Susan Wynne had had eyes like Diana’s. How could someone look into such eyes with hatred and cruelty? And yet they had died in much the same manner.
Shaken by the thought, Guy set the photo down and picked up the second one, dated the year Susan died. In it, her hair was short and uneven, as if she’d lopped it off herself. Her skin was roughened and blotchy, her lips cracked and unsmiling. But her eyes were the worst evidence of change: dark pools in which nothing lived. Cold pools that offered nothing to anyone.
Drugs, Guy thought. Disappointment, too. And the daily grind of a primitive life in a damp canyon where everybody’s dreams had died.
Quickly he turned the photo over and went back to the profile.
Susan had difficulty finding suitable work after graduating from the culinary academy. The restaurant business was demanding for the mother of — now — two small children, and even though she could afford help, she missed spending time with Heath and Oriana. For a while she considered opening her own restaurant, but felt she lacked the necessary experience. Besides, Forrest’s once-promising career had foundered, and he needed her attention. Instead of a restaurant she decided to invest a portion of her trust fund in a property where she and he and their best friends could pursue their work in peaceful surroundings. Her old mentor in Santa Cruz had urged her to write a cookbook, and promised to recommend it to his publisher.
At this point the material in the profile grew thin, because of the isolated lifestyle the residents of the canyon adopted. Susan worked on the cookbook, as evidenced by stacks of files filled with recipes, text, and notes. She and Forrest also home-schooled the three children; investigators found workbooks and teaching aids in the geodesic dome. Layers of primitive, blood-spattered drawings were tacked to their refrigerator door by magnets.
The man with whom Susan had chosen to spend her life had little by way of appearance to recommend himself. The photograph attached to Forrest Wynne’s profile showed him to be tall and thin, with a concave chest and a small round head covered with hair that stood up in wispy tufts. As he posed on a downed tree trunk in the woods, he looked ill at ease and humorless.
The son of a Marin County attorney and his artist wife, Forrest sculpted from early childhood in sand, mud, modeling clay, and any other material that could be molded to the highly original and sometimes unrecognizable forms that peopled his imagination. Although his father disapproved of his plans to study art, his mother — a painter — encouraged him.
In Santa Cruz, Forrest blossomed. He’d been the odd duck in the elitist confines of Marin, but at college he found acceptance. And he found success in the form of a showing at a local gallery and the commission of the courtyard sculpture for the restaurant where he met his wife. He told friends that in Susan he’d found a soul mate: a woman who understood his work, overlooked his flaws, and would always be there for him. At first the years the Wynnes spent in San Francisco were good ones; he began to gain recognition and to land commissions. But then disaster struck.
One of his sculptures was accepted by the city arts commission for the lobby of the Moscone Convention Center — an interlocking series of arcs rising high, which he titled Hope. Unfortunately, an art critic for the Chronicle and not a few outraged citizens noticed its uncanny resemblance to an upended eggbeater, and the subsequent outcry over the squandering of public funds on something that looked better suited to the kitchen than to the convention center forced the commission to reverse their decision. It didn’t help when the newspaper revealed that Forrest’s wife had trained as a chef.
Devastated by the ridicule, Forrest sank into depression. Toward Christmas of that year he made a suicide attempt — half-hearted, but Susan knew that any attempt should be taken seriously. It was time, she told him, that they leave the city. He agreed; he had frightened himself and didn’t want to further hurt his wife and children.
The profiles contained very little information on those children. Because they were home-schooled they had no classmates or teachers to provide detail, and no one from the immediate area really knew them. Susan’s mother had only met her grandchildren once, at a stopover at San Francisco Airport. Dun Harrison never laid eyes on his nephew, and Oriana was a stranger to him when she came to New York after her parents’ death. Forrest’s father died long before either child was born, and his mother moved to an artists’ colony in Vermont. Friends and neighbors of the family in San Francisco described Heath as “serious” and Oriana as “sweet.”
Heath’s photograph confirmed the description. Facially he resembled his mother, but in expression he took after his father. He posed in front of the family’s geodesic dome, thin arms folded across the chest of his striped T-shirt, fine brown hair dusting his forehead, mouth set in a grim, straight line. The picture was dated only a few days before he died at age nine, and the boy looked as if he already knew the world to be dangerous and cruel.
There was a wire service photograph of Oriana. An older woman in a fur coat — presumably her grandmother — was ushering her toward a jetway at San Francisco International. The six-year-old had turned her head and was staring behind her, big anguished eyes peering from under their uneven thatch of bangs as life as she’d known it receded. It was the last photograph taken of Oriana Wynne; once she arrived in New York, she legally became Oriana Harrison, and the doors of wealth and privilege closed against the curious.
There was one other victim at the geodesic dome that night, Forrest’s younger sister, Devon. Twenty-five years of age, and described by friends as being addicted to abusive relationships, she’d been drifting around the country since she left college at nineteen. Her last trek had taken her across the country from Vermont, where she’d paid a visit to her mother. Devon — whose photograph showed a thin young woman with lank blonde hair and an old bruise below her left eye — would have done well to stay in the Northeast.
Rho had just radioed in a be-on-lookout on Virge Scurlock when Central Dispatch announced, “All units, vicinity Highway One and Point Deception, ten-five-zero-Frank. Repeat, all units—”
The Scurlock property was only a few miles from the scene of the fatal traffic accident, so she put on her pulsars and headed north. Virge, she thought. No, not Virge. Couldn’t be. Both trucks were still at the house.
The fog was thick by the sea, and it diffused the lights from the vehicles pulled onto the western shoulder, about half a mile south of the point. A pickup, two cars, a cruiser, no ambulance yet. Neither the pickup nor the cars looked as if they had been involved in the accident. She parked, got out, and hurried toward the cruiser. Wayne had been first on the scene. Like herself, he was giving his all to the job tonight, working — by now — a triple shift. The cruiser’s headlights revealed his sagging facial skin and reddened eyes. He hadn’t much more to give.
Wayne was talking with a man who leaned against the back of the pickup, ashen-faced and looking sick. Rho put her hand on the deputy’s arm. “What’ve we got here?”
“You still working, kiddo? Well, what we got is Samantha Lindsay. Her car skidded across the centerline, went into the ditch. It’s not a bad drop, but she rolled, and the convertible top was crushed. She probably died instantly. Tow truck and ambulance’re on the way.”
Rho nodded, noting the gouges the tires had cut into the damp earth beyond the shoulder. Her mind superimposed on them the image of Samantha’s perfect face. One careless moment at the wheel...