Tell No Lies (24 page)

The conversation continued behind him, Theresa running through some specifics. “We’ll assign a unit to you. Two officers at your side at all times until the deadline.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll figure out what to do.”

“Will you be here with me? At midnight Sunday?”

The silence stretched out. Daniel turned away from the window. Molly was looking at
him,
not Dooley.

“Yes,” he said.

Chapter 35

Daniel was awakened by yelling. Through the high boil of his thoughts, he realized that Cris was shouting his name. Twisting in the sheets, he came off the bed, tripping over a blanket that still ensnared his legs. Cris stood at the window, the swivel chair knocked askew behind her, her palm smacking the rain-flecked pane again and again.

“There!
There!
”

He kicked free and stood. Darkness cloaked the street below.

“I saw her,” Cris said. “The mist, but still. I
saw
her. She’s there.”

His lungs, still jerking air from the shock. He watched, but the strip where the street should be was nothing more than a black river, a chasm.

Then headlights swept through the intersection and that bright yellow slicker jumped into vivid relief. The face, replaced by shadow beneath the raised hood. The lifted arm, dripping a sheet of rainwater, pointed up at them.

The car skidded on the wet asphalt to dodge the form, the horn blaring. The woman never moved.

The headlights passed, and the form vanished again, leaving them with jangled nerves and the hammering of rain against the window.

Daniel ran for the stairs, nearly colliding with Leo, just now lunging his way up.

“The woman—out on the street again.”

Leo reversed course in a single graceful rotation, gliding down over the steps, Daniel so close at his back that a tangled crash seemed imminent. Somehow they managed both flights without colliding, Cris sprinting behind them. Leo half pivoted at the front door—“Lock this behind us
now
”—and then they were out into the wet before Daniel could contemplate his state of undress, the cold blasting through his boxers and the thin cotton of his T-shirt. His bare feet splashed puddles as he raced to the middle of the street, pulling up in the spot where the woman had stood moments before.

Nothing there but the dotted line.

Vaguely, he sensed Leo on the far side of the street, checking behind bushes and parked cars.

Daniel spun a full turn and then another, the neighborhood a shadow-play simulation of itself, familiar yet different from down here at this angle, the houses looming up around him. Rain pattered against his cheeks, running into his eyes, cutting his visibility. The cords in his neck strained, and he realized he was shouting at the darkness like a madman—“
Why are you here? What the hell do you want?
”—and at once a set of headlights leapt from the blackness at his side and a truck fishtailed past, dodging him by feet, brakes squealing. An irate face at the driver’s window floated by in bizarre slow motion, mouth stretched with a road-rage roar.

The truck kept on, brake lights fading into the haze.

Next door Ted Shea materialized at an upstairs window, his puzzled expression evident until Danika appeared at his side and cinched the blinds closed.

Rain washed over Daniel. His clothes, plastered to his skin, grew heavy. He stood in the still, dark center of the street until he felt Leo’s hand at the small of his back, guiding him to the house, to safety.

Chapter 36

She entered, peeled the yellow slicker off her shivering torso like a second skin, and let it slap triumphantly to the concrete floor, the pelt of a fresh kill. The lights, off as usual to save money. Had she not known to look toward the bare mattress in the corner, she’d not have seen him sitting there, powerful body coiled even as he reclined. His shoulders to the wall, one leg kicked straight, the other knee raised to support his arm. His hand floating past the braced elbow, thumb bumping across the fingertips. His eyes glinted darkly at her, shining fiercely with pride. With purpose.

He sat like that sometimes for hours with the hurt. Planning.

“They scared?” he asked.

“They’re scared, baby.”

His teeth appeared then.

She went to him, took her knees before the mattress. He stroked her face. She reached for his hand. Curled it into a fist. Looked at him imploringly.

When she let go, his hand loosened, so she formed it again into a hard ball. “When can we do it again, baby?”

He put his thumb on her chin and tilted her face, still damp with rainwater, this way then that, appraising it. “Not now.”

She made a whimper of disappointment.

He said, “We want to keep it fresh.”

He unfolded his limbs, spreading himself, and she slid up onto the mattress and laid her cheek against his chest. The smell of him, cigarettes and musk. He stroked her hair.

He said, “Soon.”

Chapter 37

Daniel stirred and stretched languidly, back arching, limbs sprawling, hands and toes straining for the four corners of the bed. The sheets to his right bore an imprint of Cris’s body, and he could hear the murmur of her voice from downstairs and smell Illy dark roast rising through the floorboards. Yawning, he ground the heel of his hand into one watery eye, the nightstand clock blurry but readable, showing half past eleven. Shocking.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in this late. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept soundly at all. But the previous night, after trudging back upstairs and drying off, he’d fallen into bed as if from a great height. All he’d sensed before everything disappeared was the gentle stroke of his wife’s fingertips along his shoulders.

He staggered down the stairs now, squinting and scratching at his head, his hair apparently standing on end.

Phone tucked between cheek and shoulder, Cris sat at the counter scowling down at the files arrayed before her as if they were a feast she didn’t want to eat. Her glasses, once again, shoved up into her hair and forgotten. Seeing him, her face lightened, and she said, quickly, “Call you back,” and hung up. “But soft,” she called to him, “what light through yonder stairwell breaks?”

“Is it really almost noon?”

“I don’t think that’s what comes next.”

“Sorry. Can’t muster iambic pentameter just yet.” He paused en route to the coffeepot and kissed her on the head. “How’s your morning?”

“Bad,” she said. “Though I suppose that’s relative these days, what with Little Yellow Riding Hood and all.”

“What’s going on?”

The phone rang, and she looked at caller ID, then back to him apologetically. He gave her a magnanimous sweep of the hand and poured himself a mug.

“Nyaze,” she said, “what do you got for me?” Then, “No.
No.
We can’t take the counterproposal to committee on Monday. That gives them too much time to swiftboat it before the vote. We drop it on them late Tuesday, leak something to the
Chronicle
so it’s online before they finish reading the cover page. ‘Anonymous sources close to the Planning Commission confirm.’ … Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

He leaned against the sink and sipped from his mug, enjoying the sight of her, the intensity of her words playing the feminine cords in her neck, the blade of her hand accentuating one point and then the next.

At once Leo was at the top of the stairs behind her, standing motionless, arms at his sides. The man seemed not to approach but to
appear,
as if transported. The recessed light gave a good waxy shine off his bald head, showing the grooves and contours of his skull. He wore a rain jacket, though the street glowed with sunlight.

His legs moved at last as he circled to Daniel, giving Cris and her phone voice wide berth. “You slept,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “And well. Thanks to you. It’s easier to sleep knowing you’re downstairs.” He gestured toward the window and the street beyond. “No more appearances by the Lady in Yellow last night?”

Leo didn’t smile, but his lips pressed together slightly with amusement. “Nothing to report.” The accent clipped his words coming and going, another show of efficiency.

“All clear on the horizon?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

A few fat drops tapped the window, and Daniel watched with amazement as the rain began and quickened into a downpour. Leo zipped his jacket, snapped the top button. His black sneakers were tightly laced, double-knotted.

“You leaving?” Daniel asked.

“No. But I won’t be in the house. I want to watch the block.” Leo faded down the stairs.

“We
cannot
lose Donahue,” Cristina was saying. “He’s our swing vote. If we lose Donahue, it’s over. Have Wu put it in his ear that if he goes against us in the eleventh hour, he’s gonna have major voter-bloc disappearance in November. We’re talking some
X-Files
shit.”

Daniel refilled his coffee and sat on the counter. Cris reached a crescendo, hung up, and made fists in her bangs. She looked at him through the prison bars of her wrists. “You still here?”

He waved.

“I bet you wish you married someone less strident,” she said.

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “I hate to sound sexist—”

“Is that phrase
ever
followed by anything helpful?”

“—but you’re very attractive when you’re angry.”

“Oh?” She had that light going behind her brown eyes now, limning them with yellow. “So that’s gonna be your new sexy-time move from here on out? Make me angry?”

“Correction: You’re attractive when you’re angry at
other people.
”

“I see. How ’bout when I’m angry at you? Not attractive?”

“Daunting.”

“Well,” she said, cracking the faintest grin as she returned to her papers, “then don’t piss me off.”

*   *   *

After procrastinating most of the afternoon, he finally got to his run. He started on a downhill, practically tumbling along the slope of Scott Street to Union, where he paused at the crosswalk. The business of Pacific Heights living took place here—banks and bars, restaurant crowds spilling onto sidewalks, mothers with toned arms shoving twin-size sport strollers into boutiques. On a normal week, he and Cris ran errands on Union or slurped oysters at Café des Amis. Watching the current of people out enjoying a lazy Saturday brought to mind just how off course the last week had set him. The orderly procession of commerce, leisure, and luxury now seemed surreal.

The light changed, and he kept on. Up ahead, a forest of sailboat masts crowded Yacht Harbor, the sun polishing the hulls with a postcard gleam. He veered east at the Marina Green, where hippie drummers banged away, lending an inadvertent sound track to a corps of elders enacting tai chi forms with factory-floor precision. Two beautiful Chinese women practiced the fan dance, their movements chopped to a stop-action film by a team of bicyclists zipping past in Italian racing suits, school-bus-yellow Speedos stretched torso-high. The sun winked off the impenetrable windows of the overlooking Mediterranean houses. Easy to forget that most of the marina rested atop a bed of landfill, composed in part of debris from the great quake of 1906. The Loma Prieta rumble, which cracked the earth and paused a World Series in ’89, had served as a brusque reminder to the neighborhood denizens. Yet even seven collapsed buildings, sixty-three condemned structures, and four fires had only put the party on hold. That was San Francisco, keeping about her fun, setting up those deck chairs as icebergs loomed ahead. It was a kind of denial, sure, but wasn’t everyone guilty of a bit of the same? A week ago Daniel, too, had considered the foundation solid. And now there seemed to be fissures everywhere he looked.

His thoughts stewed, turning toxic, and he ran harder to escape. But his footsteps pounded out names against the pavement:
Marisol Vargas. Kyle Lane. Molly Clarke.

He ran the curves of the water’s edge, hitting the rim of Aquatic Park. A sand-castle competition was in full florid swing, a six-foot palace with more towers than Red Square rising above the field, seeming to transcend its materials. A pod of Dolphin Club swimmers emerged from the ice-gray waters, teeth chattering, skin pale.

Martin. Big Mac. Xochitl.

As he neared the dividing line of Hyde Street, the salt-tinged air wafted over the barks of sea lions who’d taken up residence suddenly and inexplicably at Pier 39 after the last big earthquake. Up ahead a fire-hose torrent of tourists washed through Fisherman’s Wharf, the Place Where Locals Dared Not Tread. A shift of the wind brought the stench of the fish brokers’ wares, and Daniel put his back to the pier and ran hard for home.

Lil. Fang. A-Dre
.

He let the burn overtake his muscles, sweat coating his body as he legged his way back along the waterfront, then upslope toward the house. It wasn’t until he double-locked the front door behind him that he realized he’d altered his run today not for the scenery.

He’d done it because there were enough witnesses along the route to deter an attack.

Chapter 38

Daniel dripped sweat up the stairs to the kitchen and knocked back two glasses of water. Cris came partway down the stairs from the bedroom, ducking to bring him into sight. Her hair was taken up in a ponytail, and she clenched a pencil in her teeth; she’d been working all day. For once her glasses were on her face where they were supposed to be.

She released a breath. “Just you?”

“Just me.”

“Where’s Leo?”

“Watching the block.”

“Yeah,” she said, turning to head back up. “That sounds like Leo.”

His cell phone rattled on the countertop, and he picked up.

A woman’s voice said, “Your guy is a
psycho.
”

“Wait,” he said, pulling the phone away to look at caller ID. The name—
SUE POSADA
—was out of context here, so it took a beat for him to place it. The occupational therapist to whom he’d referred Walter Fang for his dyslexia.