Bad Desire (21 page)

At the house, he got on the telephone and repeated the same invitation to each of the men he called. “Let's play poker.” He left a note for Faith to meet him later for dinner and drove to the Rod and Gun Club.

In the first hour and a half, he won close to two thousand dollars; then his game turned sour. He ordered a fifth of Old Grand-dad and started to drink it down.
He'll track that diamond to me. I don't know how, but he will
. He had three jacks and knew Ben Lapham was bluffing, bet his hand to the hilt and lost to a nine-high straight—a goddamned impossible hand to fill in five-card straight poker.

He laughed when the men ribbed him. And he drank. He had tens over aces and lost to a straight flush. The whiskey wasn't working. Through it all, he kept seeing those little brooms. Perspiration coated his face; when he least expected it his hands shook—once or twice he nearly dropped his cards. “We've got you this time,” Bill Franz said, cheerfully needling him. “You don't know how long I've waited to see you sweat.”

“Yeah, well, Bill, that's how it goes. That's poker. I guess it had to catch up with me sometime.” By three-thirty, he had lost his winnings and was down a thousand dollars. Men left the table, went home; others sat in. He hit; he won four hands in quick succession, which nearly brought him even. Then it spiraled and snowballed, downward. He didn't care about the money, but he couldn't afford to lose so much that it would be talked about at length. When he tore the deck in two at quarter to six, barely an inch of whiskey remained in the bottle, but Slater had never been more sober.

What am I going to do?
In the locker room, he plunged his face into a basin of cold water, holding his breath as long as he could. He studied his face intently in the mirror while he combed his hair.
Didn't do my homework
. He was down not quite twenty-five hundred when he went out to have dinner with his wife.

He couldn't eat. Faith remarked about it but he shrugged it off. He was thinking about the convicts, aware that they might be caught at any time. Then it would be too late to do anything. Something else was going to have to happen fast. It would have to be something that would cause great confusion, big enough to distract Reeves and send him right back after the convicts. And it would have to be under his control, something he could arrange secretly beforehand.

Reeves has too much time, he thought, too damned much time and I have none.

At ten, they got ready for bed. He waited until Faith went to sleep, then, in his robe, he went through the house to the garage and turned on the single overhead light. Against the wall, near the door to the laundry room, lay a stack of old newspapers that Faith had saved for the church's paper drive.

From the top of the pile, he began to go through them, one by one, taking them up, unfolding them, searching for any reference to the convicts. The papers were full of them—always the same story, it seemed, told in different words, again and again.
Homework
, Slater thought. In order not to miss what he was looking for, he was condemned to read the stories practically word for word. With every page, he hated Reeves more. Didn't dig deep enough, he thought. Goddamn you, Burris.

He had gone through perhaps thirty newspapers when the laundry room door opened and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Faith stuck her head out. “Henry, are you all right?” she asked. “Is something the—”

“I'm all right. What do you want?”

“What are you doing?” she said sleepily.

“What the hell does it look like? I'm looking for something. Christ, Faith, can't I have a few minutes to myself?”

“But—”

“Go back to bed.”

“Well, Henry, excuse me for intruding.” She slammed the door.

Intruding, he thought. That's right. Intruding. Tongue like a damned whip. He let loose a deep breath. “She'll get over it,” he muttered. “She always does.”

Close to midnight, when he was near the bottom of the stack, he came to an issue of the
San Francisco Chronicle
dated Sunday, March 30. That's when he found what he had been searching for.

BOMBING DEVICES FOUND

IN KILLER'S CAR

A stolen car driven by escaped killer William Buckram Taylor was found to contain timers altered to detonate explosives, this according to search warrant affidavits opened today by agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Division of the Department of the Treasury and the FBI.

Also found in the trunk were several pounds of gunpowder, boxes of .445 caliber lead shot and other materials required in the construction of small-scale bombing devices.

Escaped mental patient Taylor is the subject of a statewide search for the recent double murder of Jack and Betty Sewell, in rural Pinewood. He is still considered a prime suspect in the series of explosions that rocked Sausalito in 1984, which claimed five lives.

Explosives, Slater thought.

That's what Reeves had been getting at—
Christ
, that's what he had been looking for under Rachel's car! A bomb!

Slater read the article through again, then a third time. He restacked the newspapers in a tall loose pile, placing the March 30 edition close to the top so he would immediately know where to find it. The article was almost as interesting for what had been left out of it as for what it contained. Anyone with any knowledge of even basic chemistry would recognize that necessary materials were missing. To build a bomb, Taylor would also have to have batteries, probably six volt, or some other power source, blasting caps, and either timers or a radio.

Slater's hands were smudged black with printer's ink. He washed them in the sink beside the workbench. So many years had passed. He would have to dig out the old textbooks he kept in his father's trunk at the farmhouse. And any large construction site would have an explosives shack. Or he'd have to mix his own compound.

Too preoccupied to go to sleep, Slater turned off the lights, opened the garage door and walked out into the starry night.

Explosives
.

On Monday morning, he went down to the office an hour early. He knew what he had to do, but not yet how to go about it. I've got to get on with it right away, he thought. I've got to get Reeves off the track.

Before Abigail and the girls started to arrive in the outer offices, Slater went to his private bathroom and closed the door. And I've got to see Sheila. The funeral was behind her; this was the time to see her. Without delay. And yet his mind kept straying back to the more immediate problem of the police chief. Slater washed and dried his hands, but what he wanted, he realized, was one last breath of fresh air. Cool, clean air that would help him think.

In the wall facing north there was a small window of opaque glass, two feet square. He turned the crank and the window rotated wide enough on its axis for a hand to clean it. A gust of wind hit him in the face. The art of distraction, he kept thinking. I've got to distract Reeves. The hand is quicker than the eye.

Even at this altitude, he could smell the salt from the ocean, but this morning it was like the scent of blood, and washing in with it, riding on the back of these turbulent airs came the shape of another crime, or perhaps more than one, that he was now forced to commit.

Placing his hand against the window frame, Slater stood, looking out, soaking up the damp, morning air. He saw the weblike city streets, the vivid, silver bows of bridges spanning rivers and inlets. He saw the railroad tracks, shining like ethereal knife strokes, all gossamer, and quaint, and doomed to rust. On the Rialto River Bridge in the distance he watched a black and white car drive toward him over the pavement's long middle hump. A hard red spark revolved on its roof. That's a cruiser, he thought. I'll bet that's Reeves.

Slater's foot began to slowly tap on the green marble floor. He watched the cruiser drift to the end of the bridge, turn right, and park in the lot across from a donut shop he and Reeves had once frequented. The Hole in One. Old habits die hard.

So Reeves still stops there in the morning, Slater realized. He even knew what the chief of police would have: two glazed donuts and two cups of coffee, black. He glanced at his watch. 7:15. Some things never change. He would have to check to make sure, but he was convinced that that was Reeves's cruiser.

Gradually, Slater straightened up and smoothed back his hair. The plan rose in him, fully formed and in possession of him, as if the handmaidens of sleep and nothing else had delivered it to him like a garment. Now his mind could not let go of it.

The art of distraction, he thought.

Suddenly he was drained by all his plotting, weary of the spiral of lies he had had to weave. But he had come too far: he couldn't turn back. God, what've I gotten myself into? Sheila's so young. Whenever Slater closed his eyes, he always thought, Now I will be with you. He knew he had to see her again. Once more and forever. God damn, now I have to do this thing, he kept telling himself. But, Sheila, I'm doing it all for you.

He remembered her standing before him at the funeral, looking small and defenseless and badly hurt. She'll be home this evening; I'll go see her, to pay my respects.

Across the far-flung countryside, he saw only the black and white cruiser in a parking lot, waiting for him. For Henry Slater, it was a day unlike any other. It was Monday morning, Monday, and there was no end to it.

13

“It's nice that you stopped by,” she said.

“You've become a stranger. I thought I might see you in town.”

“I hoped I'd see you.” Sheila stood at the kitchen sink, looking over at him. Her voice was soft, fading on every few words. “I've not been very brave at all.” She turned her head, gazing into the gathering dusk. “I can't tell you what this is like … to come back home with her gone.”

“Don't try to be brave,” Slater said. A week had passed since he had last seen her at the funeral, and now a sense of unreality cloaked everything. To him, even their most insignificant gestures seemed false and formal.

Sheila had curled and brushed her hair, but she hadn't put on makeup or lipstick. Her eyes were an abstracted blue, her mouth pale, her face bereft of color. She was wearing blue jeans, Weejuns and an oversized, starched white shirt. “Isn't it risky for you to be here?” she asked, turning to him slowly and leaning back against the countertop.

He looked at her uncertainly, not sure what she meant. It was, of course, capricious for him to be here without Faith, even dangerous, but Slater knew of no other way to see Sheila alone. “I spoke with the neighbors on my way in,” he explained. “They know I'm here to pay my respects.” The house was empty and strange, but its emptiness seemed right.

Sheila smiled unhappily and nodded. “I saw you out there talking with Mr. Malcolmson.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I don't know. I know my Gramma's gone, but I can't get it through my head.”

Slater felt oddly in sympathy with Rachel and the care she had given the neat kitchen. The counters gleamed, the embroidered tablecloth, anchored with a bowl of roses, still showed its creases; the two chairs at the table faced each other, snugly tucked in as if at any moment the room would undergo a minute inspection. In its plain familiarity, it defied his intrusion.

“Did the police treat you all right?”

“Yes, I guess so. Considering what happened. Mr. Reeves—he was especially good to me.”

“I suppose they asked you a lot of questions?”

“The usual thing,” Sheila replied, as if none of it mattered. “It was like a movie.” She was clearly not interested in talking any further about it.

“Let me put on the light,” he said.

“No, please don't. I look awful. I don't want you to see me too much.”

In the bowl, some of the big cabbage roses had curled for the night, but others had dropped their petals like red sparks on the tablecloth. Seeing that he'd noticed them, Sheila said, “Mrs. Hagerty brought those here from the funeral. Don't ask me why. I guess she thought she was being nice.” Her voice was robbed of all vitality. The tilt of her head, the curve of her shoulders, spoke eloquently of her loneliness. Her friends had returned to their lives yet she remained, standing at the window of Rachel Buchanan's empty house.

“Would you like to go in and sit down?” she asked him, as if only then thinking to ask. “I've put on some coffee. It's almost ready.”

“Sheila, I don't think so.” Slater looked at his watch. “I shouldn't stay.” He shifted uneasily in the doorway, as if preparing to go, but he wasn't ready to leave her. “I was on my way somewhere else but I wanted to see you for a few minutes.”

She gave no indication that she heard him. Night was falling. The darkness entered the kitchen in eddies; already the corners of the room were dark. But Sheila didn't move to turn on the lights; she hadn't moved at all for several minutes. “We have many things to discuss,” he said. “You're going to need some help.”

“Oh, I know,” she readily agreed. “I know. I meant to tell you—it was nice of Mrs. Slater to come see me the day that it happened.”

He hadn't come to talk about Faith; he let it go without comment. “Where're you going to live?”

Sheila shook her head. “It looks like I'll have to stay with Mrs. Sanders … for now. They explained it to me. I guess next year when I turn eighteen … then I can do whatever I want.”

“Yes,” he said in affirmation, wanting to say more but letting it pass. “Are you still with the McPhearsons?”

“Yes, but only for the rest of this week.” She fingered the top button of her shirt. “I'm supposed to get settled in at Mrs. Sanders's this weekend. I don't know why they won't let me stay here. There's so much to do—so much stuff to go through. I don't know how I'm going to get it done all by myself.”