Tell No Lies (39 page)

“They’ll throw off a couple hundred thousand a year.” She tapped the rim to her lip and sneered. “He must be grinning from the grave.”

“People have been known to live on that.”

“People,”
she said.

He walked over and tried to pry the glass from her hand. She held it tighter, turning the moment intentionally comical as he tugged at it. Finally she let go and flopped back on the couch, giving him a mock glare. He considered her glass. Took a sip. She cracked a reluctant smile at that.

“You were smart,” she said. “You
chose
to leave the family money behind. On your terms. Having something taken away is so … maddeningly
pathetic.
”

Daniel looked out onto the terrace, where a layered Moroccan fountain burbled pleasingly before a jaw-dropping view of the Transamerica Pyramid. He knew that Castanis’s corporate goddesses were out there, too, their impenetrable, shadow-cloaked faces observing this fall from fortune as they’d observed thousands before and would observe thousands to come.

A Moroccan fountain. On a roof terrace. For the love of Mary.

He ran his fingers through his hair. “How much is this place costing you?”

She told him.

“A
night
?” He took another swig of her scotch. “Are you kidding me? Okay, first things first. Let’s get you out of here. Where’s James?”

“I don’t need
James.
” She rose, wobbled a bit, then steadied herself. “I can pack myself.” She disappeared into the master suite. There was a great clanking of hangers and rattling of pill bottles, and then she emerged. “Okay. I have no idea how to pack. I’ll send James back for my things.” She laughed at herself, and it turned into the faintest sob before she caught herself. “Did I ever tell you the story about the day they pounded the last rivet into the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“No, Mom.”

“April twenty-seventh, 1937. My mother was there. She was pregnant, so I suppose I was there, too. It was a big occasion, as you can imagine. They’d made a special gold rivet, said to be worth four hundred dollars—back
then.
During the ceremony the pneumatic hammer pounded the rivet into place, but the soft gold couldn’t withstand the pressure. It came apart, sprayed slivers across the spectators, fell into the Bay. So.” A tilt of her head. “They used an ordinary steel one.” She turned to a wall mirror and began fussing with her hair, smoothing down the back, then making microadjustments. “When Mother told me that story, I used to think she was saying, ‘This city has always had an uneasy fit with wealth.’ But maybe it means something else.” She reapplied lipstick and turned to face him. “At the end of the day, steel is stronger than gold, isn’t it?”

He studied her a moment, then nodded.

“I’m scared, Daniel.”

He had never heard her say it.

“I don’t know who I am without money,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll live.”

“I’ll help you.”

“How?”

“Put you in one of my classes with felons.”

She dabbed her nose, and a laugh escaped. “Maybe you’re not so useless after all.” She shook her head as if shuddering off water, released a deep breath. “The press caught wind. They’re waiting for me downstairs.”

“Should we ask the manager to sneak you out the back?” Daniel asked.

“No, darling.” Her sparkling laugh was not entirely drained of humor. “Losers walk.”

He had to admire that. He countered with another of her favorite sayings. “You make things hard on yourself.”

She didn’t smile, but he could read her amusement in the way her lips reshaped themselves. “I’ve been told that easy is overrated. I supposed I’m about to find out.” She pulled back her shoulders, faced the door, squaring herself up. “Will you … will you walk with me?”

He couldn’t help but think of his group members, struggling to gain power over a past they’d let define them. A-Dre and Big Mac, trying to turn a new page. Fang walking away from the beckoning neon sign of the club. X in that chair, owning up to her remorse. Lil braving a church social despite the trembling in her legs, the loss of breath, the fear she might die of panic in a parking lot. How much they had taught him.

Evelyn took an unsteady step, and he turned slightly, offered his arm.

She took it.

Side by side, they rode the elevator down in blissful silence. The mood of the lobby was restrained, the staff elegant and respectful. Each time she wobbled, he righted her.

And then they stepped outside.

The press swarmed. He felt her hand tighten around his biceps, the nails pinch into the skin, but she smiled easily into the wall of cameras and microphones. Steadily, he kept moving her toward her car.

A bald newspaperman worked his way in front of them. “—truth to the rumors that your fortune has dissipated overnight—”

“Nice tie, Bob,” Evelyn said. “I see you’ve graduated from pastels.”

An aggressively made up TV reporter lunged to the forefront. “Multiple reports have confirmed that you’re now broke.”

“No,” Evelyn said. “Just less rich.”

James eased the Bugatti forward, and Daniel steered her out of the scrum and into the backseat. She slammed the door, and he found himself looking at his reflection in the dark tint of the window.

He was about to turn away when the window rolled down and her hand reached through, caught his forearm, and held it a moment. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said.

Chapter 66

Another hard rain bounced off the street below, making it gleam beneath passing headlights. No moon, no stars—no sky, even. Just a ceiling of mist cutting the tops off the houses. Daniel set his hand on the cool glass of the bedroom window, staring down at the spot where Viviana Olvera had once stood, her face hidden beneath the raised yellow hood. Closing his eyes, he relived the thud of the Muni bus striking her. That faint little smile she wore, as if she were recalling an inside joke. That battered face, the lips shaping those two words:

You’ll see.

Cristina sat on the bed behind him, work files spread across the duvet, chewing a pencil and contemplating the next windmill to tilt at. She looked up at him. “You hungry?”

“Does it matter?”

“What does that mean?”

He grinned. “What do you want?”

She tapped the pencil against her lips. “Peking duck?”

“Should we see how many questions we can ask each other in a row?”

That voluptuous wide grin. “Chinatown or the Richmond?”

“Do you think anywhere’s open at nine o’clock at night?”

“Would you mind calling around?”

“Is this pregnancy craving thing really for real?”

She set down her pencil, and her face changed. “Are you still scared?”

His smile faded. They listened to the rain tapping the window. Then he said, “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“You’re looking for her,” she said. “On the street. Just now.”

“I guess I am.”

“I do, too. Even though it makes no sense.”

“Fear doesn’t have to make sense,” he said.

A deep breath lifted her chest. “I think it’s just hard to believe that this thing is really over.”

The phone rang, shrill off the walls.

It rang again. They kept their eyes on each other, even as Daniel crossed to the nightstand and answered. He didn’t need to hear the voice to know it would be Dooley.

“We’re doing the post-arrest interview,” she said. “Don’t want to give Martin time to work out his story. And something came up.”

A trickle of dread, like a fingernail down his spine. “What?”

“He claims that another person was kidnapped. And is still alive somewhere, alone, like Kyle Lane in that wine cellar.”

The trickle down his spine turned to ice water. He couldn’t figure out how to make his mouth work to ask the question, but Dooley continued, answering it anyway.

“We don’t know who it is. All the people from the study are accounted for. At least the ones we can think of. We’ve been pressing him hard for a name, a location. But.”

“
What,
Dooley?”

A heavy sigh blew across the receiver. “He says he’ll only tell you.”

*   *   *

When the sally port of the jail swung closed behind Daniel’s car, sealing him momentarily from fender to bumper, it produced a perfect claustrophobic dread. Then the front gate slid away, revealing a waterlogged stretch of asphalt, and he remembered to breathe again. A guard escorted him inside and upstairs, where Dooley waited, reminding him that though Martin had demanded that no one else be in the room, she and others would be listening to every last word and that Daniel should do anything to draw him out.

He was ushered into a dank room with a stall terminating in a shield of ballistic glass that looked onto the mirror image of a facing stall. A coaster-size speaking hole in the glass rendered jailhouse phones unnecessary.

He waited, counting the seconds, working to stay calm.

A metallic boom announced the opening of an out-of-sight metal door, and then a rustling of chains came audible, Jacob Marley sounding his approach. Martin appeared in the doorway, his broad form barely contained by an orange jumpsuit. The spartan surroundings only accented the dark frames of his glasses all the more, and he gave a mysterious smile as he fixed his gaze on Daniel and shuffled forward in his shackles to claim the chair opposite. A guard waited until he was situated, then vanished out through the still-open door as prenegotiated.

Martin’s voice was husky, close to a growl. “Are you thinking about all you have to be thankful for today?”

“Among other things.”

“They told me about Viviana.” He wet his lips. “I’m all alone now. Facing the death penalty. You know, pay for my bad choices. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Life in prison.” Each sentence tinged with that generic urban accent.

“Do you have something to tell me, Martin? Or not?”

“I
am
telling you. About you. And me. See, I’m your photographic negative.” He tried to spread his arms, but since his wrists were shackled to his waist chain, all he could manage was a flare of his elbows. Even physically he was in many regards Daniel’s opposite. Brown skin, swollen muscular build, close-shaved head with that bristling hair.

“You have everything,” Martin said. “I have
nothing.
”

“You looking for sympathy?”

“No. Just understanding. That’s why I wanted you to find those letters in your mailbox. I wanted you to
learn
what it feels like to be helpless. Because that’s how it feels. You don’t
understand
why someone’s in a study, say, and then she’s not.”

“But you found out, didn’t you?”

“I had nothing to do with my life
but
find out. And plan. I checked your mailbox every day after I put the letters there, but you didn’t pick them up. So I kept with the deadlines, figured you’d tune in at some point. I didn’t expect you to show up at Marisol Vargas’s—you must’ve gotten the mail late that night. I figured you’d have a shot at Kyle Lane since you had that letter in plenty of time, but the coast was clear. At least on the front end. Then, once you caught up all the way with Molly Clarke … well, creativity was called for.”

“So it was all about teaching me a lesson?” Daniel asked.

“From the moment you were born, you had no notion of reality. Your whole life. Even when you
die,
you’ll die in clean sheets.” A breath caught in that wide chest. “When someone you loved got sick, what did you do? You picked up the phone. And then your mom did. You spent money. You pulled in resources. I wanted you to know for once what it feels like to have no resources. No safety net. No idea what would happen next. That is all I ever wanted. Was for you to know what you were doing when you didn’t
care
to know you were doing it.”

“Did you actually kidnap someone before group yesterday?” Daniel said. “Or was this just an excuse to get me here and spin the same record?”

Martin tilted his chin to his chest. His shoulders shook, and Daniel thought he was sobbing until he heard the low chuckle. “Oh,
I
didn’t kidnap anyone.”

“You’re full of shit.” Daniel rose to leave. “You’re wasting my time.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. It’s over for you, Martin. You’re at the end of the road.”

He didn’t move his head, but his glittering eyes pulled north. “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s just getting started.”

Something in his tone froze Daniel halfway to the door. He turned.

“Look at my record,” Martin said. “You have already. No kidnappings. No murders. You
saw
me in the room. You were right there, and I had a knife to your throat. But I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t kidnap anyone either.”

Daniel focused to keep his voice steady. “So now you’re
not
the killer? You’re innocent, that it? I’ve heard that a time or two, Martin.”

Martin’s lips were drawn back, shaped like a grin but utterly humorless. “Oh, I’m not
innocent.
”

“Was someone kidnapped or not?”

“Yes.”

“
Who?
Who’d you kidnap, Martin?”

The dark smile returned. “I gave you a deadline. Thanksgiving at midnight.” His head pivoted, slowly, to take in the wall clock to Daniel’s left side.

Daniel followed his stare—10:31
P.M.

He felt his heartbeat as a deep ticking, a bomb counting down. He pictured again the pert little smile that Viviana Olvera wore as the bus bore down on her.

“I made you a promise, too,” Martin continued. “I said to admit what you’ve done. Or you would bleed for it. Well…” He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. “I didn’t say it would be
your
blood.”

Heat rolled through Daniel’s body. He stepped toward the glass, knocking the chair aside.
“Who?”

Those magnified eyes took his measure.

“Who’s been kidnapped, Martin?”

He bit his lip again. Released it. Smiled from deep inside his own hell.

The ammonia reek of the room clogged Daniel’s throat. He stepped back into the embrace of the stall, gripping the ledge of a desk. “What did you do? What the
fuck
did you do?”