The Husband (4 page)

8

A
lthough still hours away, the approaching night pulled every shadow toward the east, away from the westbound sun. Queen-palm shadows yearned across the deep yard.

To Mitch, standing on the back porch, this place, which had previously been an island of peace, now seemed as fraught with tension as the webwork of cables supporting a suspension bridge.

At the end of the yard, beyond a board fence, lay an alleyway. On the farther side of the alley were other yards and other houses. Perhaps a sentinel at one of those second-floor windows observed him now with high-powered binoculars.

On the phone, he had told Holly that he was in the kitchen, and she had said
I know
. She could have known only because her captors had known.

The black Cadillac SUV had not proved to be in any dark power’s employ, imbued with menace only by his imagination. No other vehicle had followed him.

They had expected him to go home, so instead of tailing him, they had staked out his house. They were watching now.

One of the houses on the farther side of the alley might offer a good vantage point if the observer was equipped with high-tech optical gear that provided an intimate view from a distance.

His suspicion settled instead on the detached garage at the rear of this property. That structure could be accessed either from the alley or from the front street via the driveway that ran alongside the house.

The garage, which provided parking for Mitch’s truck and Holly’s Honda, featured windows on the ground floor and in the storage loft. Some were dark, and some were gilded with reflected sunlight.

No window revealed a ghostly face or a telltale movement. If someone was watching from the garage, he would not be careless. He would be glimpsed only if he wished to be seen for the purpose of intimidation.

From the roses, from the ranunculus, from the corabells, from the impatiens, slanting sunlight struck luminous color like flaring shards in stained-glass windows.

The butcher knife, wrapped in bloody clothes, had probably been buried in a flower bed.

By finding that bundle, retrieving it, and cleaning up the blood in the kitchen, he would regain some control. He’d be able to react with greater flexibility to whatever challenges were thrust upon him in the hours ahead.

If he was being watched, however, the kidnappers would not view his actions with equanimity. They had staged his wife’s murder to box him in, and they wouldn’t want the box to be deconstructed.

To punish him, they would hurt Holly.

The man on the phone had promised that she would not be
touched,
meaning raped. But he had no compunctions about hitting her.

Given reason, he would hit her again. Punch her. Torture her. Regarding those issues, he had made no promises.

To dress the set of the staged homicide, they had drawn her blood painlessly, with a hypodermic syringe. They had not, however, sworn to spare her forever from a knife.

As instruction in the reality of his helplessness, they might cut her. Any laceration she endured would sever the very tendons of his will to resist.

They dared not kill her. To continue controlling Mitch, they had to let him speak to her from time to time.

But they could cut to disfigure, then instruct her to describe the disfigurement to him on the phone.

Mitch was surprised by his ability to anticipate such hideous developments. Until a few hours ago, he’d had no personal experience of unalloyed evil.

The vividness of his imagination in this area suggested that on a subconscious level, or on a level deeper than the subconscious, he had known that real evil walked the world, abominations that could not be faded to gray by psychological or social analysis. Holly’s abduction had raised this willfully repressed awareness out of a hallowed darkness, into view.

The shadows of the queen palms, stretched toward the backyard fence, seemed taut to the snapping point, and the sun-brightened flowers looked as brittle as glass. Yet the tension in the scene increased.

Neither the elongated shadows nor the flowers would snap. Whatever strained toward the breaking point, it would break
within
Mitch. And though anxiety soured his stomach and clenched his teeth, he sensed that this coming change would not be a bad thing.

At the garage, the dark windows and the sun-fired windows mocked him. The porch furniture and the patio furniture, arranged with the expectation of the enjoyment of lazy summer evenings, mocked him.

The lush and sculpted landscaping, on which he had spent so many hours, mocked him as well. All the beauty born from his work seemed now to be superficial, and its superficiality made it ugly.

He returned to the house and closed the back door. He did not bother locking it.

The worst that could have invaded his home had already been here and had gone. What violations followed would be only embellishments on the original horror.

He crossed the kitchen and entered a short hall that served two rooms, the first of which was a den. It contained a sofa, two chairs, and a large-screen television.

These days, they rarely watched any programs. So-called reality TV dominated the airwaves, and legal dramas and police dramas, but all of it bored because none of it resembled reality as he had known it; and now he knew it even better.

At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom. He withdrew clean underwear and socks from a bureau drawer.

For now, as impossible as every mundane task seemed in these circumstances, he could do nothing other than what he had been told to do.

The day had been warm; but a night in the middle of May was likely to be cool. At the closet, he slipped a fresh pair of jeans and a flannel shirt from hangers. He put them on the bed.

He found himself standing at Holly’s small vanity, where she daily sat on a tufted stool to brush her hair, apply her makeup, put on her lipstick.

Unconsciously, he had picked up her hand mirror. He looked into it, as if hoping, by some grace that would foretell the future, to see her fine and smiling face. His own countenance did not bear contemplation.

He shaved, showered, and dressed for the ordeal ahead.

He had no idea what they expected of him, how he could possibly raise two million dollars to ransom his wife, but he made no attempt to imagine any possible scenarios. A man on a high ledge is well advised not to spend much time studying the long drop.

As he sat on the edge of the bed, just as he finished tying his shoes, the doorbell rang.

The kidnapper had said he would
call
at six, not come calling. Besides, the bedside clock read 4:15.

Leaving the door unanswered was not an option. He needed to be responsive regardless of how Holly’s captors chose to contact him.

If the visitor had nothing to do with her abduction, Mitch was nevertheless obliged to answer the door in order to maintain an air of normalcy.

His truck in the driveway proved that he was home. A neighbor, getting no response to the bell, might circle to the back of the house to knock at the kitchen door.

The six-pane window in that door would provide a clear view of the kitchen floor strewn with broken dishes, the bloody hand prints on the cabinets and the refrigerator.

He should have drawn shut the blinds.

He left the bedroom, followed the hall, and crossed the living room before the visitor had time to ring the bell twice.

The front door had no windows. He opened it and found Detective Taggart on the porch.

9

T
he praying-mantis stare of mirrored lenses skewered Mitch and pinned his voice in his throat.

“I love these old neighborhoods,” Taggart said, surveying the front porch. “This was how southern California looked in its great years, before they cut down all the orange groves and built a wasteland of stucco tract houses.”

Mitch found a voice that sounded almost like his own, though thinner: “You live around here, Lieutenant?”

“No. I live in one of the wastelands. It’s more convenient. But I happened to be in your neighborhood.”

Taggart was not a man who
just happened
to be anywhere. If he ever went sleepwalking, even then he would have a purpose, a plan, and a destination.

“Something’s come up, Mr. Rafferty. And since I was nearby, it seemed as easy to stop in as to call. Can you spare a few minutes?”

If Taggart was not one of the kidnappers, if his conversation with Mitch had been taped without his knowledge, allowing him across the threshold would be reckless. In this small house, the living room, a picture of tranquillity, and the kitchen, smeared with incriminating evidence, were only a few steps apart.

“Sure,” Mitch said. “But my wife came home with a migraine. She’s lying down.”

If the detective was one of
them,
if he knew that Holly was being held elsewhere, he did not betray his knowledge by any change in his expression.

“Why don’t we sit here on the porch,” Mitch said.

“You’ve got it fixed up real nice.”

Mitch pulled the door shut behind him, and they settled into the white wicker chairs.

Taggart had brought a nine-by-twelve white envelope. He put it on his lap, unopened.

“We had a porch like this when I was a kid,” he said. “We used to watch traffic go by, just watch traffic.”

He removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket. His gaze was as direct as a power drill.

“Does Mrs. Rafferty use ergotamine?”

“Use what?”

“Ergotamine. For the migraines.”

Mitch had no idea whether ergotamine was an actual medication or a word the detective had invented on the spot. “No. She toughs it out with aspirin.”

“How often does she get one?”

“Two or three times a year,” Mitch lied. Holly had never had a migraine. She rarely suffered headaches of any kind.

A gray-and-black moth was settled on the porch post to the right of the front steps, a night-flyer sleeping in the shade until sunset.

“I have ocular migraines,” Taggart said. “They’re entirely visual. I get the glimmering light and the temporary blind spot for like twenty minutes, but there’s no pain.”

“If you’ve got to have a migraine, that sounds like the kind to have.”

“A doctor probably wouldn’t prescribe ergotamine until she was having a migraine a month.”

“It’s just twice a year. Three times,” Mitch said.

He wished that he had resorted to a different lie. Taggart having personal knowledge of migraines was rotten luck.

This small talk unnerved Mitch. To his own ear, he sounded wary, tense.

Of course, Taggart had no doubt long ago grown accustomed to people being wary and tense with him, even innocent people, even his mother.

Mitch had been avoiding the detective’s stare. With an effort, he made eye contact again.

“We did find an AVID on the dog,” Taggart said.

“A what?”

“An American Veterinary Identification Device. That microchip ID I mentioned earlier.”

“Oh. Right.”

Before Mitch realized that his sense of guilt had sabotaged him again, his gaze had drifted away from Taggart to follow a passing car in the street.

“They inject it into the muscle between the dog’s shoulders,” said Taggart. “It’s very tiny. The animal doesn’t feel it. We scanned the retriever, got her AVID number. She’s from a house one block east, two blocks north of the shooting. Owner’s name is Okadan.”

“Bobby Okadan? I do his gardening.”

“Yes, I know.”

“The guy who was killed—that wasn’t Mr. Okadan.”

“No.”

“Who was he? A family member, a friend?”

Avoiding the question, Taggart said, “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize the dog.”

“One golden looks like another.”

“Not really. They’re distinct individuals.”

“Mishiki,” Mitch remembered.

“That’s the dog’s name,” Taggart confirmed.

“We do that property on Tuesdays, and the housekeeper makes sure Mishiki stays inside while we’re there, out of our way. Mostly I’ve seen the dog through a patio door.”

“Evidently, Mishiki was stolen from the Okadans’ backyard this morning, probably around eleven-thirty. The leash and collar on her don’t belong to the Okadans.”

“You mean…the dog was stolen by the guy who was shot?”

“So it appears.”

This revelation reversed Mitch’s problem with eye contact. Now he couldn’t
look away
from the detective.

Taggart hadn’t come here just to share a puzzling bit of case news. Apparently this development triggered, in the detective’s mind, a question about something Mitch had said earlier—or had failed to say.

From inside the house came the muffled ringing of the telephone.

The kidnappers weren’t supposed to call until six o’clock. But if they called earlier and couldn’t reach him, they might be angry.

As Mitch started to rise from his chair, Taggart said, “I’d rather you didn’t answer that. It’s probably Mr. Barnes.”

“Iggy?”

“He and I spoke half an hour ago. I asked him not to call here until I had a chance to speak with you. He’s probably been wrestling with his conscience ever since, and finally his conscience won. Or lost, depending on your point of view.”

Remaining in his chair, Mitch said, “What’s this about?”

Ignoring the question, returning to his subject, Taggart said, “How often do you think dogs are stolen, Mr. Rafferty?”

“I never thought about them being stolen at all.”

“It happens. They aren’t taken as frequently as cars.” His smile was not infectious. “You can’t break a dog down for parts like you can a Porsche. But they do get snatched now and then.”

“If you say so.”

“Purebred dogs can be worth thousands. As often as not, the thief doesn’t intend to sell the animal. He just wants a fancy dog for himself, without paying for it.”

Though Taggart paused, Mitch didn’t say anything. He wanted to speed up the conversation. He was anxious to know the point. All this dog talk had a bite in it somewhere.

“Certain breeds are stolen more than others because they’re known to be friendly, unlikely to resist the thief. Golden retrievers are one of the most sociable, least aggressive of all the popular breeds.”

The detective lowered his head, lowered his eyes, sat pensively for a moment, as if considering what he wished to say next.

Mitch didn’t believe that Taggart needed to gather his thoughts. This man’s thoughts were as precisely ordered as the clothes in an obsessive-compulsive’s closet.

“Dogs are mostly stolen out of parked cars,” Taggart continued. “People leave the dog alone, the doors unlocked. When they come back, Fido’s gone, and someone’s renamed him Duke.”

Realizing that he was gripping the arms of the wicker chair as if strapped in the hot seat and waiting for the executioner to throw the big switch, Mitch made an effort to appear relaxed.

“Or the owner ties the dog to a parking meter outside a shop. The thief slips the knot and walks off with a new best friend.”

Another pause. Mitch endured it.

With his head still bowed, Lieutenant Taggart said,

“It’s rare, Mr. Rafferty, for a dog to be stolen out of its owner’s backyard on a bright spring morning. Anything rare, anything unusual makes me curious. Any outright
weirdness
really gets under my skin.”

Mitch raised one hand to the back of his neck and massaged the muscles because that seemed like something a relaxed man, a relaxed and unconcerned man, might do.

“It’s strange for a thief to enter a neighborhood like that on foot and
walk
away with a stolen pet. It’s strange that he carries no ID. It’s more than strange, it’s remarkable, that he gets shot to death three blocks later. And it’s weird, Mr. Rafferty, that you, the primary witness, knew him.”

“But I didn’t know him.”

“At one time,” Taggart insisted, “you knew him quite well.”