Tears pooling in her eyes, a woman lay on the bed of the cheap transient hotel off Del Monte, near Highway 1. Listening to the hiss of traffic, she was staring at the ceiling.
She wished she could stop crying.
But she couldn’t.
Because he was dead.
Her Daniel was gone.
Jennie Marston touched her head, under the bandage, which stung furiously. She kept replaying the last few hours of their time together, Thursday. Standing on the beach south of Carmel, as he held the rock in the shape of Jasmine, her mother’s cat, the one thing her mother would never hurt.
Recalling how Daniel held the rock, turning it over and over.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, lovely. It looks just like a cat.” Then he’d held her tighter and whispered, “I was watching the news.”
“Oh, back at the motel?”
“That’s right. Lovely, the police found out about you.”
“About—”
“Your name. They know who you are.”
“They do?” she whispered in horror.
“Yes.”
“Oh, no . . . Daniel, sweetheart, I’m sorry . . .” She’d started shaking.
“You left something in the room, right?”
Then she remembered. The email. It was in her jeans. In a weak voice she said, “It was the first one where you said you loved me. I couldn’t throw it out. You told me to, but I just couldn’t. I’m so sorry. I—”
“It’s okay, lovely. But now we have to talk.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” she’d said, resigned to the worst. She caressed her bumpy nose and no silent recitations of angel songs, angel songs were going to help.
He was going to leave her. Make her go away.
But things were more complicated than that. It seemed that one of the women in the Family was working with him. Rebecca. They were going to get another Family together and go to his mountaintop, live by themselves.
“You weren’t supposed to be part of it, lovely, but when I got to know you I changed my mind. I knew I couldn’t live without you. I’ll talk to Rebecca. It’ll take a little while. She’s . . . difficult. But eventually she’ll do what I say. You’ll become friends.”
“I don’t know.”
“You and me, lovely, we’ll be the team. She and I never had that connection. It was about something else.”
If he meant they just had sex, that was okay. Jennie wasn’t jealous about that, not too much. She was jealous about him loving someone else, sharing laughs and stories, someone else being his lovely.
He’d continued, “But now we have to be careful. The police know you and they’ll be able to find you easily. So you’ve got to disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“For a while. A month or two. Oh, I don’t like it either. I’ll miss you.”
And she could see that he would.
“Don’t worry. Everything’ll work out. I won’t let you go.”
“Really?”
“We’re going to pretend that I killed you. The police will stop looking for you. I’m going to have to cut you a little. We’ll put some blood on that rock and purse. They’ll think I hit you with the rock and threw you into the ocean. It’ll hurt.”
“If it means we can be together.” (Though thinking: Not my hair, not again! What would she look like now?)
“I’d rather cut myself, lovely. But there’s no way around it.”
“It’s okay.”
“Come on over here. Sit down. Hold my leg. Squeeze my leg tight. It’ll hurt less that way.”
The pain was terrible. But she bit down on her sleeve and squeezed his leg hard and managed not to scream as the knife cut and the blood flowed.
The bloody purse, the bloody statue of Jasmine . . .
They’d driven to where he’d hidden the blue Ford Focus stolen at Moss Landing, and he gave her the keys. They’d said good-bye and she’d gotten another room, in this cheap hotel. Just as she’d entered the room, and turned on the TV, lying back and cradling the agonizing wound on her head, she’d seen on the news that her Daniel had been shot dead at Point Lobos.
She’d screamed into the pillow, beaten the mattress with her bony hands. Finally she’d sobbed herself into a tortured sleep. Then she’d wakened and lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, her eyes flicking from one corner to the other. Endlessly. The compulsive gazing.
It reminded her of the endless hours lying in the bedroom when she was married, head back, waiting for the nosebleed to stop, the pain to go away.
And Tim’s bedroom.
And a dozen others.
Lying on her back, waiting, waiting, waiting . . .
Jennie knew she had to get up, get moving. The police were looking for her—she’d seen her driver’s license picture on TV, unsmiling, and her nose huge. Her face burned with horror at the image.
So get off your ass . . .
Yet for the past few hours, as she’d lain on the cheap bed, swayback and with coils ridging through the skimpy cover, she’d felt something curious within her.
A change, like the first frost of autumn. She wondered what the feeling was. Then she understood.
Anger.
This was an emotion rare to Jennie Marston. Oh, she was great at feeling bad, great at being afraid, great at scurrying, great at waiting for the pain to go away.
Or waiting for the pain to begin.
But now she was angry. Her hands shook and her breath came fast. And then, though the fury remained, she found herself completely calm. It was just like making candy—you cook the sugar for a long time until it reaches the hard-boil stage, bubbling and dangerous (it would stick to your skin like burning glue). And then you poured it onto a piece of marble, and it cooled into a brittle sheet.
That’s what Jennie felt within her now. Cold anger within her heart. Hard . . .
Teeth set, heart pounding, she walked into the bathroom and took a shower. She sat at the cheap desk, in front of a mirror, and put on her makeup. She spent nearly a half-hour doing this, then looked at herself in the mirror. And she liked what she saw.
Angel songs . . .
She was thinking back to last Thursday, as they’d stood beside the Ford Focus, Jennie crying, hugging Daniel hard.
“I’ll miss you so much, sweetie,” she said.
Then his voice had lowered. “Now, lovely, I’ve got to go take care of something, make sure our mountaintop is safe. But there’s one thing you need to do.”
“What, Daniel?”
“Remember that night on the beach? When I needed you to help me? With that woman in the trunk?”
She nodded. “You . . . you want me to help you do something like that again?”
His blue eyes staring into hers. “I don’t want you to help. I need you to do it yourself.”
“Me?”
He’d leaned close and gazed into her eyes. “Yes. If you don’t, we’ll never have any peace, we’ll never be together.”
She slowly nodded. He’d then handed her the pistol he’d taken from the deputy guarding James Reynolds’s house. He showed her how to use it. Jennie was surprised at how easy it was.
Now, feeling the anger within her, splintery as hard candy, Jennie walked to the bed of the cheap motel and shook out the contents of the small shopping bag she was using as a purse: the gun, half of her remaining money, some personal effects and the other thing Daniel had given her: a slip of paper. Jennie now opened the note and stared at what it contained: the names Kathryn Dance, Stuart and Edie Dance, and several addresses.
She heard her lover’s voice as he’d slipped the gun into the bag and handed it to her. “Be patient, lovely. Take your time. And what’s the most important thing I’ve taught you?”
“To stay in control,” she’d recited.
“You get an A-plus, lovely.” And he delivered what turned out to be their last kiss.