by Alice Sharpe
Trees crowded the pavement while mysterious overgrown driveways barred with rusted chains and posted with No Trespassing signs disappeared into the undergrowth. When he could see the road was going to terminate in the quarry he slowed way down. After all the greenery, the old excavation site looked like a moonscape.
Jack turned onto a spur that ran parallel to the quarry, shielded by a curtain of fir trees. A hundred feet farther along, the new road provided a good spot for camouflage almost directly opposite where all the action seemed to be concentrated. He peered through the rain-spattered windshield for a few seconds until he remembered the binoculars he’d taken from Hannah’s house the day before when they went to find Aubrielle. He dug them out from behind the seat.
The quarry had obviously been abandoned years before. Equipment stood frozen in place, victims of time and neglect. The few buildings still standing leaned precariously. Where the earth had been gouged away, sinister dark pools of water had collected.
In the middle of all the gloom, the emergency vehicles and milling humans looked almost cheerful. In addition to the cops and the ambulance, there was also a newer white car from which a teenage couple scrambled. The girl produced a red umbrella that she opened over their heads. A cop approached them and began writing in a notebook as they spoke. Jack recognized the detective from Fran’s house. Great.
The kids couldn’t take their gazes from the pool of water less than ten feet away. Try as he might, Jack couldn’t see clearly enough through the rain to make out what had grabbed everyone’s attention in that bitter-looking water, but it didn’t take a mind reader to get strong vibes that something bad was going down.
Two more vehicles arrived in the next couple of minutes. One was an industrial tow truck manned by no-nonsense-looking men and the other was a police accident response van towing a boat. Diving equipment appeared from the van. The ambulance crew retreated back to the ambulance to wait.
Additional cars arrived, and more personnel gathered. It took most of thirty minutes for one diver to enter the water and return empty-handed. During that time, Jack got out of the truck. A lull in the rain gave him a chance to stretch his legs and quell the rolling tension in his stomach. The diver eventually went in again, this time guiding the winch and cable from the tow truck. Sometime later, the water roiled and a long, green sedan began to emerge trunk first from the murky depths.
Jack stood glued to the spot, binoculars held tight against his face. The ambulance crew emerged, moving in slow motion, opening the back of their vehicle, releasing the gurney, in no particular hurry. Meanwhile, every breath seemed suspended, every eye trained on the car as it rolled out of the water and settled on the slag, water pouring from every door frame and cracked window.
The car was a celery-green luxury model circa 1960, built back when most American cars were actually American products, the kind with tailfins on the fenders. He’d seen it or one just like it somewhere recently.
Eventually, the doors were opened and a body recovered. For some reason Jack assumed it would be an old man, maybe with a bad back. He lowered the binoculars with a puzzled expression on his face when he saw enough to realize the victim was male, but hardly old.
He looked again.
Red hair plastered to his skull, white sweatshirt with the New Orleans Saints’ NFL logo on the front. A hole in the middle of his forehead made a third, deadly eye.
With a shock, Jack recognized the victim: it was the guy from the parking lot from the day before. The guy driving the hatchback. Different car, same man…
It was time, way past time, to get away and Jack got back in his truck. Hopefully the rain would cover the noise of the engine starting.
His mind raced backward like a film on rewind. Where had he seen the car? Why had he associated it with an old man and a cane? “Think, Jack!” he said, hitting the steering wheel with his fist, and that jarred him, as well; it somehow fit with the old guy and the green car—
The supermarket parking lot his first day in town. Hannah hitting the horn with her fist, the old man tapping on her window, asking if she was okay, walking off all bent over with a cane—
The contents of the hatchback flashed through his head. The wooden dowel could easily have been a portion of a cane. There’d been a folded raincoat, too. And a fedora—an old guy’s hat.
What was going on? Who was this man and how was he involved with Hannah? That he was involved was clear—he’d been in the parking lot when she complained she felt “watched,” wearing the disguise of an elderly man. He’d showed up at the car park when Aubrielle was taken….
Okay, okay, what did Mitch Reynolds have to do with this? Could it be a coincidence he didn’t come home on the same day Fran Baker was killed, the same day, probably, anyway, that the guy in the Saints sweatshirt ended up dead in a quarry less than two miles from the Reynolds house?
Did the same gun kill both victims?
A cold sweat broke out on Jack’s forehead. He made himself drive slowly, relieved beyond words when an outlet to the main road appeared a good distance farther along than the one the police would use.
The cops would identify the guy in the quarry and start tracing his movements backward. They would question the Staar Foundation employees and the guy at the front desk would reveal Fran had brought a visitor the day she died, name of Jack Carlin. If Mitch Reynolds was implicated, they would question Mrs. Reynolds and she would tell them about Jack Carlin asking questions. Word would get back to Allota and the cop who had flirted with Hannah would remember she’d had a friend with her when her car was bombed, a friend with a Harley parked by her house, name of Jack Carlin.
And hey, wasn’t it Jack Carlin, who along with Hannah Marks, found a dead woman yesterday after spending the evening before inside her house?
He’d thought he had this one day to figure things out and now he wasn’t sure he even had that. The possibility of ending up a guest of the California penal system wasn’t much more comforting than the thought of reuniting with his terrorist buddies in the GTM.
Movement in the rearview mirror caught his attention. Flashing lights, a siren…
He pulled to the side of the road, praying the cop would keep going, but the police unit pulled in behind him.
Jack braced his hands on the wheel and fought the urge to gun the engine and try to outrun the cop. He took a deep breath, centering himself, thinking of Hannah. He had to stay free in order to find her and Abby and protect them. Hannah could be his focus, his anchor, at least for today.
He carefully swept the flashlight under the seat. The shotgun behind the seat was hidden from view. True, he was less than a half a mile away from a murder scene but there was no law against driving down this road. The bigger issue was Hannah, who was unaware another body had showed up. Aubrielle was vulnerable; him getting caught in the legal system might endanger them both. He would be calm.
Still, if he made it through the day without being hauled off to jail, it would be a miracle.
HANNAH SHOWED UP AT THE commercial mailboxes a little late but there was no sign of Jack. With Aubrielle asleep against her shoulder and wrapped in blankets against the chill, she stood under the awning for a while, growing increasingly impatient, glancing at her watch every few seconds.
Where was he? He couldn’t still be at the Reynoldses’ house. She needed him, she’d counted on him. Now that her plan was in motion, there were things she needed to be doing and they didn’t include twiddling her thumbs.
It wasn’t like Jack to be late.
A shiver of apprehension ran through her chest. Had he run into trouble? Had he gone off on a wild hair?
All that was for certain was that he was late and she was counting on him to cover her, sure he’d be willing once he discovered she’d gone ahead and sent the e-mails. It was a good plan. Not very subtle, but good. Even the pounding rain worked to her advantage as it would obscure things a little. She could almost hide behind the raindrops.
Of course,
then, so could whoever showed. Someone she knew—someone who was willing to endanger a baby and kill a woman…
It suddenly dawned on Hannah that she’d managed to disenfranchise Fran the woman from Fran the corpse. Maybe belief and horror would have set in that morning if she’d gone into work and been confronted by Fran’s empty office, the lingering scent of her perfume, her coworkers shocked and grieving. Those things would have brought it home.
Fran had been brutally murdered and Hannah had just invited the murderer to meet her. There was no way to pretend that was a good idea. Jack was right, it was too risky.
Think. What did she do if she didn’t carry through with her plan? Run away like she’d made her grandmother run?
No, no, she couldn’t get cold feet, she couldn’t live in fear, couldn’t raise a child in fear. She had to figure this out. Jack might be worried about innocent lives in Tierra Montañosa and she was, too, but the truth was, she was more worried about the life she was solely responsible for right here and now.
After an eternity of pacing and growing unease, she got back in her car and drove away. Hedging her bets, she went out of her way to stop by the hotel and checked out their room to make sure Jack hadn’t gone back there for some reason, but the room was as they had left it; the maid hadn’t even changed the towels or made up the bed yet. Hannah fed and changed the baby, hoping Jack would show up any second, watching the door as though she could will him to open it. Eventually, she gave up, but as she stood, she caught sight of the bed she’d shared with him. Memories of the night’s sensations swirled through her brain. Would memories of him be enough to take into the future?
The future. Here she was worrying about the future when her energies would be far better spent getting through today. She scribbled a note on the hotel stationery warning Jack to stay away from the car park this afternoon and left the room. Several minutes later, for the second time that day, she parked behind Lindy’s store.
Unbuckling Aubrielle’s car seat, she flung a blanket over the top to keep the rain off, grabbed the diaper bag and made a dash for the door, the baby screaming at the top of her lungs.
Lindy’s grown daughter met her at the door. Jill was only two years older than Hannah but already had three children under the age of five. After a quick hug for Hannah, Jill swept baby and car seat away. Aubrielle was free of constraint a few seconds later, all tears gone.
“Sorry I couldn’t get away until now,” Jill said as she kissed Aubrielle. “I just dropped the kids off at the fire station with their daddy. He’s off duty today but there’s the annual picnic, moved inside because of this weather. Mom filled me in on the phone. You’ll pick Aubrielle up at our place?”
“Yes.” Hannah handed phone numbers to Jill, both hers and her grandmother’s. “Grandma is traveling and my ringer will be off for a while but the vibrator will be on. It might take me a few minutes to call you back though, okay?”
“Sure, no problem. Hey, remember, please, I was a nurse before I became mother earth and my husband is a fireman so there’s not too much that can happen one of us can’t handle. Anyway, we’ll be at the station for a while, and that’s full of people who know how to cope with emergencies. You just concentrate on your hush-hush job interview.”
“Thanks,” Hannah said, wishing she hadn’t had to lie.
Jill lowered her voice. “Does your switching jobs have something to do with that murder?”
“Murder?”
“That woman, Francis Baker, the one who worked out where you do at the foundation. The newspaper said it was the garage killer but my husband says his buddy on the force says the MO is wrong.”
“Nothing to do with that,” Hannah said, resisting the urge to grab her baby back and run for the hills. “Oh.”
“Did you hear about the other murder?” Lindy said.
“What other murder?”
“It was on the radio a few minutes ago. They found Brace Tyson dead in his car at the old quarry. A couple of teenagers saw his car in the water.”
“Brace, really?” Jill said, her eyes registering shock. “Are you sure they said he was murdered, Mom?”
“They called it ‘suspicious circumstances.’”
Hannah said, “Who is Brace Tyson?”
“He was ahead of me a couple of years in school so you probably missed him entirely,” Jill said. “He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and came back here a year or two ago to start his own business, Tyson Investigation. You probably saw his office at the old strip mall south of town. He was a nice guy.”
A private detective’s body had been found out by the rock quarry where Jack had gone to talk to Mitch Reynolds? And now Jack was incommunicado? Uh-oh. Had the police caught up with him?
Hannah’s stomach took another ride on a roller coaster as she glanced at her watch. There was no time to do anything but go to the beach and get ready for whomever showed up. Jack would have to figure this out on his own. Besides, she was jumping to conclusions—there was no proof Jack was involved in any way. Maybe his beat-up old truck broke down.
She reached over and touched Aubrielle’s tiny fingers.
Jill cast her a soft look. “Don’t worry, Hannah, she’ll be fine, just like she was when I covered for your grandma. I’ll take good care of her. We love babies at our house, you know that.”
Hannah forced taut facial muscles into a smile. She could see by the way Lindy and Jill exchanged quick glances that she wasn’t really putting anything over on either one of them. They knew something was up and they probably knew it wasn’t a job interview. With a last hug for her baby, Hannah left.
Her first stop was the library. Once again she logged on to their computer, this time holding her breath as she checked the e-mail account she’d used to send the messages hours before.
One response, but it was like landing the biggest fish in the lake, though the sender had disguised the e-mail’s origins just as she had.
I’ll be there. This has to stop.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack talked fast and furious. The cop seemed distracted, like he was only half listening to Jack’s tale of getting lost while searching for the main road. Chances were the dead body in the car was the first one the young officer had ever encountered. Death, especially violent death, had a sobering effect.
“I got lost on all these little country roads. They all look the same in the rain. Say, I saw the emergency vehicles, even watched for a few minutes. Did someone get hurt?”
The cop, who looked cold and miserable but didn’t seem to notice that Jack was also wet, didn’t answer. Instead he studied Jack’s temporary registration and his license, finally handing everything back with a grunt.
“You need to drive up this road about a mile and then turn right,” he said. “Go straight three miles, turn right again, go straight into Fort Bragg. Better stay off these roads. Something like this isn’t a spectator sport.”
“Thank you, Officer.” Jack did everything but hug the kid and drove off with a feeling of having escaped the grim reaper.
Hannah wasn’t at the mailbox place, which surprised him. Where else did she have to be? Worried about showing up at the hotel if the police were watching for him, he stopped at a pay phone with that most scarce of commodities, an actual intact phone book. He called Hannah’s cell number from memory first—no answer. Then he called the hotel and asked for their room. Batting zero, he called the florist in Allota.
“Lindy’s Flowers and Gifts,” a woman answered.
Jack identified himself, then added, “I’m a friend of Hannah Marks. I was supposed to meet her, but I got held up. Do you happen to know where she is?”
“She mentioned your name, Mr. Carlin, said you were the only one besides her grandmother who I should talk about the baby with. She left a little while ago to go on a job interview.”
Job interview? He said, “Did she take Abby with her? I mean, Aubrielle?”
“Actually, my daughter is watching the baby. In
fact, she has her at the fire station with the rest of her family. Hannah told me to tell you to stay away from the car park if you called after two-thirty and since it’s almost three, I’m passing that message along.”
“Thanks,” he said. Back in the truck, he took off for Allota. Abby might be in good hands, but he’d bet the ranch Hannah was meeting with a murderer. No way was he sitting that out.
IT HAS TO STOP.
The words kept echoing in Hannah’s head. They were the words she’d been saying over and over to herself that day. It was haunting to have them said to her and probably by a killer.
Originally, she’d thought to meet face-to-face with whichever man showed up in the beach car park, Jack covering her from behind a rock. But with Jack AWOL, that plan was too dangerous. She could not leave Aubrielle alone in the world by risking herself. The man coming today had probably killed Fran, maybe he’d killed David, maybe even the private eye whose body was found at the quarry. She would not be his next victim.
All she needed was an identity although proof would come in handy, as well. They could take that to the cops along with news of everything that had happened. It would be over.
She drove past the car park and up the adjoining hillside, looking for the dirt track that took off across the headland and wrapped its way back to overlook the beach. She’d ridden her bike along it often as a kid as it was the access to the rock castle. The rain made finding it tricky, but there it was at last.
She parked well back from the crest of the hill and walked in the rest of the way, head bent against the rain, her grandfather’s hunting rifle with the scope gripped in one cold, wet hand. She’d taken the rifle because of the attached scope, knowing she could use it to sight something if need be. Her grandfather had taught her how when she was a teen. But with Jack’s absence, the rifle also gave her a sense of security. Could she shoot someone if she had to? Hell, yes. The rifle was loaded and ready to go.
