Unexpected find, this album. He hadn’t been looking for anything like it, anything at all the afternoon he’d slipped into Damon Henderson’s garage. Bold move, going in there in broad daylight. Proof that he could breach their lives any time and any place he wanted to, that he owned them now whether they knew it yet or not. No real risk involved. Getting into the garage had been ridiculously easy. Wear a khaki shirt, carry a flashlight and a clipboard, wear a badge that looks authentic, act like you belong in the neighborhood, and people take you for a meter reader or a workman and pay no real attention to you.
Sifting through all those boxes and then finding the trunk with the albums in it-that had been almost as much of a rush as Sunday night’s visit. Bad few seconds when Henderson came blundering in, spoiling the planned acid bath for his CPA records and his car, but the rest of it had turned out real well. Hitting him with the tire iron, straddling him, whispering to him, hitting him again and hearing him scream… oh, yeah! He’d had to fight himself not to use the tire iron a third time, split Henderson’s skull wide open, but it wasn’t the right place or the right time. Henderson wouldn’t have suffered enough. And there hadn’t been enough time to tell him why he was suffering. That would come later.
He looked at and burned two more photos, taking his time. The last one was in color, a posed shot, poorly centered and badly filtered so that the background was muzzy and the images not sharp. But they were clear enough for identification, even without what was written on the back: “Cliff, Damon, and Dad, Oct 2000.” He lifted the snapshot close to his mouth and spat on each of the images before he set it on fire. Held it longer than any of the others, watching it burn, savoring the blackened destruction of the images until the flame reached his fingers and made him let go. Some of the ashes missed the toilet bowl. He scraped them into his hand, brushed them in.
Then he stood, unzipped his fly, urinated onto the ashes.
Spat one last time on the yellow-black mess and flushed it away.
At the sink he washed his hands. They still felt unclean when he was done, so he washed them again. Better. He used the towel, making sure his palms and wrists were completely dry. Then he switched off the fan and went out into the main room.
Typical cheap motel room, designed for anonymity. The perfect hideout. He smiled at the thought of “hideout” and sat down on the lumpy bed.
The spiral-bound notebook was in his briefcase, along with the five-by-seven color portrait and the digital snapshots he’d taken at the cemetery. He unlocked the case, took them out, lay back with his head propped against the headboard. He looked at the portrait first, looked at it for a long time. Familiar face, but clouded by time-a kid’s memory. But he’d gotten to know it well from the portrait, as well as he ever would. Each time he looked at it he felt a great tenderness well up inside. She’d been so pretty. Not the plastic, Hollywood kind of prettiness-genuine, the girl-next-door kind. High cheekbones, small nose, small cleft in the well-shaped chin. And not just attractive outside, but good inside. You could see the goodness shining in those soft brown eyes.
After a time he put the portrait down and again read the last few notebook pages, shaping each sentence with his lips, lingering over the important passages. Sad, bitter, painful. Full of love and sorrow and desperation. Full of pleading-a tacit plea to him, now, because there was nobody else.
Testimony.
Damning testimony.
Wet filled his eyes. He used a clean edge of the pillowcase to dry them, then returned the notebook and the portrait to his briefcase. The rage was in him again, strong and driving. It made the blood beat loud in his temples.
Another face popped out of his memory-thin, wrinkled, not pretty at all. “Damn you,” he said aloud, “why didn’t you read what she wrote? Didn’t you suspect, didn’t you care? And why didn’t you give me the notebook while that son of a bitch was still alive? He’d have been the one to suffer then. I’d have made him suffer!”
He lay still for a time until his pulse rate slowed and the rage started to fade. No use blaming her. She’d only done what she believed was right for him. But she shouldn’t have waited, shouldn’t have let him find out the way he had, so long afterward, when it was too late.
He picked up the cemetery photos, shuffled through them. Not too bad. Decent composition considering the darkness and the digital camera. The urn, the ashes, the monument… all clearly defined. The vapors from the acid made a neat wavy pattern on the one of the headstone. Mementos he could enjoy for years to come.
The anger was gone now, but his eyes had begun to sting. The pillowcase hadn’t been properly laundered after all. His face, his hands… itchy, dirty. He hurried into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and stood under a scalding hot shower to make himself clean again.
9
JAKE RUNYON
The Henderson Construction Company was building three new homes in a hillside cul-de-sac on Los Alegres’ southwestern edge. Two homes framed out and in different stages of completion, the third staked and ready for the concrete foundation to be poured. All three sites were fenced-new Cyclone fencing, from the look of it, probably put up after the vandalism. The gates were open now, half a dozen pickups parked inside, a forklift unloading board lumber from a flatbed truck on one site, a dozen or so workmen making the usual amount of noise.
Runyon left his Ford outside on the street and hunted up Cliff Henderson at the the home nearest completion. They went over by a large, portable tool-storage shed to talk. Even before Henderson pointed it out, Runyon had noticed the acid damage done to the unit’s metal siding.
“Bastard couldn’t get inside the shed,” Henderson said. “Didn’t have enough time to burn the locks off, so he just splashed acid on the sides. If he had gotten in… thousands of dollars’ worth of tools down the toilet.”
“No attempt at a second pass?”
“If he was thinking about it, the fencing, police patrols, a private security patrol I hired changed his mind. I can’t afford to take any more losses on these sites.”
“How’s your brother?”
“Better. Might let him go home today, tomorrow for sure.”
“You have a chance to talk to him about the missing photo album?”
“On the phone last night. He can’t figure it either. Why the guy would risk poking around in Damon’s garage during the day, why he took the album. Just gets crazier and crazier.”
“Mostly photos of the two of you and your father, you said.”
“Yeah. On the fishing and hunting trips we used to take.”
“Any particular place?”
“Same place every time. Hunting camp in Mendocino County, east of Fort Bragg. Dad built it back in the fifties.”
“Still own the property?”
“Sure. Damon and I don’t get up there as much as we used to, but two of Dad’s old hunting buddies still go now and then. They don’t hunt anymore, they’re both in their seventies, but they fish and play cribbage… you know, just to get away for a few days.”
“Hayden Brock one of them?”
“That’s right. And Dr. George… George Thanopolous.”
Runyon asked, “Anything unusual happen on any of the trips?”
“Like what?”
“Anything at all. Anything that might have been in those snapshots.”
“Not on the trips Damon and me were on. We caught fish, shot a buck if we were lucky, played cards, drank beer, told stories, goofed around. Guy stuff, that’s all.”
“How about on the ones your father took with his buddies?”
“Not that I know about.” Henderson frowned. “What’re you getting at? This stalking crap couldn’t have any connection to my dad or the camp.”