Split Second

commit. His condition’s listed as critical.”

Savich said, “And you’re wondering why a robber would shoot an old man in the back when all he’d have to do is maybe tap his jaw with his fist and take the bank-deposit bag.”

“Makes me wonder.”

“I’m trying to remember Thomas Wenkel’s exact behavior when he had the gun aimed at Mr. Patil that Tuesday night. Was he there to kill him, and just faked robbing the store? Hard to say. Of course, there was the woman—Elsa Heinz—waiting in the car. She sure came in fast, ready to kill everyone in sight. What do you have on her, Ben?”

“Elsa isn’t what you’d call a nice person. She’d been in and out of jail all of her adult life—robbery, hijacking, all sorts of scams. I haven’t found out how she and Wenkel got together.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it, Ben. Do you mind if I speak to Mr. Patil when he’s cogent? Speak to his kids and his wife?”

“He might not make it, Savich, but if he does, have at it. I can use all the help I can get on this.”

“I have this feeling Mr. Patil will pull through. I’ll keep in touch, Ben.”

“We can compare notes later.”

“You’ve got a guard on Mr. Patil?”

“Yes, I got it approved for a couple of days, at least. Officer Horne’s a young guy but smart, I’ve been told. He’ll keep the old man safe.”

Savich hoped very much that Mr. Patil, a nice man with photos of all his grandchildren and great- grandchildren stuffing his wallet, would be ringing up beer sales again sometime soon.

What were the chances of another random robbery in that neighborhood if the first shooting really was a robbery? And only one week later? Savich thought about coincidence. And he thought about death, always hovering close, and whoever knew when it would tap you on the shoulder?

It wasn’t a second robbery; he knew it.

CHAPTER 12

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Thursday evening

Lucy fit her grandmother’s beautifully carved key into the front door. It was a dark, cold night, winter making an early call, nearly midnight. She was tired and sad, and every couple of seconds she thought of her father and wanted to weep. At least she’d managed to get back to all her friends during the day, telling them she needed more time to herself, and moving herself into her grandmother’s house was good for her. Did they believe her? She hoped so.

She, Coop, Jack, Dane, and Ruth had visited The Swarm, a bar not too far from the Hoover Building that catered to federal cops, and they’d talked about Bundy and speculated endlessly about his daughter—who she was, who her mother was, what it was about her terrifying father that could help with the case. So far, she hadn’t tortured any of her victims, and there were other huge departures from Bundy Senior. The most important question was: Had she killed when she was younger? Dane had called Inspector Vincent Delion of the San Francisco PD, a homicide detective he knew personally, to see if they had any unsolveds, going back, say, fifteen years, that could possibly be her work.

Savich had told Lucy not to come in again until Friday afternoon. He said he wanted her to finish her moving, but what he really wanted was to give her more time on her own. All right, then, she could sleep in, and that meant she didn’t need to go to bed yet. She wanted to keep going through every scrap of paper in her grandmother’s study. Twenty-two years before, she wondered, had it been her grandfather’s study? She couldn’t remember.

At times she was tempted to convince herself that she’d misinterpreted what her father had said when he was dying, that it was a hallucination or a nightmare of some kind, and not a son witnessing his own father’s murder, by his own mother, but she’d known instantly it was the truth. Had he kept it a secret until the last moments of his life, when that long-ago horror had blasted into his mind? Would he ever have told her? She didn’t think so, despite the fact she was a cop, and maybe that was why—she was a cop. If he had told her, she would have had to decide whether to act on it, come what may. No, if he’d had final control of his mind, he’d have gone to his grave protecting his mother. And maybe himself? Had he agreed to keep quiet because he believed his mother was somehow justified in killing his father? Had her grandfather done something despicable? And did anyone else know? Her Uncle Alan, perhaps.

Lucy brewed herself some strong tea, swallowed two aspirin, a good way to prevent a hangover for her, and walked to the study, a large, high-ceilinged room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering three walls. The fourth wall was a huge sliding door that opened onto a small enclosed garden where her grandmother had placed a small round table with a bright red umbrella, and a single cushioned chair. Lucy remembered she’d spent a good deal of time sitting beneath that red umbrella on nice days, simply sitting there alone, reading there sometimes, enjoying the beautiful flowers. It seemed very strange, somehow not right, that all of this was to be hers now, as her father’s only heir.

She looked at the large desk. Three unexplored drawers to go, then she’d check again for any secret drawers or hidden spaces. The next drawers were filled with papers in neatly tabbed folders, just like the other drawers, but these tab names were very different from the banks, utilities, charities, and the like that had filled the others. No, these folder tabs read H. G. Wells, Tetra Time—whatever that was—and names of people she’d never heard of who turned out to be psychics, mystics, and science-fiction writers.

Lucy thumbed through the Tetra Time folder. It seemed her grandmother had culled a huge number of publications and books, from the conventional to the wild fringe, and thrown them all into these files. It was a surprise. Her grandmother had never spoken to her about an interest in such strange things. It didn’t seem like her, not her self-contained, serene grandmother. Were you a secret Trekkie, Grandmother?

Get a move on, time’s a-wasting. She couldn’t find anything that gave a clue about why her grandmother had murdered her husband.

Lucy pulled open the last big drawer. On top was a thick folder, untabbed, filled with articles about ancient types of magic that supposedly affected the passage of time itself. Magic? Time? Where had her grandmother found these things? She leafed through folders about people bending spoons, about speaking to a loved one on the other side, interviews with people who’d seen the famous white light before returning from the brink. She quickly looked through more folders about extraterrestrials, alien abductions, experiences with ghosts, hair-raising tales of all kinds. She wondered if her grandmother was losing it at the end. She thought of her father and wondered if he’d seen the white light before he’d died. Lucy shook herself. She remembered the old movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze and felt gooseflesh rise on her arms. She remembered now that her grandmother had spoken to her once about psychic sorts of things. She had asked Lucy if she ever felt the slightest hint of anything unusual. “Like what?” Lucy had asked. And her grandmother had said, “Maybe seeing unusual sorts of things about the future?” Did she ever know what people were thinking before they said it? Lucy had thought it nothing more than a game, and after she’d said no, there’d been no more unusual conversations with her grandmother, so she’d forgotten about it.

She finished looking through the last drawer, then searched behind each of them and under the desktop. Finally she sat back in the big desk chair. She’d found exactly nothing useful, only proof of her grandmother’s obsession with nearly every insane theory under the sun, and she still had absolutely no clue what had happened between her grandmother and her grandfather.

No matter. This was a very big house, with lots of hiding places, and that was enough to give her a headache, and hope. She was decided on doing this, and doing it alone. She couldn’t imagine telling any of her friends about this, or anyone else. She shuddered at the thought. If she found nothing, perhaps she could put it to rest. She yawned and looked at her watch, couldn’t believe it was two a.m. Time to pack it in.