John Lescroart - The Oath

The crying started. It sounded like Amber, the middle one, first. But the others immediately took the cue from her. Ann's voice, shrill and loud, cut through them all, though. "Stop that! Shut up, all of you! Stop it right now!"

"Ann!" Kensing pleaded through the door.

"Mom!" His son, Terry, hysterical. "I'm going out with Dad! You can't stop me."

"Oh, yes I can!"

Something slammed into the door.

"God, Ann! What are you…?"

More sounds of manhandling. Then, "Terry, get upstairs, you hear me! You girls, too!"

Kensing grabbed the doorknob, shook it with both hands. "Ann, let me in! Now! Open up!"

She was herding all of them upstairs, to their rooms. He stood for another moment on the stoop, then ran down the steps and up the overgrown driveway on the side of the house. The back door was locked, too.

But unlike the front, it had six small glass panes in its upper panel.

Kensing wished it was the usual cold day and he had a jacket he could wrap around his hand, but all he wore was a collared golf shirt. Still, he had his fist clenched. He had to do it, padding or not. But then he remembered the man last year who'd died after slashing his arteries trying to do the same thing-bled out in six minutes. The instant's hesitation gave him time for another flash of insight that stopped him cold.

He was already a murder suspect. Even if he had every reason in the world, he'd better not break into his wife's house. But the kids-Ann had lost control, and though she'd never hit any of them before, she might be capable of anything right now.

He pulled out his cell phone and punched 911, then ran back up front. The dispatcher answered and he gave the address and briefly described the situation. "I'm outside now. I need some help immediately."

Back up on the stoop, he heard Ann, upstairs, still screaming at the kids. A door slammed up there. Finally, he heard her footsteps on the stairs inside, coming down. Now she was at the door. "Eric," she said. "Eric, are you still there?"

He didn't say anything. He was pressed against the wall, scrunched down under the sill of the stoop. He knew she wouldn't be able to see him even if she leaned out the front windows. His heart thrummed in his ears. In the distance, he heard the wail of a siren.

Then he heard the lock tumble, saw the doorknob begin to move. He grabbed and gave it a quick turn, then hit the door with his shoulder. Ann screamed as the force of it threw her backward.

But she didn't go down.

Instead, she gathered herself and charged at him. "Get out of here! Get out of my house!"

He held her arms, but she kept kicking at him-at his legs, his groin. She connected and knocked the wind out of him. His grip went slack for a second. She ripped a hand free and swiped it across his face. He felt the hot flush of the impact and knew she'd scratched him. Raising his hand, he pulled it away and saw blood. "Jesus," he said.

"Daddy! Mommy!" From up the stairs.

"Don't!" Ann screamed. "Stay up there!" She never turned around, though, and came again at him. She kept coming, driving him back to the door, then out it onto the stoop. She kicked again at his groin, barely missing, but the kick spun him to one side. Now she charged full force, her fingernails out for his face.

Blocking her hands, he stepped back defensively. Her forward motion carried her by him. Her foot landed on one of the wet newspapers, which slipped out from under her. With another yell of anguish, she fell. Her head hit the concrete as her momentum carried her forward. She rolled down the steps all the way to the sidewalk, where she lay still.

The children flashed by Kensing and down the steps. They had just gotten to her, kneeling and keening around her, when a police car, its siren blaring, pulled up and skidded to a stop. Two patrolmen came out with their weapons drawn and leveled at Kensing.

"Don't make a move! Put your hands up!"

Glitsky and Treya had gotten out of bed late, got a sense of the incredible day outside, and decided on the spur of the moment to drive up to Dillon's Beach, about forty miles north of the city. On the way up, they detoured over to Hog Island for an hour or so and ate oysters every way they could think of-raw, grilled on the barby with three different sauces, breaded and deep fried with tartar sauce. Fortified, even sated and happy, they took the long way north along the ocean-switchback one-lane roads that wound through the dairy farms, the redwood and eucalyptus groves, the timeless and seemingly forgotten settlements of western Marin county.

It was truly a different world here than anywhere else in the greater Bay Area, all the more magical because of its proximity to the kitschy tourist mecca of Sausalito, the tony, crowded anthill of yuppies that was Mill Valley. On this side of Tamalpais, clapboard main streets with a half dozen century-old buildings called themselves towns. The single sign of life would be twenty Harleys parked outside the only saloon-there was always a saloon. Along the road, they passed handmade signs nailed to ancient oaks advertising live chickens, pigs, sheep. Fresh eggs and milk every few miles.

Most of it looked slightly gone to seed, and Glitsky had been up here many times when, with the near-constant year-round fog and wind, it had seemed almost uninhabi-table, a true wasteland. Today, in the warm sunlight-it would hit eighty degrees at the beach before they headed back home-the ramshackle and run-down landscape suddenly struck him as deliberate. Lots of hippies from the sixties and drop-and burnouts from the seventies and eighties had settled out here and they didn't want it to change. They didn't want new cars and faux-mansions, but a slower pace, tolerant neighbors, privacy. Most of the time, Glitsky scoffed at that lifestyle-those people didn't have a clue, they weren't living in the real world.

But today at the beach he was watching what he would have normally called a cliche´ of an aging hippy. A man about his own age, early fifties, was weaving some spring flowers into his little girl's hair. Glitsky found himself almost envying him, the simplicity of this life. The woman with him-the girl's mother?-was another cliche´. Her hair fell loose halfway down her back. She had let it go gray. She fingerpicked an acoustic guitar and would sing snippets of Joni Mitchell as the words occurred to her. It was possible, Glitsky the cop thought, that they were both stoned. But possibly not. Possibly they were blissed out on the day, very much like he and Treya.

"A chocolate chip cookie for your thoughts." She sat next to him, blocking the sun from his face.

He was stretched out on his side on their blanket in the warm sand. "Cookie first." He popped it whole into his mouth and chewed it up. "Thank you."

"Now thoughts," she said. "That was the deal."

"You don't want to hear my thoughts. They're scary."

"You're having scary thoughts here ?"

"I like it here. I'm almost completely happy. That's scary."

"Comfort and happiness are scary?"

"They don't last. You don't want to get used to them."

"No, God forbid that." She reached a hand out and rubbed it over his arm. "Forgetting, of course, that you and I have had a pretty decent run together these past few months."

He put a hand over hers. "I haven't forgotten that for a second. I didn't mean us."

"Good. Because I'm planning on making this last a while."

"A while would be good. I'd vote for that."

"At least, say, another nineteen years."

"What's ninet…?" Glitsky stopped and squinted a question up at her.

"Nineteen years." She spoke with an undertone of grave concern. With an age difference of nineteen years between them, the question of whether they should have their own child someday had nearly split them up before they'd gotten engaged. Glitsky had already done what he called "the kid thing" three times. He was finished with all that, he'd informed her.