The Hidden (10 page)

F O U R T E E N

T
HEY HAD BEEN IN
the cottage less than fifteen minutes and Jay was making noises about going out to the lane “to see if the law’s still up there” when the doorbell chimed. He glanced at Shelby, muttered, “What the hell?” and went to open the door on its chain lock.

She saw him stiffen slightly as he looked out. “Yes, what is it?” The quickened beat of the wind blurred the voice outside, but whatever it said convinced him to remove the chain and pull the door wide. Two men came inside, one wearing an unbuttoned overcoat over a suit and tie, the other in a deputy sheriff’s uniform. Both wore grim, tight-lipped expressions. The man in the overcoat saw Shelby, approached her with a leather ID case open in his hand.

“Mrs. Macklin?”

“Hunter,” she said automatically, looking at the badge inside the case. “Shelby Hunter.”

“I understood you and Mr. Macklin were married.”

“We are. I kept my birth name.”

“Oh, I see. Well.” He put the ID case away. “My name is Rhiannon, Lieutenant George Rhiannon. I’m an investigator with the highway patrol. This is Deputy Randall Ferguson, county sheriff’s department.”

She nodded. Jay’s eyes were on the deputy—a big, youngish man with a bristly mustache and flat green eyes, standing in a ruler-backed posture like a soldier at attention.

“You’re the officer who led us out here the other night,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well … what can we do for you?”

“We won’t take up much of your time,” Rhiannon said. “Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.” He was in his forties, with an ovoid body on short stubby legs and a dark, pointy, long-nosed face. Like a dachshund that had acquired human features and learned how to walk on its hind legs, Shelby thought. But there was nothing comical about the man or his demeanor. His movements, his words had a sharp professional economy.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I understand you spent some time with your neighbors and their houseguests Sunday night.”

“Just long enough to have a drink with them. We went there to borrow matches when the power went out.”

“Everything seem to be all right with the four of them?”

“They’d been drinking pretty heavily,” Jay said. “We picked up on a lot of tension.”

“Any specific cause?”

“Not that we could tell.”

“Conflict between Eugene Decker and anyone in the party?”

“His wife. They were at each other’s throats.”

“Between Decker and the Lomaxes?”

“There was some sniping. None of them were getting along.”

“Have you seen Mr. Decker since then?”

“No.”

“Any of the others?”

“Mrs. Decker. Yesterday morning, at the store in Seacrest. She was on her way home to Santa Rosa.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Briefly.”

“She tell you why she was leaving, going home?”

Jay related the gist of the conversation.

“Any other contact with any of the four since Monday?” Rhiannon asked.

Shelby said, “I saw Mrs. Lomax—Claire. On the beach yesterday morning. We had a brief conversation.”

“About what?”

“Is that important?”

“She has some facial injuries,” Rhiannon said. “She have them then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell you how she got them?”

What Claire had told her had been in confidence; Rhiannon hadn’t given a reason for her to break it. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

“She told us she tripped and fell and her husband backs her up. But it looks more like an assault. What do you think?”

“Is she all right now?”

“No further injuries, if that’s what you mean. You haven’t answered my question, Mrs., ah, Hunter.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, does it?”

“What’s going on?” Jay said. “If Lomax and his wife are both okay, how come you’re here? Did one of them call you?”

“No, sir.”

“Decker, then?”

Ferguson said, “He can’t call anyone. He’s dead.”

Shelby blinked her surprise. Jay said, “Dead?”

“Found in his Porsche down the coast this morning.”

“An accident?”

“No, not an accident.”

“Natural causes?”

“He was shot through the head.”

“… My God. The Coastline Killer?”

“Looks that way.”

Rhiannon gave the deputy a sharp look before he said to Jay, “We don’t know anything for sure right now.”

“Except that it wasn’t suicide,” Ferguson said. “No weapon in the car.”

Shelby’s throat felt clogged, as if she’d swallowed something small and hard that wouldn’t go down. “Coastline Killer? Who’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Funny. Your husband seems to. Ask him.”

Jay wouldn’t look at her. He said to Rhiannon, “When was Decker killed?”

“Sometime yesterday. According to the Lomaxes, he decided to go on home himself and left sometime in the afternoon.”

“They tried to talk him out of it because he’d been drinking,” Ferguson said. “He should’ve listened to them.” The deputy had begun to move around the front room, looking here and there as if he were checking out a crime scene. “Were you here yesterday afternoon, Mr. Macklin?”

“Yes.”

“All afternoon?”

“Yes, all afternoon. Why?”

“We’re trying to determine the exact time Mr. Decker left,” Rhiannon said. “Neither of the Lomaxes is certain.”

“Well, I can give you a pretty good idea. We were coming up from the beach when we heard him drive by out front. It was a little before two thirty.”

“You’re sure about the time?”

“Sure enough. I glanced at my watch just after we came inside. Two thirty on the nose then.”

Rhiannon scribbled in his notebook, closed it, and slid it into his overcoat pocket. “I think that’s about all, then. Thanks for your cooperation.”

Ferguson said, “You folks wouldn’t be planning to leave right away, would you?”

“No. Not until New Year’s Day.”

“Are you going to want to talk to us again?” Shelby asked.

Rhiannon said he doubted that would be necessary.

Ferguson was still looking at Jay. “Reason I asked, there’s a bad storm coming—worse than the one Sunday. Once it hits, the highway’s liable to be pretty hazardous for the next twenty-four hours or so. Be a good idea for you to stay here until it blows through.”

“We’ll do that,” Jay said. “Right here.”

When the two men were gone, he put the chain back on the door and threw the bolt lock. He said then, “I don’t like that deputy. Did you see the way he kept looking at me with those funny eyes of his?”

Shelby kept still.

“Suspicious, just like the other night. What the hell reason does he have for being suspicious of me?”

She didn’t respond to that, either.

“Lomax, yes, sure. One look at Claire’s face and they had to know what kind of bastard he is. Make any cop suspicious. But people like us—”

“Quit trying to avoid the issue, Jay,” she said. “Who the hell is the Coastline Killer?”

His expression changed. “Ah, God,” he said.

“Who, dammit?”

For a few seconds she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “Some lunatic who’s been shooting people along the coast over the past several months. They don’t have any idea who or why.”

“Shooting people. How many people?”

“Five now, maybe more.”

Five, maybe more. Lord!

“Where along the coast?”

“Different places,” he said. “The first ones … those two kids in sleeping bags, down by Fort Ross, remember? Picks his victims at random.”

“And the latest was Gene Decker.”

“You never think it can happen to somebody you know, even slightly, somebody so nearby … Christ, it gives you the willies. Poor bastard must’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Talking too fast, almost jabbering. Still not meeting her eyes. “I wonder how Paula’s taking it. Fed up with him playing around, thinking about a divorce, but still—”

Shelby said, “How long have you known about this Coastline Killer? Since before we left home?”

“No,” he said. “Only since yesterday, from the man at the service station in Seacrest.”

“And you ‘forgot’ to tell me, like you ‘forgot’ about the storm.”

“I didn’t see how it could have any effect on us. None of the shootings was in this immediate area—” Another headshake, then a small, empty gesture. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” she said.

“I really am sorry—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it.”

She went over and sat down at the dinette table. Outside the wind whistled and cried and rain thrummed on the roof, ticked against the seaward walls and windows like handfuls of flung pellets. Water streaked and ran on the window glass; everything out there had a smeared, indistinct appearance, like faulty underwater photography.

“I’d better go bring in some more wood,” Jay said, “before the weather gets any worse.”

She didn’t answer.

He went away and a little while later he came back. He said something to her, but she didn’t listen to it. The rain and wind sounds seemed magnified now, as if they’d somehow gotten inside her head. It wasn’t until he said her name, sharply, that she lifted her head to look at him. And when she did, it was as if he wasn’t even there, as if he had finally and completely disappeared.

“Shel? Are you all right?”

“I want a divorce,” she said.

F I F T E E N

D
ARK PLACE, WARM, SAFE.
Sleeping.

Not sleeping anymore. Listening.

What’re those noises? Loud, weird.

Thump. Grunt, slurp, screech, squeal. Thump thump thump.

Something’s out there.

Something … terrible.

I have to find out what it is. But I don’t want to. I’m afraid.

Squeal, howl, slurp. Thump thump thump thump thump.

Oh God, what if it tries to hurt me?

Stay here, don’t move.

No, I can’t, I have to find out what it is …

… And he was through it and out of it, sweating, struggling for air. Disoriented at first—he didn’t know where he was. Not in bed; the surface under him was cold, leathery, and Shelby wasn’t beside him. Moment of panic, and then he was awake enough to remember that he’d sacked out on the living room couch under a blanket. “I don’t want to sleep with you tonight,” she’d said, and he hadn’t argued, let her have the main bedroom. He could have slept in the guest room but it was too cold back there. Cold out here now, too, nothing left of the fire but a collection of ashes and dying embers.

The dream images were still vivid. The same, always the same. And yet there was something just a little different about this one … the creature’s snarling, howling words at the end, that were somehow like whispers so he couldn’t make them out. This time they’d seemed louder, almost but not quite understandable. Ugly, terrifying words he never wanted to hear … except that at a deeper level of perception, he did because he sensed they might explain the nightmare.

He rubbed sweat off his face with a corner of the blanket, listening to the runaway pumping of his heart. It stuttered every few beats and his breathing came short and hot in his chest. One sudden savage burst of pain and it would be all over for him, no more confrontations with his night monster, no more bitter defeats, just blackness and peace. But it didn’t happen. The thudding slowed, the sensation of gripping tightness eased, his respiration gradually slowed to near normal.

They were coming more often now, the nightmare rides. Two in two nights, the first time that had ever happened. Stress-induced. Or maybe there was some sort of physiological link. He had no control over them in any case, no way to put a stop to them. Ironic in a bitter, devilish way. Asleep, in the dream, he was at the mercy of a hideous being that ripped him apart and devoured him; awake, he was at the mercy of other demons beyond his control, real ones like failure and decay, that were in literal ways ripping him apart and devouring him.

A sudden blast of wind shook the cottage, rattled the windows in their frames. It had been storming heavily when he drifted off to sleep, but the storm seemed even worse now—elemental fury out there. The rain was torrential, making a steady jackhammer sound on the roof. Wind drafts in the chimney swirled up ashes and thin sparks and blew them out across the hearth. The night seemed alive with shrieks, whistles, fluttery moans.

The sweat on him had dried and even under the blanket he was shivery cold. When he was sure his legs would support him, he got up slowly and made his way to the draped windows. The baseboard heater under them made ticking sounds when he turned it up full. So the power was still on, something of a surprise given the way the storm was raging. But it would go out sooner or later. Damn well be sure of that.

Back on the couch, huddled under the blanket. And the brief scene from yesterday afternoon, when he’d come back inside with the load of wood, replayed again in his memory.

“I want a divorce.”

“… Jesus, you don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it. I can’t live like this anymore.”

“Like what?”

“Like strangers. You keeping things from me, hiding from me. Two people can’t live together without communicating.”

“Swear to God, it’s not intentional. I don’t mean to shut you out—”

“But you do. Sins of omission, Jay.”

“I love you, you know that—”

“It’s not enough! Once, yes, but not anymore. There’s just too much distance between us. And I don’t see any way to bring us back together.”

He’d tried to tell her then, to rip that one glued down page right out of the Macklin book. The words were all there, a huge glob of them in his throat, choking him. He’d hacked up some of them, a disjointed, fumbling few, but it was too late, he’d waited too long. She didn’t want to listen; clapped her hands over her ears and got up and walked out of the room.

If he’d gone after her, tried again … but he hadn’t. Too late. Nothing he said now would change her mind.

She was dead serious about the divorce, the way she’d acted the rest of the day proved that. Avoiding him for the most part—reading in the bedroom or staring out the oceanfront windows or into the fire while Vivaldi or, worse, Saint-Saëns throbbed gloomily out of the boom box, not answering or responding in monosyllables when he spoke to her. Drinking too much, eating nothing. And then saying in a flat, distant voice that she didn’t want to sleep with him and going to bed early, shutting the bedroom door after her, maybe locking it for all he knew.

He kept telling himself to talk to her anyway, get it all said—keeping everything bottled up at a crisis point like this was senseless, self-destructive, an indication of some sort of dementia. Telling himself it might, it just might, make a difference after all. But he didn’t believe it. The feeling of hopelessness was oppressively strong.

Maybe part of it was the environment here, the close confines of the cottage, the nasty weather. Maybe the familiar atmosphere at home would make it easier to talk, give him a chance to change her mind.

He didn’t believe that, either.

He’d already lost her. Just as he’d lost baseball and the ability to have children and Macklin’s Grotto and the Conray job and everything else that mattered in his life. It didn’t make any difference anymore whether or not he got past this lunatic compulsion to keep things locked up inside. Too late. When she’d said, “I want a divorce,” it had been the marriage’s death knell.

Shelby stayed in the bedroom most of the morning—sleeping, or maybe just avoiding him. How did she feel after yesterday? Happy, sad, relieved? Or as depressed as he was?

He drank two cups of strong black coffee, forced himself to swallow half a glass of grapefruit juice and part of a container of yogurt. Washed and dried the dishes. Tidied up the front room, using the fireplace brush to clean ashes and soot and flecks of bark off the hearthstones.
You don’t have to be maid as well as cook
. The hell he didn’t. What else had he been good for the past six months? What else was he good for now?

Wrapped in his raincoat, he made a couple of struggling trips through the gale to replenish the firewood supply. The storm was already among the worst he’d encountered; the wind gusts must be forty or fifty miles per hour, shaking the cottage like a dog shakes a bone, bending the trees low to the ground and sending twigs and needles and small torn branches skittering across the lawn and side patio. The rain was like a whipping bead curtain, thick strands of it blown inland at an undulant slant that was almost horizontal. Huge waves lashed the shoreline, gouting up clouds of white; the ocean’s surface was like foam-flecked water boiling in a cauldron.

When he came in with the second carrier of firewood, Shelby was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee. Still in her bathrobe, hair uncombed, her face pinched and baggy-eyed. She hadn’t slept any better than he had.

He said tentatively, “I can make you some breakfast.”

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat something …”

“Later.”

He’d left the drapes closed over the windows; Shelby opened them, then folded herself into one of the facing chairs and stared out at the rain-distorted view.

Tell her, he thought as he unloaded the carrier into the wood box. Go ahead, do it now. But it was a dull thought, without resolve. The sense of fatalism overwhelmed him again and he said nothing. It was as if he were trying to fight his way out of restraints, a goddamn mental straightjacket that had his will bound and helpless.

Long day ahead. Long, long day.

At one thirty the power went out.

They knew it immediately because Shelby had switched on the floor lamp next to her chair. As soon as the bulb went dark, she said, “Perfect. Just perfect.” The baseboard heater made one last pinging noise, like a death rattle. “Perfect,” she said again, and stood to close the drapes while Macklin got a fire going.

Shelby poured her first glass of wine a little after two o’clock. Sure sign of how troubled she was; she seldom started drinking so early in the day. But he didn’t say anything to her about it. There was nothing to say and even if there had been, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She hadn’t spoken to him since the power outage; it was as if he weren’t even there.

Misery loves company. Where had he heard that recently? Oh, right, from Paula Decker on Sunday night. Well, it was bullshit. Misery didn’t love company; misery wanted to be alone, curled up in some dark corner with a blanket over its head.

Paula Decker. And Gene Decker, suddenly dead, another victim of the Coastline Killer. He’d never known a victim of violence before, random or otherwise. Only met the wine salesman once and hadn’t liked him, but still a human being he’d had brief contact with just a few nights ago. Nobody deserved to die the way Decker had, with a psycho’s bullet in his brain. Frightening and unsettling, when that kind of random lunacy touched your life like this.

He wondered again how Paula was taking the news. It couldn’t be an easy thing to deal with, no matter how she’d felt about her husband. As bad as things were for Shelby and him right now, Paula was a lot worse off. Claire Lomax, too. Always somebody worse off than you are.

Yeah, he thought, but you don’t have to live their lives. The only life you have to live, the only visceral misery you have to face, is your own.

Three o’clock.

The storm was massive now, roaring and rampaging like the dream creature, assaulting everything in its path. Hurricanes were unheard of on the California coast, but this was what Macklin imagined the beginnings of one must be like. They were probably safe enough forted up in here, but there was no certainty of it; when one of the stronger wind gusts slammed into the cottage, the walls and windows shimmied from the impact.

As early as it was, most of the daylight was already gone. A thin puddinglike gloom had settled around them, relieved somewhat by the firelight and the rows of candles Shelby had set out. But all the flames flickered and wobbled, creating restive shadows; both cold air and dampness had seeped in past the weatherstripping on windows and doors and lingered despite the fire’s heat. The atmosphere was oppressive. As if he and Shelby were the only two silent mourners in a storm-battered funeral home.

He said, “I can’t stand listening to that much longer. How about putting some music on?”

“Let’s see if we can get a news broadcast first.”

She switched on the boom box, fiddled with the radio dials. Static, mostly, on the AM and FM stations. She managed to tune in a local station whose announcer was giving a storm report, something about a bad slide that had closed Highway 1 near Anchor Bay, but it broke up into static after half a minute or so. Briefly she switched over to the police band. More storm-related chatter—road blockages, a traffic accident in Point Arena. Nothing about the Coastline Killer. Why would there be? Even a psycho wasn’t demented enough to go out looking for people to shoot on a night like this.

Shelby said, “Find a CD you want to listen to,” and headed to the kitchen for a wine refill. Macklin stood up, thinking he might as well join her—self-defense, to take the raw edge off his nerves—and that was when he heard the sudden boomlike cracking sound.

It came from outside during a brief lull in the wind squalls, loud enough to override the tempest. His first thought was a thunderclap. But no, it had been different—

In the next second there was another blast of sound, this one of a crashing collision that shook the floor, rattled the furniture.

“My God,” Shelby said from the kitchen, “that felt like an earthquake.”

“Couldn’t have been. No shaking.”

“Close, whatever it was. Somewhere out front.”

“I’d better go have a look,” he said. “You stay here—no use both of us getting wet.”

He hurried to the utility porch, dragged his raincoat off the hook, shrugged into it; pulled on his waterproof gloves and jammed the rain hat down over his head. Then he grabbed the flashlight, just in case; unlocked the door and opened it just far enough to squeeze his body through.

Out on the patio the banshee wind almost bowled him over as he struggled ahead to the gate. A rain-laden gust ripped it out of his hand, hurled it against the dripping shrubbery on the other side. He staggered through and down the drive onto the lane.

The blacktop’s surface was littered with needles, cones, boughs, bare limbs; a runnel as wide as a small stream paralleled it on the inland side. Macklin swung the flash beam left, then right, slatting rain out of his eyes. Dimly, then, through the sodden half-daylight, he saw what had happened, what lay some fifty yards ahead to the south. He took half a dozen faltering steps in that direction before he stopped and stood bent and staring, his jaw clenched so tightly small shoots of pain radiated up both sides of his face.

Down tree. Big one aslant across the lane, blocking it just beyond where the Coulter property joined that of the neighboring estate.

Macklin pushed ahead for a closer look, stopping again within a few yards of the fallen tree—a dead bull pine from the woods on the inland side, its trunk encased in some sort of parasitic vine, its upthrust branches bare except for rows of decaying cones. Vine leaves, loose cones, snapped-off limbs littered the lane and the soggy ground along its length. The upper branches had collapsed a section of the estate’s border fence; the lower end of the splintered trunk was half-hidden among the standing pines, cracks in the asphalt radiating out from under its middle section. The lane was completely blocked. It didn’t look like you could even walk around the damn thing on either side, you’d have to climb over it.