His face felt frozen into stone. Smiling used all his will, so did keeping his voice normal. “Very nice.” Somehow he also forced out a polite greeting to the woman.
She nodded, murmuring a reply lost in the din of music and voices.
At a loss what to say or do next, he retreated…held his radio to his ear and shouted at Anna, “I’ve got to go. You all enjoy the reception.”
In the car he leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. “You’re totally screwed up,” Serruto had said. He was…but where did he go wrong? His mind churned. The shark’s tooth and postmark led him here. That was Lane’s picture in the high school yearbook and in Anna’s photo album. How could Mada not be Lane?
Someone rapped on the passenger window. He looked over to see Mada outside. Though he just wanted to get the hell away, he ran down the window. “May I help you?”
She smiled. “I’m hurt, Inspector; don’t you don’t recognize me?”
The voice jolted him like electricity. Lane’s voice! He peered more closely at her. Those were Lane’s eyes in that travesty of a face.
Before he could find his voice, she climbed into the car. “Didn’t you come all this way to find me? Now you have. Where do we go from here?”
17
Lane’s question had a simple answer…San Francisco, so she could stand trial. But he found himself saying, “That’s an interesting makeup job.”
She sniffed. “Well, I can hardly come home looking eighteen, can I. The old-face prosthetics used for movies don’t look real in everyday light. Faking a bad facelift works, though. People don’t want to look too closely. I didn’t recognize you, either, until Mama introduced you. I could hardly believe it when she told me about you showing up in Baumen, let alone her bombshell that you had joined the local police. I had to come home and see for myself. How did you find Baumen?”
“I’ll tell you all about it on the way back to San Francisco.”
Her forehead twitched in a movement that without the restricting prosthetic might have been raised brows. “Are we going back to San Francisco?”
He made his voice flat. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Mossman and Adair, and my attempted murder.”
She laughed. “Really? Point one, I did not try to kill you.”
“Yes you did.”
She considered…shrugged. “Well, yes, I did…but then chose to let you live.”
“You left me bleeding to death.”
“Not to a permanent death.”
Anger flared in him. “You
“Of course. Point two, Inspector…how will you take me back?”
He frowned. How did she think? “There’s a warrant for your arrest. Extradition will be arranged and you’ll — “
She hissed, interrupting him. “Are you that dense? I mean, by what means will you force me to accompany you and how will you imprison me: rose stem handcuffs? A cell with garlic on the bars? May I remind you that anything used against me hurts you equally, if you can even convince your law enforcement colleagues to agree to such nonsense.”
He stared at her. What an idiot he was…so focused on finding her he never considered the problems afterward! He could not just let her walk away, though. There must be a way to handle her.
That fish symbol torn from Mossman’s neck suggested an answer. “Maybe I can wrap your wrists in a rosary.”
She snorted. “Superstition.”
Superstition? Before she snorted, Garreth caught the beginning of a flinch. The crucifix Anna wore, another on the wall of her livingroom wall, and that picture of the Virgin Mary in the diningroom told him Lane had been brought up Catholic…and her involuntary flinch said its symbols affected her.
“Open your eyes, Inspector. You can’t arrest or try me. Our kind are beyond the reach of mere human laws.”
“No.” He shook his head. No one could be beyond the law. Without law there was only chaos.
Opposing feelings warred in him…his belief in justice against the obvious impossibility of following proper procedure. He must violate the latter to accomplish the former, and that itself violated what his badge said he stood for. He would not be acting with proper authority.
His radio crackled. “
Reflex made him respond… “10-4.”…but he hesitated with his hand on the ignition key. How could he take the call and still deal with Lane?
“I believe you’re being paged,” she said. “Since I’m sure you don’t want me out of your sight, why don’t I ride along.” She buckled her seat belt.
She obviously saw his uncertainty. Her lip curled. “How paranoid of you. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to try something in my hometown, where everyone sees everything? Where my
He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “How do you eat?”
“In Hays. Even during the holidays there are young men around the college campus eager to pick up an attractive girl and demonstrate what superstuds they are. I wear my own face there, of course.”
“Do you kill any of them?”
Her eyes went cold. “You can be so tediously one-track. No, I don’t kill them. Hays isn’t that far from home. Now, let’s talk about something more interesting…like the senses.” She leaned her head out her open window and blew. The steam of it swept away behind them. “Fairy wreaths my cousin Vicky used to call this. I think the temperature’s near freezing.”
He thought so, too, feeling the tires want to slide at a stop sign.
“I used to hate cold. Now it doesn’t bother me. I’m not crazy about heat, but can certainly bear it better than before. Don’t you find that true? And doesn’t the world have so many more odors since crossing over? Isn’t it also wonderful being able to see in the dark?”
Questions he truthfully had to answer
The vandalism became immediately obvious…a smashed jack-o-lantern halfway up the driveway with a dark substance spreading from it toward the street. He got out. “Are you going to wait in the car?”
Lane smiled…more a grimace with that face. “Of course. We have so much yet to talk about.”
Her amiability raised the hair on his neck. She must have something in mind for him.
Trying to guess her plan, Garreth barely listened to the victim while they surveyed the driveway. His flashlight showed the substance as red; his nose identified it as paint. Latex, he thought, squatting down and picking at one edge. It might just peel off, especially with damp concrete under it.
Then a name Haffener said rang a bell in his brain, Marvin Jacobs. He stood. “Two weeks ago Mr. Jacobs was the victim of vandalism, too. Someone scratched ‘bastard’ on the hood of his car outside the Cowboy Palace.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” An answer that came too quickly.
Garreth caught Haffener’s gaze and violated his freedom from self-incrimination. “Why did you key Jacobs’ car?”
