Xavier had realized before his father had that the young men hadn’t wanted to be improved. They wanted to spend their days sprawled in the shade, wallowing in the numbing bliss of their ganja. They stayed polite to his father and had backed away from Xavier, like he was crazy and they might catch it.
Xavier thought of his father’s endless rules and regulations, that supercilious way he looked down his nose at those he considered his inferiors, and that included anyone who hadn’t attended Sandhurst.
And yet his father had lowered himself to bed a local, and Xavier was the result. The old man eventually sent him to England for an education he said would rival the prime minister’s. Xavier had hated the relentless cold, the bone-numbing damp, and the rain, always the rain, snaking down his neck, making him so miserable he’d wished he’d die.
And how he’d hated the Brits. At school they rigorously caned their rebellious young to make them strong, and he was no exception. He’d heard them say more times than he could stomach that it was for his own good. He thought he might bomb Sandhurst out of existence one of these days. It was something profoundly pleasant to look forward to.
Xavier realized he’d clenched his hands so tightly they were cramping. How could that old bastard still twist him up?
Bad memories, he thought, that’s all. His old man was well and truly gone, ever since Xavier had squeezed three neat shots into his chest on a sodden black night in Belfast, years and years ago. His father was there to negotiate with those hate-filled blighter Irish, and ended up sprawled on the street between his two dead bodyguards. Xavier had watched the life fade out of his pale icy eyes, filled first with disbelief, and then final awareness. He leaned down and told his father that a lowly Siberian peasant had invented the Kalashnikov and what did he think of being shot with that? His father hadn’t answered, he’d died instead.
Xavier had stood over that sodden bloody mess of tweeds, a still-furled umbrella lying next to him. He hadn’t told those dark-eyed men in Belfast that he’d have been happy to kill his old man for free. His father had fetched ten thousand pounds, and he’d enjoyed that money, along with his inheritance. At least, he’d thought, the Irish were trying to rid themselves of the bloody English, and he’d done his part. For a price.
Incredible weapon, the Kalashnikov. He’d once thought the M16 was the god of all assault rifles until he’d been with a group of Palestinians on a raid in the desert and the damned thing had jammed, victim of a blizzard of blowing sand. Why, he’d asked their leader, did they use weapons that didn’t work in this hell on earth? But the Arab had only shrugged, said there would always be hardships for those who tried to carry out Allah’s wishes. Xavier found their hard-wired hatred of the Israelis insane—as if the Israelis hadn’t lived side by side with them over thousands of years as they’d fought and lost to a host of invaders. He knew deep hatred like that knotted you up, made you an easy target rather than a fluid shadow, unseen by your enemy because you moved too fast and sure. Hatred made you stupid. The Palestinians had looked at him when he’d said that, then away, quickly, and he’d known in that moment that without their hatred, they’d have nothing at all, their lives would be pointless, like that paltry stream of humanity parading below his hotel window. It was then he’d eschewed all contact with groups of any kind. He was by himself now, depended only on himself and answered only to himself. He was the perfect assassin, swift and silent and deadly, terminating his targets without flaw, without fuss.
Until now.
He felt rage rising in his throat, a sour peppery taste, and wanted to choke on it.
A stupid little woman, an amateur who should have died in San Francisco Bay, a lovely deep knife thrust through her heart, had shot him, maimed him. Of course he couldn’t have factored in an FBI agent that first time, couldn’t have predicted he’d be there at that precise moment. What a bit of luck for that walking-dead bitch. Well, that hadn’t been because of any flaw in planning on his part.
But when she’d shot him on Saturday night—there had been no deus ex machina, unexpected and unforeseen, to rescue her. He closed his eyes, still couldn’t believe what he had let happen. The dozen small cuts on his face and neck were a constant reminder, and he could still feel the shock of pain when he’d tweezed out each splinter. The bullet had only hit the fleshy part of his arm and thankfully gone through. He’d been able to tend to it himself.
She could have killed you. Why hadn’t she? Why had she bleated out a warning? He was there to kill her, for God’s sake. She was a wimpy amateur, thank God, paralyzed by fear even when it came down to saving herself. She could have shot you in the middle of your back when you were facing her bed. You were lucky, lucky, lucky—
His hands fisted again. How he wished he had his Kalashnikov. He could walk right up to her front door, and when she opened it, he’d pump twenty rounds into her, all in her face, shredding bone and flesh, splatting blood and brains all over the acres of marble, rich wood, and the paintings marching up the walls. And anyone else with her. Then he could walk back out of that posh death house, whistling, and leave this foggy cold city.
But what he had was his Škorpion VZ 61, thirty years old and no longer made. It was his mentor’s in a guerrilla force in southern Africa, until he’d been shot in a raid, and Xavier had uncurled his fingers and taken it. His Škorpion was small, light, and easily concealed, and it was fitted with an efficient silencer.
He swallowed three more Aleve.
He’d had two chances at her, two solid chances, and she was still alive. His employer wasn’t happy, but no matter. He was not going to slink away now, no matter what orders or stupid rants he heard. This wasn’t acceptable. He’d never failed and he wasn’t about to fail now, to turn tail and run. He sat down at the stingy little desk, picked up the cheap ballpoint provided by the hotel, and drew a piece of hotel stationery from the drawer. He would get her this time. He began to write out a list of what he would need.
CHAPTER 32
EAST BAY
Monday afternoon
About the only time Cheney used his portable GPS was when he had to cross over from the known into what he called Middle Earth, namely drive over the Bay Bridge to that place others called the East Bay, with its overflowing cities, tangle of overpasses, and signs that pointed to more highways and still more signs. Oakland, Hayward, and a dozen other cities, most of them growing, spreading over the barren hills, out until it was Palm Springs hot in the summer.
“I see you aren’t comfortable driving in the East Bay,” Julia said as she watched him punch in the address in Livermore.
“Drives me nuts. I got lost every time I had to drive over here until I got this.” He pointed with great affection to his GPS. He loved the soothing female voice telling him to turn left in two tenths of a mile, and then that comforting pinging sound as he went into the turn. “Okay, let’s make this our last interview today. The traffic’s already getting bad. It’ll be rush-hour gridlock by the time we drive back to San Francisco.”
Julia nodded. “You did okay with Bevlin. Can I trust you not to fly into sarcasm mode with Kathryn Golden?”
“I’m reformed,” he said, and crossed his heart. “I’m sympathetic and sensitive. I promise.”
“Yeah, right.”
After a few minutes, Julia shifted in her seat to face him. “What are you thinking about, Cheney?”
“That cold reading deal Bevlin Wagner described. Why, if the dead person is standing right beside the medium, doesn’t he simply tell the medium his name, tell him who he’s there to see? Doesn’t he remember his name? Are the dead playing some sort of weird game? Sorry, Julia, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. It sounds to me like they’re simply fishing, trying to hook in some poor schmuck who’s grieving and desperate to know that his loved one who died still, somehow, exists, and is somehow sentient.”
Julia said, “Oh, the psychic field is full of charlatans, wannabes, and shysters, all right. I watched a tape of a woman medium
—she really had some poor young man going, telling him his mother was right there beside him and that she wanted him to stop his grieving, that he had to depend on himself now, that she knew her passing had frozen him in place and he needed to move on. She wanted him to know she loved him as much now as she had before she’d passed. The medium realized she’d got something obviously wrong because the young man didn’t respond, and so she quickly switched in midstream in a different direction. She suggested he hadn’t gotten along with his mother, and when he responded and nodded, she knew she had him. She kept talking, hinting around what his mother was like—that she always spoke her mind, that she was always telling those around her what to do—and soon she had the young man nodding some more. She used the guy’s guilt to get to him, and by the end of it, he was crying and clutching the medium’s hand, and I thought, how low do you have to be to perpetrate such a lie on a vulnerable person? And all for money, I guess, for a name, for self-aggrandizement.
“I’ll tell you, Cheney, August hated those slicks—that’s what he called the so-called psychic mediums on TV. All you have to do is read the long release forms every TV show attendee has to sign to know there’s something seriously amiss with the whole thing. They basically make you swear you won’t say a single word to anyone about what happens during the show for as long as you live. You probably have to swear to keep quiet even after you’re dead.”
Cheney cut his eyes to her. “There are release forms?”
“Yes, isn’t that something? The producers and the psychics want to cover themselves since a person could tell the media after the show is aired how thoroughly the show was edited, how the psychic was bumbling around.
“August called it the Barnum philosophy at work—give people what they want. If they’re hurting, be the compassionate expert who will take away the hurt. It’s the grieving people who make it all work. They’ll overlook the most egregious blunders— or misses as they’re called—and still believe that beloved dead Uncle Albert is there, at the medium’s elbow, watching over them, telling them he’s happy as a clam himself, and even happier they’re doing well and they’re not to worry about him.”
Cheney said, “And Uncle Albert didn’t even bother to tell the medium his name? It boggles the mind what people can be led to believe.”
Julia nodded. “It takes a lot of talent to be able to run the ultimate scam—convincing the marks they’re talking to dead people. Sometimes mediums justify it by saying they’re helping people get through their grief, helping them by using their own brand of counseling. But August never believed in anything based on a lie. If those people want to be grief counselors, they should be up front about it.”
Cheney said slowly, “I don’t understand, Julia. Didn’t August Ransom claim he spoke to dead people?”
“Yes.”
“Did the dead at least give him their names?”
“I can’t say, since his consultations were always private, and he never spoke to me about them, or to anyone else.”
“But you believe he spoke to the dead? Communicated with them, passed on messages to those grieving left behind?”
“He told me he’d spoken to Lincoln, and I believed him.”
She sounded so certain, so settled in her belief. He eyed her. He didn’t know what to think. He decided to leave what she’d said alone. She’d evidently bought into everything her husband had told her. He wasn’t going to make her defend him.
A horn sounded, and he focused on the road again. He finally saw the exit sign to Livermore. “I want to hear more about all this, but first, we’ve got about five minutes for you to tell me about Kathryn Golden.”
She said, “I think Bevlin’s wrong about Kathryn being in love with August. She’s too—together, I guess is the right word, too focused on what she is, to love someone like that. And besides, if she wanted him, why would she kill him? Why not me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe when she approached him one last time and he turned her down, she was enraged, made plans to get even.”
“She always has lovely fingernails. I can’t see her doing anything to endanger them, much less garroting him. Okay, that was a bit snippy, but the fact remains no way does she have the strength to garrote anyone.”
“Okay, you’re probably right. So she could have hired someone. I’m getting the picture here that you simply never considered her any sort of threat, that you might even like her.”
“I suppose I do like her, and you’re right, I never saw her as a threat of any kind. August loved me, I knew that. He never gave me cause to doubt it.”
Cheney chewed that over for a moment, then asked, “Do you think she’s really psychic? Like August was?”
“August used to say that many people who thought they were psychic simply overflowed with intuition. With those people he really believed did have psychic gifts, he said he pictured two big beakers—one to measure their actual psychic ability, the other to measure their ambition for material gain. He saw their beakers filled accordingly when he made a decision about them. He said Kathryn’s psychic beaker was more than half full, but her ambition beaker flowed nearly to the top. So she stepped over the line sometimes. But he said she was so smooth and charismatic, such an expert at reading people, she could make anyone believe she was communicating with their dead Saint Bernard.”
When Cheney pulled onto Raleigh Drive, a street that speared up a barren hill where the houses were large and set wide apart, he paused a moment, looking around. “The psychic medium business appears to be good to Ms. Golden.”
“She’s practically a regular on daytime TV, you know, some of the talk shows. She even had her own show for a couple of years. She’s written a couple of books and both did fairly well, as Bevlin told you. I read The Soul’s Search. It was actually good. The fact is, Cheney, though I’ve never disliked her, I have gotten the impression she thinks I’m an opportunist, that I married August mainly for his money. I suppose she thinks August was taken in, dazzled by my youth and beauty.”
“Do I hear a whiff of sarcasm?”
“Well, yes. Youth and beauty, give me a break.”
Cheney looked at her high cheekbones, the bruise fading, her creamy white skin, and her pale green eyes, ever so slightly tilted at the corners, her mouth with its light coating of pale peach lipstick. He wondered if Kathryn Golden had a point.
Julia was saying, “I don’t know of any scandals in her past, nothing like that. She’s always been a little aloof to me. She did love August, though not, I don’t think, in the physical sense. She admired him as much as everyone did.”
She added as they pulled into the driveway, “I don’t like it that we didn’t call her, to tell her we were coming.”
“We know she’s at home, that’s enough,” Cheney said as they walked up the flagstone path to the front door. There were flowers everywhere, in beds lining the walk, in flower boxes, and hanging in baskets from thick black chains, in wild spills and vibrant colors, scenting the dry air with jasmine and violet. “We might learn something by catching her off guard. It’s an old trick. Hey, the door’s open, just like Bevlin’s. What’s with psychics?”
Julia shoved the door open, called out, “Ms. Golden? Kathryn? It’s Julia Ransom.”
There was no answer.
Cheney called out this time.
Still no answer.
They walked into a windowless entrance hall, the marble tile such a dark green they looked almost black in the dim light. “Suck in some air,” Julia said.
Cheney sniffed. “It’s vanilla, too much vanilla.”
“It’s her trademark scent.”
Kathryn Golden appeared in the living-room doorway, framed and posing. She looked around forty-five and was dressed beautifully in a full-skirted long-sleeved black dress, her black hair in a stylish chignon. She wore open-toed three-inch heels and diamond studs in her ears. She looked ready to tango. TV appearance?
She arched an eyebrow. “Julia, whatever are
you doing here? And who is this man?”
“This is Special Agent Cheney Stone, Kathryn. May we speak with you?”
“I’ve been watching the news. I hope you’re being careful. Yes, now I recognize you, Agent Stone. You saved Julia’s life.”
Julia nodded. “Yes, he did. Agent Stone is continuing to keep me safe.”
They followed Kathryn Golden into the immense living room that stretched, Cheney saw, the entire length of the house. It was long and narrow, with thick burgundy drapes closed over the wall-to-wall windows set at both ends. The floors were darkly varnished, bare of rugs. He looked over at a huge dark-veined golden marble fireplace on the opposite wall that looked like it had never been used.
The room was starkly elegant, like a museum, until you realized all the furniture groupings in the long room were black woven rattan. The extreme contrast in styles wasn’t tacky, but rather oddly charming. There had to be a story behind this. Then he noticed the modern art covering one of the stark white walls, dark violent paintings, some of them of mouths that seemed to be screaming at him. It gave him the willies to look at them.
Suddenly Kathryn Golden stopped in her tracks, and didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.
CHAPTER 33
Ms. Golden? Are you all right?” "Please be quiet. I’m having a vision. You and Julia—back away. Go sit down.”
Julia didn’t seem at all alarmed or find this particularly strange. She shushed him, pointed him to one of the long rattan sofas.