Solitude Creek (44 page)

He allowed Jenkins to pour him some of the sludgy wine and they tapped glasses, toasting their success. Over the past few days they’d made several hundred thousand dollars.

‘Always loved it here, the Cedar Hills.’

Chris Jenkins reminded March of the people in those infomercials: the handsome man, next to the beautiful woman, on a Florida or Hawaiian porch, boats in the background, palms nearby, talking about how they’d made millions with hardly any effort in the real-estate market or by inventing things. In Jenkins’s case, selling something very, very rare and valuable.

The men sat on the couch. They regarded the crystal TV screen, on which fish swam and kelp waved, hypnotic.

‘Good picture. Four K. Man, that’s beautiful. We’ll keep that in mind.’ Jenkins set the glass down. ‘Now where are we?’

‘All good.’

‘What about Otto Grant? I heard the news. They seemed to buy it.’

‘They did.’

March paused the shark video and called up another video file on his computer. The video, a high-definition (only 2K), showed Otto Grant, kicking in the last moments of his life, trying to get leverage to pull himself up and somehow unhook the rope from where March had tied it to stage the suicide. He struggled for a time, then shivered and went limp.

‘Did he come?’

There was a rumor that upon being hanged, men sometimes ejaculated. Neither had been able to confirm this.

‘Just peed.’

‘Ah.’

‘I left evidence in the shack that the man he hired is from Chicago and has already left to go back there, left right after the incident in the hospital. Solid leads. Phone calls, proxies, emails. They’ll sniff up that tree for a while.’

‘Good.’

‘Now, you were mentioning a new job.’ March knew Jenkins had come to Carmel for another reason, but he wouldn’t’ve made up the part about a new job entirely.

‘Client’s in Lausanne, so he wants it to happen anywhere but Europe. He mentioned Latin America.’

‘Any preferences as to how?’

‘He was thinking a fall, maybe a cable car.’

March laughed. He could hotwire an ignition, he could disable an elevator. That was the extent of his mechanical engineering skills. ‘I don’t think so. A bus?’

‘A bus would work, I’d think.’

‘Send me the details.’

Glasses clinked again. March had sipped the wine once. He’d also eyed the pineapple juice.

Jenkins laughed and handed the juice glass to March, making sure their fingers brushed once more. ‘Just don’t mix it with Saint Estèphe.’

March let his boss’s hand linger on his for a moment.

‘Dinner?’ Jenkins asked.

‘Not hungry.’

March never was, not at times like this. All the work, hoping it would pay off. The way he planned out the jobs, well, it was fragile. There was a lot that could go wrong. Wasting all that time and money, the risk. Anyway, what it came down to: when the Get was hungry, March was not.

‘Oh, here. I brought you something.’ Jenkins dug in his Vuitton backpack. He handed over a small box. March opened it. ‘Well.’

‘Victoria Beckham.’

They were sunglasses, blue lenses.

Jenkins said, ‘Italian. And the lenses change color in the sun. Or get darker. I don’t know. I think there are instructions. You’ll love them.’

‘Thanks. They’re really something.’

Though March’s first thought was: wearing bright blue sunglasses on a job, where you would want to be as inconspicuous as possible?

Maybe I’ll go to the beach sometime. On vacation.

Would you let me do that, Get? Just relax?

He tried them on.

‘They’re you,’ Jenkins whispered, squeezing March’s biceps.

March put the glasses away and picked up the remote.

Click
. The hypnotic ballet of sea creatures resumed on the TV. ‘Extraordinary. Four K,’ he said reverently. ‘Who shot this?’

‘Teenager, believe it or not.’

‘Four K. Hmm. Wave of the future.’

Jenkins asked, ‘What’s the plan?’

‘We need to stop her.’

‘That investigator? Dance?’

‘That’s right.’ He explained that the attempt to injure her boyfriend, somebody named Boling, hadn’t worked out. Now they needed to do something more efficient.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow. Why do anything? We’ll be a thousand miles away by noon.’

‘No. We have to stop her. She won’t rest until she gets us.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ March said, staring at the sharks.

‘What do you have in mind?’

Dance, he’d seen when he’d slipped into her Pathfinder at the Bay View crime scene, was presently attending a concert at the Performing Arts Center in Monterey. He’d thought momentarily about staging a final attack there, with the chance that she’d be severely injured or killed. But coming after Grant’s suicide that would be suspicious.

Besides, there was another reason he didn’t want her dead.

He looked over the notes he’d jotted after getting the information on the man’s license plate. ‘There’s a close associate. Named TJ Scanlon. Lives in Carmel Valley. We’ll kill him, make it look gang-related. It’ll deflect her. She’ll drop everything and go after them.’

‘Why not just kill her?’

March could think of no answer. Just: ‘It’s better this way.’

Another reason …

He jabbed a finger at the TV screen. ‘Ah, watch. This is it.’

On the screen a hammerhead shark, awkward yet elegant, swam toward the camera, then veered upward and, as casually as a human swatting a mosquito, opened its mouth and neatly removed the leg of a surfer treading water overhead. The shark and limb vanished as the massive cloud of red streamed like smoke into the scene, eventually obscuring the mutilated young man, writhing as he died.

‘Well,’ Jenkins said. ‘Four K. Excellent.’ He lifted a glass of wine.

March nodded. He stared at the imagery for a moment longer and shut the set off. He picked up the Louis Vuitton bag, checked that the hunting knife and gun were still inside, and gestured his boss toward the door. ‘After you.’

This was an era he knew nothing about, didn’t care for, didn’t appreciate.

The sixties in the US. At least
this
part of the sixties.

Antioch March believed it was called the counterculture and, for some reason, CBI agent TJ Scanlon loved it.

As they stood in the living room of the three-bedroom ranch-style house in Carmel Valley, March and Jenkins surveyed the place. Orange and brown dominated. Carpet, furniture, tablecloths. On the wall were posters – nice ones, framed – of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane. The doors were strings of colorful beads that clicked when you pushed them, gun in hand, to make sure you were alone. And, yes, a lava lamp.

‘Sets you on edge, doesn’t it?’ Jenkins asked.

It did.

In his gloved hand March clicked on a black light. The ultraviolet rays spectacularly lit up what had been a dull poster of a ship improbably sailing through the sky.

He shut the light off again.

A glance at a large peace symbol, reminiscent of the Mercedes Benz emblem on his car back home. The sixties’ icon was made out of shells.

On edge …

He told the Get to relax; it was, he suspected, still angry that the Asian family on the rocks had missed the opportunity to die spectacular deaths in the icy bay.

Somebody’s not happy …

You will be soon.

They had parked two blocks away and made their way to Scanlon’s house through woods, out of sight of any of the neighbors. March, the technician of the two, had examined the man’s place carefully from the distance. Then, convinced it was unoccupied, he’d slipped up and peered through the windows. No alarms, no security cameras. The lock had been easily jimmied. Then, prepared to flee in case they’d missed an alarm, they’d waited before preparing the room for the events tonight.

March now turned from the bizarre décor and looked over the cot they’d set up. TJ Scanlon’s final resting place. The young man would be tied down and tortured. You didn’t need much. March had his knife and he’d found a pair of pliers. Pain was simple. You didn’t need to get elaborate.

He’d staged the scene rather well also, he thought. They’d bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol, to enhance the agent’s agony, from a convenience store in the barrio of Salinas, a place known for gangs, and they’d picked up some trash and discarded rags in the area too. A little research had revealed the colors and signs of the K-101s, which was a crew that the CBI had had some run-ins with, arresting a few lieutenant-level bangers. March had tagged the signs on Scanlon’s wall, right above the spot where he would die. Presumably after giving up all sorts of helpful information about ongoing investigations into the gang.

March wondered what ‘TJ’ stood for. He didn’t bother to prowl through paperwork to find out.

Thomas Jefferson?

Jenkins was asking, ‘What if he’s not coming home tonight. Maybe—’

And just then there came the sound of a car on the long gravel drive, approaching.

‘That’s him?’

March eased up to the window to look out.

Which gave Jenkins a chance to put his hand on March’s spine.

It’s all right.

‘Yep.’

Scanlon was alone in the car. And there were no other vehicles with him.

Suddenly the Get slipped a regret into March’s head that it wasn’t Kathryn Dance whom he was about to work on after all.

March vetoed the idea. No. This was the way to handle it.

Which irritated the Get, and for a moment March felt inflamed and edgy.

Fuck you, he thought. I’ve got
some
say in this.

Silently the two men stepped behind the front door. March looked out of the peephole, gripping the hammer he’d break Scanlon’s arm with as soon as he walked inside, grab his gun.

He saw the young man walking, head down, to the gate in the picket fence in front of his house. He opened it and started up the winding walk, minding where he put his feet. If Scanlon had front lights he hadn’t turned them on.

Scanlon walked onto the low porch, then stepped to the side. They heard the mailbox open. A brief laugh, faint, at something he’d received – or hadn’t received. Then gritty footsteps on the redwood planks, moving toward the front door.

The sound of a key in the lock.

Then … nothing.

Jenkins turned, frowning. March took a firmer grip on the hammer. He peeked outside through a curtained window. He was staring at the empty porch.

‘Leave!’ March whispered harshly. ‘Now!’

Jenkins frowned but he followed March instinctively. They got only three feet back into the living room when a half-dozen Monterey County Sheriff’s deputies, in tactical gear, flooded into the room from behind the beads covering the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Hands where we can see them! On the ground, on the ground! Now!’

And the front door exploded inward. Two other tactical officers charged in too. Scanlon, his own weapon drawn, followed.

‘Christ!’ Jenkins cried. ‘No, no, no …’

March backed up, hands raised, and eased to his knees. Jenkins started to, as well, but his hand dropped to his side, as if to steady himself as he sank down.

March looked at his eyes. He’d seen the expression before. The gaze wasn’t defiance. It was resignation. And he knew what was coming next.

Calmly he said to Jenkins, ‘No, Chris.’

But what was about to happen was inevitable.

The small pistol was in the man’s tanned hand, drawn leisurely from his hip pocket. He swung it forward but it got no farther than four o’clock before two officers fired simultaneously. Head and chest. Huge explosions that deafened March. Jenkins crumpled, eyes nearly closed, and landed in a pile on the floor.

‘Shots fired. Suspect down. Medic, medic, medic!’ One officer who’d fired dropped his radio and hurried forward, pistol still pointed toward Jenkins, though from the spatter it was clear he was no threat. Another two cuffed March.

The policeman removed the small gun from Jenkins’s hand, unloaded it and locked the slide back.

The others hurried through the place, opening doors. Shouts of ‘Clear!’ echoed.

March continued to gaze down at his boss.

Maybe Jenkins had actually believed he could shoot his way out of the situation. But that was unlikely. He’d chosen to take his own life. It wasn’t uncommon; suicide by cop, it was called. For those who lacked the courage to put a gun to their head and pull the trigger.

He stared at Jenkins’s body on the floor, the blood spreading in the shag carpet, a twitch of a finger.

Other officers streamed inside, accompanying two emergency medical technicians. They bent to the fallen man. But a fast check of vitals confirmed what was obvious.

‘He’s gone. I’ll tell the ME.’

Another man, in a body-armor vest, walked inside and looked down at his captives. He recognized him from outside the movie theater the other morning and from the Bay View Center. Kathryn Dance’s colleague.

‘Detective O’Neil,’ one of the deputies called. ‘We’re clear of threat.’ The officer handed O’Neil March’s wallet. Jenkins’s too. O’Neil flipped through them.

He walked to the door and said, ‘It’s clear, Kathryn.’

She walked inside, glancing at the corpse matter-of-factly. Then her green eyes fixed on March’s. He felt an odd sensation, looking at her. Was it a comfort? He believed so. Outrageous, under the circumstances. But there it was. He nearly smiled. She was even more beautiful than he’d believed. And how much she resembled Jessica!

O’Neil handed her the men’s IDs. ‘The deceased’s Chris Jenkins.’ Then a nod. ‘And you got it right, Kathryn. He’s Antioch March.’

Got it right?

He wasn’t the least surprised his beautiful Kathryn had out-thought him.

‘Read him his rights and let’s get him to CBI.’

‘It was the lights, Antioch.’

‘Andy, please. Lights?’

‘The lights in the security cameras of the venues where you staged the attacks.’

Dance scooted her chair closer, here in the larger of the interview rooms, the one, in fact, where the Serrano incident had begun. She was already wearing her dark-framed predator specs. Examining March carefully. A trim-fitting light blue dress shirt, dark slacks. Both seemed expensive. She couldn’t see his shoes from where she sat: were they the five-grand pair?