“Yes.”
“I don’t buy it,” I said.
“Dick, it could’ve been Mateo Munoz who killed her. You can’t deny the possibility.”
“I don’t deny it. If it was Munoz, we’ll find it out once he’s in custody. But first he’s got to be found, and we’re wasting time standing around here talking about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just wanted you to know how I feel.”
“Okay. Now I know.”
Inside the cruiser I radioed in to Lou Files, who works the desk on Sundays. I gave him a fast rundown and then a series of instructions. Two officers to be dispatched immediately to meet us at Pomo General. Notify Leo Thayer and request deputies to stake out the lodge in case the accessory decided to show up after all, and to gather evidence for lab analysis. Notify Burt Seeley; he could take care of alerting the D.A. Pull the jacket on Mateo Munoz and notify the FBI office in Santa Rosa that he was wanted on a kidnapping charge, then put out a pick-up-and-hold order on him through the Justice Information System’s computer hookup. Lou didn’t waste time with questions; he said he’d handle it and signed off.
I cradled the handset. For a few seconds I sat motionless, feeling suddenly limp. Tension release. It happens like that sometimes, all at once.
Audrey touched my arm. “Are you all right, Dick?”
“Just getting a second wind.”
I reached out to the ignition. She sat back, then turned her head to look at Faith through the steel mesh that bisects the interior. I found myself doing the same in the rearview mirror. He sat in the middle of the seat, ramrod straight; his face was still tight-pulled, expressionless. Pile of stone, I thought. All except for his eyes. They were the only things about him that seemed alive. And I didn’t much like what I saw in them.
Not hate, not anger, not fear — nothing as simple as any of those emotions. They were the eyes of a hunted and trapped animal, the kind of animal that would do anything, even chew off its own leg, to be free again.
Jay Dietrich
There weren’t any other reporters at the police station when Chief Novak radioed in his bombshell. Nothing had happened on the Carey homicide in over thirty-six hours, and with there being no connection between it and the Banner shooting, the newspapers and TV stations had shifted their people elsewhere. The only reason I was at the station was my promise to Mr. Kent to stay on top of the situation. I’d finished my personal account of the Carey murder last night, and this morning I’d made a few improvements and then faxed hard copies to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and both the Chronicle and Examiner in San Francisco. So I was just hanging around, waiting for something to happen and watching the 49ers beat the Saints on Jake Maddow’s portable TV. I went to school with Jake and we’re pretty good friends, otherwise he wouldn’t have let me watch the game with him while he was on station duty. The Chief didn’t like his officers lazing around even when things were Sunday slow, but he hadn’t been in all day and Jake didn’t have any work to do, so he figured there was no harm in sneaking his portable in. He’s a big 49ers fan, Jake is.
Anyhow, when Lou Files came hurrying in to tell Jake the news I was right there with my ears flapping. Jake rushed out on orders to meet the Chief and his prisoner at Pomo General, and Mr. Files went to do whatever else he’d been told to. I tried to pry more details out of him, but he wasn’t talking. He said I should keep the news under my hat for the time being, but since I don’t wear a hat and he didn’t wait for an answer, I didn’t feel honor-bound to obey him. News is news, after all. And the public has a right to know when something big breaks. Any good reporter knows that.
Besides, this story was all mine. My first exclusive. If the capture of John Faith and all the other sensational stuff that went with it didn’t earn me a job on a bigger paper than the Advocate, I might as well give up on a career in journalism and join Pop in his printing business.
I drove straight home and made quick calls to the Chronicle and Examiner and PD and didn’t tell any of the editors I talked to what’d happened until I had a promise from each to run a bylined story by me, either the one I’d already faxed or the next one I wrote on John Faith’s capture. That’s what Mr. Kent would’ve done. He always said to be aggressive, don’t take any junk from anybody. Only, he used a stronger word than junk. He may have a drinking problem and be a curmudgeon and have a cynical outlook on things, but he knows the newspaper business backward and forward. He worked on a lot of sheets in his day, including some major ones like the Houston Chronicle and the Pasadena Star.
I owed him a lot, even if he did treat me like a dumb kid sometimes, so before I headed out again for the hospital, I took the time to ring him up and tell him the news. He didn’t sound too happy about it, but that’s Mr. Kent for you. He never sounds happy about anything. He did say before we hung up that I could write all the news accounts and sidebars on the Carey homicide and Faith capture for the Advocate, so that’ll be one more feather in my reporter’s cap. I don’t care what his problems are or what anybody says about him, underneath it all he’s a great guy.
Douglas Kent
So storm’s murderer was still alive and kicking. John Faith, whose name suited him about as well as a virginal white gown would have suited his victim. The strange beast. The stranger in our midst. Bigfoot. The Incredible Hulk. Frankenstein unbound. The destroyer of beauty, the extinguisher of flames, the slayer of dreams. Alive, alive-o.
I built myself another vodka-with-a-hint-of-orange-juice and returned to the sofa in the parlor, on which I’d been sprawled before the call from Jaydee. Roscoe was on the coffee table, comfortably arranged on a copy of the current Advocate (whose cheap ink was doubtless staining his smooth walnut butt, no sexual connotation intended). As I stretched out again and lit an unfiltered wheezer, he studied me critically with his lone eye.
“You’re glummer than before, pal,” he said. “Bad news?”
“The worst. The son of a bitch is still alive.”
“Which son of a bitch is that?”
“John Faith, naturally.”
“How is that possible?”
“All Jaydee knows is that Chief Novak found him over at the Nucooee Point Lodge and arrested him.”
“Look on the bright side,” Roscoe said. “He’ll probably get the death penalty.”
“Au contraire. Prosecutors need to prove special circumstances to plunk a murderer in the hot squat nowadays.”
“‘Hot squat’ is slang for the electric chair,” he pointed out reasonably. “California’s preferred method of offing the offers is the gas chamber.”
I didn’t feel like being reasonable. “I don’t feel like being reasonable,” I said, blowing carcinogens in his eye, “so don’t give me any bullshit semantic lectures.”
“Bullshit dialectical lectures.”
I sighed. “You’re a gun, for Christ’s sake. Guns aren’t supposed to be the voice of reason.”
“Well, excuse me. Where were we?”
“Special circumstances. Too hard to prove in a case like this. Crime of passion. Twenty years to life, that’s all the cretinous bastard will get in a court of law.”
“Sad but true. Ergo?”
“What the hell do you mean, ergo?”
“Sometimes a great notion, pal.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I have a great notion.”