Zigzag (11 page)

As soon as I made the turn I remembered that I'd been down this road once before, on an exploratory drive with Kerry and Emily one long-ago Sunday, and had forgotten its name. It ran for half a mile or so before dead-ending and was lined with a mixed bag of dwellings, most of them on high grassy banks crowded with pine and rock maple and wild grape that overlooked the river. Rustic cottages large and small, summer homes behind fences and screens of shrubbery, a small, closed resort that had once served food and hosted dances. The area's old-time atmosphere had been palpable enough on a sunny summer day; winter desertion and the gloomy weather created the fanciful impression that I had passed through a time warp into the 1950s.

Marie Seldon's residence was not on the riverfront, but one of a short, staggered row of small cottages at the edge of a pine forest on the inland side. They were all identical in old age, size, and design—resort cottages, probably, that had been turned into rental units. The one that bore her number was partially coated with thick twists of ivy along one side. And it looked as though I'd gotten lucky: a car, an elderly yellow four-door Ford Focus hatchback with the hatch raised, was backed up close in front on an unpaved driveway. If the vehicle was hers, then she was still here.

Right. I had confirmation five seconds after I pulled over onto the grassy verge. The front door opened and out she came, a somewhat chunky blonde in a black windbreaker, toting a large cardboard box.

Her attention was on loading the carton into the back of the Ford; she didn't notice me until I was a third of the way up along the edge of the muddy lane. When she did see me she froze, one hand up on the hatchback lid as if she'd been about to close it. The nearer I got to her, the surer she was that she'd never seen me before and the surer I was that she did not want anything to do with a stranger. Her stance was rigid, her broad mouth set tight, her stare both hostile and wary.

“Who're you? What do you want?”

She flung the words at me when I reached the Ford's nose, but I kept on going to where she stood before I answered. The car's rear seats had been folded down, I saw, and the space behind the front seats was packed with suitcases, cartons, clothing on hangers.

“Marie Seldon?”

“So what if I am?” She had a hard, abrasive voice. Her face was hard, too, pinched, her eyes like flat brown stones—the face of a not very smart woman who had been kicked around and done her share of kicking back. Some men might have found her attractive, in large part because of oversized breasts that bulged the front of the sweater beneath her open windbreaker, but I was not one of them. There was no softness in her, no vulnerability, no indication that she was capable of either compassion or love.

I nodded toward the car. “Moving out?”

“None of your business. What do you want?”

“Some conversation.”

“Why? What about? Listen, mister—”

“Ray Fentress,” I said.

The name plainly jolted her. “I don't know anybody named Fentress.”

“I think you do. I think you met with him in San Francisco last week to discuss something that happened in June of 2014.”

“Who the hell are you?” Snapping the words, almost snarling them. “If you're a cop, let me see your ID.”

I gave her a close-up look at the photostat of my license. She sneered at it. “Private cop,” she said, as if mouthing an obscenity. “Go away; get out of here. I got nothing to say to you.”

“Floyd Mears,” I said. “Melanie Joy Holloway.”

What color there was in Marie's pale face drained away; the rain-damp skin across her cheekbones tightened visibly. But she hung on to her cool; the fact that she was a cold number by nature helped her manage it. “You keep throwing out names of people I never heard of. You better get out of here before I call the real cops, tell 'em you're hassling me with a lot of bullshit I don't know anything about.”

“Go ahead, call them.”

“You think I won't? Wait around and see.”

She slammed the hatchback shut, spun around, and stalked back to the cottage. I had two choices, follow her or leave. If I left, she'd be on the road five minutes after I was gone. I couldn't hang around and then trail her for an extended length of time—only a quarter tank of gas left in my car after the long drive from the city, for one thing—and I did not have enough on her to convince the law to pick her up before she fled the state. I doubted she would carry out her threat to sic sheriff's deputies on me, and I had the idea that if I prodded her a little more she might crack enough to let something incriminating leak through. So I followed her.

She stomped up onto the low porch, yanked the door open. Stopped and half-turned, saw me coming, said something that sounded like, “Bastard!” Then she went in, but she didn't shut the door behind her.

I went up and stood in the open doorway. She was across a small musty living room by then, next to a table that held a brown suede purse. There was a cell phone in her left hand, but she wasn't doing anything with it. The room was mostly empty except for a few sticks of mismatched furniture; she'd finished packing and loading the Ford, and if I had gotten here five minutes later she'd have been gone.

“Go ahead and make the call,” I said. “Ask for Lieutenant Heidegger. I'd like to have him in on this.”

She neither did nor said anything in response, just glared at me across a dozen feet of empty space.

“You know who Heidegger is, don't you? The man in charge of investigating the double homicide in Floyd Mears' cabin.”

“So what?”

“So you were Mears' girlfriend in June of 2014. And Mears and Fentress knew each other from the hunting camp in Lake County. The three of you cooked up and carried out the plan, right?”

“I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.” The denial came out sharp, but not as sharp as what she'd said previously. She didn't seem quite so cool any longer.

“Or was it just you and Mears, with Fentress supplying the info on Melanie Holloway? Maybe he didn't even know what the two of you had in mind until it was too late.”

Nothing from her.

“How much of the take was he getting? A third? Less than that?”

Still nothing.

“Lot of money in any case,” I said. “Six figures altogether.”

She put her back to me, lifting the cell phone to her ear. But I didn't see her other hand dive into the purse, didn't see the gun until she whirled around and pointed the damn thing at me.

“All right, you son of a bitch, get your ass in here and shut the door.”

I hesitated, tightening up inside, cursing myself for not figuring she might have a firearm close at hand. Age-slowed reflexes, mental as well as physical. The piece was a small automatic, probably a .32, not an optimum weapon for accurate shooting at a distance but deadly enough nonetheless. I could have ducked and run, but I'm not made that way. If I was going to get shot, it would be looking her straight in the eye.

“Do what I told you, goddamn it!”

I stepped inside, swung the door closed with a backhand thrust. Moved forward in short, slow steps—one, two, three before she told me to stop. Eight feet or so separated us then, too far for me to risk rushing her yet. But unless I could talk my way out of this, and there was little enough chance of that, or find a way to create some kind of distraction to give me an edge, I'd have to make the try sooner or later. I kept my eyes on the gun, on her finger curled around the trigger. If the finger tightened …

“This isn't going to get you anywhere,” I said. “Lieutenant Heidegger knows everything I know.”

“Bullshit. Then he'd be here instead of you.”

“My partner knows, too. Killing me won't buy you anything.”

“Buy some time,” she said.

“Not nearly enough. You can't outrun the law, Marie, and you can't hide from it. Be smart: put the gun down; give yourself up.”

“Like hell I will.” She wiped the back of her free hand over her mouth, smearing her lipstick. Her face glistened with moisture, not all of it from the rain. “How'd you find out what we done?”

“I'm a detective. I get paid to find things out.”

Silence for a few beats. Then, “It was Floyd's idea, not mine. I didn't want to do it, kidnapping's a fucking capital crime, but he swore we wasn't gonna hurt the girl and I made sure we didn't. And Jesus, all that money. A quarter of a million dollars…”

“What was Fentress' part in it?”

“He told Floyd about the Holloway bitch and then pointed her out. He didn't want any part of the rest of it. Didn't deserve half as much as he was supposed to get, not after he went and got himself arrested and thrown in prison, the stupid bastard. That really screwed things up.”

Nervousness was making her talkative. That and the false perception that I knew more than I did. I kept watching the gun, her finger now sliding back and forth across the curve of the trigger.

“How did it screw things up?”

“Floyd, that asshole, he said we couldn't risk spending any of the money right away … worried Holloway might call in the FBI. Only supposed to wait for a few months, but then Fentress went all stupid on us. A few months, okay, but not a year and a half or more. I kept saying, ‘Let me have my share like we agreed on,' but Floyd wouldn't do it; he said we had to wait until Ray got out.”

“To make sure he didn't talk.”

“Yeah. Floyd promised him his share'd be waiting. Made me go up to that goddamn prison twice to reassure him. I had to do what he told me even after we had a fight and busted up. He had the money stashed someplace and he wouldn't tell me where.”

“Why did you meet Fentress in the city last week?”

“Floyd made me do that, too. Keep him reassured. Let him know when and where we'd make the split.”

“At Mears' cabin. Only Fentress wasn't sure he was going to get his cut, so he brought a gun along with him.”

Another finger swipe across her mouth. “No,” she said. “He never had no gun.”

“So you're the one who brought it. And used it.”

She was silent again for a little time. The rain was coming down harder now; I could hear it beating on the roof. Then, “It wasn't me killed him and Floyd and the dog.”

“No? Then who did?”

Headshake.

I said, “But you were there that night.”

“Yeah, I was there, but I swear I didn't know he was gonna kill them. We were just supposed to grab the money and leave 'em tied up. That was the plan, only he…”

A kind of wincing tic lifted one corner of her mouth, half-closed the eye above it. She did not like thinking about that night. No, she hadn't committed the killings. Even as hard-boiled as she was, I doubted she was capable of that kind of cold-blooded slaughter; it had a man's stamp on it. Even now, under pressure and despite her threats to shoot me, the way she held the automatic implied she'd have a hard time pulling the trigger.

“Who?” I asked again. “Who's your accomplice?”

Headshake.

“Who, Marie?”

Another sound rose over that of the rain on the roof, the whine and growl of a car coming up the access lane. She cocked her head. “You're about to find out,” she said, and in that second her stance shifted slightly and her gaze slid away from me toward the door.

My reaction was pure instinct, without thought or hesitation. I charged her, twisting my body sideways, my chin pulled down against my chest, right arm extended. The unexpectedness of it caught her completely off guard. I was already on her, driving into her with my shoulder, grabbing for the gun when it bucked in her hand with a noise like a baby thunderclap. The trigger pull was reflexive and without aim; the slug missed me high and by at least a couple of feet.

Force of impact drove her backward, yelling, staggering both of us. I groped a hold on the automatic, tore it out of her grasp in the same instant she went over backward across the flimsy table, her weight collapsing it. She was in the wrong position to break her fall; she hit the floor on her upper back, her head slamming hard off the boards. The cry choked off on impact, became a kind of grunting gurgle.

I'd managed to check my momentum by throwing an arm up just before I collided with the inside wall. But I was still off balance when I heard the door thwack open and the wind come whistling in.

“Marie! What the hell—”

I steadied myself against the wall, swinging my head around. He was standing in the doorway, filling it as I had earlier, and for two or three frozen seconds we stared at each other with a kind of mutual astonishment because he knew me and I knew him.

George Orcutt, the man I'd interviewed at Rio Verdi Propane.

 

15

I was the first to move. I shoved off the wall, reversing my grip on the automatic's squared barrel so that I could wrap my fingers around the handle. But Orcutt did not want any part of me or the gun. He must have thought I'd shot Marie Seldon, still lying motionless atop the crushed remains of the table; he took one quick look at her, another at me, and then turned tail and bolted.

“Orcutt! Stop or take a bullet!”

It might as well have been a whisper as a shout. Either he didn't believe me or he was caught in the grip of panic; he didn't break stride, just kept running with his head down. The footing on the driveway was bad; his feet slid in the mud, throwing him into a stagger as he lurched around the side of the Ford. I was out through the door by then, into the slashing rain. He was no more than twenty feet ahead of me. A warning shot might have pulled him up short, but I was not about to risk firing out here in the open even though there was nobody else in sight. I had no authority for that kind of action.

I yelled at him again to stop, making another empty threat to fire, and again he ignored me. He lunged between the Ford and his wheels, a four-door black pickup. I cut over so that I was facing toward him as he tried to yank open the driver's door. But the rain had made the handle slick and the ground a quagmire; he slipped and slid again, lost his grip, and nearly fell.