The door opened and Valerie stuck her head in. “What are you doing here, pray tell?”
“Enjoying some privacy.”
The clerk bristled. “Well excuse me.”
“It’s not you I’m trying to avoid.”
“Oh. He is acting bearish today.”
Rho nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more about Wayne. “Nothing from Grossman?”
“No.”
“I wonder why he went to Santa Carla.” Getting an ID from Lily on Ackerman’s purse could have been accomplished by a less senior officer.
“Well how should I know?” Valerie said. “I’m just the clerk here.” She left the door open and went back to her desk.
Probably Grossman had trampled on Valerie’s already tender feelings, Rho thought. He could be abrupt, and he didn’t understand what an institution she was, both here at the substation and throughout the town, where people were fond of saying, “You don’t know? Ask Valerie Middleton. She knows everything.”
Rho remained where she was, content to sit alone in the dimly lit room. From up front she could hear Wayne cursing; probably the old printer, which budgetary constraints prevented them from replacing, was out of ink. She tensed as his footsteps shambled down the hall. He stomped through the door, not seeing her as he headed for the cabinet where the cartridges were kept, then stopped short.
“What the hell’re you doing in here, Swift? Why aren’t you in Santa Carla with your buddy Grossman?”
“I wasn’t asked along. And he’s not my buddy.”
“Looked like it this morning at Quinley’s. Where’ve you been since then?”
“Interviewing a couple of witnesses about Ackerman. They weren’t very helpful.”
“Not like my sister, right?”
“Wayne, I’m sorry about Lily.”
“Don’t be. She deserves to pull some jail time. Give her a good scare, maybe knock some sense into her. What’d the techs turn up at Quinley’s?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stay around to see.” The room seemed hot now and Rho felt claustrophobic. She wished he’d take his cartridge and get out.
Wayne appeared to have no intention of moving. He studied her with narrowed eyes for a moment. “It took all that time to conduct a couple of routine interviews?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or maybe they weren’t so routine.”
“What does that mean?”
“I heard Grossman talking to somebody on the phone when he got back from Quinley’s. He said you were following up a lead on the canyon murders.”
Dammit! There could be only one reason Grossman had talked about that in Wayne’s hearing: He wanted to prompt Wayne to ask her about the interview with Cordova, in the hope he’d somehow implicate himself. Unfair to take advantage of a relationship that went back for more than a decade. And, thinking of fairness, didn’t she owe it to Wayne to tell him what she knew? Allow him to prepare for the accusations that were sure to be leveled at him?
“Okay,” she said, “I was talking with Gregory Cordova, down at Point Deception. It came out that he saw Claudia Blakeley meeting a man on the highway across from his property during the month before the murders. A man who took her to the ruins of Quinley’s for extramarital sex.”
Wayne’s face paled and stilled. It was clear what she’d said was worse than he’d expected. A mixture of rage and hurt muddied his gaze. “You set out to gather evidence against me? You, Rho?”
“I’m sorry, but don’t you see? Now we can clear this thing up.” She put out a hand toward him, but he was already gone, rushing down the hall, across the office, out the door. By the time she reached the parking lot, his truck was laying rubber on the highway.
He was heading north, in the opposite direction from his home. Running, maybe, and it was all her fault.
Guy ended his phone conversation with Dun Harrison and went to stand at the window of his room, staring out over the roofs of the unfinished subdivision at the flat gray sea. Dun had reluctantly admitted to enticing him into the project. He had a buyer for the canyon property, he said, a well-known theatrical producer who wanted a private West Coast retreat and felt the place’s notoriety would ensure that privacy. A man who wasn’t squeamish about violent death and didn’t believe in ghosts. But before the property passed from his hands Dun wanted one last chance at learning the truth of what happened there thirteen years before.
You couldn’t blame him, and it was Guy’s own fault he’d walked into the situation without knowing all the facts. His working methods dictated that. Still, he’d expressed enough annoyance at Dun’s lack of straightforwardness that he’d extracted a promise from him.
His files were spread on the table in the semicircular space formed by the turret window. He picked up the one containing the profiles of the victims and removed the photograph of Oriana being escorted to the plane at San Francisco International by her maternal grandmother. The child’s face was a study in anguish as she looked behind her. Guy wanted to ask her what she’d been feeling at that moment, as well as if in the intervening years she’d remembered anything more about the murders. He’d made Dun promise to ask her if she’d consent to a telephone interview.
He set down the photograph and looked out the window again, feeling oddly hollow. He should have been elated at Dun’s willingness to speak with Oriana. He should have felt good just being alive. Since he’d come to Signal Port he’d had a sense of an awakening, a return to his old self. But today he once again felt numb and disconnected.
“Why is that?” he asked, reaching for some connection, if only an imagined one.
Diana’s voice didn’t respond.
God, what if it continued to be silent? Then he’d be totally alone.
After numerous attempts to reach Wayne both by phone and radio, Rho finally called Grossman at the Investigations Bureau in Santa Carla and explained what had happened. “You deliberately let him overhear you talking about a lead in the canyon murders, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You knew I’d feel obligated to tell him what we’d found out.”
“Yes, again.”
“Well, you got more than you bargained for, if he’s really on the run. And I feel responsible.”
“Maybe you should stop taking on the world’s troubles, Swift. Concentrate on yourself for a change.”
His words shocked her. She barely knew Ned Grossman, and it wasn’t the place of a superior officer to give such personal advice. But he was right. She felt responsible for Wayne, her other colleagues, Valerie, her father, her fellow townspeople. Hell, she felt responsible for people whose names she barely recalled, people with whom she hadn’t spoken in years!
Grossman said, “I’ll put out a pickup order on Gilardi, and see you at the substation tomorrow at eight hundred hours.”
As the dial tone buzzed in her ear, Rho found her gaze pulled into the chaotic pattern of the garment Valerie was knitting at her desk. Her thoughts had spun into a similar pattern, quite out of control. Suddenly she felt a need to anchor herself in the familiar. “Valerie, if anybody needs me, I’ll be at Jack’s.”
Rhoda was coming down the steps of the substation as Guy crossed toward it. There was a tension in the set of her mouth and the way she moved. Something wrong, but, since she hadn’t yet seen him, for once it wasn’t his fault. He waved and she stopped, jiggling her keys.