70
By daylight, Santa Fe had been enchanting. On this snowy night, every street along which they drove seemed sinister.
Martie had a far stronger awareness of altitude than previously. The air was too insipid to nourish her. She hunched around a weakness in her chest, a shriveling sensation, as though her lungs were half collapsed and wouldn’t inflate in such thin atmosphere. A lightness in her body, an unpleasant buoyancy, gave her the queasy feeling that at these rarefied heights, gravity was diminished and her ties to the earth at risk.
All these sensations were subjective, and the truth was that she wanted out of Santa Fe neither because the air was really gruel-thin nor because she might slip the bonds of Earth. She wanted out because here she had discovered qualities within herself that she would have preferred never to recognize. The farther she traveled from Santa Fe, the more easily she might be able to make peace with these discoveries.
Besides, the risks of staying in the city even until they could catch the first flight out in the morning were too great. Perhaps Kevin and Zachary wouldn’t be missed for many hours yet. More likely, they were expected to report to someone at the institute when they had completed their assignment, which they ought to have done by now. Soon, people might be looking for them, for their car — and then for Martie and Dusty.
“Albuquerque,” Dusty suggested.
“How far?”
“About sixty miles.”
“Can we make it in this weather?”
At last a commanding wind had risen, lashing the snowfall with discipline until it had become a snowstorm. Rigorously marshaled ghost-white armies blitzed across the high plains.
“Might be less snow as we lose some altitude.”
“Albuquerque’s bigger than Santa Fe?”
“Six or seven times bigger. Easier to hide until morning.”
“They have an airport?” she asked.
“A big one.”
“Then let’s go.”
The wipers brushed snow off the windshield and gradually swept away Santa Fe, as well.
Even as Dr. Ahriman waited along the side of the Coast Highway, a sudden onshore wind blew through the tall shore grass and buffeted the El Camino harder than did the slipstreams of passing cars and trucks. A good wind would help to cover the crack of gunshots and would at least distort them so that getting an accurate directional fix on the source would be difficult for anyone who happened to hear the reports.
Yet the doctor had doubts about the beach, too. What were these two geeks doing there at this time of night, in this cool weather?
What if they were two of those kooks who tested their stamina by swimming in very cold water?
The prospect of encountering Skeet and his pal sans clothing was enough to alter the doctor’s relationship to the four cookies that he had eaten. One a walking skeleton, the other a Pillsbury Doughboy wanna-be.
He didn’t believe they were gay, though he couldn’t rule out the possibility, either. A little romantic assignation in a beach parking lot.
If he found them in their car, going at each other like two hairless monkeys, should he kill them as planned or give them a reprieve?
When the bodies were found, the police and media would assume that they had been killed because of their sexual orientation. That would be annoying. The doctor was not homophobic. He was not a bigot of any stripe. He chose his targets with a sense of fair play and a belief in equal opportunity.
Admittedly, he had brought suffering to more women than men. He was, however, in the process of redressing that imbalance within the hour — and especially by the time he finished playing out the game in which these two killings were but one inning.
After ten minutes, when the pickup didn’t return, the doctor set aside his misgivings. In the interest of sport, he switched on the headlights and drove down to the parking lot.
The truck was indeed the only vehicle in sight.
Only moonlight brightened the lot, but Ahriman could see that no one was in the cab of the pickup.
If romance was in the picture, they might have adjourned to the camper shell. Then he remembered the dog. He grimaced with disgust. Surely not.
He parked two spaces from the truck and counseled himself to move quickly. The police might patrol lots like this, once or twice during the night, to discourage teenage drinkers from staging rowdy parties. If the patrolmen recorded license-plate numbers, Dr. Ahriman would have a problem come morning, when the bodies were discovered. The trick was to hit them fast and get out before the cops or anyone else drove in from the highway.
He pulled the ski mask over his head, exited the El Camino, and locked the door. He might have saved a few precious seconds on his return if he’d left the vehicle unlocked; however, even here in this long stretch of the California Gold Coast, in Orange County where the crime rate was much lower than elsewhere, untrustworthy people were unfortunately still to be found.
The wind was lovely: cool but not chilling, turbulent but not so strong that it would hamper him, certain to damp and distort the gunfire. And the nearest house along the shore was a mile north.
Upon hearing the low thunder of the breaking surf, he realized that not only the wind would conspire with him. All of nature in this fallen world seemed allied with him, and he was overcome by a sweet sense of belonging.
Drawing the Taurus PT-111 Millennium from his shoulder holster, the doctor walked briskly to the pickup. He glanced through the cab window, just to be sure no one was inside.
At the back of the truck, he pressed one mask-covered ear to the door of the camper shell, listening for sounds of bestiality, and was relieved to hear nothing.
He stepped past the truck and, surveying the night, spotted an odd light down on the shore and perhaps fifty yards to the north. The moonlight revealed two men twenty feet back from the tide line, huddled at some task.
He wondered if they could be digging for clams. The doctor had no idea where clams were dug up, or when, because that was work, and he had little interest in the subject. Some were born to work, some to play, and he knew into which camp the stork had delivered him.
A set of concrete steps with a pipe railing led down a ten-foot-high embankment to the beach, but he preferred not to approach these men along the strand. In the moonlight, they would see him coming, and they might suspect that his intentions weren’t good.
Instead, Ahriman headed north through soft sand and shore grass, staying well back from the edge of the embankment, so that his prey would not glance up and see him silhouetted against the sky.
His handmade Italian shoes were filling with sand. By the time this was finished, they would be too abraded to take a good shine.
Moonglow on the sand. Black shoes wear pale glowing scuffs. Should I blame the moon?
He wished he’d had an opportunity to change clothes. He still wore the suit in which he had started the day, and it was dreadfully rumpled. Appearance was an important part of strategy, and no game was what it ought to be if played in the wrong costume. Fortunately, the darkness and the moonlight would make him look better-pressed and more elegant than he actually was.
When he had mentally measured fifty yards, Ahriman approached the brink of the low bluff — and directly in front of him were Skeet and his buddy. They stood only fifteen feet from the foot of the embankment, facing away from him and toward the sea.
The golden retriever was with them. It, too, was facing the Pacific. The onshore flow, blowing toward Ahriman, ensured that the dog wouldn’t catch his scent.
