Pacific Beat, page 39
On Becky’s nightstand was a vase with a dozen purple roses in it. He sat on the bed and beheld these lovely flowers, so tainted now for him. He closed his eyes for a moment and saw again the image from the dreams he had had so often this last week—of someone’s hand holding a purple rose up to the smiling, anticipatory face of Ann.
Against all the higher consciousness he could muster, Weir counted them.
Twelve.
Of course.
He sighed, closed his eyes again, and again saw the hand holding a purple rose up to Ann. At first, the rose was in focus and Ann was a blurred face in the background, then the rose lost specificity and Ann’s face became clear.
Weir’s head wobbled and he snapped himself up straight.
His eyes were so heavy. Just a moment to rest.
Of course, no rest. The hand holds the rose. A man’s hand. The petals are purple and full. Ann’s face becomes the place between her legs. The hand drips blood. This is unholy.
Weir stood to walk back into the living room. And when he looked again at the roses in Becky’s vase, he understood in an instant what he had only been seeing all along.
He stopped. The understanding was still there. He ran through it once, then again, then again. He reached out and took a flower from the vase. His hand was trembling as he gripped it up on the bulb, just under the petals, the thick green underleaves snug against his fingers and thumb.
He was still holding the flower when he walked back to the living room and drew the worried stares of Becky and Ray.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.
“Give me the phone and Ken Robbins’s home number. I’ve got it. I know what he has that we haven’t seen yet.”
He dialed and got Mrs. Robbins. She told him dreamily that Ken was still not sleeping well, had already left for the office. It was 5:30. Weir apologized, called the Crime Lab, and got Robbins on the second ring.
“Ken, this is Jim Weir. Get the rose from the evidence freezer. The rose he put in Ann.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got him. We had it all along, and didn’t know it. Please Ken, get the rose.”
Robbins was quiet for a moment. “You’re out, Jim. Dennison made it clear. I can’t be running evidence for you anymore. My hands are tied and you know it.”
“Listen, Ken. This isn’t new. It’s something you’ve got already, brought in by the Newport cops. The chain of custody is tight, it’s admissible, solid, and sitting in your freezer twenty yards away. It isn’t mine. I’m asking you to take another look. I’m begging you, Ken. Get the rose and put it on your light table. Get a good overhead on it and a pair of clean tweezers.”
Another pause. “Wait.”
Becky sat still on the hearth. Raymond was at the front window, looking out toward the hedge of oleander.
Two minutes later, Robbins was back. “Okay. It’s on the table, I’ve got a light on it, and a pair of tweezers in my hand. Now what in hell am I going to do with this withered-up thing that I haven’t done already?”
“We overlooked something because it wasn’t visible. The green underleaves, right below the petals—what do they look like?”
“Nothing on this thing is green—it’s plain goddamned simple brown.”
“The brown husks then—can you see them?”
“They’re buried under the petals, Weir.”
Weir fingered the rose in his hand. Was it his hand in the dream? “Are they folded down against the stem?”
“Yeah, Jim. In the same goddamned way they were when it came in here.”
“But they weren’t that way when the flower went in. The force folded them back, closed them tight against the stem. Lift the petals and turn up the husks with your tweezers—all the way up to where they meet the bulb. Tell me what you see.”
Robbins set down the phone. Weir could hear him snapping on a pair of latex gloves, then the metallic shuffle of instruments in a drawer.
Jim felt his pulse beating through his ear and into the receiver. Becky hadn’t moved. Raymond was facing him now, the beginnings of a smile on his face. A minute went by.
Robbins picked up the phone again and cleared his throat. “Weir? It’s beautiful. A partial thumb and probably a forefinger, drawn in blood, sealed by the underleaf when it went in. The seawater pickled the plant and sealed in the print. I can’t … I can’t actually believe this. You want a job?”
“I want you to run it against Cantrell’s set.”
“He’s never been printed.”
“That picture of Goins I left with you … with the hair in the Baggie? Cantrell’s thumb is on the right side, halfway down. It ought to be clear as day. You still have the picture, don’t you?”
“Dennison insisted I throw it away. I … well, kind of didn’t quite throw it away. Give me fifteen minutes.”
“I’m at Becky’s house.”
He left the number and hung up.
Becky looked at him with an air of perplexity that in thirty years Jim had seen probably twice. Becky always had chosen games she could stay ahead of.
Raymond smiled wholly, walked across the room to Jim, and hugged him. It was the longest, strongest embrace from Ray that he could remember. Still, he thought, something seems to have gone out of him.
Jim watched as Raymond looked out the window for a moment, then walked over and sat on the couch.
“Maybe we should have a drink,” said Becky.
“Maybe we should wait until Robbins calls,” said Weir.
Raymond shot a glance at Becky, then stood and walked toward the door. “I need a minute alone.”
Jim caught the oddness in Raymond’s expression. “Don’t mess this up, Ray. We’re too close. We’ve worked too hard.”
Raymond smiled weakly. “I want to say a prayer of thanks under the stars. That’s all.”
“Stay with us, Ray,” said Becky. “Please?”
Raymond looked at each of them in turn, his face coloring and a visible anger rising in his eyes. “Don’t worry, kids. I’m not going to do anything to mess this up. I promise, I’m going to sit on the seawall, watch the sun rise on the day we take down the man who killed my wife. You couldn’t pay me to mess that up. You don’t believe me, that’s your problem. Keep an eye out if you want.”
Fifteen minutes went by. Weir paced the living room, looking out the window every few minutes at Raymond, who, still in his tux coat, sat on the seawall beside a lamppost, facing the bay and PacifiCo Tower. What terrible visions were his? Jim wondered. The darkness had begun to dissolve with the first hint of dawn.
Five minutes later, Robbins called back. His voice was subdued and he spoke very slowly. Weir remembered that this was Ken’s way of stretching out the pleasure, of letting the satisfaction of a job well done percolate down from the head into every inch of a waiting, exhausted body. Robbins lived his job. “It’s a lock,” he said. “A perfect match.”
“What now?” Jim asked, the first waves of relief starting to wash over him.
“I’m not sure, Weir. I ran them twice against the photo, but it didn’t matter. So I ran them twice through the computer index, then did a visual myself. The prints belong to Raymond Cruz.”
Weir hung up and looked again out the window to Raymond. Raymond waiting for the truth, he thought. Raymond, who knew.
Jim closed his eyes for a moment on the world he had known, trying to say goodbye to it. Then he opened them to a world he could imagine but still could not believe.
“What’s wrong?”
He walked past Becky, down the walkway of her yard and through the creaking gate. Raymond’s tuxedo jacket was spread convincingly across two pieces of driftwood that were propped and balanced against the lamppost.
Raymond himself was gone.
CHAPTER 32
BECKY SPED THROUGH THE ALLEY, OUT TO THE BOULEVARD, then down the peninsula toward Cantrell’s beach house. The sky was changing black to indigo, with an orange tint to the east, and Jim Weir was a man unraveling. He stared out the windshield at the old neighborhood. Nothing looked the same. He was aware of moving southbound on the boulevard in Becky’s car, hunting something he did not want to find. The feeling was of being borne to sea by an undertow, away from what he knew, from what he had relied upon and held to be true. He could almost see these things, diminishing on a retreating shore.
“What if they’re not there?” she asked.
“Cantrell told me he’d be there, Raymond’s going to try for him. I know him enough to know that.”
“God, Jim. There’s got to be something wrong. Ray couldn’t have done it. Something is wrong.”
Raymond’s station wagon was parked behind Cantrell’s beach house. The windshield was clear where the wipers had gone; the rest of the glass was heavy with dew. The house was dark except for soft lamplight in the master suite upstairs. One window panel of the side door was broken out and the door stood ajar.
“He’s inside, and the alarm is banging away at PacifiCo Security,” said Jim. “Stay here.”
“Don’t be an ass, Jim. Call the police—this is what they get paid for. You don’t know anything for sure. And if he killed Ann, what’s to keep him from killing you?”
He brought the .45 from his holster, aware for a moment of its terrible heft.
“And what in hell am I supposed to do?” she asked.
“Stay here.”
“You’re a fool.”
He let himself in, gave his eyes a moment to adjust, then moved quietly through the living room to the stairway. The house was silent. He took the stairs slowly, calling for Raymond in a calm voice. His pulse throbbed in his ears with a bright, metallic clang. The bed was unmade, the bath was empty, and the air around him had the feeling of air that wasn’t going to answer back.
“Ray?”
Jim slid out the desk drawer: Cantrell’s revolver was still in place and the ammunition box was unmoved. Raymond surprised him, he thought, dragged him out of bed.
Jim looked out the open front window to the beach below. Nobody there but one surf fisherman and his dog.
From the back window, Jim could see the bayfront homes, the masts of the yachts at anchor, and between the homes a stretch of beach. A cloud of white exhaust rolled from the stern of C. David Cantrell’s Lady of the Bay, the biggest vessel Weir could see. She eased away from the dock with a high-horsepower grumble that rattled the window-pane in front of Jim’s face.
He flew down the stairs, out the door, and back into Becky’s car. “Sea Urchin,” he said. “As fast as you can go.”
“Raymond’s taking the boat, isn’t he?”
“It’s already out of dock. Flog it, Beck.”
Three PacifiCo security cars quietly rolled up just as Becky turned for the boulevard.
Five minutes later, they were speeding down the center of the bay, Weir on the bridge, guiding the little craft around the yachts and buoys and moorings, throwing up a rooster tail of water as he carved into a stretch of open harbor and shoved the throttle all the way forward. He could see the settling wake of Lady of the Bay ahead of them, disappearing into the glassy calm of the early-morning harbor. Becky stood beside him, still in her black velvet dress, hugging herself against the chill. Jim yelled over the roar of the engine. “Go get the anchor line clear and cut it off at the cleat—there’s a knife in the tool chest!”
Becky vanished into the cabin, then reappeared on the fore deck. “How are you going to get aboard?”
“Get the anchor line clear!”
“It’s clear!”
“Cut it off!”
“It’s off, goddamn it!”
Jim could see the stern of Cantrell’s yacht now, squarely between the jetties forming the harbor mouth. The big boat was picking up speed as she approached the open sea. Outside the jetties, the ocean rocked deeply with the swell and its color deepened to near black and spray blew off the whitecaps, to dart windward in the breeze. Weir heard the engines of Lady of the Bay groan louder and lower, saw the settling of her stern as the prop blades dug in.
“Becky! Get back up here!”
She nearly tipped over in the chopping motion of the little boat as she reached his hand and rode his yank all the way back to the bridge. He already was yelling out the only directions he could think of to make this thing work. “Cut close, stay with her, then fall back. Don’t press it—the swell is wicked.”
He jumped to the deck and crouched for balance against the fore hull, took the anchor in his right hand and payed out line with his left. Ahead, he could see Lady of the Bay hit the full chop of the sea, plowing through with a majestic nonchalance, losing not a bit of speed at all. Becky swung the Sea Urchin wide to port, aiming her with the swell, and with a surge of velocity bore down on a collision course for the yacht. The engine screamed when they hit the open-water swell; the bow left the water and the stern popped out and the prop cut nothing but air. They landed with a bone-crushing jolt that nearly sent Weir overboard. When he glanced up at Becky, she was hunkered down like a racer, hair streaking, a wholly fearless being. She brought Sea Urchin astern, then cut the throttle to nothing. The little boat pitched in the swell. She rose, swaying precariously as her momentum died and the wake of the yacht swept her up again. It was like being pushed skyward by some huge hand. Weir felt his knees bunch and tighten. At the apex of this rise, he threw the anchor aboard Lady of the Bay, yanked down to set the flukes, then, feeling Sea Urchin beginning her deep drop and praying the anchor had bitten into something solid, he jumped into the sky and started scrambling up the rope. It was like holding the tail of a sea monster. He felt the rock and surge of the ship above him, felt the wracking tug as she lifted over the swell and almost pulled his arms out at the shoulders. He banged hard against the stern, sucking in the billowing clouds of exhaust. Fist over fist he climbed, his body reeling, his boots sliding on the wet hull. Then he was high enough to see the polished teak gunwales. He whapped hard against the stern again, rolling with the yaw, but finally got his hands around the railing. He waited for a nudge from the ocean, and just as the yacht pitched down into a trough, Weir pulled up and rode the momentum up over the gunwale and onto the gleaming deck of Lady of the Bay.
He hit hard, rolled, righted himself, and stood. Ray was waiting for him, ten feet away. The bore of his .357 looked big enough to crawl into. There was a spray of blood on his white tuxedo shirt.
Ray lowered the gun. “God, it’s good to see you,” he said. He looked past Jim toward Sea Urchin, waved to Becky, and gave her a thumbs-up. Jim turned, to see Becky falling back, rocking deeply in the swell. She looked up at them from the bridge.
Raymond slipped the gun into his waistband and regarded Jim with clear dark eyes. “Don’t worry—the prints on the rose weren’t mine. That’s what Robbins tried to tell you, isn’t it?”
“That’s what he said.”
Raymond sighed and shook his head. His shoulders slumped as he looked past Jim again, toward the shore. “I never thought Robbins would throw in with them. I wonder how they got to him. I thought he was tougher than that.”
“Throw in with whom?”
“Dennison. Cantrell. Paris. They’ve been manipulating all this from the start. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Jim felt as if he’d jumped off a diving board, only to hang midair: Hope wouldn’t let him fall; dread wouldn’t let him rise. “Your prints, Ray. Your prints—nobody else’s.”
Raymond came across the deck to him, took both of Jim’s arms in his hands, and shook him urgently. “Be careful, Jim. You’ve got to understand, that’s exactly what they want you to believe.”
The gun in Raymond’s waistband was exposed, just a foot from Jim’s unresisting hands.
“Go ahead and take that piece if you want it,” Raymond said. “But think, Jim. Think first. Look what a perfect setup they’ve got now. Cantrell killed Annie, Dennison covered it up, they got their prime suspect to confess—then they offed him. It’s perfect, except for two things—you and me. They knew no matter how tight a case they made against Goins, we’d never go for it. You told Brian as much, back in Robbins’s office. So what do they do? They try to pit us, like fighting dogs. Go ahead, pull that gun out of your jacket and waste me. Or here, use mine. That’s exactly what they want.”
Jim couldn’t speak. The rushing sound in his ears suddenly quieted. In the silence that followed, he felt a deep, spacious calm settling over him. Everything was becoming clear.
“Don’t believe me, Jim—I might not if I were you. Come ask Cantrell. Get it straight from the source.”
Ray turned and climbed the ladder up to the bridge.
Inside the cabin, Jim took it all in: the carpeted floor, the richly paneled walls, the instruments recessed in wood, the captain’s and navigator’s chairs, the compass showing a southerly course, the wheel self-correcting on autopilot, and C. David Cantrell sprawled against the fore wall still in his bathrobe, a widening patch of red on his right shoulder. His eyes locked on Jim’s, wild and clear as a wounded animal’s. His jaw was clenched in a silent grimace.
Raymond walked over and prodded him with his toe. “Tell Jim what you told me five minutes ago, Davey. Don’t leave out the part about the fingerprints and the rose.”
Cantrell’s eyes darted from Jim to Raymond, then back to Jim again. “I never … I never hurt her. Never.”
Raymond, hands on his hips, looked down at Cantrell. “Never hurt her? Twenty-seven times with your kitchen knife didn’t hurt her? Oh, man.”
Ray stepped away and turned, and before Jim could read the movement, Ray pulled out his revolver and blew away the top of Cantrell’s good shoulder. A slab of muscle and flesh slapped against the bulkhead. Cantrell shrieked, dug his feet into the carpet, and pushed, as if trying to press himself into the crack between floor and wall.
Raymond watched him, then turned to Jim. “He’s playing to the new audience. Still thinks he can set one friend against another. Arrogance. Pure arrogance.”
