Relentless (21 page)

Nonplussed, Penny and Vivian and I sat staring at Milo with our forks frozen halfway between our plates and mouths. Even Lassie, for whom our hostess had provided a chair at one remove from the rest of us, regarded her young master with a disconcerted expression.

I looked at Penny, and she shrugged, and I said, “Point taken, Milo,” after which I held back none of the grisly details.

Judging by the gusto with which Milo ate dinner, at the end of which he demolished a piece of cream pie as big as his head, Waxx’s monstrous crimes rattled him less than they rattled me.

Of course, my anxiety was higher than Milo’s because my past had sharper claws than his did, and even after so many years of peace and happiness, memory could wound me anew.

   Vivian mostly used a Mustang, but she maintained her late husband’s Mercury Mountaineer in good condition and drove it often enough to keep the oil viscous and the tires supple.

Because she was a cop’s daughter and a cop’s widow, I thought that she would press us to go to the police in spite of our lack of evidence, but she never did.

In her garage, as she gave me the keys to the SUV, she said, “There’s something screwy about this. You see that, don’t you?”

“It’s everywhichway screwy, inside out, top to bottom,” I said. “How do you mean?”

“This wing nut is clever, he’s careful not to leave proof of his guilt—yet at the same time, he takes outrageous risks and acts as if, at the end of the day, he’s untouchable and always will be.”

Penny said, “It may just be the confidence of a narcissistic psychopath.”

Vivian shook her head. “I smell something else. And it’s some stink
I’ve smelled before, if I can remember when and where. Maybe you’d be smart not to go to the police until you have a stack of evidence taller than Milo.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t know. Just a feeling. I’ll brood on it.”

Penny said, “Cubby suspects Waxx
wants
us to go to the police.”

“Let’s all brood on it,” Vivian suggested. She offered me the big revolver. “I have a box of ammo for it, too.”

“Keep it,” I said. “You might need it.”

“I have a 20-gauge pistol-grip shotgun. It’ll stop any book critic ever born.”

I almost said the book critic might not be the worst of it, but I hadn’t told her about the deformed face glimpsed through the side window of the Maserati. Even I was beginning to think the ogre had been a figment of my imagination.

“Viv, we have a source of guns,” Penny said. “We can get what we need. We’ll be okay.”

“I imagine the source would be Grimbald and Clotilda. You better be careful going to them. Waxx might expect that.”

Vivian wanted to hug each of us, and each of us wanted to hug her, which resulted in such a rustle and flutter of raincoats that the echoes in the exposed rafters sounded like a colony of bats awakening to the idea of their nightly flight.

Vivian even picked up Lassie as if she were a mere Maltese and, holding her as she might cradle a baby, hugged the dog to her formidable bosom. “You folks … you’re the family I never could have. Anything happens to any one of you, I’m not going to feel like pink for maybe the rest of my life.”

That declaration resulted in another round of even longer and noisier hugs, with Vivian still holding Lassie and the dog licking our
chins as we embraced with her between us. But at last we boarded the Mercury Mountaineer.

After pressing the switch to raise the garage door, Vivian returned to the driver’s window of the SUV, tears pooled in her eyes. “Remember, if you get a different disposable phone, you call me right away with the number.”

“I will. Right away.”

First thing in the morning, she intended to buy a disposable of her own and call me with the number. We were taking the kind of precautions common to clandestine cells of revolutionaries.

We loved Vivian almost from the day we met her, but Penny and Milo and I were more emotional at this parting than any of us could have anticipated.

I backed the Mountaineer into the rain—then drove into the garage once more, put down the window, and said, “We meant to take Lassie.”

Vivian looked at the dog cradled in her arms. “Mercy me.” After she put Lassie in the backseat with Milo, she took advantage of this unexpected opportunity to say, “Maybe for a while, Cubby, not so blithe. Be an optimist but not a flaming optimist. For a while, expect the worst and make yourself mean enough to deal with it.”

I nodded, put up the window, and reversed into the rain once more.

In the garage, Vivian waved at us until I shifted into drive and sped away.

   By the time we returned to St. Gaetano’s, vespers must have concluded more than an hour earlier.

I worried that even as early as seven-thirty, the church might be locked. The benign days when houses of worship could be open around the clock without being vandalized were as far in the past as bell-bottom blue jeans, tie-dyed shirts, and psychedelic hats.

I dropped Penny near the front entrance. The rain suddenly intensified as she climbed the steps and tried the door. Unlocked.

As she went inside, I drove to the serviceway behind the church, parked but left the engine running. I got out, raised the tailgate.

The sacristy door opened. Penny braced it with a suitcase.

I went inside, and she said, “Somebody’s in the choir storage room off the narthex. The door was open. I think it was Father Tom.”

My note was where I had left it. Together, Penny and I quickly moved our belongings from the sacristy closet to the Mountaineer.

If I could avoid Father Tom, so much the better. Because I did not want to endanger him and also did not want to spend half an hour explaining the glimpse of Hell that our day had been, whatever story I told him would have to be at least incomplete if not a string of lies. I loathed having to lie to a priest, considering that by my calculation, I already was scheduled for 704 years in Purgatory.

When all the luggage was loaded in the SUV, I decided against testing our luck by blotting the rainwater from the sacristy floor, as I had done previously. I pulled the door shut, and we drove away.

Our destination was Boom World, as we called Grimbald and Clotilda’s property, and our route from the church took us past Beddlington Promenade, the dark and deteriorating shopping center where earlier we abandoned our Explorer.

As we drove by, we had no difficulty seeing the SUV under the skeletal branches of the dead trees. It was illuminated by the headlights of the black Cadillac Escalade parked in front of it.

Penny said, “Didn’t you tell me Waxx drove a black—”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t draw attention. Don’t slow down.”

“I’m not slowing down.”

“Don’t speed up.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t hit anything.”

“What about that red Honda?”

“What red Honda?”

“In the next lane.”

“What about it?”

“Can I hit that?”

“Don’t make me nuts, Cubby.”

“It’s harder to avoid being blithe than I thought it would be.”

“Do you think he saw us?” she worried.

“No chance. He doesn’t know what we’re driving. And the rain. And there’s a lot of traffic. We’re just another fish in the school.”

My personal cell phone rang, not the disposable.

Thinking
John Clitherow
, driving one-handed, risking a collision involving so many cars that it would set a world record, I fumbled the phone out of a raincoat pocket and took the call.

Shearman Waxx said, “Hack.”

I heard myself saying, “Hoity-toity snob.”

Disconcerted, he said, “Who is this?”

“Who do you think it is, you enema?”

“You think you’re very cute.”

“Actually, I have ugly feet.”

“Already I found your SUV. Soon I will find you.”

“Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow.”

“And I will cut out your boy’s beating heart.”

I didn’t have a snappy comeback for that one.

“I will feed his heart, dripping, to your wife.”

“Lousy syntax,” I said lamely.

“Then I will, while you watch, cut out her heart.”

Again, a perfect bon mot eluded me.

“And I will feed it to you.”

He terminated the call.

I returned the phone to my pocket. I drove carefully with both hands, glad to have something to grip that would prevent them from trembling uncontrollably. After a moment, I glanced at Penny.

To the best of my recollection, I never before saw the whites of her eyes exposed all the way around her dazzling blue irises.

She said, “Hoity-toity snob? That was
him
?”

“It pretty much sounded like him.”

“He saw us. He knows what we’re driving now.”

“No. The timing was coincidental.”

“Then why did he call?”

“The usual ragging you get from a psychopathic killer.”

“Ragging?”

“You know—all the gross stuff he’s going to do to us.”

After a hesitation, she said, “What gross stuff?”

Rolling my eyes to indicate Milo in the backseat, I said, “Dumbo, Despereaux, Pistachio.”

Milo said, “Good grief.”

“All right, all right. He says he’ll cut out your heart and feed it to your mother. Are you both happy to know that? Mmmmm?”

“Don’t worry, Milo,” Penny said. “I absolutely won’t eat it.”

“What else did he say?” Milo asked.

“Then he’ll cut out your mother’s heart and feed it to me.”

“This guy,” Milo judged, “is a major sicko.”

Lassie growled agreement.

We traveled several blocks in silence.

Some of the intersections featured pavement swales that were overflowing with swift-moving water. Passing through those rushing streams, the cars ahead of us sprouted white wings and seemed for a moment about to fly up into the storm.

Finally Penny said, “Not everything is a joke, Cubby.”

“I know.”

“We’re in serious trouble.”

“I know.”

“But I have to say …”

I waited, then asked, “What?”

She laughed softly. “Hoity-toity snob.”

“Well, he called me a hack again.”

“He’s not only a psychotic killer—he’s also rude.”

“He is very rude,” I agreed. “I’d like to meet his mother.”

“What would you say to his mother?”

“I would severely chastise her for poor parenting.”

“Our Milo is never rude,” Penny said.

“Because he’s been properly raised.”

“There was that one experiment that exploded,” she said.

“Well, that’s just the Boom side of him coming out. It’s in his genes.”

Behind us, Milo said, “This is so better.”

“What is?” I asked.

“You guys—the way you are now.”

“How are we now?”

“Not scared silent anymore. I like it this way.”

I liked it better that way, too, and when I smiled at Penny, she smiled at me.

We would not have been smiling if we had known that eventually one of the three of us would be shot dead and that life would never be the same.

   At the eastern end of Orange County, many of the canyons are still home to more coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, and deer than people. Carved into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, some are mere ravines, others less narrow, all thick with trees and brush, a refuge for the contemplative, for those who dislike urban and suburban life, and for various eccentrics.