Fatalis

Chapter Thirty-One

"With any luck we can get there before Gearhart does," Hannah said. "The Wall is going to meet us there." Grand was driving as they sped along 217 headed toward 101. Hannah was on an open phone line with Karen, who promised to provide her with any updates. Unlike the sheriff's office, the highway patrol didn't have a policy of maintaining public radio silence while en route to crime or accident sites. Since a patrol car had only just arrived, no news had come in.

As they reached the highway and headed southwest, Hannah kept a lookout for Gearhart's black-and-white. He might have been up in the mountains, delaying his arrival. Grand's mind was on the paintings he'd seen in the upper caves.

A volcano and a glacier, he thought, with Chumash gods inside of them. A snake symbolizing the inner earth, a dolphin representing the sea-water. According to the geological record, it was uncommon but not unknown for volcanoes to erupt beneath glaciers. It had happened to Mount Rainier in Washington forty thousand years ago, and in several regions well south of that.

Suppose a volcano erupted beneath a glacier in the American Northwest. Suppose the force was so extraordinary that the blast broke into fault lines and followed them south, deep into Southern California. Extreme heat and intense cold together, burning new vents in the mountains, sealing other vents. An eruption so cataclysmic that it inspired a Chumash shaman who may have witnessed it to record the event in two oversized images in a cave.

But then where did the lower cave come in, the white icons?

They reached the site twenty minutes after leaving the university. Two highway-patrol cars were parked between 101 and the train tracks that ran along the coast. The Wall's car was already there; Gearhart's was not.

Grand pulled up behind the Wall's Jeep. He grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. Then he and Hannah hurried to where other lights were moving along the beach at Loon Point.

It was 7:30 P.M. and less than an hour from high tide. The pieces of the catamaran had been lined up on the beach and the four highway patrol officers were walking along the shoreline, the lights playing over the surf.

The Wall was busy snapping pictures of something in the sand, near the water line. When he saw Hannah and Grand he motioned them over.

"They actually asked me to do this," the photographer said with a smile. "They wanted me to get a record of these before the tide erased them completely."

Grand shined the light on the sand. He squatted beside the vestiges of two footprints. They were facing the railroad tracks and were approximately three feet apart. Though they were significantly eroded by the incoming tide, they appeared to be the prints of a feline about three times the size of a bobcat.

"What do you make of them?" Hannah asked Grand.

"It's difficult to say," Grand answered. "The prints might have been smaller when they were made. The water may have filled them in and enlarged them. Even so, they're too far apart to have been made by a bobcat or even a wolf. I'd say we're looking at an animal much bigger than that."

Hannah didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

"What's interesting," Grand went on, "is the way the prints are facing. Away from the ocean."

Hannah looked out toward the road. "And there aren't any prints between here and the tracks. Wall, where's the blood?"

"Gone," he said. "One of the officers soaked some into a handkerchief for the lab and I got a few pictures before the tide took it out. It was just a foot or so behind the prints."

"Behind them," Hannah said. "That doesn't seem to make sense."

"Actually it makes a stronger case for the idea that whatever made these prints is the killer," Grand said.

"Why?"

"I'll tell you in a second," Grand said. "Let's have a look at the catamaran."

They walked over. One of the officers intercepted them, but Grand explained that he wanted to check for signs of predation on the wreckage-claw marks, bite marks, bloodstains. The officer said he could look as long as he promised not to touch. Grand agreed. He and Hannah hurried over.

"How many people does it take to work one of these things?" Grand asked as they jogged across the beach.

"A Hobie Cat? After it's in the water, one good sailor could handle it," she said.

They reached the wreckage and Grand shined his light across it. The sail was shredded and there were gashes in the trampoline and on the pontoons that resembled the sharp, clean marks they'd seen on the road engineer's backpack at the creek sinkhole.

"Are they teeth marks?" Hannah asked.

"I don't think so," Grand told her. "There are three and four in spots. They look more like claw marks. But check out the pontoons-the attacker was under the catamaran."

Hannah bent and examined the gashes. "Then I guess that rules out our strange little theory."

"This wouldn't necessarily rule it out," Grand said. "While big cats don't particularly like the water, they're excellent swimmers when they want to be."

"Selective habitual parallelism," Hannah said.

"It does occur," Grand said. "So let's try this on. The predator, whatever it is, is either walking along the shore or is in the sea. For all we know the tunnels have an outlet right off shore. Many cave systems do. The animal sees the boat and goes under. It attacks from beneath-using its claws because its mouth is closed. It chases the sailor ashore then kills him and turns back the way it came, its prey in its mouth. The victim bleeds on the sand as the killer retreats."

Just then they heard a distinctive, two-siren wail in the distance, one sound high and the other low.

"The herald angels of Malcolm Gearhart," Hannah said. "I say we tell him the killers are land sharks and see how he reacts."

"Pardon?"

"Land sharks," Hannah said. "Didn't you ever see them on Saturday Night Live!"

"The Travolta movie?"

Hannah looked at him and smiled. "It's okay," she said. "Never mind."

For a moment Grand felt the way he used to when Rebecca would make fun of what she called his "not-getting-it-ness"-like a big dumb rock. His wife used to follow it up with a peck on the forehead or a hug and an explanation, which more often than not he still didn't get.

Hannah started back toward where the Wall was and Grand followed. But he really missed Rebecca right then.