Both Ends of the Night Read online

  Within a few seconds lights came on below: the blue of the taxiway, the white of the runway. The fog hadn’t spread inland after all, and now the field lay in clear outline. I could make out a dark building to its right.

  “We’ll fly over, check it out.” Hy cut back on power, flew slowly, scanning the ground. I pressed my nose to the backseat window, identified a house trailer and a few tethered planes.

  “There’s Matthews’s Comanche,” he said. “Surprised he hasn’t come outside to see who activated his lights.” He turned, flew downwind, and squared off for our final approach.

  “I think I spotted another trailer down that access road,” I told him. “At least I saw some lights.”

  “Could be Cutter’s place.”

  “How do you plan to handle this?”

  “I’ll tell Matthews the engine’s giving me some trouble and I want the mechanic to take a look at it. If it is Cutter, we’ll say we could use a walk and wander on down there.”

  “What if Matthews insists on calling Cutter first?”

  “We’ll have to discourage that however we can. I don’t want Cutter forewarned—or Matthews overhearing our conversation with him.”

  He turned his attention to landing, forward-slipping to lose altitude quickly. We touched down in a perfect three-point and soon were rolling past the building I’d spotted from the air—a hangar, buttoned up for the night. There were no lights on in Matthews’s house trailer, although a Jeep stood next to it.

  Hy said, “He’s probably out someplace—Saturday night, you know. With any luck, we won’t have to deal with him.” He stopped the plane at a set of tie-downs near the Comanche and shut it down. By the time I climbed out, he was securing the last chain. “Let’s go.”

  We walked along the runway toward the access road, the field plunging into darkness as the lights turned off automatically. Gently curved hills rose around us, and above them the sky was moon- and starshot, although high wisps of fog drifted from the west. The air was crisp and so cold I could see our breath. I smelled pines and felt a stab of sorrow as I pictured the Christmas-tree farm and the home Matty would never return to.

  Hy’s voice rescued me from the image. “You still carrying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better be ready. No telling what Cutter might do when he sees us.”

  I reached into my bag for the .38, tucked it into my waistband.

  We came to the road and started walking along it toward the lights I’d glimpsed earlier. Except for the crunch of our footsteps, the night was very still. I moved off the gravel so that the vegetation would muffle our approach; Hy followed. Now I could see the outlines of the house trailer, perhaps twenty yards ahead. Light blazed in all its windows, and a white pickup was parked near the steps on the side nearest us.

  “It’s Cutter’s place, all right,” Hy whispered. “That’s the truck he was driving this morning.” He started to walk faster, but I held back. “What?” he asked impatiently.

  I shook my head, looking around. A feeling of wrongness, small but insistent.

  “Come on, McCone.”

  Half the distance and I stopped again. “Listen.”

  He cocked his head. “A TV. Jesus Christ, after what he did, he’s watching TV.”

  We cut across the road, closing in. I glanced at the truck, saw its rear tires were flat. And lying over the tailgate was a—

  “Ripinsky, look!”

  “What…? Ah, Jesus.”

  It was a dog. Indeterminate breed, long pale fur matted and bloody. Bent and broken, lying in a way that looked as if it had lunged over the tailgate at its attacker.

  I grabbed Hy’s arm and whispered, “Let’s move in from the rear.”

  The land around the trailer was cleared, but a windbreak of pines protected it on the side where we stood. We slipped over and took shelter behind them, walked along quickly. About twenty feet of open ground lay between the trees and the trailer’s rear wall. I turned to Hy, raising an eyebrow, and he nodded: I’ll go first; you cover. I pulled out my .38, held it in both hands and looked around; nothing moved near the clearing, and the only sounds were the wind in the pine branches and the mutter of the TV. I nodded back at him: Go ahead, I’m ready.

  In a crouch he ran across the open space and flattened himself against the flimsy wall; it gave a rumble like simulated thunder on a stage set. I tensed, gun ready, but there was no reaction from inside. After a minute I followed him, taking care not to touch the wall when I stopped next to it.

  The trailer’s entrance was midway down the side wall. I looked around the corner, saw a thin stripe of light spilling over the four steps from the partly open door. The sound of the TV was clearer now—the mindless giggle and shriek of a sitcom. Good God, I thought, commit murder by day, watch reruns of The Brady Bunch by night. Hy nudged me, and I started around the corner; edged along and moved up the steps with my gun ready. The Bradys’ laugh track roared, but no one in the trailer joined in.

  I looked back at Hy, jerking my chin toward the door: I’m going in. He nodded and began moving up the steps behind me. I straightened, raising the gun, then kicked the door all the way open and was through it before it could smack into the wall. I swept the room with both the .38 and my eyes and found it empty.

  A combination living room and kitchen, with the TV playing to an empty recliner chair. Somebody had been there recently: a half full beer bottle and a full ashtray sat on a table, and fresh cigarette smoke overlaid the odors of stale tobacco and wet dog. A short hallway opened to my left. I slipped down it and checked out the single bedroom and bath. No one, but in the bedroom the window was open, its screen removed and, from the looks of it, hastily tossed aside.

  When I went back to the living room, Hy had silenced the Bradys. The night was still again—so still that drips falling into the kitchen sink sounded loud as a drumroll. I touched the beer bottle with the back of my hand. Lukewarm. “Looks like Cutter went out the bedroom window,” I said.

  “So what the hell happened here?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m gonna take a look at the dog.”

  A task I wouldn’t have volunteered for. As he went out, I tucked the .38 into my bag, pulled on my gloves, and began sorting through a jumble of mail on the breakfast bar. Mostly junk, a few overdue bills, and travel brochures for various destinations, all of them in warm climates. Early winter dreaming, or had the mechanic been planning a trip—perhaps a permanent one?

  Hy came back, his lips white, eyes dark with anger. “Truck’s rear tires’re slashed, and the poor bugger was shot at close range, damn near ripped apart. Looks like the shooter used wadcutters.”

  Hollow-tipped bullets that fragment and cause extensive damage. Overkill for a dog, overkill for humans, too. And a top choice of pro killers. “So the shooter arrives…”

  “And the dog starts barking. He whacks it, then slashes the tires.”

  “I don’t buy that. Why wouldn’t he let the dog bark, wait for Cutter to come out to see what was happening?”

  “Maybe he did, but Cutter stayed inside, so he shot the dog to shut it up. Then he goes into the trailer, but Cutter’s already out the window.”

  “And then, instead of chasing him, he takes the time to slash the tires?”

  “Well, there aren’t a hell of a lot of places here to go on foot. Odds are Cutter was heading for the airport, Matthews’s trailer. The shooter probably guessed that, so he slashed the tires to make sure Cutter couldn’t double back to the truck and drive away.”

  “But if Cutter got to the field and alerted Matthews—”

  Hy’s eyes met mine and he nodded. “McCone, we’d better check it out.”

  We found Matthews behind his Jeep, a short-barreled rifle beside him. He’d never had the chance to fire. Cutter’s body was wedged between the hangar and a waste-disposal bin—the last place left to hide. Both men had been repeatedly shot.

  In the garish light of the flash Hy had fetched from his p
lane, the men’s mangled and torn remains were easily the worst I’d ever seen. I stayed only long enough to make sure there was nothing we could do for them, then went behind a clump of scrub oak and was violently sick. Hy maintained a tight control, but I could tell he was sickened too.

  When I came back to the Citabria, we huddled in the cockpit for warmth. He said, “What do you think—a vicious pro, or personal?”

  “I’d say a pro who enjoys his work entirely too much. Cutter was the target; Matthews just got in the way.”

  “Jesus, what was John Seabrook into?”

  I hugged my elbows, seized by an attack of shivers that had little to do with the cold. After a moment I asked, “Who has jurisdiction here? Sonoma County sheriff, I guess.”

  “McCone, we can’t report it.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason we can’t talk with the NTSB investigators.”

  “We can’t just leave those men here like this!”

  He reached over the seatback and cupped his hand under my chin, turning my face up so he could look into my eyes. “It isn’t going to matter to either of them. You know that.”

  I grabbed his wrist, held it tight. He was right, but something in me shrank from leaving the bodies to become further victimized by night-crawling predators. Besides, failure to report a double homicide could put my investigator’s license in jeopardy.

  “Okay, I know how you feel,” Hy said after a moment. “We’ll get out of here and report it anonymously.”

  “I could call now, on my cell phone.”

  “No. Nine-eleven has caller I.D. They wouldn’t be able to tell where you are, but I think the number might still come up on the screen, and it’s listed to you. We’ll fly into Santa Rosa and use a pay phone. I’ll make the call, and if somehow they identify me, you weren’t along for the ride.”

  “You shouldn’t have to take all the responsibility—”

  “You’ve got something to lose. I don’t.”

  I hesitated, trying to think clearly. “Okay, then we’ll have to make sure you aren’t identified. I’m not comfortable with calling from Santa Rosa; we’ve flown in there late at night before, and there were people around.”

  “Right. Someplace that’s bound to be deserted. Sea Ranch or maybe Ocean Ridge.”

  “Why along the coast?”

  “Because you and I need to be at Touchstone. It’s the one place we might find some peace.”

  Two hours later we lay in our own bed in our stone cottage by the sea. We’d tried to make love immediately upon arriving—a clothes-shedding, fever-pitch frenzy that hadn’t been good for either of us. Too many demons for one heated act to banish, too little tenderness and emotional connection. Finally we gave it up as a bad idea and linked hands, resting side by side in the darkness. And that simple touch eased some of the pain, erased some of the horror.

  Long after Hy drifted into restless sleep, I remained awake, thinking of Matty, Cutter, Matthews. For them it would always be night. No matter what lay ahead, Hy and I would at least see the morning.

  Nine

  Fog’s hovering on the horizon like a goddamn turkey vulture. I’d just as soon head back to the Bay Area after we have our coffee.”

  I turned away from the refrigerator as Hy came into the main room of the cottage. “That’s just as well—coffee’s all we’re getting. The bread we left here in September isn’t fit for anything other than manufacturing penicillin.”

  He went to the window, opened the draperies, and stared glumly out to sea. “McCone, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should ease off on this crazy crusade before we’re in too deep.”

  Maybe I should ease off on it was what he meant. As he’d said the night before, I had something to lose. He didn’t.

  “We’re already in too deep,” I told him. “Last night—”

  “Jesus, I don’t ever want to witness anything like that again. I had my fill of atrocities when I was ferrying rich refugees and drug lords out of war zones.”

  “I know.” I poured coffee into yellow Fiestaware cups and took one to him. He thanked me and sipped absently, his eyes still on the horizon. “Revenge aside,” I added, “you’re forgetting a couple of things: Matty hired me to find John, and now there’s Zach to consider. He needs his father.”

  “Does he? His father’s into something heavy that makes him dangerous to be around.”

  No disputing that. I took my coffee to the couch and curled up there, tucking my bare feet under the hem of my long robe. “Still,” I said, “something’s got to be done about the kid, and the first step to that is resolving the situation with his father.”

  “Can you afford a maybe lengthy investigation, on the amount Matty gave you as a retainer?”

  “No, but I have an idea—” The phone rang. “Who the hell couldn’ve figured out we’re here?” I said as I picked up.

  “There you are!” Mick exclaimed. “I kept getting the machine at your house and the office, and your cell phone’s dead.”

  “Oh, I must’ve forgotten to turn it back on when we landed last night.”

  “I suppose you also forgot about Ralph and Alice.”

  My cats. They’d surely make me answer for my long absence when I got home. “I may forget, but I don’t neglect. I cut a deal with the kid next door to feed them if she doesn’t see my car or lights.”

  “No wonder they looked so smug right before they chowed down on the can of Friskies I gave them.”

  “You went over there?”

  “That’s where I’m calling from. I got worried about you and wanted to make sure you hadn’t been strangled in the shower.”

  “Nice lurid imagination you’ve got there.”

  “Runs in the family. Anyway, after I fed them it struck me that the airstrip you were talking about flying to last night is closer to the cottage than it is to the city, so I gave it a try.”

  “About that airstrip…” I glanced at Hy. “You and Keim haven’t mentioned it to anybody, have you?”

  “We know better than to talk about our investigations to outsiders. What’s the matter, did something happen there?”

  “I can’t discuss it, but you’ll probably see something about it on the TV news or in tomorrow’s paper. That’ll be the first time you’ve heard of the place.”

  “… Right.”

  “So why’d you call?”

  “Well, for openers, Lottie located that Dr. Sandler, first name Robert. He’s got a family practice in Los Alegres. She called his office and left a message on the machine for him to contact you, but here’s the interesting thing: part of the recording said, ‘If you’re calling to schedule an FAA medical examination, we perform them on Tuesdays and Thursdays.’”

  “That is interesting.” Only certain doctors are authorized by the FAA to issue pilot medical certificates. Why would Matty have consulted one regarding John? Of course, Robert Sandler could also be the Seabrook family doctor.…

  “It’s not nearly as interesting as what I’ve come up with,” Mick said. “You were right about the Good Buy store; it’s a small chain on the west coast of Florida. I accessed the Library of Congress for old indexes to newspapers in that area and found a few articles about a shooting in the parking lot of their Gulf Haven branch in March, ten years and eight months ago.”

  “That was fast! What’re the details?”

  “Well, the local paper there is too small to have full-text online, and of course their offices are closed for the weekend. So I downloaded a story from the Saint Petersburg Times. I’ll read it to you.”

  I grabbed a pad and pencil and made notes while he read. When he finished, I asked, “Will you do me a favor? Make me a reservation on any flight after”—I glanced at my watch—“three this afternoon to anyplace within driving distance of Gulf Haven. Reserve a rental car, too.”

  “I don’t care where I stay,” Zach said. “Leave me here, stick me someplace else, it doesn’t matter. Except I don’t want to go back to Los Alegres.
” Sunk into an oversized armchair in Rae and Ricky’s living room, he appeared quite small in spite of his height.

  Hank Zahn took off his horn-rimmed glasses and held them up to the light, looking for smudges. It was a delaying tactic I’d seen him use in the courtroom. “You must have some preference.”

  Zach shrugged.

  Hank put on the glasses and transferred his gaze to me. “May I see you in the kitchen for a minute?”

  I nodded and we went out there. The house was Sunday-evening quiet; Ricky had taken Molly and Lisa to the airport, and Rae was working in her home office—probably on the manuscript of a novel, which she’d so far refused to discuss with any of us.

  Hank leaned against the butcher-block island, his arms folded across his blue ski sweater. “I know Zach’s depressed and confused, but he isn’t making it easy for me to decide what should be done for him.”

  “No.”

  “My recommendation has to be in the best interests of the child. With a boy of Zach’s age, I like to take his wishes into consideration.”

  “Well, if it’ll help any, I can definitely say that it’s in the best interests of his safety to remain here with the RKI guard in place.”

  “In your opinion how significant is the threat to his life?”

  “Very significant.”

  He ran his fingers through his wiry gray-brown hair. “Let me ask you a few questions. This client of yours who was killed—what was her relationship to the father?”

  “Significant other, of close to a year’s standing.”

  “And he left the boy in her care?”

  “Yes. I have a letter from him to my client stating that was his intention.”

  “And she, in turn, left him in your care?”

  “To ensure his safety.”

  “This was an oral agreement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any witnesses to it?”

  “Only Zach.”

  He considered. “Now, the father—he’s been missing how long?”

  “Over a week.”