Nine Man's Murder (3 page)

Bryan West had changed very little. Jonas Cruz looked older, but was still distinguished by his Latin good looks. The pretty blonde in the heavy overcoat had to be Jill Constable. But who was the tall, slender man? He resembled a grayer version of Carter Anderson, Damien’s younger brother.

Gideon glanced around the nearly empty parking lot. He’s not here. He hasn’t arrived yet. Would he show up, or had that simply been a ruse to keep Gideon quiet? If so, it had only postponed the inevitable, for what was to stop Gideon from talking to the police when he returned from the weekend?

Reeve hadn’t arrived yet, either. Would he? Dear Lord, what am I afraid Reeve will do? Gideon had been part of the solution; now he was part of the problem, a loose end. How would Reeve try to tie it up?

The others had far less trouble recognizing Gideon than he’d had identifying them. The wheelchair, of course.

“Gideon,” Carter called. “I’m glad you came.”

“We were just catching up,” said Jill. “So what have you been up to since we graduated?”

“I became a priest.”

“You’re a priest?” Carter exclaimed.

Gideon squirmed. “Well, I’m thinking of taking a different position in the church. One with fewer responsibilities.”

Jonas eyed Gideon. “Aren’t you a bit young to retire?”

The cold northern California air seemed thin and hard to breathe.

11

T
here they were,
before the train station. The man with the creased forehead sitting in the wheelchair could only be Gideon Lane. Gideon: He would know a lot, and Amanda fully intended to harvest that knowledge. Starting with the identity of the person behind the attempt to steal Capaldi’s coded ledger from the LAPD evidence locker.

Jonas was fawning over Jill. Amanda could see him almost drooling. She tried to quell the traitorous lurch of her gut. Jill was her friend. Jill had never done anything to bait the hook Jonas had snapped at. Sure, there had been that one moment of weakness, but hadn’t Amanda succumbed to one of her own?

The other two were not large enough to be Reeve. The shorter one had to be Bryan. But to whom was he talking? It looked like a prematurely aged Carter Anderson.

So Reeve hadn’t arrived yet. Amanda had never been the nervous type, yet her stomach roiled at the thought of what she had to ask him. How would he react? If he knew what she had done to get a conviction against Capaldi, he would probably kill her. Not that she would blame him. Look at the dilemma she had created for him. She had even put his life in jeopardy.

“Amanda?” Carter asked as she approached. “Is that you?”

“Amanda Farrell,” Gideon said. “What have you been doing these last fifteen years?”

“I’m a deputy district attorney for the city of Los Angeles.”

Was it her imagination, or did Gideon shiver in his wheelchair?

When the thin mountain air began to make “catching up” seem more like a long-distance marathon, the two women used the lag in conversation as an excuse to steal off and speak privately.

“Reeve’s not here yet,” Jill told Amanda.

“So I see.”

“Do you think he’ll show up?”

“He has to.”

Jill did not seem as certain. “Are you really going through with it?”

Amanda shrugged. “What choice do I have?”

“If you tell him, you’ll put him in a position to ruin your career.”

“What can I do? It’s our only chance.”

Of course, even Jill did not know how much more than that was at stake. Amanda had told no one—not even Jill—about her recent activities. What no one knew, no one could reveal.

And her goal at this reunion, among others, was to make sure no one knew.

12

R
eeve breathed in
the sharp, unpolluted smell of freedom. Hundreds of miles from Capaldi, far beyond his reach. Reeve should have been relieved to be up here, but one look at the group assembled in front of the train station—Bryan West, Jonas Cruz, Gideon Lane, Jill Constable, Carter Anderson, Amanda Farrell—revived bitter memories. Suddenly Reeve felt twelve again, a prisoner of his trashy old neighborhood.

The others caught sight of him across the parking lot. Not everyone seemed to recognize him. Gideon appeared to be avoiding Reeve’s eyes, fidgeting in his wheelchair. What was he uneasy about? He was safe, protected by his priesthood. What was with everybody, anyway? Amanda was looking at him strangely.

“What’s everyone staring at?” Reeve called out.

Carter was the first to respond. “Is that you, Reeve? I barely recognize you.” Reeve had been a big guy back at Anderson’s detective school fifteen years ago, but since then he had donned a coat of muscle over his large frame. “Did you become a weightlifter or something?”

“Bodyguard.”

“Who do you work for?” Jill asked. “Anyone famous?”

“Not really.” Last thing he was about to do was announce his connection to Capaldi.

“Maybe Amanda knows some of your clients,” Jonas suggested slyly.

Reeve turned to Amanda. “It’s been a while, Amanda,” he said coolly.

Amanda shot him a warning look but said only, “Yes.”

This had to be awkward for her. None of the others knew about him and Amanda. Even he wasn’t sure he knew what it had all been about. And the way Amanda kept shifting her weight from foot to foot made it clear that she wasn’t sure what to think, either.

13

T
he yellow taxi
cab pulled into the train station’s parking lot. Hatter could barely climb out of the back seat in his gray ankle-length raincoat. In trying to lug the two suitcases out of the cab, he bumped his head against the roof, dislodging his gray rain hat, which he quickly reset on his head.

“That’ll be $94.00,” the cab driver said.

Hatter hopped back into the cab in horror, leaving his luggage outside.

“Keep driving.”

“What?”

“Drive around for a few minutes.”

With a shrug, the driver complied. They circled the train station three times and returned to the lot.

“How much?” Hatter asked.

“$95.00.”

Much better. Hatter paid the driver, who seemed happy to get his money and drive off.

The others had already arrived. Cautiously Hatter approached.

One of them—whose brown face had to be that of Jonas Cruz—glanced at the monogrammed suitcases Hatter had set down.

“L.C. … Lawrence Cates,” Jonas declared. “Hatter.”

“Lawrence Cates” was Hatter’s given name; but ever since fourth grade, his peers had called him “Hatter.” Virtually everyone but his parents called him that. But it was his parents who had bought him the suitcases.

“Why did you tell the cab driver to keep driving?” asked Carter.

“The fare was $94.00,” Hatter replied. The others stared at him, as if that were not explanation enough. “The digits add up to thirteen. An unlucky number.”

“You know,” said the short-haired redhead, whom Hatter recognized as Amanda Farrell, “I’ve actually read a couple of ‘informational’ tracts you wrote. As I recall, you argue that the victims of violent deaths linger in this world to exact retribution on those responsible for their deaths.”

“You give lectures on that subject,” Jonas added, “at psychic conventions. Right?”

“There are supernatural forces all around us,” Hatter explained, “whose role is to punish offenders.”

Gideon spoke up. “Hatter, I w—.” He paused. “I am a Catholic priest. The Church considers the notion of ghosts to be heresy.”

Hatter would have presented an argument to open Gideon’s eyes—all of their eyes—had it not been for the arrival of the van.

14

T
he van, faded
and rust-flecked, pulled up to the reunion party and stopped. Two men emerged. The driver, a fairly tall man with bland, clean-shaven features and a thin layer of short black hair, wore cowboy boots, a brown-checked shirt, and blue jeans. His companion was a much older man whose dull eyes were unlit by any sense of purpose. The driver spoke in a hoarse and raspy voice.

“You must be the reunion party.” His smile seemed as out of place as the guests felt in the deserted parking lot of the abandoned train station. “I’m Bill. And this is Max. Damien Anderson sent us to bring you all to Moon’s End.”

Something about Bill—not the muffled croak of his voice nor the way he scanned the parking lot with those intense blue eyes, as if looking for someone—seemed peculiar to Bryan. Something hard to pinpoint, yet vaguely familiar …

Bryan noticed Jill giving the truck driver a similar searching look.

“Have we met before?” she finally asked Bill.

Bill fidgeted. “I doubt it, lady,” he said in his hoarse voice, withdrawing a cigarette from a packet and fumbling in his pockets. “Anyone got a light?”

Bryan struck a match for him as a dilapidated sedan pulled into the lot. From it emerged a man toting a suitcase and wearing the same type of gray ankle-length raincoat and rain hat worn by Hatter. Though roughly the same height and weight as Bill, the newcomer’s similarity to him ended there. Inert brown eyes and an aquiline nose were set in a pale face beneath bushy eyebrows; a brown moustache with full brown beard garnished a face framed by long sideburns.

“This is Aaron,” Bill explained, “caretaker at Moon’s End.” Aaron, maintaining a jittery silence, removed his hat and unbuttoned his raincoat, revealing wavy brown hair, brown boots, and an unzipped tan-colored down jacket covering the powder-blue work shirt and white overalls of a workman. “Don’t expect him to say much,” Bill added. “He’s mute, can’t utter a sound. He can hear and understand anything you say, but he’s not the most brilliant conversationalist.”

Bill took a head count. “Looks like we’re all here. We really should try to beat the rain—”

But it was too late, for they all felt cold drops of Morse code tap a warning on their heads. Heavy rain shaken from clouds like leaves in fall drove the reunion party into the temporary shelter of the abandoned station.

“This will mean more snow at Moon’s End,” Bill predicted darkly.

Part Two

✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗

THE GAME

15

T
he ride to
Moon’s End was as dangerous as it was beautiful. The mountaintop slept beneath a blanket of fresh snow, trimmed with the silver lace of a treacherous winding road wet from the thickly dripping trees, for the snow here had given way to a long and heavy rain, scouring all but the sharp, pleasant scent of pine from the crisp and chilly air.

At length the road was rent by a cleft in the mountain stitched with one slender thread: a rickety wooden bridge spanning a deep ravine. The van jostled the waterlogged bridge as it crept across the chasm. More than one prayer was sent skyward as the passengers crossed, more than one sigh of relief heard upon their reaching the other side.

That side was a sparsely covered plateau, shrouded in snow, where the peak formed an isolated summit not more than one-half mile in any direction, linked to civilization solely by the bridge they had just crossed. Up here you could scream forever and no one would hear you.

The only flaws in the unbroken monotony of the freshly fallen snow were small stands of narrow-trunked rain-drenched trees and, at the center of the plateau where the road ended, a two-story inn: the legendary Moon’s End. This was the first time any of them, except Carter, had seen Damien’s prize acquisition. The nearest neighbor was at the base of the mountain across the bridge and down twenty-six miles of winding road.

The guests swarmed the inn, drawn by its mystique: the old-world grandeur of the balcony’s walnut balustrade, the exotic window shutters and intricately carved exterior trim. Built long ago to lodge anticipated hordes of visitors, its inaccessibility had been its death sentence. Damien, in search of a winter retreat, had bought it a timely reprieve.

Something about the scene troubled Jonas. Unless Damien had arrived by taxi, his car should have been visible. But the building that served as a garage, a freestanding structure several yards from the inn with its door gaping, was empty; and because the road ended at Moon’s End, Jonas doubted a vehicle would be discovered behind the inn or garage.

Eager to escape the cold, the former classmates lugged their suitcases through the unlocked front double door of the inn. Inside they found the same attention to detail they’d seen on the exterior: ornate carvings on the banister of the staircase descending toward them, a western-style hanging lamp suspended above the table in the parlor room on their left. But no trace of Damien.

The guests removed their coats, grateful to be inside, where their words were not etched on the frosty air in plumes of condensing steam.

It was Hatter who made the first significant discovery: a typed sheet of paper on the parlor room table, assigning rooms. And a set of labeled room keys.

Strange, Jonas thought. Room assignments? Why wasn’t Damien here to escort them to their rooms in person?

Gideon observed that the antique style of the lodge had not prevented Damien from adding well-concealed electric wall heaters to Moon’s End.