barrier. He stood there, half-hidden by the bulk of the black Escalade, tugged on the padlock, aimed his gun at it and fired a round, tugged it again, then ran to the smaller pedestrian gate, and found it padlocked, too.
Beale climbed back into his SUV, put it into reverse so he could swing it around, then backed it into the gate. The iron gate gave a musical sound as the chain snapped and the gate's wheels jumped off their track, but it didn't open. Jane moved toward the vehicle in the dark. Richard got out, stepped on the front bumper, walked over the hood to the roof of the SUV, and prepared to jump over the gate to the street.
Jane moved into position in the bushes a few yards from his vehicle, where she had hidden earlier. 'Where is she, Richard?'
He turned toward her voice, trying to make out her shape in the darkness. 'Sybil shot her. It was an accident. She was trying to get away. '
'Where's the baby?'
'It died when she did. This was all for nothing.' He turned toward the gate again.
'Richard! Don't!'
He jumped from the roof of the SUV toward the pavement on the outside of the gate, and Jane fired two rounds. As he dropped, the muscles in his legs turned limp and unresisting. When he landed he collapsed and lay still beyond the gate.
Jane stepped to the small pedestrian gate, unlocked the padlock and took off the chain, slipped out to the street and knelt beside Richard. She felt his carotid artery, but could detect no pulse. She saw that the side of his head was wet, looked more closely, and realized that one of her shots had passed through his temple. She moved to his feet, bent and grasped his ankles, dragged him inside the gate, and left him hidden from the street by the tall hedge.
She looked back at the huge, dark house, and began to move to the area near the glass door at the back of the house. Claudia Marshall was lying on her back as she had last seen her. Her eyes were fixed, gazing sightless up at the sky, and her mouth had fallen open.
Jane stepped to the glass door and looked into the big room. Steve Demming was in exactly the same position as he had been in before. She quietly slid the door open and stepped into the hallway. She made her way down the hall to the room where she had left Sybil Landreau. She pushed the door open and stood back, but there was no sound or movement. Sybil was still lying on her side near the wall. Jane stepped in and touched the woman's throat, trying to find a pulse, but she was dead, too. Jane closed the door again and went up the hallway.
As Jane was walking across the living room toward the sliding door, she heard a sound. She whirled and aimed her gun at the man on the floor. 'You're alive.'
'Help me,' said Steve Demming. His voice was strained and weak, but she could hear him.
'Toss your gun so you can't reach it.'
He flipped his wrist and the gun slid a dozen feet on the bare floor. 'Help me.'
'You need to help me first.'
'Get an ambulance. There are no phones in the house.'
She understood. He had brought no phone because if he had made or received a call, it would prove where he was while Jane was being killed. 'Tell me about Christine.'
'I can tell you where she is.'
'Her body?'
'No. That day, when she tried to get away, this house was already set up like a damned hospital. The Beales had brought a doctor from Mexico to deliver the baby, and a nurse to take care of it. They were still here a week later. And Ruby Beale is a nurse, too—retired. After Sybil shot Christine, they were all over her in five seconds. She's alive.'
35
It was already nearly ten in the morning. The sun was bright and hot enough to burn off the protective haze from the ocean. The drive to the Mexican border seemed longer than Jane had imagined it. To her, San Diego had always seemed to be right on the border. But the wealthy parts where she had been spending much of her time had their faces turned to the north. Mexico was present only in the Indian faces of the people who worked in the restaurants and stood at the bus stops. Now, as she drove south on Interstate 5 and then through National City, Chula Vista, and Palm City, she began to see signs advertising attractions in Mexico and brokers who sold Mexican auto insurance to tourists. She pulled off at Palm Avenue and bought a policy. She knew she would never file a claim, but if she was in an accident she didn't want to be detained while the Mexican police sorted things out. A few minutes after that she reached San Ysidro.
Jane took her place in one of the seven lanes of cars waiting to cross the border. She read all of the signs and watched the movement of the cars on both sides of her, trying to be patient and calm because patience and calm were the things that customs agents on every border looked for. Jane had no experience at the southern border, but like most people in western New York, she had crossed the Canadian border frequently. This morning she was dressed in clothes that would make her identical to the hordes of female American tourists crowding the border. She wore a pair of expensive blue jeans, a long-sleeved white blouse, running shoes that showed she was expecting to be doing some walking, big sunglasses, and a baseball cap. She had her Alexandra Crowell identification in a worn wallet at the top of her purse, ready to show the customs officers.
The cars ahead didn't seem to be moving at all, but one at a time the ones at the row of customs kiosks changed. The people inching forward to the kiosks didn't seem worried, but they probably weren't carrying guns and ammunition and ten different sets of bogus identification. When she was given the wave to pull forward she took her turn with the Mexican officers. One of them came to her window.
Jane kept her face relaxed and blank, but looked at him attentively. He glanced at her for less than a second before he waved her into Tijuana and turned his eyes toward the next car.
Jane moved ahead. It had taken over two hours to get through the jam and into Mexico. She wanted to get out of the vicinity of the border, where the traffic was thick, but the traffic came with her and stayed with her— mostly in front of her—down Avenida Revolucion. Mexico was crowded. The sidewalks were moving streams of people. There were hundreds of small stores and stalls and people selling everything—trinkets, textiles, leather, food. People who were obviously Americans elbowed one another to get closer to displays of brightly painted wooden objects. There were nightclubs, bars, and hotels, and in front of many of them, stalls that seemed to represent all of the great profusion of objects that existed and could be sold by one person to another.
As she made it onto Boulevard Agua Caliente the traffic thinned, and she dared to lift her eyes from the road to look around her more often. But as the sense of crowding eased, she was shocked by the sight of the endless hills on both sides, covered with the small cottages and shacks of poor people, most of them probably squatters, since it was hard to imagine pieces of land being cut into such small parcels. They went as far as she could see, and beyond.
By the time she was away from the border, many of the cars had pulled away onto Route 10 along the ocean toward Rosarito and Ensenada, and she felt a bit less hemmed in. But being on this side of the border worried Jane. Everything was unfamiliar and took extra seconds to interpret. She had seen not only policemen in the area close to the border, but also small contingents of armed soldiers at various corners, watching the passing cars. She wasn't sure what to expect of them. The crowds of people everywhere—half of them Americans—made her feel a bit less worried about standing out. Her long black hair might make an eye passing over a crowd include her with the Mexicans, but she didn't speak Spanish, so the impression was only of value if she kept moving and didn't talk.
She knew she was going to have a difficult time finding the building she was searching for, a hard time getting in, and a hard time getting out. As she moved along Boulevard Agua Caliente, she began to see some of the things Steve Demming had told her to look for. There were whole blocks of pharmacies. People who were obviously Americans, most of them elderly, came in and out carrying large shopping bags. There was even a charter bus parked on a side street with its motor running.
Now she moved into the part of the district that she had been watching for. There were medical and dental offices in every space of each block. There were signs offering lap band surgery, tummy tucks, breast and buttock implants, collagen treatments, botox injections, face-lifts, liposuction. The larger buildings were all called
