Point Deception Read online

  “So you think she was the woman that gook poacher saw getting snatched?”

  “It’d be a big coincidence if she wasn’t.”

  “And her murder was connected with the poaching?”

  “Maybe. Did you hear that Zhi Phung was strangled by one of his cellmates last night?”

  Wayne frowned. “No. Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Central reported the death to DFG, who tried to reach you. When you weren’t available, they called me.”

  His eyes flicked away from hers and scanned the horizon. Rho knew him well enough to guess that he’d been unavailable because he’d hit the bars after the scene in the hotel.

  She went on, “Zhi may have been killed because someone from the poaching ring abducted the woman. Or his murder may have been simple retaliation for breaking their code of honor. I doubt we’ll find out soon, if ever, because none of the cellmates is talking.”

  Wayne compressed his lips and shook his head. “Jesus, something like this couldn’t’ve happened at a worse time. With the anniversary coming up, it’ll revive all the old fears and suspicions.”

  The anniversary of the canyon murders. The fears and suspicions that a monster still lived among them.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said. “Grossman’s a good detective, and discreet. He’ll keep a lid on this. Nobody’s going to know much of anything till Santa Carla releases the autopsy results. In the meantime, I’ve already gotten started on the Mercedes angle. Once I locate its owner, I can get an ID on our victim.”

  “A little while ago you said it might be her.”

  “I know, I was being cautious. But what’re the chances it’s not?”

  “Slim.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk with Grossman once he gets back up here and get rolling. I’ll handle the ID. You start asking around for anybody who might’ve seen her, see if you can get a handle on the chain of events, establish a time line. An appeal on the public-access TV station could help.”

  The big deputy didn’t respond. Rho looked at him, saw his conflicted expression.

  “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  Earlier he’d mentioned the old fears and suspicions. Now they were working on her. “Wayne, how’d you know she was still at the turnout after nightfall?”

  “What?”

  “You said you liked it better when you thought it was a case of a stranded motorist wandering out here in the dark.”

  “You would catch that.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Okay, Friday night I was… seeing somebody down in Westhaven. On my way back I spotted the woman in my truck’s headlights. She was wearing a long sweater, down to her knees, but her legs were bare, and she must’ve been cold. Normally I would’ve stopped, but I was late getting home and worried about catching hell from Janie. So I didn’t.”

  He paused, shaking his head. “Dammit, Rho, it’s my job to look out for people, but I just left her standing there. What the hell does that make me?”

  Guy crept along in the line of rubberneckers past the turnout where he’d seen the girl on Friday afternoon. Her black Mercedes was still there, but now it was being winched up onto a flatbed tow truck, and the turnout was clogged with emergency vehicles and sheriff’s department cruisers. The helicopter he’d seen earlier had put down beyond the fence. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the area, and highway patrol officers waved the traffic on.

  He pictured the girl, her long blonde hair stirring in the sea breeze. How long had it taken before Diana’s conscience-prodding voice forced him to U-turn? Five minutes, max. A brief interval, but enough time for something to have happened to the girl. If this commotion had anything to do with her. They might simply be towing the abandoned car to make room for the other vehicles.

  Still, he felt a twinge, as well as a certain curiosity, mainly because he suspected that Rhoda Swift might be one of the officers on the scene. But there was no escaping this endless line of traffic—

  He spotted a dirt track to his right, house numbers hanging crooked on a fencepost. When he braked and turned in there the driver of the car behind him leaned on his horn. The rutted track wound through a thick stand of pines and terminated at a clearing where a weather-beaten two-story farmhouse slumped. A barn and some outbuildings lay in a state of disrepair to the south, and an old pickup was pulled into a makeshift shed. Guy stopped his car and got out, eyeing the house warily. No smoke came from its brick chimney, no dogs barked, no one appeared at the door or windows.

  He remained by the car for a moment, getting his bearings, then began walking through the pines toward the sea. On their far side a barren bluff stretched toward cliffs that fell away to whitewater. Guy angled north, past burned trees and huge clumps of those strange plants with fluffy beige plumes that he’d observed on Friday. At the cliff’s edge he braced himself against the wind and looked down.

  It was low tide, and the rocks on the floor of the cove lay exposed, slick and slimy-looking in the gray light. Larger birdlimed formations rose above the placid offshore water, thick layers of black kelp swaying around them like submerged shag carpeting. Guy could smell the kelp: pungent, herbaceous, briny. Then the wind shifted, and he heard sounds that drew his attention to the downslope.

  Sheriff’s deputies, two of them, and a pair of men in plainclothes were descending to the cove, probably to search for evidence of whatever mishap had occurred there. Guy had a familiarity with crime scenes, as he’d once covered the police beat for a now defunct New York State daily, and the sight stirred memories. Many of them bittersweet, because it was at one of those scenes that he’d met Diana, then a television camerawoman. He quickly filed them away so he could concentrate on the present.

  “You’re trespassing, young man.”

  The voice, cracked with age, came from behind him. He turned slowly, saw a man whose eroded face matched the voice, standing some five feet away with a shotgun cradled in his arms. In his seventies, perhaps his eighties, with wispy gray hair and a gap-toothed mouth, dressed in plaid wool and denim.

  Guy said, “I thought this was public land.”

  “Bullshit,” the man replied, not unpleasantly. “You had to come up my driveway to get here.”

  “How much acreage do you own?”

  “One hundred ninety-seven on this side of the highway, and a small parcel on the other, where my well house is. Was my grandfather’s, my father’s, mine. When I’m gone it’ll be the bank’s, and good riddance.”

  “Why good riddance?”

  “Place is cursed, God’s truth.”

  “How?”

  “Ask a lot of questions, don’t you? What’s your name?”

  “Guy Newberry.”

  “I’m Gregory Cordova. Now, Mr. Newberry, why’d you come out here?”

  “I was curious about the commotion up at the turnout. Thought this would be a good vantage point.” He motioned at the cove. “What happened, anyway?”

  “Floater. They brought her up a while ago. You went to a lot of trouble to satisfy your curiosity. Not from around here, are you?”

  “No.”

  Gregory Cordova studied Guy, his dark eyes squinting. “You wouldn’t be a tourist. Don’t have the look. Businessman, passing through? Nope, somebody on a schedule doesn’t take the time to come out here just ’cause there’s a little commotion. Not a rancher or fisherman, either. That tan’s the kind comes from one of them salons they got now, and you don’t work with those hands.”

  The old man was a good observer, even if he’d gotten the part about the tan wrong, and since he appeared to enjoy his guessing game, Guy remained silent.

  “That accent—it tells me you come from back east someplace. New York?”

  “Right.”

  “So what’s a New Yorker doing here? A nosy New Yorker, no less. You a reporter?”

  “Something like that.”

  Gregory Cordova’s weathered face grew still, his eyes watchful. “What’s ‘something like that’ mean?�
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  “I’m a writer. Nonfiction books and articles.” Even now it felt strange to make the claim, having spent the past three years denying it. Turning his back on the work he loved because it gave him pleasure, and he hadn’t wanted any good feelings to intrude upon his grief. Hadn’t wanted them to dilute the guilt he felt over the way Diana died.

  The old man was silent for a moment. Then he nodded, as if Guy had confirmed something he’d known all along. “You’re here to write about those young folks up the canyon,” he said.

  Finally someone here had given voice to the tragedy. “Yes.”

  “Folks’ve always been afraid that’d happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? None of them want it stirred up. It’d raise all the old questions, make them look funny at their friends and neighbors again. Hell, they’ve used up so much energy trying to pretend it never happened, they’re plain worn out.”

  “What about you, sir? Have you tried to pretend?”

  “Not me. I feel for the folks involved, but it didn’t have anything to do with my life.”

  “You sound as if you know a good deal about what happened.”

  “Couldn’t help but know. Everybody does, on this stretch of the coast. And that canyon’s not all that far from here, entrance is up at the north end of my property. Nowadays I pretty much hole up here to home, but not back then. I had to pass by there all the time. Know as much as anybody does. More, maybe.”

  Guy’s interest in what was happening in the cove faded for now. He asked, “Would you be willing to talk with me? Give me your impressions?”

  The old man considered, long and hard. “I’m willing, Mr. Newberry. Sooner or later somebody’s got to take the skeletons out of the closet, dust them off. That somebody might as well be me.”

  Rho was coming to a dead end on the Mercedes. She hunched in front of the computer, irritated with its slowness, and when it froze up and crashed—as it was increasingly prone to do—she let forth a howl of frustration.

  Valerie’s hand touched her shoulder, and she started. She hadn’t heard her get up from her desk. “You need a break,” the clerk said. “Something to eat, too.”

  “Don’t you go getting all maternal on me!” she snapped.

  “Then do it for my sake. I’m tired of listening to you curse and moan.”

  “I’ve been that bad, huh?”

  “I’ve seen you worse. You’re still trying to locate the owner of that car, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I may be able to help you there. My nephew Ron, the one with the twins? He used to be a service manager for Euro Motors in Santa Carla.”

  “And?”

  “Mercedes is a very thorough company. What do you expect—Germans. Anyway, they keep detailed maintenance records on every car, track when they’re serviced, that sort of thing. If the owner took it to the dealership to be worked on, they’ll have his name and address in their nationwide data bank.”

  “And of course it’s Sunday, when the service departments’re closed.”

  “Yes, but there’s another way of getting the information. They also have a twenty-four-hour emergency road service. They can tap into the dealership records for you.”

  “I mean it when I say this land’s cursed.”

  Guy relaxed in the platform rocker next to the old man’s woodstove, coffee mug in hand. Gregory Cordova was having difficulty getting around to the subject of the murders, and Guy was content to let him ramble. Context, after all, was important.

  “My grandparents had eight children. Four of them died in an influenza epidemic. My father had run-ins with the rumrunners who trespassed on the land during Prohibition. They poisoned his well and shot his sheep. My two boys didn’t want anything to do with the place. They bought a fishing boat and were drowned in a storm. My wife went crazy and killed herself. The daughters-in-law took my grandchildren and moved away. Now they’re scattered all over the map, my great-grandchildren too. Three years ago a trespasser who was camping up by the turnout didn’t put out his fire. Those burned-out trees you see are the result of it. If the Department of Forestry fire brigade hadn’t responded fast, the flames would’ve jumped the highway and spread all the way up to the ridge.”

  “You and your family have had a long run of bad luck.”

  “Don’t take me wrong. I don’t feel sorry for myself. Never did. You take what you’re handed and make do.”

  “That may be your philosophy, but from what you’ve told me, the people around here didn’t make do after the murders.”

  “No, sir, they did not. There was a lot of hysteria at first, but then they put a lid on it, screwed it down tight. Initial reaction was shock. So many dead, and there had to have been more than one killer. Folks wanted to blame the victims. Said they brought it on themselves. After all, they were outsiders, rich outsiders by our standards, and there was evidence one of them had been manufacturing drugs. A logical assumption, given the circumstances. But even so, laying blame was hard to do, given that two of them were little children. And when you saw pictures of Oriana Wynne, the six-year-old that survived… well, you couldn’t help but feel.”

  “The little girl was hiding, never saw the killers?”

  “Right. She said her mother heard shots down the canyon and sent her and her brother away from the house. He wasn’t so lucky. Anyway, everybody figured some drug-dealing strangers would be arrested soon, but when a month went by and nothing happened, folks started to look at each other and wonder. Tempers got short, words got exchanged in public and private, people started arming themselves against their neighbors. That winter was bad. Always are—cabin fever—but it was about the worst. When spring came, they were all ready to forget the murders ever happened. Only forgetting a thing like that takes a hell of a lot of work.”

  “Any idea why the case was never solved?”

  Gregory Cordova shrugged. “Was a big case, got nationwide publicity. Everybody wanted a piece of the pie—sheriff’s department, highway patrol, the feds. One hand didn’t know what the other was doing. Evidence got tampered with or lost. A lot of the blame got unfairly heaped on the officer who answered the radio call and found the first bodies.”

  Guy felt the familiar excited prickle travel up his spine. “Who was that?”

  “Sheriff’s deputy. Woman. Name of Rhoda Swift.”

  Thirteen years ago. Before.

  Thirteen years ago. After.

  “You say ‘unfairly.’ Why?”

  “Rho Swift is a fine woman. She’s turned into a good officer. But back then she was new to the department, had only been working there three weeks. Then she walked into an ungodly mess. One of the little boys, Health Wynne, died in her arms. It’s no wonder she made mistakes.”

  “You said there was a radio call?”

  “Yes. Neighbor woman reported hearing shots fired. That’s not unusual here. But the woman heard what sounded like semiautomatic weapons and people screaming.”

  “This neighbor—who was that?”

  “Virge Scurlock. She and her husband, Will, own the adjoining acreage. Big tract, and the house is a long ways from the canyon. Sounds up there get muted or distorted. That’s why Virge didn’t call it in until it was too late.”

  Guy pictured the couple in the bar: the tense-faced redhead and her solicitous husband. “This Will Scurlock, what does he do for a living?”

  “Contractor. Decks, woodworking, that sort of thing.”

  “Does his wife have red hair?”

  “So you’ve seen them. Virge used to be a beauty, but in past years she’s taken up eating in a real serious way. Not that you can blame her, having to live next to that canyon. It’s been left exactly like it was the night of the murders, and now it’s falling to ruins.”

  “The property hasn’t been sold in all these years?”

  “Who’d want it? Besides, Susan Wynne’s family back east—people name of Harrison, who took her little girl to raise—don’t want to se
ll.”

  Harrison, Guy thought. Maybe those years off from writing had taken their toll after all. He hadn’t made the connection between Susan Wynne’s birth name and that of the man who had interested him in this project. Susan was probably Dunbar Harrison’s younger sister. And, come to think of it, hadn’t someone mentioned an orphaned niece going to live with Dun after old Mrs. Harrison died? Now Guy better understood the haunted quality he’d sensed in the man, as well as his anguish when he thought Guy was turning down his idea.

  He asked, “Why don’t the Harrisons want to sell?”

  “What I heard was that Susan Wynne’s mother wanted the property left just like it was as a monument. As a kind of reproach to the folks that live here, too. Don’t know what comfort that could’ve given her, but people take their solace in strange ways. Anyway, until she died last year it just sat there with a local security patrol guarding it. After her death, whoever inherited stopped paying on the contract, didn’t respond to the company’s inquiries.”

  “But the taxes are current?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they’ve decided to let it go to the county. I hear the family’s rich. Rich people can afford to toss away what makes them uncomfortable.”

  Or to send an unsuspecting journalist to rip open the town’s old wounds, find answers for them. But had Dun been so foolish as to think he wouldn’t find out his motives? Or had he assumed that by then Guy would be so fascinated with the story that he’d fail to take offense?

  If so, he’d been right on the second point.

  “This deputy,” he said, “Rhoda Swift. How’d she cope with being blamed?”

  “Bad, at first. She was born and raised in Signal Port, daughter of a deputy herself. Being blamed showed her how a town can turn on its own. She got drunk and stayed drunk for a few years. Would’ve lost her job, but the station commander cut her a lot of slack. He was there that night too. Her husband left her, but maybe that was good, ’cause afterwards she shaped up. Didn’t try to run away, either, just settled down to being the best deputy we got. I’ll tell you, Rho Swift’s a tough one. Good one, too.”