he knew the answer. He’d known José for almost ten years, and the gardener was known only for three things: his industriousness and his honesty and his refusal to involve himself in violence under any circumstances.
José shook his head. “I was coming up for a job. When I got here …” His voice broke off, and he shook his head helplessly. “As soon as I found them, I called the police.”
“Did you see anything? Anything at all?”
José started to shake his head, then hesitated.
“What is it?” Finnerty urged.
“I forgot,” the gardener said. “On the way up, I saw a boy. He looked like he’d been fighting, and he was carrying a gun.”
“Do you know who he was?”
The gardener shook his head again. “But I know where he went.”
Finnerty stiffened. “Can you show me?”
“Down the road. It’s right down the road.”
Finnerty glanced toward the squad car, where Jackson was still on the radio. “Let’s take your truck, José. You feel good enough to drive?”
José looked uncertain, but then climbed into the cab, and while Finnerty yelled to Jackson that he’d be right back, pressed on the starter and prayed that now, of all times, the truck wouldn’t finally give up. The engine sputtered and coughed, then caught.
Half a mile down the hill, José brought the truck to a stop and pointed. “There,” he said. “He went in there.”
Finnerty stared at the house for several seconds. “Are you sure, José? This could be very serious.”
José’s head bobbed eagerly. “I’m sure. Look at the mess. They cut the vines off the wall and didn’t even clean them up. I don’t forget things like that. That’s the house the boy went into.”
Even with the vines off the wall, Finnerty recognized the Lonsdales’ house. After all, it had been little more than eight hours since he’d been there himself.
He got out of the truck, and noted the empty garage. “José, I want you to go back up to the hacienda and send my partner down with the car. Then wait. Okay?”
José nodded, and maneuvered the truck through a clumsy U-turn before disappearing back up the hill. Finnerty stayed where he was, his eyes on the house, though he had a growing feeling that it was empty. A few minutes later, Jackson arrived, and at almost the same time, a woman appeared from the house across the street and a few yards down from the Lonsdales’.
“There isn’t anyone there,” Sheila Rosenberg volunteered. “Marsh and Ellen left two hours ago, and I saw Alex leave in Ellen’s car a few minutes ago.”
“Do you know where they went? The parents, I mean?”
“I’m sure I haven’t a clue,” Sheila replied. “I don’t keep track of everything that happens in the neighborhood, you know.” Then her voice dropped slightly. “Is something wrong?”
Finnerty glared at the woman, certain that she did, indeed, keep track of everything her neighbors were doing. “No,” he said. If he told her the truth, she would be the first one up the hill. “We just want to get some information, that’s all.”
“Then you’d better call the Center,” Sheila Rosenberg replied. “I’m sure they’ll know where to find Marsh.”
Despite Sheila Rosenberg’s assertion that the house was as empty as he thought it was, Finnerty searched it anyway.
In the bedroom he was sure was Alex’s, he found the blood-soaked shirt and carefully put it in a plastic bag Jackson brought from the squad car. Then he called the Medical Center.
“I know exactly where he went,” Barbara Fannon told him after he’d identified himself. “He and Ellen went down to Palo Alto to talk to Dr. Torres about Alex. Apparently he’s having some kind of trouble.” And that, Finnerty thought grimly as Barbara Fannon searched for the number of the Institute for the Human Brain, is the understatement of the year.
Marsh felt his patience slipping rapidly away.
They had been at the Institute for almost two hours, and for the first hour and a half they had cooled their heels in the waiting room. This time, Marsh had ignored the journals, in favor of pacing the room. Ellen, however, had hardly moved at all from her place on the sofa, where she sat silently, her face pale, her hands folded in her lap.
And now, as they sat in Torres’s office, they were being fed double-talk. The first thing Torres had done when he’d finally deigned to see them was show them a computer reconstruction of the operation.
It had been meaningless, as far as Marsh could tell. It had been speeded