Impatient exhalation. “Hang on.”
He glanced at the black camera eye on the intercom box, pictured her shuffling off to consult her monitors. He smoothed his hair and wiped dust from his face and prepared a smile.
The box spoke: “Detective? What did you want to see?”
“The road. From a couple of hours ago. I’ll be quick. Thanks.”
The gate shivered and began to slide.
He released the brake, wound up the same crushed stone path, through the same spotlit xeriscaping, toward the same stern modernist silhouette.
The front door opened. Same tatty green bathrobe in a widening slice of yellow light. Same scowl; same steaming tankard of tea. Except this time she didn’t offer him any.
They walked wordlessly to the security room. He stood behind her, averting his eyes as she typed in her password.
“I’m looking for vehicles en route to 446,” he said.
She clicked. Eight panels, eight blank swathes, bathed in green. The time stamp counted 00:13:15, 00:13:16, 00:13:17...
“How far back?” she asked.
“Three hours. Eight-thirty.”
“That’s three and three-quarters hours,” she said.
“I know.” Strictly speaking, a wider window than he needed. “I’m sorry.”
She sighed and reset the counter to 20:00:00. The screen gave a pixelated flinch.
They sat silently as minutes passed at 8×. Jacob couldn’t decide whether he was rooting for the car to appear or not. Stupid, gullible, or crazy: which title did he prefer?
The counter reached eight-thirty without anything happening. Claire Mason turned and arched an eyebrow at him and increased the playback to 24×. The counter began to reel. Nine. Nine-ten. Nine-twenty. He’d picked up Pernath’s tail at about ten after eight. The drive to Castle Court took about an hour and a half. The counter hit nine-thirty and he tensed up in anticipation.
Nine forty-seven: a square flash.
“Stop,” he barked.
She hit the space bar, pausing at 21:50:51.
“Can you go back a couple minutes?”
She stared at him impatiently.
“I saw something,” he said.
“That was me.”
His heart sank. “You’re sure?”
“I went to dinner,” she said. “I got home at quarter to ten. That was me, pulling in.”
“You’re positive,” he said.
She drew up. “Anything else, Detective?”
“Just a few more minutes, please?”
She let the video run up to real time: nothing.
“Thanks. Sorry.”
She stood up. “Should I be concerned?”
“Not at all. Thanks again. Really appreciate it. Have a good night.”
Her expression said that was unlikely.
She escorted him to the constricted entry hall, where he paused to thank her once more.
Stopped, breathless.
“What,” she said.
He was staring at a gilt-framed pen-and-ink drawing of a woman’s body lying among undulant vines, energy radiating out from her headless neck.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
She blinked once, then dashed the tea in his eyes.
It had mostly cooled off; he was more startled than hurt, and in the millisecond while his hands went up, he actually thought How rude.
She brained him with the mug. He heard a crack that he hoped was ceramic and not bone and pain trumpeted and his inner ear sloshed and he swung at her warping outline and she hit him again with something else, harder, heavier and he felt himself bowing sideways, sinking to one knee with his palm pressed to the cold concrete. She continued to hit him, breathing hard, emitting strange excited little chirrups. Blood streamed into his eyes. He rolled over into a puddle of tea to protect himself and she brought a picture (he did not know if it was To Be Brasher or another picture) crashing down on his upraised elbow. Glass teeth opened his forearm. She chopped the frame down like an axe, the corner spiking his temple, until the wood splintered; then she tried to stab him in the back with it, but he scissored his legs on the slick wet floor and he caught her ankle and she fell.
Dizzy and half blind, he surged atop her and got his hands around her throat and squeezed. Spit burst from her mouth. Blood jetted from his gashed arm and mixed with the foamy sludge running from the corners of her mouth and ran down her neck. He was trying to find her carotid. He needed four seconds of pressure. She twisted and kicked and clawed. A shadow fell across them.
A man’s voice said, “Enough.”
Chapter fifty-five
It was the only word he would hear Richard Pernath speak. Pernath was wearing pressed jeans and a charcoal polo shirt. He was barefoot and holding a pump-action shotgun, which he kept fixed on Jacob while Claire Mason crawled away, coughing and gagging. Jacob slid himself back toward the wall, pressing up against the plaster, gripping his wounded arm. The barrel of the gun moved with him. His sinuses were choked with blood. He spat. Pernath’s face twitched with revulsion but he didn’t blink.
Claire Mason stood to retie her bathrobe. She wiped saliva on her sleeve and said, “I’m sorry,” a remark that prompted Pernath to shoot the same disgusted face at her. The shotgun never wavered.
“I was getting him out,” she said.
Pernath did not answer her, and she told Jacob to stand up and turn out his pockets. He set his badge and phone on the floor. He took the spare ammo from his back pocket and placed it beside them. She asked where his gun was.
“My car.”
She patted him down nonetheless. He stood with his arms raised and his legs spread while she ran trembling hands along his inseams. The gash in his forearm was deep and ragged and perilously proximate to major blood vessels. It did not clot but oozed steadily, running down his biceps and dripping onto his shoulder and ear. Looking at it made him light-headed. His feet felt miles away.
They marched him out the front door. He could see the keys dangling in the ignition of the Honda. Pernath prodded him in the spine with the shotgun and he kept going.
They followed the network of brick paths lacing the property, heading around the swimming pool, in the direction of the orchard. Claire Mason led the way, ten feet in front of Jacob. He kept his wounded left arm aloft, over his head, clasping his left biceps with his right hand, trying to slow the bleeding. Runnels of blood pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. His temple bled, too. He left a trail of spatter on the brick. It would be easy to hose down. Same for the house’s concrete floors.
Pernath brought up the rear, keeping well back of Jacob, but close enough not to miss. Some of the shot might pass through his body and hit Claire Mason. Pernath wouldn’t care; he probably intended to kill her at some point. Jacob would simply be shortening the timeline.
He could appeal to her sense of self-preservation — tell her what became of all of Pernath’s accomplices. Jacob doubted she’d believe him. Whatever depraved magic the architect had worked on Reggie Heap and Terrence Florack, he’d done the same to her. Jacob read it in the way she kept glancing back at Pernath, her face green and rippling in the light of the pool, her expression drawn and fearful. She was appealing to him. For approval. For forgiveness. And without looking back, Jacob could tell Pernath wasn’t giving it to her.
Even if Jacob somehow got through to her, she couldn’t help him: she was unarmed.
They started around the orchard. It was larger than it appeared from the front, perfectly choreographed rows of lemons and figs and plums stirring heavily in the breeze. Their perfume made Jacob teeter. He considered lunging for the gun anyway; better than dying helpless.
Wanting to know how far behind Pernath was, he said, “I spoke to Reggie’s father.”