Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

Even without the elegant threads, Ballard cut an impressive figure. He worked out in his converted basement for an hour and a half every morning, so his six-foot frame looked pretty much the way it had when he’d pitched for Cal back in the eighties. A few lines had begun to crop up around his hazel eyes, but his light brown hair was still thick, his skin ruddy and smooth. The prominent, slightly off-kilter nose only added to his aura of powerful manhood.

Finally, he couldn’t put the inevitable off any longer, and he killed the ignition, took a steadying breath against the temperature shock, and opened the door.

There, out on the beach, where she said she’d be, by one of the boulder-bordered fire circles the hippies and/or the homeless used most nights, he could barely make out the huddled figure of his wife. He’d been with Sarah now for eight years, and though they’d had some difficult times in their marriage-their inability to conceive their own children had been a festering wound for half of those years together-it hadn’t been until recently that Ballard had begun to consider the possibility, for no specific reason other than apathy and guilt, that their relationship might actually end in divorce.

But they weren’t there yet-he hoped.

Now Stan was playing the role of the dutiful husband, coming down here to the ocean’s edge, at Sarah’s urging, because she had told him she needed him. And because she had so obviously still needed him, suddenly in the here and now, what he was doing didn’t feel like playing a role at all. Some flame still burned among the embers at the mere thought that he might still have an important place in her life, in her heart. And the warmth of that flame both surprised and disoriented him.

The ocean’s melancholy roar as waves broke at the offshore bar thrummed under the early evening’s weight. The tide was out, the sea itself not visible through the fog.

Stan came up beside her. She was wearing jeans and hiking boots and her familiar cowled BAY TO BREAKERS sweatshirt, with the hood up over her shoulder-length hair. He cleared his throat and she looked up at him, her shoulders giving in relief.

“Is there any more room on that rock?”

She shifted over a few inches, patted where she’d been, and he lowered himself down beside her.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said. “I don’t mean to be melodramatic. I was trying to keep you out of this, but it’s been a few days now and I don’t see how I can.”

“No, you can’t,” Stan said. “Out of what, though, exactly?”

She held her hands clasped tightly in front of her, her elbows resting on her knees. “Do you know what August twenty-third is this year?”

Stan considered for a long moment. “Should I?”

“You might. It might say something if you did.”

“Which means it also says something that I don’t?”

She turned to face him. With ice-blue eyes, finely pored, fair skin, and wide, perfectly defined cheekbones, Sarah was attractive from any angle, but from straight on, her face could be distracting in its beauty. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Stan.” After a pause, she said, “It’s the tenth anniversary of Rosemary Thomas’s execution.”

Nodding, Stan remained silent for a beat. “I guess that’s about right.”

“It’s right. I googled it and made sure. Though I didn’t really doubt it.”

“How did it come up?”

“That’s what’s gotten me so upset. I got a letter-not an e-mail, mind you, but a real letter-from Tony Olsen.” She raised her eyes and looked out in front of her, as if she could see the breakers. “Actually, it was addressed to you.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. Monday, I think.”

Stan strained to keep the note of anger out of his voice. “And you opened it?”

“I had to. I was afraid of… I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“What he’d do. Of why he could be writing to you, after all this time. Of what he wanted with you.”

“Tony Olsen’s got nothing to do with me, Sarah. He was connected to Rosemary and Chris Thomas, and so was I, and that’s it.”

“I know, but your testimony… I know he never forgave you for that, and he’s a powerful man, Stan.” Again she faced him with a pleading look.

“So what did he want?”

“I’ve got the letter, if you want to read it.”

“In a minute, maybe, but what’s the short version?”

“He wants to have a memorial service.”

Stan barked out an outraged laugh. “For Rosemary? That’s insane. Why would anybody want to do that? Okay, a memorial for Chris, maybe, but not for the woman who killed him.” Stan remembered now that Rosemary had mentioned such an event in her will, though he’d never expected anyone to take it seriously.

“Except nobody liked Chris.”

“I liked him all right. I’ve got to believe his mistress-what was her name, Haile-she liked him. And there were others.”

“Girlfriends, yes. But, according to Jon, the guy was a thorough shit. Believe me. He dug up some crazy dirt on Christopher Thomas during his investigation. And Haile? She was just impressed with his money and power. For you the Thomases were just early clients who helped you get going. But Christopher wasn’t anybody’s idea of a nice guy. And maybe, in fact, Rosemary didn’t kill him.”

“Wrong. That’s your ex-husband talking. There’s no maybe on that score. She killed him all right. The jury had no problem with that. There wasn’t ever any doubt about whether-” Suddenly he stopped and turned to his wife. “Ah. But this isn’t really about Tony, is it?”

Sarah hunched down farther into her sweatshirt.

“Maybe I ought to take a look at the letter,” Stan said.

“All right.” She reached inside the sweatshirt and came out with an envelope. “But you’ll see, he never mentions Jon.”

“No. He wouldn’t, would he? Especially to us. You’re married to me now. That case is what got us together. No need to belabor the obvious, but Jon always thought he screwed up that case-everybody knows that-and that was what screwed him up. Terminally.”

“Not terminally.”

“No? Well enough to lose you over.”

“I know. I just wish it could have been something else.”

“There was something else, if you remember. Animal connection, if nothing else.”

But the small attempt at humor got no rise from her. “I sometimes wonder if there was nothing else.”

“Well, thanks very much, now, after all these years.”

She reached over and took his hand. “Don’t be mad, Stan. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just don’t know if I’ll ever get over the guilt.”

“Guilt for what? Falling in love with someone else who adored you while your husband fell into the toilet and never came out? And you know what the true irony is? He was right all along . All this agonizing and hand-wringing over how he’d blown the investigation. Give me a break. Rosemary killed Chris. There wasn’t any evidence that pointed to anybody else-not to me, not to anybody.”

Sarah looked up at him. “Why on earth would it have pointed to you ?”

Stan shrugged. “It was just… a figure of speech.”

“All right, Stan, all right. As you say, we’ve been through it all a million times.” In a small voice she sighed and added, “Maybe you ought to look at the letter.”

“Maybe I should.”

If for no other reason than to give himself time to calm down, Stan studied the envelope-Tony Olsen’s personal stationery. The address handwritten with a fountain pen in Olsen’s careful script. Postmarked in the superexclusive Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, where the well-known venture capitalist had lived for the past twenty-five years.