by Meg Gardiner
She pointed up the street. “Turn here. This is it.” She eyed him again. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
“Yes.”
He hoped he was right.
Steam hissed from the radiator of the Lexus. The doctor blinked, regaining consciousness, and cringed in apparent pain. He listened to the rumbling engine and reached out to turn off the ignition.
Coyote stood on the roof of the car, observing.
The doctor realized that the steering column wasn’t there. He focused and saw that he was on the passenger seat.
Gingerly he straightened his head and looked about at the yucca trees and rocks and the interior of the car. He seemed to be figuring out that his head had created the crack in the windshield. He put his right hand to his forehead. It was streaming blood. Scalp wounds truly bled prodigiously. He jerked a breath.
“Toni ...”
He looked around again, searching perhaps for the police or for his wife.
Coyote jumped from the roof onto the hood of the Lexus, landing loudly. He spun, crouched, and gazed at the doctor.
Cantwell recoiled. Perhaps from the sight of his clothing, glinting wet with blood. Perhaps from the distortion of the cracked glass. Perhaps from seeing Coyote’s eyes, one blue and the other black, the pupil blown. It would be like looking down a hole.
He spoke loud enough for the doctor to hear through the windshield and over the rumble of the engine.
“I took Toni.”
The doctor whimpered.
Cur. Gutless dog. Coyote stood and kicked at the shattered windshield. It sagged but didn’t break. The doctor flinched, attempting to raise his hands to his face. Coyote kicked again, ferociously, and glass collapsed with a sick chiming sound into the front seat of the car. It covered the doctor like snow, gleaming in the light.
Coyote crouched down again. “Do you hear that sound?”
He paused, waiting for the doctor to focus on the rumble. Cantwell realized that it wasn’t the Lexus. The engine was off and the key was gone from the ignition.
“That is a freight train. If I estimate correctly it will arrive in approximately two minutes.”
The doctor glanced around in panic. While he was unconscious Coyote had shoved him into the passenger seat and driven the Lexus right here, to the center of the railroad tracks. The doctor jerked toward the passenger door. He got nowhere. His left hand was handcuffed to the steering wheel.
“I threw away the key,” Coyote said.
He held up the KA-BAR. The doctor cringed. Had the man never held a scalpel? Did he not recognize a tool?
“If you work at it, you should be able to free yourself with this.”
The doctor stared at him in horror, the realization dawning on him. Coyote leaned in and stabbed the knife into the plastic of the dashboard. It stuck.
“That’s your wife’s blood on the blade. If you mix the two, perhaps you’ll gain some of her courage.”
He stood. The train was louder now, coming closer to the bend.
“You have sixty seconds. If you have the fortitude, take the decision.”
Sauntering to the front of the car, he hopped down. When he looked back the doctor was staring at the knife. He strolled out of the way of the impending impact. The train would not have time to stop when it rounded the bend.
The doctor stared up the tracks. And he stared at the knife. He yanked on the handcuffs, hoping to pull them loose. The noise of the train drew near.
And at that moment his cell phone rang. The doctor looked around, hearing the sound, patting his jacket.
Coyote held up the phone. “Looking for this?”
He read the display: 911 emergency dispatch. “It’s the police. Did you contact them?”
Cantwell’s lips moved. “They’re coming.”
“I think not.”
He flipped open the phone and lowered his voice to the doctor’s middle-aged timbre. “Dr. Tully Cantwell.”
The dispatcher spoke with the mechanical, even tones of the professionally dispassionate. It was an admirable quality in a woman’s voice. She asked him to reconfirm the information he had given her before they were cut off earlier. He listened to her, eyeing the doctor and shaking his head.
“No, none of that’s true. I apologize for this, but one of my patients got hold of my phone, and I’m afraid he made that call to stir up trouble for me. He’s—”
The dispatcher began sounding dyspeptic.
“He said what? For the love of God. My wife is fine. Unfortunately he’s mentally unstable. . . . That’s correct. No, I can’t give you his name. Doctor-patient confidentiality. No, I’ll deal with this.”
He flipped the phone shut. His hands were sticky. He needed to change and shower. He had the change of clothing in the truck. He could shower at his next stop, when he retrieved the weapons he had cached the last time he was in China Lake. The train rumbled closer.
In the half-smashed Lexus the doctor pulled the knife free from the dashboard. He was sobbing. He held it over the tendons of his wrist.
The noise of the engine grew louder. Coyote gazed toward China Lake. It was time for the final work of the project, the progenitors. Abigail Johnson Hankins, Thomas Jian Chang, Kathleen Evan Delaney. And, first of all, it was time for Valerie Ann Skinner. The doctor screamed, raised the knife, and plunged it into his wrist. The locomotive thundered around the curve. The horn blew and the brakes shrieked. The roar of the engines vibrated through him.
What a satisfying sound it was, metal shredding metal.
Outside the police station, sirens blared. I looked out the window and saw three fire engines roaring south. The fan began flinging shit.
Another detective called out to Tommy, “Major MVA out past the college. Car versus train.”
Tommy sagged. I pressed my fist over my mouth. Mom turned to Dad and he held on to her elbow.
McCracken’s voice rocked the station. “Chang.”
He was standing in his office doorway, calling to his detectives and uniformed officers, ordering patrol cars to check out the motor vehicle accident and the reported murder at Dr. Cantwell’s home. Tommy jogged down to McCracken’s office. When he came back a minute later he unlocked a desk drawer, took out his service revolver, and shoved it into his shoulder holster.
“You stay put. You’ll be safe here.”
“What about Valerie?”
He was pulling on a Windbreaker to cover the holster. He stopped. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Most likely at her mom’s.”
“Find out. I’ll send a unit.”
I pulled out my phone. “She won’t open the door to the police. She’s paranoid.”
“Shit. Will her mom?”
“I presume so, but she may be working at the motel.” I dialed Valerie’s cell and heard it ring. “I’ll go with the unit.”
Dad stepped up. “I’ll go with you.”
I stood stiffly, not wanting to look him in the eye, feeling dry and coarse. Valerie didn’t answer. I nodded to Dad.
“Fine,” Tommy said.
He waved a uniform over, a young officer with a serious, eager face. Tommy told him to call the Sierra View Motel and the Skinner residence and to take us wherever Valerie was.
Tommy put his hand on my shoulder. “You rule, Rocky. You always have.”
“Take care,” I said.
“All right, all right. I’ll quit smoking.”
In the patrol car, the young officer fired up the engine and backed out.
Valerie’s mother, Alma Skinner, was not on duty at the motel, and there was no answer at her house or on Valerie’s cell. I buckled up as he drove toward the exit, and saw Abbie’s van pull in.
“Wait a moment,” I said.
I got out. Abbie and Wally were walking toward me.
She waved. “I’m heading up to Independence and wanted to tell you good-bye.”
“Coyote’s here.”
I told them, and their faces became stricken cl
ose to panic. She grabbed Wally’s hand.
“The kids,” she said.
“Go talk to Tommy.”
Clutching hands, they rushed into the station.
I jumped back in the patrol car. “Let’s go.”
Grime and heat covered the Hollywood neighborhood like a tramp’s stinking coat. Dogs had been at garbage cans overnight. Jesse set the Glock on his lap and covered it with his jeans jacket. Inside the apartment building, a funky scuzz gummed the baseboards. The elevator smelled of urine. On the top floor, Swayze hung back out of sight, and he knocked on the apartment door. Nobody answered.
“I’ll go see if the super will let us in,” she said.
“No, I’ll go.”
She turned her head. She kept that chin so far in the air that he could see up her nostrils. “I’m not going to run out on you.”
“I know. But I can be charming.”
The superintendent had one eye and breath like a dog on gin. He hated being pulled away from the Dodgers game, and he really hated hearing that Mrs. Kazanjian wasn’t answering the door. She was frail. Also mean as a cockroach, so he definitely hated the notion of barging in on her. So he guessed it was okay if Jesse took the key. He could see the concern on Jesse’s face, yeah, real honest concern, even if his business card said he was a lawyer.
Right. And the guy probably thought he would get a reward if it turned out they were averting a crisis. “Be right back,” Jesse said.
Upstairs, Swayze was waiting. She looked alert and wary, and when he neared the door she retreated down the hallway. Watching her back away, he remembered that Coyote was trained in demolitions.
“Do you think she might have booby-trapped the door?” he said.
“It’s possible.”
Angling as far back against the wall as he could, he jangled the lock and pushed the door open, turning his head and leaning away.
Quiet.
Yellow light slanted through the windows. Dust motes rode the air. The smell was fust and lavender and, in the stuffy heat, another odor creeping along the edges of the walls. The punk of bad meat.
Jesse hung in the doorway, hands on the frame for mental balance. “Oh, fuck.”
The walls and kitchen table were covered with documents. Photos, notes, and charts were pinned to the walls. Books and a computer were set up, volumes and volumes of notes; he could see that. The apartment had been turned into a war room.
Swayze shoved past him and strode in.
“Don’t. Come back,” he said.
She strode briskly down a hallway. She stopped at a door, stared in with dispassionate calm, and returned to the living room. “She’s dead.”
Adrenaline flooded him. “Coyote?”
She examined the photos on the walls. “Mrs. Kazanjian. Broken neck, quick and efficient.”
He hung in the doorway. “This is a murder scene. Get out before you contaminate it.”
He got his phone. He had to call the LAPD. He stared at the phone but it was throbbing in front of his eyes. Hell, not now, don’t lose it here.
Swayze went to the kitchen table and began pawing the papers.
Forcing his eyes to focus, he dialed. Swayze peered through the things on the table and gathered notebooks into a stack. Going into the kitchen, she returned with a basket on wheels, the kind old ladies used to bring their groceries home from the store. She began dumping papers into it.
“Stop that,” Jesse said.
The emergency dispatcher came on the line. “I need the police.”
He told her what was happening. Swayze loaded the grocery cart. In went notebooks, charts, and receipts.
“Cut it out,” he said.
He didn’t want to cross the threshold. The apartment was contaminated with depravity. But Swayze was going to take the evidence and dispose of it to keep her name clear. He went in, wheeled to the table, and grabbed her arm. She shook him off.
“You don’t understand. If you really want to get Coyote, this is how. I can use this to bring her in. She’ll want it all,” she said. “Don’t lose your nerve now.”
And then he saw, amid all the painstakingly detailed notes and charts on the table, several familiar items. There was a Bassett High School yearbook. And the Dog Days Update they’d handed out at the reunion. And—Jesus.
He could feel the rush at the back of his head, chasing him, about to erupt.
In the center of the table was a weather-beaten blue journal. It was evidence, and he knew he shouldn’t touch it. He took a pen from his pocket and used it to flip open the cover.
“Oh, no.”
The name was written right there inside the cover, in a girlish teenage hand. Property of Evan Delaney.
29
Jesse flipped the page with the cap of his pen.
October 8th. Tommy Chang said hi today in the hall. It’s the first time he’s spoken to me since the field trip. Those brown eyes of his look so mournful. He is so, so sweet.
How the hell did Coyote get hold of this? It had disappeared, what, eighteen years back?
Swayze continued loading documents into the grocery cart. Getting everything she wanted from the kitchen table, she moved on to the living room. He gave up worrying about contaminating the evidence. He grabbed the yearbook and opened it up.
Damn, it belonged to Valerie Skinner.
He called Evan’s cell. It made sense to him now. The four of them who were left. The original group of trouble-makers.
Come on, ring. Pick up, pick up.
Coyote knew everything about all of them. And they didn’t know how close the killer was.
The phone rang, on and on.
The China Lake patrol car sped along the asphalt west of town. The sun glared off the hood. The young officer at the wheel, Will Brinkley, drove with single-minded concentration. Dad sat in the backseat behind the mesh screen. If Brinkley had noticed that I wasn’t speaking to my father, he wasn’t commenting.
A thought was nagging me. If Coyote was female, Maureen Swayze was either wrong about Kai Torrance, or she was less than truthful. The asphalt ran out and we were blowing dust behind us, heading toward the tired group of houses near the end of Jimmy’s Ranch Road.
The houses had originally been built to house people who worked at Jimmy Jacklin’s ranch. A couple were now abandoned, and the house belonging to Alma Skinner looked close to derelict as well. We pulled into the gravel driveway and a line of crows took flight off the peak of the roof, buckshot black against the blue sky.
An old Chrysler New Yorker was parked out front, paisley with bird shit. Brinkley stopped and a bolus of dust rolled over the cruiser. We walked to the front porch. A thin arm of crabgrass was nudging the cracked concrete. A wind chime banged off-key.
Brinkley pulled open the creaking screen door and knocked. As he did, my phone rang. I read the display and my heart bounced into fifth gear. Jesse.
When I answered it all I heard was static.
“Jesse. Are you there?”
Dad glanced at me sharply. Brinkley knocked again.
Behind the static, I heard Jesse’s voice. “Ev, can you hear . . .” Fading to a hiss.
Brinkley knocked a third time, stepped back and glanced at the windows, perhaps thinking to walk around the house. I shook my head at him and simply turned the doorknob. The door opened.
Jesse’s voice came back. “... in Hollywood, Coyote’s been . . .” Warping out.
“Babe, it’s a bad connection.” I checked. I barely had a signal. “I’m going to lose you.”
The static thickened. Behind it he was shouting. “. . . found your . . . watch out for . . .”
Dead line buzz.
Brinkley leaned through the doorway. “China Lake Police. Anybody home?”
Punching Jesse’s number, I leaned through the doorway after him. “Valerie? Mrs. Skinner? It’s Evan Delaney.”
I could hear a television droning. An air conditioner rattled. Somewhere in the back of the house it sounded as though cu
rtains were flapping against the walls in the wind.
The warning had been in Jesse’s voice. I had heard it. I punched his number and got nothing. No service.
Brinkley hesitated in the doorway, unsure about whether to go in. But I had no legal limitations on my behavior, and no such compunctions.
“Val.”
I crossed the minuscule entryway into the living room. The air conditioner was going full blast. In the kitchen a television was playing on the counter. Talk-show hillbillies whined and pointed at one another while a therapist pursed her lips.
The faucet was dripping. I turned it off. The smell in here was one I associated with slobbish college boys negotiating their first apartment: rancid food. On the stove a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup was congealed and moldy.
Brinkley came in.
“Something’s not right here,” I said.
Mom was in the lobby at the China Lake police station when Wally and Abbie pounded through the door. Wally was gripping Abbie’s hand and talking on a cell phone to his father.
Abbie pushed her glasses up her nose. “Tell him to put the kids on the sofa and sit his butt on a chair with his shotgun leveled at the middle of the door.”
Her cheeks were red, her blond hair windblown. She looked like a Viking about to swing her sword.
Across the station Tommy was zipping his windbreaker, preparing to head to the Cantwell murder scene and complaining that he would have to ride his motorcycle because all the department’s cars were checked out. Abbie barreled toward him.
“Chang. Coyote’s killing entire households, and my kids are in a cabin near Independence with one tough old man standing between them and what’s out there.”
Tommy stopped, brown eyes alarmed. “Address?”
Wally gave it to him. Tommy told the officer on the front desk to contact the Inyo County sheriffs and get a unit out to Mr. Hankins’s house until the parents got there. The desk officer nodded and picked up the phone. Then the switchboard stopped Tommy from leaving.
“Detective, you’d better take this. We’re putting through a call from a motorist out on the rim road north of town.”
Tommy grabbed the phone. “Yes?”
