Sirens in the distance. The backup vehicles.
“Come on, come on!”
The boy’s body convulsed, and blood gushed from his mouth, soaking her uniform shirt. She was losing him.
“No please God no!”
Headlights washing up the drive. Pulsars turning the pines grotesque. Red and blue flashing over the suddenly still face of the child she hadn’t been able to save. A young blonde woman stood over her, long hair blowing in the wind, eyes asking why—
Rho jerked upright in bed, shuddering. For a moment she was still at the crime scene in Cascada Canyon, but then familiar things — the glow of the digital clock, the outline of the window, Cody’s soft wheezing — began to lead her back to the present. She hunched over, elbows on knees, hands pressed to her wet eyes.
As always during the transition from nightmare to reality, she faced a bitter truth: When little Heath Wynne died in her arms that night, a part of her had also died. Her dreams of a family, her marriage, any semblance of a normal life — all were doomed. The family because she couldn’t bear to bring a child into a world where he might become a bullet-riddled corpse. The marriage because her husband badly wanted the children she refused to give him. The normal life because, once she stopped the drinking and pill taking, she needed to maintain rigid control in order to function, and that kind of control precluded love and intimacy. Like the children, those feelings were best not conceived.
Most of the time she managed, even managed well. She was good at her work, good to her friends. She had her new home, was planning improvements and a garden. And the nightmare, thank God, came less frequently.
But now, four days before the anniversary of the murders, it had returned two nights running in a subtly altered version, the presence of the young blonde woman forcing her to confront both the distant and recent past. Why—?
The phone rang. She squinted at the clock, saw it was quarter to seven. After fumbling with the receiver, she gave an interrogatory grunt.
Wayne Gilardi’s voice. Something about it made adrenaline course through her like a fast-acting virus.
“Say again, Wayne.”
“A floater. Woman. Point Deception. Couple of surf fishermen spotted her in Lantern Cove. I could use your help, kiddo.” Wayne betrayed no anger over last night’s scene in the bar. No contrition, either. And now, after the way he’d spoken to her, he — a mediocre investigator at best — had caught an important call and had the nerve to ask a favor.
“What’s your location?” she asked.
“I can be at your place in five minutes.”
“Give me ten.”
Guy stood on the deserted pier, watching the fog move. A dirty-gray billowing mass that made it seem more like night than early morning. He’d been unable to sleep and had come down here for a breath of fresh air and some fresh thinking.
Hours in the company of Deputy Rhoda Swift the night before had convinced him he might have to change his approach with the citizens of Signal Port. In spite of drinks and food and flattering attention, she’d remained remote. A polite remote, but unyielding. And she’d volleyed most of his questions back at him as if he were hurling them at a rubber wall.
The only things he’d learned from her could be summarized briefly: Signal Port had been a wonderful place to grow up. She’d wanted to live there her whole life. She’d attended college at Chico State — wherever that was — with the intention of returning home and teaching on the elementary level, but positions were unavailable in the unified school district, and eventually, on the advice of her sheriff’s deputy father, she’d applied to the department. She’d been married once, to a contractor who left her and the town seven years ago. They’d had no children. The Lab’s name was Cody. She’d gotten him from the pound two years ago when she bought a house on ten acres on the ridge. Her .357 Smith & Wesson revolver was better protection than the dog, who was determined to be everyone’s best friend.
Surface details, the kind people exchange on a first date. And yet there was a current beneath them, something that frequently darkened Rhoda Swift’s hazel eyes and made her look away from him. In her story there was a structured quality to time, as well as one of those major breaks that people refer to as “before” and “after.”
Before I was born; after. Before Kennedy was shot; after. Before I became a writer; before I made the bestseller lists; before Diana died...
After.
There were many other breaking points in Guy’s life, but the significant one was the loss of Diana. It was as if she, a professional photographer who shot the pictorial sections of his books, had reversed one of her negatives, turning black to white, white to black. The underpinnings of his life were suddenly gone, and he began to doubt his most basic assumptions.
Not so, however, with Rhoda’s loss of Zach, the contractor husband. Her significant break had occurred long before that, thirteen years ago, soon after she joined the sheriff’s department. She probably didn’t recognize it as such, didn’t even realize how frequently she’d alluded to it, but it had formed a subtext to their conversation.
Thirteen years: The timing was right. If she could be persuaded to open up, Rhoda Swift would become a valuable asset to his project.
Guy shivered and zipped up his parka. For a while he’d been dimly aware of a change in the traffic pattern on the highway behind him. Now he turned and saw a sheriff’s department cruiser speed past, heading south. A volunteer fire department rescue truck followed, and a helicopter flapped by offshore.
Something major happening.
Perhaps another “before.” Another “after.”
“It could be the woman from the Mercedes,” Rho said, studying the sodden body on the stretcher. “She had blonde hair and was wearing a blue tube top. But I only caught a glimpse of her.”
“Why didn’t you stop?” Ned Grossman, a detective who had flown in by helicopter from Santa Carla, asked. There was a faint accusatory note in his voice that she chose not to react to.
“I had to respond to a Code Two, and after that things got busy. When I checked back there before my shift ended, the woman was gone.”
Grossman, tall and lean with iron-gray hair and thin-rimmed glasses, nodded, apparently satisfied. “You catch the call?”
“Wayne Gilardi did. He picked me up on his way here.”
The detective looked displeased at the mention of Wayne’s name. He and his colleagues at the Investigations Bureau, Rho knew, were aware of the individual levels of skills among the coastal area deputies. “Okay,” he said, “Gilardi’ll have to assist on this, since he caught, but I want you as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grossman turned away to talk with his short, balding partner, whom he’d introduced as Denny Shepherd. Rho walked to the edge of the cliff above the cove from which the emergency technicians had recovered the partially clad body. Lantern Cove — so called because during Prohibition rumrunners had set kerosene lamps down there to distract federal agents from their clandestine activities at Signal Port.
In the normal course of her work Rho often had occasion to view dead bodies — those of people who had died of natural causes, the victims of traffic accidents and drownings, the wife or husband or friend who had been shot or stabbed or bludgeoned by someone near and dear. But this instance was different. If the victim was the stranded motorist — and Rho was inclined to believe so — she’d not only seen her in life but also been visited by her in her dreams. And she could have prevented her death.