“Benny, you're slowing down,” Rachael said urgently.
Overcome by shock, he had relaxed his foot on the accelerator.
The Cadillac was closing on them as hungrily as any shark had ever closed on any swimmer.
Ben tried to press the gas pedal through the floorboards, and the Mercedes reacted as if it were a cat that had just been kicked in the butt. They exploded up Palm Canyon Drive, which was relatively straight for a long way, so he could even put some distance between them and the Cadillac before he made any turns. And he did make turns, one after the other, off into the west side of town now, up into the hills, back down, working steadily south, through older residential streets where trees arched overhead to form a tunnel, then through newer neighborhoods where the trees were small and the shrubbery too sparse to conceal the reality of the desert on which the town had been built. With every corner he rounded, he widened the gap between them and the killers in the Cadillac.
Stunned, Ben said, “They wasted two cops just because the poor bastards got in the way.”
“They want us real bad,” Rachael said. “That's what I've tried to tell you. They want us so very bad.”
The Caddy was two blocks behind now, and within five or six more turns, Ben would lose them because they wouldn't have him in sight and wouldn't know which way he had gone.
Hearing a tremor in his voice that surprised him, a quavering note that he didn't like, he said, “But, damn it, they never really had much of a chance of catching us. Not with us in this little beauty and them in a lumbering Caddy. They had to see that. They had to. One chance in a hundred. At best. One chance in a hundred, but they still wasted the cops.”
He half wheeled and half slid around another turn, onto a new street.
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” Sarah said softly, frantically, drawing down in the seat as far as the safety harness would allow, crossing her arms over her breasts as she had done in the shower stall when she had been naked.
Behind Ben, sounding as shaky as he did, Rachael said, “They probably figured the police had gotten our license number — and theirs, too — and were about to call them in for identification.”
The Cadillac headlights turned the corner far back, losing ground more rapidly now. Ben took another turn and sped along another dark and slumbering street, past older houses that had gotten a bit seedy and no longer measured up to the Chamber of Commerce's fantasy image of Palm Springs.
“But you've implied that the guys in the Caddy would get their hands on you even quicker if you went to the police.”
“Yes.”
“So why wouldn't they want the police to nab us?”
Rachael said, “It's true that in police custody I'd be even easier to nail. I'd have no chance at all. But killing me then will be a lot messier, more public. The people in that Cadillac… and their associates… would prefer to keep this private if they can, even if that means they'll need more time to get their hands on me.”
Before the Cadillac headlights could appear again, Ben executed yet another turn. In a minute he would finally slip away from their pursuers for good. He said, “What the hell do they want from you?”
“Two things. For one… a secret they think I have.”
“But you don't have it?”
“No.”
“What's the second thing?”
“Another secret that I do know. I share it with them. They already know it, and they want to stop me from telling anyone else.”
“What is it?”
“If I told you, they'd have as much reason to kill you as me.”
“I think they already want my butt,” Ben said. “I'm in too deep already. So tell me.”
“Keep your mind on your driving,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“Not now. You've got to concentrate on getting away from them.”
“Don't worry about that, and don't try to use it as an excuse to clam up on me, damn it. We're already out of the woods. One more turn, and we'll have lost them for good.”
The right front tire blew out.
10
NAILS
It was a long night for Julio and Reese.
By 12:32, the last of the garbage in the dumpster had been inspected, but Ernestina Hernandez's blue shoe had not been found.
Once the trash had been searched and the corpse had been moved to the morgue, most detectives would have decided to go home to get some shut-eye and start fresh the next day — but not Lieutenant Julio Verdad. He was aware the trail was freshest in the twenty-four hours after the discovery of the body. Furthermore, for at least a day following assignment to a new case, he had difficulty sleeping, for then he was especially troubled by a sense of the horror of murder.
Besides, this time, he had a special obligation to the victim. For reasons which might have seemed inadequate to others but which were compelling to him, he felt a deep commitment to Ernestina. Bringing her killer to justice was not just his job but a point of honor with Julio.
His partner, Reese Hagerstrom, accompanied him without once commenting on the lateness of the hour. For Julio and for no one else, Reese would work around the clock, deny himself not only sleep but days off and regular meals, and make any sacrifice required. Julio knew, if it ever became necessary for Reese to step into the path of a bullet and die for Julio, the big man would make that ultimate sacrifice as well, and without the slightest hesitation. It was something which they both understood in their hearts, in their bones, but of which they had never spoken.
At 12:41 in the morning, they took the news of Ernestina's brutal death to her parents, with whom she had lived, a block east of Main Street in a modest house flanked by twin magnolias. The family had to be awakened, and at first they were disbelieving, certain that Ernestina had come home and gone to bed by now. But, of course, her bed was empty.
Though Juan and Maria Hernandez had six children, they took this blow as hard as parents with one precious child would have taken it. Maria sat on the rose-colored sofa in the living room, too weak to stand. Her two youngest sons — both teenagers — sat beside her, red-eyed and too shaken to maintain the macho front behind which Latino boys of their age usually hid. Maria held a framed photograph of Ernestina, alternately weeping and tremulously speaking of good times shared with the beloved daughter. Another daughter, nineteen-year-old Laurita, sat alone in the dining room, unapproachable, inconsolable, clutching a rosary. Juan Hernandez paced agitatedly, jaws clenched, blinking furiously to repress his tears. As patriarch, it was his duty to provide an example of strength to his family, to be unshaken and unbroken by this visitation of muerta. But it was too much for him to bear, and twice he retreated to the kitchen where, behind the closed door, he made soft strangled sounds of grief.
Julio could do nothing to relieve their anguish, but he inspired trust and hope for justice, perhaps because his special commitment to Ernestina was clear and convincing. Perhaps because, in his soft-spoken way, he conveyed a hound-dog perseverance that lent conviction to promises of swift justice. Or perhaps his smoldering fury at the very existence of death, all death, was painfully evident in his face and eyes and voice. After all, that fury had burned in him for many years now, since the afternoon when he had discovered rats chewing out the throat of his baby brother, and by now the fire within him must have grown bright enough to show through for all to see.
From Mr. Hernandez, Julio and Reese learned that Ernestina had gone out for an evening on the town with her best girlfriend, Becky Klienstad, with whom she worked at a local Mexican restaurant, where both were waitresses. They had gone in Ernestina's car: a powder-blue, ten-year-old Ford Fairlane.