When She Was Bad

CHAPTER NINE
1

A Ferris wheel turned slowly against the hazy Santa Cruz sky. An old-fashioned wooden roller coaster roared and rattled overhead, trailing shrieks and laughter. On the carousel, painted horses and other, more fantastical creatures bobbed to the cheerful piping of a calliope. The familiar scent of popcorn, cotton candy, and corn dogs packed a Proustian wallop, sending Pender back in time to the county fairs of his boyhood in upstate New York.

After wiping the cab clean of fingerprints, he abandoned the red pickup in a metered space in front of the Carousel Motel, across the street from the Boardwalk, then strolled casually back to the weedy lot behind the bowling alley where he’d left the Barracuda only-good Lord, was it only yesterday afternoon? It seemed like months had gone by-Pender had himself half-convinced that when he got there he’d find the car missing or up on blocks, stripped.

But the ’Cuda was intact, only a thin film of dust marring the gleam of the hand-polished black finish. With a turn of the key and a little babying of the accelerator, the engine rumbled to life, setting the dust motes on the hood vibrating aimlessly like the little plastic players in one of those old electrostatic football games.

From Santa Cruz, it was a relatively straight shot down Highway 1 to Pacific Grove. Driving at a sedate ten miles over the given speed limit, with the dashboard radio tuned to a Salinas oldies station, Pender made it in just under fifty minutes. Twice during the drive he tried to call Irene; twice he reached her voice mail. Detouring past her two-story cream and tan board-and-batten house, he saw that her driveway was empty. Since she rarely garaged her new beige Infiniti (central coast homes were built for the most part without basements or attics, so storage space was always at a premium), he assumed she was out and about.

Just as well, he told himself, driving another three blocks to his cottage-he and his clothes were decidedly gamy by now. He took a quick shower, ran an electric razor over his jowls, and changed into plaid Bermuda shorts and a chocolate-brown Hawaiian shirt patterned with green palm trees and a yellow sunburst, which actually caused certain aesthetically sensitive souls to wince when they first saw it. Black socks and logan green Hush Puppies completed the outfit. He tried Irene’s phone again, got her voice mail again. Made himself a Pender-size sandwich of ham and Swiss on rye for supper. Redial; voice mail. Washed it down with a pony bottle of Rolling Rock. Redial; voice mail.

Man, I hope she hasn’t left town, thought Pender. No doubt the BOLOs had been updated by now-cops in three states would Be On the Look-Out for the red Caddy. They’d have choppers out, dogs, the whole caboodle-and lord knows he wished them luck. But Maxwell had eluded the authorities successfully before. He had a talent for it that bordered on genius, and more than his share of luck. If he made it to ground with all that cash, there was no telling how long he could evade capture.

That’s where Irene Cogan came in. She was Pender’s ace in the hole. Between the two of them, they knew more about Maxwell and Lily than anyone else alive-their histories, habits, and psychological profiles, their likes and needs, their dislikes and aversions-so it stood to reason they had a better chance of predicting the direction and object of their flight.

Another twenty minutes went by, then thirty. The kitchen phone rang; Pender snatched it off the hook. But it was only Marti Reynolds from The People’s Posse show. She was hoping that in light of recent developments Pender wouldn’t mind doing a supplementary interview to discuss the latest murders. He told her he was kind of busy at the moment, asked her to call him back on Monday.

“Of course,” she said. “By the way, do you have any other numbers for Dr. Cogan? I’ve been trying to reach her all afternoon, but I keep getting her voice mail.”

That makes two of us, sister, thought Pender. “No, sorry. If I do see her, I’ll tell her you called.”

It’s probably nothing, he told himself, pacing the tiny kitchen. Mountain out of a molehill. She’s out shopping, or jogging down by the rec trail. Or maybe she’s with a patient or taking a nap-you just assumed the car wasn’t in the garage.

But assumed was a dirty word to a graduate of the FBI Academy, retired or not. He grabbed his madras sport coat and a powder-blue Pebble Beach golf cap on the way out the door, and walked the three blocks to Irene’s place.

Cogan’s garage jutted out from the corner of the house, leaving only fifteen feet of driveway between the garage door and the street-a common enough arrangement in space-starved Pacific Grove. Tall as he was, Pender still had to rise up on tiptoe to peek through one of the narrow, horizontal windows set high in the garage door. At first he saw only his reflection. Cupping his hand over his eyes to block the glare, he pressed his nose against the cold glass. The garage was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out the outlines of the car inside.

Now, in his day, Pender had seen some truly awful sights. Mutilated corpses, severed heads stacked like cannonballs, that sort of thing. This was only a car in a garage. Nothing world-shattering about that-other than the fact that it wasn’t Irene Cogan’s new Infiniti, it was Mick MacAlister’s Cadillac.

He tried the handle of the garage door: locked. He tried Irene’s front door: ditto. Out of habit, he started to reach for his wallet-in the old days Pender had always kept a little jimmy in there for occasions such as this. But in those days, he’d also packed a badge-carrying one around without the other was a misdemeanor in all fifty states.

A narrow cement walk led around the side of the garage to Irene’s office in back. The office door was locked, and the kitchen curtains drawn, but the horizontal sliding window that ventilated the downstairs half-bath was wide open. Irene often kept it open-not only was it six feet above ground, and scarcely large enough to admit a full-grown adult, but if memory served, there had been a fixed screen there as well.

There was no screen now, though, and lying a few feet away, overturned in the flower bed bordering Irene’s back fence, was a sturdy plastic recycling bin Maxwell could easily have used as a stepstool. He came in through the bathroom window, chimed in that irrepressible, and often annoying, little jukebox in Pender’s head.

Okay, this is the part where the retired old FBI guy calls the cops, he thought. You tell the nice policemen everything there is to tell, then you go home, pop a cold one, put your feet up on the hassock, and watch the ball game.

Because this is no longer your business, old man. From here on in, all you can do is screw up somebody else’s crime scene. Or if Maxwell’s still inside, get somebody killed.

Then he remembered where he was: The Last Home Town. Crime rate slightly lower than Vatican City. This would be the most exciting thing that had happened in Pacific Grove since Princess Topaz’s dragon boat had nearly sunk a few years ago during the annual Feast of Lanterns pageant. One call to 911 and the locals would be swarming the scene, sirens screaming and roof lights blazing. And if Maxwell was inside-whichever version of him was currently playing in the multiplex of his mind-and it was a hostage situation….

Pender found himself picturing Irene wearing the filmy negligee she’d had on Monday night. Only now, in his mind’s eye, he saw Maxwell standing behind her holding a knife to her throat. Her eyes were pleading for Pender to do something-anything.

Ah, fuck it, thought Pender, drawing the hickory-handled Colt from the flap pocket of his sport jacket. In for a dime, in for a dollar, he told himself, brushing off the muffin and Danish crumbs and jacking a round into the firing chamber before returning the gun to his pocket.