The Hammer of Eden (47 page)

The bastard is very fit
.

Coming full circle, he returned to the gallery. She lost sight of him momentarily and guessed he had gone up again.

Breathing hard, she went up another ornate staircase to the third floor.

Helpful signs told her that the senate gallery was to her right, the assembly to her left. She turned left, came to the door of the gallery, and found it locked. No doubt the other would be the same. She returned to the head of the staircase. Where had he gone?

In a corner she noticed a sign that read “North Stair—No Roof Access.” She opened it and found herself in a narrow functional stairwell with plain floor tiles and an iron balustrade. She could hear her quarry clattering down the stairs, but she could not see him.

She hurtled down.

She emerged at ground level in the rotunda. She could not see Granger, but she spotted Michael, looking around distractedly. He caught her eye. “Did you see him?” she called.

“No.”

“Stay back!”

From the rotunda, a marble corridor led to the governor’s quarters. Her view was obscured by a tour party being shown the door to the Horseshoe. Was that a Hawaiian shirt beyond them? She was not sure. She ran after it, along the marble hall, past framed displays featuring each county in the state. To her left, another corridor led to an exit with a plate-glass automatic door. She saw the shirt going out.

She followed. Granger was darting across L Street, dodging perilously through the impatient traffic. Drivers swerved to avoid him and honked indignantly. He jumped on the hood of a yellow coupé, denting it. The driver opened the door and leaped out in a rage, then saw Judy with her gun and hastily got back in his car.

She sprinted across the street, taking the same mad risks with the traffic. She darted in front of a bus that pulled up with a screech of brakes, ran across the hood of the same yellow coupé, and forced a stretch limousine to swerve across three lanes. She was almost at the sidewalk when a motorcycle came speeding up the inside lane straight at her. She stepped back, and he missed her by an inch.

Granger sped along Eleventh Street, then dodged into an entrance. Judy flew after him. He had gone into a parking garage. She turned into the garage, going as fast as she could, and something hit her, a mighty blow in the face.

Pain exploded in her nose and forehead. She was blinded. She fell on her back, hitting the concrete with a crash. She lay still, paralyzed by shock and pain, unable even to think. A few seconds later she felt a strong hand behind her head and heard, as if from a great distance, the voice of Michael saying: “Judy, for God’s sake, are you alive?”

Her head began to clear, and her vision came back. Michael’s face swam into focus.

“Speak to me, say something!” Michael said.

She opened her mouth. “It hurts,” she mumbled.

“Thank God!” He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his khakis and wiped her mouth with surprising gentleness. “Your nose is bleeding.”

She sat upright. “What happened?”

“I saw you turning inside, going like greased lightning, then the next minute you were flat on the ground. I think he was waiting for you and hit you as you came around the corner. If I get my hands on him …”

Judy realized she had dropped her weapon. “My gun …”

He looked around, picked it up, and handed it to her.

“Help me up.”

He pulled her to her feet.

Her face hurt like hell, but she could see clearly and her legs felt steady. She tried to think straight.

Maybe I haven’t lost him yet
.

There was an elevator, but he could not have had time to take it. He must have gone up the ramp. She knew this garage—she parked here herself when she came to see Honeymoon—and she recalled that it spanned the width of the block, with entrances on Tenth and Eleventh Streets. Maybe Granger knew that, too, and was already getting away by the Tenth Street door.

There was nothing to do but follow.

“I’m going after him,” she said.

She ran up the ramp. Michael followed. She let him. She had twice ordered him to stay back, and she could not spare the breath to tell him again.

They reached the first parking level. Judy’s head started throbbing, and her legs suddenly felt weak. She knew she could not go much farther. They started across the floor.

Suddenly a black car shot out of its parking slot straight at them.

Judy leaped sideways, fell to the ground, and rolled, frantically fast, until she was underneath a parked car.

She saw the wheels of the black car as it turned with a squeal of tires and accelerated down the ramp like a shot from a gun.

Judy stood up, searching frantically for Michael. She had heard him shout with surprise and fear. Had the car hit him?

She saw him a few yards from her, on his hands and knees, white with shock.

“Are you all right?” she said.

He got to his feet. “I’m fine, just shook up.”

Judy looked to see the make of the black car, but it had disappeared.

“Shit,” she said. “I lost him.”

20

A
s Judy was entering the officers’ club at seven
P.M.
, Raja Khan came running out.

He stopped when he saw her. “What happened to you?”

What happened to me? I failed to prevent the earthquake, I made a wrong guess about where Melanie Quercus was hiding out, and I let Ricky Granger slip through my fingers. I blew it, and tomorrow there will be another earthquake, and more people will die, and it will be my fault
.

“Ricky Granger punched me in the nose,” she said. She had a bandage across her face. The pills they had given her at the hospital in Sacramento had eased the pain, but she felt battered and dispirited. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“We were looking for a record album called
Raining Fresh Daisies
, remember?”

“Sure. We hoped it might give us a lead on the woman that called the John Truth show.”

“I’ve located a copy—and it’s right here in town. A store called Vinyl Vic’s.”

“Give that agent a gold star!” Judy felt her energy returning. This could be the lead she needed. It wasn’t much, but it filled her with hope again. Perhaps there was still a chance she could prevent another earthquake. “I’m coming with you.”

They jumped into Raja’s dirty Dodge Colt. The floor was littered
with candy bar wrappers. Raja tore out of the parking lot and headed for Haight-Ashbury. “The guy who owns the store is called Vic Plumstead,” he said as he drove. “When I called a couple of days ago, he wasn’t there, and I got a part-time kid who said he didn’t think they had the record but he would ask the boss. I left a card, and Vic called me five minutes ago.”

“At last, a piece of luck!”

“The record was released in 1969 on a San Francisco label, Transcendental Tracks. It got some publicity and sold a few copies in the Bay Area, but the label never had another success and went out of business after a few months.”

Judy’s elation cooled. “That means there are no files we can search for clues to where she might be now.”

“Maybe the album itself will give us something.”

Vinyl Vic’s was a small store stuffed to bursting with old records. A few conventional sales racks in the middle of the floor had been swamped by cardboard boxes and fruit crates stacked to the ceiling. The place smelled like a dusty old library. There was one customer, a tattooed man in leather shorts, studying an early David Bowie album. At the back, a small, thin man in tight blue jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt stood beside a cash register, sipping coffee from a mug that said “Legalize it!”

Raja introduced himself. “You must be Vic. I spoke to you on the phone a few minutes ago.”

Vic stared at them. He seemed surprised. He said: “Finally, the FBI hits my place, and it’s two Asians? What happened?”

Raja said: “I’m the token nonwhite, and she’s the token woman. Every FBI office has to have one of each, it’s a rule. All the other agents are white men with short haircuts.”

“Oh, right.” Vic looked baffled. He didn’t know whether Raja was kidding or not.

Judy said impatiently: “What about this record?”

“Here it is.” Vic turned to one side, and Judy saw he had a turntable behind the cash register. He swung the arm over the disk and lowered the stylus. A burst of manic guitar introduced a surprisingly laid-back
jazz-funk track with piano chords over a complex drumbeat. Then the woman’s voice came in:

I am melting
Feel me melting
Liquefaction
Turning softer

“I think it’s quite meaningful, actually,” Vic said.

Judy thought it was crap, but she did not care. It was the voice on the John Truth tape, without question. Younger, clearer, gentler, but with that same unmistakable low, sexy tone. “Do you have the sleeve?” she said urgently.

“Sure.” He handed it to her.

It was curling at the corners, and the transparent plastic coating was peeling off the glossy paper. The front had a swirling multicolored design that induced eyestrain. The words “Raining Fresh Daisies” could just be discerned. Judy turned it over. The back was grubby, and there was a coffee ring in the top right-hand corner.

The sleeve notes began: “Music opens the doors that lead to parallel universes.…”

Judy skipped over the words. At the bottom was a row of five monochrome photographs, just head and shoulders, four men and a woman. She read the captions:

Dave Rolands, keyboards
Ian Kerry, guitar
Ross Muller, bass
Jerry Jones, drums
Stella Higgins, poetry

Judy frowned. “Stella Higgins,” she said excitedly. “I believe I’ve heard that name before!” She felt sure, but she could not remember where. Maybe it was wishful thinking. She stared at the small black-and-white head shot. She saw a girl of about twenty with a smiling, sensual
face framed by wavy dark hair and the wide, generous mouth Simon Sparrow had predicted. “She was beautiful,” Judy murmured, almost to herself. She searched the face for the craziness that would make a person threaten an earthquake, but she could see no sign of it. All she saw was a young woman full of vitality and hope.
What went wrong with your life?

“Can we borrow this?” Judy said.

Vic looked sulky. “I’m here to sell records, not lend them,” he said.

She was not going to argue. “How much?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“Okay.”

He stopped the turntable, picked up the disk, and slipped it into its paper cover. Judy paid him. “Thank you, Vic. We appreciate your help.”

Driving back in Raja’s car, she said: “Stella Higgins. Where have I seen that name?”

Raja shook his head. “It doesn’t ring any bells with me.”

As they got out of the car, she gave him the album. “Make blowups of her photo and circulate them to police departments,” she said. “Give the record to Simon Sparrow. You never know what he might come up with.”

They entered into the command post. The big ballroom now looked crowded. The head shed had been augmented by another table. Among the people crowded around would be several more suits from FBI headquarters in Washington, Judy assumed, plus people from the city, state, and federal emergency management agencies.

She went to the investigation team table. Most of her people were working the phones, running down leads. Judy spoke to Carl Theobald. “What are you on?”

“Sightings of tan Plymouth ’Cudas.”

“I’ve got something better for you. We have the California phone book on CD-ROM here somewhere. Look up the name Stella Higgins.”

“And if I find her?”

“Call her and see if she sounds like the woman on the John Truth tape.”

She sat at a computer and initiated a search of criminal records.
There was a Stella Higgins in the files, she found. The woman had been fined for possession of marijuana and been given a suspended sentence for assaulting a police officer at a demonstration. Her date of birth was about right, and her address was on Haight Street. There was no picture in the database, but it sounded like the right woman.

Both convictions were dated 1968, and there was nothing since.

Stella’s record was like that of Ricky Granger, who had dropped off the radar in the early seventies. Judy printed the file and pinned it to the suspect board. She sent an agent to check out the Haight Street address, though she felt sure Higgins would not be there thirty years later.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Bo. His eyes were full of concern. “My baby, what happened to your face?” He touched the bandage on her nose with gentle fingertips.

“I guess I was careless,” she said.

He kissed the top of her head. “I’m on duty tonight, but I had to stop by and see how you are.”

“Who told you I was hurt?”

“That married guy, Michael.”

That married guy
. She grinned.
Reminding me that Michael belongs to someone else
. “There’s no real damage, but I guess I’m going to have two beautiful black eyes.”

“You got to get some rest. When are you going home?”

“I don’t know. I just made a breakthrough. Take a seat.” She told him about
Raining Fresh Daisies
. “The way I see it, she’s a beautiful girl living in San Francisco in the sixties, going on demos, smoking dope, and hanging out with rock bands. The sixties turn into the seventies, she becomes disillusioned or maybe just bored, and she hooks up with a charismatic guy who is on the run from the Mob. The two of them start a cult. Somehow the group survives, making jewelry or whatever, for three decades. Then something goes wrong. Somehow, their existence is threatened by a plan to build a power plant. As they face the ruin of everything they’ve worked for and built up over the years, they cast about for some way, any way, to block this power plant. Then a seismologist joins the group and comes up with a crazy idea.”