“He … my father told me I was a failure. He listed all the reasons. I never stood with him. I was my mother’s son. I ran when the going got tough. He made it sound like it was my fault he abused me. He undermined me. Sound familiar?”
Elizabeth pulled her hand away. “You’re saying Andrew Marrero has abused me.”
“Marrero knows too much about you. He knows the buttons to push. Yes, he has abused you, and the reporter is right. Marrero doesn’t want to stand in your shadow, he doesn’t want you to be the spokesman for the scientific community. He saw the video you took of the tsunami, heard your commentary, realized that with your looks, scientific credentials, and pure good luck at being the only knowledgeable person on site during the earthquake and tsunami, you’ll supplant him and be the new star of every PBS and History Channel geological special for the next twenty-five years. So Marrero’s going to keep that video hidden until the earthquake is old news. This is no time to be naïve.” Garik pulled into the resort parking lot. “The guy’s an egotistical, self-centered bastard.”
“He’s one of the men who could possibly have been my mother’s lover.” She squinted through the sunny windshield, then, as if she had just now remembered she held them, she slid her sunglasses on her nose.
“That, too.” Garik parked right next to the front porch steps. “If she told him it was over, he had every reason to kill her. Hell, he had every reason to kill her even if he wasn’t her lover. He could have killed her to set up your father as the killer so he could direct the dig.” Another motive, and one all too obvious.
“That’s absurd, to kill someone over something like a job title.”
“Nothing’s absurd when it comes to power. Men will do anything for power.” If Garik had ever doubted the truth of that, the recollection of another father’s smile made him writhe with anger and pain.
“Power regardless of the price. I don’t understand that, but I’ve read about it, and I believe you.”
“I know this stuff, Elizabeth. It’s part of my training.” And his memories.
“Tell me the end of the story,” Elizabeth said. “What finally happened between you and your father?”
Garik looked up at the resort, all four stories of it. “He broke in, but this time he didn’t come after me. I was now taller, stronger, more reckless than him. He came after Margaret, because she was old and frail.”
“Oh, God.” Elizabeth sighed. “Of course. What happened?”
“The next day, when the sun came up, my father was dead on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff below Margaret’s balcony—and she faced manslaughter charges.”
Elizabeth thought it over. “Who killed your father?”
“I did. I shot him, and when he didn’t die, I threw him off the balcony.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Somewhere in the depths of her mind, Kateri lived.
She couldn’t move. She didn’t eat or drink. She didn’t think. She floated in time, in space, like a galaxy formed from a billion stars, like a fetus awaiting rebirth.
As she floated, she was growing, changing. Molecules realigned themselves. Bones knit. Bruising healed.
But cells mutated. Her body was not what it had been before.
Occasionally she caught a wisp of humanity hovering close. Occasionally she smelled antiseptic and flesh. Occasionally she heard voices, muffled by distance or time … or pain.
The pain was always there, her newest companion. A constant companion. She almost felt it. If she could grasp the tendrils of that pain, it would guide her up, out of this darkness.
But every time she tried, every time her fingers brushed the writhing tendrils, she didn’t feel pain. She felt agony … blistering, tearing, ripping her soul and her sanity.
Then she sank back into the depths, and floated. Floated …
A tendril of crimson pain flicked at her consciousness. Taunted her. Enticed her.
Come back. Be a person again.
She caught. She pulled.
Anguish. Torture. Legs, arms, back, belly. So … much … pain.
But she pulled again, nerves burning, muscles trembling, brain afire.
She heard things: beeping, voices, cloth rustling, a tuneless humming. The sounds got nearer. Nearer.
No. Go back, Kateri. Don’t come up.
She opened her eyes.
Movement. Above her. Around her. Humans working, saying things, urgent sounds she didn’t understand.
To the side, gauges popping with colors.
On the wall, a television set to … to the Weather Channel.
A window. Sunshine slanting in.
She tried to speak. Something in her mouth.
She tried to move. Something holding her down.
And pain. Pain exploding in all the far reaches of her universe.
Her heart beat loud in her ears.
Her breath rasped in her lungs.
She fought, and trembled with the effort to be free.
Then … the effort broke her will. She let go of the writhing pain tendril.
At once she sank back down into space and time … and isolation.
But she would be back.
Soon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The ground started trembling.
The truck started trembling.
The inn started trembling.
“There it goes again.” But there were things that needed to be said. “The only other person in the world who knows that I killed my father is Margaret.”
“I understand.” Elizabeth wasn’t paying attention to Garik. She looked toward the ocean, blue and glittering in the sun. At the parking lot, wrinkled from previous aftershocks. At the resort, which swayed like a tall ship in a storm.
He had to raise his voice to be heard over the creaking of the truck and the cracking of the asphalt. “If the FBI ever finds out, my career will be toast. It already pretty much is, but I could do time, so don’t tell anybody.”
“No, of course not.” She spared him a glance. “But that explains a lot.”
He wanted to ask what exactly she thought it explained, but abruptly the shaking got worse. He grasped the door frame to hold himself in place, reached a hand across to Elizabeth, and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. Like that would protect her. But even after his confession, he needed to hold her.
People staggered out of the resort and onto the porch, grasped the rails and uprights, looked around in panic.
“The truck is hopping around.” Leaning and rolling with the ground waves. Garik spared a thought to his shocks and struts.
“This is a major aftershock, well over six-point, I think.” Even Elizabeth’s voice shook.
Then the shaking died away, moving on inland to wreak more destruction on the already broken landscape.
“It’s a great thing for me to have experienced such a cataclysmic event,” Elizabeth said. “Professionally. But it can stop now!” She yelled the last two words out the window, then looked surprised at herself.
To Garik’s amazement, he wanted to laugh. He’d just torn out his guts for her, told her all his long-held secrets, and he wanted to laugh? Really?
He needed to face facts; he was never going to be more important to Elizabeth than an earthquake. That’s why she wasn’t reacting to his confession. He didn’t need to imagine she was okay with the fact that he had been a sniveling kid who had grown up to be a murderer. Because she did mind, or would later when she’d had time to think about it.
Yet another glance at her aggravated face again made him want to laugh.
He must be hysterical.
He cleared his throat. He let go of her wrist. He looked at the people lining the porch. “What is Mike Sun doing out here?”
“I don’t know. Who’s Mike Sun? Oh, wait, I remember—he’s your friend.”
“Yes.” Garik might as well tell her. “He’s also the coroner.”
“You went to see him today.” She remembered that, too, of course.
“Yes.” No need for more explanation, unless she demanded it. Garik looked around the parking lot. “Where’s his car?”
“Did he perhaps ride a bicycle?” Elizabeth pointed to two road bikes chained to the resort’s racks.
Garik slid out of the truck, came around to the passenger side, and opened Elizabeth’s door. As she descended from her seat, he took care not to touch her.
But she put her hand on his shoulder to steady herself, and moved close to him as Mike and a woman—wow, that must be his wife, Courtney—came off the porch and across the parking lot toward them. Both looked windblown and healthy, and had helmet hair.
So Elizabeth was right. They had come by bike.
“Hey, good to see you, and so soon!” Garik raised his eyebrows at Mike.
Mike said, “Courtney wanted to take a ride—you remember Courtney, don’t you, Garik?”
Garik offered his hand.
Courtney took it, pulled herself into him, and did the double cheek kiss.
She was almost his height, built like a Barbie doll, top-heavy with no hips and long legs. She had a tan so natural and smooth it looked fake, hair so black it was obviously dyed, and she was as gorgeous as Garik remembered. He didn’t know quite what to do with her, so he gave her a hug and stepped back as fast as he could.
“Of course I remember Garik. When we were in high school, I thought he was the only man I could ever love.” Courtney tucked her hand into Mike’s arm. “Until I saw Mike.”
“I was there all the time. You overlooked me.” Mike grinned at Elizabeth and offered his hand. “I’ve seen you around. It’s good to meet you at last.”
“It’s good to meet you, too,” she said.
Mike’s grin got bigger. “You don’t have the foggiest memory of me, do you?”
“No.” Elizabeth scrutinized him now, though. “But if I don’t look up, I don’t have to see which people are gossiping about my parents.”
“Whoa. There’s a burden I never imagined.” Courtney embraced Elizabeth and did the cheek touch with her. “I like you. You’re real. Shall we go in and see how Mrs. Smith is doing? When the earthquake started, she grabbed an unbroken vase and refused to leave.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I’m sure she’s okay. She’s too stubborn for anything else.”
The two women wandered toward the resort, chatting.
Mike and Garik watched them go.
“Ya done good, Mike,” Garik said.
“You, too. What the hell does she see in you?”
“Nothing. She divorced me.” Even now, that tasted bitter. “Remember?”
“She seems awfully fond. When Courtney hugged you, Elizabeth didn’t like it at all.”
“Really?” Cool. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got that stuff you asked for, so we made the trip.” Mike headed toward the bike racks.
Garik followed. “What stuff?”
Mike dug around in his duffel bags and came up with a huge, shiny, pink, padded envelope. He handed it over with a flourish.
Garik still wasn’t getting it. “Nice packaging, man. Is this how you send out your reports?”
“Courtney got the envelope from a cosmetics company. They want her to endorse their products. I took some papers to work in it, and it seemed like a good camouflage for … this stuff.”
Garik opened it and looked inside. The smell of musty old papers whooshed out, and he saw a glint of metal. He started to reach in.
Mike caught his hand. “I brought you gloves. Handle everything with gloves. We don’t want your fingerprints on the evidence.”
“The evidence.” Garik stuck his head almost inside and stared in disbelief. “You brought me … the evidence? Of Misty Banner’s murder?”
“What did you think it was?” Mike sounded disgusted. “A random bunch of old papers with a random pair of scissors? Yes, it’s the evidence!”
“All the evidence? Holy shit, Mike. Holy … shit.” Garik looked up at his friend in awe. “How did you get it?”
“I stole Foster’s keys, snuck into the evidence room, and cleaned out the box.” As if the heat of the day was getting to him, Mike lifted his black hair off his neck. “The box is still in there, empty.”
“Holy shit.” Garik couldn’t seem to think of another thing to say. “What made you do it?”
Mike got an ugly look to his face. “I went to lunch, came back to my office, and that bastard Foster was in there looking at his mother’s body.”
“And?”
“He had her half-turned over, looking at the back of her head where I cut the hair so I could examine the wound.”
Garik’s gut tightened. “He knows you know he killed her.”
“I’d have to examine his service pistol for blood first. But yes, assuming he did it … he does. So I figured if he was going to kill me, too, I might as well get you the evidence first.” Mike talked fast. And he grinned as if he was joking.
Garik wasn’t laughing.
Mike sobered. “You don’t think this is melodrama.”
“Do you?”
“No. I wish it was, but no.”
Garik looked down at the evidence again. If Foster found out … An unstable sheriff with a couple of murders on his plate could do a lot of damage, and right now, Garik couldn’t be responsible for Mike’s safety, and Courtney’s, and Elizabeth’s, and Margaret’s. “Have you thought of leaving town?”
Mike glared. “Yeah. Because that’s so easy right now.”
“It’s tough, but not impossible. I got here. You got a four-wheel drive?”
“Yes.” Mike paced away, then came back. “You’re serious.”
“As death.” Garik wished he wasn’t. “Everyone agrees Foster is strange and getting stranger, and for the first time in his life, he’s free of his mother’s restrictive influence.”
“She may have been holding him together, you mean?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. An extreme life change frequently triggers aberrant behavior.”
“Now you’re talking like an FBI agent.” Mike couldn’t quite work up one of his cocky grins.
“Occupational hazard.” Garik was thinking it through. “He knows you know he killed his mother. Plus you stole evidence for me, evidence of a murder I accused him of committing. Even if he didn’t kill Misty Banner, he has a lot riding on the accuracy of his investigation. But he didn’t see you get the evidence. Did he?”
Mike hesitated a moment too long.
“You are kidding.” Garik couldn’t believe it.
“He didn’t see me get it. But I had it when I walked back into the morgue and caught him looking at his mother.”
Helpless with despair, Garik lifted his hand, and let it drop.
Mike pointed. “It was in that stupid pink envelope!”
Garik shook his head and started for the resort.
“Crap.” Mike followed, moving fast, heading for the porch, passing Garik.
“It’s you,” Garik called. “You’re a superhero concerned with justice for all.”
“Bite me.” Mike turned and walked backward. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone you’ve got it.”
“I promise.”
“No one. Not even Elizabeth.”
“Not a problem, man. She’s the last one I’ll tell.” In all his life, Garik had never meant anything so much. “Elizabeth has this unnerving habit of blurting out the truth at the most unfortunate moments.”
“Right. Good.” Mike walked forward again, then backward. “What am I going to tell Courtney about our unexpected trip?”
“That you want to take her to the city to ride out the earthquakes?”
Mike stopped, and said in disgust, “She’s got big tits. That doesn’t mean she’s stupid.”
“That’s too bad.” Garik meant it, too. “Then … you’ll tell her the truth?”
“I guess.”
Garik flung his arm around Mike. “Let’s get this over with. We’ll get a map. I can show yo
u some of the trouble spots, and then, let’s get you on your way. I’ll feel a lot better when you’re gone.”
“Yeah, me too.” Mike sighed. “When I saw you, I knew you were going to be trouble.”
“You sound like every girl I ever dated.”
“If that’s what you think”—Mike shoved at him—“take your arm off me.”
It wasn’t funny, but they laughed like it was, and walked into the resort.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
That night, after dinner and some quiet, civilized conversation with Margaret, Garik and Elizabeth went to their respective bedrooms. They faced each other across the suite, wished each other good night, then Garik firmly, carefully, shut the door between them.
He didn’t want Elizabeth to surprise him now.
Picking up the shiny pink padded envelope, he spilled the contents on his desk. Papers, brown-edged papers, lots of them, slid across the brown wood surface, and on top of them—the scissors, enclosed in a Ziploc bag.
The scissors.
This relic had the same impact for an FBI agent as the golden mask of King Tut had for an archeologist.
Using the disposable gloves Mike had given him, Garik picked up the bag by the corner and held it aloft, close to the desk lamp.
A little rusty, still bloodstained, with long blades and sharp tips. Good scissors. Sewing scissors. Scissors Misty had used to make the curtains for her home, dresses for her little girl, maybe that flowered dress she had worn when she was murdered …
Taking the bag, he headed downstairs to the resort’s mail room. He enclosed the scissors in bubble wrap, slid them into a medium-sized Priority Mail Flat Rate box, sealed, addressed, and put postage on it. He didn’t know when he would have the chance to mail it, but he knew the local postal carriers. He’d gone to school with a couple of them. And that kind of connection had turned out pretty well with Mike Sun …
As he headed back to his room, package in hand, he spared a thought to the Suns.
Courtney was not pleased with Mike.
Mike was not pleased with Garik.
But Garik had helped them pack their four-wheel-drive Wrangler, close up their house, and waved them off as they set out across lousy, broken roads toward Portland, because better safe than sorry.