“Let's say I'm leaning your way.”
Terrific, Dix thought again. He looked down at his fingers, knuckles white, gripping his knees. You lean and we're the ones who fall.
He had always hated the idea of vigilante justice; of citizens arming themselves “for protection,” using that as an excuse to take the law into their own hands. Too many guns out there, he'd always argued, in the possession of frightened, irresponsible people who didn't know how to use them properly. Strong advocate of gun control all his adult life. Believed one of the nation's most insidious organizations, purveyors of lies and half-truths to disguise the fact that it was a tool of the weapons' manufacturers, was the frigging NRA.
Conservatives' definition of a liberaclass="underline" Somebody who has never been mugged. Another definition: Somebody who has never been threatened with extinction by an unknown enemy for unknown reasons.
He wondered bitterly where he could go to buy a gun.
Neither of them said much on the ride from the police department to Shady Court. It was after six, and the downtown area was mostly deserted; there had been an informal small-boat regatta on the river earlier, speeches and kids' and adult entertainment, but the festivities were over and the participants already home or on their way. Cecca stared out at the familiar buildings old and new—and they seemed as strange to her now as they had on the ride over. Everything in and about Los Alegres seemed strange today, as if her lifelong perception of this town where she'd been born and where she'd lived for forty-one years had been illusion and she was suddenly seeing it through different eyes, as it really was.
Los Alegres was not the safe and secure community she'd imagined it to be, the relative crime-free zone, the haven in a state and country and a world that bulged with new and ugly menaces every year. There was greater malignity here than anywhere else. And more deception. She wasn't safe in the company of the people who lived here, or even in her own house. She was embattled and defenseless, a naked target. Where was she safe? Nowhere, unless she ran away and hid … she and Amy, like animals looking for a burrow. Who was she safe with? No one except her family and Dix. She glanced over at him, saw the hard set of his mouth, the dark eyes unblinkingly watching the road ahead—and felt a twinge of apprehension. She was not even a hundred percent sure she was safe with him. She didn't know Dix Mallory any better, really, than she knew anyone else in Los Alegres. They shared a casual past, and a present terror, but beyond that she had no idea of who and what he was behind his public façade. Just faith in her judgment, faith in his basic goodness … and faith didn't seem to be quite enough anymore.
Outside, the intersection of Main and Lawlor flashed past. Lawlor was where the Harrells lived. Ted and Bobby … both dead in the explosion. Like Katy, incinerated, reduced to lumps of charcoal. Kevin had been stabilized at the scene and then flown by medevac helicopter to the burn and trauma unit at Santa Rosa Memorial; he was in critical condition with burns over sixty percent of his body. And Eileen … oh, God, Eileen. She'd been outside when the cabin exploded, they said, apparently just returning from her evening walk. Saved Kevin's life by dragging him out of the lake, he'd run on fire into the lake. Collapsed afterward, was in ICU at the hospital in Lakeport suffering from severe psychological trauma.
Cecca thought again that it might not have happened if she'd tried a second time to return Eileen's call last night; if they'd talked about what it was Eileen had remembered. Slim chance, but now she'd never know. Driving herself crazy with thoughts like that, useless speculations and spasms of guilt. Should she have driven up to Lake-port even though Eileen was under sedation and not allowed visitors? Beth Birnam and then Dix had counseled her against it. Eileen wouldn't be kept there long; they'd fly her to Los Alegres Valley Hospital as soon as they felt she was ready to be moved. Standard procedure in trauma cases: Take the patient as close to home as possible, where relatives and friends could make regular visits. There was nothing she could do in Lakeport.
Nothing she could do here either. Except wait.
Beth had been the first to find out about it. Watching the late news on the Santa Rosa channel and there it was, footage of the fire still burning but contained, interviews with a county sheriffs deputy and a volunteer fireman. She'd called Cecca, and Cecca had driven up to the Ridge to tell Dix when she couldn't get through to him on the phone. Calls to Eileen's brother in Fairfax and the hospital in Lakeport and the Lake County sheriffs department. Fragments of information pieced together over a period of hours, until they knew the full story—or as much of it as was available. Back home to bed, finally, but not to sleep. And then today … Owen stopping by, Beth, Jerry, Dix to tell her the Lake County authorities were calling it an accident and they'd better go and see St. John.…
She was exhausted, physically and emotionally. But the only way she was going to sleep tonight, she knew, was with the help of Scotch or Seconal. Or both.
Dix turned the car into Shady Court. Amy, she saw, had obeyed her instructions to move her Honda from the street into the driveway, back near the garage. She didn't want the Honda parked on the street any longer because it was too easy for somebody to tamper with it out there. It could be gotten at in the driveway, too, but not as easily. As Dix pulled up in front, Cecca wished again that there were room in the garage for at least the Honda. But it was cluttered with tools and yard maintenance equipment and painting supplies and all sorts of odds and ends left by the former owners. She'd intended to have it cleaned out, but she'd just never got around to it.
Dix had left the engine running. She said, “Don't you want to come in for a few minutes? We can both use a drink.”
“I don't think so. I wouldn't be very good company right now.”
“That doesn't matter. Neither will I.”
He shook his head. “I just thought of something we can do that St. John can't object to.”
“What?”
“Make some calls, find out where Tom, Sid, Jerry, Owen, and George were yesterday afternoon and evening. It's at least a six-hour round-trip between here and Blue Lake, and it had to have been made between, say, three and nine o'clock. Anyone who can account for that time is cleared. Anyone who can't …”
“We can't just come right out and ask.”
“No. Do it as obliquely as possible. You could ask Beth about Tom, Laura about George, Helen about Sid.”
“All right.”
“I'll talk to Owen and Jerry,” he said. “I'll call you later and we'll compare notes.”
“I hope to God all of them have alibis. I still don't want to believe it's one of them.”
“Neither do I.”
She felt an impulse to lean over and kiss him, just briefly; put her arms around him, just briefly. But she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. A thin little smile was all she had to give him before she got out of the car.
There was a strangeness about the house, too. She felt it again as soon as she let herself in. Burglary victims used the word “violated,” and now she knew exactly what they meant. The tormentor had walked here, touched her things and Amy's things … how many times? Touched their things while he thought of ways to kill them both …
She shut the door, harder than she'd intended, and double-locked it. Amy was in the living room, curled up on the couch with a book open on her lap, listening to a Billy Idol CD turned up too loud. She looked pale and withdrawn; she hadn't slept much either last night. Bobby Harrell had been her age, they'd grown up together, they'd been friends. But never anything more than that, thankfully, or Amy would be taking his death even harder than she was.
When Cecca entered the room, Amy used the CD remote to lower the volume. “There were a couple of calls.”