Splashes on the wall. Jesus Christ, he giggled. Looks like a goddamn slaughterhouse in here.
Then-holy shit!
Almost as an afterthought, he saw his whole new life crumble. The folly. So obvious. She knew his name. Had THE BIG LAW/341
whispered it in the dark for months. Those pages in her desk…
He stooped, picked up the dripping cat-thing and said to the smashed head, “We’ll have to do something about that!”
Then, practicaclass="underline" Wash the floor, Danny; get rid of the damn cat. With a pail, some Comet and a rag he sopped up the tracks and the mess in the bathroom. He placed the toilet seat tentatively back on the stool.
Stupid damn thing to do. Got to be careful now. This is when you make mistakes.
He wrapped the dead cat in the ragged cleaning towel and carried it to his truck. A light rain hissed from the warm tangerine sky, strange low clouds, air thick as jam.
He consulted his county map, drove through the flooded strawberry fields and orchards until he found the road to the nearest beach. Good. The parking lot was deserted. With the leaky cat wrapped under his arm, he went up the plank walkway through the dunes and crossed the beach toward the Pacific Ocean. Rain threaded down. He could barely make out the silhouette of the power plant to the south in Monterey.
Slow gray rollers flopped over and foamed lacy surf across the beach. Coils of fluted gray kelp protruded from hum-mocks of damp sand. Looked like dead worms from Mars.
Fucking Jeremiah Johnson running through the trees, tomahawk out.
He’d zeroed in on Ida.
She knew his name. But she didn’t know she knew it.
The fear washed through him faster than his eyes could process or conscious thought could catch. And there, like his fear manifest-thirty feet away, where the waves tumbled in the first breaker line-a long supple shadow broke the surface, glided. Fins.
Had to be twelve, thirteen feet, the distance between the dorsal and the tail. Just-right there. Then silently gone into the wide endless Pacific.
He lobbed the cat overhand, a lazy layup. It splashed just past the first breakers. He waited to see if the shark would strike. If it did, it happened below the surface where he couldn’t see.
Like he would. Silent.
Some fishermen in hip waders with very long poles were walking up the beach. Short men with black hair. The tonal mystery of an Asian language cartwheeled in the sound of the waves. He watched them take huge lures with ferocious curved hooks from their tackle box and string them to their leader. Calmer, composed, Danny walked back to his car.
These events disrupted his timetable. He’d have to take risks. It infuriated him that Ida Rain had repaid his compassion with betrayal. The bitch could have had it all.
The best goddamn face money could buy.
Then he looked at his watch. Shit. He was supposed to meet the retired cop at that bar in Santa Cruz this afternoon.
59
The sky over Monterey Bay sagged in rainy streaks of aqua, orange and lime like a bleeding South American flag. He parked, got out and walked, nibbled the sweet California air. Passed a girl in cutoff jeans with beach bunny legs and safety pins in her face.
She looked at him funny. He glanced down, saw he had a wad of gooey cat-hair-stickum on his arm. Rubbed it off with spit.
The bar was wedged between an insurance office and a small strip mall. Across Ocean Street, the county building looked faintly colonial behind a screen of tall palms and pine trees. Sunday. Except for cop cars, the parking lot was almost empty.
In testimony to the new antismoking ordinance, four patrons stood outside the bar, furtively smoking like high school kids behind the field house. Inside, the Jury Box was black as a cave. A partition faced the door like a blast shield to defeat the light of day. The interior was cramped and made smaller by dark paneling. A pool table was covered with garish red felt.
Custom street signs adorned the header over the bar. One said BULLSHIT PLACE the other spelled out ASSHOLE ALLEY.
In the corner a video game had a large green Creature from the Black Lagoon swimming on its side. The creature appeared very much at home in the darkness.
Danny ordered a Sharps nonalcoholic beer and sat at one of the small tables next to the pool table. He checked his watch. Early, 1:45; 3:45 in St. Paul. He eyed the pay phone on the wall. The urge was palpable, treading in the dark.
Like the creature in the corner, silently swimming to and fro.
He tried to imagine Kemper filling the space of this room.
A really big man, six nine. Kemper, according to the literat-ure, hated his mother and finally killed her. Danny did not hate his mother. He was glad she was gone because she was a bother. He’d always dreaded the long haul across the rickety ministrations of some nursing home. But he never hated her. Sometimes he wished she had been someone else.
Someone with better genes. Better looks. More goddamn money.
Danny eyed the phone again. Imagined hearing Ida’s unsuspecting voice and jacking off.
He had to get rid of her, of course. Not effortlessly, like Caren. This time it had to be done with authority. Some fear and pain to mark the arrival of Danny Storey. Trauma. Not unlike birth.
The sunlight oscillated on the other side of the partition, and a square medium-size man in his late fifties shouldered into the gloom. Danny squinted and held up his loose leaf binder. He rose and extended his hand.
“Harold?”
The man nodded curtly. Came forward. His handshake was forceful, casual retro macho. Danny winced a little and did not try to compete.
“Dan Storey?” he asked.
“That’s right,” said Danny. They walked to the bar. Wicks ordered a Scotch and water and asked for an extra glass of water. Danny dropped a five to cover it. When Wicks had his drink, they went back to the table.
“So Arnie says you’re interested in old Santa Cruz, back during the serial killer epidemic,” said Harold.
“I was curious if you had a theory why it happened here.”
Harold shrugged his shoulders. “Why not here? Those guys were like bad weather. You know it exists, but you don’t think it’ll come ashore where you’re having your picnic. But there it is.” He was philosophical. A Big Thing, but at the same time, in the long view, no big thing.
He took a sip of his drink and studied Danny. “It’s not like there are rules that govern these things.”
Danny cleared his throat. “Well, the FBI studies them, the killers.”
“Common sense,” said Harold.
“How’s that?” asked Danny, polite.
Harold gestured offhand. “Most of Kemper’s victims were coeds. He picked them up hitchhiking. Who keeps hitchhiking in Santa Cruz when somebody’s killing female hitch-hikers?”
“I hear you,” agreed Danny. He probed his cheek with his tongue. “The thing that got to me was, he used to sit in here with you guys.”
Harold nodded. “I remember one night he was at the bar with a bunch of deputies.” Shook his head, grinned. “They were trying to recruit him for their basketball team. He was this big guy. Meanwhile pieces of missing people were showing up in the ravines. Had a foot wash in on a wave with a surfer up toward Monterey.” Wicks sighed. “I went out and picked that one up.”
Danny leaned forward and studied the lines in Harold’s face. “What I mean is, you were sitting this close to him and you didn’t know.”
“Hell,” chuckled Harold. “I was just a copper, a patrol grunt.” He shifted forward, and his face creased with a rueful smile and his blue eyes twinkled with elfin mischief. “You know about what he did to his grandparents?”
Danny nodded.
“Naturally, the state of California in its infinite wisdom let him out of the nuthouse. He had to go in for regular sessions with a shrink. You know, a college-educated liberal fruit the state of California employs to look after its wayward children.