This time I was more careful, getting a firm grip on the edge of the opening and pulling myself up slowly. I slipped partway into the space, wriggled forward, and poked my head out, estimating the distance to the ground. It was a good eight feet — but I’d fallen almost that far only minutes ago.
I wriggled farther forward. My purse caught on the edge of the opening; I gave it an angry tug. It came loose, and I curled in a ball, trying to get my feet out the opening. One heel caught on the purse strap.
I decided to abandon the bag. The only important thing in it was my car keys, and I kept an extra set in a little magnetic case under the dash. I gave the purse a kick and heard it drop onto the floor of the dungeon. Then I slid my feet the rest of the way through, pushed off, and fell to the sandy ground.
I lay there for a moment, stunned and blinded by the glaring light. The sun was well overhead, moving either toward or away from its meridian. Finally I got to my feet, wincing with pain, and ran around the house, toward the front where I’d left my car.
But my car was gone. So was Sugarman’s. And in their place was a long white Cadillac.
38: “Wolf”
I had no trouble finding Lost Canyon Drive, the unpaved dead-end street Rich Woodall lived on out near Lakeside. The map I’d got at the airport car-rental booth was a good one, and the route up to this sparsely populated residential area from Highway 67 wasn’t complicated. I parked in front of his house, a tile-roofed Spanish job set well back from the street, screened by palms and a big hedge full of red berries. His nearest neighbor had to be a half mile away. Some house for a man who earned his living doing P.R. for a public institution...
I went along the front walk. The driveway that paralleled it was empty; I could see the garage toward the rear of the house, backed up against a brushy slope, but the doors were closed and I couldn’t tell if there was a car in it or not.
Ringing the bell got me nothing but the echoes of distant chimes. I went around to the rear and alongside the garage, to where a grimy window gave me a blurred view of the interior. An old red Porsche convertible sat there alone. But it was a two-car garage and there was a fresh-looking oil spot on the unoccupied side: Woodall probably owned a pair of cars and had gone off in the second one.
A seven-foot-high stucco wall with pieces of jagged glass embedded along its top barred access into the backyard; the gate in the wall sported a new chain and padlock. From the other side I could hear the sounds of animals moving around, the throaty cry of some kind of cat.
I looked around for something to stand on so I could see into the yard. There wasn’t anything. Well, maybe I wasn’t too old or out of shape to do a little climbing. I moved over to the gate, got one foot on the padlocked latch, and managed to hoist myself up. The broken glass took away any chance of my getting all the way inside, but at least I could see the cages and the animals that were in them: the yard wasn’t big and everything was more or less grouped in close to the wall.
Badgers, a bobcat, a lynx, a couple of arctic foxes, some exotic birds I couldn’t identify. And a glass cage full of snakes that looked uncommon. An odd assortment, I thought. Much odder than your average private menagerie.
I hung there a little longer, even though my bad left arm, the one that had never quite healed properly after I’d been shot over a year ago, was beginning to cramp up. I had had a job a while back that involved the theft of a variety of creatures from the San Francisco Zoo, so I knew something about endangered species. Badgers and lynx and bobcats and arctic foxes were all endangered animals. They were also the kind that unscrupulous people made coats, hats, and stoles out of. And the birds and snakes looked to be the sort coveted for expensive purses, shoes, and hats.
I knew some other things too. I knew that Woodall’s P.R. job would put him in contact with all sorts of people who dealt with animals, including a supplier or two who might not be above making an illegal dollar now and then. I knew from what Eberhardt had told me that Woodall had once been arrested on suspicion of selling animals in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act. I knew from Woodall himself, via McCone, that somebody had broken in here a few days ago. I knew that Jim Lauterbach had been a blackmailer, and that there had been a list of check-marked names in his file on Elaine Picard — a list of potential shakedown victims, probably — and that one of those names had been Woodall’s. And I knew, or was fairly certain, that Woodall had murdered Lauterbach.
Put all of that together and what did you get? You got Woodall still selling endangered creatures to the manufacturers of garments for rich and uncaring consumers, and Lauterbach breaking in here and finding out about it. You got Lauterbach trying to blackmail Woodall, and out of that you got at least part of Woodall’s motive for blowing him away.
There were still plenty of loose ends. Such as: Why did Lauterbach break in here in the first place? What had he found out about Woodall and the others on that list that made them candidates for blackmail? And what was on the tape recorder Woodall had made off with after the shooting? One or more of the answers might lie in whether or not Woodall had also killed Elaine Picard. If he had, and Lauterbach found that out too, Woodall’s motive for murdering him would have been doubled.
I dropped down off the gate, massaged the stiffness out of my left arm and shoulder, and went back out to the rental car. Had McCone tumbled to all of this too? And if she had, had she tried to brace Woodall herself? The uneasiness was sharp in me now, and mingled with it were the stirrings of fear.
The nearest service station was half a mile from Woodall’s house; I pulled in there and telephoned the administration office at the San Diego Zoo. The woman I spoke to said Woodall wasn’t there, he hadn’t come to work today. Hadn’t called in, either. She had no idea where he was.
He wasn’t home, he wasn’t at work — where the hell was he?
And where was McCone?
39: McCone
I stepped around the dark green branches of a greasewood bush, out of the sun’s glare, and stared at the place where my car had been. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what had happened. Sugarman’s murderer had found the magnetic key case under the dash and had driven the MG, as well as Sugarman’s Datsun, off someplace — probably not too far away or he wouldn’t have been able to walk back. The Cadillac must belong to him, and I was certain he hadn’t been so foolish as to leave the keys in the ignition.
Still, its windows were open and I could get inside. And that was all I needed, since I possessed valuable, though untested, knowledge — I knew how to go about hot-wiring a car. It was something I’d picked up years ago from my brothers, who, while they never stole cars themselves, had traveled in a set where the ability to hot-wire was looked upon in the same way society people appreciate a low golf handicap.
I moved away from the protection of the greasewood bush and studied the front of the house. The door was shut and, owing to the lack of windows, I felt reasonably safe about going over to the car. Nonetheless, I hurried across the parking area in a crouch and slipped into the Cadillac on the passenger’s side, which faced away from the house. Wriggling across the hot black leather seat, I checked the ignition. No keys.
I lay down on the seat and reached under the dash for the ignition wires. When I located them, I started to put them together, then realized I needed a way to hold them in place once the car was started. My brothers had advocated always carrying a stick of chewing gum for this purpose, but I had nothing on me but the Swiss Army knife — and that certainly wouldn’t do the job. Glancing around the car, I spotted a paper clip on the floor and snatched it up.