by D. F. Bailey
“You all right?” he asked.
“Just my fingernails.” She sat up and balled her fingers in her hand to staunch the pain. “I should have cut them back at the cottage.” She let out a moan. “Damn it, I had them done just before I left the city.”
They both winced at the banal irony. A high-end nail boutique set in contrast to a fatal chase above the ocean. The black humor helped to release the tension, but then Eve felt her arms shivering and clutched them together across her chest.
“My God, that was something.” She stood and glanced over the cliff again, now resolved to the fact that Nine had disappeared forever.
“I know.” He wrapped an arm around her waist. “We got lucky.”
She rolled her head against his shoulder and hugged him, still unable to believe the ordeal they’d endured. “How ‘bout you? Anything?”
“Fine.” Though it still pulsed with a dull pain, he ignored the injury to his knee. “You ready to go?”
“I guess.” She took a final look over the edge and held a hand to her mouth.
Finch began to coil the severed rope as she stood frozen in place. He wound three long loops around his extended arm.
“It reminds me of what happened to Kali Rood.”
“Yeah.” Finch’s voice came as a whisper. “Try not to think about it.”
She glanced away then turned back to him. “That’s what you always say … I just” — she shook her head with a grimace of despair — “I just don’t know how you get there. Like how —”
“You think of something else.” He knew he had to cut her off, change the subject or Eve might sink into a funk that would suck her down just as surely as Nine had disappeared into the abyss. “Like what should we do with the brass?”
“The brass?”
“Yeah.” He pointed to the bullet casings littering the ground. Nine’s pistol had spit up at least four brass casings in his last charge toward Finch. “Look, we can’t lose focus. Not now. You need to think like a cop again. Is it better to leave the brass lying around here, or do we pick it up?”
She tried to imagine the consequences either way. “How many are there?”
“Nineteen or twenty. Maybe more. A full clip plus whatever he blew off in the last ten seconds.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “Jeez. We’ll never find them now. Maybe in the morning. Unless we use the flashlights.”
“No way.” He slung the coiled rope over his neck and onto his right shoulder. “And first thing tomorrow we’re driving out of here. Besides, I’ve got to pull apart the rattle-trap we set up on the driveway.”
“Yeah. All right. That’s best.” She paused to reconsider the problem. “Okay. The driveway. How many shots did he fire down there?”
Finch tipped his head to one side and adjusted the weight of the rope. “Eight. That’s when I started counting.”
“Okay. Then we leave all the brass scattered up here. Hikers will probably find one or two pieces at a time. But unless there’s a forensic team assigned to it, it shouldn’t cause a problem.” Her voice was steady, reassuring. “But we have to grab all the brass from the driveway. Remove all traces that Nine was ever at the cabin. And do it right. If we’re lucky we can get fingerprint residuals from the casings.”
He knew she’d be all right now. She was thinking smart, looking ahead. Planning their moves.
“And DNA.”
“DNA?” he said. “It’s possible I guess”.
“You never know. But here’s the thing.” Her eyes narrowed. “What if the DNA on the brass matches what we find on one of the two cigarette butts?”
It took a second for the connection to click. “Then it proves that Nine killed Turino, too.”
“At the very least it shows they had a smoke together.”
“That’s close enough for me. Come on, let’s go.”
He took her hand and eased along the cliffside path and climbed down the ridge. Their slow recovery, Finch’s halting walk, the aftershocks that came from Nine’s attack — all of it made for a weary journey back to the shore and across the road to the driveway. When they reached the cabin, Finch felt exhausted. He checked his watch.
“It’s coming up to two thirty.”
“You want to leave the rattle-trap until the morning?”
“No. I’ll do it now.”
“All right, I’ll get a lamp from the house and look for the brass.”
Finch shook his head. It had been smart not to use their flashlights. “Probably better to wait for morning. I doubt there’s anyone awake within five miles, but we don’t want someone to see lights moving across the driveway this time of night.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” She scanned the gravel track leading back to the road. The glow from the stars filtered through the broken cloud cover casting a pale light on the ground. Two of the brass casings caught her eye. “Maybe I can find them all in the starlight. Let me get my gloves and a baggie.”
She returned from the cottage with a baggie dangling from her gloved hand. Five minutes later she’d found all eight shell casings. She brandished them in front of Finch as if they might be gold nuggets.
“Eight?”
“Yeah.” A half smile crossed her lips. “Can’t believe it, with that shooting going on, you counted right.”
“Like I said, you have to force yourself to think of something else.”
“Like how many times he missed? That’s not exactly something else.”
He shrugged, knowing she was right, but at the same time knowing that counting the gun flashes had kept him from sheer panic.
She considered his face for a moment, unsure what he might be thinking. Then a wave of exhaustion washed over her and she tugged the kitchen knife from her belt.
“I guess I can put this away now. Thank God. I don’t know if I could’ve used it.”
“You would if you had to.”
She understood that he was right but didn’t want to acknowledge it. Time to change the subject. “How ‘bout if I go warm up the bed?”
“Now there’s an idea.” He forced a smile to his lips and watched her walk toward the cabin. That’s what she often said to him at night back in San Francisco. He thought about their beautiful little house on Alta Street, just below Coit Tower. How he wanted to be there right now. Be in bed with Eve making love to her. But not tonight. There were still too many loose ends to tie together. Too many unknowns. Crazy how everything had fallen apart in just one day.
He paused to rub his hand against his knee. Then he started to unravel the trip wire from the first of two rebar stakes he’d hammered into the ground next to the driveway. He freed the cans from the trap and coiled the wire around his fist. Then he carried the wire, the coil of rope, and the rebar rods along the path past the cabin and set them were he’d found them in the shed. He lay the cans next to the back stair and made a mental note to add them to the trash in the morning. Before he went into the cabin he paused to urinate into the tall grass. A long, easy piss. As he relieved himself he wondered, what was it all about? Tony Turino and Nine — two strangers — coming for him. Both war vets. Sure, you might leave Iraq, but Iraq never leaves you.
Unable to answer his own questions, he limped through the back door of the cottage, heeled off his shoes, and stood in the kitchen. He heard Eve turning in the bed. Was she asleep? He hoped so. He placed the hatchet next to the kindling near the wood stove and stumbled toward the light in the bedroom. He sat on the bedside and peeled off his socks and pants. When he realized his eyes were already closed, he turned off the lamp and continued to undress in the dark. Better, this way, he mumbled to himself, not at all sure what he meant. But it didn’t matter. He eased under the covers, pulled the pillow under his head and waited for sleep to take him. They’d survived. He knew that much for certain, and for that they might be forgiven.
※ — THREE — ※
FINCH LUGGED HIS suitcases from his garage on Alta Street up to the second floor bedroom and swung t
hem onto the loveseat next to the window. Then he went back to his RAV4 and hauled the boxes of books and manuscripts that he'd transported from Mayne Island and set them next to his desk in his writing loft. He decided to sort out the books and papers tomorrow. He checked his watch. Last night he'd booked into a motel south of Portland and today he’d fought the traffic all the way down the I-5 into the city. He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted Eve: Made it. Where are you?
Within five minutes her text came in: My office. Heading home now. Will grab some take-out sushi. You in?
He smiled at that. Sushi, her standby take-out meal. He replied: Sure. Haven’t had any in 3 months.
He looked forward to seeing her. Since their retreat from Mayne Island, he'd thought of little else besides Tony Turino's earnest face as he stood on the driveway at the foot of the cabin stairs. “There's trouble coming at us. All of us.” Sure enough, within a day, Turino and Nine were dead.
At six a.m. on Monday, the morning following Nine’s plunge into the ocean, Eve had driven her car to the Mayne Island ferry landing, sailed back to the mainland, crossed the border and made her way down to San Francisco after a layover in Salem. Finch took an extra day to prepare his departure. He spoke to Annette Shatley and explained that he’d finished the work on his book and needed to return to the States a few weeks earlier than he’d expected. Then a little after seven p.m. on Tuesday, when he knew they would be on standby only, he phoned the RCMP office on Salt Spring Island and left a voice message for Corporal Simon Renzo advising him that Eve had left the country on Monday and that Finch himself would leave on Wednesday. He tried to keep his voice tone up-beat as he concluded the call. “And if you need any more info from either of us,” he’d said, “just give us a call, all right?”
While he waited for Eve, Finch sat at his desk with his phone in hand and keyed in the telephone number he'd seen on the inside of the Shotwell's matchbook. When he'd called on Monday, he’d been diverted to an automated message. Once again he heard the same message from the female voice robot: “We're sorry, but the number you've entered has not been assigned.”
Which meant that the three-month dormant cycle for the number had not yet passed. Someone — Turino? J.R? — had closed the account for the phone within the last ninety days. Unless he could access the directory database, the name attached to that number would remain a mystery.
He clicked on his laptop and googled Shotwell's. The street view images showed the building exterior on the corner of Twentieth and Shotwell Streets. He'd driven past it hundreds of times but never passed through the front doors. In the distance he heard the front door open and close. Eve called to him from the hallway below.
“I'm home.” Her voice rose up to him, a hint of despondency in her tone. “Where are you?”
“Up here. In the loft.”
As she climbed the stairs he closed his laptop. He would deal with Shotwell's tomorrow.
“You hungry?” Her face peered around the corner. She dangled a paper bag from one hand. The tips of her broken fingernails now bore twin bruises. “I’ve got a spicy tuna roll and two California rolls. Plus some miso soup.”
“Mmmm … my favorites.” He could see at once that something was troubling her. He took her in his arms and their eyes locked together. He took the takeout bag from her hand and set the package on the table.
“You still thinking about it?”
She glanced away and then stepped over to the window. “It’s worse than that.”
“Worse? What do you mean?”
“Ever since I left the cabin on Monday I can’t get it out of my mind.” She turned to face him. “How the hell did Turino know to follow me up to Canada?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been wondering too.”
“Somehow he heard about my travel plans. And who knew that? Only one person.” Her head tipped forward as she answered her own question. “Dixie Lindstrom.”
“Dixie?” Finch’s voice rose in surprise. Dixie was the long-standing receptionist at The Post. He’d known her for over ten years. Although she might be a bit chatty for a business requiring complete discretion, no one doubted her loyalty.
“Yeah. So I asked her this afternoon.” She plumped her fists on her hips and paced alongside the window overlooking Alta Street. “Apparently some guy had been asking to meet with me. Pressing her. But Dixie says she didn’t tell him anything.” She turned back to Finch. “It had to be Turino, right?”
Finch glanced away and combed his fingers through his hair. “Had to be. Somehow he used you to find me.”
She turned back to stare through the window. The street was dark, quiet. “All right. So I know I should have told you this, but I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone to know you were on the island. You know, so you could just finish your book in peace.” She left off as though she didn’t know how to continue.
“And?”
“And this guy — it had to be Turino, too — had been calling me for about a week. He wasn’t just calling Dixie. Both of us. Wanting to know how to reach you. Said it was urgent. Somehow he got hold of my cell number.” She turned to face him again and lifted both hands, palms up, a gesture of surrender. “Dixie swears she didn’t give my number to anyone. And I believe her.”
“No, she wouldn’t do that.” Finch could see how it might have played out. “Wait a sec, if he called you, you’ve got his number on your phone. Did you —”
“I already tried that. He must’ve used a burner phone.”
Finch’s eyes swept over the floor. Another dead end.
“I never saw him, either. At least I didn’t recognize him. But who knows, maybe he’d been stalking me the whole time. Damn, I led him right to your front door.” She knotted her fingers together as if to punish herself for such stupidity.
“It’s all right.” He walked to her and eased her into his arms again. “It’s over now. That part’s done,” he whispered. “There’s no changing it.”
“No, there isn’t, is there.” Her lips brushed his cheek. She slipped her hands across his back and pulled him close. “I wish we could make love right now. But I just can’t.”
“Yeah … well. Don’t know if I could either.”
“No?” She let out a breath of relief. “Then just hold me, will you?”
One of his hands drifted up and down her spine, caressing her. It wasn’t often that she let down her guard, a rare moment from this strong, intelligent woman — when all she could do was surrender to her feelings of betrayal, guilt and dread. Even with her confused emotions, he thought she was marvelous. The one.
※
Finch sawed off six, inch-think slices of bread from the crusty baguette and dunked them in an egg-and-milk mixture fortified with a shot of cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. When the bread was thick and soggy from the batter, he lay the dripping slabs on the hot griddle with his fingers. After the concoction began to hiss and pop, he placed a sheet of aluminum foil over the griddle and reduced the heat. He liked to cook his French toast until it was honey brown, the edges crisp but not singed. When they were perfect, he served two to Eve and put the remaining four on his plate. Meanwhile, Eve had prepared two cups of espresso.
She smiled, raised an eyebrow in a gesture of appreciation, her satisfaction with her mate now complete. “Another culinary home run. Good lord, what would Mom have said?”
Finch sat beside her. Her mother Kelly had died from a massive stroke last spring. She was quite a woman, headstrong and whip-smart. He’d met Kelly Noon only once. At the time she seemed delighted that her daughter had found someone able to handle Eve’s “plus-size personality” as she called it.
“She probably would have said, ‘Dig in.’ ”
She laughed. “You’re right.”
Finch poured a generous portion of maple syrup over his toast, cut a piece from a corner and nudged it onto his fork. They both began to eat in silence, savoring the first flavors of the meal.
After she’d finished one slice of toast
, Eve took a sip of coffee. “So. Ever since I left the island I’ve been trying to fit a few puzzle pieces together. You remember when we were on the point that night? You told me to think like a cop. Well, I have been.”
“And?”
“And if you look at what happened from a cop's perspective, you are drawn to one conclusion only. Murder.”
“Yeah, no question.”
“I’m talking about Nine.”
“Nine? What do you mean, murder? He stumbled off a cliff in the dark of night. Disappeared from the face of the earth.” Finch’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Besides, he fired almost twenty rounds at us from a nine millimeter, semiautomatic pistol with a noise suppressor screwed to the barrel.”
“True. And maybe, if anyone ever finds his weapon, maybe we can prove that. Look, to us it was self-defense. One hundred percent. But consider the facts. Did we lie in wait for him? Yes. Did we set up an alarm to alert us to his approach? Yes. Did we lead him to a place where we'd prepared a lethal ambush? Yes. We did all of that.”
Unsure how to respond, Finch stared at her a moment. “But —”
She held up a hand. “Furthermore, all of those preparations, even in our own self-defense, reveal premeditation.” She held his eyes and leaned forward an inch. “Will, any decent district attorney would argue it was first-degree murder.”
“No witnesses,” he offered, but knowing she had a point, he eased back in the chair to consider their situation. No matter what, if Nine were ever found and his death somehow linked to Finch and Eve, they would wind up in court. Either here or in Canada. They’d killed him, and depending on your legal perspective, they were murderers, too.
