Double

She screamed all the way down, a death cry that was barely audible above the pulsating roar of the planes. Something moved up in the tower, a suggestion of someone there in the shadows peering down. Or maybe it was just an illusion; I couldn’t be sure of that either, because I was already running by then, with that sense of shock something unexpected and frightening always instills in you. There were fifty yards separating me and the hotel when the falling woman hit and the screaming stopped. But even with the noise of the planes I swear I could hear the sound of impact — that melon-splitting sound of bones breaking and tissue ripping that you can never forget once you’ve heard it.

I ran through some shrubs, across a square of lawn, between a couple of palms. A few people on the beach had also seen the woman fall and were just starting to come out of their own frozen moment of shock. I plowed through a bunch of tropical flowers, and there she was, lying broken on her side on a section of cobblestone path. Dead — you could see from a distance that she was dead. Part of her skull had cracked open; there were streamers of bright blood already trailing away from it.

Five paces from her I stopped, panting, feeling sick to my stomach. I had seen a guy who’d jumped from a fifteen-story window once, but it was no worse than this — and she’d only come down four stories. Several people were milling around behind me; somebody yelled, somebody else began to shriek. Overhead, more planes picked up the roar of the ones that had just gone by. All I could do was stand there staring, because I recognized the woman and that made it even worse.

McCone’s friend, the Casa del Rey’s security chief — Elaine Picard.

9: McCone

When he’d unhooked me from the polygraph, I thanked the salesman — whose name was Wally — for the demonstration, gave him my parents’ phone number so we could make a date later on, and started out toward the mezzanine. I didn’t feel guilty about planning to have dinner with him; after all, neither Don nor I was a particularly possessive individual. I liked to think that what we had together was too strong to be disrupted by jealousy.

The movie must have ended, because the room was now crowded with people looking for someone to talk to. I chatted with a woman named Kinsey Millhone, who had her own agency in Santa Teresa, then tried once again to go outside. Halfway to the door, a fellow from New York named Miles Jacoby stopped me, pointing to the San Francisco on my name tag, and asked me if I knew Wolf. It turned out Jacoby was a big admirer of his and knew all about his pulp collection, so we talked about that for a while. Finally I made my way to the mezzanine, where the crowd was thinner.

I went over to the railing and leaned on it, waiting for it to be time for Elaine’s panel and enjoying the comparatively smoke-free air. Out here I could hear the drone of planes taking off and landing at N.A.S. North Island, and a couple of them went over with a great roar that actually shook the hotel. It, as well as the del Coronado, had been built before the base and now was right in the flight path. I wondered how the guests managed to get any sleep with the patrol planes coming and going at all hours, and decided to ask Wolf about it.

A couple of minutes later, I noticed a commotion down in the lobby. I had almost decided it was Japanese tourists rioting to see who would be first to get his picture taken with the rental-car counter, when I noticed that a lot of people were hurrying outside to the formal gardens.

Because I am a very curious person and anything was better than killing time up here, I went around to the stairs and started down. A few of the other conventioneers fell in behind me, and I had the absurd feeling that we were participating in an impromptu field trip. In a line, like little ducks following their mother, we crossed the lobby and went through the big French doors to the garden.

A good-sized crowd was gathered there, tourist types and some conventioneers, including a guy in a slouch hat and trench coat who looked like someone the hotel might have hired to publicize the convention. I spotted Wolf, standing to one side with Victor Ibarcena, the assistant manager. They both looked nervous and upset.

Next to me, a young woman in a bikini said, “My God, what a horrible thing. Did you see it?”

“No,” a man wearing a convention badge said. “I was in the lobby. Jesus.”

“Could you hear her scream? She must have screamed.”

“I didn’t hear anything. Couldn’t. Right about the time it must have happened, those bombers — or whatever they are — went over.”

What had happened? I thought. Who had — or hadn’t — screamed? I scanned the garden and saw an open area everyone seemed to be avoiding, close to the foot of the east tower. On the cobblestone path lay a bundle of pink splashed with red...