Bad Desire (42 page)

The thicket gave out onto a grassy glade that hissed in the breeze. Across the bay, the red, yellow and blue lights reflected in the water like glittering pendants for a young girl to dangle in the night. Slater stopped the Jeep, let go of the steering wheel and felt how wet his palms were. He flexed his fingers, surprised to find them aching from his grip. Everything he touched was slippery with sweat. He knew it had to happen and yet he felt empty, as if he'd never really believed it could come to this.

It will be here, he thought.

Reeves caught the gleam of red taillights and slammed on his brakes. “He's turned off,” he said to himself, grinding the accelerator to the floor. The cruiser fishtailed, skidded to the shoulder and spun around. He returned to the mouth of the old trail and pulled up. It didn't make sense. Why would Slater take this old road? Where was he going—to meet that girl? There was nothing down there but an old lovers' lane; not even a lane any more, just an old dead-end trail going down to the ocean. Reeves knew the place well from his nights on patrol before he ran for office. A shelf of grass overlooked the Pacific there, but what could a man alone want down there on a hot June night? Unless he was meeting the girl?

Crouched forward over the steering wheel and peering through the overgrowth in front of him, he turned into the forgotten lane. Ruts in the old road caught the cruiser's tires and made its progress a clumsy zigzag. Reeves couldn't see the taillights of the Jeep now; he couldn't hear its engine. He had all he could do to hold the steering wheel on course toward the faint glimmer of night sky at the end of the green tunnel. Gradually, the trees thinned. No power on earth could have stopped him now. I'm going to find out about you for once and for all, Reeves thought, and I'm going to put a stop to you. As he broke into the open, he cut his headlights and slowed even more, hoping to remain undetected until he got his bearings.

The night, the beach: Slater had driven the Jeep right out to the edge of the grassy shelf above the water. The driver's door hung open like a broken wing. All right, Reeves thought, where'd you go? Down to the beach?

He swung the steering wheel to the left, bringing the cruiser onto the high grass to place it between himself and the Jeep. Quickly, he got out of the car and closed the door. The ocean gleamed through the foliage. And yet, what if it wasn't the girl? What if it was something else? Unbuckling the leather strap on his holster and letting his right thumb rest on the handle of his Magnum, Reeves started around the front of the car. All the sounds of the night rose to meet him.

He could not hear his own footsteps, his own breath. He had gone only a few steps when he felt a sudden sharp pang of unease.

What's wrong? Something's wrong.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a figure rise up among the silvery palmettos. For an instant, the shape seemed composed of shadows. But it wasn't the shadows. Henry Slater was standing no more than ten feet away, and in a voice that he knew only too well, said, “Looking for me, Burris?”

Reeves turned to face him. The shotgun Slater was holding steadied, and Reeves stared into the twin black holes of the barrels, his mind racing, What're you doing with that shotgun? I know that gun. That's the gun from my office.

The twin hammers drew back. The LeFever clicked, twice, ready to fire.

Reeves was operating on automatic, all his instincts flash-feeding him. He's right-handed, he realized. If he fires, an old gun like that will likely pull to the left.

“Goddamn you, Henry,” he said and he pitched to the right for the high grasses, the blast of both barrels exploding in his face. A red-hot mass ripped him open down his right side as he was thrown back across the hood of his car. He let out a long, agonized scream and slid, then fell slowly downward onto his face, lost in waves of shock and pain.

Lunging and twisting, he tried again and again to get up. He had fallen over his gun, on top of it, his hand groping weakly at his side as if trying to get at it, but he was only trying to take the pain in his hands.

Then he fell over on his back and the night closed over him.

Like a nightmare, Slater watched the shots disintegrate in the man's flesh. He could almost feel their incredible violence. The monstrous kick of the shotgun, the abrupt obscene touch of it, still registered in his hands and arms; the flash from the twin muzzles, the blue smoke, the smell of cordite, filled his senses. The echoes faded into themselves.

At first he couldn't bring himself to look at the body. So much blood streaked over the hood and down the side of the car that a wet heavy scent rose from its glistening surfaces. Slater clutched at a bush for support, tucking his chin in hard against his chest, dizzy and nauseated.

Slater began to shake. The worst thing had been the sheer terror. Reeves lay on his side, his arm flung up and back across his face, covering all but his forehead and the corner of his right eye—the tiny, unafraid eye that gleamed and did not close.

God, Slater thought, what if he's still alive?

It was becoming easier to bear, but not much. He stepped around the bloody places and stooped down to examine the body. No question that he was dead. Slater reached around to the police chief's pocket and pulled out the slim leather-grain notebook.

Then it dawned on him: the noise could've carried for miles. What if someone down the beach had heard?

Slater was off, racing back to the Jeep. And as he ran what he had done grew more and more distant from him so that when, at last, he swung into the seat, Burris Reeves was as far from him as the stars above his head. He looked at his watch and understood that time no longer had a hold on him. He was free. He didn't want to think anymore, not about Reeves, not about Faith or his job, not about anything but Sheila. He wanted to let his mind fill up with the memory and sensuality of her until it had crowded out and obliterated everything that had been before her. The hot sweet relief was overpowering.

He would go to her now and take her away.

Suddenly, he was a long way from the murder scene and he was back in the city, back to who he really was. Slater turned his face toward the glittering sky world and his heart soared in triumph.

The brick driveway curved among the enchanted-looking oaks that overspread the lawn, thin dots of moonlight lying in the grass like scattered coins. Aglow at the center of the moonlit darkness, lights on in every room, was his home. Home, he thought and shook his head. It had never been his home. It was all meaningless now. He couldn't wait to leave it—to get away and start his life over with the girl he loved. Slater went up the walk, crossed the veranda, opened the door and went in. And what he saw gave him a deathly chill.

“Oh, Henry, darling, look who's here,” Faith said. “Sheila was so upset I thought she should stay with us for a while.”

And there they were, Sheila and Faith, sitting side by side on the sofa, their wondering eyes staring at him. But it was the way their hands were clasped together between them that seemed to defy anyone to tear them apart.

PART

FOUR

33

Silent patrol cars flanking it front and rear, the ambulance rolled to the lowest shallows of the parking lot behind City Hall and the criminal justice system of Rio Del Palmos took possession of the murder case of Police Chief Burris Reeves. It was a mark of the severity of the crime that the mayor climbed out of bed and came down to police headquarters in person at four in the morning. A couple of kids looking for a place to park had come upon the body two hours earlier. Nothing even remotely like this had ever happened here. Slater hugged himself against the dampness of the dark hour and gazed down at the pellet-riddled face that would never plot its mischief again.

As the body passed into the hands of the medical examiner, Slater turned to the patrolmen standing uselessly around him. Immediately, he assigned two of the them to seal off Burris Reeves's office and to await further instructions. “No one goes in there,” he told them, “unless I say so.” At the front desk, he put in a call to Abigail and asked if she would come in as soon as possible. “I'm sorry to wake you at this hour,” he explained, carefully considering his words, “but I'm going to need you. Burris Reeves has been killed.”

“Oh—” He heard the catch in her voice. “Yes, Mayor, yes, of course—I'll come right down.”

“I wouldn't ask you to, if it wasn't … a crisis.”

Then Slater returned to the trunk of his car for his briefcase.

He set up a temporary command post in the police chief's outer office. “What's the name of Burris's secretary?” he asked the two patrolmen stationed outside the door. “Maggie …,” they said, “Maggie Fitch.” To the first of them, he said, “Give her a call, try to get her down here and then go downstairs, wait for the medical examiner's report and bring it to me.”

He turned to the second officer. “Keep your position here and see that I'm not disturbed for ten minutes. I've got to try to get organized.”

Left alone, Slater went into Reeves's office and locked the door. He pulled the drapes, turned on the fluorescent desk lamp and opened his briefcase. Keenly aware of the passing seconds, he picked up the LeFever shotgun. Working quickly, he tightened the wing nut at the back of the tubular-steel stock, firmly reattaching it to the gun. With the key from his pocket, he opened the credenza and put the shotgun back into the oversized gym bag. As it had been.

Methodically, he searched through the desk drawers one by one and came upon a small manila envelope with a lump of soiled tissue inside it. Is this it? He thought, undoing the metal clasp. Is this where he kept it? Inside the tissue.
My diamond. It's my diamond
. A smile spread over Slater's face. He put the diamond into the envelope and slid it into his pocket. Quickly he went through the stacks of papers on top of Reeves's desk. Finally, he located the thick file marked
BUCHANAN, RACHEL
, and placed it inside his briefcase. Then he had second thoughts, picked it up again and sandwiched it between two handfuls of current files.

When he had done all the things he could think to do, Slater unlocked and opened the door. In the hall, Abigail was demanding that the patrolman outside the door admit her; Slater immediately intervened. “We'll need to call the members of the city council,” he told her. “What time is it now?” They looked at their watches. “All right, quarter to five. Have them here at seven, if you can, for an emergency meeting. The purpose of the meeting will be to appoint an interim chief of police.” In his arm, he carried the stack of as many as a dozen files, including the file on Rachel Buchanan. “I'll need these files to brief the interim police chief. Abigail, would you take these up and then coordinate with Miss … Fitch.”

When Reeves's secretary arrived, Slater told her, “Don't let anyone take anything from this office without signing for it. Starting with my office. My secretary has taken a number of the files, which I'll need to give the new police chief in a couple of hours. But I've instructed her to inform you what they are.” He handed her the keys to Reeves's office. “It's your responsibility. I'd like to have a status report on each of the bombing investigations, if you can pull that together.”

“By what time?”

“Before seven if possible,” he told her. “I'll be upstairs.”

In the short time he had been sequestered in the office the word of Reeves's murder had gotten around and a small crowd of reporters was already waiting for him as he made his way past the front desk toward the elevators. He ducked his head and waved off the usual crash of questions; a cameraman suddenly loomed before him, poking a television camera in his face before Slater could sidestep him into the elevator. “I'll have a statement later this morning,” he said as the doors snapped shut.

Abigail updated him, handing him a stack of telephone messages as he went through to his office. He shut and locked the door. The sun was just coming up, a pale blue rim in the east, the palm trees and buildings below still in hard, black silhouette. Going to his desk, he was taken aback by the number of calls from police all up and down the coast offering their help. No, he thought, no, we don't need this. He could imagine police from everywhere in California swarming all over his city.

He got Abigail on the intercom and reminded her to tell them thanks, but no thanks, in a nice way. “We'll take care of our own,” he said. Then putting the matter out of his mind for the time being, Slater carefully, laboriously, went through the Buchanan murder file.

He found his own name mentioned only twice, on two different pages. The handwriting wasn't quite the same, which he took as an indication that Reeves had been musing, perhaps doodling and thinking about him, on two different occasions. Slater was certain there had been many more times than that, but apparently Reeves had made no note of it. At least not here.

Slater removed the two pages from the file and put them among his own papers inside his notebook, to be disposed of at another time. Then he threw the file back into his briefcase, closed it, and leaned back in his chair.

It was done. At last; at last.

Everything had gone according to plan—except for Sheila. Damn it! Damn it to hell! Although Faith had explained to him about getting the phone call, he still couldn't imagine it.
Sheila!
Christ! There at the house with Faith. It was unthinkable. But he couldn't take the time to straighten it out right now. He would though, he would, just as soon as this horror was over. He had to stay alert; there were too many demands on him.

In speaking before the cameras later that same morning, Mayor Henry Lee Slater announced the appointment of Vincent P. Koehler to the post of acting police chief. Koehler, a veteran of nearly twenty-five years on the force and having the highest seniority, stood at Slater's side and was flanked by other members of the city council. After an expression of grief and a few brief comments, Slater turned the microphone over to Koehler, who in the course of answering reporters' questions, announced that he would be heading up a special task force with Mayor Slater to investigate the murder. No speculation was made as to who the killer or killers might have been. When asked if he thought this could be the work of the one remaining convict still at large, Koehler would only say that the investigation was ongoing.