“My fault,” he said breezily. “I wanted Phaedra in my life. She had a real hold on me sexually. But Julie was my lover and my business partner. I needed them both.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“Julie was a pipeline for some very high-powered people in North Phoenix and Scottsdale society. You think those people come home and have a martini? Cocaine is the drug of choice, and Julie-from her days as a piece of expensive eye candy-knew the right people. If I was going to supplant Bobby Hamid, I had to have Julie.”
“So,” I said, “you got Phaedra to come back for the weekend. I guess Julie was supposed to be gone. She came back unexpectedly, and you quarreled. She threatened to go to Bobby Hamid about your plans, and Phaedra overheard. So Phaedra took off, and you had to go find her. Am I close?”
“Very close, Professor Mapstone,” Townsend said. “I am impressed. If you must know, there was also something specific that Phaedra knew-a place I use to store things-and I couldn’t take a chance with her knowing that.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Julie had been silently crying through all this, but suddenly she said, “I told him just to let her go. She wouldn’t bother us. She was already disgusted with both of us and wanted to be as far away from this as she could get.”
“Shut the fuck up, Julie,” he snarled. “You wanted the money as badly as I did.”
“And you came to me to find Phaedra,” I said. “So you must have had something in mind.”
“I knew you’d protect her,” Julie said simply. “She was like you.”
“I did a crappy job of that,” I said. “I might have done better if I’d known what was going on.”
“You know I couldn’t tell you.”
“So why did she agree to meet you?”
“I was going to take her to you,” Julie said. “But he found out.” She pointed to Townsend.
“Anything that was done to Phaedra, we did together,” he said quietly.
“Not quite,” I said. “You raped her. You also were the one who strangled her, I bet.”
“I had to make a choice,” Townsend said coldly. “Not even Phaedra was worth losing a million dollars and my life. Afterward, I drove her to the desert.”
“And you arranged her in a way that would send a message to me.”
“Oh, don’t think you mattered,” he said. “Your exploits merely inspired me. I immediately called the police. I didn’t want her body exposed to the elements.”
“A compassionate man,” I said.
“I didn’t intend for it to happen,” Julie said. She was different again. She stood up and walked over to Townsend and put her hand on his arm. “But somehow, I know Phaedra understands. She loved me. We loved each other. She wouldn’t want me living the way I did.”
“You see, Mapstone, it all comes down to money and sex. They’re thicker than blood,” Townsend said. “I have money and I have Julie. Whatever happened between us, we always wanted to be richer, and we always fucked each other’s brains out. Nothing and nobody could ultimately come between that. I hope that doesn’t disillusion your bullshit college ardor for her.” He raised the gun. “And I am bored with this conversation.”
“Did your Julie tell you she slept with me for three nights?” I said hastily. Julie stared at me with a glassy look. Townsend’s mouth tightened. “She seemed pretty needy. I didn’t hear her calling out your name, Greg.”
He jerked his arm away violently and pushed her. “You told me you were through sleeping around, Julie. My health is at stake. And our security.”
She looked at him sullenly. “I didn’t.”
“What else does he know? What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.”
He said very quietly, “Lying bitch.” And he shot her, the automatic filling the room with a high-pitched, eardrum-bursting blast.
He immediately pointed the gun at me, before I could draw or go to Julie. She was against the wall, sliding down. Blood trickled out around the solar plexus, darkening the center of her light blue blouse. She was staring at me in surprise, moving her mouth silently.
“Don’t do it, Mapstone,” he yelled. Then: “Tell me what she told you…when she fucked you.”
I just stared at him with a fool’s courage.
He stiffened and then exhaled. “Tell me, and I’ll let you go. I mean, I’ll just tie you up. That way, I can have time to get away. I’ll let you live.”
“That’s probably what you told Phaedra, too,” I said.
“What do you want from me!” he screamed.
“You’re the one with the gun pointed at me,” I said.
He screwed up his face and lowered the gun a bit. “Let me get my money, and I’ll let you live,” he said. “I need a partner. You’re a smart man.”
“And you are a stupid man,” I said. “The money’s gone. We found the storage locker and Phaedra’s car.”
His eyes widened. “What the hell are you saying?” He let his elbow drop.
I drew the Colt.
“No!”
The room exploded and something tore into my left shoulder.
I lined up the sights, squeezed the smooth trigger action of the Python, felt the big gun leap in my hand, squeezed it again, and Townsend was instantly blown backward in a cloud of noise and smoke and blood. He collapsed heavily into a lamp, two large holes in his chest, a look of shock and disbelief in eyes that were already dead. The little automatic clattered harmlessly to the floor.
I holstered the Python and knelt before Julie. She was breathing very shallowly and her eyes followed me. The bluest eyes I ever saw. She had lost a lot of blood. Her skin was an ashen color. I started to rise to call for help, but she put her hands on my arms tightly. Tears were running down her face.
“Oh, David,” she whispered. “I’m a mess.”
My left shoulder was numb. My eardrums were ringing. And I was crying, too. I can’t say exactly why.
She pulled herself into me and I held her. “Cold, it’s so cold,” she said. “David, I’m so cold.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Lindsey and I are not beach people. She does not tan. I become bored too easily. But the gentle San Diego sun feels so good on my shoulder, on the nickel-sized scar just below my collarbone. We lie on a clean, little-used beach I know in the Sunset Cliffs neighborhood, our legs entangling. She is rereading Anna Karenina. I am halfway through John Keegan’s history of the way battles and war shaped America. It is a good book, and I can almost hold it in my left hand now without pain. The Pacific is the color of Lindsey’s eyes, and it is beginning to show the cold restlessness that warns summer is almost over.
The vastness of the ocean reminds me of that night in Sedona, of one of the last things I remembered before passing out. I was found by Deputy Taylor, who summoned help. They carried me out of the cabin to a waiting ambulance, in which I’d be driven to a clearing to meet a medevac helicopter. And the stars-my God, the stars. Billions and billions, uncountable, unimaginable. Pain and shock do strange things. I remember thinking of all the centuries and all the history those pinpoints of light represented. The suns of unimagined civilizations perhaps? Light that had originated when the Declaration of Independence was signed, that had been someone’s day and night when Caesar was subduing Gaul. I remember thinking how, back in college, Julie loved for me to drive her into the desert to see the stars. The next thing, I was lying in a hospital bed, groggy. Lindsey was holding my hand tightly, and Peralta was snoring softly in a chair at the foot of the bed.
The next day, Peralta told me what he thought I should know: Townsend was dead, of course. His DNA matched him to Phaedra Riding’s murder. The case was closed, “which is more than I can say for the Harquahala murders,” Peralta said ruefully. I would have to appear before a board of inquiry, but Peralta assured me it had been a “clean kill.” What a strange phrase. I had gone forty years without taking a human life. I wished I could have gone a lifetime.