Gecko (23 page)

It was afraid of the cemetery.

“
Daddy, where are you?” she cried. Then she passed out.

Chapter Fourteen

Hugh Washington rubbed his hands in front of his mouth, but blowing on them was no help. Last night had been hot, tonight cold, but then he was much farther north and he was by the ocean. He should have known better. He should have remembered.

His breath was no match for the cold night breeze coming in off the sea. He cursed himself for not buying a warm jacket, but the shock of Walker’s death tore straight to his heart. That, piled on top of his worry about Glenna, cost him his sense of priorities. Five minutes after Kohler and crew left town he was in Power Glide, driving after them. It was like the old days, he was hunting again.

He sat in a thicket across from the gray house, eyes vigilant, ignoring the occasional bug crawling along his arms or down his neck. He hoped the car was okay. When he saw the gravel road a quarter mile past the Kohler house he turned onto it without thinking. He parked out of sight of the main road and locked the car. Now, sitting in the dark, he missed the car’s warmth and he wondered if anybody ever used that road.

Earlier, during the walk back to Kohler’s, he tried to push all thoughts of Glenna and Walker out of his mind. If he was going to find her, and avenge Walker’s death, he needed to keep full concentration on the job at hand. Time enough to mourn Walker after Glenna was safe and Kohler, if he was responsible, was dead and buried. He tried to push his worries about his car away. Either the car would be okay or it wouldn’t.

He had been sitting in the thicket since morning, over twelve hours. He’d been cold for four, very cold for two, and still no sign of Monday or Glenna. Maybe something happened to them, an accident. Maybe Monday had been caught. It didn’t matter, the smart thing for him to do was wait. He’d give it the night. If they didn’t show by morning, he would go to the police.

He opened a can of beef stew, keeping his eye across the street as he ate. He was on his third bite when the front door opened. Kohler, Mrs. Monday, the Weasel and a third man, big and stupid looking, came out, framed in the light. Big and Stupid locked the door and all four got into the Mercedes. Stupid and the Weasel in back, Mrs. Monday and Kohler in front.

He wondered where Stupid had come from. Had he been in the house all along? Was there anybody else in there? Where were they going now? Dinner? Following them was out of the question. He hadn’t counted on them leaving. What to do now? Sit back and wait. Or?

Or what? Go in, that’s what.

He stood, stretched and brushed the dirt from his clothes. He reached under the flap of the unbuttoned camouflaged shirt and checked the gun, an involuntary reflex, and started across the street toward the house.

The front was well lit and the windows were barred. It would be foolish to try and enter that way. The windows on both sides were barred as well. In back he found a large wooden deck set back about ten feet from the cliff. The doctor had a spectacular view. He took the stairs up the deck and found the rear windows barred also. The back door was deadbolted shut.

He wondered how he’d get in, maybe from below. He went back down the stairs. The house might have a basement, accessible from under the deck. The cloudless, star filled sky afforded him plenty of light. Enough to see that there was no basement once he was under the wooden deck. Nothing but a pile of wood and an ax.

“
Fuck it.” He picked up the ax.

He took the stairs back up two at a time. He swung the ax in a great arc, smashing it against the deadbolt. It was a good lock. It took five solid hits to bust the door open.

Enough light came in the windows so that he didn’t have to use the flashlight and it was a good thing, because he’d left it across the street, snugly tucked away in his backpack. Thinking of the forgotten flashlight brought his hand to his gun again. At least he hadn’t forgotten everything.

He spent a few seconds admiring the rich kitchen. Cobalt blue tile on the floor and counters, lots of brushed stainless steel. Professional range, oven, microwave and refrigerator. Tiled preparation area in the center, with a small digital television mounted on the wall for easy viewing while cooking. Every chef’s dream, he thought, leaving the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew he wasn’t going to find it among the pots and pans.

The living room was a designer’s nightmare. Plush white carpets, top of the line contemporary furniture, lots of oak. A giant Hitachi plasma TV mounted above the fireplace, and in the center of the room, a steel and glass coffee table, looking very out of place.

The dining room was also covered in plush white carpet. The center of the room was taken up by a large oak table, surrounded by eight chairs, but what caught his eye was the Hitachi television mounted on the wall, the twin of the one in the living room.

He checked the half-bath off the dining room and found a toilet, shower, and a small digital Sony, mounted on the wall for viewing while sitting. He chuckled, then went up the stairs. He found three bedrooms and a master bedroom. All with televisions, all Hitachi gas plasmas. The master bath had one too. the bathroom that served the other bedrooms, a smaller one. Odd he thought, every room a television, but no DVD players.

He went back down the stairs, sliding his hand along the oak banister. He had more rooms to check. It was a big house. He went back through the living room, through a short hallway and opened one of the two doors.

“
Holy shit!” he exclaimed, staring wide-eyed. A large king-sized bed was positioned in the center of the room. A professional video camera was mounted on a wheeled tripod on both sides of the bed. An array of professional track lighting and microphones were hanging from the ceiling. A four by eight soundproofed window was cut out of the wall opposite the bed. Beyond the window, in the next room, he saw a soundboard that would put any recording studio to shame, a rack of state of the art sound equipment and a rack of Macs and DVD recorders.

“
Mrs. Monday what kind of man have you gotten yourself involved with?” he mumbled as he backed out of the room. He went down the hallway to the recording studio. The door was locked. He tried to kick it in. He gave it a good blast but the lock didn’t give. He took a closer look. Although not a double deadbolt like he’d encountered on the back door, it wasn’t the cheap interior lock he assumed he was facing.

He got the ax. The first blow caved in the lock. He went through the door.

On a desk next to the soundboard was a stack of DVDs in plastic cases. He went through them, read the titles written on the cases with a felt pen. Jim and Jenny, Carrie and the twins, The twins and Linda, Bill and Bill, Carrie and Linda.

Pornography? That didn’t make any sense. You don’t kill for that. Not anymore. That stuff flooded the internet and it was free, well free for the most part anyway.

He saw a short stack of CDs on the soundboard, picked them up. Under the stack was a letter printed out on plain bond paper.

Mohammed,

I think you’ll find this one to your liking. She’s just turned forty, I think you’ll approve. She’s half off because of her age. A bargain and I think you’ll agree after seeing her in action that she still has several good years left.

It was unsigned.

“
Son of bitch,” Washington muttered. The bastard was selling people. He picked up the discs, read the labels. Julia M #1 through Julia M #7. “Oh, Mrs. Monday,” he said, feeling genuine pain, “your lover boy is about to ship you off to some guy named Mohammed.” Washington could just imagine what the rest of her life would be like.

He took out disc number three and stuffed it in his inside jacket pocket. Then he turned to get a closer look at the recording equipment and the Macintosh computers. Expensive. Professional. He raised the ax and brought it down on the soundboard. Not necessary, but it made him feel good. It only took him five minutes to demolish every piece of equipment in the room. After the equipment, he started hacking up the discs. Then he went next door and took care of the cameras. Normally he wasn’t so destructive, but Kohler was turning out to be the kind of man that he really didn’t like.

On the way out of the place, he took care of all the flat screen panels and on the walk back to his car he reached the inescapable conclusion that Monday was innocent. Walker had been right. Glenna was safe. He didn’t have to call the police in the morning. All he had to do was what Walker wanted. Prove Monday innocent. That would be easy, all he had to do was prove Kohler guilty. He would enjoy that.

He stopped, ears tuned to the night. There was a cricket chirping up ahead. It stopped. He heard an owl hoot, once, then it went quiet. The only sound was the wind rustling through the trees. Something was out there. He heard movement behind the brush on his left. Something was there. He saw a dog-like shape in the moonlight, heard a growl, then saw a pair of canine red eyes glaring at him from through the brush. He went for his gun and the animal disappeared, like a ghost dog. Somebody’s stray, he thought, big one. It put him on edge.

He put the gun away and continued his trek up the dark road toward his car. Twenty minutes later he was back at the motel. He rented a movie and a portable DVD player in the office and listened with feigned interest while a young man with an asthmatic cough tried to explain how to hook the player up to the television.

He was glad to be out of the cold. The walk back to the car had tired him more than he cared to admit. He resolved to get up early and take a brisk jog in the woods. From now on, he decided, he would jog every morning and get back in shape. He had made these promises to himself before and every time, without fail, he quit jogging within two or three weeks. But this time, he promised himself, he would stick it through.

He set the DVD player and the disc on the bed, then shucked off his shirt, shoes and the army pants. He didn’t know if the itchy, crawling sensations he felt all over his body were real or imaginary bugs. Either way, he needed a shower and clean clothes. The clothes he would get in the morning, the shower he would get right away.

He liked taking showers in motels. The hot water seemed to last forever. He luxuriated in the steam, letting the hot water pour over his head and down his back, soothing the cold away.

He did his best thinking in a hot shower. He thought about Jane. His marriage was over. He knew that. He didn’t know if he could find someone else, or even if he wanted to. He shivered, despite the steam, at the thought of being alone for the rest of his life. He shivered more at the thought of dating again. Some things were not meant to be, and Hugh Washington dating was just one of those things.

His thoughts wandered to Walker. Without Walker he was without work, unless he called Long Beach and ate humble pie. They would take him back, but he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He was too old, too set in his ways, and too much of a man to come sniveling back like a snot nosed brat. No, he told himself, you have to lie in the bed you make. He moved his head under the spray and watched the water run off his body, wishing his problems would follow it down the drain, but knowing they wouldn’t.

He turned off the shower, thinking about Monday. How would he react when he found out what kind of man Kohler was and what he had planned for his wife? He’d probably kill the son of a bitch, but he was probably going to kill him anyway, Washington thought, as he wrapped himself in a towel.

He left the bathroom and went to the bed, where he picked up and shook out the camouflaged clothes, trying to rid himself of any little creepy crawlies that might be left over from his stint in the woods. Satisfied, he folded them and stored them in the closet. Then he dropped the towel and put on his street clothes. He wanted to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. After he was dressed he remembered that nobody knew where he was.

He drew the curtains, hooked the DVD player to the TV, popped in the disc and lay back on the bed to watch.

She stared out at him, from the screen, as striking as he’d remembered her. She was sitting on the edge of that king-sized bed. The one in the room with the cameras and the lights. She turned and looked over her shoulder at the camera and smiled. She thrust out her lower lip and blew the hair out of her eyes, the way he’d seen his daughter do countless times.

It looked like she was cold, the way she was shivering, and his heart went out to her. She turned away from the camera and stretched. The camera followed her shaking hand to the center of the bed, where it locked around her purse. A small leather handbag. She pulled the purse to herself, then opened it.

She withdrew a small mirror, then a tiny glass jar, a vial. She unscrewed the lid. His heart ached as she dumped the white powder onto the mirror, trying to hold it without shaking. She took a credit card out of the purse and started chopping up the small chunks of cocaine into a fine white powder. Finished, she used the card to build the powder into two lines, two inches long. It took a few minutes. She was methodical. He noticed her hands were no longer shaking as she rolled up a crisp hundred dollar bill.

She turned toward the camera, smiled a million dollar smile, winked, pursed her lips and threw a kiss. The camera moved in for a close up as she turned back toward the white powder. She put the bill to her nose, leaned over the cocaine and inhaled, making one of the small white snakes vanish. She repeated the motion with the other nostril, killing the other line.