“I was curious about the commotion up at the turnout. Thought this would be a good vantage point.” He motioned at the cove. “What happened, anyway?”
“Floater. They brought her up a while ago. You went to a lot of trouble to satisfy your curiosity. Not from around here, are you?”
“No.”
Gregory Cordova studied Guy, his dark eyes squinting. “You wouldn’t be a tourist. Don’t have the look. Businessman, passing through? Nope, somebody on a schedule doesn’t take the time to come out here just ’cause there’s a little commotion. Not a rancher or fisherman, either. That tan’s the kind comes from one of them salons they got now, and you don’t work with those hands.”
The old man was a good observer, even if he’d gotten the part about the tan wrong, and since he appeared to enjoy his guessing game, Guy remained silent.
“That accent — it tells me you come from back east someplace. New York?”
“Right.”
“So what’s a New Yorker doing here? A nosy New Yorker, no less. You a reporter?”
“Something like that.”
Gregory Cordova’s weathered face grew still, his eyes watchful. “What’s ‘something like that’ mean?”
“I’m a writer. Nonfiction books and articles.” Even now it felt strange to make the claim, having spent the past three years denying it. Turning his back on the work he loved because it gave him pleasure, and he hadn’t wanted any good feelings to intrude upon his grief. Hadn’t wanted them to dilute the guilt he felt over the way Diana died.
The old man was silent for a moment. Then he nodded, as if Guy had confirmed something he’d known all along. “You’re here to write about those young folks up the canyon,” he said.
Finally someone here had given voice to the tragedy. “Yes.”
“Folks’ve always been afraid that’d happen.”
“Why?”
“Why not? None of them want it stirred up. It’d raise all the old questions, make them look funny at their friends and neighbors again. Hell, they’ve used up so much energy trying to pretend it never happened, they’re plain worn out.”
“What about you, sir? Have you tried to pretend?”
“Not me. I feel for the folks involved, but it didn’t have anything to do with my life.”
“You sound as if you know a good deal about what happened.”
“Couldn’t help but know. Everybody does, on this stretch of the coast. And that canyon’s not all that far from here, entrance is up at the north end of my property. Nowadays I pretty much hole up here to home, but not back then. I had to pass by there all the time. Know as much as anybody does. More, maybe.”
Guy’s interest in what was happening in the cove faded for now. He asked, “Would you be willing to talk with me? Give me your impressions?”
The old man considered, long and hard. “I’m willing, Mr. Newberry. Sooner or later somebody’s got to take the skeletons out of the closet, dust them off. That somebody might as well be me.”
Rho was coming to a dead end on the Mercedes. She hunched in front of the computer, irritated with its slowness, and when it froze up and crashed — as it was increasingly prone to do — she let forth a howl of frustration.
Valerie’s hand touched her shoulder, and she started. She hadn’t heard her get up from her desk. “You need a break,” the clerk said. “Something to eat, too.”
“Don’t you go getting all maternal on me!” she snapped.
“Then do it for my sake. I’m tired of listening to you curse and moan.”
“I’ve been that bad, huh?”
“I’ve seen you worse. You’re still trying to locate the owner of that car, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I may be able to help you there. My nephew Ron, the one with the twins? He used to be a service manager for Euro Motors in Santa Carla.”
“And?”
“Mercedes is a very thorough company. What do you expect — Germans. Anyway, they keep detailed maintenance records on every car, track when they’re serviced, that sort of thing. If the owner took it to the dealership to be worked on, they’ll have his name and address in their nationwide data bank.”
“And of course it’s Sunday, when the service departments’re closed.”
“Yes, but there’s another way of getting the information. They also have a twenty-four-hour emergency road service. They can tap into the dealership records for you.”
“I mean it when I say this land’s cursed.”
Guy relaxed in the platform rocker next to the old man’s woodstove, coffee mug in hand. Gregory Cordova was having difficulty getting around to the subject of the murders, and Guy was content to let him ramble. Context, after all, was important.
“My grandparents had eight children. Four of them died in an influenza epidemic. My father had run-ins with the rumrunners who trespassed on the land during Prohibition. They poisoned his well and shot his sheep. My two boys didn’t want anything to do with the place. They bought a fishing boat and were drowned in a storm. My wife went crazy and killed herself. The daughters-in-law took my grandchildren and moved away. Now they’re scattered all over the map, my great-grandchildren too. Three years ago a trespasser who was camping up by the turnout didn’t put out his fire. Those burned-out trees you see are the result of it. If the Department of Forestry fire brigade hadn’t responded fast, the flames would’ve jumped the highway and spread all the way up to the ridge.”
“You and your family have had a long run of bad luck.”
“Don’t take me wrong. I don’t feel sorry for myself. Never did. You take what you’re handed and make do.”
“That may be your philosophy, but from what you’ve told me, the people around here didn’t make do after the murders.”
“No, sir, they did not. There was a lot of hysteria at first, but then they put a lid on it, screwed it down tight. Initial reaction was shock. So many dead, and there had to have been more than one killer. Folks wanted to blame the victims. Said they brought it on themselves. After all, they were outsiders, rich outsiders by our standards, and there was evidence one of them had been manufacturing drugs. A logical assumption, given the circumstances. But even so, laying blame was hard to do, given that two of them were little children. And when you saw pictures of Oriana Wynne, the six-year-old that survived... well, you couldn’t help but feel.”
“The little girl was hiding, never saw the killers?”
“Right. She said her mother heard shots down the canyon and sent her and her brother away from the house. He wasn’t so lucky. Anyway, everybody figured some drug-dealing strangers would be arrested soon, but when a month went by and nothing happened, folks started to look at each other and wonder. Tempers got short, words got exchanged in public and private, people started arming themselves against their neighbors. That winter was bad. Always are — cabin fever — but it was about the worst. When spring came, they were all ready to forget the murders ever happened. Only forgetting a thing like that takes a hell of a lot of work.”
“Any idea why the case was never solved?”
Gregory Cordova shrugged. “Was a big case, got nationwide publicity. Everybody wanted a piece of the pie — sheriff’s department, highway patrol, the feds. One hand didn’t know what the other was doing. Evidence got tampered with or lost. A lot of the blame got unfairly heaped on the officer who answered the radio call and found the first bodies.”
Guy felt the familiar excited prickle travel up his spine. “Who was that?”
“Sheriff’s deputy. Woman. Name of Rhoda Swift.”
Thirteen years ago. Before.
Thirteen years ago. After.
“You say ‘unfairly.’ Why?”