Fear itself

of drugs, were only temporary; the rat inevitably returned, ten times hungrier than before.

If he’d had a gun, of course, he could have solved the problem with two shots and been back in Berkeley by midnight, but he’d thrown away his short-barreled.38 in horror six weeks earlier after coming within a whisker of using it to end a particularly virulent siege by the rat. Only the knowledge that Missy still needed him had kept him from putting a bullet through his brain; it wasn’t until he found himself kneeling by her bedside as she slept, trying to work up the courage to kill her first, that he’d come to his senses.

So: no gun. He’d have to wait the bald guy out, hope he left soon. If so, the game was on. If not-and it was entirely possible that Dorie was sleeping with the guy, she’d all but thrown herself at Simon back in June-Simon would have to wait until they were asleep, then bash and run, which was not his style at all.

But then again, being on the wrong end of a lethal injection wasn’t exactly his style either.

6

A cozy kitchen, a fresh-brewed pot of red Typhoo tea that contained enough caffeine to give a meth freak the jitters, good conversation with a fine-looking woman-there are worse ways to spend an evening, thought Pender.

“Why masks?” was his first question.

Dorie shrugged. “Quien sabe? I’ve been hypnotized, I’ve been regressed, I’ve had my past lives done-yeah, I know, welcome to California-and I still don’t have any idea. Ask a dozen shrinks, you get a dozen different stories. One says change or loss is the trigger, another one says trauma, another says there doesn’t have to be any trigger. Some say genetics, some say brain chemistry. There’s some evidence for that- phobics have greater blood flow on the right side of the brain, and an overactive amygdala.”

“What do you think? What does your gut tell you?”

“That it doesn’t matter why. Origin: irrelevant. All that matters is that I know that if I see a mask, I’m going to have these terrible feelings. I’m going to feel like I’ve slipped into a nightmare, like anything that’s possible in a nightmare is possible now. My heart will start pounding; I’ll get short of breath, hyperventilate. I’ll feel like I’m dying, or paralyzed, and I’ll know I’m going to make a spectacle of myself, maybe pass out and break my nose, which I’ve already done twice, as you may have guessed from the zigzag.” Dorie rubbed her nose ruefully.

“It’s not the masks I’m afraid of, mind you: it’s the anxiety attack, and the idea it could be triggered at any moment. One speaker at the convention described it as going around with a cocked gun; somebody else said a phobia is like a hole in your life that you could fall through at any time.”

“Tell me about the convention,” said Pender.

“Like I said in the letter, it was fantastic. Amazing. We had shrinks, we had symposiums, we had day trips. Everybody stayed in the Olde Chicago-it was luxe, Ed-first class all the way.”

“Must have been expensive.”

“That was the best part-it was sort of pay-what-you-can, and the PWSPD Association picked up the rest.”

“And the association is supported how? On dues?”

“Just contributions.”

“Must be some awfully wealthy phobics out there.”

“Between you, me, and the lamppost…” Dorie leaned forward; by dint of sheer willpower, Pender managed to keep his eyes from straying cleavage-ward. “…most of the expenses for the convention were underwritten by my friend Simon-the one who lives in the house he was raised in?”

“In Berkeley.” Pender just wanted to show her he’d been paying attention.

“Right. That’s Simon Childs, as in Childs Electronics. His grandfather started the company-I guess he’s got a trust or something. But he’s very cool about having all that money-nobody’s supposed to know he’s supporting the association. He just wants to be treated like everybody else.”

“Admirable. How long have you two known each other?”

“We met at the convention, kind of stayed in touch. He and his sister came down for a weekend around the end of June. She has Down syndrome-it’s so sweet the way he dotes on her.”

“Not to pry,” said Pender, “but were you two…say, more than just friends?”

“No, just friends.”

The reply was quick enough, but registered on Pender’s finely calibrated bullshitometer nonetheless. Maybe a spurned overture on either side? “You sure about that?”

Her eyebrows arched, her eyes turned a slightly darker shade of blue. Pender raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right. But there’s something you need to understand. There’s a rule of thumb in my business: If you want to find the predator, first find the herd. The herd was in Vegas, which means, assuming we have a serial killer on our hands-and right or wrong, at this point we’d be fools to assume otherwise-the chances are, oh, say about ninety-nine out of a hundred that he was at that convention, and about ninety-five out of a hundred that he was one of the attendees-otherwise he’d have stood out more.”

“So what you’re saying is, I already know the killer.”

“More than likely.”

“God, that’s spooky.”

“It’s also how we’re gonna catch him. And we are going to catch him-as these investigations go, this is going to be a slam dunk. It’ll take some manpower-we’ll have to interview each of the attendees, narrow the pool down to anybody who hasn’t got an alibi for…what were the dates again?”

“April twelfth, June fifteenth, and August seventeenth,” said Dorie without hesitation.

“Slam dunk, then,” said Pender, glancing at his watch. Eight-forty-five-he and Sid had a nine o’clock dinner reservation at Club XIX, the four-star restaurant at the Lodge that Sid had been salivating over all day. When Pender took out his cell phone to call a cab, though, Dorie wouldn’t hear of it; she insisted on driving him back to Pebble Beach herself.

“It’s the least I can do,” she told him, as she cleared two weeks’ worth of water bottles, sandwich wrappers, rags, old brushes, and empty paint tubes off the passenger seat of the old Roadmaster. “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” replied Pender.

“You listened, you gave me hope. That’s a lot.” Dorie slid behind the wheel, engaged in her usual struggle with the seat belt-they just didn’t make shoulder harnesses to fit tall gals with big boobs-and turned the key in the ignition. “C’mon, Mary-you can do it,” she urged. And Mary did it, turned right over. “Attagirl.”

“You named your car Mary?” As they drove through the dark wooded streets of residential Carmel, Pender finally managed to get his seat belt buckled-they didn’t exactly build them for somebody his size and shape, either.

“After Mary Cassatt. You know-the Impressionist painter. She’s so old now, though, I’m thinking about renaming her Grandma Moses.”

“Don’t do it,” said Pender. “Never rename a car-it’s supposed to be bad luck.”

“I thought that was boats.”

“Cars, too. My ex-wife got my old T-Bird in the divorce. Changed her name from Lola to Daisy-the car, that is. Totaled it three weeks later.”

“Was she hurt?”

“I told you, she was totaled.”

“Your wife, I meant.” Then Dorie glanced over, saw him grinning; she couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t half as homely when he smiled.

They had to stop at the Pebble Beach gate and tell the guard their business in order to avoid the seven-dollar riffraff tariff. “God, I hate this place,” muttered Dorie through clenched teeth.

“I take it you’re not a golfer.”

“No, I’m a painter. And these bastards think they own some of the greatest views in the world. Did you see the Lone Cypress today?”