“Shit.” He finished his beer as the file was complete, then he called up the images, scanning Haaga’s report page by page until he ended up staring at a picture of Pam Jaffe Delacroix.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he studied a woman who resembled Marla. She could have been Marla’s sister . . . not her twin, but certainly a close relative. The same mahogany-colored hair framed a beautiful face, but her forehead was wider than Marla’s, her eyes a bit rounder, her chin more pointed. There were other differences as well, of course. Was it just coincidence?
Or had Marla changed? Not just emotionally, but physically as well. Alex had mentioned that she’d had reconstructive surgery after the accident that had altered her looks so she was bound to look different from the woman he remembered. Were they the same person? Had they switched places? Identities? What?
H
e stared at the images. Pictures of Pam taken over the years—with her husband before the divorce, with a small child on a sailboat and then, later at the girl’s graduation from high school.
His blood turned to ice water. What the hell was going on here?
“Think, Cahill,” he told himself while dozens of questions assailed him. What had happened on Highway 17 that night? Who was this woman whom no one had met and yet was alone with Marla on the night she was killed? Why were the police still investigating if it was a simple accident?
He didn’t like where his thoughts were leading him. He touched the computer screen where Pam’s face stared back at him. She wasn’t nearly as beautiful as Marla, but she could hold her own.
“Damn,” he growled and snapped the disc from the computer. It was late, after midnight, but he’d seen an all-night copy center a few blocks away and wanted the reports and the images transferred to paper. He threw on his jacket, took the stairs and, with the disc tucked into a pocket, turned his collar against the wind blowing off the Bay. Traffic was slow and a fine mist caused the city lights to shimmer and blur. Stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, he thought about Marla; how she’d nearly died on that winding mountain road.
And Pam Delacroix had lost her life.
He skirted a puddle, then jaywalked across the street to CopyWrite and a pimply faced kid of about eighteen who was far more efficient than he looked.
It didn’t take long. Within the hour he had pictures, typed reports, financial statements, resumes, a list of traffic violations and enough information on Pam Delacroix and the members of his own family to keep him up all night.
At the hotel he spread the information on the bed, separating the piles and including the files he’d gotten from Alex about the business and Cahill House. Then he settled in.
Somewhere in this mess there might be a clue to what exactly he was being sucked into. He just had to look hard enough to find it.
Tony Paterno had hoped for a miracle.
He hadn’t gotten shit.
He eased his ’69 Cadillac, a wide-bodied convertible he’d inherited from his father, into heavy traffic and headed north toward the Golden Gate. Paterno usually played by the rules. Unless they got in his way. Then he’d been known to bend a few. Just as he planned to now. Even if it included breaking and entering.
Pamela Delacroix’s blood type was O positive, the same as listed on her death certificate. Marla Cahill’s was O negative, which agreed with Bayview Hospital’s charts. He’d talked to the officer in charge of the accident scene again and was satisfied that there hadn’t been a major fuck-up. Pam Delacroix was dead.
So much for his switcheroo theory.
He flipped on his blinker and changed lanes just before the approach to the bridge and wondered why nothing was breaking in this damned case.
The composite sketch of the man wearing Carlos Santiago’s ID tag on the night Charles Biggs had died could have been any white, six-foot male of about a hundred-seventy-five pounds who’d been in the San Francisco area that night. There had been nothing to distinguish the man from hundreds of thousands of others. The guy had brown hair, not long, not short, a moustache and glasses.
The suspect could have dyed his hair, shaved his moustache, found himself a pair of contacts and put thousands of miles between himself and the hospital by now.
So Paterno was back to square one.
Chewing on a wad of stale gum, Paterno watched the bumper of the Honda in front of him as the Caddy’s wipers slapped raindrops from the windshield. On the radio a phone-in psychologist was telling some poor woman whose husband was cheating on her to “wake up and smell the espresso.” Frowning, lost in his own thoughts, he saw the rust-colored cables flash by in his peripheral vision, and was only vaguely aware of crossing the neck of greenish water linking the Pacific Ocean with San Francisco Bay or of the fact that his old ragtop was leaking again.
He nosed his Cadillac toward Sausalito, and tried to ignore his sixth sense that swore to him that Marla Cahill wasn’t who everyone claimed she was. But if so, then surely Marla’s husband would see a difference in her.
Amnesia couldn’t cover up old physical scars, couldn’t change appearances, couldn’t alter a voice . . .
“Hell.” He nearly missed the turnoff on the north end of the bridge and had to gun the old car’s engine to cut in front of a U-Haul truck and make the exit. Pam Delacroix had lived alone in a floating home on Richardson’s Bay in an old artists and writers community in Sausalito. Her daughter was off on her own and her ex, Crane Delacroix, was an engineer of some kind who had worked for a software company that, when it had gone public, made everyone rich. Including Crane. From all accounts his ex-wife lived on her divorce settlement, never bothered practicing law again and dabbled at everything from glazing pottery to writing. She sold real estate part time, but hadn’t had a sale in over six months and worked mainly from her home, not even paying for desk space at the company she was associated with.
A lot of people knew of her, he’d decided, but not many people really knew her.
He parked the Caddy in a guest area, then found Pam’s floating home docked between a sailboat converted into a permanent abode and another platform home. It was quiet on the marina, the gray skies and soft rain offering some cover, which was just as well for what he had in mind. Paterno rapped hard on the door. Waited. No one answered, so he tried the door. Locked tight. But there wasn’t a deadbolt. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being observed, he let himself inside with his credit card. Next time he’d get the damned search warrant; right now he couldn’t be bothered.
Pam Delacroix’s death was still considered nothing more than an accident, but Paterno was working from a different angle. Too many things didn’t add up in his mind and two people were dead. Charles Biggs and Pam Delacroix would never be able to tell their sides of what happened that night and Marla Cahill was claiming amnesia. Someone hadn’t been patient enough to let nature take its course with Biggs. Why?