“Deputy Gilardi becomes impatient when someone makes him an offer of information and then withdraws it,” she added, “but I am a very patient person.” To emphasize her point, she sat down across from him.
Zhi shrugged and looked away.
“I understand you’ve witnessed a kidnapping,” Rho said. “That’s a very serious crime. For information about it, I think my department would be inclined to persuade Fish and Game to do some very serious dealing.”
“I do not have much English,” Zhi said.
“You have enough to answer yes or no to my questions. Did this kidnapping occur here in Soledad County?”
No response, but why would he offer to make a deal with Wayne if it hadn’t?
“Did it happen this morning?”
Nothing.
“Last night?”
Zhi’s eyes moved toward hers, and she saw a nervous flicker.
“Was the victim a man?”
Nothing.
“A woman?”
Another flicker.
“Was the kidnapper—”
“I do not understand.”
“Mr. Zhi, was the kidnapper—”
“I want my lawyer.”
No fool, Mr. Zhi. He’d said the words that by law would force her to put an immediate end to the interrogation. Rho stood, leaned across the table till she loomed over him. “I suggest you tell your attorney what you know. He’ll be able to work out a deal that’s in your best interests.”
A kidnapping, she thought as she left the room. Here in the county. Last night. A woman. Witnessed by an abalone poacher who would’ve had to drive north on Highway 1 to one of the abandoned piers where the divers typically launched their boats. Who would’ve had to drive past Point Deception and a woman left vulnerable because of a broken-down car.
Guy stepped onto the porch of the hotel, bracing himself against the strong offshore wind. Behind him the waitress affixed to the glass door one of those signs that said “Open Again At” above a clock face with movable plastic hands, and pulled the shade behind it. Saturday brunch had not met with success, and the staff was forgoing lunch in favor of the cocktail hour.
Unpleasant woman, he thought, and the folks at the Sea Stacks were her equals. Come to think of it, most of the people he’d encountered during his brief stay were a shade off-putting, except for the pretty woman in the red pickup, and she’d tried to kill him before he’d even had his breakfast.
Town in trouble.
He remained on the porch for a few minutes, surveying the businesses strung out along the highway. Chevron station, unprosperous-looking real estate brokerage, supermarket, drugstore, cable TV office, hardware store, nursery, thrift shop, coin-operated laundry, propane firm. A couple of bar-and-grills that looked as if they catered strictly to locals. Post office was the busiest establishment at this time of day, but the people who greeted each other coming and going didn’t linger to talk.
The Sea Stacks was the only motel, and not a very good one. There were no real restaurants except the one in the hotel, no shops catering to tourists. Side roads lined with frame houses on small lots led up into the hills, where a TV satellite dish and a church spire rose above the pines. A mobile home park advertised gracious seaside living, but most of its spaces were empty.
There was evidence that the town had once seen, or been poised on the brink of, better days: A pier extended into the sea across from the hotel, its charter-fishing business boarded up; a weathered sign pointed the way to a yacht harbor. When he’d driven in the previous afternoon, Guy had noted a subdivision on the ocean side of the highway, streets with names such as Cormorant Way and Osprey Lane neatly laid out. Only three houses had been built there, and weeds grew through cracks in the pavement. Across from the subdivision the Pelican Cove Bed & Breakfast, a gabled, gingerbread-laden structure, looked to be in poor repair, and only two cars sat in its lot.
Town in trouble, and Guy was going to lay bare the reasons.
Two months ago, had anyone told him he’d now be standing on a hotel porch in a small coastal California town, shivering in the strong early October wind, he’d have thought them insane. His life was settled, and if he wasn’t happy with it, he wasn’t unhappy either. But then, at a dinner party at his literary agent’s home in SoHo, he’d been seated next to a man named Dunbar Harrison, and the whole thing was set in motion. Orchestrated, he thought, by his agent, Marta Backus, who was sick and tired of waiting for Guy to write another book.
It was ten years since his first portrait of a troubled town, set in an Alabama hamlet torn apart by a series of racially motivated killings, had made the best-seller lists. Six years since his much-praised study of a small mid-western town rocked by scandal and corruption capitalized on that first success. Four years since he stopped contributing articles to newspapers and magazines. Three years since he shelved his major work on an entire country in trouble. Three years since Diana died and everything solid and good went out of his life.
Three years, and Marta Backus apparently had decided it was time for him to get back to work.
Dunbar Harrison was a man Guy knew casually. His family had made their money generations ago in New England manufacturing, and Dun had attended all the right schools, excelling at nothing. For years he’d drifted on the fringes of New York’s theatrical world, contributing the occasional review to unimportant publications and backing off-Broadway plays that invariably did poorly. A pleasant enough man in his late forties, but he didn’t relate well to others, and his demeanor was curiously dispassionate. At least that was how most people saw him. To Guy, he seemed haunted.
Given his take on Harrison, he’d been surprised at Marta’s dinner party to hear Dun energetically lobby him to make Signal Port, California, the subject of his next book. It was his kind of material, he insisted. In what way? Guy asked. A mass murder had occurred there thirteen years ago, and had virtually destroyed the town. Hadn’t Guy heard about it?
He thought back to where he’d been then. In Asia, working on a major series of articles on the emerging Pacific Rim economy for the Times. As was typical, he’d buried himself in his project and paid little attention to what went on at home, certainly none to a crime in a California town he’d never heard of.
“No,” he said to Dun, “I haven’t. But don’t tell me any more. I’m not planning to write another book.”
“Once you know the story, I’m sure you’ll want to pursue it.”
“Sorry, Dun, I’m retired.”
“Please hear me out.”
Dun’s intensity intrigued him. A slight prickle traveled up his spine, the beginning of the old excitement when an idea was presented to him. He tried to suppress it. “Did Marta put you up to this?”
“Actually, I came to her with the concept. But she thinks it’s a surefire winner. Just listen—”
“No.” This time his refusal was less a rejection of the idea itself than an instinctive safeguard against it becoming contaminated. When he began entertaining the possibility of a story, he didn’t want to hear too much detail, particularly if it was biased, inaccurate, or incomplete. And given Dun’s excitement, his account was likely to be all three. Instead, Guy preferred to learn only the bare bones — who, what, when, where — then assign his research assistant to gather complete information. But before he tackled the volumes of material, he’d travel to the place armed with only a brief summary, and immerse himself in its culture. What he uncovered by spending time in the community and getting to know its people breathed life into his story and revealed facets of it that no amount of professional research could unearth.
Dun had no way of knowing that, however, and he flinched at Guy’s abruptness, looking away. When he turned back, Guy was shocked by the expression on his face. The intensity was gone, but instead of disappointment, it had been replaced by anguish.