Doyle says they’re becoming increasingly bold. Feral. The developers and their cancerous urban growth have depopulated the coyotes’ natural hunting ground and they’ve started coming down from the hills to slash Hefty bags and poke through garbage. They’re attracted to back yards by dog food that’s left out overnight unfinished. Sometimes they’ll attack family pets. Not long ago in Burbank one of them killed a six-month-old child.
The coyote stirs at last: turns and trots away toward the brush, exposing a new angle of view that makes it quite evident that the beast is pregnant.
Fleeing alone through the night with no society to protect her. Trying to safeguard her young; trying to stay alive.
The animal vanishes. One more flick of yellow light reflects from its eyes—or is that just a trick of her vision?
I feel as if I’ve been given a sign. I wish I could tell what it’s supposed to mean.
She finds her way down off the mountain and drives to within a few blocks of her apartment and waits five minutes in the mouth of an alley in deep darkness with windows rolled up and doors locked.
We’re going to get a dog, she decides. A female. We’ll adopt it from an animal shelter. When Ellen’s old enough we’ll breed it and Ellen can watch it bear puppies and she’ll learn to raise them and care for them. We’ll—
No. Let’s not dream about the future just now. There’s something more pressing to decide.
She’s waited here long enough. There’s no one following. That’s for sure.
Like a kid playing hide-and-seek. She hears her own giggle.
Don’t go all hysterical now. It’s hardly a suitable time for flying to pieces.
She parks on a side street. Can’t use the apartment building’s carport any longer; if her car were identified there it could lead someone straight to her room.
Walking to the court she keeps looking over her shoulder. In these small hours the emptiness of the street is dreadful.
A shadow stirs; it makes her jump; she peers into the darkness—a lemon tree, a cinderblock wall, something moving … an animal.
It darts into an unpaved alley and she can hear its toenails click on stones.
34 She lets herself in and double-locks the door and slumps into the threadbare easy chair. Strength flows away as if a drainplug has been pulled.
Blood pressure, she thinks. That’s all it is. A drop in blood pressure that follows shock’s injections of adrenaline. The body feels it’s safe now so it wants to relax.
Got to keep the brain working now: analytical, observant. No time for Victorian swoons.
A drink. A drink would help …
No. Coffee would be better.
She fills the kettle and sets it on the burner. For a moment it is good to occupy her hands with methodical functions: fit the paper filter into the Melitta’s plastic funnel; dip measures of ground coffee into it.
Waiting for the kettle to boil she’s imagining a knock at the door—seeing herself go right up the wall.
Crooks, she wonders: fugitives whose faces are pinned up on post office walls. How can they live like that—wanting to scream every time someone sounds the doorbell, desperate to run if the telephone rings, terrified if a stranger so much as looks at them twice?
She remembers the glittering eyes of the coyote. Not furtive but startled. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of. But how do you go on endlessly living with it?
Now we have got to think, children. Quickly and very clearly.
The son of a bitch took you by surprise and he threw a hell of a scare into you. But how much of a danger is Graeme, really?
He’s jumped to confusions: he doesn’t suspect any part of the real truth.
What is he likely to do? What’s his next move?
You can’t predict that until you’ve figured out what he really wants.
If you assume he’s eager to find someone to blackmail, then it’s quite possible he’ll give it up as soon as he realizes there’s no profit in it for him; and he’ll arrive soon enough at that realization because he isn’t going to find any leads that will take him any closer to identifying the Very Important Person whose mistress he believes you to be.
Maybe he’ll try to follow you around. He may keep an eye on the bookshop until you show up. Then he’ll try to tail you to see where you’re living.
You’ll have to have eyes in the back of your head for a while: keep giving him the slip until he gets tired of it.
Isn’t he bound to get tired of it? He’s not likely to waste weeks or months on something that isn’t paying off.
If it comes to the worst he’ll trace you as far as this place. He’ll ask questions—neighbors, superintendent—and he’ll learn nobody’s ever seen a male visitor to her apartment.
Maybe even then he’ll still believe she’s consorting with a tycoon or a movie star or a senator; but he’ll realize she’s too cagey for him and he’ll have no name—no one to blackmail.
Graeme’s an opportunist. He won’t waste his time. He’ll give up; go somewhere else and harass someone else. He’s the kind who likes to exploit people’s weaknesses. If you show him none he’ll go away and find easier opportunities elsewhere. All you’ve got to do is remain calm and strong.
Just don’t panic, that’s all.
Realistically now: to what extent—if any—does he threaten your security or Ellen’s?
The kettle begins to whistle. She pours water through the coffee into the mug. When it stops dripping she sits at the dinette table with both hands wrapped around the mug; it’s now that she notices how cold she feels.
Trouble is, you know, you can’t count on Graeme’s perfidy. Just because you dislike him you mustn’t rush into a miscalculation. Suppose he isn’t a cheap blackmailer? What if he’s actually doing his job?
Suppose he’s looking for a front-page beat? A nice scandal over his byline?
Journalists. She’s known a few of them. Self-appointed truth seekers who respect no one’s privacy but their own—it never matters whose feelings they hurt or what damage they do: not so long as they can shove a microphone under a grieving widow’s nose or catch a princess naked in a telephoto lens or photograph grisly blood-soaked victims of wars and accidents or fill two columns of tabloid newsprint with lurid headlines and yellow sensationalism.
News. The people’s right to know. The Fourth Amendment.
Never mind whose life the story may destroy. A fourteen-month-old girl’s? Too bad. C’est la vie. C’est la news.
I think there’s a story in you. Quite possibly a big story.
The real risk isn’t that he’s a cheap blackmailing crook. The real risk is that he’s just what he says he is: an investigative reporter.
He’s already suspicious enough to have hung around four nights in a row watching the other apartment. Suspicious enough to have done a cursory job of tracing the backtrail and found out it led nowhere. Suspicious enough to keep looking? To find Jennifer Corfu Hartman’s 1953 death certificate in the Tucson courthouse?
And then what?
You’ve done everything possible to break every point of connection that might have led them to trace you from New York to here. But you didn’t think about what could happen if someone tried to trace you backward, starting out from here.
What can he find?
Be reasonable. Don’t attribute superhuman skills to him. He hasn’t got X-ray vision.
But he does have contacts. If he’s written lengthy articles about organized crime it means he must have developed a good number of useful lines of communication both in law enforcement and in the underworld.