Mission Canyon (37 page)

‘‘Did you tell the police?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘Do you think Brand is the one who helped Yago get his claws into her?’’

‘‘The cops can find that out.’’

His voice was flat. He wasn’t trying to shade his words, wasn’t trying to protect my feelings anymore. He didn’t care.

I looked at the sun sinking toward the rooftops, reddening the western sky. ‘‘Jesse, what Adam said to you— about the anchor leg.’’

The anchorman was the final member of the team, the one who was counted on to bring home the victory.

He stared at his hands. ‘‘He meant it’s up to me to get Brand.’’

He didn’t say
find
. He didn’t say
turn in.

‘‘I know what I have to do,’’ he said.

And I knew what he meant. It turned my heart to ice.

I heard the phone ringing. I had fallen asleep on top of the covers, facedown on my bed. I fumbled to my feet, knocking a glass of water off the nightstand, grabbing the phone. By the light coming through the window, I could tell it was evening. My hair was still damp from the shower, so I couldn’t have dozed for long. The scent of jasmine hung lush in the air, and hibiscus flowered outside, violent red.

Amber Gibbs’s voice brought me awake. ‘‘Oh, Evan, it’s awful.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ I pressed the heel of my palm against an eye.

‘‘Is it true you were down there when people were shooting?’’

‘‘How’d you find out, Amber?’’

‘‘Things are crazy here.’’

‘‘Crazy how?’’

‘‘Junior went nuts. Tearing up his office and screaming at people. We had to call Pops in Washington, D.C., and finally Mrs. Diamond came over to calm him down.’’

I was now wide-awake. ‘‘Amber, back up. Why did Kenny get so upset? Because he heard about the shootings at the warehouse?’’

‘‘No, your boyfriend.’’

When did I grow an apple in my throat? ‘‘What about Jesse?’’

‘‘He came rolling in here saying he had to see Junior. He set him off like a bottle rocket.’’

Not again. ‘‘Is he still there? Do you need me to come over and break it up?’’

‘‘No, Junior went tearing out of here with Mrs. D, and Jesse left right after them.’’

She may have kept talking, but I didn’t hear it. I hung up and tried to reach Jesse. No answer at home, on his cell, or at the office. A breeze swirled through the windows. I felt a presence again, the way I had the night before, the shadow of death.
The people who are left only want to shut you up. Irrevocably.

Grabbing my keys, I jumped in the Explorer and floored it toward Jesse’s house. Pulling into his drive, I saw that his car was gone. I went in, calling his name, but he wasn’t there. I stood in the living room looking around, trying to find any evidence to tell me where he’d gone. The breakers cartwheeled up the beach in the red sunset. The Yellow Pages were open on the kitchen counter, and I saw at which page. Firearms.

He couldn’t have bought a gun. Not this evening, not from a licensed dealer.

Who was I kidding? He was resourceful, and relentless, and . . .

And a good shot.

Somebody was either going to get killed tonight, or go to prison. I couldn’t let it be Jesse. Think, I told myself. Where would he have gone? Only one place.

I phoned Dale Van Heusen. ‘‘I’m going to Kenny Rudenski’s house.’’

‘‘I can be there in twenty minutes. I’ll meet you outside, ’’ he said.

I got in the Explorer and gunned it toward the foothills.

At Kenny’s house, the only car in sight was Mari Diamond’s white Jaguar. No Porsche, no Audi. The setting sun turned the mountains a sharp blue, threaded with gold seams of rock. I was feeling déjà vu. Had it been only twenty-four hours since I was up here looking for Adam?

I pounded on the front door. Nobody answered. I stared into the security camera and said, ‘‘Kenny, open up.’’

They had to be here, I thought. I left the door and walked to the window of Kenny’s study. The blinds were open, and his computer was on. The screen was displaying video footage—I could see motion. Trying to get a better look, I pushed through the bushes bordering the window. And stepped on the dog.

One of the Dobermans was lying in the bushes. I jumped, ready to run, but the dog didn’t move. Pushing the bushes aside, I bent down and saw that the dog was dead. Its head was crushed. It had been hit with a hard, heavy object and dragged out of sight into these flower beds. My throat constricted. Fearfully, I touched its fur. It was warm. The blood on its head was wet. This had just happened.

Mari would never have done this. Frightened, I looked around again. Heard nothing, saw nothing outside. Took another look through the window at Kenny’s computer screen: The video on-screen was from the Mistryss Cam system. Oh, my God. I saw Mari, somewhere inside the house, banging on a closed door. I heard no sound, but her mouth was working frantically, and I could read her lips.
Help
.

Where was Van Heusen? I couldn’t wait for him.

The front door was locked. I ran around the house to the patio. The lawn was emerald in the fading light. The patio doors were locked. Finally I found an open bathroom window. I leaped and grabbed the sill, pulled myself up, and shimmied through. I opened the bathroom door and listened for a burglar alarm, or footsteps, anything. . . . I crept out, looking around. I heard Tim North telling me,
self-defense begins with awareness of your surroundings.

Well, rightie-o. Surroundings: house of weirdo who may want to kill me. I crept along the hallway, hearing my shoes scuff on the wood.

Mari was locked up somewhere in here. Where? I looked in the living room. Everything was in place: Steinway gleaming, glass memorabilia cases in mint condition. Into the kitchen; the big refrigerator hummed, but the room was still and clean.

I heard a sound, a cry coming from farther back in the house. I picked up a skillet from the countertop. Tim’s voice again, lecturing me . . .
Pity will get you hurt.

I put the skillet back and took a meat cleaver from the magnetic knife rack. The biggest thing on the rack, with a thick handle and a gleaming blade that looked sharp and heavy enough to decapitate a pig.

I started toward the sound, down the hallway past Kenny’s office. I held the meat cleaver flat against my leg. The noise again, the crying, behind me now. I turned. It was coming from a door in the hallway, the door to Kenny’s wine cellar.

Scratching and whimpering, the sound of fingernails scraping wood. Raising the cleaver, I pulled the door open. And as soon as I did, I knew the scratching was not the sound of fingernails. It was the sound of claws. I slammed the door.

Right on Mari’s Chihuahua. The dog squealed, I pulled the door open again and it skittered to its feet, eyes bulging. I jumped back.

It glared at me, the Chihuahua Terminator, then turned tail and ducked back into the doorway. Holding the cleaver higher now, I pulled the door all the way open.

There was no sign of Mari. Instead, a staircase went down into the cellar. The yelling was coming from beyond another door at the bottom of the stairs.

This was without doubt a human voice crying for help, accompanied by the sound of a hand beating on wood.

I called, ‘‘Hello?’’

The pounding intensified. So did the crying. The Chihuahua tottered down the stairs, claws ticking. At the bottom it pawed at the door, whimpering.

Banging, frenzied now. ‘‘Open the door. Open the door.’’

‘‘Mari?’’ I said.

‘‘Let me out. Open the door.’’

Should I wait for Van Heusen? I checked the hallway, saw nobody. I ran down the stairs. The door at the bottom had a dead bolt lock; the key was in it. I turned it.

The door blew open and Mari Diamond tumbled out. Her eyes looked like cue balls. Her red nails flailed against my chest. She clattered into me and started climbing the stairs on all fours, grunting and squealing.

I staggered back against the stairs, hitting my butt, and grabbed her leg.

‘‘Wait. Who locked you in?’’ I said.

She sawed her leg back and forth. ‘‘It’s him; let me go—’’

‘‘Where’s Jesse? Was he here?’’

‘‘You stupid— Move! In there. Kenny took a shovel; you know what he’s going to do with it? Get out. Let me out of here—’’

She saw the meat cleaver.

‘‘Jesus, you crazy bitch. Oh, God.’’

And she kicked me in the chest with a dainty, spike-heeled confection of a shoe.

I gasped from the pain, flinching backward down the stairs. Mari skittered up the stairs and out into the hallway.

I started up after her. Somebody had locked her in, and that was probably Kenny. And I didn’t want to be locked in after her. I got three steps up the stairs and heard the dog going the other way, into the wine cellar. And that’s when I smelled it.

The odor was faint, an undercurrent in the air. But it was unmistakable. It wasn’t the bouquet of old wine. It was the smell of decaying flesh.

The Chihuahua disappeared into the cellar, barking and moaning. Instinct, revulsion, the urge for self-preservation, told me to haul my butt up the stairs after Mari and keep going. Except for one thing. I’d asked her where Jesse was. And in her babblings she had said,
In there.

I felt the meat cleaver in my hand. I walked down the stairs.

I stepped through the doorway. The air felt cool. The smell was almost subliminal. Like a nightmare. My shoes scuffed on the concrete floor. I took the key from the dead bolt lock and put it in my pocket.

The wine cellar looked normal. At the far end of the room, however, was another door. I crept to it and looked in. My heart was trying to climb up my throat.

Beyond the door was a museum. This was where Kenny kept his most valuable collectibles, the memorabilia that meant the most to him. My skin started slithering.

The display cases were installed with the same care as the ones upstairs in the living room. More care, perhaps, because this was where Kenny’s heart lay. His dirty, worm-eaten, fetid heart.

I had seen a hint of this on Kenny’s computer, with the bidding on off-the-books crash memorabilia. But seeing it in person was different. It closed in on me, though encased behind glass. This was a cathedral, a cesspit, a museum of sudden death.

I walked between the displays, holding my breath. On the walls, flat-screen displays played footage of famous air crashes. The United Airlines DC-10 going down in Sioux City. The Concorde streaming flames as it struggled toward Le Bourget, fighting its doom. Air show catastrophes: Ramstein, Paris, L’viv. I kept walking. Bizarrely, I was aware that this was arranged with the care of a good museum exhibit, leading the visitor through the experience to greater understanding.

Here were the fruits of Kenny’s bids in underground auctions: memento mori. A lovingly tended, dirty collection of death souvenirs. Some . . .
pieces
, I supposed he called them, came from everyday fatal accidents, but some were from famous events. PRINCESS GRACE, one display was labeled. BUDDY HOLLY, said another.

After visiting the cemetery with him, watching him at Yvette Vasquez’s grave, I thought I understood. This obsession had been developing since Yvette died in the car wreck. This, not her headstone, was his memorial to her.

Literally. Because directly ahead was a case with a black velvet pillow, and inside was a relic. It was nothing but a piece of twisted metal, stained with brown streaks that I knew were blood. Her blood. I read the label on the display case.

YVETTE VASQUEZ.

This, for Kenny, had become the embodiment of the girl’s death, a stand-in for her crushed body. The start of his collection. Kenny the thrill seeker. Here was where he kept all his fear, and his lust, hidden. And the biggest secret he hid was that he had stolen a piece of the car in which Yvette died.

No wonder Mari pounded on the door to be let out. Here was Kenny’s inner life: death.

That was what I was smelling. And it didn’t come from the display cases. I followed the keening of the dog around a corner, and stopped.

The Chihuahua was standing in front of a wrapped package, growling, lunging and darting back, tiny hackles up. The package was wrapped carefully in a blanket, and then in trash bags, all secured with duct tape. It was a body.

I stood without breathing, watching the dog dart back and forth. Who was it? What should I do? I seemed as disconcerted as the pooch.

The dog dashed in again. It bit through the trash bag and started tearing at the blanket underneath. I backed up a step. I didn’t stop the dog. I wanted to know who it was. I took out my phone to call Van Heusen, but couldn’t get a signal.

Horrified, I watched the dog wrangle its way through the blanket and sink its teeth into flesh beneath. It wagged, ripped, tossed its head back and forth. Finally it backed off. Protruding from the blanket was a gray waxy hand. On the hand was a diamond pinkie ring the size of a big computer chip.

It was Franklin Brand.

I backed away. The dog darted in and rolled on the body.

Brand, dead, here. Not freshly dead, either. And what had Mari said—
he took a shovel
?

Kenny had murdered him.

I backed into a display case, felt it rock on its pedestal behind me. Turning, I steadied it. It was a small Plexiglas case, unadorned, set at the end of the display. No lighting, no explanatory notes. None were needed.

Inside the case were a gear cog and derailleur from a bicycle. And a damaged pair of bike shoes. And a crucifix of Mexican silver. The display was labeled, MISSION CANYON. They were mementos from the hit-and-run.

For a second I held on to the case, staring. What the hell was this doing here? Had Kenny bought these things from the police or scavenged them from the dump? Why?

I felt my head thudding. My knees felt soft. The bike parts could have been scavenged, but not Jesse’s shoes, or Isaac’s crucifix. They had disappeared from the scene of the crash, before the paramedics arrived. Jesse was right: His dream was a memory, a memory of the killer standing over him. Stealing bits of his handiwork. I looked around at the museum, the entire display, and realized that it was arranged so that two pieces had pride of place. They were the pillars upon which the exhibit rested. They were relics from the two death scenes in Santa Barbara—Yvette Vasquez’s crash, and the hit-and -run.