A Place of Hiding

“They might suspect that,” Deborah said. She didn’t add what she also knew to be the situation: The interest of the police always lay in assessing guilt and closing the case. The rest they put into other hands. If China had no ring in her possession identical to this one and if her prints were upon the one that Deborah had found at the bay, the police weren’t required to do anything more than document those two facts and pass them along to the prosecutors. It would be up to China’s own advocate to argue another interpretation of the ring in court during her trial for murder. Certainly, Deborah thought, both China and Cherokee had to know this. They weren’t babes in the woods. The troubles China’s father had had with the law in California must have given them both an education in what went on when a crime occurred.

Cherokee said, “Debs” in a thoughtful tone that elongated the nickname, making it sound like an appeal. “Is there any way...” He looked at his sister as if gauging a reaction to something he hadn’t yet said. “This is a tough one to ask. Is there any way you could lose that ring?”

“Lose...?”

China said, “Cherokee, don’t.”

“I have to,” he said to her. “Debs, if that ring is the one China bought...And we know there’s a chance it is, right?...I mean, why do the cops have to know you found it? Can’t you just toss it down a storm drain or something?” He seemed to comprehend the magnitude of what he was asking Deborah to do, because he rushed on, saying, “Look. The cops already think she did it. Her prints on this, they’ll just use it as another way to nail her. But if you lose it...i t falls out of your pocket on the way to your hotel, let’s say...?” He watched her hopefully, one hand extended, as if he wished her to deposit the offending ring on his palm. Deborah felt held by his gaze, its frankness and hope. She felt held by what his gaze implied about the history she shared with China River.

“Sometimes,” Cherokee said to her quietly, “right and wrong get twisted. What looks right turns out to be wrong and what looks wrong—”

“Forget it,” China interrupted. “Cherokee, forget it.”

“But it would be no big deal.”

“Forget it, I said.” China reached for Deborah’s hand and curved her fingers closed round the linen-covered ring. “You do what you have to do, Deborah.” And to her brother, “She’s not like you. It’s not as easy as that for her.”

“They’re fighting dirty. We’ve got to do the same.”

“No,” China said, and then to Deborah, “You’ve come to help me out. I’m grateful for that. You just do what you have to do.”

Deborah nodded but felt the difficulty of saying “I’m sorry.”

She couldn’t escape the sensation of having let them down. St. James wouldn’t have thought himself the kind of man who let agitation get the better of him. Since the day he’d awakened in a hospital bed—remembering nothing but a final shot of tequila that he shouldn’t have drunk—and gazed up into the face of his mother and had seen there the news he himself had confirmed not an hour later by a neurologist, he’d governed himself and his reactions with a discipline that would have done a military man proud. He’d considered himself an unshakeable survivor: The worst had happened and he had not broken on the wheel of personal disaster. He’d been maimed, left crippled, and abandoned by the woman he loved, and he’d emerged from it all with his core intact. If I can cope withthat, I can cope with anything.

So he was unprepared for the disquiet he began to feel the moment he learned that his wife had not delivered the ring to DCI Le Gallez. And he was ultimately undone by the level that disquiet reached when the minutes passed without Deborah’s return to the hotel.

He paced at first: across their room and along the small balcony outside their room. Then he flung himself into a chair for five minutes and contemplated what Deborah’s actions might mean. This only heightened his anxiety, however, so he grabbed up his coat and finally left the building altogether. He would set out after her, he decided. He crossed the street without a clear idea of what direction he needed to take, thankful only that the rain had eased, which made the going easier.

Downhill seemed good, so he started off, skirting the rock wall that ran along a bear-pit sort of garden sunk into the landscape across from the hotel. At its far end stood the island’s war memorial, and St. James had reached this when he saw his wife coming round the corner where the dignified grey fa?ade of the Royal Court House stretched the length of Rue du Manoir.

Deborah raised her hand in greeting. As she approached him, he did what he could to calm himself.

“You made it back,” she said with a smile as she came up to him.

“That’s fairly obvious,” he replied.

Her smile faded. She heard it all in his voice. She would. She’d known him for most of her life, and he’d thought he knew her. But he was fast discovering that the gap between what he thought and what was was beginning to develop the dimensions of a chasm.

“What is it?” she asked. “Simon, what’s wrong?”

He took her arm in a grip that he knew was far too tight, but he couldn’t seem to loosen it. He led her to the bear-pit garden and forcibly guided her down the steps.

“What’ve you done with that ring?” he demanded.

“Done with it? Nothing. I’ve got it right—”

“You were to take it straight to Le Gallez.”

“That’s what I’m doing. I was going there now. Simon, what on earth...?”