Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

Abby wasn’t in the lobby. Still, she might be watching from somewhere nearby. There was no shortage of possibilities-the upper levels of the building, where books were kept; the adjacent yogurt shop and fast food Chinese restaurant; the gift shop; hallways and alcoves. Abby could be anywhere.

“No sign of her yet,” she said quietly in the direction of the mike clipped inside her jacket. She wasn’t wearing an earpiece now, so if there was a response, she didn’t hear it.

Abby ignored Reynolds’ question. “Here’s a funny thing, Jack. Something I noticed about our mutual friend Andrea.”

“I told you, I don’t have time for any bullshit.”

“Indulge me. She said something interesting to me this morning. She dreamed about men breaking into her house. Men wearing ski masks and carrying guns.”

“So what?”

“Yesterday Andrea never saw the intruders. She was hiding behind the bed. I got a look at them. She didn’t. But in her dreams she saw them, ski masks and all.”

“Someone told her about the masks. One of the cops, probably.”

“Could be. But I noticed something else. When she talked about her dream, she kept touching her hair. The hair behind her ear. You know, where she has the scar.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“It must be a traumatic thing to shoot yourself. Almost as traumatic as killing your own babies. But she had no memory of it. She remembered only after she’d been in the hospital for a few years. By then she’d heard the story over and over. Memory is a funny thing. It’s not as reliable as we like to believe. We can manufacture memories that seem completely real. Three people witness a car accident and have three different recollections. They aren’t lying. Their minds have reconstructed the events according to different narratives. As long as the narrative is internally consistent, it will be accepted as the truth.”

Reynolds glanced at his watch. “I’m not real big on psychological theories.”

“I am. As I may have mentioned, I studied psychology. Analyzing people is a big part of what I do. Want to hear my analysis of Andrea?”

“No.”

“Oh, Jack, you’re such a tease. Of course you do.”

Tess forced herself to sit quietly for a few minutes in the hope that Abby would show up, surprising her as she always did, appearing out of nowhere.

Nothing happened. Five minutes after six o’clock, as the lights upstairs were going off, she gave up.

“No show,” she reported as she left the building.

She rejoined the other agents and took back her sidearm.

“Think she’s on to you?” Hauser asked.

Tess nodded. “Yes.”

“God damn it.”

“Now what?” Crandall asked.

Hauser was frowning fiercely. “She must have seen us and taken off. Maybe she was watching this entrance and spotted us when we pulled up.”

“Her cell phone is still signaling from this area,” the agent with the laptop said.

“She probably dropped it in a trash can. She could be on a freeway by now, heading for Mexico.”

Tess wasn’t so sure. “Not necessarily. She may still be in the vicinity.”

“Why would she blow off her meeting with you and still hang around?” Hauser asked.

“I don’t know. Why did she come downtown in the first place? Maybe there’s something she has to do here.”

“If she’s here, we’ll find her.” Hauser clapped his hands. “Pair up, fan out. Search every building that’s open. The office towers are closed, so unless she got inside illegally, she’s not in there. Focus on the restaurants, the hotel, and Pershing Square. Keep an eye open for a red Miata. Go.”

Tess realized the others had paired off, leaving her with Crandall.

“Looks like it’s you and me, Rick,” she said quietly.

Crandall managed a shaky smile.

“Andrea thinks she remembers what happened twenty years ago,” Abby said. “But she’s fooling herself. On some level she knows it. She knows what really took place. She just doesn’t know she knows.”

Reynolds shifted in his seat. “Are you going to give me the information or not?”

“After she got out of the hospital, Andrea moved to Florida. She was almost happy there. But something brought her back to California. She doesn’t even know what. She felt a pull, an attraction, she said. That was my first clue. It told me she needed to resolve things here. She put it off as long as she could, tried not to deal with it, but in the end she had to obey the dictates of the ol’ subconscious. It’s all very Freudian.”

“Maybe she just prefers this climate.”

“Nothing’s ever that simple. Think about it, Jack. Why was she showing up at your campaign events? Why would she risk it? I asked her, and she had no explanation. She didn’t know what motivated her. But I do. Maybe you do, too. Care to take a shot at it?”

“No,” he said coldly.

“Fair enough. It’s best to leave this kind of thing to the experts. Returning to California, then seeking you out-it was her way of trying to come to grips with what really happened. It was her subconscious mind prodding her to face the facts.”

“The woman is a nut job. We already knew that.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. And I don’t think ‘nut job’ is a term you’ll find in any diagnostic manual. She isn’t crazy. She never was.”

“There are two dead babies that indicate otherwise.”

“Not a good comeback, Jack. Too obvious. We both know what happened. Andrea was getting too possessive. She’d given birth to your children. She wanted to be married, the way you’d promised. Of course you never had any intention of leaving your wife. When you tried to break off your relationship, it only made her angrier. You were afraid of what she might do. A woman scorned-you know how it goes. She might talk to the media. Or to your wife. Ruin your reputation, make it impossible for you to run for Congress. You were on your way up, but she had the ability to take you down.”

“This is such a load of crap,” Reynolds said, but without conviction.

“So you decided to handle things the way you always do-by hiring some of your biker friends to do your dirty work. That’s what they’re for, isn’t it? You sicced ’em on Andrea twenty years ago, the same way you sicced ’em on her yesterday afternoon. That’s the trouble with sociopaths-so predictable. Always rerunning the same game plan in their heads, over and over.

“They wore ski masks that night, too. They got into her house, and Andrea and her children were shot. I don’t know in what order. Maybe they shot her first, then the kids. But I’m guessing they made her watch while they killed the kids before they turned the gun on her. Her own gun. You knew she had one, and you knew where she kept it. You told them to leave the gun with her so it would look like she shot herself.”

“She did shoot herself.”

“No, Jack. The men with ski masks shot her. She got a good look at them-right before they shot her in the side of the head, behind the ear.”

“You got all this from a dream she told you about?”

“A dream and some head scratching. Don’t forget the head scratching.”

“For Christ’s sake, it was murder-suicide. Everybody knows that.”

“Murder, yes. Not suicide. Andrea never shot anybody. Those two kids-their blood isn’t on her hands. It’s on yours.”

Reynolds leaned forward, his face taut. “I want what I came for, and I want it now.”

“Ever think about them, Jack? Your two lost sons? They were your kids. Doesn’t that matter to you? Doesn’t it keep you up at night?”

“Nothing keeps me up at night.”

“What’s sad is I believe you. Do you even remember their names?”

“ Fuck you.”