“What’s happening there?”
“According to my girlfriend, Signal Port’s about to go nuts. She’s a waitress at the hotel, so she sees it all.”
“Civil unrest?”
“Could happen. This is a hard-drinking community, Mr. Newberry. A lot of the people’re hot-tempered because the local economy sucks. They use their fists to settle arguments, usually in the parking lots of the bars. And a lot of the pickups in those lots have gun racks. Draw your own conclusions.”
“I’d say the town’s in for a rough night.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you what — this canyon’s creepy, but at least it’s not dangerous. No matter what walks here at night, it’s a lot more benign than the folks in town.”
“Yeah, that’s my car,” Sean Bartlow said. “Where’d you say it is?”
Rho felt her heartbeat accelerate. She warned herself against becoming impatient with him. “Soledad County. It was abandoned on Highway One south of Signal Port.”
“The bitch! I told her to take good care of it.”
“Who, Mr. Bartlow?”
“...Friend of mine. I loaned it to her.”
“And her name is?”
“Why d’you need to know?”
“We’re trying to locate the driver on an unrelated matter.”
“What matter? What’d she do?”
“Please, Mr. Bartlow, her name?”
“...Chrys.”
“The full name, please.”
“I don’t know her last name. She’s just somebody I met at one of the clubs on the Strip.”
You’re lying, Rho thought. “You loaned your car to someone whose full name you don’t know?”
“Right.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“Only that she... had to visit her sick mother.”
Lie number two. “I see. Is this your license-plate number?” She gave that of the stolen tags on the Mercedes.
“No.” He rattled off the number of the plates that belonged on the car. “You’ve got the wrong person. That’s not my car after all.”
“It’s yours. The VIN matches. But someone’s switched the plates for stolen ones—”
“Oh my God!”
“Mr. Bartlow, we need your friend’s full name. If you don’t cooperate you could be charged with obstruction, maybe even as an accessory to a felony.”
“Felony! Yeah, okay then. Her last name’s Ackerman. Chrystal Ackerman. C-h-r-y-s-t-a-l.”
“And you know her from where?”
“Is this gonna get back to my father? I mean, technically he still owns the car.”
“There’ll be no need for that, providing you cooperate fully.”
Silence, except for Sean Bartlow’s harsh breathing. “Okay,” he said, “I didn’t meet her at a club. Chrys is a sex worker. Phone sex. I’ve been calling her for about a year, and a few months ago I talked her into coming to my place. She’s been coming ever since, and last weekend she asked to borrow the car because hers isn’t reliable enough for a long trip.”
“A trip to northern California?”
“Yeah.”
“But not to visit her sick mother.”
“... No. She said she had a business deal going, had to meet somebody up there to finalize it. She told me she’d cut me in if I let her use the Mercedes. I need the money. My father’s a tightwad.”
“All right, Mr. Bartlow, do you have an address and phone number for Ms. Ackerman?”
“I don’t know where she lives, but I have the number of her private phone.” He recited it.
“Thank you. Only a few more questions. Will you describe her, please?”
“She’s about five-five, long straight blonde hair, gray eyes, great body, butterfly tattoo over her right nipple.”
“Her age?”
“She said nineteen.”
“Anything else about her that you recall?”
“We talked fantasy, not reality.”
“Think, Mr. Bartlow.”
“Good Christ, what am I supposed to remember? She’s nothing but a whore!”
Nothing but a whore. Nothing but a woman with a broken-down car. Nothing but a floater.
But now Ms. Nothing had a name: Chrystal Ackerman.
Chrystaclass="underline" Before
Friday, October 6
11:19 A.M.
There it is, the place Jude calls my legacy.
Looks awful run-down, with those gates laying on the ground and monster weeds growing in the driveway. Funny, we must’ve driven through them dozens of times, but none of it looks familiar.
Go north, Jude said, park at the wide place by the speed-limit sign. Follow the little stream uphill to the well house. Cross the footbridge, and you’re there. Get in and out quick.
But Jesus, what if the stream’s dried up or the well house and the footbridge aren’t there anymore? I don’t remember them either.
Big blank, that whole year, even if I was six years old. Like a hole in my memory. Good thing too. What Jude told me is too awful, too depressing. I got enough bad memories without carrying that one around with me.
There’s the wide place. Pull in, get out, lock the car. Stream’s supposed to flow under the highway through a culvert. Yeah, I see it. Running downhill fast — clear, clean. There’s nothing like that in the desert. Or trees like these. And the air here — it almost hurts to breathe it.
Okay, I’m following the stream, but I don’t see no well house. Maybe — Wait, there it is. Ancient shed with a big wooden tank that looks like a grungy hot tub. Newer cinderblock tank next to it, covered with moss. Me and Eric and Heath and Oriana, we—
Oh!
We used to play in the well house. Climbed into that slimy tub and pretended we were at some Hollywood party. Eric’s idea. His dad was gonna be a hot shit screenwriter as soon as he got something written. Everybody’s folks were gonna do something important, get famous. Even Jude and Leo. Well, we know how that turned out.
Eric, Heath, Oriana. I remember them now. They’ve been dead longer than they were alive.
No, not Oriana. She survived. She was the lucky one. Well, maybe not so lucky. She was the only one...
Sunday, October 8
Evening
You want to tell me what happened here, Mr. Jacoby?”
Rho sat facing one of the proprietors of the Pelican Cove Bed & Breakfast in the inn’s high-ceilinged parlor. Kevin Jacoby was a slender, handsome man in his thirties, but at the moment his features were twisted in shame. Around them lay a scene of wreckage, and Jacoby’s partner, Brandon Fuller, was in the kitchen being treated by EMTs from the Life Support District for a broken arm and other less serious injuries.
Jacoby glanced toward the hallway. “Is he going to be...?”
“All right? Yes. And he doesn’t want to press charges against you, but I still need to hear in your own words what happened.”
Jacoby expelled his breath noisily. “God, I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I just snapped. I feel terrible about it.”
“I’m sure you do. What precipitated the snapping?”
“Well, we’d been drinking.” He motioned at a silver cocktail shaker that lay on the oriental carpet, leaking liquid and ice. “But that wasn’t really the cause of it.”
“What was?”
“The guests leaving. They were the last guests we had booked through the end of the year, and they were supposed to stay till Wednesday. I could tell they didn’t really like it here, and this morning they went to the hotel for brunch and heard about that murder. Came back, packed, and left. Afterwards Brandon got quiet and moody. Tonight when I finally pressed him, he said he didn’t think we were going to make it with the inn.”