Death Qualified (57 page)

    Even as she thought this, she accepted that it was different when it was human nature itself that was being changed at the level of chromosomes. Not just a new cure for an old disease, a one-to-one cause-and-effect process, but a process that could be passed on and on.

    Where did Mike fit in? What happened to him? How was he now, this morning, this minute?

    Abruptly she stood up and went to find a note pad. No matter where her thoughts started, they always came back to those same few questions that she could not answer.

    "Ah, Bobby," Frank said when he entered the kitchen at eight-thirty. He rested his hand on her head for a moment;

    she reached up and patted it.

    "Dad, it's all right. I'm all right. Get some coffee."

    "You look all right, all right," he said and shuffled over to the counter.

    "Well, I am. Look, someone has to get in touch with Tony today, or Larry Ernst, if necessary. We have to get them to agree not to announce a new trial for a few days at the very least. A week or two would be even better."

    "Honey," he protested.

    "House rule, no business before breakfast. Keerist!"

    She nodded absently and glanced over the page of notes she had made.

    "Okay. And I've about decided to give Clive to that Deschutes sheriff, not Tony. I'd like to discuss that, though. It could be I'm just being bitchy. I know I'd like to see Tony with egg on his face."

    Frank groaned and set about making himself scrambled eggs, muttering under his breath as he moved back and forth from refrigerator to stove.

    She looked up.

    "I'm sorry. What?"

    "Not much," he said.

    "Just that you can't give what you ain't got."

    "I'll get him," she said, and looked down at her notes again.

    "I'll tackle Nell. She has to put off telling Clive anything, making any decision about confessing. I'll see if I can get her in line for now. Don't quite know how since I can't really tell her anything, but I'll do something."

    Frank banged a spatula against a pan. He was scowling ferociously when she looked at him again.

    "How long you been up?"

    "I don't know. Hours."

    "Showered yet? You haven't even got dressed yet. Why don't you go do some of those things and let a man eat breakfast?"

    She did not go to town with Frank that morning. He took the car and planned to drive in to Eugene after picking up his paper. He would see Tony, or the district attorney, Lawrence Ernst.

    "Make it good. Dad," she said, and kissed his cheek.

    He had recovered his equanimity; it comes with food, he had said. Now he searched his pocket for car keys and said with a straight face, "I'll be good. They know I'm the one who cuts deals. One way or the other I'll buy us a little time."

    She put her hands on his chest and gave him a little shove, then went back to the kitchen and her notes. The garage called to say her car was ready, could she pick it up? She said no way, and, grumbling, they agreed to send it out with a driver and a following car to bring him back.

    The price they were charging her, she thought, they should be happy if they had to send out a parade.

    The next time the phone rang, it was Bailey.

    "Got something pretty interesting," he said, and she caught her breath. What to anyone else might be earthshaking was merely interesting to Bailey.

    "I'd better come out there with it," he went on.

    "Couple of hours. And, something else, you know that guy you got your eyes on? If you can round up a picture, that would come in handy. His ex has a pretty interesting job with the city, by the way.

    Thought you might like to know that, too. Clerk in the DA's office. See you around noon."

    She sat down trying to son it out. Eugene was a small enough city, she thought, that it wasn't really surprising to find Clive's ex-wife in the DA's office, or anywhere else.

    Frank said it had been a friendly divorce; they kept in touch. Early on, she remembered, Clive had said he asked around about her and her father. She nodded. He had a contact, after all, someone who could answer his questions, keep him informed of what was going on. Today's visit by Frank? She nodded again. He probably would find out about that, too. It was quite likely that Frank would hint that with a little time he could get Nell to cut a deal, but that she, Barbara, was being difficult.

    She shivered, suddenly remembering the rock smashing through her windshield. Just another dimension, she told herself, another little interesting quirk in a case that was filled with them. Briskly she stood up and began to pace.

    A picture of Clive. Not here, probably not at Nell's house.

    Then she remembered Jessie's snapping her picture on her deck. Possibly she did that with everyone who visited.

    It was not raining, not very cold; the woods were misty and a vibrant green. Everything was saturated with green, the trees, the needles, mosses, ferns; they all seemed to glow and pulsate. Everything was dripping, or airing drops as if they had been hung out like tiny ornaments. It was very quiet; even the river was muted by the trees. The river song was such a ubiquitous melody that its absence gave an unfamiliar alien quality to the woods now.

    At the edge of the woods, with Doc's house sprawling before her, she paused, then straightened her shoulders and walked forward. She tried the front door, locked, then she tried the door to the service area, locked, and finally went around the house to the glass doors of the living room. Mike stood there.

    "Open up," she called.

    He shook his head.

    "I don't want to talk to you, or even see you. I'm after something."

    He started to walk away, back into the room, and she hit the door with her fist.

    "Open this door or I'll break it!"

    Now he came back and released the lock and slid the door open a few inches.

    "You just can't leave it alone, can you?" he said bitterly.

    "Don't flatter yourself, buster. I told you I'm after something. Just go hide under a bed or something and let me get on with it."

    After he pushed the door open, she stalked past him without a glance. In the center of the room she stopped, considering where Jessie might keep photographs. At a sound from Mike she glanced over her shoulder, and then spun around, staring. He was laughing. His laughter was raucous and unchecked; He clutched the door and held on, nearly doubled over with laughter.

    She shrugged and turned away from him, denying the panic that seized her. Pretending an oblivion that would have been superhuman if true, she started to move toward the television room, den, whatever they called it here.

    Once more a strangled sound from Mike stopped her.

    She faced him, her panic, fear, faked calm all giving way to fury.

    "Either I put my nose on upside down this morning, or it's a private joke that I couldn't possibly understand, or you're wacko. And at the moment, I don't give a damn which."

    He closed the door all the way and moved to a long white sofa and collapsed on it.

    "You're wonderful," he said as soon as he caught his breath. His mirth was so close to the surface that he had to gulp in more air before he could go on.

    "I've been wrestling with ghosts and demons and spirits and wraiths and shadows, and you come in with absolute hard-edged reality and pass right through my tormentors without a flinch, without a glance, and scatter them off into never-never land."

    "Wacko," she said, and then more critically, "You look like hell!" He looked as if he had not slept even as much as she had, and she knew that was too little by far. He had not shaved; his hair was wild with too much handling.

    Probably he had not eaten.

    "I have a right. What are you after?"

    "First, how are you?"

    "You said it: wacko. But getting better."

    She nodded as if the answer satisfied her.

    "A picture of Clive."

    His expression was completely blank. Then he glanced about the room and said, "Here?"

    She nodded and went on into the hallway to look for the den. She had not been past the deck before and was impressed by the luxury of the interior. Everything was white or gold, the wood pale; here and there a lovely dark blue in a cushion or a drape was all the contrast there was. A good decorator had done it all, she decided; all very hand some, expensive, precise, and inhuman.

    She began to open drawers in a desk, and went from there to a sideboard with a single drawer, and then on to a table and finally found a drawer with a photo album, and eventually she found a Polaroid of Clive. She let out a sigh.

    She had been aware of Mike's presence throughout her search; he had stood watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. He moved aside when she walked from the room, back into the hallway, toward the glass doors again.

    At the door he caught up with her and touched her arm.

    She stopped moving. He reached out and touched her cheek very gently, ran his finger along her chin, all the time studying her face intently. His touch was the most arousing she had ever felt; she was confounded by the wave of eroticism that swept her, made her feel light headed. He looked as startled as she was by the blatancy of the sexual need his touch had awakened. He looked frightened. He pulled his hand back and stepped back ward, just as she was drawing away. They both stood motionless staring, until she took another step away, and then another.

    She shook her head hard and closed her eyes hard; when she opened her eyes and looked at him again, it was over, whatever it had been.

    "I have to go," she said, surprised that her vocal cords responded normally, that her voice sounded normal.

    He nodded.

    "You know where to find me if you decide to come back," she said, and turned quickly and ran out across the deck, back over the lawn, and into the healing woods.

    As soon as she was deep enough into the woods that the trees hid Doc's house, hid her, she stopped her stumbling flight and leaned against a tree trunk and breathed deeply.

    "My God," she whispered, after a moment.

    "My God."

    They kept meeting on new grounds, the same two people creating ever-new patterns. At first it had been as if they had known each other for centuries, old friends, comfortable together, comfortable making love. Exciting, but comfortable, with few surprises. Then they had turned into shy adolescents, discovering sex, discovering mutual attraction, discovering the other, and through the other the self. But this.. .. She had no word for what had happened.

    Lust. Passion. She shook her head. Shopworn words that meant nothing. She had gone through a period of lust and passion in her early college years when sex had equated with life, and the partner had been whoever the current turn-on was. Each time it ended, she had been heartbroken, but even then, at an age that now seemed terribly young, she had known that endings were part of the game, accepted, looked forward to in some perverse secret way because each ending implied a new beginning, a rekindling of the excitement that went with the new other. Then Tony had' come along, and brought new excitement, new passion, but never ease, never comfort.

    Never that. All lust, never trust, she remembered telling herself when she left him at the end. He had brought a sense of danger that had increased the excitement to a higher level than she had known, and she had mistaken that for love. Her first love lost, she had thought at the time, her first real betrayal. Since then, she had allowed no one to touch her, not in any real sense. Not even Mike.

    She had set rules: He had to do this first, say that first, make the first move.. .. She had set up a testing program.

    She bit her lip when she felt her eyes burning with tears.

    "Goddamn it," she muttered under her breath.

    She pushed herself away from the tree and started to walk again, her eyes downcast, watching for rocks on the trail, but no longer seeing rocks or anything else. Goddamn it, she thought again, she didn't have time for this, not today. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and trudged through the woods.

    Bailey arrived before twelve. He grinned when Barbara let him in the house.

    "You want a smoking gun, I deliver a smoking gun. How's that for service?"

    "Wonderful," she said dryly.

    "Show me."

    "The old man home?"

    "No. You'll have to put up with just me. Coffee?"

    "Always. Never turn down a potable, that's what my father taught me. Only thing he ever taught me, but if you get only one lesson, make it good." He pulled off his jacket and handed it over. He was carrying a rolled map..

    They went to the kitchen table, where he unrolled his map and anchored the ends while she got the coffee. He took three spoons of sugar and heavy cream. How could he drink what he did, coffee, booze, whatever was available, and still run marathons? She waited impatiently until he had everything to his liking and then sipped his coffee before leaning over the map.