Despite her objective tone, Sloan felt swamped by anger. In the past, her strongest emotion had been indignation on her mother's behalf and contempt for her father. Now, as she recounted the story, she was a grown woman, and what she felt was far more fierce than indignation; it was empathy and compassion so intense that it made her chest ache. For her father—that callous, selfish, cruel destroyer of innocence and dreams—what she felt for him was not merely contempt, it was loathing, and it grew as she considered his presumptuous phone call earlier. After decades of neglect, he actually believed he could make a phone call and his abandoned wife and unseen daughter would leap at the chance for a reunion. She shouldn't have just coldly dismissed him on the phone; she should have told him she'd prefer spending a week in a snake pit to a week with him anywhere. She should have told him he was a bastard.
7
The fire had been noticed at approximately nine-thirty P.M., according to Mrs. Rivera's neighbor who saw smoke seeping under a front door and called 911. Within six minutes, the fire department was on the scene, but it was already too late to save the shabby frame house.
Sloan had been on her way home from work, intending to change clothes and walk across the street to the beach where Pete's bachelor party was underway, when she heard the radio call and decided to offer whatever help she could. By the time she arrived, the street was already jammed with fire engines, ambulances, and police cruisers, their emergency lights flashing like grim beacons in the night. Sirens were wailing in the distance, and fire hoses were stretched across the street, slithering over the yards like fat white snakes. Police officers were cordoning off the immediate area and trying to keep a growing crowd of curiosity seekers from getting too close.
Sloan had just finished taking statements from several neighbors when Mrs. Rivera suddenly arrived on the scene. The heavyset, elderly woman plowed past the officers and onlookers like a frantic linebacker heading for a touchdown, tripped over a fire hose, and landed in Sloan's arms, her momentum nearly knocking them both to the ground. "My house!" she cried, struggling to free her wrist from Sloan's grasp.
"You can't go in there," Sloan told her. "You'll get hurt, and you'll only get in the way of the men trying to save your house."
Instead of being calmed or deterred, Mrs. Rivera became hysterical. "My dog—!" she screamed, struggling to free herself. "My Daisy is in there!"
Sloan wrapped her arm around the woman's shoulders, trying to detain and console her at the same time. "Is Daisy a little brown-and-white dog?"
"Yes. Little. Brown and white."
"I think I saw her a few minutes ago," Sloan said. "I think she's safe. Call her name. We'll look for her together."
"Daisy!" Mrs. Rivera sobbed, turning in a helpless circle. "Daisy! Daisy—where are you?"
Sloan was scanning the street, looking for likely hiding places where a small, terrified animal might seek shelter, when a little brown-and-white face, covered in soot and grime, suddenly peered out from beneath an unmarked police car. "There she is," Sloan said.
"Daisy!" Mrs. Rivera cried, rushing forward and scooping the terrified animal into her arms.
After that, there was nothing Sloan could do except stand beside the bereft woman and offer the solace of companionship while they watched the ravenous flames devouring the roof, licking at the front porch. "One of your neighbors told me you have a daughter who lives nearby," Sloan said gently.
Mrs. Rivera nodded, her gaze riveted on her collapsing house.
"I'll radio for a car to pick her up and bring her here to you," Sloan offered.
By the time Sloan got home, she was already so late for Pete's party that she couldn't possibly take time to shower and wash her hair. She parked her car in her driveway, grabbed her purse, and hurried across the street, where she had to turn sideways to sidle between two of the cars parked along the street. As she edged between the cars' bumpers, she thought she saw someone sitting in the driver's seat of another car parked far down the row; then the shadowy figure disappeared, as if the person had slouched down in the seat or leaned over out of sight.
Sloan suppressed the impulse to investigate and walked swiftly across the sidewalk. She was in a hurry. Perhaps the person in the car—if it had been a person—had dropped something on the floor and reached down to pick it up. Perhaps he'd decided to take a nap. More likely, what she'd seen had been only a shadow on the windshield cast by palm fronds swaying across a street lamp.
Even so, she continued to watch the vehicle, a Ford, from the corner of her eye as she headed toward the long row of food stands on the boardwalk. As she started around the north corner of an ice cream stand, she saw the Ford's interior light go on, and a tall man got out of the car. He started walking slowly toward the beach, moving at an angle that kept him south of the row of food stands and along the edge of the sand dunes.
Sloan could no longer quell her uneasy suspicions, and she froze, using the side of the building to shield her from his view. North of the snack stands was a three-mile stretch of sandy beach dotted with circular kiosks used by beachgoers for barbecues and sheltered picnicking. That was the stretch of beach suitable for sunbathing, swimming, and parties, and it was there that Pete Bensinger's party was under way.
To the immediate south of the snack stands, where the stranger was heading, there was nothing except sand dunes covered in thick vegetation, dunes that offered little on a dark night except privacy for trysting couples and for people who were hoping to engage in other, less innocent endeavors.
Sloan knew she'd been jumpy and off-balance ever since her father's phone call that afternoon, but there was something about the male who got out of that car that made her feel distinctly, and professionally, uneasy. For one thing, he seemed vaguely familiar; for another, he wasn't dressed for a late-night stroll on the beach, and most important of all, there was something stealthy in his actions, both when he was in the car and now that he was out of it. There'd been muggings at the dunes, drug exchanges, and even a murder several years ago.
Sloan edged her way back to the corner of the ice cream stand, then began retracing her steps, staying close to the rear of the food stands so that she would emerge on the south end of the row of buildings. From there, she would be able to either watch him or follow him.
Silently cursing the sand that filled his shoes, the man waited beside the dunes, expecting his prey to appear on the beach, beyond the snack stands. She'd been so unsuspecting, so easy to follow, and so predictable, that when she didn't appear where he expected to see her, it didn't occur to him to be alarmed. She'd been in a hurry, and since she hadn't appeared on the beach, he assumed she'd forgotten something at home and returned to get it.