HOW LONG HAD IT been since he’d left her? An hour? Less than an hour? Yes, almost certainly less than an hour. Yet, already, she’d caused Kane’s visit to pass into the shadows, a memory, no substance, therefore no menace. No menace, therefore no fear. No fear, no terror. One small round capsule on an empty stomach, and she’d caused Kane to cross over, dissolve, shrink into the shades beyond.
But memory remained. She’d left the warm, secure cocoon of her sleeping bag to find him at the door. Instantly, she’d sensed danger. Yet she’d let him in. It was, she knew, Daniels, his power. Svengali. Extend his arms, fingers spread, eyes wild, compelling, Daniels’s will be done. Thy will be done, the minister’s scam. Dress up, drop a dollar in the collection plate, and Daniels’s will be done.
Yet she’d let him in. Kane, with those flat, watchful eyes. Snake’s eyes, portrait of Kane. Pilots were heroes—pilots were killers. A burst of machine-gun fire, black smoke trailing the enemy airplane across the sky, curving down, score one more dead.
One more dead—and Jeff dead, too.
If Kane hadn’t done it, then Kane could have done it. Crash and burn, the hot-rodder’s creed.
She’d been with Jeff, that Sunday night on the dunes. Kane had known it, known they’d been together. And Jeff had died.
And Kane had tracked her down, rung her doorbell, waited politely for her to dress.
I want you to think about it. The con man now, not the hit man.
Hit man?
It had been her first thought when she’d seen him on her doorstep. Yet she’d let him in.
I want you to think about it.
Translation: Together, they could ruin Daniels. Forever.
Dressed in a dark skirt and blouse, funeral clothes, she would watch the judge pronounce sentence. She would watch, and she would smile. Daniels, guilty of murder. Preston Daniels, in convict’s denims, locked in a cell.
But suddenly she saw it again: Jeff, and all the blood. Jeff, no longer human, as meaningless as a bundle of clothing discarded beside the road.
Jeff, so curiously flattened on the bottom. When she’d stood there beside his body a wayward fragment of memory had flickered: a big blow-up water toy, a sea horse she’d once had that had lost most of its air.
Before Daniels let her testify against him, before he allowed her to send him to prison, he would have her killed. First Jeff. Then her.
She was sitting on the couch. Because the morning fog hadn’t yet cleared, San Francisco’s arctic summertime, she’d pulled the sleeping bag around her, as much for protection as for warmth. In front of the couch, on the floor, lay the leather tote bag. When she went to sleep at night, everything went into the tote bag: wallet, keys, contacts, whatever paperback she was reading, money, address book—and the pills, and the grass. Her stash. Herself. Whatever she had, whatever she was, it was all there, in the tote bag.
So that now, without moving from the couch, she had a choice: she could find Alan Bernhardt’s card, probably in her wallet. Or she could call her father, tell him she had to see him. She could tell him what happened—what could happen.
But why did it seem so shameful, to tell her father? Why did it feel so wrong?
Just as wrong as it would feel to tell her mother. Just as wrong. Just as lost.
One choice—two choices—
Leaving the third choice, the last choice: the tote bag again, and the pills. Rest in peace.