Civil Twilight (21 page)

Wrong. I grabbed a plastic chair and threw it in the pool. Water tsunami’d in all directions. Lights flashed on. I dropped to the ground and jammed myself against the gate, like a draft stopper. Metal clinked, plastic crinkled as I skidded over my fanny pack. Seconds ticked. Water slapped the pool edges. My breathing—slow—sounded like a steam shovel.

The light went off, timed out. Widley could still be inside, waiting to launch his two-hundred-plus pound of muscle at me, but I didn’t figure it that way. My money was on him being out. Gone, if not for long.

How to get in? A guy doesn’t install motion lights and leave his doors unprotected. I’d inherited a fine set of lock picks from Duffy’s former owner, but sadly, they don’t let you carry burglar tools on airplanes anymore. Anyway, I wouldn’t get near these doors or windows without setting off bells, and sirens going off all over the house. Or worse, at the police station.

My eyes readjusted to the dark and I looked upward. Doors had to be wired, and windows, but maybe not the attic window, twenty feet up, when there’re no trees near the house to climb.

I hoisted myself back onto the fence, sprang to the slanted roof, landing flat out. I’d have scrapes on my palms and bruises on my ribs from this one. Asbestos shingles are hard on skin but great for belly-crawling. I slithered up, tense for the feel of a wire, ready to turn, slide, and run if a light came on. But Widley must have done the protection on the cheap, or not at all. No wires here. I shimmied to the top and let myself down head first over the dormer. The window was tiny; if I went in on the diagonal I might make it. Might! I didn’t even have a pocket knife thanks to Homeland Security! Credit card?

I checked the window. No credit necessary. The wood was old, the latch rusted, the knob tiny. I twisted. My hand slipped. All I had was rust! I twisted again. The latched moved but the windows stayed shut. I braced my free hand against the house, twisted, pulled hard and just about sent myself back-flipping into the pool. But the little window opened.

The air crackled.

Helicopter! Searchlight! In seconds it’d be shining off my red hair and khaki pants on this dark roof. I grabbed the edge of the dormer, pushed myself all the way to the waist over the roof edge.

The helicopter cracked louder, nearer.

I inhaled, tucked my head and shoulder and shot my arms over my head and in through the window. The air almost choked me. My hips caught. My legs were sticking out the window like a comedy shot. I gave a huge push against the wall, sent myself flying through and landed hard.

Dust billowed up. The helicopter buzzed loud. It sounded like it was sitting on my shoulders. Had they seen me? Seen enough to call in a ground unit?

The attic was closer to a crawl space. Dust was inches thick. I breathed through my mouth. It was dead dark.

The copter light shone through the window. I all-foured away from it and almost cracked my head on a folding ladder, a ladder attached to the hatch door.

I poked the hatch open an inch. Darkness below.

I have this superstition about things evening out. Too much good makes me wary. But bad’s like luck in the bank. I cashed the check the helicopter had deposited, opened the hatch, dropped to the floor and turned on the lights like any innocent resident.

Silence. At least inside. No feet running at me; no safety clicking off. The helicopter sounded like it was moving away. A huge sigh escaped me.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath. If I had any balance left in my luck account, when he got home Widley’d figure he left the lights on himself.

The door from the street was to my left, the living room in front of me, two bedrooms behind.

I scanned the room where I’d sat forty-five minutes ago.

What is it that says who you are? Where you’re from? Who you were ten years ago before you came here? What is it you can’t bear to leave behind even though you know it may betray you?

When I’d left San Francisco to get away from the memories of Mike and the family that seemed so removed from missing him, what had I taken? Photos. I’d needed a book to comfort me in a lonely bed, to stand guard in case I woke up miserable in the night, to promise me moments away from my misery. My books had been adventures: Alexandra David-Néel’s travels through Tibet a hundred years ago; and, later, Zen books. They told me who I was.

But Karen’s only book had been the cookbook.

I checked my watch. 9:37! Damn! I hit the bedroom, pulled open drawers, checked the underside, felt behind. I ran my hand between the bed frame and mattress, behind the headboard, slid under the bed. Nothing.

Outside, an engine shifted downward. Patrol car?

I froze. The window opened to the street. No exit from here. I could . . . The car picked up speed.

Karen’s closet was a different world. Shiny cocktail dresses like the one Widley’d described. Sexy shoes and lots of them. A drawer full of cashmere sweaters that could have kept her warm even in this freezing house. A soft terry robe, fluffy slippers, sweats and shorts and some shirts and slacks that had the look of L.L. Bean or Eddie Bauer. Mail ordered. The clothes said: sports, luncheons, black-tie dinners. But, mostly, they said: gym.

There was jewelry, too. Diamond drop earrings, a single-row bracelet that seemed to dance in its box, and a sweetheart pendant, the kind that’s too schmaltzy to wear but you do because your guy gave it to you for Valentine’s Day. And in a leather folder, like a passport case, was a picture—Matt and Karen. They were sitting, smiling at each other. The shot was staged, but not done professionally. It was a snapshot taken in the living room, maybe by a friend, or maybe one of them set the timer then raced across the room and plopped into position. Even sitting, Matt was a head taller than her. His dark eyes, which had seemed to be searching for escape when I was with him, seemed relaxed. He had a little smile, but mostly he looked awestruck, just like he’d told me he’d been. Awestruck and in love.

It was Karen with the wary look. Just a slight one that I hadn’t glimpsed in San Francisco. Because she was looking up, her blonde hair hung back, revealing the sparkling diamond earrings. Her smile was slightly amused but pleased, the way she might have looked accepting a gift of wilted flowers from a child.

She
had
had some decent times here. A good enough life. At least one memorialized moment. Widley had a temper, I knew from experience. But day to day with him? He looked like he’d loved her and that was something.

I stared harder, trying to discern who she was. The girl who’d swung the knife? The woman who’d pushed the teenager clear of the speeding car? The one who’d betrayed John?

Things change!
The first time I saw Leo, he lectured on that. All things change. Things
are
change. In the time—

The door to the other bedroom was shut. I pulled it open to a wall of photos. Girls playing soccer, boys running, kicking, heading the ball. I
spotted Karen bending over a child clutching her knee. But it was Widley who was the star, running on the sideline, calling out, coaching. There were two more shots of the couple, him with his arm around her, her face once again in the shadows.

And that was what he’d really done for her. He’d given her an identity—Matt Widley’s wife. In the eyes of the world she was something solid, unchanging. No one was going to think about her even having a past. She was part of an institution here, minor one though he was. For a woman on the run, there could hardly be a greater gift.

I was desperate to study all the pictures, experience what they were revealing.

But I made myself move to the master bath. There I gave the medicine cabinet a quick check, then headed for the kitchen door. A stack of newspapers almost blocked it.
San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, L.A. Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Washington Post,
the
Redding Record Searchlight,
and one from Seward, Alaska. Quite an assortment. I plucked out the Alaskan one. It was small, with big ads. I scanned each page, but nothing stood out. Just another summer week in a one-industry town. Seward, a fishing hub. It had been at least six years since Sonora’d left Alaska, closer to twenty since she’d arrived there. Did she miss the mountains and the water, here in the desert? Or was Alison a different person? That was the question. It was a question that so totally grabbed me, I didn’t hear the car pull up.

THE BACK DOOR was feet away, but it was already too late.

Munson was with Widley. They were shouting. They were drunk.

If I could get through the hall, I might slip into the guest room and wait till they passed out.

Or—I glanced at the coffee cup in the sink. I’d doubled an actress in a B-movie who’d picked up a cup like that and walked into the fray as if she’d been sitting calmly in the kitchen, waiting, drinking coffee. It had worked for her.

Or I might—

I strode into the living room. “Matt, your wife is dead!”

“What’re you—”

“Shut up, Munson!” I said. “Matt, did you hear me? Your wife—she’s dead!”

He stared, hazy-eyed. Munson started to speak but Matt silenced him with a glance. Slowly, he picked up a lamp, snapped the cord out of the socket, stepped back like a quarterback going into a one step drop and threw the whole thing across the room. It smashed dead center on the mantel. He grabbed a big urn and sailed it into the same spot. Then a clock. He was moving on body memory, now hoisting a narrow table, throwing it, too, where the other shots had landed.

Munson made no attempt to stop him. Wise move. Next to Widley, Munson looked like the water boy. He looked, also, like he’d seen this kind of thing before. I edged toward the kitchen, just as Matt yanked a picture off the wall. He hoisted a chair and threw it, spun around and spotted me.

He lunged. His hands were around my neck. He lifted me up. I gasped. He was going to pop my head like a wine cork. I slammed my head into his chin. He dropped me, stumbled back, blood flowing from his nose.

I hit the floor hard on my back, rolled, and came up shaky. “Sit down!” I forced out. “Now!”

He stared, sank slowly as if there was a chair behind him, and collapsed onto the floor. He was snoring before Graham Munson stepped out of the bedroom.

“Look what you did to him!”

“His wife is dead! Dead!”

“She can’t be.”

“Where were you last Tuesday?”

“Where I am most of the time, which is none of your fucking business. What? Did she die on Tuesday? She’s really dead?”

“Yes, she’s dead. But he’s not. Can’t you get him to the couch or something?”

“You’re the one who head-butted him.”

“What do you normally do? Leave him on the floor?”

The guy was the classic jerk; he’d have been the kind of smart-ass in high school who gets a laugh and leaves a girl humiliated. Now he was pushing middle age, dressed like half that, his smug face visiting the lines that would eventually take it over, lines that could have signaled concern but likely didn’t—not for Matt, for Karen, or for his own wife. I walked by him, out the door to their car. Melia Munson was leaning against the
window. She looked weary of the whole scene—like Karen Johnson might have, had she taken a very different path.

“Come on in. The fireworks are over. But it’s going to be a while.”

She glanced up, did a better double-take than I’ve seen in some final cuts, and said, “You?”

“Right. Still here. But it’s fine. Now the problem’s getting Matt off the floor. Graham insists that’s not a one man job.”

She looked like she had a dozen different questions, but the most pressing was, “So, it’s okay with Graham, me coming in?”

I nodded.

“It’s not the first time Matt’s been down for the count. The other night I was ready—”

“When was that?”

We were a step from the door. I held my breath.

“The night he got back from San Francisco and there was no message from Alison.”

“What happened?”

“He was on our floor, in our living room. Couldn’t leave him there; couldn’t send him home like that. I knew Graham’d be back by the time he woke up in the morning.”

Graham had stayed in San Francisco
—
when?
“Could it have been Tuesday?”

She pulled open the door and I could see it was not Matt, now lumped on the couch like a big wad of blankets, but Munson she was searching for. He was making his way shakily from the kitchen, a glass of orange juice in his hand. “You waited long enough, didn’t you? I’m done now.”

I took the juice. There were things I needed to know, but not from him. Him I needed gone. “Thanks. I’ll deal now.”

“Are you a doctor or something?”

“I’m a stuntwoman. I’m doing—”

“A movie?” Melia exclaimed, like we weren’t standing in a roomful of rubble and there wasn’t a passed-out body on the floor. “Here?”

“San Francisco.”

“Now?” Munson looked up, interested.

Were these two living in some parallel, adolescent universe? “His wife is dead! I called the police.”

“Why did you—” Before she could finish, Munson grabbed her and shoved her toward the door. She just got the screen open in time.

I hadn’t actually called the cops, but I’d have to now before the Munsons headed to Nogales and points south. But which police? John was unreachable. I’d thought I could trust Korematsu before his telltale smile as Broder strode into the North Beach apartment,
after he’d called the station.
So, not John, not Korematsu. Which meant not SFPD. On the other hand . . .

It had been too soon for Broder to have dropped everything and driven over. But more than enough time if he was already keeping tabs on Korematsu.

Did I dare call Korematsu?

Did I dare not?

Matt’s cell phone had fallen on the floor. I checked my own for Korematsu’s number and punched it into Matt’s.