I DIALED BRIAN’S HOTEL NUMBER IN SAN FRANCISCO.
“C’mon, pick it up, baby, pick it up,” I begged as the phone rang away on the West Coast. Outside, I noticed, the light had changed from gray to yellow-white, giving an eerie cast to the sky.
“Brian Chang,” came the curt answer.
“Brian, it’s me. Listen, something’s happened, I can’t come—”
“Emma, are you all right? What’s wrong? I can barely hear you.”
“I haven’t much time, the storm, I’ve got to get to the site right now—”
“The site?” Brian shouted in disbelief. “The site? You absolutely do not need to go out to the goddamned site! I swear to God, Emma, if you—”
“Look, I know, I know, let me—”
“Emma? I can barely hear you! Don’t—”
“I think I know—” I shouted, but it was already too late. After a final earsplitting crack, the line went dead, save for a loud whine, some sort of emergency tone. The lights went out as well. I looked out the window and saw that the whole campus was dark.
I tapped the receiver a couple of times, but nothing. Brian would understand, I reasoned, when he calmed down and I could tell him what I’d discovered. He has to understand.
Hurriedly I grabbed my slicker and a couple of other things, then rushed down the hall. In my haste, I ran headlong into Neal and gave him a few brief instructions.
“Get hold of Sheriff Stannard. Tell him to meet me at the Point. And then you stay put—”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you later; I’ve got to get out there now.”
Then, not bothering to curse the stranded elevator, I stumbled hurriedly down the stairs and out into the storm.
Two hours later I left the Civic on the road leading to Pauline’s driveway in order to draw less attention to myself on the site. The wind had steadily picked up during my drive; when I’d left campus, it had been blowing in sporadic gusts, now it pushed the rain relentlessly. At first I was pleased that I was adequately dressed to face the weather; soon, however, I found myself completely soaked from the thighs down the moment after I slammed the car door shut.
I had wisely decided to leave the fax in the car; there was no way that it would stand up to one minute of the downpour. I didn’t need it any longer anyway, I had practically memorized the contents of the text, and one hasty comparison of the sketch—the same as the one in the map file and in Tichnor’s kitchen—with a topographic map had only confirmed what the crabbed cursive of the eighteenth-century writer told me.
It was difficult to squelch the same sense of discovery that I’d felt on the site the day I’d found the silver sixpence or started to understand the stratigraphic sequences. I suddenly realized that I’d been getting the same rush hunting for the clues that had led me here as I had with my regular research. I decided there was no shame in being proud of the skills that would lead to the discovery of Pauline’s killer. What mattered now was keeping a head cool enough to get the job done.
I hurried down the driveway and onto the lawn facing the river, the still-open trenches partly filled with water where the tarps had collapsed in and the surrounding area had become a sea of mud and treachery. I moved along the easternmost line of trees, trying to remain concealed while I searched along the river for some indication that I was not on a self-deluded wild-goose chase. I clutched a camera tightly under my slicker and moved as close to the eroding northern bank as I dared. Under the relative shelter of the pines, I scanned the far bank to the east and the west for as far as the low clouds and rain would allow.
I awkwardly twisted the telephoto lens through the plastic bag I had swathed around the camera, trying vainly to see through the mist. A few small sailboats, tied close to shore, rocked violently in the wind, loose halyards and clips clanging against their masts. There was nothing to see, nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary. The wind died down, briefly, mocking my overreaction to an unlikely hunch and diminishing the dramatic impulse that had driven me out onto the stormy coast when I could be heading toward Brian, San Francisco, and the local red wine. I stood there, dripping and freezing, cursing my own foolishness, when I saw what I had been looking for.
The motorboat was much closer to my side of the river than I had calculated from the eighteenth-century map. Surely I had attributed too much accuracy to the description, or else the water had shifted what I had come to find. The boat’s dark color and the size of the chop helped obscure the activity that was going on when sane and legitimate business was being conducted indoors. A diver in a black dry suit, barely visible to the casual observer, hoisted himself onto the side of the boat and dumped in a small, bulging bag.
I was ecstatic. I stepped out of the line of trees to get a better view and made the most of the temporarily slack winds by snapping a succession of shots of the diver moving around on the boat. I had an impression of something yellow. The figure then fiddled with his regulator; it was clear the diver was fed up.
“Please, oh please, look over here, let me get a face shot,” I murmured as a prayer. “This is why Pauline died, no one wants a sharp-eyed old lady around when there’s gold in her backyard. There’s too much for this to be a coincidence. Come on, come on, smile pretty for the camera, Tony, give me one clean head shot, and we’ll end this right now.” I squinted through the lens, every drop of mental energy focused, channeled, willing Tony to give himself away, when, frustrated with the hookup, the diver removed his mask to get a better look.
It wasn’t Tony Markham at all.