Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

He paused at one of the doors and peered through a filigree of decorative ironwork. A blue tile fountain-two dolphins with interlocked tails-spat an arc of salt water into a star-shaped pool.

At the end of the loggia were doorways to the entrance hall and the living room. He went into the foyer first, passing under the skylight through a glittery fall of starshine.

Anastasia scooted ahead of him and sniffed at the front door. Steve tensed. Somebody outside?

Gingerly he tested the door. It felt secure, unviolated. He nudged Ana back, then unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The hammock on the front porch swung lazily in a fresh breeze. The flagstone court beyond the steps was as vacant and still as the surface of the moon. The gate was closed.

“Nobody there,” he reassured the dog as he shut and locked the door.

The living room was next. He stopped in the doorway and scanned its wide expanse. Starlight filtered through tall, arched windows, gleaming on the mahogany furnishings, the miniature schooner on the mantel, the ceramic vases squatting like trolls in the corners.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Still, a person could be concealed behind the sofa or one of the leather armchairs.

He considered flicking on the lights. Caution stopped him. Illumination would make him a better target.

In darkness he circled the room, the gun held at waist height, cocked, a pound or two of pressure on the trigger. The large antique globe creaked, spinning a few degrees, when he brushed against it.

Anastasia preceded him into the dining room. A wrought-iron chandelier hung over a long mahogany table flanked by hand-carved chairs. He found no intruders under the table or behind the floral-print curtains drawn over the French doors.

He and Ana slipped through a side doorway into the 1920s-style kitchen, replete with bottle-glass windows and inlaid wall tiles in a pelican design. A pile of crockery was soaking in the sink; along the counter scuttled a large shiny palmetto bug.

Steve crept past the antique stove toward the door at the rear. The tile floor was cold against his bare feet. Anastasia’s toenails clicked softly.

He reached for the doorknob, and there was a hand on his arm.

His heart kicked. He pivoted, the gun rising And saw Kirstie in her nightgown, drawing back with a gasp as she saw the pistol, her eyes very big.

Anastasia woofed.

“Jesus,” Steve hissed, fear receding and leaving him limp. “Never sneak up on a nervous man with a loaded gun.”

“Sorry.” Her voice was a frightened whisper. “I woke up and you weren’t there. What the hell’s going on?”

“Ana’s antsy about something. As if we’ve got company. But I haven’t found any sign of trouble.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

“Just about. But I’d better be thorough.”

He drew a couple of shallow breaths, then opened the door and entered a small, musty chamber, a maid’s room in an earlier day. It was unfurnished save for a chair, a table, and the two-way radio. Through the walls thrummed the pulse of two diesel generators, which Steve fed with fuel oil on a daily basis; they were housed in a shed directly outside.

“Looks okay,” he told Kirstie after checking the window for signs of intrusion.

“How about the patio?”

“That’s the only place I haven’t looked.”

He returned to the dining room, Ana and Kirstie following, and opened one of the French doors, then passed through the pergola, breathing the thick, humid air. Around him lay white wicker lounge chairs, gleaming like bone in the colorless starlight.

Turning in a slow circle, he took in the rear of the house with its whitewashed facade and red-tiled roof-the low coral wall, draped with chalice vine, enclosing the patio and garden-the trellises of bougainvillea and beds of pink primrose and aster, hemmed in by stands of royal poinciana, gumbo-limbo, and woman’s tongue tree.

He checked the garden gate, which was locked, then poked around meaninglessly in the trees until he started to feel silly. “False alarm,” he said finally.

Kirstie nodded. “Must have been. Funny, though. Ana doesn’t usually get spooked in the middle of the night.”

“Well, she did, this time.” Steve petted the borzoi. “What was it, sweetie? Bad dream?”

Anastasia whined.

Kirstie had a thought. “Bet she’s still hung up over that frog she chased. It drove her crazy.”

“Sure. You’re right. That’s probably all it was.” Steve smiled, taking his wife’s hand. “A frog in the garden. Not a serpent.”

He kept his words light. But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had been with him since Anastasia’s lapping tongue pulled him out of sleep.

As he led Kirstie back to the patio, he found himself looking at the chain of lights that marked Upper Matecumbe Key.

Matecumbe. A corruption of mata hombre. Kill man.

The thought haunted him, and it was a long time before he finally drifted back to sleep.

“I still can’t believe it. Can’t frigging believe it.”

“It must have been a shock.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah. I mean, when I heard his name on KFWB, it was like whoa, hold on, you know what I mean?”

“Of course.”

“I’m driving home from the movies, and all of a sudden they’re talking about him, about Jack, and I’m like… holy shit. You know?”

“I know.”

Tamara Moore kept her voice neutral, her face carefully blank save for a practiced hint of sympathy in the eyes. She had been listening to Sheila Tate ramble on for forty-five tedious minutes, and despite the possible importance of the interview, she was thoroughly bored.

Sheila, as the FBI surveillance team had already known, had been carrying on a romantic relationship with Jack Dance, spending her nights with him on an irregular basis. She had been a top priority after Dance had disappeared.

Unfortunately, Sheila Tate proved impossible to find. The surveillance unit had followed Jack when he left for work; no one had bothered to put a tail on his girlfriend. It was assumed she would be working at Bullock’s, as usual; but as it turned out, Thursday was her day off.

A stakeout car waited outside her apartment in Santa Monica all day and into the night. She didn’t show. The task force was beginning to worry that Jack had added her to his list of victims when at ten o’clock the watch commander at LAPD’s West L.A. divisional station called with word that Sheila was there.

Apparently she’d spent the day in Malibu, working hard on her tan, then visited Century City to shop, eat, and take in a movie. She hadn’t heard any news until she was driving home. Panicking, she detoured to the police station, afraid to go home while Jack was still at large.

Two LAPD detectives interviewed Sheila long enough to learn the essentials of her story, then delivered her to the FBI field office in Westwood. Lovejoy asked Moore to talk with her privately in a conference room.

Rigid in a straight-backed chair, Moore studied Sheila Tate, sprawled bonelessly on the couch. She was twenty-eight years old, slender and hard-bodied like so many southern California women, with a lustrous suntan and waves of chestnut hair laced with oddly alluring threads of gray. She should have been beautiful, but wasn’t. Her looks were spoiled by her mouth, a sneering, angry mouth well suited to the frequent profanities it uttered.

“Did he really kill all those women?” she asked for the tenth time. Her lower lip still trembled with the aftereffects of shock.

“We believe so.”

“Shit. It might’ve been me next, huh? He might’ve done me?”

“Well, fortunately he didn’t.”

“Could have, though. Jesus, what a wacko. Crazy as the Dahmer guy, and I was practically shacking up with him. Who would’ve known?”