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Index
Prologue
Part I
chapter ONE There was this girl I knew back in high school. Her name was Donna, and even that was wrong about her, as if she’d been mislabeled at birth. She wasn’t a Donna. Not in real terms. She made you realize there must be an underlying rhythm to the universe, and you knew this purely because she wasn’t hitting it. She walked a little too quickly. She turned her head a little too slowly. It was like she was dubbed onto reality a beat out of true. She was one of those kids you saw at a distance, toting a pile of books, standing diffidently with people you didn’t realize were even at the school. She had friends, she did okay in class, she wasn’t a total loser, and she wasn’t dumb. She was just kind of hard to see. Like all schools we had a pecking order of looks, but Donna somehow wasn’t on the same scale. Her skin was pale and her features fine-boned and evenly spaced, faultless except for a crescent scar to the side of her right eye, legacy of some toddling collision with a table.
chapter ONE
chapter TWO “Here’s what I know,” he said. “Three weeks ago two people were murdered in Seattle. A woman and her son, killed in their own home. The police were called after a neighbor noticed smoke and came outside to see flames in the house. When the police get in, they find Gina Anderson, thirty-seven, lying in the living room. Someone had dislocated her jaw and broken her neck. On the other side of the room was Joshua Anderson. He’d been shot in the head and then set on fire. According to the fire department, that wasn’t what burned the house, though: The flames had only just reached that room when they arrived. The main blaze had been set in the basement, where the woman’s husband, Bill Anderson, had a workshop. From the debris it looked like someone had trashed the place, emptied out a bunch of filing cabinets full of notes and papers, and put a match to it all. I don’t know how well you know Seattle, but this is up in the Broadway area, overlooking downtown. The houses are close
chapter TWO
chapter THREE A beach on the Pacific coast, a seemingly endless stretch of sand: almost white by day but now turning sallow gray and matte in the fading light. The afternoon’s few footprints have been washed away, in one of nature’s many patient acts of erasure. In summer, kids from inland spend the weekends here, gleaming in the sun of uncomplicated youth and pumping default-value music out of baby speakers. They are almost never picked off by sharpshooters, sadly, but go on to have happy and unfulfilled lives making too much noise all over the planet. On a Thursday a long way out of season, the beach is left undisturbed except for the busy teams of sandpipers who skitter up and down at the waterline, legs scissoring like those of cheerful mechanical toys. They have concluded the day’s business and flown to bed, leaving the beach quiet and still. Half a mile up the coast is the small and exclusive seaside town of Cannon Beach, with its short run of discreet hotels, but here most of th
chapter THREE
chapter FOUR I got home around a quarter after nine in the evening. Apart from picking up milk and coffee, the trip had been make-work: Amy kept the cupboards well stocked. I’d walked into town from the house, which took twenty minutes. It was a pleasant stroll, and I’d have done it that way even if the car hadn’t been unavailable. I sat outside the coffee place and nursed an Americano while leafing through the local paper, learning several things: The trajectories of two cars had intersected a few nights before—nobody was hurt, not even a little bit; some local big shot got reelected to the school board for the twelfth straight year, which seemed borderline obsessional; and the Cascades Gallery needed a mature person to help sell paintings and sculptures of eagles and bears and Indian braves. Experience unnecessary, but candidates were instructed to bring a willingness to follow a dream. That didn’t sound like me, even if the writing project remained stalled. I hoped the gallery did f
chapter FOUR
chapter FIVE “Who is this, please?” The voice was male, rough, loud. Coming from Amy’s number, it was about as wrong as could be. “It’s Jack,” I said. It sounded dumb. “Who—” “Is this home?” “What? Who are you?” The voice said something that might have been a name but sounded more like a random collection of syllables. “What?” I repeated. He said it again. Could have been Polish, Russian, Martian. Could have been a coughing fit. There was a lot of noise in the background. Traffic, presumably. “Is this home?” he barked again. “What do you mean? What are you doing with—” The guy had one question, and he was going to keep asking it. “This is number says ‘Home’?” A light went on in my head. “Yes,” I said, finally getting what he was driving at. “This is the number listed as ‘Home.’ It’s my wife’s phone. But where’s—” “Find in cab,” the man said. “Okay. I understand. When did you find it?” “Fifteen minutes. I call when I get good signal. Phones here not always so good.” “It belongs to a wom
chapter FIVE
chapter SIX Oz Turner sat in the seat he’d preselected, wall side of the booth nearest the door. This position was obscured from most of Blizzard Mary’s other patrons by the coatrack. It gave him a good view onto the parking lot, cars and pickups whose sole shared characteristic was that of not looking too new. He’d been to the bar twice the day before, in preparation. Office workers at lunch, young moms sharing salads. Late at night the clientele switched to lone men interspersed with middle-aged couples drinking steadily in silences companionable or otherwise. Meanwhile their vehicles waited outside, like old dogs, pale and ghostly in the dark. Beyond the lot was the little town of Hanley. A few streets away, through the small and prettified knot of the old quarter, was a wide, flat water-course. Either the Mississippi itself or the Black River. Oz wasn’t sure. He didn’t really care. He was nursing a beer to hold his place. He’d ordered one of the specials, too, but barely touched th
chapter SIX
chapter SEVEN If you lay still, really still, you could hear the waves. That was one of the best things about the cottage, Madison thought. When you went to bed, assuming the television in the main room wasn’t on—it usually wasn’t, because time at the beach was for reading and thinking, Dad said, instead of watching the same old (rude word)—you could lie there and hear the ocean. You had to tune yourself first. The dune was in the way, and depending on the tides the water could be quite a distance down the beach. You had to let your breathing settle, lie flat and very still on your back with both ears open, and just wait…and gradually you would begin to hear the distant rustle and thump that said tonight you were sleeping near the edge of the world. And you certainly would sleep, as the waves seemed to get closer and closer, tugging gently at your feet, pulling you into friendly warmth and darkness and rest. If you woke up in the night, you heard them, too. It was even better then, as
chapter SEVEN
chapter EIGHT I got to the Hotel Malo just before 10:00 A.M. I’d been awake since before 6:00 but realized I could not call Amy’s office for several hours. So I put myself into movement instead. Seven was the earliest I could arrive at the Zimmermans’ and borrow a car without looking too strange. Inspired by Fisher’s visit the day before, I told them I’d gotten a call from an old friend and was heading to the city for lunch. Bobbi looked at me a beat longer than necessary. Ben got straight to explaining how steering wheels worked. I headed west on 90, joining 5 as the rush hour was starting in earnest, and fought my way off at James Street. Familiar territory so far, the route we’d taken when we came to spend a day in the city a week after we moved up north. Amy had showed me a couple of major draws like the Pike Place Market and the Space Needle, but she was more familiar with the city’s boardrooms than its tourist attractions. The sky was low and an unrelenting gray. It had been that
chapter EIGHT
chapter NINE I found a bar downtown. I scored a table by the window and ordered a pot of coffee—employing the last of my charm to get the waitress to let me use an outlet behind the bar to plug in a power adapter I’d bought on the way for Amy’s phone. While I waited for the coffee, I watched people at the other tables. Bars used to be a place where you came to get away from the outside world. That was the point. Now everyone seemed to be sucking free Wi-fi or talking on cell phones. Nobody did anything interesting enough to distract me from the interlocking dialogues in my head. The fact that Amy wasn’t in town on Kerry, Crane & Hardy business could be explained. I knew that. I was calm. It was still possible there was nothing strange going on here except inside my own head, and it reminded me of a time a year or so before, when Amy went through a period of talking in her sleep. At first it was just a mumbling, and you couldn’t really make out anything. After a while it got stronger, w
chapter NINE
chapter TEN Meanwhile a girl was standing in an airport concourse. A big clock suspended from the ceiling said it was twenty-four minutes to four. As she watched, the last number changed, going from 16:36 to 16:37. She kept watching until it flipped to 16:39. She liked the 9. She didn’t know why it should seem compelling, but it did. A recorded voice kept telling people not to smoke, which Madison suspected must be annoying for them. Madison was not sure where she was going next. She had not, for a couple of minutes, been sure where she was right at this moment. She recognized it now. It was the Portland airport, of course. She’d been here several times in the past, most recently when they went to visit Mom’s mom down in Florida in the spring. Madison could remember browsing around the little Powell’s bookstore and drinking a juice at the café where you could watch planes landing and taking off. Mom had been nervous about flying, and Dad had joked and made her feel better about it. The
chapter TEN
chapter ELEVEN The bar I’d been in had been okay but staid, and after a while they put the game on and everyone watched with the sound off. Not my kind of place. So I migrated to somewhere along the street called Tillie’s, which was more scuffed up and played loud rock and roll. That didn’t mean it was a great environment for me to be in, however. The good and bad thing about bars and alcohol is that they blur social bonds. Sometimes this can be a plus—a lonely person finding solace in the company of strangers, the temporary tribal warmth of sitting around the same campfire. But it can also be that one individual begins to seem as relevant as the next, that the person you love is suddenly too annoying to bear and complete unknowns become your best friends. As a result you end up having conversations you probably shouldn’t. I do anyhow. I’d been talking to one guy in particular, and the discussion was going downhill. This person had shadows under his eyes, his hair needed a trim, and hi
chapter ELEVEN
chapter TWELVE He arrived twenty minutes later. Too-blue jeans, a new three-quarter-length leather jacket. Short hair, sturdy and anonymous bone structure. I’d started to see guys like this arriving in L.A. a year or two before we left. The workhorses of the new millennium, young men who would stack shelves, sell contraband on street corners, toil like dogs in regular modes of employment or smack heads in the dead of night, all with a steady, glacial determination that seemed to elude the local populace. And, of course, drive cabs. I indicated who I was with an upward nod. He came over and sat on the opposite side of the table, glanced at my beer. “You want one?” “Please,” he said. “But you’re working, right?” He just looked at me. I held my hand up, got us both a drink. The waitress was fast and had them back by the time I’d lit another cigarette. When Georj had taken a long swallow, he nodded. “Good,” he said. “So?” “Thanks for taking the phone to the hotel.” He shrugged. “Thank you
chapter TWELVE
chapter THIRTEEN Alison was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, supported on both hands. The light outside the window was gray-blue, an unwelcome dawn. She knew she had to turn, to look at her husband. She knew they had to say more things to each other, although she’d said everything she could think of, and she believed Simon knew that. Even though her head felt like it was about to split down the middle, she knew she had to turn around. How do you look anyone in the eye on a day like this? It doesn’t matter. You have to do it anyway. She turned. Her husband was sitting at the table. He was exhausted and horror-struck but bright and alert and can-do. She recognized the look. It was how he appeared when he knew something had to be done but had no idea what it was. It was a signal of readiness. A way of saying, “I know I’m not doing anything, but look—I’m ready to.” He glanced up, a question on his face. “No,” she said. “Nothing else.” Her voice was hoarse. That would be the tal
chapter THIRTEEN
chapter FOURTEEN The first thing I saw was a big man looming over me. I was freezing, and my head felt like it was broken, but even so I could tell that there was something extremely wrong with this person. His proportions were badly odd. His features were too strong and skewed, and the texture of his skin was ragged and worn, even in this early, low light. He was also, I finally realized, really, really huge. And made of wood. I sat up quickly. My brain followed later. I found I was huddled against the back of a building, partly covered in leaves. There were a couple of boarded-up windows and doors with rusty locks, the disused backs of shops on the other side. In front lay a small park. There were bushes and trees, at least, though the ground was paved in granite cobblestones. The buildings on the other side were made of dark stone, a uniform three stories high. A couple of other guys reclined on benches, most under dismantled cardboard boxes. More professional about their situation
chapter FOURTEEN
chapter FIFTEEN I dropped the Zimmermans’ car outside their house, leaving the keys in the ignition. If Ben had been there, it would have been different. I wasn’t going to deal with Bobbi right now. Or so I’d thought. She’d evidently been standing behind her door, possibly for the last two hours, and was out of the house before I had time to get away. I took a deep breath. My head hurt badly, and I wasn’t going to give anyone a fight. Unless she asked for it. “Thank you,” Bobbi said, disconcerting me. I reached inside the car and got out the keys. “Sorry for the delay, Bobbi, I was just—” “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I was harsh earlier.” I nodded, not really knowing what to say. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend, too. I hope he’s okay.” She smiled vaguely, and I headed up their driveway, back along the road, and into our own domain. I started slowly, but by the time I got to our house I was striding fast. Our car was standing outside the house. It looked big and black and reproac
chapter FIFTEEN
chapter SIXTEEN He drove fast but accurately, and he kept under the speed limit. He was careful to appear, as always, like just another man on the road. Though he’d enjoyed many privileges throughout his life, Shepherd understood the costs that came attached. You paid, somewhere down the line. The highest price, the one that could never be recouped, was that of time. You never get a minute back. If he got pulled over by the cops, he would lose half an hour, maybe more. He couldn’t afford that. So he kept driving steadily up Interstate 5, hoping matters could be resolved tonight. It had been a simple plan. He had not suspected that things could go so wrong so quickly. It was now over twenty-four hours since the girl had disappeared. He hadn’t expected his first stop to yield anything, but he had lived by doing things methodically, and checking the O’Donnell house first made sense. Before leaving Cannon Beach, he’d been up and down the highway and out onto the sands without expecting a
chapter SIXTEEN
Part II
chapter SEVENTEEN On Sunday we had breakfast in Birch Crossing. Afterward we went for coffee, sitting outside so I could have a cigarette. Amy was nice about this, withstanding the cold and denying herself even a pro forma reminder that I was supposed to be giving up. I flicked vaguely through the paper, remaining unchallenged by anything exciting in local news. Amy watched the mother and young daughters at the next table, but after a while her eyes drifted away. We’d been there a half hour when someone said, “Hi,” and I looked up to see Ben Zimmerman on his way into the coffee shop. He had newspapers under his arm and was wearing battered combat khakis, as usual, along with the kind of sweater you wear to go fishing after your wife has banned its use within civilized company. It struck me, however, that I’d be pretty happy to look the way he did at his age, and being greeted in passing made me feel like we actually lived there. I nodded. “How’s your friend?” Ben shrugged, with a half
chapter SEVENTEEN
chapter EIGHTEEN You kept moving. You kept moving. You kept moving. That was what you did. If you were moving, then you were going somewhere. If you had somewhere to go, then you were a proper person and nobody bothered you—and so you kept moving even when your feet hurt and you could no longer tell the difference between where you were and where you’d been. If you stopped for a moment, they looked at you. They asked if you were lost. They asked if you were hungry or thirsty and where your mommy was. They didn’t seem to realize that these questions hurt. Madison was very glad she had her coat, and not just because Seattle’s streets were cold. She was glad because it had been expensive, and other people seemed to know that. This meant that some did not bother her, people who she sensed would have been only too happy to bother her otherwise. It helped, too, that she was tall, like Mom. She was also glad it was now day. The night had been very long. After she arrived in the city, dropped
chapter EIGHTEEN
chapter NINETEEN I was in Seattle over an hour before we were due to meet. I used some of the time in a book and record store on Fourth. I went into the jazz section, found the clerk who looked least like he’d rather be snowboarding, and got my cell phone out. I played him one of the MP3 files I’d transferred from Amy’s phone. The clerk stooped with his ear cocked, listened for barely two seconds, and then vigorously nodded his head. “Beiderbecke,” he said. “‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’ A classic. And so true.” He led me into the section, ran his hands down the CDs as if down the spine of a man he loved, and plucked one out. The cover showed a black-and-white-era guy holding some kind of neo-trumpet device. I allowed the clerk to sell it to me. “Such a shame,” he said as we waited for my card to be authorized. “Bix, I mean. A prodigy. Could barely read music but played like an angel. Dead at twenty-eight. Drank himself to death.” And then he sighed, as if it had been a personal loss.
chapter NINETEEN
chapter TWENTY I walked across the street, barely noticing a truck that whistled past behind me. When I got to the far sidewalk, I turned, looked south toward downtown. I checked it against the second photograph and saw enough congruence to know that this was the view it showed. “Yes,” Fisher said as he stepped up the curb to stand next to me. “I was standing up at the next corner.” I walked up to the storefront. Tried to look through the window, but whoever nailed it over had done a good job. Went to the doorway and pushed my hand against it. No movement. It was a big, heavy door, decorated by rivets on all sides, and fitted tightly. Layer after layer of gray paint made it appear impregnable. I stooped to look at the handle and saw that the slot for the key showed flecks of bright metal. It had been unlocked recently. I stepped back a few paces and looked up and down the street again. The entrance to the building was exposed, visible to anyone in a fifty yard radius. It had the brutal
chapter TWENTY
chapter TWENTY-ONE Todd Crane was sitting in his office. Most of his desk was lost under paper, which was in turn covered with bullet-pointed lists and slogans and sketches. He was supposed to have read, digested, and commented on it all. Creative teams were standing by. A pile of DVDs from commercial directors stood to one side. He was supposed to have watched all these, too, and passed down his views so that account handlers and production managers could get busy with checking availability and fees and booking talent and generally kicking KC&H toward further glorious triumphs in the pursuit of getting people to buy shit they didn’t actually need. He had done none of these things. Instead he’d turned his chair to face the big window and was gazing blankly down across Elliott Bay. From up here you could see the piers, the roof of the market building hard to the right, and the sprawling docks over on the far left. Behind all this was the gray-blue expanse of the bay itself, and beyond t
chapter TWENTY-ONE
chapter TWENTY-TWO The Anderson house was on Federal, near Broadway Avenue, up on the ridge overlooking downtown and Elliott Bay. The avenue itself is a major thoroughfare, a long, wide street sparsely lined with generic businesses, redbrick banks, and more places to buy coffee. As a nation in general, we like our coffee, but the Northwest is insane on the subject. I’m surprised you can’t get it out of ATMs. Federal was a couple of streets back and overhung with big trees now shedding copper and yellow leaves. The speed limit was twenty, because people actually walked around here, and many houses had low hedges that someone remembered to cut or picket fences that had been painted sometime in living memory. Most were small. The cars on the street also said you did not have to be rich to live here, but it was easy to see why you might want to be. The house itself was one back from a crossroads. Evidence of fire damage was minor from the outside, though the street-level windows had been c
chapter TWENTY-TWO
chapter TWENTY-THREE I was at the bar a while before the time I’d arranged to meet Fisher. I needed somewhere to think. And I needed to call home. I had to let Amy know I wouldn’t be home tonight. The thought of her made me defensive and angry, though I didn’t really know what about. The building in Belltown was Fisher’s obsession, not mine: Amy’s name on the papers didn’t necessarily have any bearing on my life. We hadn’t even known each other when she was involved. A business formality, a company name on a company deal. I hated having these questions to consider, however, just as I hated my inability to stop wondering who the man in the photographs was. In the end I gave up trying to prepare myself and just pressed her number. “Hey,” she said. She picked up quickly, as if she had already been holding her phone. Had she? Did it mean anything if she had? “What’s the news in the bright lights? Thought you’d be home by now.” Her voice sounded as it always did. The telephone, though a rem
chapter TWENTY-THREE
chapter TWENTY-FOUR When he’d gone, Fisher turned to me. “You didn’t say you were going to get into the house. I would’ve liked to have been there.” “Which is one of several reasons I didn’t tell you,” I said. “And there was nothing there for you to find.” “Jack…” “Jack nothing. You pulled me into this by throwing my wife’s name in my face. She’s my interest here, and I’ll do what I have to in order to find out what’s going on. Just liked you turned up here with that friend of Anderson’s without letting me know first.” “Bad idea? Talking to him?” “Not unless he’s involved with whoever killed Anderson’s family.” “Christ—you think he is?” “No, I don’t. But you didn’t even consider the question. What if Chen had let someone know that Anderson would be out of the house that evening? Or if he’d even agreed to make sure he was? If either of those were true, we’ve just put ourselves squarely on someone’s radar.” Fisher looked down. “Jesus. I didn’t think. Sorry. I’m…This isn’t really my kind
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
chapter TWENTY-FIVE Finally Shepherd called Rose back. He had more freedom than most, but there was such a thing as pushing it too far. He hoped she’d get it over with on the phone, but she insisted on meeting him face-to-face. She had wanted to do it in the old town, near the Square, but he said no. He’d never liked it there. The air was too rich. It felt crowded even when no one was around. He arrived early. Victor Steinbrueck Park, past the northern end of the fish market, on the edge of what had once been a high bluff overlooking the bay. The grassed section was dotted with sprawled or sleeping homeless people, and a couple of the picnic tables also held small groups of the alcoholic and/or stoned. He could tell that these were not the only people present. The feeling was nowhere near as acute as it would have been at the Square, but it was stronger at night wherever you were. He felt it more and more now, everywhere. He took a table at the paved area near the front of the park, wh
chapter TWENTY-FIVE
chapter TWENTY-SIX “He’s not going to come.” “So he doesn’t come,” I said. Fisher shook his head, went back to staring out the window. It was a little after eight. We were in Byron’s, on the street level of Pike Place. You entered through the market, walked past bulky men bellowing about fish, and found yourself in a dusty, low-ceilinged and hazily sunlit diner that couldn’t decide whether greasy breakfasts or strong cocktails were its main business. Some of the patrons couldn’t either. In the center was a battered and grimy cook’s station, around which battered and grimy men perched on stools sucking down one type of fare or the other, occasionally both. Some wore the stained white coats of men who’d already been up for hours shifting raw seafood and ice, others were dressed white-collar, on the way to work, and trying to look like they’d wandered in by accident and found a beer in their hand the same way. One wall was mainly glass and looked out over Elliott Bay. The tables along the
chapter TWENTY-SIX
chapter TWENTY-SEVEN “He’s dead.” I looked up to see Blanchard standing over me. It was two hours since Anderson had been shot, and I was sitting in a plastic chair in a corridor of a hospital I didn’t know the name of. A crowd of cops were standing down the far end. I’d been interviewed by two of them. “So where does that leave us?” “No idea,” he said. “And there is no ‘us.’ Be clear on that. I’m only here because I used to partner one of the lead detectives. You’re here as a courtesy and because witnesses are very firm on how you reacted when the gunman came in. Where’s your buddy? Fisher?” “Getting some air.” Blanchard sat down heavily in the chair beside me. “What the fuck happened? Really?” “What I told you. We got a message to Anderson through one of his colleagues. He came to talk to us.” “Why? That’s what I don’t get. Why you?” “Maybe because our pitch was that we knew he didn’t kill his family. We arranged to meet at the diner, at Anderson’s suggestion. How the guy with the gu
chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT Madison’s second night on the streets had felt even longer than the first. After going to see the silly man in his office—an episode that was a little cloudy to her now—she had walked for quite a while. She bought some food at a small market and ate it in a park, and cried for a bit, then went walking again, going on and on, long after all the stores and restaurants were shut, keeping to alleys and moving within shadows. She stood for a while in front of a building that was boarded up, even went and pressed on one of the buzzers. She took out the keys she’d found in the back of the notebook, tried them in the door. They did not fit. This annoyed her a great deal. Something had been stolen from her, she now believed. This was where it was. She turned away from the building and stalked back into downtown and along near the Barnes & Noble, past the public library with its weird glass and metal. She let herself be led down the right side of the slope, diagonally toward
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
chapter TWENTY-NINE When the door to the house didn’t open, I was confused, until I realized that Amy must have gone out. I unlocked the bolt and let myself into a space that was supremely quiet, suffused with the distinctive emptiness caused by the absence of the person with whom you share your life. I headed down into the living area, sneakily glad of time to myself, a period to decide how to broach the subject of the photographs I’d seen and the fact of her name being on the paperwork Fisher had shown me. The living room was tidy. The current work frenzy was over, or in abeyance, and presumably she’d walked up into the village. In which case maybe I should call her, go meet up. Grab lunch. Talk to her long enough to overlay the dark aftermath of the morning and decide what to do about everything else. We’d always been able to talk the world away. I hoped this was still the case. I’d traveled a couple more steps before I stopped, however, looking through the door into Amy’s study. Wh
chapter TWENTY-NINE
Part III
chapter THIRTY At LAX, I took a cab to Santa Monica. I got the driver to stop fifty yards short of the house, and I walked the rest. When I arrived, I found a boy in the yard outside, playing in an orderly fashion. “Hey,” I said. He looked up, checked me out. Didn’t say anything. “Uncle Jack,” I added. He nodded, head to one side, as if conceding the truth of my observation but failing to find that it rocked his world. I walked past him up the path and knocked on the door. It opened immediately, as I’d expected. This kid’s mother wasn’t going to be letting him mess around in the yard in the early evening without keeping an eye out. “Well, how about that?” she said, hands theatrically on hips. “You don’t see a Whalen for months, then bang—a full house. Must be some kind of astrological thing, right? Or biorhythmic? Is a comet due?” I felt tense. Amy’s sister was hard work at the best of times. “How are you, Natalie?” “Still not a movie star and a bewildering ten pounds heavier than I’d
chapter THIRTY
chapter THIRTY-ONE On the pier, groups of tourists strolled in the softening light, coming in and out of souvenir stores or suspiciously eyeing restaurant menus. I leaned against the rail and waited, the knot in my stomach getting tight and tighter. Twenty-five minutes later, I saw a woman walking down the ramp from the Palisades. I watched her come onto the pier and move purposefully through the crowd. She was in her mid-thirties but looked younger and was very smartly dressed. She glanced neither left nor right but headed straight to where she was going. She held something in her right hand, something that looked so wrong as to be trick photography, and I realized there had been things I’d misunderstood. I let her go by, then got up and followed. By the time I got to the end, she was leaning on the railing, looking across the water back toward Venice, a yellow glow surrounding her from the lamp at the corner of this section of the promenade. There were other people nearby, but not
chapter THIRTY-ONE
chapter THIRTY-TWO Rachel stood at the corner, mouth open. She looked up the street, then down again. Turned in a melodramatic circle, as if it might help. It didn’t. Son of a bitch. She’d really gone. Oh, beautiful. Thanks, Lori. A perfect end to another stellar night. Naturally, it was agreed that if either woman met someone five-star, then she was authorized to take off with him without having to track down the other to explain. The arrangement was more pertinent to Rachel, though, because Lori always insisted on driving and so was never the one who got abandoned outside Seattle’s hottest bar (this week only), facing a walk home that would get longer and longer as the last glass of wine wore off. A walk in a skirt not designed for locomotion. And without a sensible coat. “Fuck,” Rachel said, wearily. But no use crying over spilt milk. Or split girlfriends. Ha. Was that funny, or just clever? Was it even clever? Given that the exchange was happening inside her own head, did it even f
chapter THIRTY-TWO
chapter THIRTY-THREE I have been here before. Many times has this scene replayed in my head, but never has it been so much like it was when it was real. I am in Los Angeles. I am sitting in a cramped armchair, in the dark, surrounded by the smell of other people’s debris. I am waiting for two men whose identities I have determined through the closest thing I will ever do to detective work. Men who have been places that were not theirs to enter, and in which they stole, committed at least two rapes and a murder. I have come to believe that being human is most of all to be a social animal and that if you do not understand that you are not allowed into other people’s places without their permission, then while you may be a Homo sapiens, you are not a human being. I am aware I am committing the same crime as they, and as the men who killed my father, many years ago and hundreds of miles away. I am not allowed to be in this house. Even if I had a warrant, I should not be here. I should be a
chapter THIRTY-THREE
chapter THIRTY-FOUR There’s a feeling you get to be very familiar with as a policeman. The realization that the person you’ve been talking to has, all this time, been lying. It might be something big, could just be some small detail. But suddenly you understand that the world he’s been describing, with plenty of eye contact and the apparent desire to be helpful, is simply not real. I didn’t think Gary was lying. But otherwise it felt the same. You want neurosis to be heroic, to confer a shamanic majesty upon the tangled and pathless inner landscape some people are unable to escape. It isn’t. There is no upside. It’s just bitterly sad. He saw the way I was looking at him. “No, Jack. You just saw it, right there on the screen.” “I saw a child sleeping. I heard some words.” “Some of which she is not capable of saying.” “Some part of your kid’s brain has gotten ahead of itself, Gary. That’s all. It’s practicing in downtime. Talking in your sleep is no big deal. Amy did it for a while. Back
chapter THIRTY-FOUR
chapter THIRTY-FIVE The call came in the dead of night. Todd had fought waking. Fought it hard. He’d lain wide-eyed for hours when he went to bed. When he finally found sleep, he wanted to stay there. The sound of the phone ringing had been faint, from downstairs. Livvie had banned a telephone by the bedside a decade before, after a spate of strange calls, some wacko calling up in the night to speak to their middle child, then only eleven years old. The ringing stopped as the machine clicked in. But barely thirty seconds later, it started again. Todd opened his eyes. That was weird. People hitting a wrong number usually understood their error as soon as they heard someone else’s message. They didn’t call back. Anyone with a legitimate message left a message. He rolled over. The clock said 3:21. Jesus. No call at that hour of the night can be ignored. He grabbed his robe and hurried downstairs. By the time he got to the hallway, the ringing had stopped again. He heard the answering mach
chapter THIRTY-FIVE
chapter THIRTY-SIX “I don’t see how we’re going to do this,” Gary said. We’d spent five minutes inspecting the back of the building in Belltown, confirming that the windows were boarded from the second story up. Their condition was academic: The fire escape stopped ten feet from the ground, and I wouldn’t have trusted a cat’s weight on the rest. The ground-level door had a pair of Dorling bolts, which could be opened only from the inside. It would have taken time and a sledgehammer to get through the door from here, an endeavor that would arouse comment in the parking lot that ran right up to the back wall and in which we sat, peering up through the windshield. Patrons came and went, and an officious-looking man was sitting in a booth. He’d already given us a long and suspicious glare. Nobody was going to be dealing drugs on this guy’s watch. Or smashing down doors. We got out of the car and walked around the side to the road that ran along the front of the building. Crossed the street
chapter THIRTY-SIX
chapter THIRTY-SEVEN After the door closed, we were in pitch darkness. I hadn’t wanted to fumble for a switch with the cops right there. “Christ,” Fisher said. “That was…” “…fine.” I said. “Keep your voice down.” I pulled out the cheap flashlight I’d bought in the convenience store. I pointed it back toward the door, ran the beam along the wall at shoulder height. Saw a bank of switches. Flicked them one by one. Nothing happened. Pointed the light down at the floor instead. There was nothing lying there. “No power,” Fisher said. “But no mail or junk either. Someone picks up.” We were standing in a wide, high-ceilinged corridor, peeling paper on the walls and an uneven floor. Once it had been tiled in a simple, businesslike way. Now many of the tiles were broken or missing. I made my way along it, treading carefully. The building smelled damp and fusty and old. Ten feet away a door hung ajar slightly, on the right. It opened into a long, narrow kitchen, the ser vice area of the coffee s
chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
chapter THIRTY-EIGHT When the phone rang, Todd yanked it out of his pocket so fast it slipped and went skittering across the sidewalk. He crawled after it on hands and knees, people snorting and laughing and not moving out of the way. He was beyond noticing. He’d spent three hours walking the streets. He couldn’t have gone back to his office, dealt with Bianca or the rest of them. He couldn’t possibly go home. He had to do something, and so he’d walked, attempting to lose himself in the press of normal people, trying not to feel once again that the streets were even more crowded than they looked, growing more so as the evening came on, that this feeling was worse than ever before. “Yes?” he said into the phone. It was Rose. She gave him the address. It was where it was supposed to be. Todd knew it well. A long time ago, he’d spent many hours in the building, supervising shoots, sitting in a chair with his name stenciled on it, selecting which PA would receive the offer of a quick and e
chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
chapter THIRTY-NINE Five seconds too late, I was all about movement. I threw myself at the door, calling Amy’s name. “Can’t you open it? Pick the lock?” Fisher had gone straight to the bookcase and started pulling books off the shelves. “It’s padlocked on the other side.” Gary leafed through another book, dropped it to the floor. “They’re all just law manuals.” “It’s a lawyer’s office.” “Lytton works out of here. Zimmerman. Whatever his name really is.” I kicked the door, uselessly. “So either they’ve got the sense not to keep anything in an obvious place or maybe there’s just nothing to be found.” “Jesus, Jack. What does it take?” The truth was, I wasn’t sure anymore. “Two armed guards plus your wife,” Fisher said. “Heavy backup for just some lawyer, don’t you think?” For either a lawyer or an ex–history professor, and I couldn’t begin to understand what Amy had been doing here. My only chance of finding out lay in catching up with her. I headed into the portion of the room that led t
chapter THIRTY-NINE
chapter FORTY It was too dark to see, but the stifling air and heavy smells of brick and earth were all too familiar. Madison knew she’d been here before, in dreams and nightmares. Though the man inside kept her plunging forward into the dark, if felt like he was pulling her backward. The darkness didn’t bother Marcus. He knew he had nothing to fear from it. Madison did not want to have him in her head anymore, but it didn’t feel as if she had any choice; if anything, it felt like it was she who was being shoved out. He was increasingly out of control now, too—or she was less able to stop him from doing the kind of thing he’d always wanted. She hadn’t known he was going to stab Rachel’s father—she’d just found herself doing it, before she could do anything to try to stop it. He’d been angry that the woman he wanted to see wasn’t here after all, that this was supposed to be a trap, though Madison believed he’d known this was a possibility all along, that his anger was partly a pose, and
chapter FORTY
chapter FORTY-ONE Madison sprinted through the door, back into the dark, and went careering along a series of twists and bends into black corridors. She was the fox now, cunning and at home. She hardly even knew who she was anymore, in fact was barely sensible to her body’s crashes into walls, the stumbles and falls. As her body ran, she ran, too, inside, through a head that was no longer hers and no longer a haven, no longer even safe. There were running footsteps behind her for a few minutes, and a flicking light, but for the moment she had lost her pursuers, dodging down a maze of corridors that Marcus knew but Shepherd and the other man did not: Shepherd, the man who’d come to her on the beach and smashed a hole in her mind wide enough for Marcus to start coming through. Shepherd evidently wanted to kill her now, and it sounded like maybe he’d done so before. She’d been right not to trust him, huh. She tripped over something, hard, and fell sprawling. As she picked herself up, she
chapter FORTY-ONE
chapter FORTY-TWO “We didn’t get him,” a voice said. I was sitting in a chair in a hospital room, after the most recent of a series of conversations with members of Seattle’s law-enforcement agencies. I’d given a selective account of events during the altercation inside the building in Belltown. It was not the first time I’d given this account. I doubted that it would be the last. I had burns on my face and arms, had lost a chunk of hair. The pain of the wound in my shoulder and its associated stitching was bitterly emphatic, even through a pile of painkillers. My lower back felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and my head hurt in a way that felt as if it would never go away. I was not feeling receptive to news of any kind. I glanced up. Blanchard stood in the doorway. “I hope you feel better than you look,” he said. He came in and leaned against the side of the bed, folded his arms and stared down at me. I waited for him to say whatever it was he’d come to say. “You could be worse,” he
chapter FORTY-TWO
chapter FORTY-THREE First I cabbed over to Belltown to retrieve my car. The area around the building was heavily cordoned. Police and firemen were going about their business. Passersby stopped to watch for a while, no idea what they were looking at. Just another thing in the background of their lives. The visible fabric of the building didn’t appear badly damaged, but if fire had been through the foundations, I guessed it was most likely coming down. To become another parking lot, and then apartments, and get knocked down again, and then be something else in some future world. Things go up and then come down, and the years go by. I got into the car and drove down to Pioneer Square. I bought a coffee in the Starbucks and took it outside. The metal tables were all empty. I chose the one with the best view of the square and lowered myself gently into one of the chairs. The process hurt. I told myself I’d give it an hour and then go. While I waited, I looked across at the trees. There wa
chapter FORTY-THREE
chapter FORTY-FOUR As soon as I let myself into the house, I knew that everything had changed. Houses are pragmatic and unforgiving. If something alters in your relationship to them, they shift, turn away. I saw that Amy’s computer had gone, some of her books, a few clothes. In a way it was distressing to see how little had been removed, how small a part of the life that had been lived here was now judged to be worth moving on. I limped back to the living room and stood in the center. Took out my cigarettes and lit one. Defiantly, thinking, That’s the end of all that. But I couldn’t go through with it. I unlocked the door onto the deck and went out there instead. People never really leave. That’s the worst crime committed by those who go and those who die. They leave echoes of themselves behind, for the people who loved them to deal with for the rest of their lives. I hardly slept at all that night, or the next. Even if my mind had been able to find any quietness, the pain in my shou
chapter FORTY-FOUR
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