He hadn’t stopped to see if the book was missing, he knew it would be. The guy running between the hill and the garages stopped sometimes as if to listen. Yes, as he fled again, a gleam of moonlight caught the corner of the package. Same size, same pale color like brown wrapping paper. Strange he didn’t climb the hill—except he’d make a perfect target against the moon-pale grass. The moon hung low in the west, hitting the hill, leaving the yards dark. Beyond Wilma’s, the houses were close together. The runner paused at each narrow, dark side yard then went on, dodging bushes and trees. Suddenly he vanished. No sound, no movement in the shadows.
Jimmie used his flashlight, shining it into the narrow yards, into the crowded shrubbery. He was about to double back when he heard someone running again, and then two men …
He knew Crowley’s footfall. He heard the faintest hush of a door closing. Crowley stopped, they both stood still, one at each end of a narrow yard, listening, the faintest streak of moonlight touching Crowley’s cap where he stood by the corner of the garage; the walk-in door was halfway between them.
When there was no more sound, when they shone their lights around the door and into the shrubbery there were only empty shadows. Jimmie flashed his light once, then covered his tall partner while Crowley, wearing gloves, tried the door.
It was locked.
Moments earlier when Wilma’s stalker had slipped out the guest room window carrying the box, he heard McFarland come out behind him. He knew there’d be other cops. Earlier, he had jimmied the lock of one of the garages down the row—when he heard McFarland drawing too near then heard a second man running, he eased open the door, slipped in, locked it from inside. He heard them try the door, fiddle with the lock, then soon they moved on down the row of houses, one at each end of the side yards.
The garage was neat and uncluttered. Low moonlight shone through the narrow, obscure glass in the big double door. There were two cars, both of them unlocked. Silently rummaging, he found little of value in the Ford Taurus.
In the black Mercedes he found, shoved back under a tangle of pamphlets in the glove compartment, the concierge key on a big ring. People were so stupid. They hid, or thought they had hidden, the nonelectronic model so when they went out to dinner or to a hotel they could give the attendant only the car key, no opening codes, no handy house key attached. He was thinking about starting the engine, opening the garage fast and taking off, when he heard a car start up the street, heard it move away south. A quiet, heavy vehicle that could be a cop car.
Quickly he left the garage, he couldn’t lock the side door behind him but the cops had already checked it. Slipping away, keeping to the shadows, he was lucky this time, the patrol car had gone on.
Moving fast and silently along the dirt path, he hustled down the last four blocks to the little corner grocery. He stepped behind it into the narrow strip of woods that separated it from the motel above and from Ocean Avenue. There were two homeless men asleep between the pines. They didn’t wake. The grocery’s little parking lot, which opened to the cross street, was empty. Staying beneath the bordering trees, he watched for the dark SUV that would pick him up. He had no notion that he was stalked by more than cops. When he heard a car coming he was prepared to race to it—until he saw the cop car behind it, and backed deeper into the woods. It wasn’t his ride anyway, but a white minivan.
Dulcie, running shoulder to shoulder with Courtney, didn’t say a word to her. She couldn’t talk, with cops down there on the street, and if she did speak, she didn’t know what would come out; she didn’t want this to end in a spitting match—she was so mad at Courtney for following Joe that she wanted to smack the headstrong kitten.
But Courtney had only meant to help her daddy. The calico’s busy paws tore across the shingles, her determined little face so coldly serious that Dulcie couldn’t scold her. They had crossed Ocean Avenue under dark trees, well behind Joe. There was no traffic. They climbed a vine silently and hit the roofs again. They were on the shop next to the little corner grocery when suddenly ahead of them Joe stopped. Dulcie and Courtney froze.
But he hadn’t seen them, he was peering over the roof’s edge where trees lined the market’s parking lot, intent on a man hidden in the trees’ shadows. When the figure heard a car coming he moved out among the row of trees that led to the street. Dulcie could barely make out his long thin face. He carried the box, wrapped in paper. He stepped back when a minivan passed below, moving slowly. A cop car followed it.
The officers pulled the driver over with flashing lights. They got out, ordered the driver out. He stood facing his van, hands on the roof. They frisked him and questioned him. They searched the van, looked at his driver’s license, then sent him on his way.
At first sight of the patrol car, the burglar had slid deeper in the pines and shrubbery. Now, when the cops had gone, he slipped his phone from his pocket. He spoke softly. Dulcie watched Joe listen from the roof then quickly choose a pine and back down, she watched him warily. If someone was picking this guy up, she knew what Joe meant to do.
“You stay here,” she told Courtney; but already the young cat was wired to move. “Right here!” Dulcie repeated. “Don’t you dare go down off this roof, not for anything. If I … if you are left alone, you are to go to your pa’s house. Do you know how to get to the Damens’?”
“Of course I know,” Courtney said, bristling. “Down that street four blocks, and to the left past Barbara Conley’s with the yellow tape.” And she turned her face away, sulking.
As Dulcie slid into a bougainvillea vine and down among its thorny branches a car pulled into the lot, a dark, older SUV. At once the thief fled from the bushes and opened the driver’s side back door. He folded half of the backseat down so it matched the platform of the rear storage space. Leaning in, he rummaged among the jumble at the back, tucking the box he carried under some duffel bags and bundles.
Behind him, Joe Grey sped for the open door, leaped in and slipped over behind the passenger’s seat. He could say nothing as Dulcie flew in and pressed against him; he glared at her, furious, ears back, yellow eyes narrow. He watched her claw a dark blanket down from the seat above them. As they slid under, Courtney flew in behind them.
They couldn’t scold, they daren’t even whack her lightly for fear she’d hiss and fight. This calico was getting too big for her britches.
Quietly the thief shut the door, went around and opened the front passenger door and slipped in. The driver took off, skidding as he turned.
Headed where? Where was he taking them?
Dulcie pushed the blanket aside for a little light. Courtney was wide-eyed and shivering. She hadn’t thought, she had only meant to help her pa. She hadn’t helped him at all, and now she was filled with fear. Dulcie thought of the time Joe had gotten in a car headed who-knew-where, and ended up in the parking garage of the San Jose airport, some eighty miles north. Lost, alone, surrounded by cars driving in and pulling away, a regular riot of moving wheels, he’d seen a woman he knew shot to death. He had, at last, stolen a cell phone from an open truck, had called Clyde and Ryan to rescue him.
Now, sliding around where she could see between the two front seats, Dulcie got a look at the driver: a heavy fellow, dark, short hair, heavy shoulders. He was built like Pan’s description of the car thief that windy night, the man whose trail bore the same white, flaky evidence as that from the beauty salon murders. Looking closely, she could see the same white specks stuck in the crepe soles of his dark shoes.