“I think that was his suspicion and it was tearing him apart. Again, this wasn’t something he said. This is my best guess.”
This time I was silent for a moment. “I should have seen that. How stupid of me. Shit.”
“What will you do now?”
“Beats the hell out of me. What would you suggest?”
“Why not talk to someone in Internal Affairs?”
“And say what? I’m certainly willing to give them anything I have, but at this point, it’s all speculation, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes. I guess that’s one reason I didn’t call myself. I’ve got nothing concrete. Maybe if you talk to Pinkie’s daughter up there, it will clarify the situation.”
“Meanwhile alerting the guy that I’m breathing down his neck,” I said.
“But you can’t do this on your own.”
“Who’m I gonna call? The Nota Lake Sheriff’s Department?”
“I’m not sure I’d do that,” she said, laughing for once.
“Yeah, well if I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” I said. “Any other comments or advice while we’re on the subject?”
She thought about it briefly. “Well, one thing . . . though you may have already thought about this. It must have been general knowledge Tom was working on this case, so once he dropped dead, the guy must have thought he was home free.”
“And now I come along. Bad break,” I said. “Of course, the guy can’t be sure how much information Tom passed to his superiors.”
“Exactly. If it’s not in his reports, it might still be in circulation somewhere, especially with his notes gone. You’d better hope you get to ’em before someone else does.”
“Maybe the guy already has them in his possession.”
“Then why’s he afraid of you? You’re only dangerous if you have the notes,” she said.
I thought about the search of Tom’s den. “You’re right.”
“I’d proceed with care.”
“Trust me,” I said. “One more question while I have you on the line. Were you ever in Nota Lake yourself?”
“Are you kidding? Tom was too nervous to see me there.”
I replaced the receiver, distracted. My anxiety level was rising ominously, like a toilet on the verge of overflowing. The fear was like something damp and heavy sinking into my bones. I have a thing about authority figures, specifically police officers in uniform, probably dating from that first encounter while I was trapped in the wreckage of my parents’ VW at the age of five. I can still remember the horror and the relief of being rescued by those big guys with their guns and nightsticks. Still, the sense of jeopardy and pain also attached to that image. At five, I wasn’t capable of separating the two. In terms of confusion and loss, what I’d experienced was irrevocably bound up with the sight of men in uniform. As a child, I’d been taught the police were my pals, people to turn to if you were lost or afraid. At the same time, I knew police had the power to put you in jail, which made them fearful to contemplate if you were sometimes as “bad” as I was. In retrospect, I can see that I’d applied to the police academy, in part, to ally myself with the very folks I feared. Being on the side of the law was, no doubt, my attempt to cope with that old anxiety. Most of the officers I’d known since had been decent, caring people, which made it all the more alarming to think that one might have crossed the line. I couldn’t think when anything had frightened me quite as much as the idea of going up against this guy, but what could I do? If I quit this one, then what? The next time I got scared, was I going to quit that job, too?
I went up the spiral stairs and dutifully started shoving items in my duffel.
EIGHTEEN
The ocean was white with fog, the horizon fading into milk a hundred yards offshore. The sun behind clouds created a harsh, nearly blinding light. Colors seemed flattened by the haze, which lent a chill to the air. A quick check of the weather channel before I’d departed showed heavy precipitation in the area of California where I was headed and within the first twenty-five miles, I could already begin to sense the shift.
I took Highway 126 through Santa Paula and Fillmore until I ran into Highway S, where I doglegged over to Highway 14. I drove through canyon countrybalding, brown hills, tufted with chapparel, as wrinkled and hairy as elephants. Power lines marched across the folds of the earth while the highway spun six lanes of concrete through the cuts and crevices. Residential developments had sprung up everywhere, the ridges dotted with tract houses so that the natural rock formations looked strangely out of place. There was evidence of construction still in progress-earth movers, concrete mixers, temporary equipment yards enclosed in wire fencing in which heavy machinery was being housed for the duration. An occasional Porta-Potty occupied the wide aisle between lanes of the freeway. The land was the color of dry dirt and dried grass. Trees were few and didn’t seem to assert much of a presence out here.
By the time I’d passed Edwards Air Force Base, driving in a straight line north, the sky was gray. The clouds collected in ascending layers that blocked out the fading sun overhead. The drizzle that began to fall looked more like a fine vapor sheeting through the air. Misty-looking communities appeared in the distance, flat and small, laid out in a grid, like an outpost on the moon. Closer to the road, there would be an occasional outbuilding, left over from god knows what decade. The desert, while unforgiving, nevertheless tolerates man-made structures, which remain-lopsided, with broken windows, roofs collapsing-long after the inhabitants have died or moved on. I could see the entire expanse of rain-swept plains to the rim of hushed buffcolored mountains. The telephone poles, extending into the horizon ahead of me, could have served as a lesson in perspective. Behind the barren, pointed hills, rugged granite out-croppings grew darker as the rain increased. Gradually, the road moved into the foothills. The mountains beyond them were imposing. Nothing marred the featureless, pale surface-no trees, no grass, no mark of human passage. At higher elevations, I could see vegetation where low-hanging clouds provided sufficient moisture to support growth.
I’d tucked my semiautomatic in the duffel. The gun experts, Dietz among them, were quick to scoff at the little Davis, but it was a handgun I knew and it felt far more familiar to me than the Heckler and Koch, a more recent acquisition. Given the condition of my bunged up fingers, I doubted I’d be capable of pulling the trigger in any event, but the gun was a comfort in my current apprehensive state.
Little by little, I was giving up my initial irritation with Selma. As with anything else, once a process is under way, there’s no point in railing against the Fates. I regretted that I hadn’t had time to contact Leland Peck, the clerk at the Gramercy Hotel. I’d taken his coworker’s word that he had nothing to report. Any good investigator knows better. I should have taken the trouble to look him up so I could quiz him about his recollections of the plainclothes detective with the warrant for Toth’s arrest.
In the meantime, secure in my ignorance of events to come, I thought idly of the night ahead. I truly hate being a guest in someone’s home. The bed seldom suits me. The blankets are usually skimpy. The pillows are flat or made out of hard rubber that smells of halfdeflated basketballs. The toilet refuses to flush fully or the handle gets stuck or the paper runs out so that you’re forced to search all the cabinets looking for the ever so cunningly hidden supply. Worst of all, you have to “make nice” at all hours. I don’t want someone across the table from me while I’m eating my breakfast. I don’t want to share the newspaper and I don’t want to talk to anyone at the end of the day. If I were interested in that shit, I’d be married again by now and put a permanent end to all the peace and quiet.
By the time I arrived in Nota Lake at 6:45, night had settled on the landscape and the weather was truly nasty. The drizzle had intensified into a stinging sleet. My windshield wipers labored, collecting slush in an arc that nearly filled my windshield. My guess was the people of Nota Lake, like others in perpetually cold climates, had strategies for coping with the shifting character of snow. From my limited experience, the freezing rain seemed extremely hazardous, making the roadway as slick as a skating rink. In moments, I could feel the vehicle slide sideways and I slowed to a snail’s pace. At the road’s edge, the dead grass had stiffened, collecting feathery drifts of whirling snow. Selma had bullied me into having supper with her. I’m easily influenced in food matters, having been conditioned these past years by Rosie’s culinary imperiousness. When ordered about by any woman with a certain autocratic tone, I do as I’m told, largely helpless to resist.