Imola (17 page)

She wasn’t one for elaborate interior furnishings, but she did insist on a functional setting. This place wasn’t functional. It was barely habitable: a combination of modern flophouse and early fracture. It was the kind of room in which the lonely were never alone. The gauzy walls and herds of insects saw to it. In some places, scratches in the plaster showed multiple layers of peeling paint that she imagined would reveal the age of the hotel like the ringsof a tree trunk. Was this the price of listening to Lilin?

Listening? That was a joke. Lilin was getting more and more pushy. And she was the one who didn’t listen.

Agnes flopped on the bed and nearly bounced off the other side. She settled in to think. Since she’d escaped from Imola, she wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. The last few days were peppered with nightmares so real she remembered every minute of them: her initial arrest for the murders up in Mendocino, Jason and his attempts to find the killer, the devastating realization that it was Lilin, and the emotional search for her twin sister. She felt the pain as Dr. Leahy’s words came back to her, telling her over and over that Lilin wasn’t real. And she sensed she was losing control of her life. She had more control inside Imola.

But right now, in this dump of a place, everything was quiet. She loved quiet times—craved them. Her thoughts were her own when it was quiet. When nothing was happening other than the movement of time. She could do what she wanted to do. And she wanted to do something right now.

She rolled off the bed and stood for a few seconds. No objections, no orders. She walked to the door and grabbed the knob. Nothing. The door squeaked to her pull. She stepped outside, down the stairway with more peeling paint, more deep cuts in the plaster. Finally outside.

It was nice to go out. The air was cool, foggy. A lightbreeze brought the smell of the ocean through the maze of unkempt Victorian buildings. The street was busy, but most people walked like they didn’t have a destination in mind. Some were lying in doorways; others slumped against the corners of buildings. No one seemed to look up. There was no eye contact. No greetings. Was it all a trap? Of her mind?

Someone bumped her shoulder. Without looking, the person growled and kept walking, faster. He called over his shoulder, “Watch where you’re going, bitch.”

Agnes wanted to just walk, too, but she had something to do first. Down the block, she saw what she needed.

She scurried across the parking lot of a convenience store and pulled open the door. A bell on the door announced her entry. On a shelf in the corner, she found a writing tablet, a pen, and a box of envelopes. Near the counter, she saw a stack of newspapers. Grabbed one. She stepped to the counter, then stopped and turned around. She hurried two aisles over and stood, staring. Which should she choose? There were so many. Why did decisions like this have to be so hard?

The green one. Her favorite color had always been green. That was before Imola and all of its shiny, green walls. But she wasn’t in there any more. Green could be her favorite color again. She grabbed the bar of Ghirardelli Mint Chocolate and pranced to the counter.

Her hand pushed in her pocket, and she froze. Itwas full. Of bills. She worked the wad so she could pull out a single bill without exposing the lot, and the crinkled face of Andrew Jackson came out. A twenty. How many more were in there? She tried to remember where she’d gotten them, and the memories that came back scared her. Gert and Ella’s stash from her house in Mendocino had come at a steep price, paid in Lilin’s currency, with the swipe of a knife.

The clerk handed her the change. Her hand stopped at the edge of her pocket. “Do you have a stamp?”

“For a dollar,” the clerk said.

She peeled a bill from the change and folded the others over the stamp before shoving the wad into her pocket. She hurried out of the store.

A block down, an oasis caught her eye. A patch of green in a quilt of drabs: asphalt, cement, and the long-faded paints of the building façades. As she walked closer, the bright, primary colors of a children’s playground played on her senses, teased her with the imaginary sounds and smells of a county fair. The fog seemed to lift over the park. The sound of laughing children wafted on the ocean breeze.

She aimed for a bench inside the nearest gate, but a small, Asian woman pulled her arm. “Where’s your kid?” The woman pointed to a sign next to the entrance.

Its bold letters proclaimed, “Sgt. John Macauley Park. All adults must be accompanied by a child.”

Agnes scanned farther down. The park was named after a police officer who was shot during a traffic stop. She swept her gaze across the field of happiness. Sgt. Macauley would be proud.

Agnes waited until the nearest person was at least twenty steps away, and then she slipped through the gate and hustled to the nearest bench. The writing tablet and pen were free of the bag and on her lap in an instant. In another, the pen flew across the paper.

A squat man, fortyish, stomped in her direction. She turned her head toward a group of children on the locomotive of the play train and gave a petite finger wave. The man reversed direction and disappeared.

Agnes pulled an envelope from the box and balanced it on her knee. She wrote the first two lines of the address without directing her fingers: Mr. Jason Powers, c/o San Francisco Chronicle. She pulled the newspaper from the bag, opened the front page, and copied the address on the envelope. She returned the paper to the bag, scribbled the return address as a single word. Agnes.

Her hands shook as she bent the letter into a trifold and slipped it into the envelope. The stamp wasn’t the licking kind, so she peeled off the backing and pressed it on the envelope. She hoped Jason would get the letter. She had to tell him. Herself. He’d understand. He’d help. He’d be there for her. He was one of the good ones.

Agnes swept her head back and forth, scanning thearea around the park. Mailboxes only showed themselves when one wasn’t needed. Otherwise, they hid in the shadows, behind buses, or under low-growing trees. She stood at the corner of the park and let her mind free-fall. She wanted to see the beach. The ocean. But the fog obscured all navigation cues except for the fresh-smelling breeze. She walked into it. A mailbox would appear eventually.

It took only five blocks. And the box was in the open, in plain view. She pushed the envelope through the swivel door and opened it again to make sure the letter had dropped. A foul odor surrounded her. She turned and jumped. A dirty man stood close, nearly against her. His stringy hair hit his shoulders and mingled with his beard. Both were streaked with gray.

“Give me some money.” The man’s breath smelled of day-old alcohol and filth, blending with a background tinge of sweat and urine.

Agnes tried to step back, but the mailbox blocked her path. The man matched her first sidestep, then her second.

“Gimme money.” His hand patted her pocket—the empty one. He reached for the other side.

Her right hand flew to the man’s neck and clamped down on either side of his Adam’s apple. The fingernails dug into his flesh.

The man made a gurgling sound and tried to step back.

She tightened her grip and started to work her fingernailsinto his skin. Red bubbled on both sides of his neck and slid to his collar in small rivulets. She ripped her hand away, twisting it as she pulled, and a patch of skin came away in her fingers. She shook it to the ground.

The man’s eyes were wide, like those of an unbeliever. His hands gripped his throat. He gurgled again and stumbled away in a lopsided, galloping trot.

Agnes felt her eyes open wide, pulling back the brightness from the long shadows.

You could have killed him.

He’s lucky I didn’t have a knife
.

He wanted the money.

Why am I out here?

You don’t know?

No. How did I get here?

What do you remember?

I was in the hotel room. What’s going on?

You don’t know!

Jason jumped and the groan of the old recliner chair brought him upward, from a vague feeling of apprehension to full-sensory alertness. Light leaking under the drapes at the far end of the room told him it was morning. He scanned the surroundings, noting the panorama of familiarity. He’d slept in the chair again.

The sound again, the doorbell. He didn’t move. The drapes hung still. He hadn’t opened them since Lilin’s visit to his brother’s apartment, right here in Santa Rosa. Since he’d installed the extra lock on his sliding glass door. The landlord would be pissed. Drilling into the doorframe voided the warranty on the double-pane glass.

Another chime. Jason flipped the lever, and the chair ejected him. He slinked into the entryway in a timid, sideways crab walk. As his hand reached outand touched the door, the memory came back, intact, every detail in agonizing slow motion. How he had half jumped, half fallen over the patio wall just as Lilin’s razor had swiped within inches of his neck. He remembered the animal growl that had come from her throat as he’d run into the darkness of the golf course fairway.

Even after Agnes’s capture, the feeling of violation, of insecurity, had permeated his apartment in a knee-deep swirl of anxiety. And that was when Agnes was safely locked away in Imola. Now Lilin was back, and she was on the loose again, leaving another trail of corpses.

Knuckles rapped on the metal security door. Jason pulled his hand away. The door wasn’t his doing: it was a bonus.

He stood to his full height so he could look downward through the peephole. He saw a massive chest in a navy blue jacket. His knees flexed so he could see the face. Thank God.

The heavy door flew open, startling the visitor. Jason thrust a hand through the opening and was surprised when the man dodged it. “Detective Bransome. It’s good to see you.”

A different set of memories flew through Jason’s mind, covering the two times his job had run him headfirst into Bransome. The first was three years back, during his exposé on the problems with the DNA lab. A clear mental picture brought back Bransome’s fury when the article triggered the release of three felons. Then Jasonflashed on the more recent, latent antagonism when he reappeared in Mendocino to report on the original Agnes Hahn case. It took a second, but his mind hovered on how they eventually settled into a mutual tolerance that evolved into efficiency, almost friendship. How they had worked together to capture Agnes and expose Lilin for what she was.

“You scared the doo-doo out of me.” Bransome said. “You always open the door like that?”

Jason felt his face go hot. “I thought it was somebody else.” He realized how stupid that sounded. “Come in. The place is a mess.”

Bransome walked through to the living room, lifting his feet like he was afraid of stepping in something. “More like a funeral home. I knew reporters were bloodsuckers. You adopting the lifestyle?”

“Lilin’s on the loose. I may be on her list.”

Bransome shook his massive head. “It’s Agnes, not Lilin. Remember?”

Jason started to say something but gave it up. “What brings you to Santa Rosa?”

Bransome fell into the couch and adjusted his weight. “She’s at it again. This time in Frisco.”

“San Francisco. You know how much they hate it when anyone calls it Frisco.”

Bransome smiled. “Another poor stiff with his throat slit and his penis on his chest. I’m heading thereto talk with the investigators.”

“Did it happen in the Tenderloin?”

“Why? Do you know something?”

Jason considered telling him about Lilin’s visit to Donnie’s apartment, her request for a new identity. “No. Just guessing.”

“You obviously know the city. It was in the Castro District.”

“You seem to know it, too.”

“I got my start there. Quit when my partner got shot making a traffic stop. Crazy place back then.”

Jason couldn’t sit down. “Any idea who the stiff is?” He hoped Donnie hadn’t been stupid enough to go into the city.

Bransome pulled a spiral notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped a few pages. “Male. Obviously.” He looked up and chuckled. “Five nine. One sixty.”

Too small. “Caucasian?”

Bransome looked at the notebook. “Hispanic.”

Jason’s exhalation echoed.

“This one was unique, though. The place was ransacked. A computer is missing, and a whole file cabinet was dumped. They said the guy was obviously into making documents.”

“Creating an identity?” It just came out.

“You sure you don’t know something about this?”

Once again he thought about telling Bransome what he knew, but he had to protect Donnie. “No, butit makes sense. She’s trying to disappear.”

“She?”

“Lilin. Agnes.”

“Then coming here was the right move.”

Jason sat on the arm of the recliner. He frowned.

Bransome closed his notebook and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Agnes may try to contact you. It seems you two had a connection. And I know you visited her in the hospital.”

Same thorough Bransome. “If she’s trying to disappear, I’d be the last one she’d try to contact.”

“That shrink you’re screwing said the Agnes part of her would try.” He blushed. “Sorry about the way I said that.”

“Right now, Agnes is the last person I want to see.” He looked down at his crotch. “I’d like to be able to keep screwing shrinks.” His laugh triggered Bransome’s.

The detective squirmed against the soft cushions. “We need a favor.”

This was a reversal. Jason’s requests for favors had so angered Bransome in the early part of the Agnes Hahn case. Jason used a singsong voice to mimic Bransome’s favorite line. “I knew that was coming.”

“If she contacts you, I want you to set up a meeting. We’ll make sure you’re safe.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Oh, great. A decoy. A friend hunts ducks. Do you know how many of his decoys have holes shot in them?”

“We need to get her off the street. Besides, don’t you smell a hell of a story in it? After the fact, of course.”

Now the reversal in roles was total. But Bransome had a point. A great point. “Any ideas how I should do it?”