Mortal Faults

by Michael Prescott

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Lowry.”

  “It’s Miss Lowry. Just Miss. Call me Andrea.” Her mouth was dry. Speech was difficult. “The phone ... in the kitchen.” She gestured vaguely.

  The woman moved past her. She was alone. No accomplice had been waiting to spring through the doorway.

  Andrea lingered in the living room while Abby Bannister called AAA and arranged for service. When the call was over, Abby emerged from the kitchen. It had taken longer than the promised minute, but Andrea wasn’t upset about that. She was beginning to adjust to the peculiar sensation of sharing her living quarters with another human being.

  “I’m sorry I was so standoffish,” Andrea said. “But a person has to be careful, you know. Especially at this time of night.”

  “I understand.”

  “The car people—they’re sending someone?”

  “Yes. It may take some time. I’ll wait outside.”

  “You can wait in here ... if you like.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “No, really, I don’t mind.” The odd thing was, she didn’t. Now that she’d allowed a person into her home, she suddenly dreaded the thought of being alone again. “I can fix you something to drink.”

  “Well, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “I have lemonade. Is that all right?”

  “That would be fine, thank you.”

  Andrea got the pitcher out of the fridge and poured two tall glasses. She was distantly amazed that she could do this. She was entertaining a guest. She was a hostess.

  She carried the glasses into the living room and handed one to Abby. They took seats across from each other.

  “You have a very nice home,” Abby said.

  Andrea doubted she meant it. The house was small and old and stuffy, the curtains were always closed, and there were security bars on the windows. No mementos or knickknacks were on display, no items of a personal nature. She’d lived here for more than a year but had furnished the place with little besides essentials, and most of those had been purchased secondhand.

  Andrea asked Abby where she lived. “West L.A.,” Abby said. Andrea knew West L.A. It was miles away, a much pricier area, near enough to the ocean that you could feel the sea breeze.

  “I envy you,” Andrea said, and it was true, and not only for living in West Los Angeles. The woman was young and attractive and seemed unburdened by fear and guilt, the two inescapable constants in Andrea’s own life.

  They talked for a while, sipping lemonade. Andrea found it remarkable that she could be having a conversation with a stranger off the street. She barely noticed what they talked about. She was aware only of the ebb and flow of words, the casualness of it, the surprising ease. She had thought it would be impossible to talk to anyone, especially here, in her private sanctum. Yet it wasn’t so hard, after all. Perhaps she’d underestimated herself, or overestimated the perils of the world.

  “Would you like more lemonade?” she asked when their glasses were empty.

  “Thank you, yes. It’s very good.”

  This time Abby accompanied her into the kitchen.

  “Lived here long?” Abby asked.

  “A year or so,” Andrea said, then wondered why the woman would have asked that question.

  “Where were you before that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just, you know, where do you hail from? Everybody in California is from somewhere else. I was raised in Arizona.”

  “I was born in Oregon,” Andrea said softly. She took out the pitcher and carried it to the kitchen counter next to the sink.

  “That’s a nice part of the country,” Abby said. “Of course, L.A. was probably real nice too, way back when. You know, years ago, before all the traffic and crime.”

  Crime. Andrea picked up on the word. Why introduce that subject? “There’s crime everyplace,” she murmured. Her hand moved toward a drawer under the countertop, then shied away.

  “We seem to get more than our share. So ... you said you’re not married?”

  Stiffly, Andrea answered, “No.”

  “Me neither. I prefer it that way.”

  Andrea began to pour from the pitcher.

  “Though I guess,” Abby said, “it would be nice to have children someday.”

  Andrea’s hand shook, and she nearly spilled the lemonade.

  “I think about it sometimes,” the woman went on. “The old biological clock is ticking, you know.”

  Andrea set down the pitcher. “I have no children.” She looked at Abby, looked at her hard.

  Abby gazed back, her face open and guileless. “Ever want any?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Making conversation, that’s all.”

  “Making inquiries. That’s what you’re doing.” Andrea turned back to the counter, and this time she opened the drawer. She reached inside, and her hand closed over the thing she needed. “Who are you?”

  “I already said—”

  Andrea turned to face her. “Who are you?”

  This time she expected an answer.

  ***

  Abby considered the gun.

  It was aimed at her chest from a distance of four feet, a Colt revolver, a .38 Special, the Commando model.

  She hadn’t expected the gun. It had been careless of her, really. She should have been ready.

  “Who?” Andrea Lowry asked for the third time.

  “I told you,” Abby said slowly. “My name is Abby Bannister. My car ran out of gas—”

  “Don’t lie to me. I can’t stand it when they lie to me!”

  “Okay.” Abby kept her voice even. “I understand.”

  “You don’t understand. Nobody does. Walk a mile in my shoes... You know that expression? You’re too young know it.”

  “I know the expression,” Abby said.

  “You don’t know anything. Asking questions. Marriage, children ... You think you’re so smart.”

  “I don’t. Really.” At the moment this was true.

  “You’re all alike. You all use the same dirty tricks, and for what? To get a few words you can print? To get a story?”

  Reporters. That’s who she was talking about.

  “Now admit it.” The gun hadn’t wavered. “Admit who you are. Tell me the truth. Tell me right now.”

  “I’ll tell you.” Abby took a breath. “You’re right. I’m a reporter. For a newspaper.”

  “I knew it. I always know. Which paper is it, this time?”

  “The L.A. Times.”

  “You work for them?”

  “I’m what they call a stringer. A freelancer.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Abby formulated a vague but—she hoped—plausible lie. “I was working another story, and your name came up.”

  “My name? Why would my name enter into it?”

  “I can’t reveal my sources.” It sounded like something a journalist would say.

  Andrea gave her a sharp look. “Your sources. Oh, for God’s sake. You act so ethical, and yet you gained admittance to my home under false pretenses. To spy on me. To write one of your damn stories!”

  “I was going to tell you—”

  “When?”

  “When we’d established a rapport.”

  The woman snorted, a sudden sharp noise like a gunshot. Abby managed not to jump at the sound.

  “Rapport. When you’d gained my trust, you mean. Fooled me into trusting you.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You people—you disgust me.”

  “Could you put down the gun now, please?”

  “I ought to shoot you dead, you little bitch.”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Your job. Your job is to ruin lives. People like you have been after me for twenty years. For twenty years—do you know what that’s like, never to be left alone, never to
have any peace?”

  “I’m sorry,” Abby said.

  “Ought to shoot you in your lying heart,” Andrea hissed, but there was no more passion in her voice, and the gun was lowering. “Your car is fine, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you used my phone to call Triple A—”

  “I didn’t really make the call. I faked it.”

  “You’re quite the actress, aren’t you?”

  Abby didn’t answer.

  “Get out. Get out of my house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You think I’m a sideshow for your readers’ amusement? You think I’m a freak?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You do. You all do. Well, go and write about me. Go tell them I’m as crazy as they thought. Tell them I’m a psychopath. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Get out,” Andrea said again.

  Abby got out. She didn’t look back until she was pulling away from the curb. She expected to see Andrea Lowry in the doorway or window, watching her go, but the door was closed, and the curtains remained shut.

  Abby released a slow breath. “That went well,” she mumbled.

  She’d managed to alienate the woman she was trying to befriend. Not that alienating Andrea Lowry was hard to do. She was afraid of people—reporters in particular. Had they really been after her at some point in her life, or was that just part of some megalomanic drama she was acting out?

  Near the freeway entrance Abby pulled into a convenience store parking lot and dictated notes into the microcassette recorder she always carried in her purse.

  “Hostile ... paranoid ... fixated on reporters. Claims they’ve been harassing her for twenty years. Has a gun—Colt thirty-eight. Keeps it in a kitchen drawer near the sink. She looked like she knew how to use it. And she was wearing a wig at the town hall meeting, so whoever she is, she’s afraid of being recognized. Afraid of a lot of things. And not likely to talk to me again.”

  That was the bottom line. Her job was to get close to this woman, gain her trust. She’d failed.

  Abby didn’t like failure. And she knew Jack Reynolds didn’t, either.

  Still, she had more facts than she’d had before. She knew the woman’s name and address. Soon she would know much more.

  ***

  Or maybe she wouldn’t. Information on Andrea Lowry turned out to be perplexingly difficult to find.

  Nestled in the workstation in her bedroom, Abby had spent two hours on her computer, hopping from one Internet database to another. A reverse directory listed Andrea as the sole resident at the Keystone Drive address. More exotic research tools supplied the woman’s Social Security number, date of birth, and credit history.

  She’d been at her current address for a little more than a year. Before that, she’d lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for seven years. She’d bought the Chevy Malibu in Florida eight years ago. Her credit card accounts had been opened eight years ago also. Her driver’s license had been issued in Florida at the same time.

  Before that—nothing. There was a prior address on file with some credit agencies, but when Abby ran a search, it didn’t check out. The address was real, but no Andrea Lowry, or Andrea anybody, had ever resided there.

  Phony background information, and an identity that had appeared out of nowhere, fully formed. It looked as if somebody had reinvented herself.

  Had she been Rose Moran before she was Andrea Lowry? And if so, why make the switch?

  There were many imaginable reasons for a change of ID. Andrea could be on the run from someone. Ex-boyfriend, abusive husband, even a stalker of her own. Or she might be hiding from the law.

  There was another possibility. Witness protection. Andrea could have testified against somebody, then gone into hiding with the government’s help. Maybe her identity had been created by the feds, who had moved her to Florida. Then for reasons of her own she had come west.

  Hard theory to test, though. If Andrea had been an L.A. resident, Abby could have used one of her contacts in the LAPD to check her out. But the town of San Fernando had its own police department, and Abby had no contacts there.

  Anyway, if Andrea was in witness protection, it wouldn’t be in the bailiwick of local law enforcement. It was a federal program.

  Well, she knew a fed. Hadn’t kept in touch over the past year and a half, but now seemed like a good time to catch up.

  Abby found the number in her address book, then called the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver office.

  The time was eleven p.m. in L.A., midnight in Denver. A little late for a phone call, but what the hell. Tess would be glad to hear from her.

  Sure she would.

  5

  It was like riding a wave, a swell of motion that expanded into a long curling comber arching upward, fighting free of gravity until it hit the shore and broke apart in a crash of spangled fragments, slivers of light.

  “Oh, my God,” Tess said. “My God.”

  On top of her, Joshua Green smiled in the darkness. “Sounds like”—his speech was punctuated by hard breathing—“a religious experience.”

  “Definitely.” Her voice was faint and hoarse.

  He straddled her a moment longer, making the moment last, then rolled clear and lay at her side. “Too bad we have to keep this a secret,” he said between gasps. “The women in the office might look at me differently if they heard your reports.”

  “And why would you care how they look at you?”

  “Hey, I’ve got to keep my options open, in case our relationship goes south.”

  Tess punched him on the arm.

  He grunted. “Ow. Watch it, boss.”

  She liked it when he called her “boss.” The old-fashioned term, still in use in the FBI, was accurate, if not appropriate. As special agent in charge of the Denver office, she really was his boss. He reported to her daily in the role of ASAC—assistant special agent in charge. “I work under you,” he not infrequently pointed out.

  She’d been seeing Josh Green for more than a year, but their affair remained secret—or undercover, another of Josh’s cheerful euphemisms. The Bureau disapproved of sexual relationships between agents of different rank, especially when one agent was the other’s immediate subordinate. They could both be disciplined if they were found out. But clandestine activity was what feds were supposed to be good at, and besides, the lure of the forbidden added an extra zing to their liaisons.

  “Someday your sense of humor is going to land you in trouble,” she warned.

  “It already did. That punch hurt.”

  She laughed, and then somewhere in the dark a phone was ringing.

  “Who would call at midnight?” she asked.

  “Somebody official, is my guess. It’s a cell phone.”

  “I know. But is it mine or yours?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “We really need to get different ring tones. One of these days you’re going to answer my phone or I’m going to answer yours ...”

  “And the cat will be out of the proverbial bag. I think it’s your phone,” Josh added. “It has that cheap, tinny sound.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Unfortunately he was right.

  Tess got out of bed and crossed her bedroom to the dresser. Her groping hand found her cell and flipped it open. Caller ID showed a 310 area code. Los Angeles. She didn’t recognize the number.

  “McCallum,” she answered.

  “Hey, Tess. How’s tricks?”

  “Oh, Christ.” She shut her eyes, feeling the sudden onset of a migraine.

  Abby’s voice teased her through the receiver. “Is that any way to greet an old pal?”

  Tess glanced at Josh, then carried the phone into the living room, where she hoped her end of the conversation would be out of earshot. “Sorry,” she said. “But—well, actually I’m not sorry.”

  “You sound kind of conflicted about this.”

  “N
o, not really. Truth is, I’m remarkably sure of things. I’ve had a lot of time to think, Abby.” She kept her voice low. “To think about the Rain Man case.”

  “Living in the past? Not a good idea.”

  Tess plowed ahead. “It was a mistake. I never should have hooked up with you. I regret it now.”

  “If we hadn’t hooked up, another two or three women might have drowned. We saved lives, soul sister.”

  “I’m not your sister. What we did was wrong. I knew it at the time. I was never comfortable with it. I can’t operate like you.”

  “Don’t feel bad. We can’t all be superstars. As they say at the beach, they also surf who only stand and wade.”

  Tess massaged her forehead. “Will you listen to me? I’m telling you that I cannot be dealing with you again, Abby. Not in any way, shape, or form. We can’t even be having this conversation.”

  “And yet we are. It’s just one of those paradoxes.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “No, you aren’t.” Abby’s tone hardened. “You can’t act like we don’t know each other. You owe me, Tess.”

  “For what?”

  “A little thing called saving your butt, if you recall.”

  “That debt goes both ways—if you recall.”

  “I was hoping you’d forgotten that part.”

  “I haven’t. We don’t owe each other anything. We’re even.”

  “No, we’re connected. We’re like two paired electrons that continue to influence each other over vast distances.”

  Tess was losing the thread of the discussion, not an uncommon occurrence when speaking with Abby. “What are you talking about?”

  “Quantum entanglement. Or loyalty. Take your pick.”

  “It’s not an issue of loyalty.”

  “Sure it is. Didn’t you ever read about Androcles and the lion? Androcles took a thorn out of the lion’s paw. Years later he was thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. And one of those lions was the very same one he’d helped. And the lion didn’t care, and ate Androcles anyway.”

  “That isn’t how the story goes.”

  “I saw the director’s cut. Point is, that mangy lion showed no loyalty. Do you want to be a mangy lion, Tess?”

  Tess had forgotten how truly irritating Abby could be. “You’re not going to manipulate me into getting involved in another one of your cases.”