He got into his car and drove along Magnolia past the high school, but did not get onto the freeway for many blocks, until he was sure that he had not been followed. At Woodman he found another entrance ramp, drove west on the Ventura Freeway, then turned south on the San Diego Freeway. He was thinking of the way to get Prescott. Reading about him had not helped Varney find any vulnerabilities.
In those articles, Varney had read accounts of Prescott shooting about three people, killing some guy in a hand-to-hand fight, chasing another into a mountain forest where he’d had a suspicious fatal fall. Prescott had found people in seven or eight different ways in places that had little in common. Varney saw nothing in the stories that would tell him what Prescott was likely to do this time. He remembered that there was a man named Donald Ramirez interviewed in the Hawaiian Gardens case. Ramirez was a very common name, but Varney was pretty sure there would not be a lot of Donalds in the phone book. Maybe he would give this guy a call. If Varney pretended to be considering hiring Prescott, a satisfied customer might tell him things that had not been in the newspapers five years ago.
Varney got off the freeway at Marina del Rey and drove to his motel. It was a long, low building across the Pacific Coast Highway from the harbor, where thousands of yachts were nosed up to the docks nearly touching each other, and the masts of sailboats looked from a distance like the forest they once had been. Varney took comfort in the motel’s design. It was built in the shape of an enormous horseshoe. The outer sides of the building showed only a row of room doors leading directly to the large parking lot, with one small window for each room. The inner side of each room had a sliding glass door that led out to an inner court dominated by a heated swimming pool.
The motel was easy for him to find, because it had a high row of shrubs with big white flowers at the edge of the parking lot, and they were all in bloom. He approached the entrance to the parking lot, but he hesitated and let his car go past. There was something he did not like. Varney kept going for another block, then turned into a lot near the boat harbor and parked. He sat still for a moment, then got out.
What he had seen was a brand-new dark blue Cadillac parked at the edge of the motel lot, backed into a space. It was much farther from the building than the other cars. When he was working, Varney spent much of his time in motels, and he knew that motel guests seldom parked farther from the building than they needed to. They had to carry their own luggage in and out, and they liked to keep their cars close, in the belief that proximity discouraged car thieves. Often he saw cars stranded far out in a lot as this one was, but they were always the cars of guests who had arrived late the night before when the lot was full, and slept late in the morning while the rest of the guests checked out. This car had not been in the lot when Varney had gone out this morning.
Varney would have ignored the car, but he thought he had seen a man sitting behind the steering wheel. His speed and the flowering shrubs along the sidewalk had blurred and partially obscured his view. It wouldn’t hurt to walk the block to the motel and be sure. He turned away from the harbor onto the next street, then walked toward the side of the motel next to the parking lot.
He came around the building where he could see the man in the car without being seen. The man was tall, with a long left forearm resting on the top of the car door. His head had that same look that Coleman’s had once had, the sandy hair cut close at the sides with a bit more at the top combed straight back, high cheekbones, and a slight squint of the eyes in the sunlight. He compared the man with the profile he had seen in the hazy newspaper picture from the old case in Mexico. Prescott had let Varney see that dim, unfocused picture of him walking away as a taunt, just another attempt to unnerve him. But it had confirmed Varney’s sense of Prescott’s size and body type.
This was Prescott. It had to be. He was parked so the car was aimed at the door of Varney’s room. If he chose, he could wait until Varney had driven in and gone into his room, then pull the car across the lot entrance to block the way out. If Varney saw him and ran, he could tromp on the gas and run him down.
Varney turned and walked along the side of the building farthest from the parking lot. There was only one way this could have happened. Prescott had somehow gotten the license number of the rental car last night, used it to get the number of Varney’s credit card, and found the motel name through a credit check. Varney gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He had been stupid to park in the underground garage at Prescott’s building. He had planned that when he was at the controls in the lobby, he would erase all the surveillance tapes. He must have missed one for a camera recording the license numbers at the garage entrance. At the time, he had figured Prescott was just a self-promoting blowhard, like the professor on television. Varney had planned to fly here, terrorize him with the deaths of the cops, then come for him and disappear, all in a day. He had been careless.
Varney hesitated. If Prescott had that kind of lead, what was he doing here? He could have given Varney to the police. Varney remembered the newspaper articles. They had been printed over a period of ten or twelve years in different states. There must have been dozens of times when Prescott had collected enough information to turn somebody over to the police. But it didn’t appear that he had ever done that. He always wanted to make the kill himself.
Varney turned the corner of the building, considering what he would lose if he just kept walking: his suitcase contained some clothes and personal items that Prescott might be able to use in some way. There would be hair from his brush, fingerprints on the latches. He had left his plane ticket in the suitcase. He had thrown away the stub of the ticket he had used to get here, but the return ticket was still in the suitcase. He had hidden it in a slit he had made in the lining. A thief probably wouldn’t find it, but he could not leave the suitcase for a man like Prescott.
He wanted to kill him. Prescott was sitting in that car in a shady spot, probably listening to the radio and patiently, contentedly staring at the door of Varney’s room. Varney tried to formulate a strategy. He had no gun. But he could come through the bushes behind Prescott’s car, be at the open window in a second, try to disable Prescott’s left arm and maybe get a hand to his temple, eyes, or throat. But it was midday, and the car was in the open, far from any others. Prescott might see him coming. Prescott wasn’t just some guy sitting in a car, either. He was here in the first place because he was expecting Varney, and he undoubtedly had a gun he could put his right hand on in a second.
Varney was not going to try it. He would have to be satisfied with simply getting out clean. He entered the motel through the back of the lobby on the other side of the building, then walked along the side of the pool in the interior courtyard. He stopped to feel the water, then moved on until he came to his room. He knew the sliding glass door was locked, because he had locked it himself. But the lock was a simple mechanism. The latch was a hook that went over a little bar in the frame. By the time he got to it, he already had his thin plastic phone calling card out of his wallet. He stepped close to lean against the edge of the door, inserted the card between the frame and the window, and pulled the card up. The latch came with it, and he was inside.