Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (65 page)

I gripped the gun and started off, intent on searching every inch of
ground between here and the river.

I stood at the edge of the grove of pepper trees behind the cottage.
The rush of the river's water was louder here. I strained to hear other
sounds through the sighing of the trees; there were only typical night
noises.

Between the grove and the levee the land was barren and moon washed.
If Soriano was hiding somewhere out there, he would spot me easily when
I crossed it. But if he broke cover and tried to run, I'd have the
advantage.

I ran across the ground and up to the top of the levee.

Moonlight sheened the water. The river moved swiftly, swollen by the
recent rain. The falling-down dock shivered with the strong current.
The wind blew steadily, tossing the branches of the willow tree that
sheltered the derelict fishing boat. I stared at it. Saw a movement in
the shadows. A different sort of movement than that of the tree's
drooping limbs.

Soriano had found Tracy's gravesite.

I stopped close to the willow, stood with my feet apart, gun braced.
It had taken minutes to make my approach, shielded by the hump of the
levee. Another minute to slip down here. By now he knew I'd found him.

"Soriano!" I shouted. "Come on out."

Silence. Then a faint, unidentifiable sound from the boat.

"Soriano!"

He was waiting for me to try to take him.

I stayed where I was, listening for sirens. Nothing. More than half
an hour now since I'd left Amy. How much longer would it take?

A scraping sound from the boat. A thump.

It was probably a ploy to get me onto the boat, into close quarters
with him. Perhaps he underestimated me, thought I didn't know how to
use the gun properly. That was a common fault of men like Soriano—to
underestimate others, particularly women.

Slowly I started toward the boat.

A few of the planks had been tossed on the ground by the lab crew
that removed Tracy's remains, but otherwise it looked the same as when
I'd first seen it. I climbed carefully onto its side.

"Soriano, save us both a lot of trouble and give up."

No reply. No more telltale sounds.

I moved forward toward the collapsed pilot house, testing my footing
with each step. The hatch cover was back over the opening in the rotten
planking. I was certain the lab crew would not have replaced it.

I went closer. Studied it. Extended my right foot and nudged it.

It didn't budge.

I braced myself against one of the pilot house's support beams,
worked the toe of my boot under the cover's edge. Kicked upward.

The cover fell back with a crash. The musty odor of the grave rose
to my nostrils.

Extending the gun at the opening, I leaned forward. Looked down at
Rob Soriano.

He looked back at me, unspeaking. Something seemed wrong with one of
his eyes; then I realized the lens of his glasses
was cracked. Blood trickled from the gash in his cheek. His mouth
twisted violently, and he recoiled.

I'd expected Soriano to crack eventually, and he had. Now he was
terrified.

As I stared down at him, I felt nothing but the rage—cold and steady
again.

I could shoot him point-blank, I thought. The way he shot Emmons.
Should shoot him. No sense in letting this evil man live. No sense in
going through the motions of arrest, trial, imprisonment, even
execution, because it won't make any difference.

He moved a fraction of an inch. My hands tensed on the .32. I'd
claim self-defense.

I could hear the sirens now, distant but clear in the still night.
Dogs began to howl in imitation of them.

Soriano moved again, farther back into the boat's hull. Moonlight
filtered through the wind-whipped branches of the willow, rays glinting
coldly off the cracked lens of his glasses.

Self-defense, I thought again.

The sirens came closer.

Give me a reason to pull this trigger. Any reason.

Sirens down near the railroad bridge now. Screaming along the row of
cottages. I moved closer to the opening in the planking, gun extended.

Sirens cutting off, back at the Barbour cottage. Men's voices
shouting.

Soriano moved frantically, slipped on the exposed rib-work.

I raised the gun and fired a single shot.

Into the air, so they'd know where to find us.

The visiting area at San Quentin seemed more cheerful on a Saturday.
Perhaps it was the fact that so many children were there; dressed in
go-see-Daddy finery, with freshly scrubbed faces, they imparted an air
of normalcy and hope. Or perhaps it had something to do with knowing
this would be my last trip here—for a long time, if not forever. It
certainly had a lot to do with the joy on Leora Whitsun's face as we
waited to see Bobby.

I hadn't wanted to come; I didn't want to hear thanks, and I didn't
want to answer questions. But Leora had insisted, and there I was.

This time there wasn't much of a wait, and the desk officer actually
smiled at us when we identified ourselves. The guard who led us to the
small, spare visiting room said to me, "Nice going." The case had been
featured prominently in both local and national news; anonymity would
be in short supply for a while.

After the guard locked us in, Leora sighed and looked around. "How
many more times do I have to sit here and stare at
these four walls?"

"Not many. Maybe none. There are legal formalities, but Jack's set
them in motion. There's been too much media attention for anyone to
drag his feet."

"It'll be good having my boy home again." She sat, smoothed her
denim skirt. "Home won't be the projects, either."

"No?"

"Nope. I found me an apartment. Near the clinic. Not much of an
apartment, but it'll be home." She nodded emphatically, gold earrings
bouncing to reinforce her words.

The door on the other side of the grille opened. Bobby entered. His
stiff, defensive posture was gone, replaced by a long, loose stride. He
was free—almost.

"Sharon," he said, "I'm so happy Mama talked you into coming. I got
to thank you for everything you done." He came up to the table that
bisected the room and placed the palms of his hands flat against the
grille.

I leaned forward and placed my hands on my side of it, so we could
touch. "You don't have to thank me."

"Well, I do."

He sat in his wooden chair, and I sat in mine.

For a moment there was an awkward silence. Bobby's eyes clouded and
he said, "That motherfucker Emmons killed her."

Beside me, Leora clicked her tongue in disapproval.

"Right name for him, Mama."

"Maybe so. I got no call to correct you, anyway. You went in here a
child, you're coming out a man."

He nodded brusque thanks at her, trying not to show how much her
words pleased him.

I said, "Emmons killed her, I think, because he had really envied
and hated her for some time. She had everything he wanted: talent and
the ability to make her own opportunities."

"That what you call what she did to me and Lisa and Jay—makin' her
own opportunities?"

I'd thought a good bit about Tracy over the past day and a half. Now
I said, "She was young and greedy, and she used very poor judgment.
That's a reason, Bobby, not an excuse."

"Ain't they the same thing?"

"I don't think so, not really. An excuse removes blame; you realize
a person's not guilty of wrongdoing, and you forgive them. A reason
just tells you why they did what they did; then you have to work at
forgiving."

"Never thought about it that way." He stared at the scarred tabletop
for a moment. "Guess I do forgive her. I had a lot of time to work on
it in here."

There was a silence. I sensed all three of us were entertaining
private thoughts about Tracy Kostakos, about what was forgivable and
what wasn't. Finally Leora said, "What about Rob Soriano? Jack Stuart
says there's no way to prove he set that fire and killed Jay and all
those other people."

The death toll from the fire had climbed to seven; Larkey was among
them. The arson squad had found fragments of what might have been a
simple, timed incendiary device in the club, placed in such a position
as to take advantage of the persistent gas leak from the furnace line.
Soriano had probably counted on the blast destroying the apparatus
completely, and that had nearly happened. There was not enough left to
reconstruct it, and no evidence as yet that the fragments had ever been
in Soriano's possession. Had his past in Florida not come to light, he
would possibly have escaped suspicion; too many people were aware of
the gas leak and PG&E's seeming inability to repair it properly.

Soriano, of course, had admitted nothing.

I said, "It's a long shot. And the Florida arson can't be used as
evidence, because other charges pending against a defendant
aren't admissible. They could allow extradition to Florida, but the
case there isn't all that strong, either. But they've got him for
murdering Marc Emmons. Amy Barbour and I are eyewitnesses."

"What about his wife?" Bobby asked. "She know anything?"

"Quite a lot. Kathy's willing to testify to him being an accessory
after the fact to Tracy's murder, in exchange for immunity from
prosecution."

I'd visited Kathy that morning at the clinic where her personal
physician had had her admitted—more to satisfy my curiosity about
certain things than out of charitable impulse. She'd already spoken
with the district attorney and talked freely to me about how she and
Rob had helped Emmons fake the kidnapping in exchange for his silence.

At first, Kathy said, they had only intended to create confusion
around Tracy's disappearance, patterning the ransom note on the wording
in Bobby's notebook to make it seem the kidnappers were poorly
educated. The idea of framing him occurred to Rob the next week when
Kathy relayed what Lisa Mclntyre knew about Tracy's relationship with
Bobby. But Lisa's knowledge also had the potential to cause all sorts
of complications, so they decided it was best to pay her way out of
town.

Kathy also admitted to helping Emmons move the Volvo from the
cottage to the mountains about two weeks after the killing. Her switch
of the dental records on New Year's Day, the bogus phone calls to
Laura, the marked-up book that Emmons planted in the apartment—all of
those things were last-ditch ploys to preserve the fiction that Tracy
had disappeared of her own volition.

Leora said, "How could that woman have married such scum? She must
be as bad as he is."

"She's pretty bad. But she claims she wasn't aware of his past until
Emmons showed up after killing Tracy and blurted out
about the newspaper article. I tend to believe her; it's turned out
that Soriano established an elaborate phony background for himself and
took measures to ensure he wouldn't have to appear at public functions
or get his picture in the papers."

"Still, she'd have to be pretty dumb or pretty evil not to go to the
cops once she knew. Didn't she realize he'd probably kill somebody
else? Or set another fire?"

"She says Rob promised her nothing like that would ever happen
again." I didn't know if she was telling the truth or not, but the
memory of her repetition of the words "he promised" during her
crippling hysterics at the scene of the fire made me lean toward
accepting what she claimed.

"Well, in my book she was stupid to believe the man. And him—for
somebody who's supposed to be such a smart high-roller, he's really
kind of stupid, too."

"I think what he is is shrewd, but with an overblown idea of his own
capabilities. His kind often conceive grandiose schemes, but then they
get tripped up by details. That's what happened in Florida. This time,
though, he won't be able to disappear and start over somewhere else."

Bobby bared his teeth in something that didn't even pretend to be a
smile. "Never thought I'd say it, but I'm glad they got the death
penalty in this state."

I remembered my primitive, near murderous rage as I'd stood over
Soriano on the derelict fishing boat, gun in hand. "I know what you
mean," I said.

Late that afternoon I stopped by All Souls to put my desk in order.
A bunch of people were sitting around the living room eating pizza:
Rae, Jack, Ted, Hank, Anne-Marie. Even the health nut was there; his
purge of the kitchen must be over, because he was sucking on a beer.
They all wore grubby work clothes and seemed in a festive mood.

Rae waved at me. "Come join our moving party!"

I went only as far as the archway. "Who moved?"

"Well, first Hank did. Then we picked up some furniture I bought at
Junk Emporium and dragged it up to my new room."

I looked at Hank in confusion. He was sitting on the couch with
Anne-Marie, his arm around her shoulders.

Anne-Marie said, "Don't panic; it's not a big deal. The Andersons
vacated our upstairs flat three weeks early. Hank and I talked it over
and decided we can't live together but don't want to live apart. So he
moved upstairs, I'm staying down. We're extending one another liberal
visiting privileges, of course."

"Of course." Although it sounded somewhat bizarre on the surface, it
struck me as a sensible arrangement.

"Why don't you have some pizza?" Ted said. "There's plenty—even
anchovy."

"Sorry—I have a dinner date, and I'm running behind schedule."

Rae smiled knowingly; she'd suspected all along that something was
developing between George and me. Jack looked glum and reached for
another slice of pizza. I grabbed a beer out of one of the six-packs on
the table and went up to my office.

When I arrived home, there was a note from the contractor taped to
my front door. He'd finished work on the new bedroom, it said, and had
locked up. He'd be by the next afternoon with the extra keys, to pick
up the final payment on our contract.