“Yes?” Molina demanded.
“I suppose it’s a simple thing to most people. No big deal. But she knew how to find the one thing…What’s the hallmark of a Roman Catholic priest, laicized, as I have been, or not?”
“Religion. The collar, bingo night?…” Her joke found no response and he could hear her squirming on her side of the linen curtain. Funny, confessees usually squirmed, not confessors.
“Oh. That,” she said at last, absolving him of putting it into words.
A long silence.
“It is fiendish,” she whispered, almost thinking aloud. “Isolating. Abusive. Like something out of a melodrama, only with a role reversal. This woman is mad.”
“I asked Kinsella for help. He checked out my place for bugs. There was nothing. Yet. But she left a package there while I was out of town.”
“Right. It could have been a bomb.”
“I don’t think she wants to hurt me. At least not physically. Not anymore. She’s made her mark. It’s just others. I didn’t tell him what her price was. I was afraid he’d tell me to pay it.”
“You can’t.” Molina’s voice was crisp. Certain. “You know what I’d do if someone was putting Mariah in that position?”
“I’m not a child. I’m not helpless.”
“Yes, you are, which is why you wouldn’t let the Mystifying Max in on your ugly secret. We’re all helpless, Matt, if someone wants to destroy us badly enough. This is fiendish. You can hardly dare go to anyone for help, you can’t associate with friends…. Has she targeted Temple Barr?”
“I don’t know. She said something about watching her, but it was more to prove that she was watching me. I think she knows who my friends are, but she doesn’t know—”
“Who you really care about. That’s good. Keep it that way. She seems to be aiming at the women around you, like the jealous bitch she probably is.”
“Carmen!”
“Sorry. I forgot where we were. Where I am. You know how hard it is to stop a stalker. Legally.”
“I know. And she’s too smart to attack me physically again, although if I hurt her back, a man against a woman, who’d support me?”
“Fiendish.”
“I wonder,” he began, then stopped.
“What?”
“Oh, speaking of role reversal. I hunted Cliff Effinger down. Probably drew the wrong people’s attention to him and got him killed. I wonder if this isn’t a case of just deserts.”
“Forget it! Effinger brought on his own death by associating with a crooked crowd. Besides, this woman…what does she look like anyway?”
“Great. Beautiful. A late-twenties Elizabeth Taylor. And don’t say—”
“‘Just relax and enjoy it?’ No, I won’t. Heard that about too many rape victims to think any age or gender welcomes abuse. Looks have nothing to do with the crime, but they might have something to do with the criminal. With looks like that, she could get almost any man she wanted. Why fixate on the one man who doesn’t want her, won’t succumb. It’s a power thing, as usual. All about me, me, me, even as they fixate on you, you, you. Can you get me an image of her?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I had Janice do one.”
“Oh, Janice. You’ve been busy. Do I sense a wee hesitation there?”
“I was trying to see Janice lately.”
“Trying? Guess this woman fixed that.”
“And I have the note and envelope the ring came in. Kinsella suggested you might want prints.”
“‘Kinsella suggested.’ Who is he? Mr. Police Expert now? I’ll take it. And what ring is this?”
“What she sent me. She demanded I wear it.”
“I begin to get her MO. What kind of ring?”
“A gold image of a serpent eating its own tail.”
“Seen something like that.”
“It’s called the worm Ouroboros. Ancient infinity symbol going back to the Greeks.”
“So. You wearing it?”
“Just what she called to ask. I told her yes.”
“Must stick in your craw.”
“No. On my keychain.”
Matt had seldom heard laughter from the confessor’s side, but he did now.
“That’s right. Fight her with the letter of her own law. She can’t think of everything, Matt. She’s not supernatural. She’s just ahead of the average person because she’s spending all her time and energy on tormenting you. You know what you have to do?”
“Concentrate on finding and stopping her just as hard. I’m a stalker again.”
“Bingo. Okay, hand over the physical evidence. You’ve got it with you, I assume. Just leave it in your cubicle when you go. Mail me that sketch Janice did. Follow your regular work and travel routine. See only who you have to, and very briefly. Visit the library and look up books on surveillance, bugging, police and covert techniques. Don’t check them out, just read them there and make notes if you have to. Web-crawl the law enforcement sites.”
“Web-crawl! I have to buy a computer too?”
“The wail of an immaterial man being made flesh.”
“You’re saying I have to become her to overcome her.”
“I’m saying you’ve got a new full-time job. I’ll look into what I can, but it won’t turn up much. She sounds like she’s been doing this for a while. If she’s done this before, if she’s left a trail, if she insists on breaking in and getting caught, you could maybe have her put away for a few months.”
“What’s her ultimate goal? What does she really want?”
“There’s only one way to find out, and you don’t want that route.”
“What’s that.”
“Sleep with her and see what she does after.”
“I doubt anyone has ever gotten that advice from a confessor before.”
“It’s not advice. It’s reality, but, hey, you don’t have to give in to reality. It’s not a law.”
He was going to protest when he heard something else he’d never heard in a confessional before.
The yodel of a cell phone.
“Is there no sanctuary anywhere?” Molina growled to herself and her phone. “Yeah? Yeah. At the ranch? Shooting? Right away. This is one denouement I don’t want to miss.”
Matt heard her rise. “Come on. Let’s give your stalker something to chase. Some friends of yours are in mucho hot water out in the desert.”
Chapter 50
Action Traction
Temple came running into the clearing, using her high heels like the pitons she had claimed they were, driving her forward faster than even she believed possible, the security man and his ponderous boots tamping sand behind her.
Leonora had stayed behind in the front seat of the Storm, the door open, her delicate shoes planted on the desert sand, quivering.
But she had ordered—ordered—the man to go with Temple and do what she said.
The scene in front of them wasn’t chaotic, but it was like a stage with three spotlit acts, a three-ring circus: you didn’t know where to look first.
The three dusty wayfaring strangers trilling like a Salvation Army chorus in front of a loose panther was the most riveting vignette.
They were singing, she thought, the song about the lion sleeps tonight. The panther had obviously not been sleeping today.
The lone man on the right, on his knees holding a bleeding face in two blood-gloved hands, caught her attention next, and held it.
Behind her, Rafi’s footsteps veered away and toward his fallen fellow guard.
And then there was the third scene stage right: Max coated in sand dust, beside another fallen man.
Temple couldn’t tell whether he was helping the man, or holding him in custody, or both.
Max’s eyes flicked across Temple, their expression changing from something dark and unreadable to relief, then to wariness as they moved on to Rafi, helping up the stricken guard across the clearing.