Cold Springs(32)

“Not possible.”

“Talia Montrose's house? Blood everywhere. Looked like a damn sprinkler went off. Wounds caused by a short, bladed object, six, maybe seven inches long. Fingerprints all over the crime scene. Blood samples. Hair samples. We'll get it all back from the lab in a day or so. In the meantime, I can tell you we're pretty sure Race and Mallory were the only ones staying at the house. Talia was staying with a boyfriend, getting ready to skip town, probably came home to tell Race hasta la vista. We think she had upward of twenty thousand cash on her person when she was killed. Except for a few bills stuck in the blood, all that money is gone.”

Chadwick thought about the $630 he'd taken from Mallory's coat pocket—fresh new bills. “The Montroses aren't saints. Run the last name. Take a look at her kids. The oldest son—Samuel. He'd be an adult now.”

“What would I find, Mr. Chadwick?”

Something in Damarodas' tone made Chadwick's scalp tingle. The detective was playing him, flashing a lure.

“All I'm saying, Sergeant— Mallory Zedman didn't bring trouble to that family. I don't believe she would get herself involved in a murder.”

“Last week? I arrested a seventy-two-year-old grandmother, kept her dead boyfriend in a freezer, five different pieces wrapped in aluminum foil, so she could collect his Social Security checks. I didn't believe she'd be involved in a murder, either. I intend to fly down there and ask Mallory Zedman some questions.”

“Cold Springs is a closed program. No exceptions.”

“This is a homicide investigation, Mr. Chadwick. I've requested a court order from Alameda County.”

“I wouldn't go that route, Sergeant. Dr. Hunter's lawyers have had a lot of practice. They'll turn your court order into trench warfare.”

Chadwick watched the sunrise creep over the hill, melting the shadows from the hooves of the deer.

Finally Damarodas sighed. “Perhaps there's another thing you could help me with, Mr. Chadwick.”

“Sergeant?”

“Something we found near Mrs. Montrose's body. Kind of an odd piece of jewelry to be stuck in the woman's blood.”

Chadwick felt a distant rumble, like a train ripping through a dark tunnel.

“A silver necklace,” Damarodas told him. “An inscription on it. I bet you can't guess.”

The morning seemed colder—the air thickening, swirling to a standstill.

“What was your daughter's name, sir?” Damarodas asked. “Was it Katherine Elise?”

Chadwick took the phone away from his ear, knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Don't run away from this conversation. Don't hang up.

He heard Damarodas say, “Sir?”

Then Chadwick disconnected.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, watching the deer graze the hilltop, before Asa Hunter came out to join him.

Hunter hooked a chair, pulled it up next to Chadwick's. “That bad, huh?”

“What?”

Hunter propped his combat boots on the railing, laced his fingers around his coffee cup. “You look like hell, amigo.”

“Blame my boss. He works me too hard.”

Hunter gave him the same skeptical appraisal he'd been giving him since they were both eighteen, working perimeter guard duty in Korat, Thailand. His expression posed the rhetorical question, Where'd this big dumb white boy come from?

“Listen, amigo, if I thought picking up Mallory Zedman would make you feel worse rather than better—”

“How is she doing?”

“Hit her assistant trainer yesterday. Day before that, she scratched and bit a white level. Day before that, kicked her counselor in the balls. Three solitary confinements. No extra privileges. Standard problems.”

“Standard, if she's a rabid mountain lion.”

Hunter's face could have been crafted from stealth bomber material—smooth hard contours, bald scalp so dark it seemed to drink the light. His eyes trapped you, studied you, released you only when they were good and ready. “The girl is resistant. We'll get to her.”

“She talk much about why she's here?”

“You need to let the program work, amigo. You got enough . . .”

Hunter's voice trailed off.

A white level, a kid named Aden Stilwell, stood waiting at a respectful distance to be recognized. Chadwick called him forward. Aden politely asked if he could go inside and use the computer to look up a word. Chadwick reached into the bin of reference materials at his side and pulled out a dictionary. He explained to Aden how it worked. Aden looked at the book, mystified, then thanked Chadwick and walked away thumbing the pages.

Hunter smirked. “Hard to believe that's the same boy tried to run you over a year and a half ago, huh? Someday—that's going to be Mallory Zedman.”

“Trying to run me over?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I need to go back to San Francisco, Asa.”

“You want to tell me why?”

Chadwick told him about the murder of Talia Montrose, Katherine's necklace at the crime scene. He told him about the letters John had mentioned from Samuel, the court order Sergeant Damarodas had threatened to get to interview Mallory.

Hunter looked out toward the hills. He sighted a deer over the tips of his combat boots, as if calculating the best shot. “You think this young man—Samuel—he's trying to get some kind of revenge?”