The bridge’s foghorn greeted him when he stepped outside, and then there was the wind and the sound of the ocean from down below. The wooden steps were soaked and slippery. He walked down them carefully, holding the handrail and feeling his way around the corners where the shadows were so dark that he couldn’t see his feet. It was a long, zigzagging descent to the beach. He could smell the wet sand and the seaweed, and then he reached the beach and there was just enough light from the cloud-covered moon that he could make out fresh footsteps. He followed them, the tracks skirting the edge of the tide pools and sticking to the soft sand. He came to a print that was in clean, hard-packed sand and he knelt to look at it.
She was barefoot.
He stood up and looked along the empty length of China Beach, then saw her silhouette on the promontory of rock where he’d spoken to her before. He walked the rest of the way to her and stopped when she turned around to face him.
She was wearing another of her gingham dresses, the thin fabric printed with black and white checks, and splattered from the neckline down with blood. There was blood on her face and blood on her bare arms. She held a pistol off to her right side, pointing it at the ground and not at him.
“Don’t come any closer, Inspector Cain.”
“All right.”
“I shot him,” she said. “He shot my mom, so I had to. It’s not like I had a choice, did I?”
“Sure,” he said.
He took another step toward her, and this time she raised the gun.
“Not any closer.”
“All right,” Cain said. He wanted to keep her talking to him, wanted her to lower the gun. “Did he shoot your father, too? Was it his idea?”
“My father was a rapist,” she said. “He killed a girl. Him, and his friends. They took pictures of her, and then they buried her alive.”
“Your mom told you that. But it’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “I’ve seen the pictures. She showed them to me when I was ten.”
“You didn’t find them in his study. She showed you.”
“She needed me to know.”
“She’d been planning this for nine years,” Cain said.
“At least.”
Cain tried not to look back along the beach, or up the cliff to the house. Fischer didn’t know he was down here. She thought he was standing in the front yard, on the phone with his lieutenant.
“You didn’t answer—did your boyfriend shoot your father?”
Alexa came a step toward him, then another two. Now he could reach out and grab her if he wanted to. Tackle her onto the rocks and rip the gun from her hand, if she didn’t shoot him first. She must have known the danger, but she took another step. She was daring herself to do it. Proving that she could. She’d already shot one person tonight. A second wouldn’t be any harder. She lowered the gun, and he understood what she was doing. Now she was daring him.
“Yes,” she said. She was close enough now that she had to look up at him. “He shot my father.”
“Your mom let him into the house when she left to go to Monterey,” Cain said. “She came out, and he went in. The door only opened once. When your father got home, he made him drink bourbon. Made him swallow pills, and then he put the gun in his mouth.”
“Yes.”
“When your mom came home, he left the house when she opened the front door. That’s how you did it. That’s how you beat the alarm log.”
“Yes.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“I knew he’d do it if I asked him to—he’d killed a boy when he was thirteen. They said that was an accident too. Two kids in a garage, playing with a gun. Someone’s finger slips on the trigger. But he wondered if it was really an accident, what he did. If maybe, deep down, he just wanted to see what would happen. So when he said he’d do anything for me, I knew he would.”
“What happened to the money?”
She flicked her eyes to the right. He turned carefully to look, not wanting to let her out of his sight. There was a shopping bag on the beach, fifty feet away. She’d set it down past the high tide line.
“Was it always just about the money?” Cain asked.
“It was always about him. Getting rid of him.”
“Did you know he was withdrawing cash and stashing it?”
Alexa nodded. She was holding the gun one-handed, her index finger curled tightly on the trigger. He wondered how many bullets were left in the magazine. She’d used plenty upstairs, on her boyfriend.
“But he had it all wrong. We weren’t going to take the money and run away from him. We were going to stay right here. He was the one who was going to leave.”
With her free hand, she reached behind her neck. She raised the gun again and kept it pointed at his stomach as she undid the tie on her dress. She’d stripped naked in front of him nearly every time he’d seen her. He didn’t see why this time had to be any different.