Cold Springs (14 page)

11

Her left wrist was cuffed to the picnic table.

Olsen sat next to her, a large trail of Mallory's spittle glistening on the shoulder of her fleece jacket.

It was too cold, too late in the afternoon for anyone else to be using the deck. Deer grazed the hillside. Mesquite smoke scented the air. The junipers crackled as ice expanded in the joints of their branches.

Chadwick sat across from Mallory, slid her a plate of food.

She scowled at the turkey and dressing. “What is this—Thanksgiving?”

“Yes. You need to eat.”

She shoved the plate back toward him. “Like I've got a ton to be thankful for. Thank you, Chadwick. Thank you, Miss Bitch-sitting-next-to-me-with-the-plastic-handcuff-collection.”

“Mallory,” Olsen warned.

The girl turned away.

Olsen removed her wristwatch and set it on the table next to the plate of food. “Ten minutes. That's all you have to be here.”

“He ruined my goddamn life. He slept with my mother, made Katherine kill herself. He brought me here.
You
helped him. Why the fuck should I listen to you?”

The deer on the hillside raised their heads. Their hindquarters twitched.

“Set aside the anger,” Olsen told her. “Put it away for ten minutes and listen.”

Mallory grabbed the fork from her dinner plate. She wedged it under the handcuff and tried to pry it loose, but the fork was cheap plastic. The tines snapped. She threw what was left at Chadwick.

“Ten minutes without an outburst,” Olsen said. “Starting now.”

Olsen looked at Chadwick, and he realized that her deadline—the maximum time she would tolerate—was an edict meant mostly for him.

He told Mallory about the police investigation into Talia Montrose's murder—the bloodstains, Sergeant Damarodas' visit, the fact that Race and she were both wanted for questioning. Mallory kept her eyes on the mist curling up from the turkey.

“Dr. Hunter will protect you if he can,” Chadwick told her. “But we need to know what you saw that night. What you did.”

“Nothing. I didn't do anything.”

“Who killed Mrs. Montrose?”

“I don't know. I don't want to.”

“Mrs. Montrose's killer was probably related to her,” Chadwick said. “Was it Race?”

“No. Goddamn you. No.”

“One of his brothers?”

Her face darkened. “You mean Samuel. Race told me . . . Race swore Samuel was gone. Like, permanently gone.” She yanked on her handcuff. “Anyway, why the hell do you care? You'd love them all dead.”

“Three minutes, Mallory,” Olsen promised.

“Just lock me up,” Mallory murmured.
“Fuck
you.”

The watch kept ticking. It had a transparent face, exposed gears that reminded Chadwick of his father's repair shop.

He wondered if the closet in the Mission house was still full of old clock parts. He remembered Katherine playing hide-and-seek there, surprising him by leaping out of the woodwork, smelling of dust and oiled copper, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Mallory, did your father ever say anything about Samuel?”

The question drained the color from her face. “No. Why would he?”

“Your dad bought Talia Montrose's house. He gave her a lot more money than it was worth. Maybe he was paying her to go away—to get Race away from you. But I think there was more to it than that. I think someone in the Montrose family was blackmailing him.”

Mallory's attention seemed to be focusing on smaller and smaller things—the design in the paper plate, the grain of the table.

“Talia Montrose should've had a large amount of money on her when she died,” Chadwick said. “The police found nothing. When we picked you up in Rockridge, you had over six hundred in cash.”

“Race got it.”

“Where?”

“He just said . . . I don't know. I don't remember what he said.”

“What about your necklace?”

Her hand crept up to her neck. “I don't—I left it . . .”

“You left it at Talia Montrose's house. It was found next to her body.”

“No. I was with Race. We came into the house, and his mother—she was lying on the . . .”

A tear made its way down her cheek. She brushed it away like it was coming from somewhere else—like an insect or rain.

“Time's up,” Olsen said.

“I'm going back to San Francisco,” Chadwick told Mallory. “Tell me where to find Race.”

“So you can turn him in?”

“So I can talk to him.”

Mallory moistened her lips, and Chadwick got the uncomfortable feeling she was deciding whether or not to lie.

“Mr. Chadwick,” Olsen said, her fingers covering the watch.

“His grandmother's,” Mallory said. “She lives in downtown Oakland, off 14
^th
.”

“The police have already checked there.”

“Yeah. But that's where he'd go. That's the only place he could go.”

Mallory's eyes were intense green, just like her father's. “Make sure he's okay, Chadwick. He didn't do anything.”

Chadwick promised nothing, but he got the uncomfortable feeling he'd made an irretrievable bargain—one that cuffed him to the table more firmly than Mallory's plastic wrist restraint.

He looked at the hillside, where the deer had gone back to grazing. He wondered if the grass tasted any different on Thanksgiving.

“I'll do what I can,” Chadwick told her. “If you concentrate on the program.”

“I hate the program.”

“Start small.” He remembered the little girl who used to steal white meat as soon as it was carved, then go running, giggling wildly, through the house as her father pretended to chase her. “You like turkey. Eat some.”

Mallory looked at the plate of food, now cold. She picked up a half-moon of turkey, bit off a piece. She started to put the rest down, then changed her mind and took another bite.

Olsen said, “I'll cut your restraint. When you're done, we'll take you back to the Black Level barracks.”

As Mallory ate, Chadwick motioned to Olsen. She followed him as far as the sliding glass doors.

“She's hiding something,” he said.

Olsen crossed her arms, the shoulder bandage crinkling under her jacket. The skin around her eyes tightened. “The girl's whole life, people have betrayed her—Katherine, you, her parents. Now she's wondering if Race has lied to her, too. Of course she's hiding something.”

“You don't approve of me talking to her.”

“Your priorities are wrong. You're more interested in torturing yourself about your daughter than helping Mallory.”

He felt anger building in his stomach, but mostly because he was afraid she was right.

“You're making progress with her,” he said. “I'm impressed.”

“You know why? I told her I'm not leaving, no matter what. She can't push me away. I learned that from you.”

She looked nothing like the young woman who had been so afraid at the Rockridge café. There was determination in her eyes, absolute conviction that she was going to help this kid. Chadwick remembered why he had chosen her as a partner in the first place—she had a good heart. Heart wasn't something you could fake. It wasn't something you could train for. And it wasn't something she had learned from him.

“Watch out for her,” he said.

“She stabbed me. Of course I'll watch out.”

“No. I mean, keep her safe.”

“You're worried about somebody coming after her? Is that what you're talking about?”

“I don't know. It's just a feeling.”

She looked back at Mallory, but seemed to be looking through her—straight into the past.

“I'll stick by her,” she promised. “That's my job.”

Chadwick knew she didn't mean it as an accusation, but he remembered her words the day she'd quit—that his job was a form of perpetually running away. He felt the same wistful resentment he'd felt on the plane, when the flight attendant had assumed they were father and daughter. “You identify with her.”

“Yes.”

“I remind you of someone, too, don't I? Not a good memory. That's really why you couldn't work with me.”

She said nothing.

“Can I ask who it was?”

“You could,” she said, “except for two things.”

“What?”

“I told you your priorities are screwed up. I can't very well admit that maybe mine are, too.”

“What's the other reason?”

She raised her eyebrow, as if that should be obvious. She tapped her wristwatch. “Your time is up.”

She walked back to the picnic table, where Mallory Zedman was eating a cold Thanksgiving dinner in the fading afternoon light.

12

On Monday, Chadwick and Kindra Jones took a flight to Boston. They picked up a thirteen-year-old who'd been expelled from his middle school for dealing Ecstasy and flew him to the Green Mesa facility in North Carolina. An easy job. The kid knew it was either Dr. Hunter or Juvenile Hall.

Jones had dressed in another corduroy and flannel montage, her freshly braided cornrows glistening with styler. She spent the plane trip arguing with the kid about whether Lauryn Hill or Dr. Dre was the bigger musical genius. Chadwick, who had no opinion, read two chapters of a Theodore Roosevelt biography.

He called John Zedman from Raleigh-Durham International and got voice mail. He left a message, telling John he was coming to town and wanted to meet.

He called Laurel Heights and got the secretary, who told him Ann was in a meeting with Ms. Reyes—no interruptions.

Tuesday morning, he and Jones transferred a gray level who'd been diagnosed anorexic to Bowl Ranch in Utah. Again, Jones fell into easy conversation with the kid, this time about the death of reality television. Between flights at DFW, Chadwick called both the Zedmans and failed to get them. On the last call to John's house, a man with a slight Spanish accent answered the phone.

Chadwick gave his name, and the man was silent so long Chadwick thought he'd hung up.

Finally the man said, “This is Emilio Pérez. Let me give you some advice.”

“I'd rather you put your boss on the phone.”

“You come out here, you'd best be returning the girl.”

“That's not open for discussion, Mr. Pérez.”

“Mr. Z? He remembers how you used to be a friend—only reason he hasn't let me hang you on a meat hook yet. Me? I got no sentimental problems. I know what you are. I know your game. You show your face, I'm going to make Talia Montrose's murder look like a quiet death.”

The line went dead.

Kindra Jones came back from the TCBY, handed him a cup of yogurt with rainbow sprinkles and a pink plastic spoon.

“Got chocolate for me and the kid,” she said. “Figured you for a vanilla man.”

Wednesday evening at Bowl Ranch, Chadwick stared out the lodge window at miles of red sandstone—rock formations and stunted junipers marbled with snow like a Martian Christmas.

He thought about Mallory Zedman on the porch at Cold Springs.

He heard Olsen's voice in his mind—Olsen, whom he'd accused of running away from her fear.

From the moment he turned the first shovelful of dirt onto Katherine's coffin lid, Chadwick had known he would be moving to Texas. He would devote his life to pulling troubled kids out of crises, rewriting his failure with his daughter, over and over again. He told himself the job had been hard penance. In the years since, he had seen his share of suicides. He had been shot at, spit at, cursed and sued by the very parents who hired him. He had changed lives, delivered a lot of kids into Hunter's care.

But emotionally, escorting was safe—a brief, scripted performance where success was easy to measure, not much different than his history classes at Laurel Heights, or the way his own father had dealt with children—as appointments, gears to be oiled, chains to be balanced, with care and skill, but no particular emotional attachment. Chadwick could help kids on that level. He could do it brilliantly.

But when it came to permanent commitment—living with a child, letting her see you warts and all, unscripted and stumbling and unsure, staying with her no matter what, whether she screamed or stabbed or turned away—Chadwick had never been good at that, even with Katherine. Especially with Katherine. He had failed his daughter. And nothing he had done in the nine years since—not all the escorts he had made, all the children he had pulled from horrible situations—atoned for that.

The next morning, when they got to the San Francisco rental car counter, Chadwick asked Jones if she was up for a little sightseeing.

She gave him an easy grin. “Noticed you got us in here on the earliest possible flight, and the pickup isn't until tonight.”

“A few courtesy calls.”

“Uh-huh. You want to tell me what about?”

“Preferably not.”

She lifted the car keys from his hand. “In that case, I'm driving.”

At first, Chadwick was impressed by Jones' command of the terrible Bay Area traffic. After a few blocks, he realized Jones was the
reason
for the terrible traffic. Curbs were loose guidelines for her. So were sidewalks, pedestrians, traffic lights, medians, other people's bumpers.

After twenty minutes of death sport on Highway 101, then weaving through downtown playing kill-tag with the bike couriers, Jones found an open stretch of Van Ness and shot north. She fishtailed onto California, sent coffee-toting students and medical workers diving for cover, and slammed the car into fourth gear for the final half mile.

“This is it,” Chadwick warned. “This is it. That was it.”

Jones swerved onto Walnut, pulling over a red curb and crunching into a trash can two doors down from Laurel Heights.

Chadwick exhaled for the first time in a mile and a half. “You hardly killed anyone.”

“Just jealous,” she said. Then she pointed with her chin. “What's going on over there?”

Half a block up, across the street, a local CBS satellite news van was cranked for business. The reporter's back was to them, the cameraman filming in their direction. The backdrop for their news spot was Laurel Heights School.

A cold feeling started to build in Chadwick's chest.

The auction would be tomorrow—the first Friday after Thanksgiving. Maybe Ann had arranged some publicity. But the thermometer banner that had hung in front of the school was gone. It didn't seem right they would take that down before the final fund-raiser, especially with the press coming.

Jones slid down her black horn-rims, checked out Laurel Heights, tall and cozy on its hill. “That's your old school, huh? Think they could afford a paint job in a neighborhood this snooty.”

“You want to come in?”

“And do what—talk to the custodians?” Kindra leaned back in the driver's seat, propped open an April Sinclair novel on the wheel. “No thanks, Chad.”

Before he could respond to the unwelcome nickname, he saw Norma hurrying down the steps of the school. From the stiffness of her shoulders, the way she held her rolled-up newspaper, Chadwick knew she'd been arguing with someone.

She froze when she spotted the news van, then kept walking toward her Audi, which sat directly across the street.

Chadwick got out of the car.

“Hey,” Jones shouted after him, “we get paid hourly, right?”

Norma was chirping off her car alarm when Chadwick caught her.

Her makeup was smeared from crying, her hair a chaotic swirl of black, her wrinkled dress and overcoat two mismatched shades of red. The furious set of her mouth made her look like she was walking through a dust storm.

“Oh, so you're the cavalry, again?” she demanded.

“What?”

She thrust the newspaper at him. “Good luck.”

A-1, below the fold, the headline read:
$27 Million Scandal Unfolds at Bay Area School.

“The boy was right,” Norma said. “He told me to check, and I'll be goddamned, but there it wasn't—the entire account. Gone. Transferred to fucking Africa.”

“What? What boy?”

“Race Montrose. Goddamn it, Chadwick, I sat on the information for a
week.
I gave her a chance to explain. I couldn't be quiet anymore. This isn't a fucking clerical error.”

The television reporter was watching them now, mumbling something to his cameraman. Chadwick felt as if he were bleeding, as if the scratches Norma had put on his face three weeks ago in Ann's office were reopening.

“You called the media?” he asked. “You told them Ann stole money from her own school?”

“Fuck the media. I told the police and the board. Only two people had access to that account, Chadwick. Ann and me. You think I'm going to fail to come forward on this? You think I'm going to risk jail time on top of a ruined career?
Chíngate.”

“Two people. What about John?”

“Oh, no, no.” Norma's hands flew in front of her like a warding spell. “Don't try that. You know goddamn well John didn't need that money. He wouldn't risk his career.”

“And Ann would?”

The anger in her eyes turned brittle. “I will not do this. I will not have another argument with you about the Zedmans.”

“What did Race tell you? How did he know about the money?”

“No,” she repeated. “I will not—”

The reporter called, “Ms. Reyes? Norma Reyes?”

Norma's lips started trembling.

Chadwick stepped toward her, some involuntary reflex telling him to protect her, despite all their history. The familiar rose scent of her hair made him feel hollow, hungry in a way he did not want to admit. He cupped his hand around her arm. “Get in your car. Come on.”

Norma pulled away. “Go back to Texas, Chadwick. Just . . . get away, all right?”

She slipped into her Audi, started the engine and pulled away from the curb, almost clipping the reporter's leg. The faint scent of rose remained on Chadwick's clothes.

“Sir?” the reporter asked.

Chadwick walked across the street. The reporter followed him, his cameraman lumbering behind.

“Sir? Excuse me—”

Chadwick turned on the reporter, made him back straight into the camera lens.

He couldn't have been more than twenty-five. Whatever hard-edge attitude he'd put on that morning along with his foundation and rouge crumbled immediately.

“Leave,” Chadwick told him.

“But—”

“Now,” Chadwick said, rolling Norma's newspaper into a tighter baton. “Or I show you why I prefer print.”

“Ah,” the reporter said.

He scurried back to the news van, pulling the cameraman along by his belt loop, hissing at him, “You weren't filming? What do you
mean
you weren't filming?”

Another minute and they were packed and gone.

Chadwick glanced at his rental car.

If Kindra Jones had watched the exchange, she gave no sign. She was still reading her novel, chewing gum, bobbing her head to whatever music she'd found on the radio.

Chadwick looked up at Laurel Heights.

It seemed impossible that potato-print pictures could still hang from clothespins in the windows, that children could still shriek with delight on the playground. If $27 million had really vanished, the place should collapse. The yard should be silent, the gate draped in black.

The color and energy of Laurel Heights suddenly made him resentful, the way it had nine years ago, when the world had also failed to stop.

He took a deep breath, then walked up the steps of the school.

Ann would not allow her knees to shake. She would not let her hands tremble, or her voice quiver.

She told herself she must stay in control. This was her school—her legacy. They would not take Laurel Heights away from her with their well-meaning concern, their polite questions, their uncomfortable silences.

They sat in a semicircle—an impromptu Star Chamber made from student desks: five board members and Mark Jasper, the president, who until today had been Ann's biggest supporter. David Kraft, poor David, who'd been up forty-eight hours straight, trying to help her figure out the disaster, was slouched against the radiator in the corner, his eyes bleary, the tails of his dress shirt untucked.

“So you don't know.” Mark Jasper spread his hands. “You have no idea.”

He'd come straight from his art studio, smelling like turpentine, his polo shirt and faded jeans flecked with paint from whatever million-dollar commission he was completing.

His expression was calm and sympathetic, but Ann knew better than to trust his friendship. Mark was the archetypical Laurel Heights parent—a liberal artist who doubled as a cutthroat businessman. As much as he professed to love Ann's idealistic vision for the school, if he began to consider her a liability he would orchestrate her firing with as little remorse as an auto plant manager ordering a layoff.

“I'm cooperating with the police,” Ann told him. “We're working tirelessly on this.”

“Tirelessly,” he repeated. “I wish we could give the school community a better answer than that, Ann. This is a lot of money we're talking about.”

The other board members studied her—their faces morose, anger smoldering under the surface. She knew what they were thinking. She had pushed, and pushed, and pushed this capital campaign, let it drag on for ten years. She had insisted that the new building was the answer to the school's falling enrollment. She had bled the school community with constant fund-raising. And now, $3 million shy of her goal, the final auction tomorrow—this had happened. A crater, blown right in the middle of her career.

It was her fund. It must be her fault.

“You asked Norma Reyes to give you a week before she told anyone,” Mark said. “Even us. Is that correct?”

“Mark—it was Thanksgiving weekend. I didn't want to cause a panic if it was some . . . mistake. I didn't want—”

“And then when Norma informed you, this morning, that she
had
to tell this board, and the police, you asked her for yet more time. Is that correct?”

The floor was sand, eroding under her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chadwick appear in the classroom doorway—a tower of beige, his expression as grave as that of the members of the board. Her mind must be playing tricks on her—lack of sleep, too many days of stress. Chadwick was in Texas. But it made sense that he would appear to her now, like some Jacobean ghost.

Mark cleared his throat. “Look, Ann, the administrative leave—”

“I'm not taking administrative leave.”

From the playground came the sounds of the second-grade PE class—Red Light, Green Light. Laughter and the coach's whistle.

Ann wanted to be down there with the children. She wanted to be in the classrooms, reassuring her teachers, who had woken up this morning to reporters' phone calls.

There was an answer, if she just hung on long enough to find proof. She knew where the blame lay—oh, damn yes, she knew.

She was not a violent person. But when she comprehended the extent of John's evil, how completely she'd underestimated his capacity for hate, she wanted him dead.