CHAPTER 19

If I got rid of the Glock, threw it into the bay or buried it, then I would have nothing to defend myself if Winslow sent somebody after me. But keeping it was a risk. Obviously it wouldn’t take much to match the slug they had from the kid’s death and my gun. And Fuller was sniffing around. Would he talk to the clerk at the Tomales Bay Lodge? Of course he would. And the bartender at the Old Western might remember me talking to Davy. Would Davy’s partner at the bar remember the guy who bought them Manhattans?

I wondered what creatures preyed on the egrets. I found out that raccoons and rats raided nests for the chicks, but the adults had little to fear. The occasional coyote might attack while an egret was foraging in a field, and hawks were another danger, but egrets wading in a marsh or at the edge of a bay had little to fear. Such a big bird with a long, dangerous beak was not something to mess with.

My house is small, what used to be a summer cottage for a San Francisco family, a place out of the fog to go to when it got hot in Marin. A place for the family to bathe in the summer sun, raise tomatoes in a small garden, the father going to and from work in the city on the ferry, the children running in the grassy hills above the cottage. Built as a summer cottage, it had been remodeled over the years, utilities brought up to date, the kitchen pulled out, new appliances and cupboards installed, and I had done much of that work myself. It was still small, two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a covered porch across the back that looked out toward Mt. Tamalpais. Trees on all sides, there was a steep driveway that climbed to the narrow street, a small garage that might have been used years ago to house a small car, a Model T or a Model A, but not large enough for my Toyota. I installed a workbench where I keep my chop saw, cupboards and shelves for other tools. I’m on a slope so that the back of the house is on stilts, the front at ground level. The bedroom I choose has a view of the mountain. It’s a quiet neighborhood, the occasional dog barking at a deer that wanders through, and sometimes, in the early morning, I can hear the high-pitched howl and trill of coyotes on the ridge above my street. At night the only sound is the occasional owl, a far-off dog bark, and the sound of an automobile, somebody coming home late. Otherwise, it’s a silent neighborhood, which is why, when I heard the scratching, I awoke. Was it a raccoon trying to get at the garbage can? A rat chewing on a shingle on the side of the house? No, it was something at the front door, something working at the latch. I reached out to where the Glock was positioned on the bedside table. I slipped out of bed, crossed the living room to the front door. The handle was turning, and there was something being inserted between the jamb and the door. Someone was trying to get into my house.

“Keep doing that,” I said, “and I will put a bullet through this door.” The scratching stopped, the doorknob stilled.

“You’re not fucking around with somebody who’s easy pickings,” I said. I went to the window and looked out into the darkness. I could see a shape, briefly illuminated by the street light at the top of the driveway. Winslow had sent someone and whoever it was now knew that I was alert at night.

Fuller had been right. Winslow would try something else. I would install motion-sensitive lights outside the house so that if anyone else showed up, the outside would immediately be lit up. I would carry the Glock with me in my tool box. And I would figure out something that would make Winslow think twice before trying again. I would make his life miserable. Make him look over his shoulder every time he left his fortress of a house. Make him surround himself with armed men. I would find something that was more deadly than a rattlesnake.

I went back to bed. I lay there in the dark, waiting. Waiting for what? I thought. Be still, I told myself. Be as still as an egret, waiting at the tide line, waiting in the mud at the edge of Tomales Bay, waiting in the marsh behind the shopping center, waiting for something to move. Winslow had moved. Now I needed to fix him with my eye, strike when it was time. The sky outside the window began to grow light, the top of Mt. Tamalpais grew distinct. This was the room my daughter had slept in. She, too, had watched the sun grow on the mountain. If she were alive today, she would be entering her senior year at university, She would have taken courses for her teaching credential. She wanted to be an elementary school teacher, and I could imagine her in a classroom, surrounded by eager children who did not reach up to her waist. She would have been good at it. Again, the image of her submerged in water filled my head. She was upside down and the water was green and shimmered and it enveloped her. Fish swam in front of me, and things floated up into the water from the floor of the car, a paper coffee cup, a receipt from the burger shop in town, tissues and one of a pair of old flip flops, the kind she wore at the beach. It all floated between me and her face and then it stopped, a rush of water and air ballooning as the car was lifted and now I was on the highway as the water rushed from the open car doors. It was the same dream every time. It was four o’clock, the light just beginning to grow and today I would go to a new job in Santa Rosa, another kitchen, more cabinets. Ken was happy with my work, and the cabinets came from IKEA, were pre-fitted, easy to install. All I had to do was replace the kitchen wall, hang the cabinets, make sure they worked properly. Two days at the most. A house at the end of a cul-de-sac, not an easy place for someone to sneak into. I would be safe today and tomorrow.