Jericho's Fall Read Free Page A

boisterous, the forecourt thick with the cars of visitors who wanted his wisdom or his money or his liquor or his connections, or just to shake his hand. He would have dragged her inside and forced her into whatever party he had going, even if the party consisted of two or three cold-eyed men from the clandestine services division of the Central Intelligence Agency, discussing a project in Malaysia or Peru or Iran. That was what Jericho called them, projects, even after the men stopped coming to the house.
    Her good humor began to fade. She wanted an excuse not to go inside. If Jericho was not partying, he was not Jericho. The bounding, energetic, globe-straddling man she had loved, if love was what they had shared, was upstairs suffering in a bed from which he would never rise. The house was lonely now, merely the residence of a rich but no-longer-important man, whose encroaching demise rated not even a television truck at the bottom of the hill. The attendants of his last days were few, and, although Jericho had been the epitome of the man’s man, all were female: a pair of daughters who were distant from him, and, mounting the steps, the woman who had wrecked his career.
    Except that another observer was present.
    As Rebecca stepped onto the gravel, noisily dragging her suitcase, her friends in the helicopter whup-whupped overhead once more, then circled back, dipping the dark nose briefly as if in salute.
    (ii)
    The woman who opened the heavy door was tall and slim and so pale that one might have been forgiven for thinking her the patient. She wore aged jeans and an ageless sweater, neither bearing a designer label, and pearls that didn’t need one. Her feet were bare. Her dark hair was comfortably awry. Her clear eyes were appraising. She had achievedthat ethereal beauty that attaches to certain coolly distant women from their late thirties onward after having eluded them most of their lives.
    “I see you made it,” she said, in the sullen voice of one already seeking out your faults.
    “Sorry I’m late. Hello, Pamela.”
    “The drive from Denver’s only two and a half hours. It’s almost midnight.”
    “My flight was delayed,” said Beck, already on the defensive; but, with Pamela, she always was. The two women had spoken on the phone twice over the past twenty-four hours, and, so far, Pamela had yet to concede the possibility that Rebecca might do anything right. “The storm.”
    “You should have called.”
    “I couldn’t get through.”
    Pamela said nothing to indicate what she thought of this pitiful excuse. She had inherited from her father the effortless assurance of a person with more important things to do, and when she stepped aside her body language said she was doing Rebecca a favor.
    Beck crossed the threshold. She had to hold her breath to do it. The vast space was as empty as she remembered, and as sad. The wide plank floors were ancient, and devoid of rugs, creaking with every step, because Jericho, as he used to say, wanted to hear them coming. This was what Jericho called the great room. A central fireplace dominated the space, but although logs were heaped in the grate, no fire had been lighted. The ceilings were two stories high, bordered by colorful clerestory windows salvaged from a burnt church. At human height, attractive seating arrangements stood near picture windows, but near the stairs, a handful of stout wooden chairs were scattered haphazardly, obstacles over which invaders might stumble. They looked like the same chairs from fifteen years ago, when Jericho had fired the maid for moving them.
    “How is he?” said Beck, not daring to meet Pamela’s eye.
    “Dying.”
    “Are they sure?”
    A snicker of disdain from the prim mouth. “You’re here, aren’t you? That means you’re sure.”
    Rebecca moved toward the wide windows that, during the day, provided dizzying views down into the valley, but at night were bright with the wash from the floodlights Jericho required.