I had never seen this weapon before.
My father had never owned a gun.
Acting on instinct, I put down the pistol and used a corner of the
bedspread to wipe my prints off it. I suspected that I was being set
up to take a fall for something I had not done.
Although any television emits ultraviolet radiation, I’ve seen a lot of
movies over the years, because I’m safe if I sit far enough from the
screen. I know all the great stories of innocent inenfrom Cary Grant
and James Stewart to Harrison Ford-relentlessly hounded for crimes they
never committed and incarcerated on trumped-up evidence.
Stepping quickly into the adjacent bathroom, I switched on the low-watt
bulb. No dead blonde in the bathtub.
No Orson, either.
In the bedroom once more, I stood very still and listened to the
house.
If other people were present, they were only ghosts drifting in
ectoplasmic silence.
I returned to the bed, hesitated, picked up the pistol, and fumbled
with it until I ejected the magazine. It was fully loaded. I slammed
the magazine back into the butt. Being inexperienced with handguns, I
found the piece heavier than I had expected: It weighed at least a
pound and a half Next to where I’d found the gun, a white envelope lay
on the cream-colored bedspread. I hadn’t noticed it until now.
I withdrew a penlight from a nightstand drawer and focused the light
beam on the envelope. It was blank except for a professionally printed
return address in the upper left corner: Thor’s Gun Shop here in
Moonlight Bay. The unsealed envelope, which bore neither a stamp nora
postmark, was slightly crumpled and stippled with curious
indentations.
When I picked up the envelope, it was faintly damp in spots.
The folded papers inside were dry.
I examined these documents in the beam of the penlight. I recognized
my father’s careful printing on the carbon copy of the standard
application, on which he had attested to the local police that he had
no criminal record or history of mental illness that would be grounds
to deny him the right to own this firearm. Also included was a carbon
copy of the original invoice for the weapon, indicating that it was a
9-millimeter Glock 17 and that my father had purchased it with a
check.
The date on the invoice gave me a chill: January 18, two years ago. My
father had bought the Glock just three days after my mother had been
killed in the car crash on Highway 1. As though he thought he needed
protection.
In the study across the hallway from the bedroom, my compact cellular
phone was recharging. I unplugged it and clipped it to my belt, at my
hip.
Orson was not in the study.
Earlier, Sasha had stopped by the house to feed him. Maybe she had
taken him with her when she’d gone. If Orson had been as somber as
he’d been when I’d left for the hospital-and especially if he had
settled into an even blacker mood-Sasha might not have been able to
leave the poor beast here alone, because as much compassion as blood
flows through her veins.
Even if Orson had gone with Sasha, who had transferred the 9-millimeter
Glock from my father’s room to my bed? Not Sasha.
She wouldn’t have known the gun existed, and she wouldn’t have prowled
through my dad’s belongings.
The desk phone was connected to an answering machine. Next to the
blinking message light, the counter window showed two calls.
According to the machine’s automatic time-and-date voice, the first
call had come in only half an hour ago. It lasted nearly two minutes,
although the caller spoke not a word.
Initially, he drew slow deep breaths and let them out almost as slowly,
as though he possessed the magical power to inhale the myriad scents of
my rooms even across a telephone line, and thereby discover if I was
home or out. After a while, he began to hum as though he had forgotten
that he was being recorded and was merely humming to himself in the
manner of a daydreamer lost in thought, humming a tune that seemed to