And then he saw the answer, suddenly, clearly, in a moment of absolute revelation. Like that moment during a chess game when the route to checkmate becomes so obvious you wonder why you didn’t see it from the very first move.
The thought took him back with vivid clarity to the drive-in porn theater above the Club Echangiste, his confrontation with Twist in the dying light. And Twist’s words came back to him like bullets from the Super Gun, with almost the same devastating effect.
You’re too damned clever for your own good, Michael.
Michael, Twist had called him. But Twist was Janey. And Janey never called him Michael. In all the years she had known him, he had been Mike to her.
The Twist O’Lemon who had just tried to kill him wasn’t Janey. It was someone else operating Janey’s avatar. And with that chilling thought came the realisation that if someone else was inside her AV, then Janey herself was either in grave danger, or...
He didn’t even want to think about it. He snatched the phone and called her cellphone. Hi, this is Janey... He hung up and dialled her home number. Hi, this is Janey... He hit the End Call button and sent the handset careening across his desk.
He tipped back in his chair and cursed the heavens. “Damn you, Janey! Why didn’t you call me back?” He stood up, his mind racing, blaming himself for not picking up the phone sooner the first time she called. He checked the time. It was almost six. It would take nearly half an hour to drive down the Coast Highway to Janey’s place at Laguna Beach. But he didn’t see any other option.
Early evening sunlight slanted through the birds of paradise growing along the front of his house as he backed out of the garage and saw, parked across the street, the same two mob minders who had been tracking him all day. They sat in their Lincoln, windows down, smoking, making no attempt to conceal themselves. In his rearview mirror, Michael saw the Lincoln pull away from the sidewalk to follow as he accelerated away along Dolphin Terrace. And as he swung out on to PCH south, in the dying light of the day, misgivings about Janey morphed into an almost unbearable sense of dread.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Traffic fumes rose infuriatingly into the cooling evening air, long lines of vehicles blocking the lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway as it came down the hill into Laguna Beach. The last of the rush-hour traffic.
Fading red light shimmered on the ocean as the sun began its inevitable descent toward Catalina, hidden tonight in a long line of purple haze on the far horizon. Traffic lights turned to green, and the lines of traffic began inching forward. Michael eased his way into the outside lane and pushed himself into the left-turn filter, patience finally giving out as the lights turned yet again to red. He flipped down his turn lights, and with a squeal of tyres, accelerated across the lane of oncoming traffic, turning into the narrow suburban street that would take him up the hill to Janey’s bungalow. Behind him, he heard horns venting angrily at the car, three vehicles back, that had followed Michael’s lead and jumped the lights for the left turn. He wondered, fleetingly, if the mobsters thought he was trying to lose them. But right now, he didn’t care. The motor of his SUV screamed at high pitch as he accelerated hard, ignoring the give-way signs at cross-junctions, before finally turning into Janey’s street, which ran at right-angles along the top of the hill.
Her car was parked below her house, a battered fawn-coloured Ford Focus, with its defiant bumper sticker, Fermez la Bush! Michael had no idea whether to read this as a good, or a bad omen. If she was at home, why wasn’t she answering her phone? He pulled in behind it and glanced back as his minders drew into the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He started up the steps, two at a time, to the veranda that ran along the front of the bungalow. Still breathing hard, he banged on the door with the heel of his fist then stood listening. But he could hear nothing except for the distant cry of the seagulls and the sound of someone mowing his lawn several houses along.
“Janey!” he shouted, and banged this time with the flat of his hand. But he didn’t wait for the responding silence. He ran along the wooden deck and tried to peer into the living room window. The blinds were down, and the slats almost shut. With the sun sinking behind him, he couldn’t see anything for reflected light. He ran back along the length of the house and around the side. A small gate opened into the back yard. Janey had never been one for spending time in the garden. Most of the yard was laid with concrete flagstones, weeds poking up between them. A small swimming pool had never been uncovered after the winter. A rusted grill still contained the ash of some long-forgotten barbecue. Bins lined up along the back wall were almost overflowing. French windows leading from the house to the patio stood open, and Chas paused, looking at them with a growing sense of misgiving. This did not look good.
Caution overtook him now, as he moved slowly from the patio to the interior of the house. He crossed a temperature threshold. The evening air outside was still warm, humming with the sound of spring insects. Inside the house it was cold and dark. He could hear the distant rumble of the air conditioning unit somewhere deep within and knew that no one in his right mind would leave doors wide open with the AC turned on.
He called out again. “Janey?” His voice cracked a little, and he became aware for the first time of his own fear. Still no reply. He was in her bedroom, her unmade bed a tangle of sheets and blankets, a smell of stale training shoes hanging in the cool air. Dirty clothes overflowed from a wicker laundry basket. He opened the door and moved through to the hall. The blinds everywhere were drawn, and the house stood in darkness, an odd sense of silence about the place. He glanced along the hall to the kitchen and then moved toward the front of the house and the main living room. This was where Janey had lain mock-dead on the floor the last time he had been here. But the room was empty, old beer bottles accumulating around the legs of her favourite armchair where she liked to curl up and read.
He began to relax a little. There was no one here, after all. And he began to wonder why her car was still parked out front. He moved back along the hall and pushed open the door to her den. The glow of her two computer monitors filled the room, and by their light he saw her lying on the floor by the wall, huddled like a child in the womb. A large, dark patch stained the creamy shag of the rug beneath her. Blood smeared the wall above her, and he could smell it in the chilled air.
“Jesus, Janey!” His voice came in a whisper that seemed to thunder around the room. He reached her in three paces and crouched to turn her over. There were two bullet holes in the centre of her chest, very close together. Most of the blood had leaked out through a single exit wound in her back. A dribble of dried blood had oozed from the corner of her mouth. Her lips were parted slightly, and her sightless eyes, still behind her thick-framed glasses, were wide and staring. She was cold, bloodless flesh as chilled as if it had come straight from the freezer.
There was a short trail of blood across the carpet as if she had not died immediately, but dragged herself to the wall and tried to stand up. Then slipped back down to her last resting place, where she had finally bled to death.
Her right hand was clutched tightly around something small and white. Rigor mortis had not yet set in, and carefully he prised her fingers apart to release what they held. It was a tiny plaster bust of a winged cherub, and he had a recollection, then, of noticing it on previous occasions, hanging from a picture hook on her wall. Janey was not a religious person, but she had been brought up a Catholic and had several religious mementoes around the house. For some reason she had made a determined effort to reach this particular piece, almost as if she knew she would die and wanted the comfort of it, or to ask for some kind of absolution for her sins.