House of Smoke (63 page)

Kate and Miranda both stare at Dorothy in horror.

“You’ll never get away with this,” Kate tells her. She’s having a hard time getting any words out, let alone speak and think rationally.

“I already have, haven’t I?” Dorothy’s smile is almost serene. Why not? Kate thinks. The woman is in charge; and she’s crazy, gone totally round the bend.

“No. Friends know I was coming out here, and there are copies of all these documents. If anything happens to me this all goes right to the law.”

“You’re lying,” Dorothy states.

“You don’t want to find out, do you?”

“I’ll take my chances. They’re much better than letting you go.” She motions with the shotgun. “Move over there. Away from your gun.”

Kate takes one step to her left. Swiftly, Dorothy grabs the automatic off the desk and sticks it in her waistband.

“What about Miranda here?” Kate asks. “Do you think she’s going to sit on this for the rest of her life?”

“She’s not going to have to.”

Miranda stares at her in shock. “What are you …?” she gasps.

“Before I could kill your blackmailer,” Dorothy explains to her, “she shot you.”

“You had Frank killed,” Kate says. Keep talking—keep buying time. “And you got away with it. You had Wes and Morgan killed, and you got away with that, too. And you almost had me killed, which you would have gotten away with as well—because someone else was doing it. Of course, your granddaughter might have been killed in the crossfire, but that’s the price you have to pay, right? Since it wasn’t your hand that was actually on the trigger you would have been clean.”

She’s hit a primary nerve.

“They wouldn’t have killed Laura!” Dorothy erupts, her voice filling the room. Her hand is shaking, holding the shotgun. “They knew who they were after—they had their instructions!”

“That’s a good one,” Kate answers. “Trained professional killers, that bunch. Calm, cool, and collected. Lady,” she says, taking a step forward, “you listen to me. They could’ve wasted Laura and they wouldn’t have blinked an eye.”

“No,” Dorothy answers, her voice trembling. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m right. And you know it.”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Miranda taking all of this in: the horror, the madness, the total lack of humanity. She looks back at Dorothy. The woman has regained her self-control—the eyes are dead again.

Dorothy motions with her shotgun. “Outside. Both of you. This time I’ll do it myself,” she says to Kate. “So that it gets done right—finally.”

Here or out there—what’s the difference? Kate watches Miranda come out from behind the desk, then slowly walk through the living room towards the front door.

“Move,” Dorothy commands.

She follows Miranda out. They stand on the porch, in shadow.

“Down there.” Dorothy points into the yard. “Spread out.”

They trudge down the steps. Miranda, then Kate, then Dorothy, a safe distance behind, but close enough that the shot from her gun won’t disperse much if one of them tries to run and she has to pull the trigger.

It’s late morning now, the pale yellow sun sitting high above their heads. The sky is almost colorless, as if the life has been squeezed out of it.

“I’m not doing this because I want to,” Dorothy says. “I’m doing it because I have to.”

“Those are comforting last words to hear,” Kate states bitterly. “I guess that means your conscience is clear.”

“Completely,” the old woman replies. She raises the shotgun to her shoulder and takes careful aim at Kate, both barrels.

Kate dives for the gun.

The explosion is deafening.

Before Dorothy hits the ground her eyes widen with the amazed look of a woman who painstakingly prepared for everything, and still got it wrong.

Kate’s head snaps around.

Laura stands fifty yards away on the hill above them, in the shadow of an oak tree. The rifle, barrel smoking visibly, hangs limp in her hand. As she starts walking towards them it drops with a thud.

Three women stand on the hard dirt ground, apart from each other, the sun so directly overhead that there seem to be no shadows. The fourth woman, the dead one, lies facedown in the center of the triangle, the back of her shirt rapidly spreading crimson.

Time is frozen.

Then it comes back to life as Miranda races to her daughter and takes her in her arms. Laura stands motionless, eyes cast down.

Kate walks slowly to them, as if moving through a quagmire. Her legs feel like they have no bones left in them.

“How did you …?” Kate asks. She feels like she’s going to puke her guts out and have a heart attack at the same time.

“I followed her,” the girl says simply. She starts trembling, suddenly losing control over her body, feeling the reality of what she’s done. “She’d been acting weird lately,” she states in a low monotone, “and when you called me earlier I told her. I know you warned me not to, but I always tell her everything—things I don’t even tell you, Mom,” she says, looking at Miranda, who looks away, her face flushing painfully.

Laura looks at Kate again. “She was the only person who knew from the beginning that I’d hired you, which must be why she knew everything that was happening as things progressed. Like up at your private place,” she adds shamefaced. “This morning I told her about your call and she freaked, it was like she’d seen a ghost. That set something off in my head, how crazed she was, so when she took off in her car I followed her. I lost her coming over the pass, but by then I knew where she was heading.” She reaches out and lays a hand on Kate’s arm. “You saved my life. I couldn’t let her take yours.”

Kate’s voice is choked. “Thank you.”

“You put your life on the line for me,” Laura says. “I had no choice.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Miranda consoles her daughter, trying to pull her close.

Laura shakes her head, withdrawing from her mother’s arms. “No, Mom. Nothing’s ever going to be all right again.”

Kate comes back to life, starting to take stock of their situation. Without wasting another second she kneels down and picks up the rifle that is lying at Laura’s feet. With her other hand she grabs Dorothy’s shotgun, and takes her own gun from Dorothy’s belt, shoving it back into her pocket. Looking at the two women standing, and the dead one on the ground, lying in a pool of her own spreading blood, she feels sick; they never understood, she thinks, that in the end, the world does not revolve around them.

Now they’ll have to.

Enough sentiment. Those feelings are dangerous, there’s no time for feelings. She has business to finish.

“It
may
be all right,” she says, repeating Miranda’s plea. “What happened here. Or it could blow up in your faces. You’re going to have to do as I tell you—
exactly
as I tell you.”

She grabs Laura by the shoulders. “You’re going to have to pull yourself together. Can you do that?”

Miranda starts to answer for Laura, but Laura cuts her off. “Yes,” Laura says, in a firm tone that states “I can take charge of my life.” “I can do that.”

Kate looks at her. It’s a different woman she’s seeing—a real woman, not a kid anymore. Out of these awful ashes a life is growing, she realizes. Something is going to come from all this pain.

She returns to the problem at hand. “And you, too,” she warns Miranda.

“I will. Don’t worry.”

“Okay. Here’s the drill. I was never here.”

They both stare at her.

“That telephone call you got at the office?” she tells Miranda. “That was somebody calling to warn you that there was a problem up at your ranch. Maybe something to do with that drug deal, you weren’t sure. You didn’t want to come up here by yourself so you called Laura and told her to meet you here. You got here and found your mother-in-law dead, shot in the back. And you saw someone running away. A man. A tall man, athletic. You got a good look at him, you could ID him if you ever saw him again. That’s the story that you’re going to tell the police, and you’re sticking to it. Can you do that?”

Miranda nods. “Why are you doing this?” she asks.

“You don’t have to know. I’ll take these with me,” she says, brandishing the rifle and the shotgun. “They’ll never be seen again.”

She heads toward her car, then turns back. “Wait a couple of hours before you call the police. That’s imperative. You got that?”

Miranda nods yes.

Kate throws the rifle and shotgun in the trunk of her car and hightails it down the road.

One more piece of the puzzle to fit in. Then it’s over.

S
HE SITS IN HER
living room, waiting. It’s the first time she’s been back to her apartment since she went into hiding. She’s changed out of the clothes she wore up at the ranch. Now she is wearing a loose T-shirt and light silk Turkish trousers that are almost diaphanous. No bra. Her bikini underpants can be seen through the trousers. Her feet are bare, her toenails freshly painted. She has bathed and put on perfume.

The doorbell rings. She walks across the room and opens the door.

“Hello, stranger,” she says.

He has come from work, where she called him, so he’s wearing his uniform of sport coat, white shirt, slacks, tie. His gun is tucked into a holster clipped to his belt.

“Hello back,” Juan Herrera says to her. “I’ve been worried about you, Kate. I tried calling, I even stopped by.”

“I went to ground,” she says. “After what happened down in Orange County, I was afraid …” She stops. “Anyway, I’m back in the open now. So come on in.”

She stands aside so he can enter. Then she closes the door behind him and locks it.

The curtains have already been drawn.

“I need to see you,” she told him over the phone. “I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of the whole rotten mess. All that Sparks family shit. I thought you’d want to hear all about it. So I can put it all behind me.”

From when she hung up until the ring of the doorbell has been less than twenty minutes, which means he left his desk right away.

“You look good,” he tells her. He can’t help noticing her ass through the sheer pants, and her nipples showing under the T-shirt. “Real good.”

“Good enough to eat?” she teases him. She reaches behind him and slips his jacket off, tossing it onto a chair.

“Yes,” he answers slowly, a smile breaking out across his face. “I was going to leave for lunch in a few minutes, so I’m hungry.”

“Caught you in the nick of time,” she says. “Guess it’s my lucky day.”

They come into each other’s arms, a hot, hard embrace.

“How long can you stay?” she asks when they break.

“As long as it takes,” he answers. One hand is caressing a breast, the other tracing ribbons down her back.

“It could take a long time,” she smiles coquettishly. Her hand is going to his belt, loosening it.

“Damn. You’re frisky today,” he observes.

“I’m horny.”

“That’s pretty direct.”

“I haven’t been laid for a long time,” she tells him. “Ever since this.” She points to her face.

“You look good,” he said. “You shouldn’t worry about that.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. It’s important to me. You know what I went through,” she tells him, seriously. “More than anyone.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Does that mean I’m beautiful?” Playful again.

“About as beautiful as any woman I’ve ever known.”

“What about sexy?”

“For sure, sexy.”

“So am I turning you on?”

“You’ve always turned me on, Kate,” he says, dropping the bantering tone. “From the first time I laid eyes on you.”

“You mean you weren’t just being a nice guy and helping out someone the rest of the department wouldn’t?” she teases.

“No,” he answers. “I helped you out plenty before …” He leaves the rest unsaid. “Because I wanted to fuck you doesn’t mean I don’t like you, too.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. ’Cause that’s how I feel about you, too.”

His hand is under her shirt, caressing her bare breast. She has goose-bumps all over. He is hard as she strokes him through his pants.

“So what’s this important news you have for me?” he asks.

“All in good time. Let’s get to the important things first.”

She takes his hand and leads him into the bedroom.

“Get undressed,” she orders him. “I’ll be right back.” She pulls her T-shirt over her head and tosses it onto the floor, standing topless in front of him, her nipples hard, sticking straight out. “I need to get my protection. Don’t go away.”

He doesn’t need any further encouragement—he’s half undressed by the time she’s out of the room.

It’s warm in her bedroom. He lies on top of the covers, naked. His clothes are neatly folded, the crease in the trousers matching up, the shirt over them, then the tie. At some point he will have to shower, dress, and go back to work. Later for that. He can take the rest of the afternoon off without checking in; his time is pretty much his own at this stage in his career.

The bolstered gun lies on top of the neat pile.

He hears water running briefly in the bathroom.

“Watcha doing?” he calls.

“I won’t be long,” she calls back from the bathroom.

He can taste her—not just her mouth where he’s kissed her, but all of her. He still has that taste in his mouth’s memory, from when they made love before.

“Come on,” he calls again.

“This has to be right,” she answers. “This is a special occasion. Everything has to be right.”

She enters the room. She’s wearing a white terry-cloth robe, untied, the sides folding against her hips. He can see her vagina thrust forward towards him, her breasts hanging down. The incongruity of the prosaic robe and her frank nakedness under it makes for a very erotic image.

His cock is erect, rock-hard. He extends his arms to her. “Come here,” he beckons. His voice is hoarse, his throat constricted with sexual heat.

She stands at the foot of the bed, staring down at him. “You’re glad to see me,” she remarks, glancing at his swollen penis.

“We’re both glad to see you. Now come on.”

“In a minute.”

She reaches into one of the pockets of the robe and pulls out some papers.