Rogue Wave Read Free Page A

a long time ago,” she said, surprised by the anger in her voice. “And I don’t like dealing with people who try to manipulate my private life. Find yourself another investigator.”
    Behind her the clank of silverware hitting china stopped.
    “Wait! I’m sorry, Doc. I guess that was out of line. But the thing is this case is real important to me. You understand what those red hairs stuck in Brant’s blood mean? After whoever hit him, that person got out of the car and stood over him. Then left him there in the cold to die. I got real hooked on this, and it’s obsessing Maureen Brant, too. She’s willing to spend the last cent she’s got on it, and I just want her to have the best she can get. Look, at least talk to her.”
    Kiernan could hear the desperation in Olsen’s voice. She remembered she’d heard some kind of rumor about him a couple of years after she’d left San Francisco. He’d been demoted. Had there been a scandal? She couldn’t recall. But that would explain why he ended up back on beat before he retired. She glanced over at Tchernak, who was jabbing his fork into a clam’s midsection. “Voodoo doll?” she mouthed, and had a fleeting sensation of sharp pains in her own stomach. To Olsen she said, “Garrett Brant’s name sounds familiar.”
    “He’s an artist. He had a couple of shows set up in California before the accident. They went ahead with them. He paints what they call ‘interpretive landscapes.’ One of the shows was in La Jolla. Maybe you saw an ad for it—the two pictures they used in the ad were called ‘Winter Bear’ and ‘Alaskan Mud Flats.’”
    Kiernan shivered. “I saw Brant’s show down here. ‘Alaskan Mud Flats’ isn’t a picture you forget. At first it seemed like just another pretty sunset painting, but I found I couldn’t stop looking at it; no one could. It held you. There was something ominous in it. I don’t know enough about art to figure out why, technically. I read the card beside the canvas—about the people who’d died walking across those mud flats. The mud looked perfectly solid. One woman took a shortcut across them and that solid-looking mud sucked her down thigh-deep and hardened around her legs like cement. She couldn’t move. Her husband tried everything he could to get her out. Nothing helped. And then the tide came in—up over her chest, her neck, her nostrils. She drowned.”
    Kiernan felt the same clutch of gut-fear she’d had three years ago. Such intensity of feeling was quite an endorsement for Garrett Brant, she thought.
    As if reading her mind, Olsen said, “The critics felt Brant could have become the most perceptive landscape painter of our time. The guy needs your help.”
    She shook her head, half-smiling. Olsen was probably sincere, but there was something of the dangerous mud flat in him, too. However honest he was, the slurping sound of deceit pulled at his words. But that wasn’t Brant’s fault. And it wouldn’t take long to talk to the Brants. She had to admit she was curious about the man who said so much on so many levels in a picture of mud and sun and water. And the idea of forcing Marc Rosten to give her something was not without appeal. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. Tell them to come here tomorrow.”
    “Can’t do it. Garrett Brant can’t travel, and Maureen won’t leave him. You’ll have to go there.”
    Kiernan sighed. “Okay. Where are they?”
    “I don’t know exactly. Somewhere around Big Sur. Go to a grocery called Barrow’s, on Route 1, just past the sign for the town of Big Sur. She’ll leave you directions. I’ll call and tell them you’ll be there tomorrow around noon.”
    “In the meantime, fax me whatever you’ve got on the Brants, Matucci, and Delaney. And Olsen, include the info about yourself, why you were demoted. I don’t take cases unless I know who I’m dealing with.”

3
    D R. M ARC R OSTEN, ACTING coroner of the city and county of San Francisco, washed the