in the last two weeks. He knew he should have said something to Charlie, but really, why? Charlie wasn't being open with him about anything, it seemed.
Besides, the woman who bought the stuff was cute, and she'd smiled at Ray. She had nice hair, a cute figure, and really striking light blue eyes. Plus there was something about her voice - she seemed so, what? Peaceful, maybe. Like she knew that everything was going to be okay and no one needed to worry. Maybe he was projecting. And she didn't have an Adam's apple, which was a big plus in Ray's book lately. He'd tried to get her name, even get a look at something in her wallet, but she'd paid in cash and had been as careful as a poker player covering her cards. If she'd driven, she'd parked too far away for him to see her get into her car from the store, so there was no license number to trace.
He resolved to ask her name if she came in today. And she was due to come in. She only came in when he was working alone. He'd seen her check through the window once when he was working with Lily, and only came into the store later when Lily was gone. He really hoped she'd come in.
He tried to calm himself down for his call to Rivera. He didn't want to seem like a rube to a guy who was still on the job. He used his own cell phone for the call so Rivera would see it was him calling.
Charlie didn't like leaving Sophie for this long, given what had happened a few days ago, but on the other hand, whatever might be threatening her was obviously being caused by his missing these two soul vessels. The quicker he fixed the problem, the quicker the threat would be diminished. Besides, the hellhounds were her best defense, and he'd given express instructions to Mrs. Ling that the dogs and Sophie were not to be separated for any amount of time, for any reason.
He took Presidio Boulevard through Golden Gate Park into the Sunset, reminding himself to take Sophie to the Japanese Tea Garden to feed the koi, now that her plague on pets seemed to have subsided.
The Sunset district lay just south of Golden Gate Park, bordered by the American Highway and Ocean Beach on the west, and Twin Peaks and the University of San Francisco on the east. It had once been a suburb, until the city expanded to include it, and many of its houses were modest, single-story family dwellings, built en masse in the 1940s and '50s. They were like the mosaics of little boxes that peppered neighborhoods across the entire country in that postwar period, but in San Francisco, where so much had been built after the quake and fire of '06, then again in the economic boom of the late twentieth century, they seemed like anachronisms from both ends of time. Charlie felt like he was driving through the Eisenhower era, at least until he passed a mother with a shaved head and tribal tattoos on her scalp pushing twins in a double stroller.
Irena Posokovanovich's sister lived in a small, one-story frame house with a small covered porch that had jasmine vines growing up trellises on either side and springing off into the air like morning-after-sex hair. The rest of the tiny yard was meticulously groomed, from the holly hedge at the sidewalk to the red geraniums that lined the concrete path up to the house.
Charlie parked a block away and walked to the house. On the way he was nearly run over by two different joggers, one a young mother pushing a running stroller. They couldn't see him - he was on track. Now, how to go about getting in? And then what? If he was the Luminatus, then perhaps just his presence would take care of the problem.
He checked around back and saw that there was a car in the garage, but the shades were drawn on all the windows. Finally he decided on the frontal approach and rang the doorbell.
A few seconds later a short woman in her seventies wearing a pink chenille housecoat opened the door. "Yes," she said, looking a little suspicious as she eyed Charlie's walking cast. She quickly flipped the lock on the screen door. "Can I help you?"
It was the woman in the picture. "Yes, ma'am, I'm looking for Irena Posokovanovich."