Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [68]
Maybe when I had the answer to that question, I’d be done with stories for good.
Part Two
Monday, June 14
4:54 A.M.
Gray dawn was breaking as I reached the top of the high embankment. The shapes of the rocks and scrub vegetation on the other side had begun to take on definition. The cold sea wind blew more strongly in this unsheltered place. I lay flat on my stomach, then slowly raised my head and looked around.
Things moved down below: they could have been animals, polios, human coyotes—or merely branches stirring in the wind. Like the phantom wolves of my childhood bedtime stories, they slipped in and out of the shadows, eluding identification. For a moment my calm deserted me; I wanted to scramble back down the embankment and run as blindly as I had from the wolves in my long-ago nightmares.
Then the calm reasserted itself, and I knew I was done with stories for good.
I took out my father’s .45 and braced it experimentally on the mound of earth in front of me. Checked my watch again. Nearly five minutes had gone by. I scanned the surrounding terrain, saw no one. Listened. Waited.
Then there were sounds below, echoing in the drainage pipe. I tensed, peering through the half-light. Sniper’s light, they call it—
And there was a sniper.
Seventeen
Friday, June 11
The best hiding places, I thought as I carried my bag into the bungalow, are often so blatantly obvious that no one would bother to look there.
The little motel sat on one of La Jolla’s narrow streets—only miles from the newish office park that housed RKI’s headquarters. Stucco with a red tile roof overgrown by gnarled wisteria vines, it was an old auto court dating from the forties and had been the scene of many a tryst—including a few of mine. Only two blocks from Prospect, the main street of La Jolla’s commercial district, the real estate was prime, pricey eateries and shops encroaching on either side. The only reason the motel hadn’t been torn down or tricked up was that the old woman who owned it stubbornly refused to entertain offers. Her similar refusal to upgrade its appointments had kept rates at a level I could afford.
I’d had my choice of bungalows, since only a few of the dozen were occupied, and opted for one at the rear of the court, screened by a big jacaranda tree whose fernlike branches brushed my head as I walked by. When I stepped inside, my breath caught; as I’d thought, this was the same unit where, during one magical summer home from college, I’d spent nights with a much older man, a staff member at nearby Scripps Institute, for whom I’d entertained a brief but wild passion. The terra-cotta floor, unadorned whitewashed walls, tiny primitive kitchen, and equally ancient bath looked the same; only the jacaranda tree had grown and changed. The jacaranda and me.
I shut the door and set my bag on a luggage rack at the foot of the lumpy bed, then went into the kitchen and looked out the window. It opened onto the alley where I’d parked my rental car; a back door gave access. I tested its lock, noted the window was painted shut, tested the front door and other windows. Reasonably certain the bungalow was secure, I went to the small desk and rooted through its drawer, looking for an envelope.
I’d escaped Mission Hills that morning in the flow of commuter traffic, but spotted a tail as I drove toward downtown. Once there, I turned into the garage of Horton Plaza, parked the Scout on one of the lower levels, and left by a side exit. In a nearby restaurant I forced myself to choke down breakfast and drink several cups of coffee while pretending to study the Union-Tribune but actually studying the other patrons and people outside the windows. A man in a Padres cap who loitered for half an hour on the sidewalk looked