thing. Undercover agents' activities are classified information. But even if they weren't, I don't think Grant would have gone public with the story. He had reasons for not wanting his past too closely scrutinized.'
'You mean because of Jenny's baby?'
'That, and other things.' But I couldn't go into them at the moment because ahead I saw the outlines of Taylor's sign, and the entrance to the crushed-shell driveway. I turned the MG and coasted down into the parking lot.
My headlights washed over Mia Taylor. She stood in front of the restaurant, backlit by its beer signs, wearing a blue sweater that was many sizes too big for her. Before I brought the car to a stop she ran toward it.
'What're you doing here?' she exclaimed, her startled face appearing at the side window. Then she looked across me, saw Ross. 'Oh.'
I shut off the engine and we got out. 'Where's D.A.?' I asked.
'Gone. To the island. He took my babies with him.' I felt a sudden chill.
Ross came around the car. 'He's got little Mia and Davey?'
She closed her eyes and nodded. 'Why? Why would he take them out there?'
'I don't know.'
I asked, 'Have you called the sheriff?'
Her eyes flew open in panic. 'I can't! Like I told you, there's been lots of trouble with D.A. I'm afraid after this Salcido business, they'll shoot first, kill him, maybe the kids, too.'
She had a point. Ramon Salcido, a Sonoma Valley winery worker, had gone on a drug-and-alcohol-induced rampage the previous spring, leaving seven people dead, including his wife and two of his three young daughters. Area sheriffs' departments were now understandably more nervous than usual when it came to hostage situations involving children. And the situation with Taylor-a known substance abuser- was entirely too reminiscent of the Salcido case. 'Is D.A. armed?' I asked.
'The twenty-two we keep behind the bar is gone.'
Ross was looking around. 'Where is everybody? What happened to Jake and Harley?'
Mia said, 'They're over to Occidental-big dinner for this lodge they belong to. Just as well-there's nothing they'd like more than to blow D.A.'s head off.'
I glanced at Ross. She shrugged. I asked Mia, 'Is there a boat we can use?'
'Outboard tied up to the dock. D.A. took one of the rowboats. Does that sometimes, the damn fool, rowing around in the dark. I heard him cast off, went out to see what was going on. Then I heard my babies crying.'
'And you're sure he went to the island?'
'He had a Coleman lantern. I could see it until he got there and then it disappeared into the trees.'
I asked Ross, 'Can you pilot a boat?'
'Of course.'
'Good. Once I get those kids away from D.A. I'll want you to bring them back to shore, while I try to convince him to give himself up.' Quickly I glanced at Mia, regretting the way I'd phrased it. But she was staring off at the bay, probably searching for light from D.A.'s lantern. When I touched her arm, she started.
'We'll need some things,' I told her. 'Flashlights-the most powerful you've got. Blankets. A first-aid kit, if you have one.'
She nodded and set off for her cabin at a run.
Ross moved closer to me, said in a low voice, 'What do you think our chances are?'
I looked out at the dock, where a pair of lights shone fuzzily through the fog. Imagined the expanse of water beyond them, and the uncharted terrain of Hog Island. And wished for my gun, which I'd locked away that morning-hoping never to need it again after last night's shooting.
I said, 'Not real good, but we've got to risk it.'
Twenty-Five
I killed the stuttering motor as the boat scraped bottom off the island's shore. Ross jumped over the side, sloshing in the shallow water. I moved toward the bow, stepped out onto a flat rock, and together we hauled the boat up onto the beach. There was another vessel to our left: a blue rowboat that had seen better days. Ross reached for one of the powerful torchlights Mia had given us and went toward it.
She held the torch up, moving it from bow to stern. Then she bent, reaching for something inside the boat. She turned, her face furrowed with concern, and held the object aloft. It was a fuzzy white slipper, child-size.
I grimaced and reached under the seat of the motorboat for the other torch, then raised it and studied the fog- swept terrain. The island's rocky beach rose to jagged outcrop-pings; then the thick and tangled cypress and eucalypti started, covering it all the way to the top. I could see no light anywhere. All I could hear was the soughing of the branches, the lapping of small waves. Ross still stood by the rowboat clutching the slipper, scarcely breathing.
The engine's racket had prevented all but minimal conversation on the way over. Now I asked, 'Have you ever come out here?'
Although I'd spoken in a low voice, the sound carried, echoing. Ross jerked, said, 'Ssh!'
'For God's sake, he knows we're here by now. No way he couldn't hear that engine.'
'Sorry, I'm jumpy.' She moved closer to where I stood. 'No, I've never been here before. When I first came up from the city, D.A. was always trying to get me to come with him. But there was something about the way he talked about the place made me not want to do that.'
'What about the kids? Did he ever bring them?'
'Plenty of times, before these past few months when he got so strange that Mia told him he couldn't. They know the island as well as D.A. He said they would clamber all over it like little goats.'
'Well, that's something, anyway. It's not unfamiliar territory to them.'
'But in the dark… D.A. told me that it's rocky all the way to the top. There're trails, but some of them come to dead ends. Further up are big rocks, sort of like steps that were built for giants. Where he liked to go was a flat rock at the very top. He could look out through the trees, see the whole bay. He said…' She paused, shivering.
'He said?'
'He said he liked to lie on the rock and… imagine what it would be like to be dead and at peace.'
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind off the bay enveloped me. 'Then that's probably where he went. Let's see if we can find the right trail.'
The tide had gone out, but not long ago. The rocks underfoot were slick. I trained my torch downward so neither of us would slip. There were two trails starting at that part of the beach-one paralleling the shoreline, the other snaking up into the jagged rocks. We took the latter.
As we climbed, the smell of cypress and eucalypti became more pungent; the ground was carpeted in needles, making it easier to lose one's footing. I became aware of night noises now, a scurrying to one side; branches rubbing together; the rustling of birds in their nesting places. The wind was not as strong as it had been on the beach, but still cold. It brought with it the odor of brackish salt water and the fresher scent of the open sea, not too many miles away. At the base of a high outcropping I stopped, wiping fog-damp off my face with one hand, holding the torch aloft with the other.
Nothing but a sheer rock wall.
Ross came up behind me. I said, 'It looks as if this is one of the dead-end trails.'
'Shit! Better go back to the beach. We can try the other.'
We retraced the path we'd climbed on, Ross tripping once and nearly pitching headlong into a declivity. Passed the beached boats and began moving along the shoreline. Small waves sucked at the island's edges, lapped at the rocks, and washed up into the hollows between them. I lowered my torch once more, illuminating the treacherous ground.
And saw her…
Little Mia Taylor lay in a rocky depression that was partially filled with water, curled into a fetal position. She wore white pajamas printed with red and yellow and blue and green circus clowns, and one foot was bare. The other was encased in a fuzzy white slipper, the twin of the one Ross had found in the rowboat.
