water.
That's how it would be in the end too. That's how it would be for Weiss.
He started the car with a quick jerk of the key. He put it in gear roughly. He backed out over the dirt lot.
You arrogant so-dead fuck, he thought. I am coming for you.
Part Four
Shy Harbor
33.
Olivia Graves looked up from her desk when Weiss came to the office doorway. The sight of her made Weiss stop short on the threshold. There was a big window on the wall to her left. There was a lot of light-a sheet of warm afternoon light, late, clear desert light-sweeping across her. It smoothed her features nearly to nothing. So for a moment, Weiss thought she looked exactly like Julie.
Then she stood. She stepped around her desk, came toward him. 'Mr. Weiss?'
The illusion was gone. She didn't look like her older sister at all. He'd just expected her to. Maybe wanted her to.
In fact, Olivia was short and slender. Her features were small and sharp. Her hair was boy cut, parted on one side, brown, not Julie's flowing, startling red and gold. She wore a long green skirt and a white blouse. Not an unfriendly look but a little starched, a little unapproachable. It made Weiss feel underdressed, wearing only his slacks and his blue polo shirt. But he'd left his tweed jacket behind out at that weird house on the edge of the desert.
Anyway, he found Olivia attractive in a compact, efficient sort of way. Twenty-seven years old, as he knew from the newspaper stories. Trying to seem older, he thought. Trying to seem as if she weren't afraid of him, which touched him, made him want to take care of her, protect her from the wind and weather-which was pretty much the way he felt about most women most of the time.
They met in the middle of the room. He towered over her. His paunch alone dwarfed her. She offered her small white hand. His huge hand engulfed it. He looked down at her. He thought of the little girl waiting on the school doorstep with her big sister. Huddled there in the morning dark after their father hammered their mother to death. His sad, baggy eyes went soft for her.
But Olivia Graves's manner was clipped and businesslike. She gestured brusquely toward a leather sling chair near the wall across from the window. She marched toward another sling chair facing the first, her blocky heels knocking hard against the Yuma rug.
Weiss followed her to the chairs. He hated sling chairs. He always felt as if his big body were going to sink right through them and smack the floor. He waited for her to sit first, then worked himself down across from her, settling back carefully against the thin leather.
He took a quick glance around the room. The office was big. He was surprised. She was only an associate professor of psychology, but the office was downright spacious. Nothing much in it but the Yuma rug from the door to the blocky blond-wood desk. An upholstered swivel chair behind the desk, a bookshelf behind the chair. Jumbo- sized books with dark bindings; doctor-type books. That huge window on the far wall with a view of the campus, its green paths and gracefully rounded red-and-white buildings. Then, set apart against the opposite wall, these two chairs they were in and a glass coffee table beside them with a huge picture book on it about Native American art.
This, he realized, was the corner where Olivia did therapy and counseling. She had guided him to the chair where the students sat when they came to her homesick or lovelorn or pregnant or whatever the hell students were these days.
And Olivia Graves was in her psychologist chair. And she now made a psychologist-type gesture at him, an unreadable unfolding of the hands that might've been an invitation for him to begin or maybe not.
She had a lot of ways to defend her inner territory, this girl. The starched outfit, the clipped manner. Now this I'm-the-doctor routine.
'You know why I'm here, Dr. Graves,' Weiss said.
'Ms. Graves. On the phone, you said it was about my sister.'
'That's right.'
'I'm interested to know. How did you find me?'
'I find people,' said Weiss.
'That's an interesting job.'
'Sometimes.'
'I mean it's an interesting line of work to go into.'
Weiss smiled a little. 'So is yours.'
'And now you're trying to find my sister.'
'That's right.'
'Why? If you don't mind my asking.'
'There's a man looking for her-a bad guy, a contract killer. I want to stop him.'
'So it's really him you're looking for.'
'And her.'
'I'm confused. You're looking for both of them?'
She was sitting with her legs crossed, with her hands clasped on top of her knee. Her body was leaning toward him out of the sling. Her expression was caring, polite, inquiring. It was the whole psychologist package. She thought she could play him like one of her patients, then send him away with nothing. Weiss, in his protective concern for her, tried not to laugh.
'The man-the bad guy-who wants to find her,' he said. 'He's following me. When I find your sister, he'll make a move to get her. Then I'll take care of him.'
'You'll-take care of him?'
'That's right.'
'I see.' Her expression didn't change. She nodded, psychologist-like, considering. 'You want to use my sister as bait to catch this man.'
'If it comes down to that. But he'll find her eventually anyway. He has people all over the country. She'll make a mistake, walk down the wrong street. She'll have to live afraid every day-and eventually he'll find her.'
'So you're going to save her. You're going to rescue her from this bad man.'
'I'm going to take him out of the equation. Then she can live her life any way she wants.'
Olivia straightened her back, drew in a loud breath through her pert nose. 'I see.' More I-am-the- psychologist stuff. 'Just out of curiosity? How do I know you're not the bad guy? Just because you're you?'
'That and my white hat.'
She smiled blandly. 'Yes, but really: how do I know?'
'You know,' said Weiss. He tried to lean forward, but he was sunk too deep in the damned sling chair. 'You know exactly who I am and why I'm here. You know because your father would've called to warn you…'
'My father…?'
'…and because Julie-your sister, Mary-would've found a way to warn you too.'
If that shook Olivia Graves, she didn't show it. In fact, she tilted her head, narrowed one eye, and basically looked him over as if he were ranting, out of his mind. It was a hell of a smooth performance, assuming it was a performance at all.
'That's a very interesting fantasy,' she said. 'I take it you know my history, then.'
'Your father killed your mother, deserted you, and disappeared. Yeah, I know.'
'And you know I was raised in foster homes separate from my sister.'
'Yes.'
'And that my sister ran away shortly after that, almost fifteen years ago.'
