I studied her face, pallid in the moonlight, wondering if she was enough in touch with her surroundings to do what I had in mind for her. Finally I decided that her trancelike state might work to my advantage.
I said, “Amy, I need your help now.”
She nodded.
“He’s out here somewhere. He may get away if I don’t find him. I need you to go on to that house alone.”
She looked over at the lights as if measuring the distance to them.
“I’ll be right here,” I added. “With the gun. He won’t come near you anyway, not with other people so close.”
After a moment she nodded again.
“When you get to the house, tell the people to call nine-eleven.”
“Nine-eleven.”
“Tell them there’s been a homicide, we need the sheriff’s department.”
“Homicide. The sheriff.”
“Then just stay there.”
She looked toward the lights again. Took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“Can you do that?” I asked.
“I can do it.” She hesitated a few seconds longer, then took off at a run.
I watched her go, gun raised, should Soriano suddenly appear. She ran awkwardly, arms flailing, but she didn’t falter. When she reached the house, she pounded on the door. After it opened and she disappeared inside, I turned away.
Then I went after him.
I crouched by the right front tire of the Jaguar and stabbed at it with the Swiss Army knife’s largest blade. I’d never slashed a tire before; it was more difficult than I’d imagined. But after working at it for half a minute, I made a slit. The air hissed out, and the car began to settle onto the wheel rim.
Soriano wasn’t going anywhere now.
I stood, jamming the knife back into my pocket. He was still somewhere close by, of that I was certain.
But where?
Not beyond the turnaround; I’d have spotted him if he was. Not on the property belonging to the salt company; it was fenced in barbed wire, possibly patrolled. He wouldn’t have gone down the road, either; the houses were too numerous, packed too close together.
So he had to be somewhere behind the Barbour cottage.
I gripped the gun and started off, intent on searching every inch of ground between here and the river.
I stood at the edge of the grove of pepper trees behind the cottage. The rush of the river’s water was louder here. I strained to hear other sounds through the sighing of the trees; there were only typical night noises.
Between the grove and the levee the land was barren and moon washed. If Soriano was hiding somewhere out there, he would spot me easily when I crossed it. But if he broke cover and tried to run, I’d have the advantage.
I ran across the ground and up to the top of the levee.
Moonlight sheened the water. The river moved swiftly, swollen by the recent rain. The falling-down dock shivered with the strong current. The wind blew steadily, tossing the branches of the willow tree that sheltered the derelict fishing boat. I stared at it. Saw a movement in the shadows. A different sort of movement than that of the tree’s drooping limbs.
Soriano had found Tracy’s gravesite.
I stopped close to the willow, stood with my feet apart, gun braced. It had taken minutes to make my approach, shielded by the hump of the levee. Another minute to slip down here. By now he knew I’d found him.
“Soriano!” I shouted. “Come on out.”
Silence. Then a faint, unidentifiable sound from the boat.
“Soriano!”
He was waiting for me to try to take him.
I stayed where I was, listening for sirens. Nothing. More than half an hour now since I’d left Amy. How much longer would it take?
A scraping sound from the boat. A thump.
It was probably a ploy to get me onto the boat, into close quarters with him. Perhaps he underestimated me, thought I didn’t know how to use the gun properly. That was a common fault of men like Soriano-to underestimate others, particularly women.
Slowly I started toward the boat.
A few of the planks had been tossed on the ground by the lab crew that removed Tracy’s remains, but otherwise it looked the same as when I’d first seen it. I climbed carefully onto its side.
“Soriano, save us both a lot of trouble and give up.”
No reply. No more telltale sounds.
I moved forward toward the collapsed pilot house, testing my footing with each step. The hatch cover was back over the opening in the rotten planking. I was certain the lab crew would not have replaced it.
I went closer. Studied it. Extended my right foot and nudged it.
It didn’t budge.
I braced myself against one of the pilot house’s support beams, worked the toe of my boot under the cover’s edge. Kicked upward.
The cover fell back with a crash. The musty odor of the grave rose to my nostrils.
Extending the gun at the opening, I leaned forward. Looked down at Rob Soriano.
He looked back at me, unspeaking. Something seemed wrong with one of his eyes; then I realized the lens of his glasses was cracked. Blood trickled from the gash in his cheek. His mouth twisted violently, and he recoiled.
I’d expected Soriano to crack eventually, and he had. Now he was terrified.
As I stared down at him, I felt nothing but the rage-cold and steady again.
I could shoot him point-blank, I thought. The way he shot Emmons. Should shoot him. No sense in letting this evil man live. No sense in going through the motions of arrest, trial, imprisonment, even execution, because it won’t make any difference.
He moved a fraction of an inch. My hands tensed on the .32. I’d claim self-defense.
I could hear the sirens now, distant but clear in the still night. Dogs began to howl in imitation of them.
Soriano moved again, farther back into the boat’s hull. Moonlight filtered through the wind-whipped branches of the willow, rays glinting coldly off the cracked lens of his glasses.
Self-defense, I thought again.
The sirens came closer.
Give me a reason to pull this trigger. Any reason.
Sirens down near the railroad bridge now. Screaming along the row of cottages. I moved closer to the opening in the planking, gun extended.
Sirens cutting off, back at the Barbour cottage. Men’s voices shouting.
Soriano moved frantically, slipped on the exposed rib-work.
I raised the gun and fired a single shot.
Into the air, so they’d know where to find us.
29
The visiting area at San Quentin seemed more cheerful on a Saturday. Perhaps it was the fact that so many children were there; dressed in go-see-Daddy finery, with freshly scrubbed faces, they imparted an air of normalcy and hope. Or perhaps it had something to do with knowing this would be my last trip here-for a long time, if not forever. It certainly had a lot to do with the joy on Leora Whitsun’s face as we waited to see Bobby.
I hadn’t wanted to come; I didn’t want to hear thanks, and I didn’t want to answer questions. But Leora had insisted, and there I was.
This time there wasn’t much of a wait, and the desk officer actually smiled at us when we identified ourselves. The guard who led us to the small, spare visiting room said to me, “Nice going.” The case had been featured prominently in both local and national news; anonymity would be in short supply for a while.
After the guard locked us in, Leora sighed and looked around. “How many more times do I have to sit here and stare at these four walls?”
“Not many. Maybe none. There are legal formalities, but Jack’s set them in motion. There’s been too much media attention for anyone to drag his feet.”
“It’ll be good having my boy home again.” She sat, smoothed her denim skirt. “Home won’t be the projects, either.”
“No?”
“Nope. I found me an apartment. Near the clinic. Not much of an ap
artment, but it’ll be home.” She nodded emphatically, gold earrings bouncing to reinforce her words.
The door on the other side of the grille opened. Bobby entered. His stiff, defensive posture was gone, replaced by a long, loose stride. He was free-almost.
“Sharon,” he said, “I’m so happy Mama talked you into coming. I got to thank you for everything you done.” He came up to the table that bisected the room and placed the palms of his hands flat against the grille.
I leaned forward and placed my hands on my side of it, so we could touch. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“Well, I do.”
He sat in his wooden chair, and I sat in mine.
For a moment there was an awkward silence. Bobby’s eyes clouded and he said, “That motherfucker Emmons killed her.”
Beside me, Leora clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Right name for him, Mama.”
“Maybe so. I got no call to correct you, anyway. You went in here a child, you’re coming out a man.”
He nodded brusque thanks at her, trying not to show how much her words pleased him.
I said, “Emmons killed her, I think, because he had really envied and hated her for some time. She had everything he wanted: talent and the ability to make her own opportunities.”
“That what you call what she did to me and Lisa and Jay-makin’ her own opportunities?”
I’d thought a good bit about Tracy over the past day and a half. Now I said, “She was young and greedy, and she used very poor judgment. That’s a reason, Bobby, not an excuse.”
“Ain’t they the same thing?”
“I don’t think so, not really. An excuse removes blame; you realize a person’s not guilty of wrongdoing, and you forgive them. A reason just tells you why they did what they did; then you have to work at forgiving.”
“Never thought about it that way.” He stared at the scarred tabletop for a moment. “Guess I do forgive her. I had a lot of time to work on it in here.”
There was a silence. I sensed all three of us were entertaining private thoughts about Tracy Kostakos, about what was forgivable and what wasn’t. Finally Leora said, “What about Rob Soriano? Jack Stuart says there’s no way to prove he set that fire and killed Jay and all those other people.”
The death toll from the fire had climbed to seven; Larkey was among them. The arson squad had found fragments of what might have been a simple, timed incendiary device in the club, placed in such a position as to take advantage of the persistent gas leak from the furnace line. Soriano had probably counted on the blast destroying the apparatus completely, and that had nearly happened. There was not enough left to reconstruct it, and no evidence as yet that the fragments had ever been in Soriano’s possession. Had his past in Florida not come to light, he would possibly have escaped suspicion; too many people were aware of the gas leak and PG&E’s seeming inability to repair it properly.
Soriano, of course, had admitted nothing.
I said, “It’s a long shot. And the Florida arson can’t be used as evidence, because other charges pending against a defendant aren’t admissible. They could allow extradition to Florida, but the case there isn’t all that strong, either. But they’ve got him for murdering Marc Emmons. Amy Barbour and I are eyewitnesses.”
“What about his wife?” Bobby asked. “She know anything?”
“Quite a lot. Kathy’s willing to testify to him being an accessory after the fact to Tracy’s murder, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.”
I’d visited Kathy that morning at the clinic where her personal physician had had her admitted-more to satisfy my curiosity about certain things than out of charitable impulse. She’d already spoken with the district attorney and talked freely to me about how she and Rob had helped Emmons fake the kidnapping in exchange for his silence.
At first, Kathy said, they had only intended to create confusion around Tracy’s disappearance, patterning the ransom note on the wording in Bobby’s notebook to make it seem the kidnappers were poorly educated. The idea of framing him occurred to Rob the next week when Kathy relayed what Lisa McIntyre knew about Tracy’s relationship with Bobby. But Lisa’s knowledge also had the potential to cause all sorts of complications, so they decided it was best to pay her way out of town.
Kathy also admitted to helping Emmons move the Volvo from the cottage to the mountains about two weeks after the killing. Her switch of the dental records on New Year’s Day, the bogus phone calls to Laura, the marked-up book that Emmons planted in the apartment-all of those things were last-ditch ploys to preserve the fiction that Tracy had disappeared of her own volition.
Leora said, “How could that woman have married such scum? She must be as bad as he is.”
“She’s pretty bad. But she claims she wasn’t aware of his past until Emmons showed up after killing Tracy and blurted out about the newspaper article. I tend to believe her; it’s turned out that Soriano established an elaborate phony background for himself and took measures to ensure he wouldn’t have to appear at public functions or get his picture in the papers.”
“Still, she’d have to be pretty dumb or pretty evil not to go to the cops once she knew. Didn’t she realize he’d probably kill somebody else? Or set another fire?”
“She says Rob promised her nothing like that would ever happen again.” I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, but the memory of her repetition of the words “he promised” during her crippling hysterics at the scene of the fire made me lean toward accepting what she claimed.
“Well, in my book she was stupid to believe the man. And him-for somebody who’s supposed to be such a smart high-roller, he’s really kind of stupid, too.”
“I think what he is is shrewd, but with an overblown idea of his own capabilities. His kind often conceive grandiose schemes, but then they get tripped up by details. That’s what happened in Florida. This time, though, he won’t be able to disappear and start over somewhere else.”
Bobby bared his teeth in something that didn’t even pretend to be a smile. “Never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad they got the death penalty in this state.”
I remembered my primitive, near murderous rage as I’d stood over Soriano on the derelict fishing boat, gun in hand. “I know what you mean,” I said.
Late that afternoon I stopped by All Souls to put my desk in order. A bunch of people were sitting around the living room eating pizza: Rae, Jack, Ted, Hank, Anne-Marie. Even the health nut was there; his purge of the kitchen must be over, because he was sucking on a beer. They all wore grubby work clothes and seemed in a festive mood.
Rae waved at me. “Come join our moving party!”
I went only as far as the archway. “Who moved?”
“Well, first Hank did. Then we picked up some furniture I bought at Junk Emporium and dragged it up to my new room”
I looked at Hank in confusion. He was sitting on the couch with Anne-Marie, his arm around her shoulders.
Anne-Marie said, “Don’t panic; it’s not a big deal. The Andersons vacated our upstairs flat three weeks early. Hank and I talked it over and decided we can’t live together but don’t want to live apart. So he moved upstairs, I’m staying down. We’re extending one another liberal visiting privileges, of course.”
“Of course.” Although it sounded somewhat bizarre on the surface, it struck me as a sensible arrangement.
“Why don’t you have some pizza?” Ted said. “There’s plenty-even anchovy.”
“Sorry-I have a dinner date, and I’m running behind schedule.”
Rae smiled knowingly; she’d suspected all along that something was developing between George and me. Jack looked glum and reached for another slice of pizza. I grabbed a beer out of one of the six-packs on the table and went up to my office.
When I arrived home, there was a note from the contractor taped to my front door. He’d finished work on the new bedroom, it said, and had locked up. He’d be by the next afternoon with the extra keys, t
o pick up the final payment on our contract.
I hurried inside and inspected his work. It looked great. All I needed to do now was paint, lay carpet, and install mini-blinds. Then, I decided, I’d invite the All Souls’s moving crew over to help me haul my bedroom furniture back there. Afterward I’d feed them spaghetti, or maybe lasagna.
But right now I needed to get ready for my date with George. I wanted to look particularly good, because I felt apprehensive about it. Too many things had been left unsaid between us over the last few days. Tonight we would have to say them all.
30
It was a drizzly night in February, nearly two years to the day since Tracy Kostakos died. South Park was shrouded in mist; it hazed the street lamps and softened the ragged outlines of the burnt-out ruin that once had been Café Comedie. A casual passerby, new to this place, might not even notice it, much less guess at the tragedy that had been played out here.
I’d come, as I often did these days, to walk in the park. The ground still bore scars where the ambulances had driven, but frequent rains had begun to heal them, bringing fresh blades of grass. Soon other reminders would go; eventually there would be none at all.
I walked with my head bent forward, hands thrust in my pockets, barely noticing the damp. The park was familiar territory now; I came here so often that the old black men who congregated on the benches on nice days were starting to think of me as a regular. One of them had waved to me the other afternoon.
If anyone had asked me why I kept returning to this place, I would have been hard pressed to give an answer. It had something to do with trying to make sense of it all, but I didn’t expect anyone else to understand that-because I didn’t really understand it myself.
Trying to make sense of Tracy Kostakos, whose greed for everything the world has to offer had destroyed both her talent and her life.
Trying to make sense of Marc Emmons, who had allowed himself to be used until love turned to hatred, hatred to violence.
Trying to make sense of the evil at the core of Rob Soriano, and the primitive rage it had triggered in me.
The Shape of Dread Page 25
