The Altar Of Bones Part 9

Yasmine turned off the tape player.

"Is that it?" Miles asked.

She nodded. "He didn't say another word after that. He slipped into a coma, and then it was bye-bye, Mikey."

Miles didn't say anything, just looked out the window at a sea that shone silver under the rising moon.

"You really don't know what it is, do you?" Yasmine said. "This altar-of-bones thing." She laughed, and he heard in her laugh the madness that always lived in her, just beneath the surface. "Oh, Lord, this is almost too funny, Miles. You went and killed-"

"No." He thrust away from both her and the window, took a couple of steps, then turned back. "O'Malley did the killing." He thrust away from both her and the window, took a couple of steps, then turned back. "O'Malley did the killing."

"And the Russian, Nikolai Popov, he did the planning. But you conned them into doing it. You were the big mastermind. Isn't that what you told me? Only now it looks like you were the one who got played."

He almost hit her. He got as far as lifting his arm for a backhanded slap, but the way she just stood there, ready to take it, even though she could see it coming ... He could see she wanted wanted him to do it. And that stopped him. him to do it. And that stopped him.

Anyway, the face he really wanted to smash wasn't hers.

It all started with Katya Orlova and the altar of bones.... What in h.e.l.l was that? It almost sounded like a joke. If you didn't know Nikolai Popov.

"You've got to find this Katya Orlova woman, Yaz. Find her, get the film, make her tell you all about this altar of bones.

"And then kill her for me, please."

Part Three: The Legacy

12.

San Francisco, California Back in the present ZOE DMITROFF looked out the window of her Mission Street law office for any sign of the Impala. Puke brown with a dented front fender, it had been circling the block for over an hour now, slowing down every time it pa.s.sed her door. It was too misty and rainy for her to see the face of the man behind the wheel, but she knew who it was. Manuel Moreno. looked out the window of her Mission Street law office for any sign of the Impala. Puke brown with a dented front fender, it had been circling the block for over an hour now, slowing down every time it pa.s.sed her door. It was too misty and rainy for her to see the face of the man behind the wheel, but she knew who it was. Manuel Moreno.

She knew what he wanted, too. He wanted his wife. His obsession. His punching bag.

"Yeah, well, those days are over for you, chump," Zoe said out loud, feeling a little silly, but also more than a little creeped out by the circling Impala. By now the anonymous white SUV carrying Inez Moreno and her three-month-old daughter would be well on its way to a safe house out of state. Something Manuel shouldn't have figured out until five hours from now, when his wife didn't come home after the end of her nursing s.h.i.+ft at San Francisco General. Yet here he was, and this was way more than a little creepy.

"It's like he's living inside my head and all I gotta do is even think think about leaving him, and somehow he knows," Inez had told her once. "He just knows." about leaving him, and somehow he knows," Inez had told her once. "He just knows."

Outside, a tire squealed. Zoe tensed, then relaxed once she got a good look at the car that whisked past her window, spraying water. Not the Impala.

Normally the Latino neighborhood bustled with activity, but on this wet and chilly February afternoon few people were out and about. Paco G., who sold fake-leather handbags from a stand on the corner, was already packing it in for the day. Even Tia Juanita, who usually lived in the alley in back of the bodega next door, had given up picking through the trash for cans and bottles and set off to find a shelter.

A Muni bus pulled up to the stoplight, wipers flapping, exhaust belching out a cloud of smoke. Zoe craned her head to look around it. Still no Impala. Maybe he'd given up, too.

Except that men such as Manuel Moreno never gave up.

She turned away from the window and finished clearing off her desk of the case files she'd been studying. When she was done, she put on her black leather bomber jacket and slung the oversize Tumi satchel she used as a combination purse and briefcase over her shoulder. She turned out the lights and headed for the door.

Zoe's office was in a small Victorian-style storefront, sandwiched between the bodega and a T-s.h.i.+rt shop. She got as far as the second step of the front stoop, then the Impala whipped around the corner, nearly knocking down a bike-messenger boy, and screeched to a stop at the fire hydrant.

Manuel Moreno flung open the car door and got out. He was a weedy man, with a scraggly goatee and small, tight eyes.

"Where's Inez?" he shouted, coming right at her, getting up into her face. "Where's my wife?"

"I don't know where she is," Zoe said, and that was no lie. She'd set the system up that way herself because you couldn't be ordered by a court by tell what you didn't know.

Manuel's mouth curled, and he leaned into her, so close she could have counted the individual hairs on his pathetic chin. "Inez is a scared little rabbit. She'd never do this on her own. You know where she's at, lady, and before I'm done with you, you're gonna be beggin' me to let you tell me."

Out the corner of her eye, Zoe saw a silver Ford Taurus pull up, the kind of car that in this neighborhood shouted la policia la policia so loudly it might as well have been painted black-and-white. It double-parked alongside the Impala, and two plainclothes cops-a man and an Asian woman-got out. so loudly it might as well have been painted black-and-white. It double-parked alongside the Impala, and two plainclothes cops-a man and an Asian woman-got out.

Zoe knew the man, Inspector Sean Mackey of Homicide, and he never brought her anything but bad news. But right now she wanted to throw him a ticker-tape parade.

"You might want to cool it," she said to Manuel. "'Cause there's a big, bada.s.s cop standing right behind you."

The man snorted. "Yeah, right. What do I got-stupid written all over my forehead?" written all over my forehead?"

"Well, since you asked ..."

Inspector Mackey slammed the flat of his big hand down hard on the Impala's hood. Moreno whirled, almost tripping over his own feet.

"Hey, what the-"

"Better watch it, tough guy," Mackey said. "The lady's got a black belt in tae kwan do. She can kick your a.s.s so bad you'll be p.i.s.sing blood for a week."

"She can kiss kiss my a.s.s, is what she can do." my a.s.s, is what she can do."

Mackey stepped into Moreno's s.p.a.ce. His voice, though, was soft and smooth as whipped cream. "You might want to go on home now. Take a nice long shower, then pour yourself a brewski and chill for a bit."

Moreno clenched his fists, but he brushed past Mackey and went to his car. He jerked open the door, got inside, and revved up the engine. Then he poked a finger out the window at Zoe. "You tell Inez we ain't finished. Not by a long shot."

"Whoever this Inez is," said the female cop, as they watched the Impala pull out into traffic, "she better not get within a mile of that guy. At least not until he settles down a bit."

Zoe didn't comment. Sometimes the police sympathized with her cases. Sometimes they didn't.

"You okay, Zoe?" Mackey said.

"I'm fine, Mack. Thanks for showing up when you did, though."

"Aw, you'd have taken him."

Zoe shrugged. "Maybe. He was pumped." She held out her hand to the female cop. "I'm Zoe Dmitroff."

"Wendy Lee," the woman said, laughter and curiosity bright in her eyes. "Mack was filling me in about you on the way over here."

"Really?" Zoe looked at Mackey, but he wouldn't meet her eyes. She wondered what he'd said about her. He was a good-looking guy, square-jawed and nicely ripped, and there'd always been this little frisson of attraction between them. But it was never going to go anywhere because he flat out couldn't handle what her mother did for a living.

"And I saw that report Channel 4 news did on you a couple of days ago," Wendy Lee was saying. "About how you've set up an underground-railroad-type service to help get women and kids get away from the a.s.sholes in their lives."

"Sometimes she helps them get away," Mackey put in, a little edge to his voice. He didn't always approve of what she did for a living either. "Sometimes they pump a shotgun round into the a.s.shole's chest instead or bury a meat cleaver in his head, and then she helps them walk on the murder rap."

"Sometimes," Zoe said, "when the system fails you, a meat cleaver might seem like your only recourse."

"And who gets to decide when that line's been crossed? Who gets to decide when killing the guy becomes a ... How did you put it? Oh, yeah. An only recourse only recourse."

Wendy Lee grinned at her partner. "I think the reporter did mention something about that, too, Mack. Only the way he put it, Ms. Dmitroff not only specializes in battered-wife and partner syndrome as a defense, she works pro bono to free those poor women already convicted and s.h.i.+pped off to prison for murdering their abusers during previous, less enlightened times."

Mackey snorted. "There you go."

"So moving right along," Zoe said. "What brought you guys out here anyway?"

Mackey reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of photographs. "You know this woman?"

Zoe was a criminal-defense attorney; she'd seen crime-scene photos before. And Mackey had only given her headshots so there weren't any visible wounds, just some blood around the old woman's sunken mouth. But something about her, something so vulnerable in those opaque, staring eyes, pulled hard at Zoe's heart. She knew-without quite knowing how she knew-that this poor old woman had died alone and afraid.

"No, I don't think I know her.... Should I? What happened to her?"

"She's a homeless woman who was stabbed late last night in Golden Gate Park. On Kennedy Drive near the Conservatory of Flowers. The murder weapon was left in her-some weird kind of knife I've never seen before. This guy and his friend were tooling along in his new Jag when they interrupted the killer in the act. Literally. She died on him before the ambulance could get there, and I know that had to've been tough on him, but now he's got a rant going with the media about poor old homeless women getting s.h.i.+vved on our city streets. There's a real s.h.i.+t storm going on down at the Hall."

Zoe looked at the crime-scene photo again, drawn by those dead, staring eyes, and she felt almost swamped by feelings of sadness and loss. It didn't make any sense. She didn't know this woman, but it felt as if she ought ought to know her. It was her eyes. Something about her eyes ... to know her. It was her eyes. Something about her eyes ...

"Do you-" Zoe's voice cracked, and she had to start over. "Do you know who she is yet?"

"Not exactly," Mackey said. "We canva.s.sed the park and found a trannyho called b.u.t.tercup who cruises the Panhandle, and who claims they were both part of a colony camping out in the woods behind the Conservatory. He ... she ... said the old woman's name was Rosie something."

Zoe tore her gaze away from the eyes in the photograph. She looked up to catch Mackey studying her, concern on his face, but also with a cop's wariness.

"I'm sorry, Mack, but I just don't know her. What made you think I would?"

He reached in his pocket and this time pulled out a clear plastic evidence envelope. "The ME found this caught way in the back of her throat. Like maybe she'd tried to eat it to keep her killer from getting hold of it. It was pretty badly chewed up, but those guys in the lab can do wonders these days."

The envelope held a shredded sc.r.a.p of paper, scribbled on in pencil. The writing had been chemically enhanced, but even then only part of it was still legible. Zoe could read enough of it, though, and a chill settled over her.

"It's my home address. Not my office. My home."

She looked up at Mackey, who exchanged cop looks with Wendy Lee, then cleared his throat. "You ever hear of something called the altar of bones?"

"No, but it sounds weird. What is it?"

In typical cop fas.h.i.+on he didn't answer. Instead, he produced another plastic evidence envelope and handed it to her. "This photograph was in the pocket of the old lady's coat. We figure it was taken back in the late fifties to go by the clothes and hairstyles. Are either of the two people in it familiar to you?"

Zoe looked down and felt the spit dry in her mouth. It couldn't be, simply couldn't be.

It was an old black-and-white snapshot of a pretty blond woman in her twenties standing with her arm around the shoulders of a little girl of about six. The little girl wore pigtails and a parochial-school uniform and smiled widely for the camera. They stood in front of the entrance to Twentieth CenturyFox studios. Zoe knew it was Twentieth Century Fox studios because her mother had this same photograph, or rather a larger version of it, in an ornate silver frame on the desk in her library.

"But I don't ... It doesn't make any sense. How did she get this?"

"So you've seen it before?" Mackey asked. "Or the people? You've seen them before?"

But Zoe didn't really hear him, she was staring at the photograph's crimped corners, at how badly it had faded over the years. Something had been spilled on it at one time-coffee? blood?-staining the sky above the studio sign. But then it had been lived with and loved by an old homeless woman who had been murdered, not carefully preserved in a silver frame.

It began to rain again, fat drops splattering the plastic envelope, as Wendy Lee came up to look over Zoe's shoulder. "Our vic's had a rough go of it and a lot of time has pa.s.sed since this photograph was taken, but the ME thinks it's the same woman. They're going to run a photo a.n.a.lysis program later to get a more definitive answer."

"But they can't be the same," Zoe said. "The woman in this picture is my grandmother. And her name wasn't Rosie. It was Katya. Katya Orlova. Only she's been dead for almost fifty years."

13.

ZOE GUNNED the Babe. the Babe.

She snagged a yellow light, zipped across Market, hooking a left first chance she got, then right onto Franklin. No way would she stay on Van Ness with its traffic lights turning red at every cross street. She went up, up, through the wind-whipped rain, eyes peeled for cops. A lot of them knew the Babe, and those who didn't would still just love to ticket a vintage baby blue Mustang.

She broke a good-size law, not allowing a pedestrian to waltz out in front of her, drenching him instead, but she had to get to her mother ahead of the cops. She had to find out how an old homeless woman who came to be murdered in Golden Gate Park turned out to be the same grandmother who'd died in an automobile accident years and years ago.

But the only way you ever had a hope of getting the truth out of Anna Larina Dmitroff was to catch her by surprise. If Zoe could get to her mother first, if she could to look into her mother's face, into her eyes, maybe something something would bleed through that cold, hard mask she wore. would bleed through that cold, hard mask she wore.

Almost there. Her wipers drug across the winds.h.i.+eld, fog piled up inside. The Babe had good rain traction-she cut off a yellow cab, swerved around a big honker Lexus, curses and middle fingers flying in her wake, nearly ended up in the yard of a tall, skinny Victorian. She cut a hard left on Was.h.i.+ngton, spraying water like a rooster tail, nearly skidded into a parked Toyota, rolled through the stop signs at Gough and Octavia, and two blocks later swung into the driveway of her mother's mansion on the crest of Pacific Heights, the Babe's tires squealing. It was twelve minutes exactly since she'd left Mackey and his partner, Wendy Lee, telling them she was due in court. She'd watched them drive away, then ran around to the alley behind the bodega where she parked her car.

And now she'd beaten them here, thank G.o.d, but she had to hurry.

Wind drove the rain into her face as she raced up the steps of the huge granite-and-gla.s.s house. But the sight of the tall, ebony double doors, with their sterling-silver handles, stopped her cold.

Thirteen years ago, on the day of her high school graduation, she had walked through those doors and out of her old life with nothing but a duffel bag full of clothes. She swore to herself she would never come back, but she should have known better. You can escape some of your past, but not all of it.

Zoe drew in a deep breath, lifted her head, and pressed the bell. Less than five seconds later it was opened by a man with no neck and hands the size of turkey platters. She shoved past him, probably not smart since she could see he sported a gun in a shoulder holster under his loosely cut black jacket.

"I'm her daughter," Zoe said as he grabbed her arm. "So if you're fond of your hands, you'd better take them off of me."

The man had a weathered face, weary eyes, and fast reflexes. He immediately released her.

"Where is she?" What if she wasn't here? Please, G.o.d, she had to get to her mother before the cops, she- "The pakhan pakhan," he said, "is up in the library."

Zoe wasn't about to get in the coffin-size elevator. She ran up all four flights of the sweeping limestone stairs, but at the top another door stopped her.

This one was made of solid, s.h.i.+ning mahogany, and on the other side of it was Anna Larina's sanctuary. Thirteen years since she'd been inside this house, and two more since she was inside that room. Not since a summer's day when she was sixteen, the day her father had gone in there and sat down at her mother's desk, a giant slab of black marble. Sat down, put a gun under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

Zoe had been the only one in the house that day, the only one to hear the shot. The one who had seen the blood soaking into the ivory silk Persian sarouk and teak floor, who'd seen the splattered bits of gore. The one who'd had to look into was left of her father's face.

ZOE FLUNG THE door open with such force it banged against the wall. door open with such force it banged against the wall.