His first call was to Gloria, to tell her he wouldn’t he in but that he’d be available at home if needed. She said, “How’d the submission package look?”
“What submission package?”
“Dry Creek Valley. We worked all day Saturday to get it ready, Gabe and me. Didn’t he tell you?”
“I haven’t heard from him.”
“Ah, todo esta jodido. He said he’d give you a call. That’s why I just dropped the envelope off yesterday. I thought you’d be expecting it.”
“Where’d you put it?”
“In your mailbox. Yesterday morning, on my way home from church. I rang the bell but nobody answered. I wonder why Gabe didn’t call you?”
“He’ll have some excuse. He always does.”
“Envelope must still be in the box...”
“I’ll go over the package right away.”
“You’re gonna be pleased,” she said. “If we don’t get this job, I’ll swim naked all the way down to Black Point.”
“That I’d like to see. Tell Gabe to call me when he gets in.”
He fetched the envelope, took it into his study, and spread the contents out on his desk. Mannix and Gloria had done a fine job. The fee schedule had been pared to the bone, the schematic site plan and conceptual designs — as much Gabe’s in their final form as his — were clean and environmentally sound.
Gabe, he thought, you’re a hell of an architect when you set your mind to it. If you’d just stay focused, put a curb on the booze and the woman-chasing. Just had a little more ambition. I wish I could figure out exactly what makes you tick...
I can think of somebody right off the top of my head. You won’t like it, but he’s got just as much motive as Ryan.
For Christ’s sake, he thought. Don’t start suspecting Mannix now. Cassie wasn’t serious. Gabe, of all people.
Gabe?
The phone rang at a quarter of ten, just after he finished making an appointment with the Santa Rosa rep for Camden Home Security Systems. Mannix. Sounding lugubrious and hungover.
“I screwed up,” he said. “Other things on my mind yesterday... I just plain forgot to call.”
“A woman, I suppose.”
“Cute little piece from Paloma Valley. Her only fault is she drinks too damn much.”
“And you don’t?”
“Weak and easily led, that’s me.”
“That where you were yesterday, Paloma Valley?”
“Nope. My place.”
“All day?”
“We didn’t get out of the sack until dinnertime. Why?”
“No reason. Listen, the proposal looks fine. You nailed everything down just right.”
“We nailed it down, all three of us. So we go with it as is? Or do you want to make any changes?”
“As is. I’ll bring it down this afternoon.”
“I don’t mind swinging by to pick it up.”
“I’m not an invalid, Gabe.”
“Did I say you were? You sound the way I feel.”
“I’m a little pressured right now.”
“Reason?”
“Some work that needs to be done on the house.”
“What kind of work?”
“Repairs. Living room remodel.”
“Kind of a sudden decision, isn’t it?”
“Very sudden,” he said. “We don’t have much choice.”
“Meaning?”
“Never mind. Tell you about it later.”
He hung up feeling ashamed of himself. There’d been nothing in Mannix’s voice except polite interest — of course there hadn’t. Why couldn’t he get rid of that nagging little worm of suspicion? It was ludicrous to think of Gabe sneaking into the house, slashing the furniture with a knife, wielding a can of spray paint like some drugged-up teenage tagger. It was an act of betrayal to give the notion even a second’s serious consideration.
Buy a gun and use it. That’s what I’d do in your place.
Oh, hell. Talk, false bravado.
Suppose I do it for you.
No way.
I wouldn’t have any qualms about it, moral or otherwise. Same as shooting a rabid dog.
Rakubian wasn’t shot, was he? Bludgeoned to death.
I’d do it. No lie and no bull.
Yes, bull. Mannix crushing a man’s skull with a statuette? Another ludicrous image.
People like Rakubian don’t deserve to live. Do the world a favor, take him right out of the gene pool.
Cut it out, Hollis!
But now he was remembering last week, their lunch at the Thai restaurant. He’d taken Mannix’s comment about doing the right thing to mean that Gabe thought he’d killed Rakubian, but it could have meant something else. Could’ve been an allusion to the cleanup, the body being taken away and disposed of. Guessed he was responsible for that and was thanking him in an oblique way
No, that didn’t make any sense. Why thank him on the one hand, devil him on the other? Those notes, the vandalism... what possible reason could Mannix have for turning on Angela, Cassie, himself after committing murder to protect them?
Crazy thoughts, crazy suspicions. It’s not Gabe, it couldn’t possibly be Gabe, it’s Pierce.
Pierce, Pierce, Pierce!
Monday Afternoon
It wasn’t Pierce.
By five o’clock Hollis had that proven to him beyond any reasonable doubt.
The day had been busy, and a good thing, because the activity kept him from thinking too much. He dropped off the proposal at the office, met with the Camden Home Security rep, met with the two contractors (explaining briefly to each of them that the damage was a case of vandalism, but offering no details). He was finishing up with Tom Finchley, the contractor he was probably going to use, when Cassie called at 4:10.
“Jack,” she said, “I need you to come pick me up.”
An edge in her voice put him on alert. “Why? What’s the matter with the van?”
“We’ll talk when you get here. I’m at the clinic.”
“On my way.”
Animal Care Clinic was in the narrow part of Los Alegres east of the river that longtime residents called “the DMZ” — a section of older, lower-middle-class homes, small businesses, and light industry that lay between the long-established west side and the newer east-side tracts and malls. It was an old wood-and-brick building, once an irrigation supply company’s office and warehouse, with a customer parking lot on the near side and a tiny lot for employees tucked away behind the kennels at the rear.
When Hollis arrived he found Cassie in the employee lot, in conversation with the bearded driver of a tow truck that was drawn up behind her van. All four of the van’s tires were flat, so that it seemed to be resting on the ground itself; he couldn’t tell from a distance if anything else was wrong with it. There was no room in the lot for the Lexus; he left it outside and walked in with his body bent against the cold wind.