A curiosity seeker? Someone with a taste for the macabre? Probably. When? Not recently, but perhaps within the past year.
He went back to the main room and stood in its center. Soon he felt a sensation of the blood running slower in his veins. Time both shrank and telescoped: He was here at this very minute; he was here on the night of the murders; he was caught in between, as the years went by and nothing changed. Never had he felt so affected and vulnerable at a crime scene, and while it unnerved him, he decided to go wherever his emotions would take him.
He closed his eyes to the terrible sights and opened his other senses.
Hear: silence. Feeclass="underline" cold. Smelclass="underline" dry rot and the taint of old fires. Taste: dust.
Try again.
Hear: wind whistling. Feeclass="underline" draft through leaky window frame. Smelclass="underline" ashes stirred by downdraft in woodstove. Taste: ashes and dust.
Go deeper.
Hear: cries, faint. Feeclass="underline" fear. Smelclass="underline" fear. Taste: fear.
Now you’re getting it. Once again.
Hear: echoes of gunshots.
Feeclass="underline" panic.
Smelclass="underline" blood.
Taste: my own blood where I’ve bitten my lip.
He opened his eyes, moved swiftly toward the door, and stepped out on the porch, where he sucked in deep breaths of clean air. He’d been in the house longer than he realized, and dusk had fallen. Nothing moved there in the shadows, nothing made a sound except the wind whistling deep into the canyon. He wanted to follow it, visit the other scenes, but that was impractical and, besides, he’d always had the sense to know his own limits. Tomorrow he’d return, but for now he’d gotten far more than he came for.
The fog ushered in the night, wiped out all traces of the fine weather. Rho switched on the cruiser’s headlights, and their beams hit a solid wall of white boiling up from Schooner Cove. Then, as the road curved inland, the fog was gone and every striation in the bark of the tree trunks stood out in sharp relief. She’d lived on this north coast her entire life, yet the patterns of the fog still fascinated her. Why, for instance, should Schooner Cove draw it in so heavily, while Pelican Cove did not? Why, even when the rest of the shoreline was socked in, were the coves north of Deer Harbor clear, almost tropical? She knew the scientific answers, of course, but she liked to think there were less understandable forces at work as well.
Why did a young woman have to die?
The question came from nowhere, so strident that she felt as if someone else had asked it out loud. She wanted to ignore it, concentrate on the mundane aspects of her patrol. But there was no ignoring it on what promised to be a dark, uneasy night.
The radio calls she’d been listening to described the local population’s state of mind: nervous reports of prowlers and the discharge of firearms; two domestic disturbances; a 911 disconnect; two D&Ds; one DUI. A heavy volume of calls for any given time period, and particularly for Sunday. The citizens of Signal Port and environs were acting out their paranoia.
Rho turned up the volume on her radio. She licked dry lips, wished she’d remembered to fill her water bottle. Then she thought, Stop kidding yourself. What you really want is a drink.
She wouldn’t dream of drinking while on duty, of course. Even in her worst days she’d managed to abstain long enough to work her shift sober. Now when the craving came over her, she could usually ignore it and satisfy it later with a glass of wine or beer in good company. But tonight it demanded full attention, and she knew if she later gave in to it, she wouldn’t stop with one drink, and she’d take that one and the others that followed while alone.
She tried to concentrate on how she would handle Sean Bartlow, the current owner of the Mercedes, when she reached him at his number in Las Vegas. She tried to think of ways the department could calm and reassure the area’s troubled populace. But the craving swelled, the prospect of a drink floating in her consciousness like a cloud that she could use to blot out everything, past and present.
When he reached the tree where the downed utility wire was tangled, Guy stopped and listened. For half a minute he’d been aware of sounds coming from the slope that led up to the redwood grove. Now he heard nothing but the wind. He went on toward the highway, hands deep in his jacket pockets.
More sounds: crackling in the underbrush, then footsteps on the driveway behind him. He glanced back, but could see no one in the gloom. He rounded the curve where the old sedan crouched under its shroud of needles and moved to one side. The footsteps came on, and a tall figure appeared. Six foot four, maybe five, and slender. A man wearing a peaked cap.
Guy waited till the man was abreast of him, then stepped forward and shone his flashlight on his face. “Hold it right there.” The air of authority in his voice — he might’ve hated shore patrol duty, but he’d acquired certain assets during his tour — brought his pursuer up short.
“Jesus, man, you scared me!” the stranger exclaimed.
Guy relaxed and took inventory of him: hiker’s clothing, complete with small backpack and knobby walking stick; neatly trimmed beard, dark brown shot with gray; small nose, slightly skewed as if it had been broken and not set properly; dark deep-set eyes; old scar over right brow; peaked wool cap covering the hair; startled look turning to a scowl.
“You’re trespassing, man,” his pursuer added.
Guy was prepared for such a challenge. “No, you’re trespassing.”
“Huh?”
“That’s right.”
The scowl melted into bewilderment. “Who the hell’re you?”
“Name’s Guy Newberry. I was sent out from New York by the owners to check on the property.” And in a way, he had been.
“What owners?”
“People name of Harrison. Now, who are you?”
“Clay Lawrence. I live on the other side of the hill.” He motioned toward the grove.
“I thought people name of Scurlock own that land.”
“They do. I’m their tenant, rent a little cabin from them.”
“And what’re you doing over here?”
Clay Lawrence shrugged. “I like to watch night come on from the redwoods. Technically that grove’s part of this property, but there’s nobody here to care. I saw you walking along the drive and... Well, you must know what happened here.”
“That was thirteen years ago.”
“Yeah, but in this canyon it feels like it was yesterday. Have you looked around?”
“Some.”
“Weird, isn’t it? Creepy. Nobody ever comes here, not even kids looking for a place to drink or screw.”
Guy thought of the footprints in the dust at the Blakeley house. “You sure of that?”
“Reasonably. Folks in town call it an evil place, when they mention it at all.”
“What about you?”
“Do I think it’s evil? As much as a place can be, I guess.”
“No, I mean, do you come here often? Have you looked around?”
“I did when I first moved into the cabin, back before I knew about those murders. But never again. No way.”
“You go inside any of the buildings?”
“Uh-uh. That’s criminal trespass.”
“But you’re trespassing on the land now.”
Lawrence shifted from foot to foot. “It doesn’t seem like it. I mean, land’s land. Houses, that’s personal.”
“So why’d you follow me?”
“I don’t know, I just did. After what happened today... You know we had another murder?”
“The girl they fished out of Lantern Cove? Yes. Don’t tell me you thought I was the killer, hiding out where nobody ever goes?”
“Look, man, I didn’t think. It just seemed like the thing to do. And if you find my behavior weird, you oughta take a look at what’s going on in town.”