The door hissed open, the attendant stepping out. “I can’t tell her mood, but she’s ready to see you.”
Am I ready, though? Coltrane asked himself.
After an uncertain glance toward Jennifer, he felt encouraged by the touch of her hand on his arm. He entered the room.
The rest home’s administrator had given Coltrane a sense of what to expect. Even so, he was caught by surprise, faltering as Jennifer closed the door.
“There’s been a mistake. We’re in the wrong room.”
“No mistake,” Jennifer said.
“But . . .” Coltrane stared at the apparently sleeping woman on the bed. “Tash’s mother was born in 1934. Depending on when her birthday is, she’d be sixty-three or sixty-four now. But this woman is—”
“What are you whispering about?” the woman on the bed complained. She sounded as if she had broken glass caught in her throat.
“Sorry,” Coltrane said. “We thought you were asleep. We were trying to decide whether to wake you.”
“You mean you were trying to decide if I was asleep so you could feel me up.”
“Uh . . .” Coltrane lost the power of speech. The woman in the bed, who should have looked in her early sixties, seemed in her nineties: stringy, thinning white hair, rheumy red eyes, shriveled skin, a prematurely shrinking and collapsing body. A scar disfigured each of her cheeks. But the most disturbing aspect about her was that, in spite of all the ravages her body had endured—“From alcohol and drugs,” the administrator had explained—she was recognizably Rebecca Chance’s daughter and Tash’s mother, as if this was how Rebecca Chance would have looked had she lived and led a hard life, or as if this was how Tash was destined to end.
“Go ahead. Feel me up. The attendants do it all the time.” The prematurely old woman pawed at her spiderweb hair, as if combing it.
Coltrane looked at Jennifer, shocked and sickened.
“Stephanie?” Jennifer approached the bed.
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Jennifer. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“No women allowed.”
“We brought you some photographs of your daughter.”
“No women allowed.”
“If I leave, do you promise to talk to my friend?”
“Did he come here to . . .”
The suggestion she made turned Coltrane’s stomach sour.
“I’m afraid the attendants wouldn’t like him to do that,” Jennifer said. “They might get angry.”
“Good.”
“They might start a fight.”
“Yes.”
“You enjoy that?”
“Make them fight. They deserve to be punished.”
“Why?”
“For wanting me.”
“Does your daughter like men to fight?”
“The little . . .” The next word was shocking.
“Why do you call her that?”
“Thought she was better than me. Took my men away from me.”
“When she was in college?”
“Hah.”
“In high school?”
“Hah. When I was asleep, she got a razor, snuck up, and did this to my cheeks. Couldn’t stand her momma to get all the attention. Thought she could destroy the competition. Didn’t work. I’m still as beautiful as ever.” She gave Coltrane the most demanding look he had ever received. “Aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Then . . .”
What she said next made Coltrane look away.
“What good are you? Get yourself a new boyfriend, missy. This one can’t cut it. Pictures? Did you say you brought pictures of my daughter?”
“Yes,” Coltrane managed to say.
“Burn them. Send her to hell. And get out of here. Quit wasting my time. I’ve got men lined up waiting to—”
“You’re right,” Coltrane said. “We’re wasting your time. I’m sorry we bothered you.”
23
O N THE PILLARED STEPS OF THE REST HOME , Coltrane sank and put his head between his knees. It took him several deep breaths before his swirling sensation passed and his stomach became still. From the bay, a salt-laden breeze drifted over him, cooling the sweat on his brow.
Finally he was able to peer up at Jennifer. “You’re the one who took all the psychology courses.”
“It’s called being a sexual predator,” Jennifer said. “In women, it’s very rare.”
“But how did . . .”
“Heredity or environment. Take your pick.”
“Or both. In other words, who knows,” Coltrane said.
“My abnormal-psych prof said that emotional illness can be inherited.” Jennifer eased down next to him, crossing her arms over the knees of her gray slacks. “We don’t know anything about Rebecca’s mother, but she and her daughter and her granddaughter are all beautiful women so obsessed with their beauty, so self-conscious and uncomfortable about it, that they feel self-worth only when men fight over them.”
“Or they were all abused as children and they’re so ambivalent about men, so bitter, that they want to punish men for finding them attractive,” Coltrane said.
“Which takes us from heredity to environment. We don’t know how that pathetic woman in there was raised. It could be Winston Case was a monster. But from what she said about the way Tash or Melinda or whatever you want to call her was raised, it’s clear that even as a child, Tash felt jealous about all the men her mother had around her. She needed attention, but since she couldn’t get it from her mother, she got it from her mother’s boyfriends. The trouble is, she may have gotten more attention than she bargained for. If Tash was molested, I’m not surprised that she feels so angry at men now that she’s grown up. On the one hand, she feels compelled to tempt them. On the other hand, she needs to punish them for wanting her. Having sex with her is unforgivable.”
Coltrane felt his cheeks turn warm.
“I have a terrible feeling you’re next on her list of get-evens,” Jennifer said. “But even if you hadn’t had sex with her, you know she was lying about the negatives and Duncan Reynolds. You see through her act, and that puts you in a position to make trouble for her. If she’s true to form, she’ll protect herself by finding a way to get rid of you.”
“Just as she got rid of Duncan and her former boyfriends. That’s what she’s doing with Walt. She’s setting him up to use him against me.”
“We have to warn him.”
24
M R . C OLTRANE , this is Eliot Blaine,” a concerned voice said from the speaker on Coltrane’s car phone. As soon as he and Jennifer had gotten back to the Los Angeles airport, he had called his home to find out if he had any messages on his answering machine. A series of hang-up calls had troubled him, reminding him of Ilkovic, making him wonder if it was Walt. Then Blaine said, “I’m the attorney for Randolph Packard’s estate. I don’t know if you’ve heard this from another source. If not, forgive me for being the messenger of bad news. I know you spent time with Randolph’s assistant, Duncan Reynolds. He confided to me that he was fond of his chats with you. I’m . . . There’s no easy way to say this. You’ll be as dismayed as I was to learn that Duncan’s body was found at his home last evening. Apparently, he’d been dead for several days. The police seem to think he committed . . . It’s more appropriate if we discuss this in person. Please call me at my office. About a week ago, Duncan came to me with a strange request. I respected his privacy and didn’t question him about it, but it now seems obvious that he was taking care of personal matters before . . . I have a package he wanted me to give you in the event of his death.”
25
A N AUDIOCASSETTE ?” Coltrane looked puzzled at the object he removed from the envelope.
Seated in a soft-looking brown leather chair behind a large glass desk, Blaine slid a signed letter in Coltrane’s direction, his manicured fingernails glistening. “At the time, I thought it was a strange request, but in my profession, strange reques
ts aren’t unusual. Duncan’s instructions to me were that you should listen to the tape in my presence. When you telephoned to say you were coming, I instructed my secretary to rearrange my schedule so that we could do so now.”
“Thank you.”
“I always made time for Duncan. He was more than a business associate.”
“Yes, I thought of him as a friend, too.”
Blaine was in his fifties, of medium height and weight, with cautious eyes. His hair was perfectly trimmed, his suit expensively tailored, his shoes so shiny that they looked as if they had just come out of their box.
He stood and put the cassette into a player on a stack of stereo components next to law books. As a soft hiss came from speakers at each end of the shelf, he returned to his chair, interlocked his fingers on his desk, and hardened his patrician jaw in concentration.
The hiss on the tape continued. Something made a hollow thumping noise, as if a microphone was being moved. The clinking of what sounded like ice cubes in a glass was followed by the gulp of a large mouthful of liquid being swallowed.
“This message is for Mitch Coltrane,” Duncan’s slurred voice said. “If you’re listening to this tape, you know I’m dead.” Another strained breath. “What an odd thing to hear myself say.”
More clinking of ice cubes. More liquid being swallowed. Duncan didn’t speak again for what seemed like fifteen seconds.
His breathing was forced. “I thought about running, but that would only make her decide I’m a greater liability than I suspect she already thinks I am. Besides, I can’t stand to be away from her. What she lets me do to her . . . A man of my years, with my ordinary looks, with my physical limitations. I never dreamed I could know such . . . To be indulged by . . . Maybe she doesn’t think I’m a liability. Maybe I don’t have a reason to be afraid. Maybe things will go on as they are, and she’ll continue to let me . . .”
“What on earth is he talking about?” Blaine asked.
Coltrane held up a hand for Blaine to be silent.
“If only you hadn’t taken those photographs of me,” Duncan said. “You weren’t supposed to get to the South Coast Plaza. Melinda told Carl that you’d be at the first stop, at the Beverly Center, photographing the crowd, trying to find the stalker. She had Carl worked up to the point where she knew he’d use force to discourage you from seeing her again. We were certain that you’d be sufficiently disabled not to go on to the other stores. When the photographs I took of her at the South Coast Plaza arrived at her house in the mail, our assumption was that you’d realize how close you had come to getting an image of the stalker. You’d have become more determined. That would have made Carl more determined. Eventually . . .”
A labored breath. “But damn you, you had to keep going, and now, if you’re still alive, you’ve figured out that she destroyed the photographs you took of me and that I’m the only one who had access to your house to steal the negatives. But that still leaves you and me. For the first time, someone knows my connection to her. How will she destroy that evidence?”
A bump led to unnerving silence, not even a hiss, as if the tape machine had been turned off. The tape’s hiss resumed.
“I thought I heard her,” Duncan said. “I keep expecting her footsteps to come down the hall. She’ll smile and put her arms around me and tell me who she’s going to be next and the next game she’s going to play. But when she makes me a drink, will she put something in it? Or will she get me more drunk than usual and take me out to the dock for a moonlight stroll and push me underwater—the way she did to that kid who managed to follow her from Sacramento to Arcata?”
“Would someone explain—” Blaine started to say.
“Quiet.”
Duncan chuckled bitterly. “She certainly had that kid jumping through hoops. But then she had us all jumping through hoops. Randolph knew what she was. Knew what her mother was. Knew what Rebecca Chance was. But he was powerless to resist, the same as I am. Even after he got so angry with Rebecca that he pushed her off that cliff in Mexico, he couldn’t get away from her spell. He had to spend years trying to find the daughter that he wasn’t even sure was his, and when he finally found her and his granddaughter, he fell into the same trap. In the name of love, he excused the terrible things they did. Melinda was happy to take his money, but she never came to see him, never made the slightest effort to delude him into thinking he was loved. Poor Randolph. Such a lonely man. He wanted the comfort of a family, but I was the only one who provided it. He finally had his will amended so that she would inherit the place he most hated, where he killed the woman he never stopped loving, even though he hated her for having manipulated him.”
Duncan’s voice was unsteady. “I have to stop. I don’t dare let her catch me with this tape recorder. I’d warn you right now in person, but what if I’m wrong? What if she hasn’t turned against me? I can’t give her up. And if I’m right to be suspicious about her? In that case, I’m dead. I’ve got nothing to lose. Make sure she doesn’t destroy you the way she did me. Get even for me, even though I deserve whatever she might do to me. I have absolutely no loyalty to her. God help me, though, how I need her.”
The tape hissed. Something made a scraping sound, possibly Duncan’s hand setting down the microphone. Then the tape became silent, although Coltrane could see it continuing to turn in the tape deck.
“Now?” Blaine asked. “Now would you explain what this is about?”
26
W HEN J ENNIFER FINISHED , B LAINE LEANED BACK FROM THE documents she had spread on the desk.
“We have to take this to the police,” Coltrane said.
Blaine shook his head. “I don’t know what good it would do. These materials don’t prove anything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A skillful defense attorney would have a case predicated on these flimsy connections dismissed before it went to trial. You’re filling in blanks without any support for your conclusions. In the eyes of the law, the theory you’re proposing is wildly circumstantial.”
“But what about all the names she used?”
“To protect her privacy. The defense would argue that she’s an unfortunate young woman who, through no fault of her own, has been plagued by men who want to dominate her. A chain of terrible consequences, for which she bears no responsibility, has forced her to keep changing her name and where she lives. You can’t prove she manipulates men into fighting over her. You can’t prove she arranges for the victors to have lethal accidents. The law deals with facts, not supposition.”
“What about Duncan’s tape?”
“The ravings of a man deranged enough to commit suicide. The defense would deny any sexual connection between her and Duncan. It would argue that Duncan was fantasizing. In my professional opinion, these materials are worthless.”
“But they might convince the police to look more closely into Duncan’s death. It’s clear now that he didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”
“Clear to you. But if Melinda Chance is as calculating as you believe she is, I think it’s highly unlikely that she left anything to incriminate herself.”
Coltrane started to say something, then gestured in frustration.
“But my personal opinion is another matter,” Blaine said. “I think this woman is dangerous. I think you should give this material to the police in the hopes that they might finally investigate her. Then I think you should run like hell.”
27
I BOUGHT A REVOLVER AND A SHOTGUN HERE BEFORE Christmas.”
The clerk at the gun shop nodded.
“But I couldn’t take the handgun because of the five-day waiting period.”
“You’ve come to pick it up?”
“Yes—and another shotgun.”
28
J ENNIFER ’ S FACE WAS STARK WITH DISMAY AS C OLTRANE SET THE shotgun in the backseat along with the briefcaselike container that the revolver came in. “It’s happening again.”
“I know how y
ou feel about guns,” he said. “But I don’t see another choice. It’s my fault I got into this mess. If I’d stayed away from her . . . You don’t deserve to be at risk. You’ve already helped a great deal. I’m going to take you home and—”
“Like hell you are.”
Coltrane blinked.
“She makes me furious,” Jennifer said.
The force of her words made Coltrane study her in surprise.
“I’m furious at the way she used you,” Jennifer said. “At the way she’s threatening you. At what she did to us. So don’t give me any bullshit about taking me home. I’m going to do my damnedest to help you stop her.” Jennifer thought about her tone and started to laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“Just like old times. Did you ever argue with . . .”
“Her?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
Their laughter subsided.
“Never,” he said.
Jennifer remained silent for a long, somber moment. “Maybe you and I just aren’t a match.”
“Because we disagree about some things? Hey, it’s easy not to disagree when someone’s playing a role and constantly lying the way Tash was.”
“Maybe that’s my problem. I always tell the truth,” Jennifer said.
“I wouldn’t call that a problem . . . If I know what’s good for me, you said. I’ll tell you what’s good for me. You are.”
Jennifer studied him. Studied her hands. “But how will you feel tomorrow?”
“The way I feel right now,” Coltrane said. He couldn’t help thinking, If we’re still alive tomorrow.
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