"You would enjoy Chamisal, Penasco, Rodarte, so many beautiful and mysterious places."
She considers her words before she speaks. "Let's hope I live to see them."
He meets her stare directly. His eyes are the blue of a somber sky that suggests an impending storm even in the absence of clouds.
In a voice still softer than usual, not in a whisper but with a quiet tenderness, he says, "May I speak to you in confidence?"
If he touches her, she will scream until she wakes the others.
Interpreting her expression as consent, he says, "There were five of us, and now just three."
This is not what she has expected. She holds his gaze though it disturbs her.
"To improve the split from five ways to four, we killed Jason."
She cringes inwardly at the revelation of a name. She doesn't want to know names or see faces.
"Now Johnny Knox has disappeared," he says. "Johnny was running surveillance, hasn't called in. The three of us — we didn't agree to improve the split from four. The issue was never raised."
Mitch, she thinks at once.
Outside, the tenor of the wind changes. Ceasing to shriek, it rushes with a great shush, counseling Holly in the wisdom of silence.
"The other two were out on errands yesterday," he continues, "separately, at different times. Either could have killed Johnny."
To reward him for these revelations, she eats more chocolate.
Watching her mouth once more, he says, "Maybe they decided on a two-way split. Or one of them may want to have it all."
Not wishing to appear to sow discord, she says, "They wouldn't do that."
"They might," he says. "Do you know Vallecito, New Mexico?"
Licking chocolate from her lips, Holly says, "No."
"Austere," he says. "So many of these places are austere but so beautiful. My life changed in Vallecito."
"How did it change?"
Instead of answering, he says, "You should see Las Trampas, New Mexico, in the snow. A scattering of humble buildings, white fields, low hills dark with chaparral, and the sky as white as the fields."
"You're something of a poet," she says, and half means it.
"They have no casinos in Las Vegas, New Mexico. They have life and they have mystery."
His white hands come together, not in contemplation, certainly not in prayer, but as though each possesses its own awareness, as if they are pleased by the feel of each other.
"In Rio Lucio, Eloisa Sandoval has a shrine to Saint Anthony in her small adobe-walled kitchen. Twelve ceramic figures arranged in tiers, one for each child and grandchild. Candles every evening in the vespers hour."
She hopes that he will make new revelations about his partners, but she knows that she must appear discreetly intrigued by everything he says.
"Ernest Sandoval drives a '64 Chevy Impala with giant steel chain links for a steering wheel, a custom-painted dashboard, and a ceiling upholstered in red velvet."
The long fingers with spatulate pads smooth one another, smooth and smooth.
"Ernest is interested in saints with whom his pious wife is unfamiliar. And he knows…amazing places."
The Mr. Goodbar has begun to cloy in Holly's mouth, to stick in her throat, but she takes another bite of it.
"Ancient spirits dwell in New Mexico, since before the existence of humanity. Are you a seeker?"
If she encourages him too much, he will read her as insincere. "I don't think so. Sometimes we all feel…something is missing. But that's everyone. That's human nature."
"I see a seeker in you, Holly Rafferty. A tiny seed of spirit waiting to bloom."
His eyes are as clear as a limpid stream, but cloaked by silt at the bottom are strange forms that she cannot identify.
Lowering her gaze, she says demurely, "I'm afraid you see too much in me. I'm not a deep thinker."
"The secret is not to think. We think in words. And what lies beneath the reality we see is a truth that words can't contain. The secret is to feel."
"See, to you that's a simple concept, but even that's too deep for me." She laughs softly at herself. "My biggest dream is to be in real estate."
"You underestimate yourself," he assures her. "Within you are…enormous possibilities."
His large bony wrists and long pale hands are utterly hairless, either naturally or because he uses a depilatory cream.
Chapter 40
With hobgoblins of wind threatening at the open window in the driver's door, Mitch cruised past Anson's house in Corona del Mar.
Large creamy-white flowers had been shaken from the big magnolia tree and had blown in a drift against the front door, revealed in a stoop lamp that remained on all night. Otherwise, the house was dark.
He did not believe that Anson had come home, washed up, and gone happily to sleep almost at once after killing their parents. He must be out somewhere — and up to something.
Mitch's Honda no longer stood at the curb where he had left it when he had first come here at the direction of the kidnappers.
In the next block, he parked, finished a Hershey's bar, rolled up the window, and locked the Chrysler Windsor. Unfortunately, it drew attention to itself among the surrounding contemporary vehicles, museum grandeur in a game arcade.
Mitch walked to the alleyway on which Anson's garage had access. Lights blazed throughout the lower floor of the rear condo above the pair of two-car garages.
Some people might have work that kept them busy just past three-thirty in the morning. Or insomnia.
Standing in the alleyway, Mitch planted his feet wide to resist the rushing wind. He studied the high curtained windows.
Since Campbell's library, he had entered a new reality. He saw things more clearly now than he had seen them from his former perspective.
If Anson had eight million dollars and a fully paid-off yacht, he probably owned both condos, not just one, as he had claimed. He lived in the front unit and used the back condo for the office in which he applied linguistic theory to software design, or whatever the hell he did to get rich.
The toiler in the night, behind those curtained windows, was not a neighbor. Anson himself sat up there, bent to a computer.
Perhaps he was plotting a course, by yacht, to a haven beyond the authority of all law.
A service gate opened onto a narrow walkway beside the garage. Mitch followed it into the brick courtyard that separated the two condos. The courtyard lights were off.
Bordering the brick patio were planting beds lush with nandina and a variety of ferns, plus bromeliads and anthuriums to provide a punctuation of red blooms.
The houses to the front and back, the tall side fences, and the neighboring houses crowding close on their narrow lots all blocked the wind. Though still marked by blustering crosscurrents, a more genteel version slipped down the roof slopes and danced with the courtyard greenery instead of whipping it.
Mitch slipped under the arching fronds of a Tasmanian tree fern, which swayed, trembled. He crouched there, peering out at the patio.
The skirt of broad, spreading, lacy fronds rose and dipped, rose and dipped, but the patio was not entirely screened from him at any time. If he remained alert, he couldn't miss a man passing from the back condo to the front.
In the shelter of the tree-fern canopy, he smelled rich planting soil, an inorganic fertilizer, and the vaguely musky scent of moss.
At first this comforted him, reminded him of life when it had been simpler, just sixteen hours ago. After a few minutes, however, the melange of odors brought to mind instead the smell of blood.
In the condo above the garages, the lights went out.
Perhaps assisted by the windstorm, a door slammed shut. The chorus of wind voices did not entirely cover the thud of heavy hurried footsteps that descended exterior stairs to the courtyard.