“She disappeared a couple of months after she graduated. The family is well-to-do, they live in the Lafayette hills, and her father’s a lawyer, involved in the Pro Terra Party. You’ve heard of them?”
“Environmentalists? Aren’t they the ones who run candidates on a third-party basis?”
“Yes. Alicia was a good student until her senior year, then her grades fell off radically. I tried to work with her, but she wasn’t responsive. All she would tell me was that school didn’t matter any more, nothing did.”
“Did you ask her why?”
“Of course I did. But she refused to talk about it.”
“What about her parents-did you consult with them?”
“Her mother. She complained of Alicia’s unexplained absences on weekends and sometimes on weeknights.”
“Had she asked her daughter about those?”
“Yes-and she’d gotten the same response I did. After a while she didn’t press the issue. If anything, she seemed… intimidated by Alicia.”
“Intimidated? In what way?”
Koziol hesitated. “Alicia had the upper hand in the relationship. I think her mother felt that if she confronted her, she’d lose her.”
“And the father? Did you speak with him?”
“No. Lee Summers is too important a man to speak with a mere high-school counselor.”
“Did you consider sexual abuse as a factor in Alicia’s problems?”
“Oddly enough, I didn’t. I know it’s the first thing a counselor would suspect, but from her body language and the way she talked, it didn’t fit into the equation.”
“What did?”
“… Disillusionment. Something in her experience had opened her eyes to the world in a way a person of her age and development couldn’t deal with except by giving up.”
“I didn’t tell you before, but she was working as a prostitute in the city when she died.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. That’s giving up as much as any woman can, isn’t it?”
SHARON McCONE
T
I closed my eyes, pictured my right toe. Willed it to move.
Nothing.
Still nothing.
Frustration welled up again. Why was I putting myself through this? It was hopeless. I was trapped inside myself, a well-wrapped mummy, with no sensation except my raging emotions. And those…
Once, in a rented beachfront place on the island of Hawaii, Hy and I had been awakened by an earthquake. The house had shaken violently, gone still, then shaken again almost as hard. We looked outside, saw the sea was placid, but could feel its roiling potential. Fled to higher ground, along with all the neighbors.
The tsunami we’d feared never happened, although we later found out that we were within three miles of the quake’s epicenter at sea. But its innate rage and desire to destroy everything in its path charged the air, and a day later we cut our stay short and returned home.
Now a rage like that had invaded my body and threatened to consume what remained of my rationality.
What had happened to me? Where was the woman who had soared above the Sierras and Crater Lake, thrilled to controlled spins, loved and married a man whom some people, myself included, considered “still dangerous”? The woman who had braved a paramilitary encampment, a clandestine border crossing, a child rescue on an isolated Caribbean island?
Where was
Julia had said that Larry Peeples told his lover his parents were giving him a hundred thousand dollars to return home and learn the winery business; instead he was planning to run off with Ben Gold and the money. But that hadn’t happened.
Rae had identified the hooker who’d been stabbed in the alley off Sixth Street. She was the daughter of a well- to-do and politically connected East Bay family. Rae had notified the SFPD who, after verifying her information, would contact the parents. Rae hoped to meet with them tomorrow, but till then was pursuing leads about the father’s involvement in the Pro Terra Party.
The Pro Terra Party. Hy didn’t like them. They ran candidates for local office around the state on an environmental stance, but he was dubious as to their motives and actual commitment to the movement. A stealthy money and power grab cloaked in altruism, he suspected. They lost more often than they won, but they were making gains: their most notable success had been with the election of State Representative Paul Janssen of San Francisco.
It would be interesting to see what Rae reported tomorrow.
Nothing from Mick or Craig. Curious.
I was tired. Too many visitors in too little time. Too many things to absorb. Soon Hy would arrive for his evening visit. I’d rest till then.
No, I wouldn’t. Not until I tried again… and again… and again to make my toes move.
HY RIPINSKY
He was going to be late seeing Shar, but she would understand. The one thing that had remained constant through all of this was their mutual psychic connection. It had been strong from almost the first day they’d met, and while it may have faltered at times during their relationship, it now tugged at him, taut as wire. He knew it tugged at her, too.
All afternoon he’d been at home, on the phone and Internet, talking and e-mailing with friends and informants around the world. He’d run searches trying to connect any of the cases the agency folks were working with his wife’s shooting. No definite links, but a whisper here and there.
Hy got into his vintage blue Mustang, which was parked in the driveway, backed out, and flicked on the radio as he turned down the street.
News broadcast. Special report.
San Francisco Board of Supes President Amanda Teller and State Representative Paul Janssen had been found dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a lodge near Big Sur. Mystery surrounded the crimes: as yet there was no
