Walker looked up, but he was too close to the house to see into any of the upper windows. He went back to the tennis court to see if he could detect any sign that someone was awake upstairs and had not heard the door. He stood near the net and looked up, but he could see no glow of flashlights or candles. He tried using his own flashlight, shining it in the upper windows to cast a light on the ceiling, but he detected no shadow of a person looking out to see what he was doing.
As he lowered his light, it shone on the grass. He brought it back, then moved it from side to side. There was a long depression where the grass had been crushed. He moved his light a few feet to the right and picked up a second depression—tire tracks. He tried to fathom the sight. Someone had driven a car back here? Maybe the home owner had asked the appraiser to use the utility vehicle he drove to move or carry something for him. But then Walker remembered that here, too, there was only one set of tracks. Whatever had come this way had not come back.
He picked up the parallel tracks again on the far side of the tennis court, and followed them. They led down a broad gravel path through a garden, then to another rectangular expanse of pavement. He moved closer and directed his light over it. It wasn’t pavement. It was the cover of a swimming pool.
He let his light move along the edge of the pool cover. It was the kind with an electric motor that turned a reel to pull it back into a wooden housing at the end of the pool, and wheeled guides on a track at the edges. But what caught his attention was that the cover was clean. He looked around. The pool was in a protected spot below the hill, but the cover should have been plastered with wet leaves and trash and mud like everything else. It must have been rolled up in its housing during the storm and rolled out afterward. There had been no electricity, so someone had pulled it out by hand. He stared at the pool cover for a moment.
He stepped to the end of the pool, dreading what he was going to find but not sure what it was. He knelt to grasp the bar that held the cover and managed to push it a couple of feet away from the deck. He picked up his flashlight and trained it down into the water.
The light played along the hood of a black Mercedes sedan. He went down on his elbows, aimed the light again, and sucked in a breath. There were two bodies. The man in the back seat had floated upward, and all Walker could see of him from this angle was a leg that had drifted out of the open window, the pant leg halfway up the calf, so his shoe and sock and a length of white skin were visible. The woman was held in the front passenger seat by her seat belt, sitting there with her dead eyes staring ahead.
Walker quickly stood and yanked the cover back. He turned to look around him, not because he expected to see something else but because he hoped he would not. He didn’t know whether to keep the light on or turn it off, so he flicked it off and felt worse, then pushed the switch on again. He walked up the path quickly, his head swiveling from side to side in an attempt to see all around him at once. When he made it to the tennis court, he broke into a run.
He reached the street, got into the car, and drove a mile or more, searching for a police car, a fire truck, any vehicle that looked as though it belonged to someone in authority, but he saw nothing. This area had not been hit hard, and he knew the emergency vehicles must be in other neighborhoods. He drove on, feeling more and more desperate, but then to his left, down a long, straight avenue, he saw a faint glow on the pavement: electric lights. He turned and drove toward the glow.
It was a large building with a few lighted windows. As he came nearer, he saw that there was a big set of letters along the top of the building that were not illuminated. He picked out the word hospital. Of course that was what it would be. They all had emergency generators. He turned up the driveway and into a lot, then ran toward a lighted doorway.
The automatic doors didn’t work, but he pushed one open and stepped into chaos. There were people on gurneys in the hallway with IV stands set up beside them, nurses and orderlies rushing back and forth, people who wore dirty clothes and fresh white bandages, children crying, old people sitting on floors because there were no chairs. Down the hall in the lobby, he saw what he had been looking for, the dark blue uniform of a policeman. Walker hurried toward him with such speed and determination that the cop’s body went tense.
Walker said, “I just found two murder victims.”
The cop looked into Walker’s eyes for about two seconds, then picked his radio off his belt and began to talk.
It was four hours later when a police car finally dropped Walker off back at the hospital. He had taken one set of policemen to the pool and shown them what he had found, then waited while they broke into the house and told him that they had not found Fred Teller inside. After that it had been a long night of waiting in the back seat of a police car, then waiting in the station, then waiting for another police car to take him back.
While he was driving his rental car back to the McClaren agency, the lights began to come on. At first the streets were dark, and then there was a sudden flickering around him, and the street lamps came on, not all at once, but with a brightening that shot along the straight stretch of road ahead like a row of dominoes falling. A few seconds later, other circuits came on in random groups. Lights that had been on when the power died all came back—upper windows, neon signs and fluorescents in closed stores, alarm systems that now clanged and hooted along the empty streets. Traffic signals that had been dead for two days suddenly began to blink on and off.
He turned into the driveway at the McClaren’s office, snatched Fred Teller’s list off the seat, and ran into the building. People who looked as though they had been asleep were standing up and moving toward desks, a few of them looking around and picking up papers off the floor as though they had not noticed them before. Walker saw Evans come out of the hallway that led to his office, putting on his suit coat and looking pleased.
Walker hurried up and grasped his arm. “Are the phones working?”
Evans turned and led him back down the hall. “I’m not sure yet. Did you find him?”
Walker’s mind had gone so far beyond the surprise of it that for a second the question struck him as insane. “I’m afraid I didn’t. The police are looking now. I’ve got to try to make a call.”
Evans stopped and looked back at Walker, but Walker dodged by him and hurried ahead. Walker stepped into Evans’s office and reached for the telephone, but as he did, he heard a ringing in the main office, and then a half- ironic cheer from the people gathered there. He dialed the number of the McClaren’s office in San Francisco. It rang twice, and then a pleasant female voice said, “You have reached the office of McClaren Life and Casualty. We’re sorry, but all—” He hung up.
He sat at Evans’s computer terminal, typed in Joyce Hazelton’s e-mail address, and began to type.
“URGENT, URGENT, URGENT for anyone in the McClaren’s office, from John Walker in Miami.”
Walker moved his finger down Fred Teller’s list until he found the address, then turned to the screen again.
To his surprise, the screen was not empty. It said, “John, this is Joyce. Go ahead.” She was there.
His heart beat hard as he typed, “Have any payments been requested or authorized for policy number HO-6 135834, to Mr. and Mrs. Michael Cosgrove of Palm Beach?”
He waited, aware that Evans was reading the screen over his shoulder, then conscious that Evans was staring at him, waiting for an explanation that he didn’t have the time or energy to give, because it would divert his concentration. There was motion on the screen again.
“Yes. Claim received by fax via Tampa for limit of policy. Authorized for payment by Frederick G. Teller, appraiser. Check cut and sent.”
Walker typed his response. “Stop payment ASAP.” He hesitated for a second, then typed, “Get Stillman.”
21
“Walker. Get up.”
Walker opened his eyes and looked around him. The office was a momentary surprise, but his memory came back. It was daylight, and there were phones ringing. Standing near the open door was Stillman.
Walker sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes. “How did you get here so fast?”
Stillman said, “I didn’t waste any time because I heard it was you that rubbed my lamp.”
Walker stood. “Yeah. That was me.” He said, “Here’s what happened. I was out looking for—”
“I know what happened.” Stillman looked at his watch. “It’s nearly four o’clock. Time to go.”
Walker put on his coat and pulled one end of his tie to bring it back up to his neck, then sat down on the
