Anya lay crumpled on the living room floor, like a rag doll a child had discarded after play.
I staggered and dropped the towel bar, then leaned in the archway, staring at her prone figure.
“This is too much,” I said aloud. “Two people killed in two days. It’s too much.”
No, maybe she’s not dead. Go over and see if she’s dead.
“I can’t. I can’t take any more.”
Go on. You’ve got to.
“I can’t!”
Go!
I knelt beside her, pushing back her hair where it had come loose from the comb and fallen over her face. Her blood-suffused eyes stared sightlessly. Her face was a mottled purple. The bruises on her throat told me all I needed to know.
I got up and backed away, stumbling over a chair. How long had I been imprisoned in the bathroom? Ten minutes? Fifteen? How long since I’d heard the voices? I’d lost all sense of time. I’d been so preoccupied with the goddamned bird that I hadn’t noticed a thing.
It was important to stay cool now and figure out if the killer had gotten what Anya had been holding for Molly. Where would she have hidden it?
People hid things in strange and unsuitable places. Money in the mattress, marijuana in the Band-Aid box, jewelry in the cookie jar.
I began to search.
Anya had several dozen boxes of bird charms, like the ones she’d given Linnea and me, in the linen closet. The bathroom cabinet held enough toilet paper to supply a small army. She kept candy in the bedside table, extra handkerchiefs stuffed down beside the cushion of her chair, and an unusual number of her books were shelved upside down.
I moved stealthily, using pieces of Kleenex to avoid leaving fingerprints.
In the kitchen, I found the chocolate cake Anya had baked for Jeffrey. A bottle of Wild Turkey stood on the table beside it. Delicate plates, cut-crystal glasses and silver forks had been laid out.
What a pathetic fantasy the fortune teller had been enacting! After blackmailing Jeffrey into coming home, she had supposed they would have a festive little party and live happily ever after. I felt a rush of pity for her.
Anya’s cupboards were well-stocked with staples and cereals and canned goods. A few dishes stood clean in the drainer. Her appliances sparkled. The refrigerator contained milk and fresh vegetables and a bottle of good wine. The freezer held meat and TV dinners and a box of nylons.
Elated, I snatched it from the cold depths. There were three pair of a standard brand of knee-high stockings designed to be worn with pants.
This had to be it. But what on earth could it mean?
The telephone rang, shattering both the silence and my nerves. I stared at it, paralyzed, then jammed the nylons in my bag. I’d better get out of here fast. Hopefully I wouldn’t run into anyone on the stairs.
At Anya’s front door, however, I stopped. The drawer of the little table beside it was open. And empty. The killer had taken the fortune teller’s gun.
I went out and hurried downstairs, past my apartment, where the stereo once more blared. I’d report the murder anonymously from the phone booth on the corner, then be on my way. I should stick around, but I didn’t want to waste precious time explaining to the police what I was doing in the bathroom with a bird while Anya was getting murdered.
16
When I stepped out of the phone booth, the blue Blind Center van pulled up to the Albatross Superette. Neverman was at the wheel.
Just the man I wanted to see.
Mr. Moe came out of the store and fumbled with a set of keys. Neverman’s hand beat an impatient rhythm on the steering wheel.
I ran to where I’d parked my car before talking with Mr. Moe. Getting in, I twisted the rearview mirror until it showed the grocer climb into the van.
Neverman backed up, made a sweeping U-turn in the intersection, and drove past my parking space, headed south on Guerrero. I started up and followed.
At Army Street, the van turned left and led me toward the freeway. It went past the cluttered hump of Bernal Heights and swept under the interchange, ignoring the on-ramps. I tailed it along Army, deep into the industrial sector of the city, pulling back as traffic lightened.
At Third Street, the last major artery before the Bay, the van turned again. Here the traffic was nonexistent, and I had to drop back further. We were headed for the area known as India Basin, next to the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
In spite of the distance I had to maintain, the taillights of the van were easy to spot. They disappeared to the left as the clumsy shapes of World War II housing on the hill above the shipyard came into view. I speeded up and cruised by in time to see the van drive down a lane between two gas storage tanks. I backed up and followed the lane to a dilapidated cyclone fence. My headlights picked out a brick guard post with smashed windows. Blackberry vines and weeds had taken over here, snaking up the walls of the little gatehouse and twining in the lattices of the fence. A sign leaned at a crazy angle among them, as if it had fallen there:
The gate sagged open on broken hinges. Beyond it, a narrow road led between hulking factory buildings. Not a light showed. The van was nowhere in sight.
Quickly I pulled behind the guardhouse and cut off my motor. I unlocked the glovebox and took out my gun, slipping it into an outer compartment of my shoulderbag that acted as a holster.
The road on the other side of the fence was full of potholes. I walked far to one side, next to the wall of the factory. The buildings were ponderous brick structures with huge arching windows and doors. What moonlight filtered down into the chasm between them picked out jagged holes in the many-paned glass. Occasionally my feet crunched on shards of it as I made my way toward the open space at the other end.
There I paused. The moonlight provided better visibility here. It outlined heaps of rubble dotting a flat plain that ended at the shore of the Bay. A tortured wreck of a corrugated-iron building stretched its twisted beams toward the sky. From far to my left I heard a rhythmic clanking.
I peered around the building in the direction of the sound. The van was moving slowly onto a pier with a large warehouse at the end. The headlights bumped up and down with each clank. The pier must be an old one, resurfaced with metal slabs that had come loose.
Afraid to cross the open space where moonlight created a murky dusk, I kept to the wall of the old factory until I had no choice but to sprint toward the pier. There I hid behind an upright post. The van had stopped midway between me and the warehouse.
Mr. Moe’s slender figure emerged from the passenger side. He leaned back in, conferring with Neverman, then approached the warehouse. The lights of the van went out.
I slipped forward to the next post.
A small door in the warehouse opened. For an instant, a burly man was silhouetted against the light inside. He beckoned to Mr. Moe. The grocer entered, and the door shut. No light leaked from around its frame.
I kept creeping forward.
The faint orange tip of a cigarette glowed inside the van. Neverman’s head was outlined against the waters of the Bay. He had the radio tuned to a country and western station, and the monotonous thump of the guitars blended with the sloshing of the waves under the pier.
When I reached the post closest to the van, a sudden breeze brought me the acrid odor of marijuana smoke. It was a startling intrusion upon the smells of tar, creosote and stagnant sea water. I crouched behind the post, debating what to do next.
Neverman was obviously not at his most alert. Should I chance taking him by surprise?