Mission Canyon

by Meg Gardiner

  The door blew open and Mari Diamond tumbled out. Her eyes looked like cue balls. Her red nails flailed against my chest. She clattered into me and started climbing the stairs on all fours, grunting and squealing.

  I staggered back against the stairs, hitting my butt, and grabbed her leg.

  ‘‘Wait. Who locked you in?’’ I said.

  She sawed her leg back and forth. ‘‘It’s him; let me go—’’

  ‘‘Where’s Jesse? Was he here?’’

  ‘‘You stupid— Move! In there. Kenny took a shovel; you know what he’s going to do with it? Get out. Let me out of here—’’

  She saw the meat cleaver.

  ‘‘Jesus, you crazy bitch. Oh, God.’’

  And she kicked me in the chest with a dainty, spike-heeled confection of a shoe.

  I gasped from the pain, flinching backward down the stairs. Mari skittered up the stairs and out into the hallway.

  I started up after her. Somebody had locked her in, and that was probably Kenny. And I didn’t want to be locked in after her. I got three steps up the stairs and heard the dog going the other way, into the wine cellar. And that’s when I smelled it.

  The odor was faint, an undercurrent in the air. But it was unmistakable. It wasn’t the bouquet of old wine. It was the smell of decaying flesh.

  The Chihuahua disappeared into the cellar, barking and moaning. Instinct, revulsion, the urge for self-preservation, told me to haul my butt up the stairs after Mari and keep going. Except for one thing. I’d asked her where Jesse was. And in her babblings she had said, In there.

  I felt the meat cleaver in my hand. I walked down the stairs.

  I stepped through the doorway. The air felt cool. The smell was almost subliminal. Like a nightmare. My shoes scuffed on the concrete floor. I took the key from the dead bolt lock and put it in my pocket.

  The wine cellar looked normal. At the far end of the room, however, was another door. I crept to it and looked in. My heart was trying to climb up my throat.

  Beyond the door was a museum. This was where Kenny kept his most valuable collectibles, the memorabilia that meant the most to him. My skin started slithering.

  The display cases were installed with the same care as the ones upstairs in the living room. More care, perhaps, because this was where Kenny’s heart lay. His dirty, worm-eaten, fetid heart.

  I had seen a hint of this on Kenny’s computer, with the bidding on off-the-books crash memorabilia. But seeing it in person was different. It closed in on me, though encased behind glass. This was a cathedral, a cesspit, a museum of sudden death.

  I walked between the displays, holding my breath. On the walls, flat-screen displays played footage of famous air crashes. The United Airlines DC-10 going down in Sioux City. The Concorde streaming flames as it struggled toward Le Bourget, fighting its doom. Air show catastrophes: Ramstein, Paris, L’viv. I kept walking. Bizarrely, I was aware that this was arranged with the care of a good museum exhibit, leading the visitor through the experience to greater understanding.

  Here were the fruits of Kenny’s bids in underground auctions: memento mori. A lovingly tended, dirty collection of death souvenirs. Some . . . pieces, I supposed he called them, came from everyday fatal accidents, but some were from famous events. PRINCESS GRACE, one display was labeled. BUDDY HOLLY, said another.

  After visiting the cemetery with him, watching him at Yvette Vasquez’s grave, I thought I understood. This obsession had been developing since Yvette died in the car wreck. This, not her headstone, was his memorial to her.

  Literally. Because directly ahead was a case with a black velvet pillow, and inside was a relic. It was nothing but a piece of twisted metal, stained with brown streaks that I knew were blood. Her blood. I read the label on the display case.

  YVETTE VASQUEZ.

  This, for Kenny, had become the embodiment of the girl’s death, a stand-in for her crushed body. The start of his collection. Kenny the thrill seeker. Here was where he kept all his fear, and his lust, hidden. And the biggest secret he hid was that he had stolen a piece of the car in which Yvette died.

  No wonder Mari pounded on the door to be let out. Here was Kenny’s inner life: death.

  That was what I was smelling. And it didn’t come from the display cases. I followed the keening of the dog around a corner, and stopped.

  The Chihuahua was standing in front of a wrapped package, growling, lunging and darting back, tiny hackles up. The package was wrapped carefully in a blanket, and then in trash bags, all secured with duct tape. It was a body.

  I stood without breathing, watching the dog dart back and forth. Who was it? What should I do? I seemed as disconcerted as the pooch.

  The dog dashed in again. It bit through the trash bag and started tearing at the blanket underneath. I backed up a step. I didn’t stop the dog. I wanted to know who it was. I took out my phone to call Van Heusen, but couldn’t get a signal.

  Horrified, I watched the dog wrangle its way through the blanket and sink its teeth into flesh beneath. It wagged, ripped, tossed its head back and forth. Finally it backed off. Protruding from the blanket was a gray waxy hand. On the hand was a diamond pinkie ring the size of a big computer chip.

  It was Franklin Brand.

  I backed away. The dog darted in and rolled on the body.

  Brand, dead, here. Not freshly dead, either. And what had Mari said—he took a shovel?

  Kenny had murdered him.

  I backed into a display case, felt it rock on its pedestal behind me. Turning, I steadied it. It was a small Plexiglas case, unadorned, set at the end of the display. No lighting, no explanatory notes. None were needed.

  Inside the case were a gear cog and derailleur from a bicycle. And a damaged pair of bike shoes. And a crucifix of Mexican silver. The display was labeled, MISSION CANYON. They were mementos from the hit-and-run.

  For a second I held on to the case, staring. What the hell was this doing here? Had Kenny bought these things from the police or scavenged them from the dump? Why?

  I felt my head thudding. My knees felt soft. The bike parts could have been scavenged, but not Jesse’s shoes, or Isaac’s crucifix. They had disappeared from the scene of the crash, before the paramedics arrived. Jesse was right: His dream was a memory, a memory of the killer standing over him. Stealing bits of his handiwork. I looked around at the museum, the entire display, and realized that it was arranged so that two pieces had pride of place. They were the pillars upon which the exhibit rested. They were relics from the two death scenes in Santa Barbara—Yvette Vasquez’s crash, and the hit-and -run.

  They were the two scenes where Kenny was present. Where Kenny was to blame. Where Kenny was at the wheel.

  I hissed through my teeth. Franklin Brand had been telling the truth all along. He was not the driver. He did not run Jesse and Isaac down.

  Kenny did. And he’d taken trophies.

  Was he planning to turn Brand himself into his newest exhibit? Gagging at the thought, I staggered toward the door. I ran back through the wine cellar, up the stairs, and out into the hall, gulping fresh air.

  Van Heusen, where was Van Heusen? I ran through the front hall into the atrium. The front door was wide-open. It was almost dark, stars appearing in the eastern sky. I dashed outside. Mari’s Jag was gone.

  But Kenny was home. His Porsche was parked behind my Explorer. He had the hood up on my car, and was ripping wires loose in the engine.

  I stopped on the porch, still holding the meat cleaver.

  He wiped his hands on a handkerchief and gave me a solid stare. He was sweaty and his shirt was covered with dust. It was the Great Escape look all over again, but I didn’t think he’d been digging a tunnel. Rather a grave. I felt the handle of the cleaver in my palm. My hand was sweating.

  I said, ‘‘The FBI is on the way.’’

  He smirked and nodded at the cleaver. ‘‘You might get in a halfhearted swing at me, but I’ll take it from you. I’ll hack off your arms, and then I’ll
bury it in your face.’’

  Don’t move, don’t back up, don’t give him encouragement. I pulled out my cell phone. Screw it, call 911.

  No signal.

  Kenny walked toward me. ‘‘You can’t get reception this far back in the ravine. Sorry, Gidget, you’re fucked.’’

  I stood on the porch, my quads shivering. And out of the dusk a car swept into the driveway. Relief lit me up like a klieg light. Van Heusen was at the wheel.

  Kenny looked at me with a sneer on his face. Van Heusen was getting out of the car. Kenny called to him.

  ‘‘She’s armed. Watch out.’’

  Van Heusen looked from Kenny to me, saw the cleaver.

  ‘‘Dale, don’t listen to him. He killed Franklin Brand,’’ I said.

  Kenny started toward him. ‘‘She’s whacked out of her head. She chased me out of my own house with a meat cleaver. The bitch is freaked, man.’’

  Van Heusen raised a hand. ‘‘Stay where you are. Both of you.’’

  Kenny kept walking. ‘‘She’s been in my face since the beginning, she and Blackburn. They won’t go away. They’re like a bad case of herpes.’’

  Van Heusen reached under his jacket, hand going to his holster. ‘‘I said hold still.’’

  Kenny stopped next to my car.

  Van Heusen looked back and forth between us. He still hadn’t drawn his gun.

  ‘‘Put your hands on the grille of the car, Rudenski. Evan, set the cleaver down and step over here.’’

  ‘‘Dale, he’s lying,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Do it.’’

  Kenny leaned on his hands against the grille of my Explorer and stared under the open hood at the engine, as though he were a mechanic. Van Heusen kept his gaze on me.

  I set the cleaver on the driveway. My relief had fizzled.

  ‘‘The body’s in his basement,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Jesus Christ,’’ Kenny said. ‘‘She breaks into my house, goes for me with a kitchen ax, and you’re going to listen to this shit?’’

  ‘‘Franklin Brand is dead, wrapped in trash bags and duct tape,’’ I said.

  Kenny shook his head. ‘‘That’s not a body; that’s a mannequin. Come in and see, man.’’

  ‘‘Don’t, Dale. I know a dead body when I smell one.’’

  Kenny guffawed. ‘‘It’s for my sports memorabilia collection, stupid, to display the new driving suit I bought.’’

  He started to turn and gesture to me. Van Heusen drew his weapon.

  ‘‘Both hands on the car.’’ He walked toward Kenny.

  Kenny made a point of drawing a deep breath, giving an appearance of calming himself down. Quieter now, he said, ‘‘She’s desperate to blame this on me. She’s over the edge.’’

  Van Heusen gave me a glance. He looked intent, and confused, and over his head.

  He pointed his gun at me. ‘‘Go sit over on the driveway and lace your hands behind your head.’’

  I felt the ground seem to drop away beneath me.

  The Chihuahua trotted through the front door and skeltered up to Van Heusen, moaning for attention. Clenched in its teeth, diamond ring shining, was Franklin Brand’s finger.

  33

  Van Heusen gawked at the little dog, and the trophy in its mouth.

  ‘‘That’s not . . .’’

  Caesar reared onto his hind legs and put his paws against Van Heusen’s shin. Van Heusen shied backward, stepping toward my car.

  Kenny charged at him.

  Van Heusen looked up, but Kenny slammed against him and slapped his head sideways across the open engine block. Van Heusen cried in surprise and fumbled to regain his balance. Kenny reached up for the hood of the Explorer and slammed it down on him.

  I yelled, ‘‘No!’’

  Once, twice, Kenny smashed the hood on Van Heusen’s head and upper body. Van Heusen staggered, tried to straighten up, threw his arm toward the car to keep from falling. He got his head clear and Kenny rammed the hood down a third time. I heard bone crack, metal slam, the hood latch shut, Van Heusen screaming, feet sliding out from under him. The dog skittered around his feet.

  Kenny had smashed the hood closed on Van Heusen’s hand. His gun hand. He was trapped. His arm was broken, his pistol lost down in the engine.

  Kenny’s shoulders were heaving. He watched Van Heusen struggle, and then he turned toward me. The meat cleaver was on the ground in between us. We looked at each other, and we both lunged for it.

  I saw it gleaming on the ground, the blade so promising. I reached for it.

  Kenny ran straight at it, kicked it out of my reach, and picked it up. He hoisted it and turned back toward me.

  Van Heusen hung on the car, pale, barely holding on to consciousness through the pain. Kenny stood between us. There was no way for me to get to Van Heusen, or even to get into the car and pop the latch to release the hood. Kenny stepped back and glanced at each of us, as though deciding whom to go for first.

  Van Heusen reached his free hand into his jacket and pulled out his cell phone. He looked at me. The pain was striating his face.

  ‘‘Run,’’ he said.

  My legs didn’t move. How could I leave him here? But he gave me a look that made me understand. He wasn’t being selfless. He was captive prey. I was the fox the hound would have to chase. The only way to buy him time was to get Kenny away from here. And the only way Kenny would leave was running after me.

  I lit out toward the street.

  About eighty yards along the road I looked back. I knew what Dale Van Heusen didn’t: His cell phone wouldn’t work up here. He couldn’t call for help. Only I could do that. I had to get out of the microwave shadow of this hill and call for backup. I had to draw Kenny away from Van Heusen, and I had to keep him away until the cops could get here. I had to keep him on my tail, but not close enough to bury the cleaver in my face. If I got away, he would go back and finish off Van Heusen. I had to run, but not too fast. I was fit. Dear god of running, please let Kenny be out of shape. I turned and looked. He was fifty yards back, chasing me.

  In his Porsche.

  Neighbors, I needed neighbors. Or another driver. I pounded down the hill, seeing no driveways, no other cars. Hearing that German engine. I had to get off the road.

  I pumped my arms, running hard. I heard the Porsche shift gears. Just off the road, the hill descended through tall grass toward a line of sycamores that looked as if they lined a creekbed. Beyond the trees an avocado orchard climbed the far side of the gully.

  Jump. I careened down the hillside, running toward the cover of the sycamores. Racing into the shadows, I ducked behind a tree trunk. On the road above, the Porsche rumbled, slowing to a crawl. I got out my cell phone. I had a signal. I punched 911.

  Access denied.

  Gaping at the display, I redialed. Access denied.

  This was impossible. My phone was guaranteed to reach the emergency number anywhere, anytime, even if I hadn’t paid my bill. Maybe the signal was too weak . . . but it didn’t matter. I had to draw Kenny’s attention again.

  Calm down. Listen. In front of me, through the trees and blue shadow, I heard water slurring over stones in the creekbed. Behind, I heard Kenny revving the engine of the Porsche. I peeked around the tree trunk, up the hill. In the drawing dusk, the car idled on the road above.

  I ran back into the open, where Kenny could see me. Heard him jam the Porsche into first gear. The creek flowed parallel to the road, and I ran downstream, toward the city, toward Foothill Road, the main street at the bottom of the hill. The Porsche kept pace above me.

  I tried the phone again. Access denied.

  The foliage thickened, grass and trees and, dammit, that was poison oak I just ran through. I looked up. Kenny had rolled down the window and was staring at me.

  I crossed back into the treeline. For the fourth time, I tried 911. Hell. Running in the deepening darkness, sidestepping rocks and gopher holes, I tried another number, one my fingers could speed-dial by feel alone.


  Jesse.

  I called his cell and ran. I heard clicks and static, and the phone ringing.

  Above me, the Porsche accelerated, drawing ahead. I heard the engine rev, and saw it round a curve and edge out of sight.

  The phone rang. I veered back into the cover of the trees.

  Jesse, answer the phone.

  Because I knew what Kenny was going to do: Get ahead of me, park, and wade down the hill to cut me off. Literally, with the cleaver.

  Finally, in my ear, I heard Jesse’s voice. ‘‘What’s up?’’

  ‘‘Call the police. Send them to Kenny’s house; tell them a federal officer is down and will die if they don’t haul ass over there.’’

  ‘‘What? Jesus, Ev—’’

  ‘‘Do it now.’’

  Silence; I could virtually hear the shock crackling through his mind. He said, ‘‘I’ll call you back.’’

  Again I peered out from the trees. Where was Kenny? I stopped and listened. I could no longer hear the engine. Sweat trickled into my eyes. A breeze shivered the leaves, a chill taunt.

  The phone chirped. I answered, ‘‘Yeah.’’

  ‘‘They’re rolling. Are you hurt?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Are you safe?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘I’m coming to get you.’’

  Jesse, my love, my sorrow, my heart. ‘‘I’m downhill from Kenny’s house, and . . .’’ I looked around. ‘‘I can’t see him.’’

  ‘‘I’m in the car; don’t hang up.’’

  I pressed myself against the bark of an old tree. The leaves stirred in the breeze.

  I said, ‘‘Did you get the gun?’’

  Quiet. ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Shit.’’

  The light had dimmed to a blue glow in the west. I heard creatures scurrying and water licking in the creek. I listened for signs that Kenny was approaching. He was now downstream; I couldn’t keep heading that direction.

  Jesse said, ‘‘You there? Head toward the cops.’’

  ‘‘Right.’’

  Once more I listened. I thought I heard, skating on the wind, the sound of voices up on the road. My nerves were playing Pachinko, pinging and chattering. Keeping to the shadows under the trees, I started upstream.