10
He tried to sleep. With people here expecting him to live by daylight, he had to make himself rest at night. Surely he could manage that for a few days; he had before, in the beginning. The earth pallet and sheer tiredness should have helped, but his mind kept churning, tossing up images of Lane, Fowler, his grandmother, and Holle, of a small woman faceless but for violet eyes, of burning bridges and gothic houses full of shadows and chill with danger. Garreth rolled over and pulled the top sheet up over his shoulders, but the images continued to spin behind his closed eyes, mixing together in endless varieties . . . Lane and the bridge, Fowler and the bridge, his grandmother and violet eyes, Lane and Fowler, Fowler and Holle.
Fowler and Holle! Garreth came wide awake, sucking in his breath. He sat up in bed. That could happen. Harry had no probable cause for requesting a search warrant for Lane's apartment, but Fowler's passion for details about his characters might well take him to Holle to charm his way into accompanying Lane's friend on the next visit to her apartment. Cold crawled up Garreth's spine. One look around, at the photographs duplicating some of Anna Bieber's, at the books inscribed to "Mada" and "Madelaine," and Fowler would know what the police file on Mossman's murder might have already suggested, that Lane Barber and Madelaine Bieber were the same person.
Garreth had not looked in this kitchen, but in her other apartment the kitchen had been empty, its cupboards barren of anything to cook in or eat from, not even a drinking glass. Lane, he knew, considered it a backstage area she never expected anyone to see and therefore not worth the trouble of stocking with props. What would it suggest to a horror writer, though, after reading the autopsy report on Mossman and seeing file photographs of Garreth's body and the wounds on his throat?
Garreth sucked in his lower lip. Fowler must not see the apartment. How to stop him, though? Attempting to keep the writer away from the apartment might draw his attention to it instead.
"Damn." His gut knotted. Throwing off the sheet, Garreth swung out of bed and paced the room. His grandmother was right; he should never have come back to San Francisco.
The urge to run beat at him. His suitcase sat invitingly by the dresser. All he had to do was slip away. Except it was too late to pack up and retreat. The very act of coming had brought the means for his destruction, and Fowler would still be here even after Garreth—
The thought broke off in a hurried reverse. Pack up? He grimaced. You're a thick mick, you know that Mikaelian? If there's a stake in your future, you deserve it. He had been looking at the problem with Fowler from the wrong end. The solution was not preventing the writer from seeing the apartment, but keeping Lane's belongings out of his sight.
Relief and resolution washed away his weariness. Dressing, Garreth slipped out into the hall. Voices murmured in Harry and Lien's bedroom. He glided silently past their door and down the stairs to the front door.
Wrench.
Outside, lights still showed in the houses along the street, each behind its narrow strip of grass and hedge. Except for a man walking his dog and an occasional passing car, though, the neighborhood lay quiet. Garreth drew a deep breath, savoring the briney scent of the sea and the muted symphony of city sounds . . . distant traffic, barking dogs, threads of voices and music from nearby houses. Very different from night in the hills around Baumen, where a cow's bellow or coyote's yodel carried for miles in the stillness and the stars glittered cold and brilliant as ice chips overhead, but no less enjoyable.
Climbing into the passenger side of the ZX, he reached back behind the seat for his thermos. A few swallows finished off the remaining blood. Now the question was, should he refill it and risk storage in Lien's refrigerator, or depend on nightly hunting with its attendant hazards?
That question could be answered later, he decided, crawling over the gearshift into the driver's seat. Turning the key enough to free the steering wheel, he slipped the car into neutral and let it roll backward out of the drive, then swung out and pushed it down the street. Harry knew the snarl of the ZX's engine too well for him to risk starting it in front of the house.
"Can't you get it started?"
Garreth spun to find the dog walker eyeing him from the sidewalk. The man's thoughts ran almost visibly across his face: Man pushing car down the street in the middle of the night. Very suspicious. Possible car thief. Garreth thought fast. "The damn battery's down. I thought maybe if I got it rolling, that'd be enough to turn the engine over."
He gave the car an extra hard push to make it move, then jumping in, cranked the key. The motor roared to life. With a smile and a wave at the dog walker, Garreth drove away.
Two blocks later he let out his breath, but even then he made himself drive around at random for fifteen minutes, watching the rearview mirror for patrol cars, in case the dog walker had gone ahead and reported him as suspicious activity. Of the several black-and-whites he spotted, though, none showed any interest in him. Finally he headed for Lane's apartment.