The Dangerous Hour

by Marcia Muller

  “Game’s over, puta,” he said.

  Your game, not mine.

  His head appeared above the ledge in front of the opening. I raised my legs and kicked out. Caught him smack in the middle of the forehead.

  He yelled, driven backward, and then went tumbling to the concrete floor below. There was a bone-cracking sound as he hit.

  I crouched, panting, on the floor of the little cave. The pain in my side radiated out and engulfed my entire body. I shuddered, fighting against it. When it subsided some, I edged forward and peered over the ledge. Dominguez lay on his back, motionless.

  I climbed down to the fountain’s floor and edged toward him. He was breathing, but just barely. I hesitated a bit, then knelt and felt his neck for a pulse. Found a weak one.

  I turned away, climbed out of the fountain, and breathed deeply of the crisp air. Massaged my side, dropped my head back, and looked up at the star-shot sky. Then I started for the staff housing, to rouse someone who would call 911.

  Sunday

  AUGUST 3

  At five in the afternoon, my house teemed with people. At first I’d envisioned the agency’s celebratory party as an elegant catered dinner for staff members only, but then there was the problem of Hy, who was still in town. How could I include my man while excluding the others’ men or women? But if I did include them, there wouldn’t be enough space at the table for everybody.

  So finally I said the hell with it, come one, come all. I’d make a few of my special sourdough loaves—hollowed out and filled with every imaginable cheese and deli meat, then baked to perfection—a big salad, and a sinful dessert. We’d eat outside, weather permitting, or all over the house if the fog rolled in.

  Then Rae called, lonesome because Ricky was on an out-of-state concert tour, and I invited her. She asked if she could bring Molly and Lisa and their older sister, Jamie, who were up from L.A., and volunteered to supply hot dogs and burgers and tend the grill. Next Hank Zahn called to say he and Anne-Marie Altman and their adopted daughter, Habiba Hamid, were back from vacation, so I invited them. He said they’d bring three different kinds of salsa from Trader Joe’s, and both yellow and blue corn tortilla chips. The Curleys volunteered potato salad. The Halls, next door on the other side, offered up three-bean salad. Glenn Solomon and his wife, Bette Silver, supplied a case of wine. Maggie Hayley augmented it with champagne. My half sister Robin, who had arrived early to look for an apartment in Berkeley, made a special trip to my favorite bakery for a tray of pastries.

  Party quietly out of hand. The best kind.

  I put the sourdough loaves in to bake, then went out on the deck. People lounged in chairs or perched on the railing, noshing and drinking soda and beer and wine; Rae was tending the Weber with an intense expression usually seen on the faces of male barbecue fanatics; the smell of charcoal set off my hungry button, and I looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes to go.

  Even Julia was there, still uncomfortable from her chest wound, and being fussed over by everyone, including her sister, Sophia. In the yard, Tonio and the other kids ran around, tossing a Frisbee and screaming. Jamie, almost grown now, was sitting on the steps leading down there, in earnest conversation with Derek Ford. Now, that would be an interesting match. . . . I caught Hy’s eye and smiled.

  Adah came up to me. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

  We went to the kitchen, got glasses of wine, then moved to the sitting room.

  She said, “Given everybody’s good mood, I guess BSIS isn’t pursuing the complaint against you.”

  “As Marguerite Hayley puts it, the paperwork is lost at the bottom of a pile on a low-level bureaucrat’s desk and will stay there.”

  “That’s good, because Dominguez is still stonewalling it. I’ve got a feeling the shrinks’re starting to believe him.”

  Since his release from Marin General Hospital, where he’d been treated for a concussion, ruptured spleen, and other injuries sustained in his fall, Dominguez had staged a very convincing insanity act at the county jail. A court-appointed psychiatrist, as well as those hired by the prosecution and defense, were holding interviews with him to determine the extent of his mental disorder. Adah and I, as well as investigating officers in Marin, Sonoma, and San Francisco Counties, were in agreement that he was crazy like a fox.

  “Damn it!” I exclaimed. “Can’t the shrinks see through him? This guy was a jailhouse lawyer; he knows if he gets put away on an insanity plea, he’ll eventually be back on the street.”

  “Yeah, after killing three people. But the Marin County people have to go through the process, and if the shrinks aren’t perceptive, and they get a sympathetic judge—”

  “I wish Marin didn’t have jurisdiction. There’s no strong case for him having killed Scott Wagner.”

  “But there is for his attack on you. You ought to know; you signed the complaint.”

  “But Dan Jeffers—they turned up evidence that he was killed in that little house in Los Alegres. That’s Sonoma County, and it’s a capital charge.”

  “A weak case, though. The evidence only shows that somebody of Jeffers’s blood type was injured or killed there. And they’ve got no body.”

  “It’s probably hidden in one of those canyons up on Sonoma Mountain, where it won’t be discovered for years, if ever. But down here—there’s Johnny Duarte. Alex Aguilar as good as admitted to me that Dominguez killed him.”

  “‘As good as’ isn’t good enough. And we haven’t been able to locate Alex.”

  “The assault on Angela Batista or Alison James?”

  “Neither’ll press charges. Batista claims it would damage her reputation and her business. The other one’s worried about her child-custody case.”

  “Julia’s shooting, and the attempt on Mick . . . the gun . . . Oh, hell. Dominguez didn’t have it at the park—that one was a forty-five. He probably tossed the Saturday night special into the bay right after he fired on Mick. Nobody has anything on Dominguez, unless you find Aguilar and persuade him it’s in his best interests to turn state’s evidence. Or if Dominguez makes a slip of the tongue to those shrinks, and they realize he’s not only sane but guilty.”

  Adah was silent, her face still, her eyes thoughtful. “You know,” she said, “nobody here or in Marin and Sonoma Counties wants to see this guy get a vacation in a mental hospital. Even his public defender doesn’t seem too keen on the idea. Maybe—”

  “McCone!” Hy called from the kitchen. “These loaves’re ready. What d’you want me to do with them?”

  “Maybe what?” I asked.

  Adah shrugged. “I’m not promising anything, but I’m thinking the other investigators and I might be able to work out an interagency deal. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  Tuesday

  AUGUST 5

  Reynaldo Dominguez and I were seated across from each other at a table in an interview room at the Marin County Jail, near the sprawling, blue-roofed civic center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Behind the one-way window overlooking the room were the three psychologists assigned to evaluate him, his public defender, the Marin investigating officers, Adah, and other investigators from the San Francisco and Los Alegres police departments.

  Like any good jailhouse lawyer, Dominguez knew we were being watched, probably videotaped. And he was putting on a good act: he mumbled to himself and laughed, his gaze roving aimlessly around the room, never meeting my eyes. When the sheriff’s investigator who was in charge of the case brought him in, he’d asked if Dominguez wanted his court-appointed attorney present. Dominguez shook his head, said, “Fuck my lawyer,” and began talking to himself in Spanish. He hadn’t yet stopped.

  Yesterday evening, after this meeting was finally arranged, Adah and I had drawn up a list of questions for me to ask Dominguez. The idea was to take him through the chronology of what he’d done since coming to San Francisco and attempt to provoke a reaction or outburst that would prove he was in full possession of his faculties. So far, I might as well have been talki
ng to a Spanish-speaking magpie.

  For all his babbling, though, I could tell Dominguez was faking. A satisfied light flickered beneath the cold, flat surface of his eyes. He knew exactly what I was trying to do, and once again he was taking pleasure in taunting and defeating me. Before, a gun had been his weapon; now it was inane mutterings.

  I glanced at my watch. They’d allowed me an hour, and time was growing short. The hell with this, I thought, and deviated from the scripted questions.

  “Tell me, Dominguez,” I said, “what did you plan to do to me that night at Olompali?”

  His eyes flickered, not enough for those on the other side of the glass to see, but I knew I had his full attention.

  “You want to tell me,” I added. “You know you do.”

  He laughed, muttered in Spanish. Something involving the word coño—“cunt.”

  I scribbled the word on the legal pad in front of me, shielded what I’d written with my hand.

  Dominguez’s eyes narrowed, and he shifted, trying to see the pad. I made another note, just scribbles. The corner of his mouth twitched.

  I said, “Well, I can guess your plans for me. At first it was enough to ruin me professionally, but when you realized I’d identified you, it turned into something different. You wanted me to die, but first you wanted me to suffer.”

  “Vete al carajo, coño.”

  He’d told me to get fucked, but the light in his eyes confirmed my assumption.

  “You don’t like women, do you, Dominguez?”

  “No me jodas.”

  Don’t fuck with me.

  “You like that kind of word, don’t you? Puta. Coño. Carajo. They’re obscene, degrade the woman whom they’re directed at. Let’s talk about other words—or actions—you like. Humiliación. Torturo. Violación. Homicidio. Humiliation. Torture. Rape. Murder. Acts of a coward who’s really afraid of women.”

  His eyes came alive with rage, but he didn’t move or speak.

  Keep pushing him.

  “So that was what you had planned for me. I don’t know how you thought you’d get away with it, though. If I were dead, everybody at my agency would’ve known you killed me. And they could’ve proved it. We have testimony from witnesses, composite sketches. A homicide inspector on the SFPD has been monitoring our progress the whole time we’ve been looking for you.

  “You made a lot of mistakes, Dominguez. You involved Alex Aguilar—a weak man. The police are going to find him sooner or later, and he’ll break easily. You used scare tactics—like beating up Angela Batista and firing a shot at Mick Savage—that called attention to yourself. You killed three people, and attempted to kill one more. You’re faking this insanity business, but not very well, and the shrinks are going to see through you. And eventually the authorities will uncover compelling evidence to link you to all those crimes. Then you’re going away for the rest of your miserable life. Or maybe they’ll give you a lethal injection.”

  His hands tensed on the edge of the table.

  “When you take a good, hard look at what you’ve done, you’ve got to admit you’ve been downright stupid. Or maybe you really are crazy.”

  His nostrils flared, and he made a growling sound deep in his throat.

  Got him.

  I stood up, leaned over the table toward him, and said softly, “‘Knives at midnight.’ You left those words as a message on Troy Winslip’s answering-machine tape. ‘Knives at midnight.’ You spelled them out in the notes you left for me. You really must be crazy to make a mistake like that twice. Crazy and stupid. A stupid, stupid man—”

  Dominguez sprang from his chair, grabbed me by the throat, dragged me halfway across the table. I grasped his fingers, trying to break his grip.

  “¡Coño!” he screamed. “You don’t talk to me that way! I am not stupid! I am not crazy! I planned; I acted—”

  The door crashed open behind me, and two sheriff’s deputies ran in, pried his hands off me, and subdued him. I pushed off the table and reeled backwards, clutching at my throat, struggling for breath. One of the psychologists appeared and took hold of my arm, guided me to a chair.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, watching Dominguez being dragged from the room. The look he shot me over his shoulder was the same as in the San Diego courtroom. I supposed I’d see it again when he was finally convicted of one or another of his current crimes.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” the psychologist asked.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s all right, dear. You’ve been through a traumatic event, and sometimes it’s difficult to articulate your feelings. If in the future you’d like to discuss it . . .” She was fishing around in her purse.

  Good God, she’s going to give me her business card! If I start talking to a shrink about all the trauma I’ve endured over all the years, I’ll be on the couch for the rest of my life!

  “Thank you,” I said, “but what I’d really like is a glass of water.”

  Saturday

  AUGUST 9

  Hy put Two-five-two-seven-Tango into a loop high above the tule marshes south of Los Alegres. I closed my eyes and savored the disorientation that flying blind imparts. No matter how often you’ve experienced it, you’re sure you know your altitude, attitude, and direction—and then it’s a surprise when you open your eyes and discover you’re totally wrong.

  Disorientation aloft is pleasurable. It’s on the ground that it’s tricky.

  Fortunately, my life was more or less on an even keel again. Reynaldo Dominguez had been found sane and bound over for trial for assaulting me. Alex Aguilar was finally located in a suburb of San Diego, and his lawyer had negotiated a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony in the various other cases pending against Dominguez. The attractiveness of pleading out was greatly enhanced when Aguilar learned that Harriet Leonard had revealed to the authorities that Johnny Duarte had coerced him into importing his drugs through the shop in Ghirardelli Square.

  Julia was fully in the clear and working overtime to accumulate the hours that would qualify her to take the exam for her license. I’d put Derek Ford on salary and hired Patrick Neilan full-time. Ted was still searching for the paragon of the paper clips. BSIS had removed the complaint against me from the pile on the low-level bureaucrat’s desk and torn it up. Life was good. Even Ralph’s health had improved. The vet had told me the cat’s recent glucose curve indicated he was responding to the insulin.

  But now Hy and I were flying off for a weekend at Touchstone, during which I was sure he would once again bring up the subject of marriage. I still hadn’t a clue to what answer I’d give him.

  I opened my eyes. We were in a climbing turn now, spiraling out of the airspace designated as an aerobatic box, on our way northwest after we’d both given the plane a good workout. Since I’d been with Hy, he’d enriched my life in so many ways: with the flying we loved; the remote and beautiful places he’d shown me; but mostly with his love, support, and understanding. So why was I afraid—?

  “McCone,” he said through our linked headsets, “I can’t think of a better place to do this than at a mile high in our airplane. Maybe it’ll bring me luck. For what seems like the hundredth time: Will you marry me?”

  You’ve risked your safety time and again. You’ve risked your life, too.

  Why not risk happiness?

  The word was out of my mouth before I had time to argue with myself: “Yes.”

  Disorientation in the air. A splendid thing.

  Hy didn’t say anything—probably he was as shocked as I—but he reached over and squeezed my knee. Then he waggled the plane’s wings exuberantly, and put it into a steeply banked right turn.

  “Why’re you changing course?” I asked. “Where’re we going?”

  “Reno, before you change your mind.”

 

 

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