'Well, I'd hate to go more than ten miles.'
'Will they slow you down much?'
'After the first five, yes.'
'That's all right, then; it's only four to Tyler's.'
'You want me to run to Tyler's Barn?'
'For Christ's sake, Martinelli, wake up. You heard her; she was seen at one and at some time before six. We have to know if she could have made it on foot to Tyler's to pick up a car, driven by car to the Donaldson house in Palo Alto, snatched Samantha Donaldson between three and three-fifteen, and made it back here to see Dodson by six.'
'Leaving the body in the car, or carrying it with her?' Hawkin's shriveling look went a long way to explain his ferocious reputation among his colleagues. Kate felt three feet tall.
'In broad daylight?'
'Good,' she said gamely. 'It saves me from having to carry forty pounds back up the hill with me. Where will I find you?'
'Probably at Tyler's. I'll cheer for you as you go past.'
'Thanks. You can buy me a pizza afterwards, to replace the calories.'
'And a big glass of goat's milk.'
'Come to think of it, I'm busy tonight, very busy. Here, take my jacket and stick it in the truck, would you? I'll drop it in the mud if I try to carry it. And the shoulder holster too, it'll kill me to run in it.' She took off the restricting leather harness, retrieved her gun. 'I'll take this in my bag. You going to talk to the Dodsons?'
'First on my list. Also, I'll get Trujillo started on the cars, see if we can find who was up here that day, have a chat with Mr. Tommy Chester and maybe another talk with Tyler.'
'Have fun.' Casey slung the shoulder strap of her heavy bag across her chest, aware that it made her look like an advertisement for bras, and did a few leg stretches before setting the chronometer on her Christmas watch (alarm clock, the time in London, Sydney, and New Delhi, and an unreadable face, just like Dick Tracy), and then set off carefully down the rough and slippery track.
In the house on the hill Vaun Adams heard the old fire wagon cough into life and lumber off. In another minute or two she moved at last. She opened her eyes, took her hand away from her mouth, scrubbed the palms of her hands slowly up and down her trouser legs, and finally stood up, deliberately, as if her body ached all over. Inevitably, she moved to the two easels, touched the smooth handle of a squirrel-hair brush lightly in a gesture of taking bearings, and stood before the nearly finished figure of the agonized mother. The artist's face was without expression, but the tendons in her neck seemed exaggerated, and when her right hand reached out automatically to mix the drying paints on the glass slab, the fingers were unsteady against the handle of the palette knife. She drew back her hand and held it up in front of her face, fingers spread and still trembling. Her eyes studied the hand curiously, examining in minute detail the back of it, then the palm and the softness of the wrist, then the back of it again, the webs, the knuckles, before they looked through the fingers and focused on the painting behind. The hand dropped and as of its own volition, without the eyes looking down, reached out for the tube of cadmium red. She flicked off the cap with her thumb and squeezed a huge dollop out on top of a blue that had taken her half an hour to mix. She dropped the tube and, still without looking, seized a random brush, a large one, and scooped up the blood-colored pigment. She carried it to the face in front of her and stopped, holding it a fraction of an inch from the canvas. Her hand was rock steady now, but the sound of her breathing was suddenly harsh in the room. Thirty seconds, a minute, and abruptly she straightened and put the brush down onto the palette. She scrubbed her palms again down the front of her thighs and glanced at the table next to her, grimaced at the pool of red, and set about carefully to rescue what she could of the laboriously achieved blue tint.
When her face came up again it had changed. Her eyes went to the unfinished woman, and her hand, no longer disconnected but as a part of her, went again to the bundle of brushes and chose one. She rubbed the white bristles into the edge of one of the globules of paint, rose up onto her toes, and reached out for the painting.
8
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Al Hawkin stood watching until Casey Martinelli's nice firm backside disappeared behind some trees, and then he turned to the wide spot up the Road where Detweiler waited in the muddy wagon. Thank God she's not my type, he thought—no strains there on Hawkin's Rules of Order, Law One: Thou shall not get involved with a female colleague. Two, no, three years ago in Los Angeles he'd been assigned a lady whose long legs and blond curls had been painfully distracting to work next to. He'd finally gone to the man in charge, and a few weeks later, when she was transferred with a promotion, he was freed from Law One and had found her distractions a source of pleasure rather than discomfort. This one, though, would be no problem—no chemistry. Too short, too dark, too well muscled. Wonder if she lifts weights? He climbed up into the car.
'You can take me to the Dodsons now.'
'Where'd she go?' asked Detweiler, puzzled.
Hawkin looked at him blandly.
'Downhill. The Dodsons?'
'Just up the Road, about half a mile.' He ground the engine into life and coaxed it into the lowest gear, and the vehicle set off phlegmatically up the pitted road. 'Great thing, this old gal. Just point her in the right direction and she'll climb right over everything, feels like. Ever see that
Worse than a taxi driver, thought Hawkin morosely as the man chattered away. That's another thing about Martinelli—she doesn't chatter. A person can think around her. Perhaps she wouldn't be such a burden as he'd originally thought. He pictured her setting off down the Road with her bag strap slung between her breasts, muddy water flying at every step, and wondered how she would get on.
Kate was getting on slowly but not steadily and with increasing annoyance. The Road seemed to be crawling with people, all of whom wanted to know what she was doing, what had happened, where was her car, or, in the case of the various police, if she wanted a ride to Tyler's. She shut off her ticking chronometer three times in the first mile, until finally she just decided to give a cheery wave and keep running. Her shoes were totally inappropriate to the job and would probably be ruined, her pant legs clung up to her knees, and after threatening all day it finally started raining, gently, a mile before the gate. When she hit the final quarter-mile straightaway where the road dropped through the meadow, she stopped abruptly. She had totally forgotten about the press. There must have been thirty cars camped across the Road from Tyler's Barn and even more cameras waiting to capture her bedraggled, sweaty, filthy self on film for all the Bay Area to feast their eyes upon. One of Trujillo's county cars was just edging through the gate. She ducked back around the corner, switched off her timer, and greeted it wetly when it appeared. Trujillo himself was at the wheel, with Tyler beside him. Trujillo wound down the window.
'What happened to the fire wagon?' Tyler asked, echoing the cry that had followed Kate for the last four miles, and from Trujillo came its mate, 'Where's Hawkin?'
'Paul, can I talk with you for a minute?' He hadn't spent the morning sloshing around in the mud, she thought in disgust as he joined her beneath a sheltering tree, though with the slick soles on those shoes it's only a matter of time before that nice gray suit ends up in the mud. The thought cheered her considerably, and she smiled sweetly through the drips that ran down her face.
'If you don't have any urgent business up the hill would you mind going back to Tyler's so I can pick up my car? Hawkin's got me doing a timing test, round trip to the Donaldson house, but I really don't want my mother to open her newspaper and see her little girl looking like a mud slide survivor.'
'Sure, no problem. We were just checking on a couple of my people, it can wait five minutes more.'
'Look, I should tell you, Hawkin's going to want to know every car that was out of Tyler's shed on Monday, and then he's going to have every one of them gone over for traces. If you haven't started on the cars yet, you'd better do so.'
'Thanks for the tip.' They turned back to the car.
'Hello, Mr. Tyler. No, I'll sit in the back, it's all right. Mr. Tyler, I hope you don't mind turning back to the barn for a minute? I really couldn't face those reporters like this.'
'Happy to. How—'
