"May I borrow this?" I asked, pointing at the one that belonged to her husband.
She hesitated, then shrugged. "If you bring it back soon. D.A.'s gonna be too out of it for a while to notice it's gone."
"Thanks." I put both chains in my pocket.
Mia asked, "Do you know what those are?"
"I think so."
"Some devil-thing, maybe?"
"No, nothing like that."
"But then why does that one have this… power over D.A.? What does it mean?"
"Nothing much now. But it's not bad. You shouldn't worry. It's…" I paused, searching for the right words. "It's nothing but a symbol of things that are over and done with."
Sixteen
When I stopped the MG next to the paddock fence at Moon Ridge Stables, Libby Ross was emerging from the tack room. She again wore faded jeans and a down jacket, and in her hand she carried a plastic bucket full of brushes and currycombs. She saw the car and shaded her eyes with one arm as she peered toward it.
I got out and called hello. She acknowledged me with a wave and went to a rail where one of the pintos stood, the lead rope of its halter looped around it. As I approached she selected a rubber currycomb from the bucket, fitted it to her hand, and began brushing the horse's coat in a circular motion.
"Didn't expect to see you here again," she said over her shoulder. "I talked with your boss; he said everything's in order about my inheritance."
"Yes, it is. Actually, I stopped by to check up on you, make sure you're all right."
She glanced at me, the lines around her eyes crinkling. "Why wouldn't I be?"
I recalled that Ross neither owned a TV nor took a paper. "You haven't heard, then."
"Heard what?"
"One of the other beneficiaries of Hilderly's will, Tom Grant, was murdered last night."
She turned slowly, her wide mouth pulling down. "Murdered? By who?"
"I don't know. The killer got away unseen."
"Last night, you say?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"He was beaten to death, in a studio behind his house."
She shook her head. "What is it-you think this has something to do with him being named in Perry's will?"
"It might. And then again, it might not."
An odd expression came across her face-part fear and part comprehension. For a moment she seemed to be lost in thought. "So what you're thinking is that if it did, the rest of us might also be in danger."
"It's a definite possibility."
Ross looked around-at the cypress-covered knoll, the paddock, the barren stretch of land between the ranch buildings and Abbotts Lagoon. I knew what she was thinking: this was an isolated place, where a solitary person would be easy prey for a killer. I asked, "Are you alone here?"
"The kid who cleans the stalls is here right now." She motioned at the barn. "But most of the time, yes. My stepson Dick comes and goes, but even when he's around, he's pretty useless."
"Is there someone you could get to stay with you for a while? A friend or a relative?"
"No, no one." She continued to contemplate the lagoon for a bit, then shrugged and went back to grooming the pinto. "Don't worry about me," she said. "I've got a rifle and a couple of twenty-twos in the house, and I'm a damned good shot when I have to be."
I went over and leaned against the rail, watching her brush the horse. The wind blew her dark blond curls across her face, so I couldn't see her expression. I said, "I was just talking with Mia Taylor. She told me about D.A. having been in prison."
Her hand slowed in its circular motion, then picked up the rhythm again. "So? It's not exactly a secret."
"What did he do?"
For a moment I thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she said, "Tried to bomb the Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station out at Antioch."
"When?"
"August of sixty-nine."
"Who else was at Port Chicago?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Bombing a federal military installation isn't something one undertakes alone."
"The collective-"
"What collective?" Silence.
"What collective, Libby?"
Abruptly she tossed the currycomb back into the bucket and turned as if to go to the barn.
I stepped in front of her, reaching into my pocket for the two medallions and holding them up at eye level. "Do you remember these?"
Her violet eyes widened. Then she looked away, trying to sidestep me. "You're not making a whole lot of sense today. First you tell me I might be murdered. Then you dangle some cheap jewelry in front of me-"
"Drop the pretense, Libby. A man's been killed." She was silent, biting down on her lower lip. It was dry and chapped; when her teeth came away from it, blood welled from a fine crack.
I continued to hold the medallions up. Their gray pot metal gleamed dully in the sun. Ross stubbornly refused to look at them.
I asked, "What did the whole thing look like, Libby?"
No response.
I glanced around, saw a stick on the ground, and picked it up. Then I squatted in the dirt in front of her, drawing with the stick's sharp point. "It was an oval. Like so. On this side, the letters A and M. And on this side, Kand A."
I looked up at her. Her gaze had been drawn to the stick, and she was watching its motion intently.
"I'd guess there were more letters in between those," I went on. "Like these-E,R, and I. Am I right, Libby?"
She made a gesture with her hand, as if to erase the letters I'd just drawn.
When she didn't speak, I said, "Amerika. The way people in the Movement spelled it-taken from the Kafka novel, and used to say that the United States was an imperialist, fascist, racist, militaristic country."
Ross sank to the ground, staring at my drawing. Then she took the stick and added a peace symbol, the branches of the inverted Y converging at the R of "Amerika."
She said, "I haven't thought of those medallions in years. I don't even know what happened to mine. Our talisman." She laughed ruefully. "From this vantage point, it seems like just one of those silly things that kids do-like sitting around in a clubhouse in a vacant lot and cutting your fingers so you can exchange blood oaths. But at the time it was a big deaclass="underline" we'd each have a piece of this thing that stood for what we believed in and be connected forever."
"In a way, I guess you are."
"Yes. Yes, I guess so." She sighed, then took them from me, examining them as they lay on the palm of her hand. "Where did you get these?"
"One from Perry Hilderly's flat. The other was given me by Mia Taylor."
"D.A. actually kept his?"
"Mia says he takes it out occasionally and looks at it. She thinks it has power over him, like an evil charm."
I thought Ross might scoff at that, but she merely said, "Maybe it does."
I said, "I take it this… talisman, as you call it, was something you shared with the other people who were involved in the Port Chicago bombing attempt."
"You think you know a lot about us. But not everyone in the collective was in on the Port Chicago thing."
"The collective again. What was it?"
She sank into a full sitting position, arms wrapped around her knees. "We were a political collective, loosely affiliated with the Weathermen. The Weather Bureau-the top leadership-was supposed to control policy, but there was a lot of ideological struggle, and the Weather Machine was informally structured to begin with."
"When was this?"
"Sixty-eight, sixty-nine. Things were bad: the Movement as originally conceived was losing momentum, and the cops were really cracking down on us. Everybody was dropping out, preparing for direct, violent action. On campus, the scene had shifted from Berkeley to S.F. State. So a bunch of us split for the city."