Mortal Faults

3

Abby positioned herself on a bus-stop bench in Laguna Hills at six forty-five. The entrance to the high school parking lot was just down the street. From her vantage point she would see the cars rolling in and, with luck, spot Reynolds’ mystery woman driving one of them.

Having had a couple of hours to kill after their meeting, she’d gone back online, using her laptop with a wireless modem, and found the address of Reynolds’ campaign headquarters in Huntington Beach. The place itself was easily identifiable by the REELECT JACK REYNOLDS sign in the window and the American flag flying overhead. Inside, she asked for campaign literature and was directed to a card table stacked with brochures. She pretended to look over the material while she checked out the place.

It was a definite step down from Reynolds’ Newport Beach digs. The decor consisted of folding chairs and Office Depot furniture. Campaign signs were plastered on the walls, some professionally printed, others hand-lettered, most displaying Reynolds’ uninspired slogan: FOR THE PEOPLE. Abby wondered if anyone had ever run against the people. Bland or not, the slogan was everywhere, tacked to file cabinets, taped to windows, even worn as a campaign button on the collar of somebody’s snoozing Great Dane.

Partitions had been set up to divide the room into cubbyholes and offices. Fluorescent panels glared down, some of them flickering wanly. Banks of TV sets, volume muted, were tuned to a variety of news channels. A stale odor of pizza grease hung in the room, undisturbed by the air conditioning even though it was roaring at full blast.

A dozen or so volunteers and staffers, mostly young, worked at two different tables. One group was stuffing envelopes while the others were cold-calling prospective voters. Most got immediate hang-ups, but they persisted, undeterred by rejection, reading from a script whenever they found someone willing to listen to the pitch.

Abby found the atmosphere-part boiler-room operation, part all-night dorm-room bull session-strangely invigorating. It was electoral politics at their grass-rootiest, being played out with a sweaty energy she rarely saw in L.A., where the local style was to feign ironic detachment at all times. These folks weren’t poseurs. They were serious about reelecting their congressman, and they were working hard. Reynolds might think the outcome of the contest was assured, but the message hadn’t reached the troops in the field.

Abby didn’t like Reynolds personally and had next to no interest in politics, but for a moment she was almost tempted to sign up for campaign scut work, just to be part of the action.

Looking across the room, she saw someone who was clearly a step above the volunteers and run-of-the-mill staffers, an angular, youngish man with close-cropped hair and what looked like a permanent five o’clock shadow. He sat in the semi-privacy of cubicle, manning the best desk in the place, with the only swivel chair in evidence, talking on a hands-free phone while studying a computer monitor and reading two newspapers at once. Half moons of sweat rimmed the armpits of his button-down shirt; his tie was loosened, his wilted collar open, his jacket thrown over the back of his chair. He sipped compulsively from a Styrofoam coffee cup, wincing every time he swallowed. The stuff must be foul, but it was fueling his hyperactivity.

Before leaving, she asked one of the volunteers about the man, who was evidently the big kahuna around here.

“That’s Mr. Stenzel,” she was told. “Kipland Stenzel. Our campaign manager. You’ve probably seen him on TV. He did an interview on Prime Story last week.”

Abby had never heard of Prime Story, but she nodded as if the information were meaningful. She departed with a handful of campaign propaganda, which she reviewed in her car. One of the brochures provided a schedule of Reynolds’ public appearances, including the town hall meeting tonight.

Rose Moran, or whoever the woman was, could have picked up the schedule at any time, just by stopping at the office. Reynolds was making it too easy for her. It was tough to foil a stalker when you advertised your every move.

Then again, foiling a stalker wasn’t Reynolds’ job. It was hers.

She adjusted her position on the bench and thought about the congressman. His story made a rough sort of sense, but she still had the uncomfortable suspicion that he was hiding something. He’d claimed not to have a single photograph of his housekeeper-no snapshot taken at a family dinner or holiday get-together, no picture of her with the kids. Unlikely. Then there was the protective-father act. He wanted to keep his son out of the headlines. Very noble, but Reynolds didn’t strike her as the noble type. He was calculating and shrewd, genial when he needed to be, but cold to the touch if you got too close.

She made her living with her intuition. Other people might rely on linear, left-brain thinking, but she’d always been more of a right-brain gal. She saw things holistically. She trusted her inner voice. And her inner voice was saying that Reynolds needed to be handled with care.

Shortly past seven, cars started arriving for the event. Abby pretended to read a copy of the Orange County Register in the slanting sunlight while surreptitiously checking out each vehicle as it drove in. To keep herself alert she counted the cars. With number thirty-eight, she hit the jackpot.

A white Chevrolet Malibu, not new. The blond woman at the wheel. Abby saw her clearly as the car slowed to roll over the first of several speed bumps in the parking lot.

She kept her eye on the Malibu as it crept through rows of parked cars and found a space. The woman got out and headed into the high school. She went quickly, head down, shoulders hunched, as if walking into a strong wind-but there was no wind. She was just someone who liked to keep her head down, someone who might have something to hide. She wore a coat that was a bit too heavy for a summer evening, and Abby was glad there was a metal detector at the door.

Abby waited until the full crowd had arrived-a decent turnout, at least a hundred people. No TV news vans, though. The Southern California media were continuing their tradition of ignoring local politics, a policy that suited a community built on narcissistic self-absorption. Abby couldn’t complain. She paid no attention to politics, either.

The last person to show up for the event was Reynolds himself. In the movies, politicians were always riding around in limousines, but real life was more prosaic; Reynolds drove a Ford minivan. Stenzel, she noticed, was his passenger. Abby watched them go in.

She left the bus stop and sauntered into the parking lot, holding her key ring as if she were looking for her car. Actually her car was parked around the corner. It was the Malibu that interested her.

She memorized the tag number-a California plate, no surprise. The license plate frame advertised a dealer in the San Fernando Valley, the vast smoggy basin north of the Hollywood Hills. Possibly the owner lived there. If so, she wasn’t one of Reynolds’ constituents.

Abby took a peek through the side window. A schedule of Reynolds’ public appearances, identical to the one she’d taken from the campaign office, lay on the passenger seat. Next to it was an Orange County map book, turned to the Laguna Hills page. Apparently the woman wasn’t familiar with the area-more evidence she lived outside Reynolds’ district.

Of course, there was one easy way to find out where she lived, and that was to follow her home.

The town hall meeting broke up just before nine. By then, even the long summer twilight had yielded to darkness.

Abby liked the dark. It cloaked her.

She had picked up her car and parked down the street from the high school, where she could watch the departing vehicles. A street light at the exit of the parking lot made it easy to spot the white Malibu as it pulled out. Abby merged with the flow of traffic and followed.

She expected the Chevy to head for the San Diego Freeway, and she was right. The car took the northbound lanes, staying well within the speed limit. Abby hung back by several car lengths, allowing another vehicle or two to occupy the intervening space from time to time.

Even at a distance, the Chevy wasn’t difficult to follow. Abby had taken the precaution of breaking its left taillight. She could hold the single taillight in view and be sure the target hadn’t been lost.

Under other circumstances she might have risked following closer, but tonight there was the problem of her car. When on assignment, she ordinarily drove a beat-up Hyundai that she stored in a spare parking space in the Wilshire Royal’s underground garage. Today, not expecting to go undercover, she’d driven her Mazda Miata to the congressman’s office. It was a bright red, sporty little two-seater convertible, and even with the top up it stood out more than she would have liked.

Most drivers would never notice a car behind them, no matter what the make or model. But something in this woman’s hunched shoulders and quick, frightened stride had suggested paranoia, and paranoia had a way of making people vigilant. Abby had dealt with plenty of paranoid types. There were lots of them-lonely people, prickly, insecure, alienated. She felt their nervous glances in supermarkets. She saw their pale faces in crowds. Sometimes she feared that her own face must look like theirs in her unguarded moments. How many Leon Trotmans could she get to know before she became one of them?

The Chevy left Orange County and passed through the crowded confines of West L.A., then crossed into the San Fernando Valley, a grid of suburban streets lined with single-family homes. The Valley was an immense openness, flat, broad, sprawling to the far horizons. As was true of any large community, there were affluent sections and poorer spots. Judging by the age of the Chevy Malibu, Abby figured they weren’t heading for a high-rent district.

The car kept going, into the northwest part of the Valley, which was dominated by aging industrial concerns. Finally the one working taillight began to pulse. The Chevy was taking the Mission San Fernando exit.

On surface streets it passed through San Fernando, a small city carved out of county land. Traffic was light, and Abby stayed back, keeping the single taillight barely in view. Then the car turned down a side street, and she had a decision to make. If she followed, she might be spotted, but if she continued going straight, she might lose the target.

She compromised, pulling onto the shoulder and slowing. By the time she took the corner, the Chevy was far ahead. It pulled into the driveway of a house and was illuminated by a light inside the carport. Abby killed her headlights and parked up the street, watching as the driver emerged.

She wasn’t a blond anymore. She’d taken off the wig. Her hair was brownish, cut short, framing a square, pale face, a face with good bone structure half hidden in too much flesh. She would have been attractive when she was younger, but she’d let herself go. Abby put her age at fifty or thereabouts, but she moved with a curious stiffness, like a very old person-or like someone in pain.

Abby started driving again and cruised past the house, noting the street number just as she’d noted the street name at the corner. Now she knew her quarry’s address-903 Keystone Drive.

She made a U-turn in a cul-de-sac, then considered her options. The safest approach would be to go home, look up the address in a reverse directory, and see if the resident was Rose Moran. Then she could arrange one of those cute-meet situations she was so good at.

The problem was, she was a little hyped up after the long tail job, and she wasn’t in the mood to do research. She was in the mood to get up close and personal, right now.

Could be dangerous. Worse, it could be stupid. In the past she’d rarely approached the subject without proper preparation. Lately she’d been more willing to wing it. She told herself that her experience gave her enough flexibility to improvise her way out of anything. It might be true. Or maybe she just liked the rush she got by taking a reckless chance.

She drove back down the street. A few yards from the woman’s house, she killed the Mazda’s engine and let the car roll to a stop by the curb.

She took a moment to study the place. A small one-story home, huddled between look-alike houses in an aging development. The car in the driveway next door was raised on cinderblocks, and a lawnmower rusted in the yard. The house on the opposite side appeared to be abandoned, its windows boarded up. Across the street was a pocket park with playground equipment-a slide, a swing set. The park was empty now.

She got out of the Mazda and walked up the front path. She was getting a funny vibe from the place. In some unaccountable way, the little house seemed draped in sadness. Maybe it was the lawn, green and close-cropped and meticulously tended, or the flower beds with their desperately cheerful arrangements of pinks and mums. Someone spent a great deal of time on appearances. Or it might be the heavy curtains covering the front windows, curtains that were stiff and faded, as if they hadn’t been opened in years.

The woman who lived here was alone. She never had company. Abby was sure of it, sure in her gut, where the truest intuitions lived.

Well, she would have company now.