The 7th Canon (36 page)

Ladies and gentlemen, the next heavyweight cham-peen of the world, Dixon Connor.

He hadn’t made it that far, but he had won a city Golden Gloves championship.

Everything had revolved around the stool at the corner of the bar.

Not anymore.

They’d killed the bar, just like they’d killed his father.

Connor had just had his final drink at the 19th Hole. Thursday morning, he’d pick up his money. Then he’d vanish, to hunt and fish the rest of his life. For the fun of it, he’d screw that prick Gil Ramsey and his father. He’d send a copy of the tape to the local media. What had gone around was coming back around. Payback was going to be a royal bitch.

He turned the key and started the engine.

The tiny penlight revealed an unmade bed. On it was a large canvas bag stuffed with clothes and toiletries. Donley’s instincts were correct. Dixon Connor was leaving town, in a hurry from the looks of it. Unopened mail and debris littered the floor and obscured a desk. Donley stepped closer to what, at first, appeared to be a strange wallpaper pattern. Instead, his penlight revealed dozens of articles pinned and taped to the wall—a seemingly unorganized collage.

He moved the light from article to article. The collage covered the arrest and criminal trial of Max Connor, and the civil trial that had followed. Equally prevalent were articles on then–District Attorney Augustus Ramsey and the young assistant DA he had assigned to handle the case, Gil Ramsey.

Frank Ross had been accurate in his assessment that the Ramseys had been unable or unwilling to let the matter go. There were articles about the Hispanic community and women’s groups pressuring the DA to ensure Max Connor would be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The police association had predictably stood by one of its brethren. It had accused Augustus Ramsey of conducting a witch hunt and pandering to special-interest groups, especially when an internal investigation questioned the veracity of the female officer’s allegations that Max Connor had raped her. But it had not been enough to save Max Connor.

Ross had been right about Dixon Connor having slipped off the ledge of rational thinking; he’d just underestimated how far Connor had fallen. The bloodstained bedspread and the bizarre collage represented the work of a man obsessed with revenge and seething with anger.

Donley realized he’d underestimated the danger he’d put himself in. He needed to get out of that house as quickly as possible. He stuck the penlight between his teeth, and quickly went through the canvas bag but did not see or feel any videocassettes or books.

He picked through the mess on the desk and floor, checked under the bed, and went through the closet. He pulled open drawers of a dresser, pushing aside clothes. Nothing.

He hadn’t figured Connor to be the kind of guy who would get a safe-deposit box or hide the tape someplace else, but maybe he’d also misjudged Connor’s paranoia. He left the room, stepped back into the dining room, and suddenly thought of the videotapes on the shelves in the living room.

He moved quickly into the room and ran a gloved finger over the titles, pulling tapes from the shelves and sliding out the cassettes to check whether the title matched the case. There had to be close to fifty tapes. It would take too long to go through them all. As if to prove that point, two cones of light pierced the curtain. A second later, Donley heard the hum of an engine turning in to the driveway.

Dixon Connor stopped the car at the end of his driveway and reached out the window, but with the new vehicle being higher, he could not reach the lock on his mailbox. He put the car in park and stepped out, opening the lock. Inside, he found nothing but junk mail and a bill from PG&E. He’d requested the postal service to cease delivery the day after tomorrow, providing no forwarding address. He didn’t care if he ever got another scrap. He’d listed the house with an agent to sell after he’d left, and set up a bank account for the real-estate agent to deposit the funds upon closing. Once the check cleared, he’d transfer those funds into a different account. He’d load his duffel into the back of the Range Rover, pick up his money from Gil Ramsey, retire to the little cottage he’d bought in the Northern Idaho wilderness, and live out his life the way he was entitled, the way his father had talked about but never got the chance.

As he slid back onto his leather seat, a light in the front window caught his attention. The television. The timer was off its cycle again. Probably a power shortage.

He tossed the mail onto the passenger seat, about to continue down the driveway when another flicker of light caught his eye—a sharp, more directed light. Not the television. Connor swiveled his head and looked up and down the block. The wind continued to blow the fog thick and thin. He saw a car parked on the south side of the street, the only one. A red Saab convertible. It faded and reappeared in the fog like an apparition. After forty years, Connor knew what belonged and what was out of place in his neighborhood. The street cleaners cleaned the south side of the street every Wednesday morning at 6:00 a.m. The fines for not moving your car were steep. Anyone who lived in the neighborhood knew the schedule.

The car did not belong.

Neither did the light that flickered again inside his home.

Connor took his foot off the brake and drove forward.

Outside, the headlights crept down the side of the house and disappeared. The engine died.

Donley started out of the room, took one last look at the shelf of videotapes, and stopped. A videocassette rested atop the video player below the television. Donley quickly picked it up.
Dirty Harry
. The cassette was the only one not in a case. Given how organized the rest of the house was, it seemed particularly out of place. He looked but didn’t see the empty case.

Outside the window, a car door opened and closed. Donley’s heart raced. He wiped perspiration from his eyes and quickly ran the penlight over the titles again.

Get out,
his inner voice shouted.
Get out!

Heavy footsteps approached the front door.

Dirty Harry.

He pulled the case from the shelf. It contained a tape. He slid it out. Unlabeled. Footsteps sounded on the front porch. He quickly switched the
Dirty Harry
cassette for the unlabeled tape inside the case and slid it back onto the shelf.

Keys rattled in the lock. Donley crossed to the kitchen as the front door opened behind him. As he crossed to the laundry room, he heard the sound of keys dropping on a wood surface.

Donley pulled open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light inside the house came on. Donley shut the door and grabbed the porch railing, intending to vault it to get out of the line of sight, but when he jumped, the railing snapped, and he sprawled into the grass. He felt the gun dislodge from the small of his back. On his hands and knees, he frantically searched the tall grass, but it was like a thicket. He couldn’t find the revolver. He didn’t have time to look.

Move!

He scrambled to his feet, unlatched the gate, and slid between the car and the side of the house, ducking low to stay below the windows. At the corner of the house, he paused and leaned out. Seeing no one, he bolted for the street, the videocassette bouncing inside his coat pocket. The fog now became his ally, helping to obscure him.

Fear caused him to burst into a dead run. At his car, he fumbled with his keys and looked back over his shoulder, but the fog had grown so thick, he could barely see the outline of the house.

The key rattled in the lock. Donley’s hand shook, unable to find the teeth. Gusts of wind shook the car. Donley inserted the key. He had visions of it snapping off in the lock, but it turned, and the door latch popped up.

He pulled the door open, slid behind the wheel, and shut and locked the door. Only then did he allow himself to let out the breath he’d been holding, to feel a sense of relief. Yes, it had been a risk, but it had paid off. He had the tape, and he was certain whatever was on it would be the final piece to the puzzle he needed to exonerate Father Tom. He inserted the key in the ignition lock between the two seats. A further sense of relief washed over him when the engine kicked over. He felt like shouting. He felt like laughing out loud. He felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Something fluttered in a gust of wind.

He looked up at the convertible top. A wedge-shaped piece of the canvas roof flapped like a bird’s wings.

Ragtops are easy,
the homeless man had said
. Rip the top, open the door, do all kinds of damage.

And in that moment he smelled the feral, inhuman smell, just before he felt the muzzle of the gun press against the back of his head.

“Hello, Counselor.”

Chapter 21

Frank Ross walked into his house through the back door, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. Old habits died hard. The mineral water used to be beer. He drank the water to settle his stomach.

His wife, Julia, walked into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe and slippers, drying her hair with a towel.

“You waited up this late,” he said, surprised to see her.

“I couldn’t sleep. Thought a hot shower would help.” She leaned against a counter. “Everything OK?”

“Sam just needed to talk. I didn’t think I’d be this long, or I would have called. I was afraid I’d wake you.”

“What did Sam want this time of night?”

“He wanted to show me a story the
Chronicle
was going to run tomorrow about that attorney I told you about, the one representing Father Martin.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said. “He called, by the way.”

“Peter Donley called here? When?”

“Earlier. He called twice.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

She shook her head. “No. Didn’t leave a number, either.”

Ross wondered if it had to do with Ross picking up Donley in the morning, if Donley had a change of plans. It was too late to call now.

On the drive home, Ross had thought about what Donley had told him in the car, about being abused by his father, and the deadly confrontation that eventually resulted.

“So many people really get cheated in life, don’t they?” he said. “Kids, I mean. They don’t do anything except get born, and then they pay the price for someone else’s mistakes and disappointments.” He felt his emotions bubbling to the surface and wiped away tears. “We gave Frankie a good home, two loving parents. Why him?”

This time, the tears felt different. Instead of stinging like a thousand needles piercing his skin, they felt like they were somehow washing him clean, absolving him. “Why would God take him when there are so many others out there living in such crappy conditions?”

She put her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his chest. “I don’t know, Frank. I don’t know.”

“He’s dead,” Ross said, sobbing. “Frankie’s dead, isn’t he?”

Now she was crying, too, holding him tight. “I think so, Frank. I think he is.”

“I hope he is,” Ross said. “Does that sound terrible . . .”

“No.”