“I never said that.”
“How about getting me in on the surveillance?” Lauren suggested, her face lighting with excitement. “I could-”
“Give it a rest, Van Owen.”
“Just thought I’d ask.” Lauren dropped her pen and notepad into her purse. “You realize you’re taking a big chance.”
“If we were watching someone, which I’m not admitting, and we were trying to get him to make a mistake, where’s the risk? The guy’s going to do it again anyhow.”
“I’m not referring to that. There’s no we about this, is there? It’s you, Kane. You’re acting on your own, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re going way out on a limb here.”
“I’ll be fine. But thanks for your concern.”
“Why, Kane?”
I rose from the table. “Let’s just say I’ve never been much of a team player. Good luck, Van Owen.”
“You too, Kane. You’ll need it.”
Later that night, once Allison and Nate had gone to bed, I pulled a large cardboard box from the back of the bedroom closet. After retiring to the kitchen, I sat at the table and began reviewing a jumble of family photos, meticulously going through a Kodak chronicle of the Kane family history. Despite best intentions, there were hundreds of pictures that had never found their way into an album, most of them shots taken before we’d gone digital. Working steadily, I occasionally selected a print, found a corresponding negative, and placed them in one of three stacks before me. I had progressed to Nate’s fifth birthday when the phone rang.
“Kane,” I said, lifting the receiver.
“Hi, Dan,” said Catheryn. Although she and I had continued playing phone-tag, we had spoken only once since our last argument, and then our conversation had quickly degenerated to strained truce involving only the polite transference of news and updates on the children. In keeping with my promise to Allison, as well as being reluctant to broach the subject while Catheryn was still in Europe, I had sidestepped discussing the revelations made to me at the cemetery by our children-simply informing Catheryn that Allison and Nate had something important to tell her when she returned. Sensing my evasion, Catheryn had withdrawn even more, and our chilly exchange had once more ended on a bad note.
“Hello, Kate,” I said, setting down a picture I’d been studying. I picked up another, a shot taken on a beach in Cancun the year of Allison’s birth. It depicted a considerably younger me sporting a tastelessly loud Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and a Dodgers cap with the brim turned to the rear. Catheryn, her arm around me, had on a skimpy black bikini and looked great, even though it had barely been months since the delivery. Both of us wore carefree smiles that hearkened back to happier times.
“How are you?”
“Busy. You still in Paris?”
“London. We arrived Monday. We have one more performance here. After that we’re on to Brussels, then Amsterdam, and finally back to London for one more booking and then our flight home next Sunday.” Catheryn spoke rapidly, as if fearing any silences in our conversation.
Recognizing her nervousness, I felt a surge of sadness. “How’s the tour going?” I asked, struggling to keep up my end of the conversation.
“All right. I’m tired, though. Ready to be home.”
“Any change in the time I’m picking you up at the airport?”
“That’s why I’m calling. There’s been a snag in the reservations. Half the group will be taking a later connecting flight out of Dallas/Fort Worth than originally scheduled. I’m not sure which flight I’ll be on.”
“Call when you know.”
“It may be a last minute thing. I suppose I could telephone when I arrive in Dallas. Or maybe I’ll just catch a ride home with one of the other members.”
“Arthur, for instance?”
“I haven’t asked him, but-”
“I’ll pick you up,” I said brusquely.
“Fine. I’ll see you then. Goodnight, Dan.”
“Goodnight, Kate.”
32
Congestion at John Wayne International Airport had been unusually bad that evening, even for a Wednesday. Worse, an accident had snarled southbound freeway traffic, increasing Victor Carns’s return trip home from the Orange County airport by over an hour. Nonetheless, the delay had barely dampened his spirits.
And why should it? he thought as he wheeled through the wrought-iron gates of his Coto de Caza estate. Everything went perfectly. It would take more than a traffic jam to ruin things tonight.
After rolling into the garage and pulling to a stop, Carns revved the engine, enjoying the throaty roar of his most recent acquisition, a V-12 Lamborghini Murcielago. Moments later he twisted off the ignition, raised the distinctive jack-knife “Lambo” car door, and climbed from behind the wheel. Ducking back into the cockpit, he flipped the luggage compartment release. Whistling cheerfully, he walked to the front of the half-million-dollar red exotic and withdrew his flight bag from the wedge-shaped trunk. With a quick tug, he pulled off the OMA/SNA airline tag and tossed it into a trash can on his way into the house. Once inside he turned off the security system, a precaution he used reluctantly, and then only rarely. The possibility of an intruder pawing through his secrets was unthinkable, but Carns also knew that having the police show up at his home when he wasn’t there could prove fatal.
Deciding that unpacking could wait, Carns left his bag at the bottom of the stairs and strode to his office. Ignoring a stack of faxed reports and newsletters that had accumulated in his absence, he crossed to his trading desk and flipped on the TV. Smiling, he settled into his chair and shoved a disc into a playback console hooked to the set.
Carns had recorded the newscast earlier that afternoon, prior to leaving for the Omaha airport and his flight home. At that point neither CNBC nor CNN had picked up the murder, but KETV, an Omaha ABC affiliate, had. Impatiently, Carns shuttled through several commercials before finding the newscast. John Hall’s death was the lead story.
Carns turned up the sound.
“… the death in his home early this morning of United Western Packers executive John Hall, long an icon in the Nebraskan cattle community. Authorities have thus far declined to comment on the circumstances of Hall’s death, but sources close to the investigation have indicated that it may not be ruled accidental…”
Recalling Hall’s final moments, Carns rocked back in his chair. He had been wrong about Hall’s having made other recordings of their telephone conversations. He knew that now, as surely as he knew that never again would Hall pose a threat. With a surge of satisfaction, Carns pictured the CEO in his bathtub as he had last seen him, Hall’s bulging eyes staring up from beneath the surface of the water.
During most of it, Hall, a manipulator to the end, had refused to believe what was happening-bartering, whining, negotiating for his life between occasional sputtering breaths when Carns let him bring his lips to the surface. But at the finish, when Hall finally accepted that he was about die, something had changed in his eyes. Carns had seen it and cherished that exquisite moment, storing it, like many that had gone before, in a secret place inside his mind.
It was time for the network news. Curious to see if other stations were finally running the story, Carns flipped through the channels. He stopped on CBS, hearing a name that for the past days had nagged him with the persistence of a rotten tooth. As he watched, the scene shifted from the network news desk to a terrace outside downtown LAPD headquarters. Carns leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as Lauren Van Owen, microphone in
