Authors: James P. Blaylock
Peter looked at him for a moment before asking, “A woman and boy?”
“I’m afraid so.”
P
OMEROY PICKED UP A FOIL-WRAPPED TOWELETTE FROM
the dashboard and tore it open, carefully wiping his face with skin freshener. Dust and leaves swept through the deserted
schoolyard across the street, and he felt suddenly lonely and disconnected as he listened to the wind. It reminded him of
playing alone on autumn afternoons in the empty field of his neighborhood school. What he remembered most keenly was the drone
of distant, unseen airplanes. Somehow there was a world of loneliness in the sound of an airplane. It was sentimental weakness,
though, thinking like that now. The past was simply past, and unless you could use it, it was nothing but a liability to recall
it.
He tossed a bag full of videotapes into the backseat. He had spent longer in the video store than he’d meant to, looking at
titles. Once, five years ago, he’d been at a party for a salesman friend of his that was getting married—not exactly a friend,
really, just a man he worked with. They’d drunk beer, the rest of the men had, shown porno movies of the worst kind—women
together, men and women committing perversions … He had walked out. There was no way he was going to sit around with a bunch
of beer-swilling perverts and watch filth.
The video store had a whole section in the back full of movies like that. In the privacy of his own home a man might look
into them. Some of them might be quite artistic, really, which was something you could appreciate if there weren’t a lot of
drunks shouting obscenities at the screen.
There was no way he could check one out, though, not face-to-face with the clerk behind the counter….
Even though there were a couple of hours to kill, he had no desire to drive back out into the canyon today. There was the chance that he
could shoehorn another cabin owner into thinking about selling, but the cat bite in his hand throbbed, and the wind was just too
damned wild, blowing straight down off the hills like that. And besides, there were other highly entertaining things to do.
He pulled into the post office parking lot and cut the engine, then took a padded manila envelope out from under the seat
and slid a sheaf of papers halfway out of it. He shuffled through them slowly, stopping to scan a line or two on a page or
to glance at a set of figures. He had made the copies in the fifteen-cent Xerox machine at the local grocery store, and some
of them were so badly reproduced that they were edged with black shadows. Klein would get the point, though. It wouldn’t take
more than a couple of clear sentences and he’d get the point as clear and sharp as if he’d been hit with a pickax.
Pomeroy laughed silently, unable to make up his mind. Bills, transcripts, letters—everything he had was pretty good, although
most of the letters and bills wouldn’t mean much by themselves. They were substantiating evidence, really. Finally he decided
on one of the best of the lot, a five-page transcript of a telephone conversation that Klein would no doubt rather not be
reminded of. There were a couple of other choice articles among the papers; could have copies of them in due time, if he needed
them. The extortion business, if you did it right, was like cooking a bird. You didn’t pour the heat to it all at once and burn it to a crisp. You let it simmer.
The transcript itself was ten years old—or at least the original was—and Klein had no idea on earth that it existed, although
Pomeroy was willing to bet that hadn’t forgotten about the phone call itself. Pomeroy hadn’t. He could remember every detail
of it.
The shady little business meeting that followed the call had taken place at Angel Stadium: Angels versus Oakland, September
29, 1983. Pomeroy himself had been there along with old Larry Collier and a contractor out in Tustin who did core samples
and geological surveys. It had even rained that evening, just a few big drops like a warning out of the sky before the clouds
passed on. In the west a rocket had gone up out of Vandenberg, fizzling out and corkscrewing over the Pacific, painting the
sky with a smoke trail that was clearly meant to be handwriting. Going into the game, the Angels had been contenders, two
games out of first, and then lost that night to Oakland eight to two, sealing their fate on the very same night that Klein
was sealing his. That was Klein in a nutshell, always coming close, but never quite making it to the series.
There was a certain synchronicity to things when the game was going right—or wrong, as was the case with Klein and the Angels.
The universe played along, dealing out signs and symbols. If you understood the language, you could read your fate in the
sky or on a baseball scoreboard.
From the glove compartment, he took a cassette taps of Klein’s voice, recorded for posterity, and slid it into a fresh manila
envelope along with the transcript of the recording. He had already addressed the envelope with rub-on letters, very neatly.
It looked pro. Nothing to arouse suspicion in anyone but Klein himself, and Klein was already suspicious. Once he opened the
envelope and took a good hard look at the contents, suspicion wouldn’t enter into the transaction anymore.
Wind shook the car, and people up on the sidewalk turned their faces away from it, hurrying to get inside one of the open
shops.
He moistened a sponge with water out of a plastic bottle, rubbed the gum on the flap, and sealed the envelope. Then he started
the car, drove to the mailbox in front of the post office, and dropped the envelope into the chute. It would probably be routed
through the main post office and get to
Klein on Monday. By then Klein would have been simmering long enough, and Pomeroy could turn up the heat.
It was late in the afternoon, and the traffic was fairly heavy through Live Oak Canyon, mostly commuters driving home to
Coto and Santa Margarita. Pomeroy owned condo up there himself: athletic club, tennis courts, pool complex. It was close enough
so that he could still make it home in time to put a fresh bandage on his hand and take a quick shower before his dinner meeting
with Klein.
Traffic cleared, and he swung out onto the highway, heading northeast toward the turnoff to Trabuco Oaks. In his rearview
mirror he saw a Volkswagen bus pull up behind him, signaling to make a left, up Parker Street, into the Oaks. A blond woman
was driving, and he knew right away who she was.
“Beth,” he said out loud. Linda’s name only occurred to him afterward, as a sort of echo. He looked at his bandage-wrapped
hand. Beth would heal both wounds! The sight of her sent a thrill through him now, and for a moment his breath caught in his
throat as it had that morning, as if the mere sight of her would physically incapacitate him. Running into her twice in one
day! What were the odds of that? He couldn’t let the opportunity slide. It would be the easiest thing in the world right now
to find out where she lived.
He breezed past Parker, watching in the mirror as the bus turned left, disappearing beyond the general store. Fifty yards
farther, he made a quick U-turn across the left shoulder and pulled straight out onto the highway again.
D
ETECTIVE
S
LATER SAT IN SILENCE, LOOKING OUT AT THE
street.
“What’s being done?”
“Nothing,” the cop said. “There isn’t any case. Just the testimony of one hiker. It was night. The man was scared, alone.
When the ranger got back in there he couldn’t find anything at all. No blood, no broken-up bushes. Sheriffs looked the place
over next day. There wasn’t a piece of thread or a scuffed rock. Nothing. Locals back in there hadn’t seen or heard anything.”
“So what are you saying?” Peter asked. “What the hell happened to the bodies? Nobody was dead? What?”
The cop shrugged. “Hiker might have been full of baloney. Or else the people he saw might not have been dead at all. Maybe they got up and walked away. That’s possible. Hell,
we get reports of dead bodies around here all the time. Almost always turns out to be someone passed out drunk or a bag lady
asleep in the Plaza. So I’m saying that nobody knows what happened out there in the canyon. Might be a half dozen answers
for it. They’ve got the hiker’s description of the alleged bodies, though—clothes, hair color.”
“What clothes?” Peter asked, suddenly full of both hope and fear. If Amanda and Peter had disappeared out there, they would
have been wearing the clothes they’d driven out in. They hadn’t brought any others.
“Woman had on a long black dress. The hiker was close
enough to see that. Apparently there was some moonlight. The boy …”
“He’s sure it was a boy?”
“That’s what it says here. The boy wore light-colored pants, maybe khakis. White long-sleeve shirt.”
“That isn’t what Amanda and David were wearing.” Peter said. A wave of relief swept across him. “It wasn’t them.”
Detective Slater shrugged again, noncommittally. “Let’s hope not. As far as the sheriff’s department knows, it wasn’t anyone.
They don’t have any bodies, just a man’s testimony. What got me, though, was the coincidence of the whole thing. You lose
your wife and boy out there, and a couple days later a hiker claims to have seen a woman and child dead. It’s a small world,
but it’s not that small. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to drive out to Santa Ana, soon as you leave here. Sheriff’s office is down
on north Flower Street, 550 block near the corner of Santa Ana Boulevard, by the courthouse buildings. I called them when
I went after the report a few minutes ago.”
Peter’s head spun. He had spent the last hour processing what he knew, over and over until he couldn’t see past it or around
it. Now all of that was swept aside by these new revelations. “Am I under suspicion then?” he asked suddenly. “What, I just
drive over to the sheriff’s department alone?”
“That’s the ticket. No crime’s been committed as far as I know. Nobody’s suspected of anything.”
“What do I expect from them? Will they hold me on suspicion of something?”
“Of what?” Detective Slater shook his head slowly. “You shouldn’t expect anything except a few questions. Like I said, nobody’s
under suspicion. If there’s no bodies and no evidence of anything, then there’s no investigation beyond the information taken
from the hiker and the ranger a week ago. If bodies turn up, and if they’re identified as your wife and son, then you can
bet the sheriff’s going to
come looking for you. Right now all you’ve got to do is drive out to Santa Ana and tell them what you told me. I’ll file two
missing-persons reports and we’ll see what comes up. Meanwhile I’ll send them out copies of the photos and fingerprints you
gave me. That’s about it. If you think of something, though, or find out anything, come straight back here.”
“Right,” Peter said. “Thanks.”
The detective stood up and put his pen into his pocket. It was over, this part was. He shook Peter’s hand and walked him out
to the door, explaining where the sheriff’s department was again, where to park, who to ask for. Together they stepped outside,
into a sheltered alcove between buildings. Even there, leaves and debris blew along the concrete and out toward the street.
“Wind won’t quit this year,” Slater said.
Peter nodded. He couldn’t think of anything to say. The small-talk center in his brain had been temporarily shut down. He
wondered if that wasn’t one of the things you lost forever if you became insane.
“You know, maybe there’s other explanations for this,” the detective said, making no move to go back in. “I don’t mean the
bodies out in the canyon, I mean your wife disappearing.”
“What’s that?” Peter asked.
“How about custody kidnap? What was the deal there? You say you were separated but not divorced. Was she happy with the arrangements?
She got to keep the kid? The house?”
“She would keep David weekdays. He can go to the neighborhood schools that way. He stays with me weekends, holidays, summer
vacations. My schedule’s good that way.”
“That’s carved in stone?”
“It will be in another couple of months.”
“And she likes that? Lot of mothers wouldn’t give a child up that easily, you know. That’s a pretty modern
idea—sharing custody. Sometimes that kind of thing looks good in theory, but actually doing it is a different thing. How do
you know she didn’t just take the kid and go? Move to the east or something?”
“She wouldn’t do that.” Peter said this with conviction. Almost at once, though, he wondered how sure he was about it. “Impossible,”
he said, after a moment. “Why dump money into airplane tickets to Hawaii? Why leave a thousand dollars in traveler’s checks
behind, along with your luggage and clothes?”
“Why
not
do all that? If you’re putting one over on the world, you want to do a job of it. Convinced the hell out of
you,
didn’t it? She have any money? Enough to be independent of you?”
“She has enough. More than me, really—better job. It’s me that’ll have to tighten the belt. And she owns the house that her
parents lived in before they died.”
“The house here in Orange. Is that hers?”
“Technically it’s both of ours still,” Peter said. “It’ll be hers when the papers are final.”
“What I’d do, maybe, if I were her, is take out a big second, or a home equity loan on her parents’ place. Lot of equity in
that house, I’d guess, if she owns it outright? Then I’d throw a little of it away on airplane tickets and traveler’s checks,
set up my husband, and walk away with the kid. She could move out of state and do pretty well. It would cost her, but I’ll
guarantee you there’s people all over the country doing it right now. It’s a popular crime. Some states won’t even extradite
in cases of custody kidnap. Texas is a good bet for that. Living’s cheap, too. She could buy a house with cash and bank the
rest.”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said. “I wasn’t very perceptive about her sometimes. That’s been part of the problem. But I think
I would have seen that coming. She wasn’t that good when it came to acting. In fact, she wasn’t any good at all. She didn’t
play games. It wasn’t in her.”