and this was truer now for the doctor than ever it had been.
By the time Ahriman reached the Pacific Coast Highway, the Rolls-Royce was gone.
The rich ditz and her clam-dull husband lived in nearby Newport Coast, but she might not go directly home. Indeed, if her phobia had progressed to a more serious condition than he’d previously realized, to some form of paranoid psychosis, she might be reluctant to return home ever again, for fear that Keanu or one of his henchmen — such as her own pistol-packing psychiatrist — would be waiting there to do her harm.
Even if he’d thought she was headed home, Ahriman wouldn’t have pursued her there. She and her husband were certain to have a lot of household staff, each one a potential witness, and considerable security.
Instead, the doctor tore off his ski mask and drove to his own house as fast as he dared.
71
On the way home, no more poetic observations about time tumbled out of Mark Ahriman’s overturned memory chest, but during the first half of the ten-minute journey, he foamed at the mouth with vicious obscenities — all aimed at the Keanuphobe, as if she could hear — and with vivid oaths to humiliate, brutalize, mutilate, and dismember her in imaginative ways. This fit was adolescent and not worthy of him, which he realized, but he needed to vent.
During the second half of the trip, he pondered when or whether she would call the police to report the two murders. Paranoid, she might suspect that the nefarious Keanu controlled every police agency from the local cops to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in which case she would keep silent or at least take time to mull and fret over whether to approach the authorities.
She might go away for a while, even flee the country and hide until she had puzzled out a strategy. With half a billion bucks to draw upon, she could go far and be difficult to find.
The thought of her possible vanishment alarmed him, and an icy sweat oozed out of the nape of his neck. His friends in high places could easily help him conceal his links to any number of outrageous crimes committed by others who were under his control; but it was a very different thing, and a lot iffier, to expect them to protect him from the consequences of murders committed by his own hand, which was one reason he hadn’t taken such risks in twenty years. The sweat from the nape of his neck was now trickling down his spine.
A man of sublime confidence, he had never felt anything remotely like this before. He realized that he had better quickly get a grip on himself.
He was the lord of memory, the father of lies, and he could meet any challenge. Okay, all right, a few things had gone wrong lately, but a little adversity now and then was a welcome spice.
By the time he drove into his labyrinthine underground garage, he was fully in control of himself once again.
He got out of the El Camino and looked with dismay at all the sand smeared on the upholstery and mashed into the carpeting.
Sand or soil of any kind was admissible evidence in a criminal trial. The scientific-investigation division of any competent police department would be able to compare the composition, grain size, and other aspects of this sand with a sample of sand taken from the scene of the murders — and make a match.
Leaving the keys in the ignition, Ahriman salvaged only two items from the El Camino. The knotted blue plastic bag of Valet’s best work. The Green Acres sack half full of cookies. These he carefully set aside on the flamed-granite floor of the garage.
Quickly, the doctor pried off his ruined shoes, stripped off his socks and pants, and shrugged out of his suit coat, piling the garments on the floor. He put his wallet, the mini-9mm, and the shoulder holster aside with the two bags. The sand-crusted necktie and white shirt came off next and were added to the pile, although he salvaged the 24-karat tie chain.
Amazingly, considerable sand had even caked in his underwear. Consequently, he completely disrobed and committed his T-shirt and briefs to the heap of discards.
The doctor used his belt to cinch the garments together in a neat bundle. He placed it on the car seat.
An annoyance of sand, rather than a significant quantity, was stuck in his body hair. With his hands, he brushed himself off as best he could.
Naked except for his wristwatch, carrying the few items that he had salvaged, he entered the lowest floor of the house and took the elevator up to the third-floor master suite.
Using the Crestron touch panel, he opened the secret safe in the fireplace. He put the Taurus PT-111 Millennium in the small padded box with the jar containing his father’s eyes, and after consideration, he added the blue bag.
This was only temporary storage for the incriminating handgun, until he had a day or two to decide how to dispose of it permanently. The poop he might need as early as the morning.
After donning a lime-green silk robe with black silk lapels and a black sash, Ahriman phoned downstairs to the house manager’s apartment and asked Cedrick Hawthorne to come to the master-suite sitting room at once.
When Cedric arrived moments later, Ahriman accessed him with the name of a suspicious butler from an old Dorothy Sayers mystery novel and then took him through his enabling haiku.
The doctor had a policy against programming employees in his businesses, but in the interest of absolute privacy, he felt that it was vital to have such total control over the two key personnel on his household staff. He did not, of course, use his power to take undue advantage of them. They were paid well, provided with superb health- care and retirement plans, and given adequate vacation — although he had implanted in each of them an iron restriction against exploiting their kitchen rights to poach upon supplies of his favorite nibbles.
Succinctly, he instructed Cedric to drive the El Camino to the nearest Goodwill collection station and deposit the bundle of sand-filled clothes. From there, Cedric would top off the fuel tank and cruise directly to Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego. In one of Tijuana’s more dangerous neighborhoods, if the valuable vehicle were not first stolen out from under him, he would park it with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition to ensure its disappearance. He would walk to the nearest major hotel, arrange for a rental car, and drive back to Newport Beach well before morning. (As it was not yet 8:00 P.M., the doctor estimated that Cedric should be able to return by 3:00 A.M.) In Orange County once more, he would turn the rental car in at the airport and hire a cab to bring him home. Thereupon, he would go to bed, sleep two hours, and wake rested, with no recollection of having gone anywhere.
Some of these arrangements would be tricky, considering the late hour when he would arrive in Mexico, but with five thousand dollars packed in a money belt — which Ahriman provided — he should be able to get done what was necessary. And cash left less of a trail.
“I understand,” Cedric said.
“I hope I see you alive again, Cedric.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After Cedric departed, the doctor phoned downstairs to Nella Hawthorne and asked her to come at once to the master-suite sitting room from which her husband had just been dispatched on a Mexican adventure.
