The Girls He Adored (21 page)

But dead or alive, she would still serve to point the cops southward. And once the bodies in Prunedale were discovered and the house searched, he'd have to ditch the car anyway, so why not do it
sooner rather than later? No sense taking chances. As for clothes, and a hat to disguise the hair, he'd pick them up along with his next car—once he turned north again, he'd need to be less conspicuous anyway.

He felt himself leaning toward letting the chubby brunette live. The only joker in the pack was Kinch. He would be mightily pissed off—maybe even pissed off enough to try to take control himself. And once Kinch got going, there was no stopping him—Max might lose Irene along with Barbara.

So whom should he try to please, Kinch or Irene?

Sometimes having a dissociated identity was no frigging picnic.

A
FTERNOON IN THE LOWER
C
ASCADES.
The sky is high and sparkling blue above the ridge, and the air so clean and clear you want to sip it like water from a mountain spring.

For the woman in the green dress and mask, however, summer afternoons at an elevation of a thousand feet are a little too warm for comfort. In her case, the delicate thermal equilibrium of the warm-blooded mammal has been disturbed by the loss of roughly one-third of the body's two to three million exocrine sweat glands: she can't afford to let herself get overheated.

So after feeding the dogs and the chickens (she estimates there's less than a week's worth of food remaining for the animals; after that she could buy herself a little more time by feeding the chickens to the dogs) and scratching around in the garden for an hour, the woman retires to her air-conditioned bedroom for a nap.

But instead of sleep, come visions. The nearly empty feed bins. The drying shed she hasn't visited in days. And most important, the six morphine ampoules in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator. Though the Percodans she takes for pain are sufficient unto the day, she doesn't think she can make it through the night without her morphine. Which means in less than a week she'll have to take some kind of action.

The woman considers her options. There is no telephone on the ridge. There are half a dozen vehicles in the barn, but only two of them, Donna Hughes's Lexus and their own Grand Cherokee, are operable. She can't drive the latter, and won't drive the former for fear of discovery. Which leaves what? The mailbox at the bottom of the ridge. It's a long hike down the hill, but she can manage it, at
least during the cool of the evening. Then a letter to her lawyer. At the prices he charges, he'd be delighted to make whatever arrangements she deems necessary.

Necessary—that's the key word. Once she asks for help, a chain of events will be set in motion. Her peaceful solitude will be broken, and for the first time since she had the boy released from Juvenile Hall, there will be strangers on the ridge. Strangers with staring eyes, pitying eyes, prying eyes. Strangers to be kept away from the drying shed and out of the basement. No sense opening up
that
can of worms.

So the timing will be absolutely critical. She glances at the complimentary calendar from the Old Umpqua Pharmacy on the wall over her writing table. Today is Friday. She'll give him the weekend, but if there's no sign of the boy by Monday, she will post a letter to her attorney in Umpqua City. He'll have it by Tuesday; help will be on the way by Wednesday.

But the worms, once loosed, will never fit back into the can.

Damn that boy—where
can
he be?

W
HEN
M
ICHAEL
K
LOPFMAN'S
mother failed to pick him up at the Pacific Grove golf links at two-thirty that afternoon to drive him to a Pony League game, he paged his older brother Doug, who was just about to head for the beach with some friends to catch the high tide.

Grumbling, Doug agreed to chauffeur his brother to Jack's Field in Monterey, then meet his friends at Asilomar. On his way back from Monterey he stopped by his house to pick up his board and wet suit. His mother's car was still in the driveway; her purse was on the table by the front door.

Alarmed, he checked her bedroom to see if she were ill, then called his father at work. Sam, who knew about the jogging date, called Irene. When she failed to answer either her private or business lines, he left an urgent message on her machine, then called the Pacific Grove police.

Upon learning that Barbara Klopfman had been out jogging with Dr. Cogan of recent notoriety, and that both women were missing, the PG police immediately contacted the sheriff's department and the FBI. An updated BOLO was issued within minutes, and by four o'clock the hunt for the fugitive had been upgraded to a potential kidnapping/hostage situation.

Two hours later, Motorcycle Officer Fred Otto of the California Highway Patrol was cruising north on Highway 1 when he sighted what appeared to be a body wrapped like a mummy lying on its back in the dirt at the entrance to one of the fire trails leading into the Lucia Mountains.

As he pulled over to investigate, Officer Otto was surprised to
see the mummy raise its knees, dig its heels into the dirt, and shove itself another foot or so closer to the highway. He called in his location and requested an ambulance, then hurried over.

“Hang on,” he said, kneeling by the side of the mummy, which was wrapped in a cocoon of filthy gauze bandages and adhesive tape from head to foot, legs together, arms inside, with only a fleshy nose protruding from the front and a shock of dark hair sticking out from the top. “Just hang on there, you're gonna be okay now.”

He used his jackknife to cut through the layer of adhesive tape securing the top of the gauze, then, cradling the head in his left arm, he began to unwind the bandages. A pair of dark brown eyes opened, blinked shut against the light, then opened again warily.

“I made it,” she said, when he'd freed her mouth—it was as much a question as a statement.

“Do you have any injuries under there?”

“I don't think so. I'm just sore all over—I've been crawling for hours.”

“What happened?”

“I was kidnapped by the man who escaped from jail in Salinas. He has my friend Irene.”

Otto had received the latest BOLO over the radio. “Are they still in the green Volvo?”

“They were when they left.”

“Let me call it in, then we'll get you loose. There's an ambulance on the way.”

“Have them call my husband.”

“Of course.”

And so the BOLO was updated again: a blond man in a pink jogging suit and a blond woman in white running shorts and tank top, heading south in a green Volvo station wagon.

Unfortunately, the corrected BOLO was already inaccurate on almost every count.

“B
ILL,
I'
M GOING TO ASK
you a series of questions,” said Max to the elderly man tied to a wooden chair in the kitchen area of a double-wide trailer located at the top of a steep driveway in the Big Sur mountains. He and Irene had driven the back roads for nearly an hour looking for just the right place—an isolated driveway with only one mailbox. “Your life depends upon your answering truthfully. Isn't that right, honey?”

Irene was standing in the doorway of the trailer, watching the driveway, as she'd been ordered to do. She turned around, saw the man looking at her imploringly over his gag.

“I believe it is,” she said. Not strictly true—after her success at talking him into freeing Barbara, Irene was inclined to the opinion that Max, though extremely disturbed, was not the homicidal alter. She almost
had
to believe that. Her nerves were frayed to the breaking point, but she understood instinctively that if she let herself give in to the fear, even for an instant, she would be lost. It was an emotional balancing act, and if she fell, there would be no climbing back onto the high wire.

“Okay, here's your first question, Bill,” said Max. “Are you expecting any visitors?” He'd parked the Volvo under a lean-to garage with a corrugated green plastic roof and positioned Bill's own battered white Dodge Tradesman van at the top of the driveway, pointing down the hill, ready to roll.

Bill shook his head.

“Anybody else live here?”

Shake.

“Anybody else
ever
lived here?”

Another shake.

“That's a lie, Billy-boy.
You
never hung those curtains.”

Irene glanced over her shoulder, saw that the curtains were white, flounced, and feminine, with little blue windmills. Observant fellow, that Max.

“Honey, you're supposed to be watching the driveway.”

She turned around again quickly. By cooperating with Max, Irene hoped to help him lower his stress level and maintain his dominance over the other personalities.

“Now, Bill, I'm goin' to give you a second chance,” Max said softly, almost gently. “See, we just robbed us a bank up in Carmel. We're not interested in doing you any harm—we only want to get out of here. But the situation is heatin' up pretty fast. What I want from you is first, the truth, and second, your van. What I'll do for you in return is, I'll leave the keys in the Volvo—it's a better'n even trade, and you'll get the van back anyway once we're done with it. Now, do we have a deal?”

Bill nodded.

“Swell. Who hung the curtains?”

“My wife—she died last year. Cancer.”

“Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Bill. Were the two of you married long?”

“Thirty years.”

“Man, but life can be cruel.” Max tsk-tsked. “Tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna leave you tied up here for a couple hours while we borrow your van. If you can get to the phone before then, more power to you—if not, we'll give somebody a call to come get you loose. Any family around here? Any close neighbors?”

Bill shook his head. His daughter lived nearby—she was working the dinner shift at a restaurant down by the highway—but he'd be damned if he was going to give her name to these two characters.

“How about if I call some local business then? I'd just as soon not phone the police, you know how it is.”

“Nepenthe—call Nepenthe. The restaurant—they'll be open.”

“Nepenthe it is. Let's go, honey.”

Max followed Irene out of the trailer and, in a bit of excessive chivalry, helped her up onto the passenger seat of the van. Then he slapped his forehead. “I almost forgot, we'll need clothes and supplies. Be right back.”

He cuffed her left wrist to the steering wheel. Irene didn't mind
as much as she thought she would. In a way it was a relief, not having to decide whether or not to make a run for it. She watched through the rearview mirror as he entered the trailer, still wearing that ridiculous pink suit, and emerged a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt, wearing a black knit watchcap over his blond hair and carrying a cardboard box, which he tossed in the back of the van.

“There's some clothes in there.” He climbed up into the driver's seat and uncuffed Irene. “They look like they might fit you, but you need to change even if they don't. There's also a wig for you— Mrs. Bill must have lost her hair before she died.”

A dead woman's wig—Irene could feel her scalp contracting involuntarily. “Do I have to?”

“You have to do everything I tell you. That's how this works.”