Point Deception Page 4

  She shook her head, sipped wine, looked around. The bar was filling up and—Oh, hell!

  “What?” Wayne asked. He could read her only too well.

  “Nothing.”

  He turned, scanned the room. His eyes came to rest on Alex Ngo, who slouched alone at a table near the windows. “Fuckin’ gook,” he said. “At least Lily’s not with him for a change.”

  Rho didn’t point out that the jacket slung over the back of the chair opposite Alex looked like one Wayne’s younger sister often wore.

  Wayne turned back to the table, downed half his beer. “God, I’d like to get something on that little bastard!”

  “Such as?”

  “Come on, kiddo, you’ve heard the rumors.”

  “You mean about the abalone poaching.”

  “Yeah. One of the Fish and Game guys who went out on the raid this morning said they’re ninety-nine percent sure that Ngo is hooked in with that ring of poachers.”

  “What do they have on him so far, other than the fact that he’s Vietnamese and a diver?”

  “One of their surveillance photos shows him with a fellow called Phuc Ky Phan of Oakland. Phuc’s one of the middlemen the divers pass the abalone off to.”

  “And Alex was photographed in the act?”

  “No.” Wayne scowled. “He was photographed drinking beer with Phuc on Calvert’s Landing Pier.”

  “And that makes them ninety-nine percent certain he’s hooked in? What if Phuc’s a relative? Or a friend? Their knowing each other doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “Why’re you defending the bastard, Rho? You know how he treats Lily. You’ve seen the bruises on her face. You remember when I had to drive her to the clinic because two of her ribs were busted in a so-called fall. I swear, if he’s involved her in this poaching business—”

  “Wayne, stop. I’m not defending him.” Lily had just come out of the restroom and was walking toward Alex. “All I’m saying is that DFG has no proof. They’d better get more than that before they arrest Ngo.”

  Wayne followed the direction of her gaze and turned. His face reddened and then he was off his chair, fists clenched at his sides.

  Christ, Rho thought, not another scene like last week!

  Quickly she stood and followed, but by the time she caught up with Wayne, he was looming over Alex, in his face and shouting.

  “I told you what’d happen if I saw you with her again, you fuckin’ gook!”

  Rho grabbed Wayne’s arm, tried to pull him back. He shook her off and she stumbled against the next table. The bar grew quiet.

  Alex sat with his arms folded, acting as if Wayne wasn’t there, but Lily half rose. “Stop it, damn you!”

  Wayne grasped his sister’s arm and dragged her all the way to her feet. “Go outside and wait for me in my truck.”

  “I’m not—Ow! That hurts, you bastard!”

  Someone stepped between Rho and Wayne now, a tall man who moved swiftly and confidently. He got Wayne in a restraint hold, breaking his grasp on Lily. Said to the couple, “Get out of here. Now!”

  They went, while Wayne struggled against his captor. Rho stepped forward to intervene and recognized the man. The tourist she’d almost run down that morning.

  “Let him go,” she told him. “I’ll handle this.”

  The black-haired woman took over, and Guy released his hold on her friend. She grasped him by the arms and spoke forcefully, her delicate face close to his.

  “You can’t keep doing this, Wayne. You’re only driving her away from you.”

  “Fuckin’ gook’s wrecking her life—”

  “No, Lily’s wrecking her life, and till she realizes that and decides to do something about it, nothing you say or do is going to change things.”

  “Guess you’re the expert on that, Rho.”

  The woman recoiled, taking her hands off him. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shook his head and turned on Guy, giving him a shove that knocked him against the jukebox. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, buddy. Keep your goddamn hands to yourself!” Then he started for the door in a tight, angry stride.

  Guy pushed away from the jukebox and rubbed his shoulder, where Wayne’s hand had caught him. The woman came over to him and said, “Thanks. I owe you. Where’d you learn that hold?”

  “In the navy, shore patrol. May I buy you a drink?”

  “Let me buy you one.” She headed back to her table and Guy followed, taking the chair Wayne had vacated. The noise level in the bar was returning to normal. Probably altercations were a normal component of Signal Port’s Saturday-night festivities.

  “Your friend doesn’t like Asians much,” he commented.

  “My colleague at the sheriff’s department, Deputy Wayne Gilardi, doesn’t like that particular Asian—and for good reason.”

  Guy remembered the SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT bumper sticker on her truck, and winced. She was a cop. And so was Wayne. Jesus…!

  “I’d’ve never grabbed him like that if I’d known—”

  “No way you could have. He’s off duty.”

  “Still, you don’t go around assaulting the local law.”

  “You’re perfectly justified when the local law’s making an ass of himself. Besides, his fellow deputy nearly assaulted you this morning. Recovered from that scare yet?”

  “Fully. My name’s Guy Newberry, by the way.” He waited to see if she might recognize it, but if she did, she gave no sign. Writers, he thought wryly, labored in obscurity. Even best-sellers like himself failed to achieve notice unless they were celebrities in some other field or at events where the attendees expected to see them. On the one hand, anonymity made his type of work easier, but on the other it could be deflating.

  “Rhoda Swift.” She offered her hand, and he clasped it. Her grip was strong and straightforward.

  As she signaled to the waitress he said, “So you’re with the sheriff’s department.”

  “Thirteen-year veteran, work out of the substation here in town. And you’re a stranger to the coast.”

  “It shows that much? Well, yes, I’m from New York City. But I’m thinking of relocating. What’s it like to live in Signal Port?”

  She frowned—more puzzled by the question than displeased, he thought. “Like living in any small town, I guess. Everybody knows you, your life history, your business. And they’re pleased to hash it over with anybody else who’ll listen. Fortunately, you also know about them, so in the end everybody’s even.”

  “You’ve lived here your whole life?”

  “Except for college in another small town.”

  “Ever had the urge to get out, try a big city?”

  “Not particularly. I’d still be carrying the small-town girl around inside me. Now you, Mr. Newberry—”

  “Guy.”

  “Guy. And please call me Rhoda. What is it you do that allows you to consider relocating to someplace this remote?”

  Rhoda Swift, he thought, might be more friendly than her fellow townspeople, but just as adept at fielding questions. And he sensed that, as a member of the sheriff’s department, she’d close off completely if he revealed the reason he was here. So he opted for a half-truth.

  “Freelance writing,” he said. And with the intention of making her thoroughly bored with his profession, he launched into a monologue about the new laptop he’d bought for the trip.

  The evening proceeded pleasantly, if not very profitably, through drinks and dinner, but ended abruptly when Rhoda’s pager went off and she returned the call from the phone in the lobby. She came back to the table tight-lipped and obviously upset, but would offer only the terse explanation that a potential witness to a serious crime had been killed in his cell in the county jail in Santa Carla.

  Chrystal: Before

  Friday, October 6

  10:32 A.M.

  Jesus, this road! I thought a couple of those stretches back in Mendocino County were white-knucklers, but this on
e’s got them beat to hell. Take a curve too fast and you’d be screaming all the way down the cliff. And it’s a long way down.

  How the hell do people up here survive, driving this thing every day? Guess they get used to it. Must get used to being so far away from everything, too. Haven’t seen a house in miles, just cows on the hillsides. I remember what Jude used to say about the cows: that they were specially bred with their legs shorter on one side so they could stand up on those steep slopes. Thought she was a riot, but it drove Leo nuts every time she said it.

  Mileage sign. Signal Port’s thirty miles north. Less to where I’m going. But miles seem longer up here than on regular roads. Lots longer.

  Jesus, Chryssie, watch your driving! You’ve come too far now to screw up and take a nosedive off the cliff. You’re nervous, is all. All those instructions and warnings Jude gave you—they’re fuckin’ with your head.

  Why’d she send me up here if she thought I couldn’t get away with it? Desperate, I guess. Greedy, too. Well, why not? Me and her, we never had nothing. And why shouldn’t she believe I can’t pull it off? All my life she’s been telling me I’m a loser.

  Well, not this time. This time Jude’s gonna be wrong.

  Sunday, October 8

  She was kneeling in the fog-damp pine needles, the boy’s body so slight that she easily cradled him in her arms. Blood bubbled at his lips as he gasped for breath, his eyelids fluttering. She thrust frantic fingers into his mouth, trying to clear his airway.

  Sirens in the distance. The backup vehicles.

  “Come on, come on!”

  The boy’s body convulsed, and blood gushed from his mouth, soaking her uniform shirt. She was losing him.

  “No please God no!”

  Headlights washing up the drive. Pulsars turning the pines grotesque. Red and blue flashing over the suddenly still face of the child she hadn’t been able to save. A young blonde woman stood over her, long hair blowing in the wind, eyes asking why—

  Rho jerked upright in bed, shuddering. For a moment she was still at the crime scene in Cascada Canyon, but then familiar things—the glow of the digital clock, the outline of the window, Cody’s soft wheezing—began to lead her back to the present. She hunched over, elbows on knees, hands pressed to her wet eyes.

  As always during the transition from nightmare to reality, she faced a bitter truth: When little Heath Wynne died in her arms that night, a part of her had also died. Her dreams of a family, her marriage, any semblance of a normal life—all were doomed. The family because she couldn’t bear to bring a child into a world where he might become a bullet-riddled corpse. The marriage because her husband badly wanted the children she refused to give him. The normal life because, once she stopped the drinking and pill taking, she needed to maintain rigid control in order to function, and that kind of control precluded love and intimacy. Like the children, those feelings were best not conceived.

  Most of the time she managed, even managed well. She was good at her work, good to her friends. She had her new home, was planning improvements and a garden. And the nightmare, thank God, came less frequently.

  But now, four days before the anniversary of the murders, it had returned two nights running in a subtly altered version, the presence of the young blonde woman forcing her to confront both the distant and recent past. Why—?

  The phone rang. She squinted at the clock, saw it was quarter to seven. After fumbling with the receiver, she gave an interrogatory grunt.

  Wayne Gilardi’s voice. Something about it made adrenaline course through her like a fast-acting virus.

  “Say again, Wayne.”

  “A floater. Woman. Point Deception. Couple of surf fishermen spotted her in Lantern Cove. I could use your help, kiddo.” Wayne betrayed no anger over last night’s scene in the bar. No contrition, either. And now, after the way he’d spoken to her, he—a mediocre investigator at best—had caught an important call and had the nerve to ask a favor.

  “What’s your location?” she asked.

  “I can be at your place in five minutes.”

  “Give me ten.”

  Guy stood on the deserted pier, watching the fog move. A dirty-gray billowing mass that made it seem more like night than early morning. He’d been unable to sleep and had come down here for a breath of fresh air and some fresh thinking.

  Hours in the company of Deputy Rhoda Swift the night before had convinced him he might have to change his approach with the citizens of Signal Port. In spite of drinks and food and flattering attention, she’d remained remote. A polite remote, but unyielding. And she’d volleyed most of his questions back at him as if he were hurling them at a rubber wall.

  The only things he’d learned from her could be summarized briefly: Signal Port had been a wonderful place to grow up. She’d wanted to live there her whole life. She’d attended college at Chico State—wherever that was—with the intention of returning home and teaching on the elementary level, but positions were unavailable in the unified school district, and eventually, on the advice of her sheriff’s deputy father, she’d applied to the department. She’d been married once, to a contractor who left her and the town seven years ago. They’d had no children. The Lab’s name was Cody. She’d gotten him from the pound two years ago when she bought a house on ten acres on the ridge. Her .357 Smith & Wesson revolver was better protection than the dog, who was determined to be everyone’s best friend.

  Surface details, the kind people exchange on a first date. And yet there was a current beneath them, something that frequently darkened Rhoda Swift’s hazel eyes and made her look away from him. In her story there was a structured quality to time, as well as one of those major breaks that people refer to as “before” and “after.”

  Before I was born; after. Before Kennedy was shot; after. Before I became a writer; before I made the bestseller lists; before Diana died.…

  After.

  There were many other breaking points in Guy’s life, but the significant one was the loss of Diana. It was as if she, a professional photographer who shot the pictorial sections of his books, had reversed one of her negatives, turning black to white, white to black. The underpinnings of his life were suddenly gone, and he began to doubt his most basic assumptions.

  Not so, however, with Rhoda’s loss of Zach, the contractor husband. Her significant break had occurred long before that, thirteen years ago, soon after she joined the sheriff’s department. She probably didn’t recognize it as such, didn’t even realize how frequently she’d alluded to it, but it had formed a subtext to their conversation.

  Thirteen years: The timing was right. If she could be persuaded to open up, Rhoda Swift would become a valuable asset to his project.

  Guy shivered and zipped up his parka. For a while he’d been dimly aware of a change in the traffic pattern on the highway behind him. Now he turned and saw a sheriff’s department cruiser speed past, heading south. A volunteer fire department rescue truck followed, and a helicopter flapped by offshore.

  Something major happening.

  Perhaps another “before.” Another “after.”

  “It could be the woman from the Mercedes,” Rho said, studying the sodden body on the stretcher. “She had blonde hair and was wearing a blue tube top. But I only caught a glimpse of her.”

  “Why didn’t you stop?” Ned Grossman, a detective who had flown in by helicopter from Santa Carla, asked. There was a faint accusatory note in his voice that she chose not to react to.

  “I had to respond to a Code Two, and after that things got busy. When I checked back there before my shift ended, the woman was gone.”

  Grossman, tall and lean with iron-gray hair and thin-rimmed glasses, nodded, apparently satisfied. “You catch the call?”

  “Wayne Gilardi did. He picked me up on his way here.”

  The detective looked displeased at the mention of Wayne’s name. He and his colleagues at the Investigations Bureau, Rho knew, were aware of the individual levels of skills among the c
oastal area deputies. “Okay,” he said, “Gilardi’ll have to assist on this, since he caught, but I want you as well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grossman turned away to talk with his short, balding partner, whom he’d introduced as Denny Shepherd. Rho walked to the edge of the cliff above the cove from which the emergency technicians had recovered the partially clad body. Lantern Cove—so called because during Prohibition rumrunners had set kerosene lamps down there to distract federal agents from their clandestine activities at Signal Port.

  In the normal course of her work Rho often had occasion to view dead bodies—those of people who had died of natural causes, the victims of traffic accidents and drownings, the wife or husband or friend who had been shot or stabbed or bludgeoned by someone near and dear. But this instance was different. If the victim was the stranded motorist—and Rho was inclined to believe so—she’d not only seen her in life but also been visited by her in her dreams. And she could have prevented her death.

  The tall grass behind her rustled. Wayne’s voice said, “Grossman just told me he wants both of us on this.”

  “Yeah, he said the same to me.” She pointed to the detective and his partner as they descended to the cove with a pair of her colleagues.

  Wayne asked, “What do they think they’re gonna find down there? Won’t be any evidence. She didn’t go into the water here.”

  “No.” Rho consulted her knowledge of the currents, pictured this week’s tide table. “It would have to be someplace north, no farther than Deer Harbor and no earlier than last night. She isn’t bloated or banged up enough to have been in the water any longer.”

  “Yeah. You know, I liked this better when I thought it was a simple case of a stranded tourist wandering out here in the dark and falling off the cliff.”

  “But the fact that all she’s wearing is that tube top, plus those bruises on her wrists, throat, and thighs—we’re looking at murder here. Probably rape-and-murder. Kidnapping too.”