Crosscut (11 page)

“This killer isn’t typical, is he?” I said.

“Coyote fits what we call the assassin profile,” Heaney said.

The breeze sent the hairs creeping on the back of my neck. “What’s that mean?”

“Loner. Emotionally undemonstrative. Nocturnal, and into obsessive journal writing.” He hunched forward. “This personality is more dangerous than most serial killers.”

“More?” Shit, just what we needed. “How?”

“Most serial killers pick victims they know they can handle, and they go to great lengths to keep from being caught. But assassins view their murders as a mission. They’ll do anything to complete that mission. Even die.”

I breathed. “Have you traced Coyote’s code name back to Project South Star?”

“No comment.”

“My source asked me to pass this information along specifically so you’d get involved and bust through the national security thicket. Have you?”

Given the FBI’s notorious rivalry with the intelligence agencies, I presumed Heaney would find satisfaction at catching them in a screwup.

“Not yet,” he said. “Coyote is a convenient shorthand right now. And whether or not it proves to be the code name for an operative trained by some defunct military program, it’s accurate. Coyotes are solitary hunters. Night after night, same as serial killers.”

His demeanor didn’t change, but his eyes were now anything but placid. They reflected the controlled calm of someone who had lifted the lid off hell and heard the howling.

Tommy said, “Have you considered that there’s another reason this source came to you, aside from your being a journalist?”

“I’m from China Lake. The victims were my classmates.”

“No. South Star, this supersecret project. Is it possible your dad worked on it?”

I really wasn’t feeling well, I realized. My head was pounding, my limbs ached, and my stomach felt uncertain.

“Dad was NAVAIR. That was his life, U.S. air superiority. Keeping our guys alive up there. My source said South Star was not navy, and that means Dad wasn’t involved.”

They didn’t respond.

“You’re alleging that my father was a spook,” I said. “He wasn’t. But even if he was, I’d never know and neither would you.”

Tommy held a handful of pretzel sticks tight in his fingers. “Is your dad the source, Evan?”

That was why they were here. That was why they’d driven a hundred miles before sunrise.

“No.” I held his gaze. “He’s not, Tommy.”

Whether he saw it in my eyes, my demeanor, or my tone of voice, he seemed to accept that. His shoulders relaxed a notch.

“In that case,” he said, “you think he could provide some background to help us with the investigation?”

“Believe me, I’ve asked and he’s looking.”

“Good. We need every ounce of help we can get,” he said. “Because Coyote isn’t finished. He’s going to kill again.”

 
Ninety seconds after they left I was on the phone, calling my dad. He didn’t answer. I left a message asking him to call back.

He was going to tell me what was at the bottom of this, but I wasn’t going to wait for him. I had to take an alternate, intersecting route. I double-checked my calendar. Friday I was scheduled to argue motions in court for Sanchez Marks, Jesse’s firm. The rest of the week was flexible enough for me to scramble. I phoned Jesse and told him I wouldn’t be sleeping at his place tonight.

“Give me forty-five minutes,” he said. “I’ll drive you to the airport.”

Still feeling crappy, I took two Tylenol, stuffed clean socks and underwear and a toothbrush in a backpack, grabbed my keys and computer case, headed across the lawn, and knocked on Nikki Vincent’s kitchen door.

She answered with the phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, carrying Thea on her hip. I followed her inside.

“Tell him the lighting’s fine,” she said.

Play-Doh was blobbed on the butcher block table. And mushed in Thea’s fingers and caught, bright blue, in Nikki’s hair. Something creole was bubbling on the stove. Nikki set Thea in her high chair.

“Wine, yes. Vodka, in his dreams.”

It sounded like she was talking to her assistant. Nikki ran an art gallery but stayed home two mornings a week. She grabbed a dish towel and ran it over Thea’s hands and face. Held up a finger, indicating just a minute.

Nikki had been my college roommate, and living next door to her continued to anchor me. She was compact and voluptuous, African-American, and today she was wearing shorts and a UCSB Volleyball T-shirt along with reams of silver jewelry. Her bracelets sang as she wiped her little girl’s face. Thea squirmed, and the phone squirted out from under Nikki’s chin and fell to the floor.

“Sorry,” she shouted.

I took the dish towel and finished wiping Thea’s fingers. She was eighteen months old, sunny and curious and sturdy as a fence post. Coming into this homey chaos gave me a feeling of both longing and belonging, and I felt myself unwind. Even the smell of jambalaya on the stove didn’t bother my stomach.

Nikki hung up. “Sorry, the new exhibition. Temperamental artist, imagine that. What’s up?”

“Road trip. I’ll be back tomorrow. Will you lock up after the workmen and set the alarm for me?”

“No problem.”

“And if my cousin Taylor shows up, hit her with a rake.”

“With pleasure. Where are you off to?”

“Palo Alto.” I ruffled Thea’s hair. “Paying my mom a surprise visit.”

“You never pay your mom a surprise visit.”

Not since college, when I drove home and heard her down the hall in the bedroom, whooping, “Phil, you
dog
!”

“I need to pick her memory about the bad old days in China Lake,” I said.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“What’s that for?” I said.

“You, Miss Military Industrial Complex. Your childhood on the dark side is going to catch up with you.”

“Pinko.”

“Warmonger.”

She hugged me and kissed my cheek. “Safe trip.”

 
Jesse stopped the truck in front of the terminal. “You know what your father will say about this. You’re not lying low.”

I grabbed my things from the backseat. “Visiting Mom
is
lying low. I’m spending the afternoon airside past security, then airborne, then sequestered at a house only you and Nikki know about.”

“I can’t take you to the firing range if you’re in Palo Alto.”

Leaning across the cab, I hooked his red tie, pulled him to me, and kissed him. “Your ammo will keep for twenty-four hours. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I schlepped my things up the walk, past flower beds, and inside to the ticket desk, all of fifty feet. The Santa Barbara terminal is less an airport than a hacienda plucked from
Man of La Mancha
, designed to show the happy tourist he has arrived in Fiesta Land. I showed my ID and paid the tax for the flight. This was the big perk in my life. As the daughter of an airline employee I essentially flew free, worldwide. The agent handed me my ticket and I hiked toward the metal detector.

An hour and a half later the small jet swooped off the runway and headed north. I leaned against the window and watched California scroll by. Special Agent Heaney’s profile of Coyote hung in my mind, deeply unsettling.

Coyote, Heaney predicted, kept notes. A journal. Compulsively. It reminded me of Jax and Tim. In my safe-deposit box I had twenty years of their notes and diaries and memos. Detailing, sometimes excruciatingly, covert ops they had run. Wet work, in the jargon of the trade.

I dismissed the possibility that either of them was Coyote. But I didn’t dismiss the possibility that they were tasked with eliminating Coyote. Their masters at the CIA or NSA or Hits “R” Us may have assigned them to kill this killer. If so, they might be using me to flush Coyote out of hiding. By pressuring me to pressure the cops and the feds, they could scare Coyote into making a mistake, and they could catch him. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

Forty minutes later we banked past the green coastal mountains and snarled freeways of Silicon Valley and bumped down onto the runway at San Jose, thrust reversers roaring. I caught the Super Shuttle to Mom’s house, fifteen miles up the 101.

Arriving in Palo Alto, cruising along tree-lined Embarcadero Road, was like coming home. I went to law school at the sprawling campus up ahead, with its sandstone courtyards and red tile roofs. I’d loved it here, felt challenged by my classmates and professors, and coming back to this town made me feel sharper, prouder, and bigger, if not younger.

And to hear my dad, I’d gone and blown my grand ivory-tower legal education by kicking free from law practice after four years. For what—to turn myself into a legal journalist, brief doctor, and science-fiction novelist? Even now I heard him:
Girl, you’re fixing to stay in debt your whole life
.

But he knew why I did it. The black days when Jesse lay near death in the ICU taught me that you don’t waste second chances. The day he came off the critical list, I quit my job.

My mom lived in a quaint and beautiful Spanish-style house with oaks shivering overhead in the breeze. The shuttle dropped me off out front. The house was only four miles from where Mom grew up, though worth twenty times what my grandparents paid for their place. She bought it when she took the job in San Francisco. She had invested her modest divorce settlement in a stock portfolio that she cashed out at the right time, at the height of the boom. But then she was a stewardess. Her life revolved around knowing one truth: What goes up must come down. Angie Delaney was a wise woman. This was Palo Alto, and the house was now worth seven figures.

It was just after three p.m. and she was still at work, thirty miles up the freeway near the San Francisco airport. I let myself in and went out back to sit in the shade by the swimming pool. I sat down on a chaise longue to plan my ambush. It was simple.

Hug, laugh, eat, and hit her with hard questions about China Lake and Project South Star. Catching her off-balance was key. I couldn’t give her time to plan her cover story. I put my feet up, listening to birdsong.

“Ev, sweetheart.”

I blinked. My mother stood above me, arms wide, beaming.

“Mom.”

She laughed and pulled me to my feet. “My God, I don’t believe it.”

Shoot, how long had I been asleep? I glanced at my watch: ninety minutes. I embraced her, smelling the fresh scent of her perfume.

“You look awesome,” I said.

She smoothed my hair, smiling as if a pot of gold had just dropped into her backyard. “Flying up here to pull a commando raid on me, this is too much. What a hoot.”

She was fifty-seven and still a sprite, trim and tan. Her tailored gold suit stopped above her knees. Her heels were kicked off, dangling from one hand. Her hair was shorn to a spiky collage of silver mixed with Coca-Cola brown.

“What secrets were you going to squeeze out of me? Black projects? Secret weapons? What do you want to eat, a sandwich? Or I have soup.”

“South Star,” I said.

“I know, honey. Come inside.”

She gripped my hand and hauled me into the kitchen. It was photo central. The fridge was plastered with shots of me, my brother, Brian, and especially my nephew, Luke. The walls were a bright mosaic. Her postcard collection spanned thirty years and six continents. Alaska, Rome, Cape Town, the Grand Canyon. She sat me down at the kitchen table and opened the fridge.

“So.” She waved a hand. “You satisfied that Phil isn’t here?”

“Guess so.” Mostly I was satisfied that she spoke his name easily, without coldness or rancor. This indicated that they were on the same wavelength at the moment.

“How’s that man of yours?” she said.

“He sends his love.”

“Brian said he looked underweight. Are you cooking for him? Making him laugh?”

She took a pitcher from the fridge and poured two glasses of iced tea. I felt like a grouchy toddler roused too soon from the playpen.

“He’s great. We’re great. And it’s status quo.”

“Just checking.” She smiled. “He’s still the cutest thing on—”

“Wheels. Yeah. You know how I like ’em. Tall, dark, and paralyzed.”

She leaned against the kitchen counter, drank her tea, and rattled the ice cubes in the glass. “Gee. I was going to say the West Coast.”

Red heat climbed up my neck. She set down her tea. Taking a carton of orange juice from the fridge, she poured a glass and set it on the table in front of me along with a trio of pills.

“What’s this?” I said.

“Vitamin C and Tylenol. You’re coming down with something. You only get snotty when you’re feeling punk.”

I found that I didn’t have the energy to stick out my tongue at her. And the only reason I wanted to was because she’d gotten the jump on my slick-as-spit plan to ambush her.

“Sorry. Thanks.”

She put the back of her hand across my forehead. Her skin was cool. I felt soothed and safe and five years old.

“Well, you’re not feverish.” She gestured to the juice, indicating,
Drink, drink
.

I swallowed the pills. “Achy and tired and a killer headache.”

“Is this PMS?”

“Why do people keep saying that?” I slumped, and conceded, “It’s PMS
extreme
. It’s so bad it should be an event at the X Games.”

She turned back to the sink. “Is that why you chased your cousin out of your house, hissing like a cobra?”

I pushed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I’m taking out a hit on Taylor.”

“You can’t.” She turned around. “Then who’d keep us posted on Kendall’s divorce? Or Mackenzie quitting business school to make vegan clothing?”

“True.”

Taylor spread useless information faster than a computer virus. The family counted on her for gossip.

She came over, stood behind me, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Fine. I’ll stop prying.”