those covers… then I heard someone coming up the stairs.'
'It was like if you got under the covers, what?'
'That she'd be there.'
'That's your answer?'
'That's it.'
'You're a sick dog, Martin.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'Let's take a walk.'
I paid up and we walked out onto the beach. I guided us south, toward the rocks. I picked my way around to a little cove that closed us off from the rest of the strand. When Marty was almost beside me, I drove my elbow into him as hard as I could, right below the sternum. He folded in half, head down, and I sent my knee into his forehead, hard. Then I grabbed him the hair, pulled him out to the water, and pushed him in. I got his hair again and leaned into his backbone with my knee. He was taking big gulps of air when I let him; the rest of the time he got ocean. 'Truth time, Marty. You kill her?'
'No…'
'Come on, I'm a friend.'
'No…'
So I jammed his face down again and gave him a good drink. For a while, he didn't even struggle. He blew bubbles. When I pulled him up, he was just starting to suck in a big breath. He swilled the air and I asked him again whether he killed her.
'No…'
Back under for some more quiet time. The water eased in, lifted us in unison, set us back down on the sand. I yanked up on his hair again. 'Then what the fuck were you doing her house last night-and don't tell me because you had to see her.'
'I had to see her-I swear to…'
I leaned harder on his back. 'And you went back again tonight? For what, Marty? For what?'
'I couldn't figure out why… couldn't figure out why nobody called it in… and maybe…'
'Maybe what, Marty?'
'And maybe I didn't really see what I thought I did. I could hardly remember anything this morning. I was hoping maybe I was blackout drunk and didn't really see her'
'So then you got naked and wanted to get into her bed.'
Martin Parish was groaning now, not a groan of physical pain but one of terrible, terrible inner torment. 'I just needed… needed five minutes of what it used to feel like. I loved her. I don't know. It's always… worked. I don't know… see… I'd done it before.'
'Gotten into her bed?'
'Only when she wasn't there.'
'Oh, Christ.'
The shore break rolled in harder now and knocked me off him. I stood, balanced myself, and dragged up Marty by his belt. We staggered out, across a few feet of beach, then he sagged down, coughing and breathing hard. I knelt in front of him and yanked him by his shirt collar right up to me, face-to- face.
'We've got five bashings, Marty. Did this guy paint up the Ellison and Fernandez places, too?'
Martin just shook his head. He was drunk enough to admit crawling naked into bed with a murdered woman who wasn't there. But he wasn't drunk enough to break procedure and leak to the press just exactly what their man had left for them at two-and maybe three-crime scenes. Marty's divisions were more profound than I had ever suspected.
'Maybe Amber just got up and walked away,' he said, sobbing. In the moonlight, his face looked like a child's, like a slobbering infant who'd finally come to the end of a crying jag. 'Maybe it was a makeup job. She knows all those Hollywood types. It was all a trick.'
I shook him hard. 'She's dead, Marty. But nobody knows that except you and me and Grace and whoever took that club to her. And nobody's going to know, unless whoever moved Amber put her somewhere we can find her.'
Marty was nodding along dutifully now. I let go of him. He brought up his knees and arms and bowed his head against them. He was rocking back and forth a little. He was pathetic.
'We need to talk to Grace,' he said. 'We need Grace.
' We sure as hell do, I thought. 'I'll find her.'
'You should do that, Russ.'
'I'll do it.'
'Since she's your daughter.'
'Right, since she's my daughter.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Grace's red Porsche was parked in my driveway when I came home, and Grace was leaning against it. A quiet alarm went off inside me. I hadn't seen her in almost a year-an occasional phone call was all she had offered. Even though the night was humid and warm, she stood bundled inside a parka with fur around the collar, her shoulders bunched, her head set down into the fur, her hands in the pockets.
Amber had claimed Grace from the start-seized her, appropriated her, removed her. From before the start, in fact: Amber was five months pregnant before she told me. I had first seen Grace when she was two weeks old, then not again until two years later. Amber had taken her to Paris. Amber had taken her to Rome. To New York, Rio, London, St. Barts, Kitts, and Thomas. Grace said her first words to me when she was four. She said, demurely offering her cheek for a kiss, 'How nice to meet you, Russell.' It was one of the strangest, strongest moments in my life, stooping to kiss that face so much like mine, turned in profile while her long-lashed brown eyes contemplate the sky with supreme control, supreme boredom. I believe that I felt a little part of my heart die in that moment. She referred to me as Russell, never once as Father or Dad or Pop ever since.
Later that same night-the night when Grace was four-Amber and I had walked up into the hills behind Laguna and had the centerpiece battle of our lives. It was the kind of wild escalating fight where both parties are truly eager. My position was that Amber had stolen my daughter, and I demanded that she be at least partially returned. How naive I was, at twenty six, to think that such a return could come from anyone but Grace herself, if ever, if at all. I had no instruments then to measure the distance she had gone. Amber said that I had no more claim to Grace than a flower had to a bee, that I had only supplied the pollen. She actually used those words: 'supplied the pollen.' We each drew blood that night, though I will say that Amber struck first. The moon was full and ice-bright over the rocky path, and I can still remember the wet black shine of the stone she used.
I saw neither Amber nor Grace again for almost five year:
'Grace,' I said, getting out of my car.
'Russell,' she said back. She came toward me across the driveway, her heels resonant on the asphalt. She proferred her cheek as she had done those fourteen years ago. Her skin was cold, and she smelled very strongly-a woman's scent cut with nerves and perfume. Grace was a large woman, nearly five fee ten, with an athletic strength to her body and a lovely face. She had her mother's dark wavy hair.
'Sorry to just appear. I must seem like a ghost.'
'Is everything okay?'
'Of course not, Russ.'
'Come in.'
'Thank you.'
I left Grace in my study and went upstairs to check on Isabella. She was deep in sleep. I stood there for a moment and looked at her face buried down in the pillow. The crook of her cane was visible where it stood beside the bed, and I wondered for the millionth time why the Good Shepherd had abandoned it to her. Isabella would not be happy if Grace was to be here in the morning: She believed that both Amber and my daughter were the worst
