The surface was actually better than it had been that morning, but the trees looked very large and dark, and they swayed and creaked gothically in the rising wind. In a minute they swallowed her up, and she jogged steadily uphill on the narrow, rocky road, very much alone, with the huge trees bending and groaning on all sides, the big drops splatting onto her face and clothes, the occasional lighted house, glimpsed through tossing branches, serving only to increase her sense of isolation. It was getting darker, and she ran faster now to shake the eerie shadows and fought off the feeling that someone was behind her by pushing herself physically. Her shoes chuffed rhythmically and she had to concentrate on the road surface to avoid ruts and stones. She was sweating freely now despite the chill drops that worked their way down the neck and through the seams of her parka, and her breath was coming in great gulps as she fought toward the fast-fading point where the pale road disappeared between the dark walls of the woods. She passed the Adams house on the left—not far now.
Without warning the world exploded into light and for a moment Kate, completely disoriented, braced herself for the clap of thunder. Instead she heard a welcome voice shouting angrily.
“Turn that thing away, for Christ’s sake, you’re blinding her.” The light shifted, and through the dazzle in her eyes she was aware of figures, a car, a lighted house beyond. She automatically reached down and switched off her timer, and then stood, hands on knees, gulping in air.
“You all right?” Hawkin’s voice again. She bobbed her head, and spoke as best she could.
“Yeah, just wanted, to make it, before dark, couldn’t run, by flashlight, could use, a drink, of water, though.”
“I’d have thought you had enough on the outside to make you happy, but come on in the house and catch your breath.”
Kate ducked into the log cabin after him and accepted a chair and a drink, and as her heart slowed she was grateful for the glow of the wood stove at her side. Angie Dodson was a tiny, thin woman with a thick tumble of dark blond hair held determinedly in place by numerous inadequate hairpins, and she had filled the low room with bright pillows and tapestries and the smell of good food, with a large loom in one corner and a spinning wheel behind a chair. A serious, freckled child of about twelve brought Kate a big cup of hot, oniony soup and a warm, seed-filled roll.
“You’re Amy, aren’t you? I remember you from the other day.”
“Yes. Why did you run up from Tyler’s in the rain when you could use a car?”
“Because it’s there, I guess. Did you make this soup?”
“I helped Mom.”
“Thank you, you may have saved my life with it.” Seeing the serious consideration of this, Kate smiled. “It’s just a saying, but I do thank you very much for it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ready, Martinelli?” Hawkin stood at the door with the jacket she had left with him several lifetimes before.
“Ready. Thank you, Mrs. Dodson, it really hit the spot.”
“Please, the name is Angie.”
“Good night, Angie,” called Hawkin. “I hope your husband makes it home okay.”
Kate looked more carefully at the narrow face of the woman who seemed scarcely older than her daughter, and noticed then the tension of worry in her face.
“I expect he’ll stay in town with friends, if it’s raining too hard. It’s happened before.” She lifted the bright kerosene lamp and led the way to the door. “Feel free to come tomorrow, if you need a hot drink.”
“That’s very good of you, Angie,” said Hawkin. “We’ll try not to bother you too much.”
“It’s no bother, really it isn’t. It—” She stopped, and looked faintly embarrassed and something else. Defiant? “I shouldn’t say this, I suppose, considering the reason you’re here, but it’s actually been a treat, seeing all these new faces. I’ve had fun.”
Yes, thought Hawkin, he could imagine that fun was a rare commodity up here this time of year, in a tiny dark house with no electricity and a child. His face relaxed into a smile, the smile that tended to fluster women like Angie Dodson.
“Fine, then. You keep the kettle on for us.”
The wind blew the rain into them as they stepped from the warmth and ran for the shelter of the wagon. Detweiler folded down his spotlight and picked up the portable radio Trujillo had provided. The crackling and whining were bad, but he eventually got the message across that they, the last car, were starting down.
“Sorry about the shouting,” he said, and pulled into the road. “There’s something wrong with the aerial.”
“Can you turn on the heater?” The man must be from Alaska, thought Kate.
“Sorry, it’s gone too. There’s a blanket back there somewhere. Are you cold?”
“For God’s sake, man,” Hawkin burst out, “she’s soaked through; of course she’s cold. Here, Casey, put this around you. Oh, Christ, don’t tell me the wipers have gone out again.”
“They’ll be fine as soon as the engine’s warmed up,” the driver said desperately.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said Hawkin in a soft voice. Kate did not think it was a prayer.
It was fully dark, and the headlights, which did work, picked out no press cars through the rain at the bottom of the hill. Kate clamped her jaws shut against the shudders of cold that threatened to take possession. The electricity seemed to be out at Tyler’s, but lamps shone in several windows. Hawkin was out of the wagon before the brake was set. He reached into the back door, pulled Kate out, steered her with one firm hand into the house and thrust her toward the bathroom. A kerosene lamp burned on the back of the toilet.
“Hot shower,” he ordered in a hard voice, and shut the door. A few minutes later Kate, under a stream of blessedly scalding water, heard the door open.
“Don’t put those wet things on again,” came another order, and the door slammed. She pulled the curtain to one side and saw jeans, sweatshirt, and thick gray socks folded next to the sink. The urge to shudder subsided, the water began to run cool, and she dressed. When she came out of the steam-dripping room she heard a now-familiar voice shouting in monologue.
“—when it ought to be hauling cantaloupes in the Coachella Valley. You get me a decent four-wheel-drive vehicle in here tomorrow or I’m going to have to make some major waves about the lack of backup here for my people. No, I don’t want to hear about your problems. I don’t care if you have to break into the goddamn Jeep dealership and steal something. I can’t have my partner getting pneumonia because you people don’t maintain your equipment, and I’m too old and too ill-tempered to walk. Have I made myself sufficiently clear? Good. Have a nice evening,” he added maliciously, and hung up. He rapidly wiped the grin from his face when he saw Kate standing in the doorway, but it crept back in twitches. She was grinning too, in her cuffed and belted jeans and the sweatshirt that reached to her thighs. She felt ridiculously pleased at his use of the word “partner.”
“Warmer now?” he asked.
“I should ask the same of you,” she said mildly, with a glance at the telephone.
“Yes, well, if they think they’re all going to hide behind me, they’re very much mistaken. You want something to eat before we go?”
“A cup of coffee would be great, but that’s all.”
“I gave Tyler’s lady your thermos. Anna. She said she’d fill it. I’ll just tell Trujillo we’re leaving—he’s staying here again tonight.”
They found Trujillo in the dimly lit great hall with his feet up on a table in front of the huge fireplace, talking to Tyler and sitting next to a woman who was apparently not a stranger. He had a glass in one hand and no tie on, and he jerked upright as they entered.
“Christ Jesus, Trujillo, you seem to think this is some kind of holiday arranged for your entertainment. You’re on duty here, mister, or had you forgotten? Maybe you think the people of this county pay you for sitting and drinking whiskey while some bastard is out there murdering children? I don’t expect you t
o stay up all night, I told you that. I don’t even expect you to sleep alone. I do expect you to stay sober enough to answer the phone if I feel like having a chat at three in the morning.” He snatched up the glass and took it over to the fireplace, paused at the sight of the bottle on the mantelpiece, and looked at Kate. “You driving?”
“Sure.”
“Not too tired? Good, it’d be a shame to waste this. I’ll bring back your glass tomorrow, Tyler, and from now on put the good stuff away or I’ll have to charge you with attempted bribery.” He took a small sip and rolled it around his tongue. “We’ll overlook it tonight, though. Good night, all.”
They detoured through the kitchen and retrieved the thermos from Anna.
“Sorry I didn’t have anything smaller,” she said, smiling at Kate’s attire.
“I did wonder if Tyler went in for lavender,” replied Kate. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”
“No hurry. Drive carefully. They’re predicting gale-force winds by midnight, I heard on the radio before the power went out.”
“A cheery thought.”
In the car Kate slipped off her sodden shoes, the second pair for the day, and drove in her stocking feet. Hawkin poured her some coffee and slumped back, nursing the glass.
“You like whiskey?” he asked.
“Not especially.”
“White wine.” From the scorn in his voice he might have said “soda pop.”
“Sometimes. I prefer a red. When I drink, it’s usually beer.”
He was surprised, and said so.
“It has character,” she commented. “And if you want the results of the afternoon, I’ve written it on that pad in the glove compartment. The final figure should be”—she looked at the glowing figures on her wrist—“four hours, twenty-eight minutes door to door. I didn’t run very fast going down, but I doubt she could have done it as fast going up. We’ll have to ask Dodson if she seemed out of breath at all. Where is he, by the way?”
“He borrowed Tyler’s pickup to go to Sacramento to pick up an engine. His truck has a cracked block, and a friend had one that he was going to sell him cheap. Trujillo checked, too. His engine really is shot.” He threw the notebook back into the glove compartment and slapped it shut.
“What else turned up today?” she asked.
“One little lock of brown hair in the back of the Jaguar, one child’s ring under the seat.”
Kate frowned.
“There was no mention of a ring on any of the girls, was there?”
“No, there wasn’t. One of Trujillo’s men is going to do the rounds with it tomorrow. Parents sometimes forget just what a kid walked out the door wearing. One of them might recognize it. It was too small for an adult.”
“You said a lock of hair. Cut off?”
“No, caught in a door handle, a little twist of twenty, thirty hairs. Brown, straight, about six inches long.”
The rain sheeted down the windshield, and even on high speed the wipers managed to clear only brief glimpses of the black roadway and the drops that fell and bounced back up in the headlights. When Kate broke the noisy silence, her voice was flat.
“It doesn’t look good for Vaun Adams, does it?”
“No, it does not.”
“Do you think she did it?”
“We’re not allowed to play favorites, Casey.”
“I just want to know what you think.”
Hawkin took a minute to answer.
“You know, all day I’ve been thinking about a case I had, oh, fifteen years ago, maybe. This little, quiet mouse of a woman whose kids and husband disappeared. She came in to report that he’d taken them, filled out missing persons forms, we put out their descriptions. His car was found a few days later near a bus stop, so we went back to talk with her. She was just what you’d expect—teary, worried, furious at her husband, but completely rational. She showed us the kids’ rooms, and there was this teddy bear, no eyes, one ear chewed off, all the fuzz gone—you know how a toy looks when it’s been loved to pieces. Anyway, this teddy bear was sitting there on the table next to the bed, leaning up against the lamp, and it just struck me that it looked, I don’t know, lonely. It stuck in my mind, and later that night I got to thinking about it, and I got to thinking that really there were kind of a lot of clothes in the closets, that he would at least have taken coats or shoes. The next morning we went and got a search warrant, and found them in the basement, buried deep. And she was such a nice, gentle lady, with absolutely no guilt in her eyes.”
“But you can’t think that Vaun Adams is stupid, and to bring the bodies to her own backyard, as she put it, would be stupid. Suicidal.”
“Maybe that’s it. She wouldn’t be the first psychopath who arranged to be caught. ‘Stop me before I do it again,’ that sort of thing.”
“Do you honestly think so?”
He squinted out the side window, but saw only the reflection of the dashboard lights and his own unhappy face.
“No, I don’t. She looked like a badly beaten ex-con who’s trying to decide whether or not to stand up on her feet, not like a murderer who’s half afraid of being caught and half afraid of not being caught. She didn’t look afraid at all, for that matter. Maybe she really is crazy. I dunno, we’ll have to find out what Dodson says tomorrow and see the results from the lab and the prints boys. Oh, hell, I shouldn’t have had that Scotch on an empty stomach, it’s making me all weepy. Next thing you know I’ll be telling you about my ex-wife. I’m tired. Do you need me to keep you awake?”
“No, I’m fine,” she lied. “Will it disturb you if I listen to the radio?”
“Nothing disturbs me when I’m asleep,” he snorted, and soon proved it.
10
Kate reached for the car radio and pushed various selector buttons until the muttering of voices filled the car. For a long and tiresome drive a severe irritant is called for, and there is nothing, but nothing more irritating than listening to one of those twenty-four-hour talk shows, particularly at night, when the callers are regulars who glory in their moments of authority, commanding the airwaves and the attention of hundreds, even thousands, of ears. The current caller was working himself into a rant about oil drillers and water wells, with brief excursions into the weight of concrete and the encroachment of fill into the Bay. It wasn’t until the moderator cut him off that Kate learned the topic for the evening, which was earthquakes, the prediction of and how to prepare for. Floods might be more appropriate, she thought. The little car suddenly slowed and veered as it hit a deep wash of water from a blocked drain. The noisy burst of spray from below and the sharp change of speed half woke Hawkin, who looked around blankly and went back to sleep.
Kate carefully poured herself a cup of coffee from the thermos, barely taking her eyes from the road. She drove with her left hand on the wheel, sipping, listening to the radio with half an ear, enjoying the sensation of being a warm, dry speck pushing through a cold and nasty universe.
After a few miles a pair of headlights came blurring at her, fellow travelers in the storm. She glanced at Hawkin as the lights passed and had etched onto her inner eye the brief, clear image of a younger man, the lines and hardness of the face softened, vulnerable. Innocent.
It was a disturbing view of an already disturbing man. Kate did not want to see the vulnerable side of Al Hawkin, no more than she wanted to be emotionally intimate with any of the people she worked with. She had labored long and hard on the defenses around her life, defenses all the more efficient for being nearly invisible, and did not wish to see them breached now.
It is no easy job, being a police officer. For a woman it is an impossible job, fitting into the masculine world of the station while retaining her identity as a woman. For a woman to be a street cop she must, from the first day in police academy, create a clear picture of what is required of her, and stick to it without wavering: she must be tough but not coarse, friendly but not obsequious, unaggressive but ready without a moment’s hesitation to hurl into
a violent confrontation. Impossible, but women do it. Kate had done it. She had also pushed and scrambled and sweated the books to work herself into an early promotion off the streets, knowing the resentment and mistrust her single-minded ambition would cause.
Those feelings and the tensions they had created had undoubtedly contributed to the willingness San Jose had shown in giving her to San Francisco, but once there she had made it her business to play down her urge to competitiveness. For once, she would just fit in, as much as her private self would allow. The men and women she worked with found her friendly and easygoing, to a point. Everyone knew that she ran and worked out at the gym, that she liked pasta and baseball and spicy little carnations, that she had an ongoing feud with the plumber. Everyone knew that Casey could be counted on for donations to shower gifts, for trading shifts so you could get to your sister’s wedding or your aunt’s funeral, for a wicked accuracy with the bat on the departmental team, for being a good cop to have at your side in a tight place. Yet not one of them had been inside her home, knew what she did in her off hours, knew how or with whom she lived. Her intensely private home life she concealed by the very openness of her work life. It was a somewhat schizophrenic way to live, she knew, but she had found that the only way she could continue as a cop was to preserve a place totally apart where she could retreat. No work came home, no colleagues came inside. Most of them didn’t even realize that they hadn’t been invited.
Hawkin, though. She had a feeling that Al Hawkin’s eyes missed very little. Not that he would push her—she’d had to deal with a number of people, men and women, who wanted to be buddies, who felt the presence of a hidden Kate and wanted to pick at it, like fingers on a scab. She could deal with these—it had become almost a game a couple of times—but Al Hawkin was different.
Al Hawkin, she knew by now, was totally involved with whatever case he was on. He would eat, sleep, and drink the case, and be eaten by it, until it ended. Any partner of his who wanted to be more than an assistant would have to follow him at least part of the way down that road. It was something Kate had always resisted, but she felt the threat of it now, radiating from this sleeping man at her side.
A Grave Talent Page 9
