It was not a good Christmas for the Merrill family.
Because Tina's body had been out on the hillside for so long, it was difficult for the pathology people to be certain, but it did not appear that she had been abused in any way before she was strangled. She had vanished in San Francisco on her way home from school, on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, and was left in the woods not too many days after that. Her murderer had apparently carried her naked body to this spot half a mile down the fire road from where it entered the state reserve, where Tommy Chesler found her ten days later. The overworked detective who was handed her case held out little hope of an immediate arrest. His name was Alonzo Hawkin.
The second child was found six weeks later, fifteen miles away as the crow flies, and in considerably fresher condition. The couple who found her had nothing in common with Tommy Chesler other than the profound wish afterwards that they had done something else on that particular day. It had been a gorgeous morning, a brilliant day following a week of rain, and they had awakened to an impulsive decision to call in sick from their jobs, throw some Brie, sour dough, and Riesling into the insulated bag, and drive down the coast. Impulse had again called to them from the beach where Tyler's Creek met the ocean, and following their picnic they decided to look for some privacy up the creekside trail. Instead, they found Amanda Bloom.
Amanda, too, was from over the hill in the Bay Area, though her home was across the water from Tina's. There were a number of similarities in the two girls: both of them were in kindergarten, both were white girls with brown hair, both were from upper-middle-class families. And both of them had walked home from their schools.
It was the third death that set off the fireworks, even before the body was found. Samantha Donaldson disappeared from the fenced-in, manicured front garden of her parents' three-and-a-quarter-million-dollar home in the hills above Palo Alto on a sunny Monday in February. She reappeared some hours later, quite dead, on Tyler's Road. Samantha was five years old and had shiny brown hair, and with her disappearance the low-grade fear among Bay Area parents, particularly those with brown-haired, kindergarten-aged daughters, erupted into outright panic. From Napa to Salinas, parents descended on schools, sent delegations to police stations, arranged car pools, and held hundreds of tight-voiced conversations with their frightened children about the dangers of talking with strange people, conversations which brought feelings of deep, inchoate resentment on the part of the adults at this need to frighten kids in order to keep them safe.
The Donaldsons were important people on the peninsula. Mrs. Donaldson, a third-generation San Franciscan, was the moving force behind—and in front of—a number of arts programs and counted the mayor of San Francisco among her personal friends. So it was hardly surprising that within two hours of Samantha's disappearance Alonzo Hawkin's other cases were taken from him and he was put in charge of directing the investigations in all four counties. He was also given an assistant. He was not pleased when he heard the name.
"Who?" His worn features twisted as if he'd smelled something rotten, which in a way he had.
"Katarina Cecilia Martinelli, known as Casey. From her initials."
"Christ Almighty, Ted. Some nut is out there killing little girls, I'm about to have half of Northern California come down on my head, and you assign me some Madonna in uniform who was probably writing parking tickets until last week."
"She made inspector a year ago," Lieutenant Patterson said patiently. "She's new here, but she got a first-class degree from Cal, and the people in San Jose say she's competent as hell, gave her a citation to prove it."
" 'Competent' means that she's either impossible to get along with or so nervous she'll shoot her own foot."
"I know she's green, Al, and we probably wouldn't have promoted her to detective yet, but I think she'll work out. Hell, we were all young once, and she'll age fast working with you," he said, trying for camaraderie, but at the lack of reaction on Hawkin's face he sighed and retreated into authority. "Look, Al, we have to have a woman on it, and the only ones I've got better than her are involved, in a cast, or on maternity leave. Take her."
"I'd rather have one of the secretaries from the pool."
"Al, you take Martinelli or I'll give the case to Kitagawa. Look, I want you to take this. I read the reports on the cases you handled in Los Angeles, the two kidnappings, and I like the way you worked them. But I have to have a woman's face on this one—I'm sure you can see that—and I just don't have anyone else free. I'd give you a more experienced woman if I could, but at the moment I don't have one. Believe me, Al, I want this bastard caught, fast, and I wouldn't do this to you if I thought she'd be in the way. Now, will you have her, or do I give it to Kitagawa?"
"No, I want it. I'll take her. But you owe me."
"I owe you. Here's her file. I told her you'd want to see her at six."
ONE THE ROAD
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only
the essential facts of life, and see what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"Good Heavens," I cried. "Who would associate crime
with these dear old homesteads?"
"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London
do not present a more dreadful record of sin
than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
—Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"
1
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San Francisco was still dark when the telephone erupted a foot from the ear of Katarina Cecilia Martinelli, Casey to her colleagues, Kate to her few friends. She had it off the hook before the first ring had ended.
"Yes?"
"Inspector Martinelli?"
"Yes."
"Inspector Hawkin wants you to pick him up at the front entrance in fifteen minutes. He says to tell you they found Samantha Donaldson."
"Not alive."
"No."
"Tell the inspector it'll be closer to twenty, unless he wants me in my pajamas." She hung up without waiting for a response, flung back the tangle of blankets, and lay for a moment looking up into the dark room. She was not wearing pajamas.
A sleep-thick voice came from the next pillow.
"Is this going to be a common occurrence from now on?"
"You married into trouble when you married me," Kate snarled cheerfully.
"I didn't marry you."
"If it's good enough for Harriet Vane, it's good enough for you."
"Oh, God, Lord Peter in my bed at, what is it, five o'clock? I knew this promotion was a mistake."
"Go back to sleep."
"I'll make you some breakfast."
"No time."
"Toast, then. You go shower."
Kate scooped clothes out of various drawers and closets, and then paused with them tucked under her left arm and looked out the window.
Of all views of the bridge that dominated this side of the city, it was this one she loved the best—still dark, but with the early commute beginning to thicken the occasional headlights that passed at what seemed like arm's reach. The Bay Bridge was a more workmanlike structure than the more famous Golden Gate Bridge, but the more beautiful for it. Alcatraz, which lay full ahead of the house, could be seen from this side by leaning a bit. Kate leaned, checked that the defunct island prison still looked as surreal as it always did in the dark, and then stayed leaning against the frame of the window, her nose almost touching the old, undulating glass. She was hit by a brief, fierce surge of passion for the house, for the wood against her right hand—wood which that hand had stripped and sanded and varnished eighteen months before—and for the oak boards beneath her bare feet that she herself had freed of the cloying flowered carpet and filled and sanded and varnished and waxed. She was not yet thirty years old and had lived in eighteen different houses and had never before understood how anyone could feel possessive of a mere set of walls. Now she could. Perhaps you had to put sweat into a house before it was home, she speculated, watching the cars curve past her. Or perhaps it was that she'd never lived in anything but stucco before. Hard to get passionate about a house made of plywood and chicken wire.