“It’s a living.” Rho couldn’t imagine doing anything in proximity to her mother, who had abandoned the family when she was only eight. “Any further responses to our requests for sightings of Ackerman?”
“Finally, yes. Everybody who called saw her at Point Deception. All of them drove past. All of them feel guilty about not stopping to help her. Have you located Samantha Lindsay?”
“No. There’s a be-on-lookout on her.”
“She’s probably just up to her usual tricks.”
“You don’t know that.”
Valerie shrugged, her expression indicating that it would take a great deal to convince her of a different scenario. “By the way, your father called earlier this evening. He wants you to stop by.”
“Why?”
“Just to talk.”
Which meant he was sitting around with too much time on his hands and drinking. Jack Antolini was long retired from the department on disability. He missed the job and had too few interests to keep himself occupied, so he drank, quizzed Rho about every aspect of her work, and generally was critical of her performance. By now he’d heard she was assisting on the Ackerman case, and must be chomping at the bit to hear every detail.
“If he calls again,” she told Valerie, “tell him I’m very busy, but I’ll try to stop by this week.”
“He’s your father and a lonely man, Rhoda. How much trouble would it be?”
“I said I’d try, didn’t I?” She set the message slips in the box she shared with Wayne, and when she turned saw Valerie watching her with an analytical expression. “What?” she snapped.
“Well, don’t bite my head off!”
“Sorry. It’s late and I’m tired.”
“I guess you are. How’re you holding up otherwise?”
“Fine. I’ve been taking my vitamins like a good girl.”
“I don’t mean physically.”
“How, then?”
“Well, this is the first murder of a non-domestic type you’ve had to handle since. It must raise some painful memories.”
Since. Spoken as if the word were capitalized, no further explanation needed. Valerie, like the rest of them, couldn’t put a name to what had happened thirteen years ago. Rho felt a sudden emotional shift. No, something more akin to an emotional earthquake. She was sick of the euphemisms and evasions. Possibly had been sick of them for a long time.
“Why don’t you just come out and say it?” she asked.
“Say what?”
“Since eight people were slaughtered in Cascada Canyon.”
The harshness of the words echoed off the institutional green walls. Valerie put a hand to her lips. When the phone rang, she stared distractedly at it before picking up.
“Yes, Will,” she said. “...Oh no!.. Deputy Swift’s here. I’ll send her... Yes, I’ll be glad to.” She replaced the receiver and spoke to Rho without meeting her eyes. “That was Will Scurlock. Virge is missing too.”
The knot of anxiety that had been present in Rho’s stomach since early morning gave a painful tug. “Since when?”
“He’s not sure. He fetched her from the hotel around two. She’d been drinking heavily, so he took her home, poured her into bed. Checked on her at four, and she was asleep. Then he worked on some plans, had supper, watched a couple of movies on TV, and fell asleep in his chair. When he went to the bedroom a few minutes ago she was gone, and one of her jackets was missing from the coatrack. Poor man’s beside himself.”
“I’m on my way.”
Guy set his file box on the motel room bed and pulled out the one labeled “Victims.” Then he sat down with it at the table in front of the glass door leading to the small balcony. Although it was well past midnight, he wasn’t tired. An earlier conversation with Aaron Silber had, in fact, invigorated him. Aaron confirmed that Susan Harrison Wynne’s mother had been paying the taxes on the Cascada Canyon property until her death late the previous year, when her son, Dunbar, took them over. That issue — and Dun’s motives — clarified, Guy decided it was time that he became better acquainted with those who had died there.
He paged through Aaron’s summary of the bare facts. The two couples who lived in the canyon had become friends while students at the University of California at Santa Cruz, an innovative campus employing such practices as giving written evaluations, rather than grades, for course work. Members of a clique who all had artistic aspirations, they thrived in the sheltered atmosphere of the wooded hills above the midstate coastal town, but not in the real world they faced after graduation. Their chosen fields were tough to break into and highly competitive; graduate schools looked askance at transcripts that could not be boiled down to a standard grade point average. Even mundane jobs were hard to find, and, having been raised in well-to-do households where their every need was catered to, they lacked the drive to pursue them.
Several years after graduation Susan and Forrest Wynne got together with their best friends, Claudia and Mitch Blakeley. The purpose of their reunion was serious: They’d all concluded they were dissatisfied with how their lives had turned out. Susan and Forrest were struggling to no avail at their professions. For Claudia and Mitch, real estate and banking had grown tedious, as had juggling their employers’ demands with raising their young child. But now Susan Wynne had a solution to these problems.
Susan was about to come into control of a substantial trust fund established for her by her paternal grandfather. She proposed that the four of them find a large tract of country property, which she would buy as a retreat where they could live and pursue their artistic endeavors. She would pay for putting in a septic system, well, and whatever other utilities were necessary, and they would help each other build their homes. The Blakeleys would only be required to contribute their labor and the materials for their house.
Claudia and Mitch loved the plan. They’d been saving toward a home of their own, but real estate prices were rising faster than the amount in their passbook. Materials for a small house were within range, however, and the idea of forming an artists’ colony with their best friends intrigued them. Of course, the land would have to be in an area where both property prices and the cost of living were low, and even then money would be tight, as the terms of the trust stipulated Susan could only withdraw so much cash per year. But the two couples — who held an exalted opinion of their own talent — assured one another that once they got on with their real work, fame and fortune would not be far off.
Claudia, a real estate agent, was put in charge of a statewide property search, and three months later she reported that she’d found the perfect place, a secluded tract in Soledad County called Cascada Canyon.
Will Scurlock had always impressed Rho as a man who preferred to think before he spoke and consider the consequences before he acted. But tonight — or this morning, as it was now nearing one o’clock — he was anything but self-contained. As she examined the bedroom from which his wife had vanished an indeterminate amount of time before, Will babbled and ranted and occasionally smacked his big fists against the wall.
Virge, he claimed, had been forcibly taken from their bed.
Then why, Rho countered, was her down jacket missing from its peg on the hall coatrack?
Well, maybe it wasn’t missing. Maybe it was in one of the trucks or at the dry cleaner.
But hadn’t Will said earlier that Virge had been wearing it when he brought her home from the hotel? And that he’d hung it up himself?
Okay, maybe whoever took her had sneaked into the hall for the jacket. He’d been watching TV, napping. He wouldn’t’ve noticed. Besides, Virge would never have gone out at night by herself — not with a killer on the loose. Someone had taken her, and he—