Love, Al.
His name is Roberto, he’s a nice little boy.
Photographs.
Deadfall.
So sorry.
Fall how could you …
Love, Al.
Photographs.
Danny Martinez.
Crucifixes.
Roberto.
Lumber, remember the lumber?
I woke up. Sat up so fast that pain ripped through my side and I had to jam my teeth together to keep from crying out. I was soaked in sweat, panting as if I had run a long distance—and in a way, that was just what I’d done.
I had it now … some of it, maybe even most of it. And I knew where to look for the rest. Bad, worse than I’d thought, uglier than I’d thought. Simpler than I’d thought, too. That was why it had taken me this long to figure it out. Too many complications, and most of them false trails, miscalculations, red herrings. The forest for the trees.
What time was it? I looked at the clock, and the hands read 1:03. I stared at them; I had slept another five hours, slept away half of the day. Thursday—another Thursday. Everything of any magnitude on this case seemed to happen on Thursday, including its beginning and now maybe its ending.
I got out of bed, stripped off my pajamas in the bathroom—they smelled medicinal and sweaty, and so did I—and took a careful shower. Then I got dressed, went back to the bedroom. My notebook was on the dresser; Kerry had rescued it from what was left of the suit jacket I’d been wearing Sunday night. My car keys were there too, thanks to her and Eberhardt having retrieved the car. When I checked through the notebook I found that I hadn’t copied down Claudia Mitchell’s telephone number. I could call the office, get it from Eberhardt if he was in, but I did not want to talk to Eberhardt right now. So I dialed 411 instead. There was only one Claudia Mitchell listed—the right one, as it turned out.
Her sister wasn’t there, but she gave me a number where Ruth Mitchell could be reached. The former Mrs. Leonard Purcell did not want to talk to me at first, not about anything so personal as what I was asking; but I convinced her it was important, that it would help bring Leonard’s murderer to justice. She answered my questions finally. And they were the right answers, the ones I had expected to hear.
One more thing to check out, one very important thing. I did not have to go do it myself, I did not want to go do it myself; it would require work, the kind I was in no shape for—hard work, bad work. Call Ben Klein, I thought, lay it out for him, let him take it from here. But I couldn’t do that. It was my case now, mine to finish unraveling, mine to put an end to one way or another. Personally.
You sound like Mike Hammer, for Christ’s sake, I thought. What’s the matter with you?
I watched a man die, I thought, I felt him die. And they beat me up, they hurt me bad. That’s what’s the matter with me.
I got the car keys off the dresser, put on my old tweed overcoat to guard against a chill, and went out. Wishing I owned a gun to take with me, and damned glad I didn’t.
Chapter Twenty-two
The car didn’t handle right. When the trap car rammed it on Sunday night the impact had done more than just cave in part of the right front fender; it had screwed up the steering gear somehow, so that that side felt loose on turns and shimmied badly at speeds above thirty-five. I didn’t like driving it this way, but at the moment I had no choice. I held my speed down and put blind trust in the thing hanging together for another sixty miles or so.
I drove straight down the coast on Highway 1, taking it very slow through the bad snaky stretch at Devil’s Slide. The weather had turned poor again—heavily overcast, gusty winds, mist sailing in ragged streamers along the edge of the sea. There was not much traffic. I kept my mind blank as I drove; I did not want to think about what lay ahead. Time enough for thinking when I finished what I was on my way to do.
When I got to Moss Beach it was a little after three. I turned inland through the village, went out Sunshine Valley Road, picked up Elm Street a little while later. And a little while after that I was again looking at the deserted expanse of the Martinez farm.
I parked where I had the first time, in the middle of the dusty yard, and got out in slow, careful movements. Driving hadn’t bothered me too much, except for the jouncing of the car as I crawled over the rutted access lane; that had made my side and my head hurt. My joints ached, too, as I stepped away from the car. Old, I thought. Old and badly used.
The wind blew hard and cold here, made pained moaning noises in the surrounding woods, fiapped a loose shutter at one of the house windows, spun a rowel on a rusty weathervane atop the barn; I was glad I had thought to put on the overcoat. I stood looking around for a time. Everything seemed as it had been nearly a week ago. But looks can be deceiving; I ought to have remembered that little homily before, saved myself a lot of grief. They might have been here in the interim, one or the other or both of them. It depended on how secure they felt … no, on how secure she felt.