U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

“Up yours.”

“I don’t want to sound racist about this, but what we have here is what’s called a Mexican standoff.”

He smiled. “Right, the question being which of us will fire first.”

“Exactly.” I fired a shot, hitting his right hand. The gun popped up and landed in the grass. Walker jumped while Jon yelped in pain and dropped where he stood. I must have looked like a sharpshooter, but in truth he was fewer than fifteen feet away so it didn’t require any tricks. Point and pull the trigger, easy does it.

“Jesus Christ,” Walker said. “You fuckin’ shot the guy!”

“He’s the one who talked about firing first,” I said.

I removed a hankie from my shoulder bag and bent down to retrieve Jon’s gun, wrapping it daintily to preserve his fingerprints. Jon had rolled over and risen to his knees. He leaned forward, head almost touching the ground as he gripped his shattered right hand in his left. He watched himself bleed, his face ashen, his breathing ragged.

“You’re fine,” I said to him, and then turned to Walker. “Give me your tie and I’ll make a tourniquet.”

Walker was so rattled his hands shook as he pulled the knot on his tie and passed it to me. Except for the whimpering, Jon offered no resistance as I made a slipknot and secured the tie around his forearm. It’s only in the movies the bad guys keep firing. In real life, they sit down and behave.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Walker said, distressed.

“Neither can he.”

“We can’t just leave him here without help.”

“Of course not.” I handed him my car keys. “My Mustang’s parked down below. Take it to the nearest service station, call the cops, and tell ’em where we are. You better ask for an ambulance while you’re at it. I’ll wait here with your pal until you get back.”

He took the keys, pausing to stare at me. “Did you just save my life?”

“More or less,” I said. “So how’s it going down with the clean-and-sober shit? That’s a tough one. You gonna make it?”

Disconcerted, he said, “Good. It’s great. I got a lock on it. Ten days.”

I reached over and gave his arm a squeeze. “Good for you!”

EPILOGUE

As of the writing of this report, Jon Corso’s hired a criminal attorney with a five-star reputation who’s busy preparing his case, filing motions left and right, trumpeting to the press his client’s eagerness to lay the facts before the court in the interest of clearing his name. Fat chance. When the case comes to trial, he’ll doubtless accuse Walker of being the mastermind, claiming he offered to testify purely to save his own ass. The case will drag on for years. The trial will take weeks and cost the taxpayers a bundle. And who knows, maybe subjected to sufficient obfuscation and sleight of hand, the jury will find for the defense. Happens all the time.

As for Walker, the fingerprint on the ransom note was his. Herschel Rhodes is working on a deal whereby he’ll plead guilty to kidnapping for ransom and second-degree murder, with assorted other charges tacked on. In exchange for his testimony, the death-penalty allegation will likely be dropped. Still, once you factor in his guilty plea for felony vehicular manslaughter, drunken driving, and leaving the scene of an accident in the death of the coed, Julie Riordan, the terms of his sentence are bound to be stiff—twenty-five years to life, but with the possibility of parole . . . perhaps.

Walker said he never knew where Jon had buried Mary Claire, and Jon, of course, refused to admit to anything. Three weeks after the incident in the park, a judge issued a search warrant. Sergeant Pettigrew, the K-9 officer, took his dog, Belle, to Jon’s property. Nose to the ground, she sniffed her way back and forth across the grass, up and around the house, finally settling near the water heater at the back of the garage. The heater was mounted on a concrete pad, surrounded by a weathered trellis with a hinged door. A sticker on the side of the heater bore the name of the plumber and the date the appliance was installed. July 23, 1967. When officers jackhammered up the concrete pad and dug under it, they found Mary Claire’s body five feet down, curled in her final sleep. With her, Jon had buried the fifteen thousand dollars in marked bills, still in the gym bag. Over the years, moisture in the soil had reduced the money to pulp.

Half of the Santa Teresa townsfolk turned out for Mary Claire’s funeral, including Henry and me.

As for the Kinsey family gathering Memorial Day, I attended that, too, keeping Henry at my side for moral support. Grand was in a wheelchair at the head of the receiving line. Even from a distance I could see how frail she was. She was old, not in the way Henry and his siblings were old, but feeble and shrunken, as light and bony as an old cat.