there was a wall safe in the house, he would’ve wanted the money from
it. But basically, I think he’s just.. . looking for a place to go to
ground for a while, until the process . . runs its course. Then, when
he blanked out for a moment and you hid from him, and when he came
around again and didn’t see you, he probably figured you’d gone for
hell?, so he had to get out of there fast, go somewhere else.
“The cabin, I’ll bet.”
“What cabin?”
“You don’t know about his cabin up at Lake Arrowhead?”
“No,” Rachael said.
“It’s not on the lake, really. Farther up there on the mountain. He
took me up to it once. He owns a couple of acres of woods and this neat
cabin-” Someone tapped on the window.
Rachael and Sarah cried out in surprise.
It was only Benny. He pulled open Rachael’s door and said, “Come on.
I’ve got us a new set of wheels. It’s a gray Subarune hell of a lot
less conspicuous than this buggy.”
Rachael hesitated, catching her breath, waiting for her drumming
heartbeat to slow down. She felt as if she and Sarah were kids who’d
been sitting at a camp fire, telling ghost stories, trying to spook each
other and succeeding all too well. For an instant, crazily, she had
been certain that the tapping at the window was the hard, bony
clickclick-click of a skeletal finger.
12
SHARP From the moment Julio met Anson Sharp, he disliked the man.
Minute by minute, his dislike intensified.
Sharp came into Rachael Leben’s house in Placentia in more of a swagger
than a walk, flashing his Defense Security Agency credentials as if
ordinary policemen were expected to fall to their knees and venerate a
federal agent of such high position. He looked at Becky Klienstad
crucified on the wall, shook his head, and said, “Too bad. She was a
nice-looking piece, wasn’t she?”
With an authoritarian briskness that seemed calculated to offend, he
told them that the murders of the Hernandez and Klienstad women were now
part of an extremely sensitive federal case, removed from the
jurisdiction of local police agencies, for reasons that he could notH)r
would notH!ivulge. He asked questions and demanded answers, but he
would give no answers of his own. He was a big man, even bigger than
Reese, with chest and shoulders and arms that looked as if they had been
hewn from immense timbers, and his neck was almost as thick as his head.
Unlike Reese, he enjoyed using his size to intimidate others and had a
habit of standing too close, intentionally violating your space, looming
over you when he talked to you, looking down with a vague, barely
perceptible, yet nevertheless infuriating smirk. He had a handsome face
and seemed vain about his looks, and he had thick blond hair expensively
razor-cut, and his- jewel-bright green eyes said, I’m better than you,
smarter than you, mare clever than you, and I always will be.
Sharp told Orin Mulveck and the other Placentia police officers that
they were to vacate the premises and immediately desist in their
investigation. “All of the evidence you’ve collected, photographs
you’ve taken, and paperwork you’ve generated will be turned over to my
own team at once. You will leave one patrol car and two officers at the
curb and assign them to assist us in any way we see fit.”
Clearly, Orin Mulveck was no happier with Sharp than Julio and Reese
were. Mulveck and his people had been reduced to the role of the
federal agent’s glorified messenger boys, and none of them liked it,
though they would have been considerably less offended if Sharp had
handled them with more tact-hell, with any tact at all.
“I’ll have to check your orders with my chief,” Mulveck said.
“By all means,” Sharp said. “Meanwhile, please get all your people out
of this house. And you are all under orders not to speak of anything
you’ve seen here. Is that understood?”
“I’ll check with my chief,” Mulveck said. His face was red and the
arteries were pounding in his temples when he stalked out.
Two men in dark suits had come with Sharp, neither as large as he,
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