House of Smoke (40 page)

Kate can see their faces, illuminated by the moonlight. With a shock that almost literally stops her heart she realizes she has seen these men before; she carried copies of their mug shots around for days until she knew them cold: these are the men who were in the jail cell with Frank Bascomb.

Her bladder empties. She feels the warm water dribbling down her legs.

The ringleader points a bony finger at Laura. “Fuckin’ little bitch,” he singsongs in his raspy, lilting voice, walking towards the pool; the whole group of them are steadily coming closer. “You wrote about us in your chickenshit newspaper, didn’t you, you little cunt.”

“Don’t answer him,” Kate cautions Laura, keeping her voice low.

They’re treading water, bodies touching each other. Her mind is racing. “Stay in the deep end, next to me.”

The ringleader squats on his haunches at the edge of the pool. Kate looks at him, at the others. They stare back at her and Laura, their faces eager like dogs that have treed a bear, impatient for the bloody kill.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees her clothes lying in a heap, away from the men, twelve eyes locked onto her and Laura’s nakedness. If she can figure out a way to distract them long enough to get to her gun, in her jacket pocket …

Her gun. She left her damn gun in the trunk of her car.

A good detective doesn’t need a gun
—one of Carl’s dictums. This proves Carl is fallible, that there are exceptions to every rule. She and Laura are going to die here tonight proving that point.

She has to do something—but what? Two women, naked and unarmed in a swimming pool a million miles from nowhere. She could scream her lungs out—they both could—and no one would hear.

Her mind is racing but nothing comes, the absoluteness of her fear drives everything out; and then, suddenly, as in a dream, the faces of her daughters, Wanda and Sophia, float up, like nymphs emerging from the depths. This is what it must feel like when you realize your parachute isn’t going to open, she thinks. Your life—what’s most important in it—flashing before you, the image you carry to your death.

That she will never see them again, never have the chance to make that right, brings tears to her eyes, which she fiercely fights; she has to try to clear her head. There must be something she can do: what is it?

She hears Laura, next to her, starting to cry, a low pitiable moan.

“Try to keep yourself together,” she whispers, turning to face Laura, turning her back on the ringleader—in some small ineffectual way trying to protect her client.

That’s her job here, she divines with a burst of clarity. To try and get Laura out of this alive. What she would wish for someone else, in her place, to do for her daughters.

The ringleader calls out to her. “Turn around. I want to see your eyes.”

She ignores him—what can he do that he isn’t going to do anyway?

No time to think: go on gut instinct.

“Hey!” the ringleader calls out again. “I said turn around!”

She rotates to face him, treading water, breathing deeply, forced breaths. The man stares at her. He’s beginning to run out of patience, she thinks. That could be good, if it makes him lose his cool.

Sculling the top of the water with her hands, she starts drifting towards the shallow end of the pool, away from Laura, her hands moving along the water’s surface, gradually moving towards the shallow end, the far side from where the ringleader is standing. At the edge of her vision she sees that Laura, having realized what she’s trying to pull off, is drifting in the opposite direction.

Kate looks at the ringleader, at the other men, who are starting to bunch up near him. They’re all watching her—no one is keeping close tabs on Laura.

Her toes touch the pool bottom. Then her entire foot. She keeps moving away from Laura. Her eyes are locked onto the ringleader’s eyes, who is staring back equally hard at her.

Now or never.

She drops below the surface for leverage, then pushes off against the bottom in the direction of the shallow-end steps, splashing-running in the water, it’s like running in a nightmare where the ground is quicksand beneath your feet and the harder you run the deeper the hole you dig.

She reaches the steps, clambering up, but she isn’t fast enough, they are on her, one grabs her by the leg, another has her around her waist, she jams an elbow hard into his nose, feeling the soft crunch, the blood spurting out onto her, across her chest, the man’s grip falls away from her, but another takes his place, they’re on her now, two men, now three, dragging her out of the pool, all of them wet and soaking, heavy with the water in their clothing.

At the far end, twenty meters from them, Laura has reached the edge and is pulling herself out. The ringleader, his head an emaciated skull, jerks around, seeing what’s happening.

“Go get her!” he screams. “Don’t let her get away!”

Two of the men take off after Laura. She’s running like hell, naked, away from the pool to the path, then down the path, plunging into darkness in the closest cluster of trees, the men in pursuit, chasing her.

“Run!” Kate cries out to her. “Don’t stop!”

The nearest assailant grabs at her. She stomps down hard on his shin and instep with her bare foot, at the same time driving an elbow into his windpipe, pivoting away from him, punching, kicking, biting, kneeing the men closest to her. “Run!” she screams at Laura again, throwing her body at the nearest attacker, taking the man down in a heap.

The ringleader dives for Kate, awkwardly tackling her. She kicks at him, chopping at his neck. He grabs her at the shoulders, the waist, anywhere he can get a purchase on her, his emaciated frame belying a wiry strength. She kicks at him with all her might, almost breaking free, but another one wrestles her down, then the others grab her, one on each arm and each leg, pinning her.

“Help!” she screams.

Her voice carries away into the wind.

The men who had been chasing Laura stagger back into the clearing. “She got away,” they tell the ringleader. “No way we could find her in that darkness.”

The ringleader turns to Kate, held prone on the ground. “You shouldn’t have been a hero, you dumb bitch!”

A fist smashes into the side of her head. Another crashes across her jaw, fists bang her ribs, she’s a punching bag, a rain of blows all over her head and body, she takes a slam in her cheekbone, and she knows it’s broken, she can feel the bone splintering and spreading across her face, the blood spurting out.

They intensify the assault on her, bone of fists against the bones of her eye sockets, her left eye explodes like a firecracker, against her mouth, breaking teeth, knocking them out. She’s crying, screaming, she can feel her blood and her tears all mixed up flowing on her face.

Then a pair of rough, scarred, callous hands are pulling her legs apart, spread-eagling her.

The ringleader steps forward. “Stand back,” he commands the others.

He towers above her, his pants fallen at his ankles. He has no underwear on. His cock is swollen, although she can barely see him—one eye is completely closed, the other open but a slit.

She shuts it. She doesn’t want to see any more. “Kill me, you bastard,” she manages to croak from between her cracked lips.

She means it. All she wants now is release, no more pain.

He kneels between her legs. Even with her nose broken, with her face battered senseless, she can still smell his breath, his horribly putrid stench. The smell of carrion, of dead rotting meat.

Kill me, she begs to herself, kill me. That would be better than this. She can’t feel a thing anymore.

The ringleader reaches inside his pants pocket and pulls out a knife, a thin fish-gutter. Bending down he grabs Kate by her hair, pulling her up and exposing her neck. “As soon as I fuck you,” he says, his mouth against her ear, “I’m gonna slit you, pussy to Adam’s apple.”

With his free hand he reaches for his cock, to guide it in.

The first shotgun blast is deafening, the explosion lighting up the area like a Roman candle, lifting and throwing the ringleader up and back, obliterating his face. The second blast follows immediately, hitting the man nearest the suddenly dead knife-wielder between the shoulder-blades, killing him before his body hits the ground.

In the blink of an eye Cecil Shugrue has cracked the shotgun and ejected the shells, reloaded, and fires again. A third man is hit, writhing on the ground, his knee shredded like hamburger. The fourth shot goes wild, taking out a small eucalyptus tree.

The rest of the attackers are running, two of them dragging the wounded man with them, the man screaming fiercely with pain, his leg barely hanging on through the tatters of the remains of his pants leg, all of them dispersing into the night and gone.

Cecil kneels to Kate, cradling her head in his arms. “Jesus Christ,” he cries.

He scoops her up in her arms and carries her, running clumsily, the branches tearing at their faces, all the way down the trail to his car, which is parked directly behind her own.

Speeding down Mission Canyon, running all the stop signs, his hand jamming on the horn all the way down, blasting through red lights, not stopping for anything, her body lying across the wide front seat, her bleeding head cradled in his lap.

“You’re going to be okay,” he keeps reassuring her, stroking her head with his free hand whenever he can. “We’re almost there.”

The old Cadillac slides to a stop in front of the emergency room doors at Cottage Hospital, laying a line of rubber halfway across the parking lot. Cecil scoops her up in his arms and carries her through the entrance, screaming for help.

Interns and nurses and staff come rushing forward, laying her on a gurney, wheeling her down the overbright antiseptic corridors to an operating bay. Cecil is right alongside, running with them, his hand clutching hers.

“I couldn’t let things go with that answer you gave me,” he tells her, “so I came looking for you. You weren’t at your apartment, I checked your office, you weren’t there, either. I took a chance and came up there. I don’t take no for an answer,” he says. “Not to the important stuff.”

Just before they wheel her into the operating room, leaving him behind outside the double doors, the faintest shadow of a smile creases her cracked and broken mouth. Then her face goes slack with complete and blessed unconsciousness.

T
HE HOSPITAL ROOM IS
private. Kate lies on her back, motionless, eyes fluttering open occasionally, looking up at the ceiling, looking at nothing. Mostly her eyes are closed, even when she isn’t sleeping. It’s easier that way, if her eyes are closed she can’t see anything, if she can’t see anything she can shut out the world.

Her head and jaw are wrapped tightly, for stabilization. A plastic guard covers her nose. She doesn’t know how badly it’s been broken, but she knows it’s bad. What will it be like when it heals? she thinks. A tube protrudes from a nostril to suction out the mixture of blood and mucus that is constantly draining. Other tubes are attached to other parts of her body: an ear, under her left ribs. An IV drips medicine and painkillers. Most of her face is swollen, black and blue and yellow from where their fists repeatedly slammed into her. Her left cheekbone is fractured, so severe was the pounding her assailants administered that fragments of bone broke through the skin. Four ribs are cracked, too, which makes the simple act of breathing hurt like hell.

The doctors have assured her nothing is permanently disabling. What she’ll look like when she is all healed up (the process will take several months), that’s another story. Right now it’s too early to tell. They may have to do some plastic surgery. But one thing is certain: the face she will see in the mirror for the rest of her life will be different from the one she’s been looking at all her life.

“You’re lucky,” the operating doctor had told her, once they had taken care of the worst of it and she was out of immediate danger. “You’ll survive intact, more or less. It could have been worse, much worse.”

You call this lucky? How much would she have had to endure to be unlucky?

She has flashbacks, to when Eric had done a similar number on her. Two of the ribs that are cracked are ones he had cracked before. She had been able to get payback for that. It had been an important step on her road to recovery. How in the world is she ever going to be able to have payback for this?

As importantly: why does she keep putting herself in situations where this can happen to her? Why didn’t she learn her lesson from the Eric business? All that work with the therapists and in her group—is she bullshitting herself deep-down? Is there something in her that makes her want to be a victim?

She’ll have to face that. Her life could depend on it. She escaped twice. One more time, she might not be so lucky.

After the operation. When she was wheeled into intensive care, she slept for thirty-six hours straight. When she woke up Cecil was there. He had been there the entire time.

He comes every day, early in the evening when he’s finished work. They’re getting the fields ready for picking, the grapes are swollen with ripeness. He sits with her, hands touching, rarely talking. He says things that don’t require a verbal response. Sometimes she’ll grip his hand, weakly. For the first few days that’s all she can do.

There is a police guard at her door on the off chance someone comes looking for her to finish the job.

She calls Julie, in San Francisco, to let her know she won’t be coming up this weekend to be with the girls.

“What’s wrong?” Julie asks, unable to keep her voice from sounding peevish. What’s keeping you from being a mother this time? is the implied, but always unasked, question.

“I was in an accident.”

She hears the sharp intake of breath. “What happened?” A beat, then: “Are you all right?”

“I was protecting a client, and I got beat up some,” Kate says simply, avoiding any explanation.

There’s a pause from the other end. “How beat up?”

“I’ve got some pretty good bruises. No problem,” she adds quickly, “it’ll all heal fine.”