In the parking lot a reporter and camerawoman from a Sacramento TV station stopped him. What did he think of this new rash of murders? the man asked. He brushed by them with a curt “No comment” and went to the newspaper racks in front of the supermarket. The San Francisco Chronicle’s headline and photograph of the entrance to the canyon told him that Signal Port had once again been caught in the glare of publicity, and the citizens were barricading themselves against the sudden influx of media people.
At the Sea Stacks the parking lot was full of vehicles, and those who had been turned away had already found the B&B. Inside, a harried Kevin Jacoby was contending with a complaint from a writer for the L.A. Times whom Guy knew slightly and disliked heartily: He’d specifically asked for a king-size bed, but his room only had a queen. As Guy slunk up the stairs in order to avoid an encounter, Jacoby patiently explained that all the beds were queen-size.
Apparently Becca Campos hadn’t come to work yet; Guy’s room wasn’t made up, and when he went to get a fresh towel from the linen closet he found it locked. The previously quiet Victorian echoed with noise. A woman in the opposite room was talking loudly on the phone, and Guy shut his door against her. The town had been taken over, and he resented it as much as if he were a long-term resident.
He unfolded the newspaper on the desk, skimmed the first few paragraphs of the story, then turned to the continuation inside. There was a full-page spread of all the victims, including Ackerman, and a final paragraph mentioned the Lindsay and Scurlock deaths as “strange coincidences.” While the article was well enough researched, he sensed it had been hurriedly put together after the Santa Carla TV station had first aired news of the tragedies.
He refolded the paper, uncovering a message slip that had been left on the desk. Dunbar Harrison had called; Oriana was willing to talk with Guy at three o’clock, Pacific time. She would call him. He looked at the clock. Nearly three hours till then. He’d use the interval to bring his notes up to date, perhaps get a bite to eat, provided he could find a restaurant that was not swarming with press people.
The packet of photos caught his attention. He picked it up and tore it open. Removed the prints and shuffled through them.
They were blank, as if the film had passed through an X-ray machine.
“Rho, we’ve been over this before.” Will Scurlock sat in his recliner chair, big hands dangling loose over its arms. His face was deeply lined and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“I know, and I’m sorry to bother you. We’re reinterviewing everybody we talked with.”
“I don’t think I can do this. Forty-eight hours ago I was making arrangements with the Neptune Society for my wife to be cremated. Burned up, like a hunk of dead wood. Her wishes. Me, I would’ve liked a nice casket for her, flowers, friends at the graveside. But Virge always said no, she didn’t want a lot of fuss...”
After a moment he went on. “Yesterday I picked up the ashes in Santa Carla. That’s them in the cheap brass box on the coffee table. Pick the least expensive, Virge said, I’ll only be in there a little while. I couldn’t go against her. Tomorrow a buddy of mine’s taking me up in his plane, and I’ll scatter her at sea.”
“Well, at least you’re doing what she wanted. Will...” Rho hesitated. Virge’s death wasn’t the reason for her visit, but she wanted to clear up an issue that was bothering her. “Mimi Griggs told me about the life insurance policy on Virge.”
“Policy? Oh, that. Mimi’s idea. I was gonna cancel it, but when I told her, she gave me a sob story about needing the commission. I guess that makes me look bad, Virge dying like she did.”
“That’s not my concern at the moment. As I said, we only have today to close the Ackerman case, and I can’t get it out of my head that Virge’s death is connected with hers somehow.”
“I told you what I know. We only saw her the one time.”
“And that was around six on Friday evening?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it was later. I brought Virge home, changed clothes, and drove back into town for a meeting at the hotel with Alan Lindsay.”
“When was your meeting?”
“Seven thirty? Eight?” He shook his head.
“Don’t you keep a calendar? Or a work diary showing the hours you put in?”
“Yeah, yeah I do. I’ll get it.” He stood up and shuffled off to the wing where he had his office.
Rho got up and moved to the front window. The sky had turned dark; the first storm of the season was predicted for this evening. Will’s new Dodge Ram stood outside the garage, the passenger-side window rolled down. She’d close it so the interior wouldn’t be soaked in the expected downpour.
She approached the truck from the rear, nothing a faint blue mark on the side of the right tire — a mark placed there by a meter maid in Santa Carla, the only city in Soledad County that had parking restrictions. The tire was new, but there was—
A nick. A distinctive crescent-shaped nick in the tread of a top-of-the line Firestone tire.
“I’d like to know what happened to this film,” Guy said to the clerk at the pharmacy. He was a little man, bent and humpbacked, and his head thrust forward like a turtle’s protruding from its shell. At the moment he looked as if he wished he could withdraw into it.
He said, “Maybe you overexposed it?”
“The entire roll?”
“It might’ve been bad film.”
“I doubt that. It’s high-quality film, and the photo supply store where I bought it is very conscientious about its stock.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know what happened.”
“Who develops your film? Do you send it to a lab like Kodak, or is it done locally?”
“Locally. There’s this freelancer here in town. Dave Moretti. Unless you specify Kodak, he’s the one processes our orders.”
Guy remembered Moretti from the canyon. He hadn’t seemed to be the sort of amateur who would destroy an entire roll of film by accident.
Rho had squatted down and was examining the crescent shape on Will Scurlock’s tire when he came up behind her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do I have a puncture?”
She stood and faced him, trying to decide how to proceed. From this point forward Will should be considered a suspect in Chrystal Ackerman’s murder, and she should read him his rights and take him to the substation for questioning. Recently California had seen a great increase in Miranda warning violations; the department had sent a memo urging deputies to exercise special caution. She didn’t want to jeopardize the case when it eventually went to court, but on the other hand, Will was a friend, a neighbor. She’d known him her whole life.
“Not a puncture,” she said. “A nick.”
Will went closer, squinting at the tire. “Damn! That wasn’t there last time I looked.”
“When was that?”
“A week? Ten days? Whenever I last checked the pressure.”
“You been driving on rough terrain since then?”
“Just up and down the highway to my job sites. Why’re you so interested in it, anyway?”
Again she considered, and decided to go with her gut instinct. “We located the place where Ackerman’s body went into the water — Quinley’s old burger stand. There was a set of tire imprints. Firestone heavy-truck series. One of them had a nick that’s an exact match with this.”
Will’s expression froze as he absorbed the information and its implications. “You think I killed that woman, Rho?”
“I’m sure you have some explanation.”