The Woman (19 page)

“I followed Cynthia the morning she put it there. When she went back home, I went in your place. You were still out jogging. It’s how I knew you were here in Portland.”

“Okay. But, well, how did you find me in this hotel?”

“It’s what I do. I’m not Allstate, but you’re in good hands.”

“I don’t want to be in your hands. Get out of here. Get out of my life. Cynthia’s letters don’t tell you which cities or banks I’ll choose, and when I’ll go to each so there is no great harm to your having read her letters.”

“If you want it that way. By the way, the money and diamonds, tempting as they are, you’ll find are still there on the table. If I wanted to harm you, you’d be dead. The payment I’ve been promised for dealing with you, plus that two-hundred-thousand in cash, not to mention the diamonds, would equal the price on the head of a president of a small African country. But sending me away is a mistake.”

“Oh. And what mistake is that?”

“You need me.” He leaned down and took off his shoes, then his socks, stretching them out neatly across the tops of his shoes. “Besides, how can our romance blossom if you run out on me?”

“What romance? Get out of my room. Leave me alone.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a pleasure watching your backside. Well, that’s not exactly true, watching your backside is definitely a pleasure. But, then, as you wish. I drove half the night to get here and I’m tired. I’ll leave in the morning.” Then he took off his pants and his shirt, laying it on top of the slacks he had just draped over the end of the dresser, the leg pleats straight. Lastly, he took a handgun from somewhere behind him and placed it on top of his shirt.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“I need some sleep. Move over.”

“Go to hell. You’re not sleeping in this bed.”

“Yes I am. I’m exhausted. And we’ve got a full day tomorrow.”

Right then his gun and shirt slid off the dresser and thudded against the floor like the carcass of a small dead animal. Linda’s eyes fixed on the dark weapon then widened and went round. “Then you’re sleeping alone.” She got up, bent down to pick up her clothes from the floor, slipped her top on and moved to the chair where Ahab had been sitting. He shrugged and got into the bed.

The seat of the chair was warm. She sat looking at his open eyes, barely discernible in the ambient light coming through the open weave drapes. After a while she spoke. “Whatever made you decide to . . . this’ll sound hokey, become a bad man?”

“In my line of work you learn there are lots of shades of bad. Not since the crucifixion, has anyone been purely good. So, there are lots of shades of that, too.”

Then, like a thought tossed aside, he closed his eyes.

* * *

“Hello, Nathan?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“It’s Nora Larick. We met in the Nob Hill Grill.”

“Who?”

“You’ve forgotten me that quickly?”

“Oh. Nora. Yes. Yes. I remember. Forgive me. It’s the middle of the night. But no, how could I forget you? . . . Nora, it’s five-thirty in the morning?” It was a statement of fact, he had said like a question.

“Listen, Nathan. I understand this is a bit odd. A lot odd, I admit. It’s just that, well, I had gotten up and checked out of my hotel to get on the road early. Then, a few miles out of town, I got a call telling me I needed to stay in Portland for a meeting this afternoon. And, well, to tell the truth, I could use a few more hours sleep. So, I got to wondering, you said you lived alone and worked days, so, well, how’d you like some company? I could cook you breakfast. Get you off to work. Then sleep a few hours and be out of your way before you get home. I come back to Portland a couple times a year and, well, next time we’d know each other. . . . Dumb idea, huh?” she said into the lingering silence. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

A few minutes later she hung up the hotel lobby phone and walked outside holding the directions to Nathan’s place.

* * *

Late that afternoon, Linda had left Nathan’s home, an older house nearby in a neighborhood filled with homes that could qualify for favored financing as historical structures. Nathan had been a nice man, lonely, hard working, and he was the only person in the entire world who knew Nora Larick. Her contact of Nathan had been more daring, more brazen than her passive behavior in the upscale taverns of the towns near Sea Crest. She felt both shocked and proud she had pulled it off. Despite this difference, the memory of him felt the same as the memories of the men from the bars, empty and meaningless.

Today might become the day she would die and, if she did, after last night she would not die horny.

She smiled and pressed the accelerator.

Chapter 30

Linda drove south from Canon Beach through the darkness along the coast toward Sea Crest seeing very little traffic in either direction. Around three-thirty in the morning, no longer able to stay awake at the wheel, she stopped at a beachside rest area to take a short nap in the car. The moon glowing off the Pacific whitecaps appeared as bright pinpricks in the night sea. When she closed her eyes, the sounds of the surf let her think she was back at home, safe in her own bed.

Two hours later, the first subtle glow of the morning moving across her stretch of the road announced the new day. Later today she would play cat and mouse with Police Chief Ben McIlhenny.

After driving fifty miles, she used a drive-through to get a large coffee and a fast food breakfast. Then she was back on the road.

In daylight all roads look safer, less secretive, even the roads with which one is familiar. The tree shadows cast on the road ahead moved in a cadence with the wind. She was nearing home. It felt good, even though she would not actually go home, not this trip anyway, if ever.

She entered Lincoln City, Oregon, a few minutes after nine and stopped to use a pay phone to call Ben McIlhenny. “Hello Ben. It’s Linda Darby.”

“Linda. Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just had to get away for a few days. Clear my head. We need to talk. There are things I haven’t told you.”

“I can come by your place.”

“No. Not my place. This is a nice day, how ‘bout the turnout just north of town. We can sit on the benches near the cliff overlooking the ocean.”

“When?”

“I can be there in an hour.”

“I’ve got a meeting with the violent crime task force that starts in fifteen minutes. Give me two hours. Will that work?”

“I’ll make it work.”

“Linda. I’d like to bring Clark Ryerson with me.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. He cares about you. And he’s my new deputy, just started yesterday.”

“That was fast.”

“Small town means less red tape. You know.”

“What happened to . . . what’s his name? Your other deputy.”

“Clyde? He quit. Said he signed on to be a cop in a quiet little beach town. I guess all these murders melted his backbone.”

“Don’t fault him, Ben. He’s probably the only sane one out of all of us.”

“Clark’s got great instincts. I s’pose as my deputy I could just bring him along, but I’d like you to be okay with it.”

“Sure. No problem. I trust Clark, but no one else. Whoever else is on this task force of yours, I don’t know those guys. I don’t want to feel ganged up on. Just the three of us, okay?”

“Sure. Clark and I will see you at eleven-thirty.”

The drive from Lincoln City to Sea Crest would take less than an hour, so Linda took time to eat something more substantial than fast food. It also gave her time to use a gas station restroom to brush her teeth, freshen up a bit, and change a few appearance things to recapture the real Linda Darby look.

She had one more problem. Ben McIlhenny knew her car, and if he saw her driving the car Cynthia left for her it would lead to questions she’d rather avoid. Since he was a cop, he might just run the plates letting him link her to the name Nora Jean Larick. She didn’t plan on telling Ben about Cynthia’s letter, the bank box, the cash or diamonds, or the fake identities. After meeting with Ben and Clark she would be back on the road. Back on the run so she needed that stuff to remain a secret. Besides, she had not completely shaken off Ahab’s warning about Ben McIlhenny. Truth was she didn’t know exactly what to make of Ahab. He had saved her life in the alley. Then again by warning her and leaving the gun she had used to kill the man who chased her on the beach. Then, last night, he could have killed her in her hotel room and taken the cash and diamonds. Still, none of that changed one thing, he was an assassin who apparently had a contract on her.

She considered swapping over to her own car, but couldn’t be sure someone was not watching her condo. Then she’d have to switch back to the Nora Larick car. She decided that simpler was better. She would park in the small neighborhood on the east side of the highway and walk to the cliff-side turnout.

* * *

The high sun striking the windshield prevented Linda from seeing the occupants when Chief McIlhenny’s four-wheel jeep wagon pulled into the turnout. And right then she realized that her choice of where to meet had pinned her against the sea cliff. If Ben had come to arrest her, she would have no way of escape.

Calm down. Ben has no reason to arrest me. I’m a victim, not a criminal. I killed. I didn’t murder.

The driver’s door opened. Ben stepped out stretching his tall frame, and tugging and pushing on the wide leather belt on which he carried his gun and other official paraphernalia. A moment later, Clark got out of the passenger seat, similarly fussing with the leather ensemble wrapped around his waist. No one got out of the back. They had come alone.

“Hello, Linda,” Ben said, as he got close.

Clark winked, and then took off his cap. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. Clark’s transition from a motorcycle gang member to a waiter, to a cop, was measurable through the changing lengths of his hair. Standing there, clean shaven, the sun on his face, he looked good in his uniform.

“Please sit down,” Ben said.

Linda managed a nervous smile. Then sat, placing her hands on top of the wooden picnic table. She had read in a book that when people were nervous, they rarely knew what to do with their hands. It was true. She moved them to her lap.

“Well, Linda,” Ben began, “this is your meeting. You take the lead. We’ll listen. Tell it your way. Try to keep it chronological, if you can. Okay?”

“I’ll try,” Linda said.

They all instinctively turned toward a loud wave, large enough that it climbed over the seagull-whitened rock polyhedron about a hundred yards out from where they sat.

Linda knew it was time to do what she had returned to Sea Crest to do. Come clean. Well, part way clean anyway.

Ben and Clark sat facing Linda. Ben rested his hands and forearms on the table. Clark sat on the end of the bench, his legs crossed, his arms relaxed on his lap.

“It all started the night before the two men were found dead in the alley,” she began. “Like I told you before, Ben, I had decided to walk to town. Do a little shopping, and then go to Millie’s for some chowder and cheese bread.”

Fifteen minutes later, she had told the two men everything including the mystery man who had saved her and drove her home, most likely in the taxi that had been briefly stolen that same night.

“You had told me about being accosted in the alley and getting away,” Ben said, “but not about the man who had saved you. Why not?”

“He warned me not to come to you, said you could not be trusted.”

“Why? Why did he say that?”

She noticed that Ben’s voice had risen, and, at one point, cracked.

“I have no idea. Besides I didn’t want to get him in trouble. He saved me. I thought from being raped. Now it appears more likely from being tortured and murdered like Cynthia.”

“Did he kill those two men?”

“When I left the alley, they were both alive, just unconscious, so any claim that he killed them is only supposition. I didn’t even know the two men were dead until the next morning when I heard about it on the radio. All I knew—know—is that he saved me and the two men were found dead.”

“Come on, Linda, who else could have killed ‘em?”

“Yes, it seems logical to assume he killed them. But I don’t, we don’t, know that.”

“But he never told you about why he felt you shouldn’t come to me?”

“He didn’t,” Linda replied. “Let me ask you, why would he doubt your trustworthiness?”

“I think he just didn’t want you telling me about him. It was to his advantage for the authorities not to know there had even been another man in the alley.”

“That makes sense,” Linda said. But she hadn’t liked Ben’s body language. His eyes were normally right on her, but while saying this, he had looked away. Ahab had been right. She knew it now. Not why. Not how. But, Ben McIlhenny was involved.

“Then what happened?” Clark asked.

“Ben knows the rest. I went to Cynthia’s and found her. . . . Called him and waited until he arrived.”

“But why did you run?” Ben asked.