The Hidden: A Novel of Suspense

F O U R T E E N

THEY HAD BEEN IN the cottage less than fifteen minutes and Jay was making noises about going out to the lane “to see if the law’s still up there” when the doorbell chimed. He glanced at Shelby, muttered, “What the hell?” and went to open the door on its chain lock.

She saw him stiffen slightly as he looked out. “Yes, what is it?” The quickened beat of the wind blurred the voice outside, but whatever it said convinced him to remove the chain and pull the door wide. Two men came inside, one wearing an unbuttoned overcoat over a suit and tie, the other in a deputy sheriff’s uniform. Both wore grim, tight-lipped expressions. The man in the overcoat saw Shelby, approached her with a leather ID case open in his hand.

“Mrs. Macklin?”

“Hunter,” she said automatically, looking at the badge inside the case. “Shelby Hunter.”

“I understood you and Mr. Macklin were married.”

“We are. I kept my birth name.”

“Oh, I see. Well.” He put the ID case away. “My name is Rhiannon, Lieutenant George Rhiannon. I’m an investigator with the highway patrol. This is Deputy Randall Ferguson, county sheriff’s department.”

She nodded. Jay’s eyes were on the deputy—a big, youngish man with a bristly mustache and flat green eyes, standing in a ruler-backed posture like a soldier at attention.

“You’re the officer who led us out here the other night,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well … what can we do for you?”

“We won’t take up much of your time,” Rhiannon said. “Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.” He was in his forties, with an ovoid body on short stubby legs and a dark, pointy, long-nosed face. Like a dachshund that had acquired human features and learned how to walk on its hind legs, Shelby thought. But there was nothing comical about the man or his demeanor. His movements, his words had a sharp professional economy.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I understand you spent some time with your neighbors and their houseguests Sunday night.”

“Just long enough to have a drink with them. We went there to borrow matches when the power went out.”

“Everything seem to be all right with the four of them?”

“They’d been drinking pretty heavily,” Jay said. “We picked up on a lot of tension.”

“Any specific cause?”

“Not that we could tell.”

“Conflict between Eugene Decker and anyone in the party?”

“His wife. They were at each other’s throats.”

“Between Decker and the Lomaxes?”

“There was some sniping. None of them were getting along.”

“Have you seen Mr. Decker since then?”

“No.”

“Any of the others?”

“Mrs. Decker. Yesterday morning, at the store in Seacrest. She was on her way home to Santa Rosa.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Briefly.”

“She tell you why she was leaving, going home?”

Jay related the gist of the conversation.

“Any other contact with any of the four since Monday?” Rhiannon asked.

Shelby said, “I saw Mrs. Lomax—Claire. On the beach yesterday morning. We had a brief conversation.”

“About what?”

“Is that important?”

“She has some facial injuries,” Rhiannon said. “She have them then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell you how she got them?”

What Claire had told her had been in confidence; Rhiannon hadn’t given a reason for her to break it. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

“She told us she tripped and fell and her husband backs her up. But it looks more like an assault. What do you think?”

“Is she all right now?”

“No further injuries, if that’s what you mean. You haven’t answered my question, Mrs., ah, Hunter.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, does it?”

“What’s going on?” Jay said. “If Lomax and his wife are both okay, how come you’re here? Did one of them call you?”

“No, sir.”

“Decker, then?”

Ferguson said, “He can’t call anyone. He’s dead.”

Shelby blinked her surprise. Jay said, “Dead?”

“Found in his Porsche down the coast this morning.”

“An accident?”

“No, not an accident.”

“Natural causes?”

“He was shot through the head.”

“… My God. The Coastline Killer?”

“Looks that way.”

Rhiannon gave the deputy a sharp look before he said to Jay, “We don’t know anything for sure right now.”

“Except that it wasn’t suicide,” Ferguson said. “No weapon in the car.”

Shelby’s throat felt clogged, as if she’d swallowed something small and hard that wouldn’t go down. “Coastline Killer? Who’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Funny. Your husband seems to. Ask him.”

Jay wouldn’t look at her. He said to Rhiannon, “When was Decker killed?”

“Sometime yesterday. According to the Lomaxes, he decided to go on home himself and left sometime in the afternoon.”

“They tried to talk him out of it because he’d been drinking,” Ferguson said. “He should’ve listened to them.” The deputy had begun to move around the front room, looking here and there as if he were checking out a crime scene. “Were you here yesterday afternoon, Mr. Macklin?”

“Yes.”

“All afternoon?”

“Yes, all afternoon. Why?”

“We’re trying to determine the exact time Mr. Decker left,” Rhiannon said. “Neither of the Lomaxes is certain.”

“Well, I can give you a pretty good idea. We were coming up from the beach when we heard him drive by out front. It was a little before two thirty.”

“You’re sure about the time?”

“Sure enough. I glanced at my watch just after we came inside. Two thirty on the nose then.”

Rhiannon scribbled in his notebook, closed it, and slid it into his overcoat pocket. “I think that’s about all, then. Thanks for your cooperation.”

Ferguson said, “You folks wouldn’t be planning to leave right away, would you?”

“No. Not until New Year’s Day.”

“Are you going to want to talk to us again?” Shelby asked.

Rhiannon said he doubted that would be necessary.

Ferguson was still looking at Jay. “Reason I asked, there’s a bad storm coming—worse than the one Sunday. Once it hits, the highway’s liable to be pretty hazardous for the next twenty-four hours or so. Be a good idea for you to stay here until it blows through.”

“We’ll do that,” Jay said. “Right here.”

When the two men were gone, he put the chain back on the door and threw the bolt lock. He said then, “I don’t like that deputy. Did you see the way he kept looking at me with those funny eyes of his?”

Shelby kept still.

“Suspicious, just like the other night. What the hell reason does he have for being suspicious of me?”

She didn’t respond to that, either.

“Lomax, yes, sure. One look at Claire’s face and they had to know what kind of bastard he is. Make any cop suspicious. But people like us—”

“Quit trying to avoid the issue, Jay,” she said. “Who the hell is the Coastline Killer?”

His expression changed. “Ah, God,” he said.

“Who, dammit?”

For a few seconds she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “Some lunatic who’s been shooting people along the coast over the past several months. They don’t have any idea who or why.”

“Shooting people. How many people?”

“Five now, maybe more.”

Five, maybe more. Lord!

“Where along the coast?”

“Different places,” he said. “The first ones … those two kids in sleeping bags, down by Fort Ross, remember? Picks his victims at random.”

“And the latest was Gene Decker.”

“You never think it can happen to somebody you know, even slightly, somebody so nearby … Christ, it gives you the willies. Poor bastard must’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Talking too fast, almost jabbering. Still not meeting her eyes. “I wonder how Paula’s taking it. Fed up with him playing around, thinking about a divorce, but still—”

Shelby said, “How long have you known about this Coastline Killer? Since before we left home?”

“No,” he said. “Only since yesterday, from the man at the service station in Seacrest.”

“And you ‘forgot’ to tell me, like you ‘forgot’ about the storm.”

“I didn’t see how it could have any effect on us. None of the shootings was in this immediate area—” Another headshake, then a small, empty gesture. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” she said.

“I really am sorry—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it.”

She went over and sat down at the dinette table. Outside the wind whistled and cried and rain thrummed on the roof, ticked against the seaward walls and windows like handfuls of flung pellets. Water streaked and ran on the window glass; everything out there had a smeared, indistinct appearance, like faulty underwater photography.

“I’d better go bring in some more wood,” Jay said, “before the weather gets any worse.”

She didn’t answer.

He went away and a little while later he came back. He said something to her, but she didn’t listen to it. The rain and wind sounds seemed magnified now, as if they’d somehow gotten inside her head. It wasn’t until he said her name, sharply, that she lifted her head to look at him. And when she did, it was as if he wasn’t even there, as if he had finally and completely disappeared.

“Shel? Are you all right?”

“I want a divorce,” she said.