Marcia Muller - Wolf in the shadows

Copyright 1993 by Marcia Muller

All rights reserved.

Mysterious Press

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

First eBook Edition: April 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56159-4

SHARON MCCONE MYSTERIES BY MARCIA MULLER

TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN

WOLF IN THE SHADOWS

PENNIES ON A DEAD WOMANS EYES

WHERE ECHOES LIVE

TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS

THE SHAPE OF DREAD

THERES SOMETHING IN A SUNDAY

EYE OF THE STORM

THERES NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

DOUBLE (with Bill Pronzini)

LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR WILLIE

GAMES TO KEEP THE DARK AWAY

THE CHESHIRE CATS EYE

ASK THE CARDS A QUESTION

EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES

For Anne-Marie dHyevre and Michael Dowdall

Many thanks to Liz Alexander, Lewis Berger, Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Janice Hayes, Betty Lamb, DeEtte Turner, Collin Wilcox, and an anonymous officer of the U.S. Border Patrol. Your generous volunteering of your time, expertise, and insights is greatly appreciated.

And special thanks to my in-house editor and husband, Bill Pronzini.

Thursday, June 10

The mesa was the most desolate place Id ever seen.

I climbed out of the Scout and followed my guide across rock-strewn ground where nothing but mesquite and spiny cholla cactus grew. The morning was overcast, the air saturated with salt-laden moisturespitty weather, we used to call it. The wind blew sharp and icy off the flat gray sea.

Ahead of us where the ground dropped off to distant ranchland stood the tumbledown adobe hut. My guide, Andrs, stopped several yards from it and waited for me to join him. There is where it happened, he said in a hushed voice.

I looked at the hut, felt nothing. It was simply a relic of a bygone time, crumbling now into the earth that had formed it. I started toward it, then glanced back at my companion. He stood, arms folded, staring resolutely at the Pacific. Superstitious, I thought, and kept going.

The hut had no roof, and two of the walls leaned in on each other at abnormal angles. I stepped through an opening where a door once had been onto a packed dirt floor, Loose bricks were scattered underfoot, and trash drifted in the corners; fire had blackened the pale clay.

I still didnt feel anything. No more loss or grief, no sense of horrornone of the emotional shock waves that surge through me at the scene of a violent death, even though the death that had happened here should have touched me more deeply than any.

Whats wrong with you? I asked myself. You cant have used up all your tears in one night.

For a few minutes I stood still, looking for somethinganythingand willing my emotions to come alive. But there was nothing here, so I turned and went back outside. I felt a tug at the leg of my jeans and glanced down: a little tree, dead now. Poor thing hadnt stood a chance in this inhospitable ground. A few crumpled papers were caught in its brittle branches; I brushed them away. Rest in peace.

One of the scraps caught my eye, and I picked it up and smoothed it out: U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Notice and Request for Deposition. The form the border patrol issues to illegal aliens when they pick them up, carelessly discarded here because it didnt matter anyway. One trip over the border fence and through the wild canyonsinfested with rattlers, scorpions, and banditshad been aborted, but that made no difference. Soon the illegalin this case, the form showed, one Maria Torreswould be back, and others would follow in a never-ending stream. I let the paper drift from my fingers.

Then I walked away from the hut where so much had come to an end and stood at the very edge of the headland. To my right lay the distant towers of San Diego and, closer in, the vast Tijuana riverbed. The river itself had long ago been diverted from its original course; it meandered westward, its waters made toxic by Mexicos raw sewage. Straight ahead was its destination, the leaden gray Pacific. And to my left, Baja California. A border patrol helicopter flapped overhead.

I turned and faced south. Cars moved on the toll road leading away from the border; beyond it sprawled the pastel houses and iron and red-tiled roofs of Tijuana. The famed bullringlike a giant satellite TV dish that could service all of Bajastood alone at the edge of town. I stared at the black steel-paneled boundary fence that lay across the ridge of rugged hills, and thought of satin funeral ribbons.

For a long time I stood there, thoughts and impressions trickling randomly through my mind. I recalled the words You keep what you can use, throw the rest away. And then the sluggish flow began to rush in an unstemmable torrent toward the obvious conclusion. When I finally began to feel, the emotions were not the ones Id anticipated. I turned and ran back to where Andrs still contemplated the sea.

Id come here this morning on a pilgrimage, thinking that everything was over, finished. Now I realized my search was only beginning.

Monday, June 7

Hey, wherere you going in such a hurry? I need to talk with you.

Hank Zahns hand gripped my shoulder as I tried to squeeze by him on the front stairs of All Souls Legal Cooperatives main building. He jerked me to such an abrupt halt that I nearly lost my footing on the fog-damp step.

Sorry, my boss added, steadying me with his other hand and whacking me on the elbow with his briefcase.

Let go of me, I said through gritted teeth, before we both fall down and end up in matching leg casts.

Hank did as I told him, running his free hand over his wiry gray-brown hair. Sorry, he repeated.

Just see that it doesnt happen again. I kept going, hoping to make a getaway while he was still befuddled.

Wait! he called.

I sighed and turned. What?

I need to talk with you before the partners meeting at three.

It was close to noon now. What about?

Hanks eyes grew evasive behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses. Oh, some things to do with the reorganization.

So theyd finally coined a term for itreorganization. It referred, I supposed, to the mixed bag of changes that had gone into effect during All Soulss transition from a small neighborhood law cooperative to one of northern Californias largest legal-services plans. At any given time during the past year you could have found at least one employee reeling from some change in job status or description, and now it appeared it was to be the turn of their chief investigator. From the look in Hanks eyes, I wasnt going to like what I heard. Still, I had my priorities.

Hank, I said, Im working a case, and Ive got to take off.

I really need to

Ill try to get back to you before three.

If not He paused, looking downright guilty now.

Yes?

The partners would like you to attend the meeting.

Bad sign. Very bad. What the hell was this? Surely they didnt plan to fire me? There had been a number of dismissals lately, and Lord knew Id played fast and loose any number of times with what few rules All Souls had, but I was a good investigator, and they damn well knew it.

I frowned, but before I could say anything, Hank fled up the steps. Be there, he called back to me.

I watched him go inside, his shoulders hunched under the burden of his guilty knowledge, then shrugged and headed downhill, where my old red MG was sandwiched between the corner and a fireplug.