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Red Sky at Morning
Sunrise bled over Sacramento as Patrick drove out of the city at dawn. What was that phrase out of The Return of the King? Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn? At least the phrase made him smile—thinking of himself some kind of knight on a quest.
He exited the highway onto the main road into Royale, the one his CBI team had taken a month ago. It was Saturday; she might be at work now. He pulled into the downtown parking lot, parked in a slot, then took out his cell phone. He’d have to call information. He’d have to call the Sheriff’s Department to see if she were there. Once he reached someone in the Sheriff’s Department, even if it were Samantha herself, he’d have to explain why he wanted to talk to her. Or do what he did best;
He put the phone back in his pocket, then backed his ’70 Citroën out of the slot. He looked both ways before he turned right. No Sheriff’s cars in the vicinity; he turned onto Main. Keeping the engine at an easy fifteen miles per hour, he cruised past the building’s parking lot. Sheriff Austen’s Ford Expedition was there, but not the green Subaru Forester that Samantha Kelly drove.
All right. Try the house.
The house was clean and the lawn buried under snow. No lights were on in the porch. No green Subaru sat in the driveway.
He parked in the driveway and thought it over. Where might Samantha Kelly be on a Saturday morning when she wasn’t working and could presumably drive? Pictures of the inside of her house flashed up in his memory; he flipped through them. One stopped him.
Two girls with their parents: Samantha about eight, Angela about 4, holding Easter baskets and in Easter finery, standing in front of a church, in the parking lot. There had been a sign to one side… He closed his eyes. Yes.
He took the portable GPS out of the glove compartment, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, then moved through the prompts until he could type in “Grace Chapel Lutheran Church.” The screen redrew. The GPS fastened to the dash with a strip of Velcro. After a moment, the annoying half-female voice began talking to him.
Heaps of dirty snow lined the streets. As he moved out of the town proper, the hard curbs turned into shoulders, with the piles of snow sometimes higher than his car. The instructions given by the GPS were straightforward, with none of the twists and turns he’d been given in other towns and cities.
As the car reached the church, he saw the green Subaru sitting in the lot. He inhaled. His stomach flipped over, then over again, and he picked up the bottle of water lying in the passenger seat, opened it, and drank. The Citroën stuttered a moment as he switched off the engine, then fell silent. He opened the door and stepped out onto the asphalt.
Snow on the asphalt showed signs of the morning sun, melting and running off into the ditch. The cemetery sat to the left of the white church. A branch of the cobbled walk curved off to the fenced-in graveyard. He opened the gate, hesitated, then took a step into it.
No photographers. He had picked a cemetery outside Sacramento for his family. He visited the graves once a month, but never on a schedule. On the drive there, he checked out the streets surrounding it. He stayed alert, waiting for the stray photographer who might have tracked down where the gravesite lay. No need to worry about that here.
The first thing he saw was a coat. A woman, with dark hair, wearing trousers and boots beneath a heavy coat. As he walked closer, he recognized the set of her shoulders. Samantha Kelly.
She heard his boots crunching on the snow. She turned. Her eyes narrowed. Then they widened. A smile: quizzical, amused, lit up her face. “Patrick?”
“Yes. It’s me.” Still the first name? No bad memories there, apparently; a good thing, in light of the situation. And your response, Patrick, hardly makes the grade as repartee. Banal would be a better description. “How are you?” And that take banality to new heights.
Another shift showed him that she leaned on a cane, but not with her full weight. “I’m about ready to get rid of this. The x-rays say I’m healing well. I should be back to full duty in two weeks.” She took a breath. “Ah—Carlos is still out—he’s not fully recovered yet, and we’re not pushing him. Pete and I have been breaking in our two new hires.” She grimaced. “Uh—And Kick decided I should supervise our new secretary, who is starting to figure out how we do things. Other than that, things are fine—” She crossed her eyes and screwed up her mouth, as if laughing at herself. “And I’m babbling. I’m sorry. Umm… You want to come back to the house for coffee—um, tea?”
The smile he couldn’t hold back kept widening as she talked. So I’m not the only nervous one here. He glanced down at his feet, then sidelong at the granite marker. Kelly, in serif, and below it, four names: Douglas, Barbara, Samantha, and Angela. The first two and the last had dates of birth and death—Samantha’s only her birth date. “Actually, I was hoping we could talk a little here and then I thought I might take you to lunch. If you want, of course.”
Her head tilted. She leaned back against a tree and waited. “Talk about what?”
“What you told me when I left.”
“Ah.” She looked at her feet, then tilted her head again to look up at him from under her lashes.
“I remember that Moon September mentioned you run self-defense classes. I’m assuming for women—and I do know what assuming does.”
She laughed; it crinkled up her eyes and her mouth pleasantly. “Okay. For the most part, my students are women. I have had male students. I separate genders—it works better that way. What sort of self-defense are you interested in?”
He slid his hands into his coat pockets. This did require one more breath. “I—would like to learn to shoot a gun.”
Her pleasant smile and her tranquil expression faded like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Her eyes narrowed, just as slowly. She looked down at the grave stone a moment, then lifted her head to stare off at the trees.
His brain began to tick off the seconds, until he shut it off forcibly.
Her attention returned to him. She drew a long breath. “All right. I can teach you to shoot a gun.”
He prodded, using a statement instead of a flip question. “It took you a while to decide.”
Her mouth tightened. She chewed on her lower lip for a second. “It’s a large responsibility to take on, Patrick.”
He thought that over, analyzing tone of voice, her relationship with Lisbon, and the ramifications of his request. “Yes. I can see that it would be.”
She straightened. She took a cautious step away from the tree. “When do you want to start?”
“What about today?”
That got him the quizzical look a second time, although without a smile. Then her smile reappeared—the Cheshire cat effect again—as she took a second step. “All right. Today.”
“Good. Now, about lunch?”
“You can buy me lunch.” After a beat, she said, “If we take my car and eat in Verellen.”
He pursed his lips. “Why Verellen?”
“Not as many people know me there. You’ve spent time in Royale. You know what gossips people are here.”
“There will be more gossip if people think we’re hiding something.”
She rocked her head back and forth, then nodded. “But it will be a different kind of gossip. There’s a shooting range I’ve used in Verellen. I’ll need to pick up a gun before we go.”
More camouflage. You’re not as innocent as you appear. “All right. I will park my car at your house and you will drive us to Verellen.”