Two turns later, they stopped at the edge of Tammy’s trailer park.
Tammy promised she’d tell Tom that she’d freaked out when the shooting started and took the car herself, but she also pressed Caitlin for cash in a way that suggested a streak of entrepreneurship that might supersede gender.
Caitlin doubted the twenty she gave her would outbid Johnny Larsen’s wallet or fists. She waited to say anything else until Tammy walked away, Promise had claimed the front seat, and they’d pulled back onto the road.
“What’d you do to her phone?”
Promise’s mouth curled into what was almost a smile. “Reset the carrier setting. She’ll probably figure it out. Maybe not.”
Caitlin didn’t want to count on maybe.
“Does your dad know anyone on the Coos Bay police force?”
“If he doesn’t, they all know Grandpa Anders.”
“And your grandfather—”
“Is rich.”
“Gotcha.” Caitlin followed a sign toward North Bend. A few cars passed heading the opposite way. She suddenly felt very aware that the car she was driving was neither hers nor inconspicuous.
“What about your mom?”
Promise’s response came out almost twice the volume. “My mom?”
Sins of the Mother Page 23
