called for additional back-up? We’re going to need to talk to everyone in that crowd. I need two people to watch the rear of Rainbow Village.” I looked at the acre of vehicles. There were probably thirty or more in it. “And four or five to go door to door in there. And a couple more to check at the Marriott, the docks, and the rest of the lounges down here. If there’s anyone where he shouldn’t be, or acting out of line, I want him held till I can get there.”
“Back-ups are on the way. I’ll call in and make sure they’re adequate.”
“Have someone go over the hedge. See if you can find the spot this twig is from. Maybe more of it broke off.”
“Right.”
“Where’s the person who found her?”
“Over there, sitting on the box by the fence, the woman in the black cape. She says she knows why she was killed.”
CHAPTER 7
“T HIS IS A URA S UMMERLIGHT , a.k.a. Penelope Lynn Garrett,” Murakawa said with only the slightest suggestion of a sigh as he pronounced her self-appointed name. To twenty-four-year-old Murakawa, the sixties was an ancient oddity, characterized by old-hat political action and slovenly dress. Anachronisms like Aura Summerlight baffled him. “She discovered the body.”
Half the Rainbow Villagers who had been standing by the fence watching our activity at the water’s edge moved off when we started toward them. The remaining ten edged in protectively to Aura Summerlight.
I glanced at the group. There was no one member who could be taken as representative of all. Two men in their early twenties wore cheap, shiny polyester pants and jackets, garments that would betray them after the first wash. Next to them was an older man, for whom the next wash was well overdue. A woman in a balding, black fur coat, with the lining hanging from both sleeves and the hem, stood next to a couple in jeans, denim jackets, and cowboy boots. Aura Summerlight sat slumped against the fence. The filtered light from the windows of a purple school bus behind the fence skimmed her limp, light-brown hair.
There was a theory in the psychic circles that contended the name you are called shapes your character because it is a symbol of you and, more prosaically, because you hear it more frequently than most words. Advocates chose to be called qualities they wished to embody. The aura of summer light was such a clear and hopeful image. It seemed to mock the very ungracefulness of this woman’s slumping body. As if to balance her own blandness, she wore a fringed black Punjabi cape embroidered with huge red roses. Even slumped as she was, the thin wool didn’t disguise her thick shoulders and full breasts. She had that type of narrow-hipped figure that carries its fat around the middle without losing the slimness of the ankles.
I stepped between the blue-jeaned couple and looked down at Aura Summerlight. My body blocked the sporadic red light from the patrol car pulsers. The ground on either side of her blinked red, but she remained in darkness. I said, “I know this evening has been a shock. I don’t want to keep you any longer than I have to. Where can we talk?”
“Lady, she can—”
“Ms. Summerlight?” I said, cutting off the speaker, a crew-cut man in a red plaid wool jacket. He shrugged. It was obvious he had objected only for form’s sake.
Aura Summerlight stood. Now I could make out her scrunched features: the short sharp nose, the tight thin mouth, the sharp cheekbones, and the dark eyes that were sunk so far in they seemed, in the dim light, to be empty hollows. “You can … come to my truck.” She walked to the gate. The wind lifted the flags above it, snapping the cloth back against itself. It blew Aura Summerlight’s hair across her mouth, but she made no move to push it away. She walked on, hurriedly, but making surprisingly little progress, as if she were on a moving sidewalk going the wrong way. Beside her, I found myself taking longer, slower steps, controlling my urge to grab
“Back-ups are on the way. I’ll call in and make sure they’re adequate.”
“Have someone go over the hedge. See if you can find the spot this twig is from. Maybe more of it broke off.”
“Right.”
“Where’s the person who found her?”
“Over there, sitting on the box by the fence, the woman in the black cape. She says she knows why she was killed.”
CHAPTER 7
“T HIS IS A URA S UMMERLIGHT , a.k.a. Penelope Lynn Garrett,” Murakawa said with only the slightest suggestion of a sigh as he pronounced her self-appointed name. To twenty-four-year-old Murakawa, the sixties was an ancient oddity, characterized by old-hat political action and slovenly dress. Anachronisms like Aura Summerlight baffled him. “She discovered the body.”
Half the Rainbow Villagers who had been standing by the fence watching our activity at the water’s edge moved off when we started toward them. The remaining ten edged in protectively to Aura Summerlight.
I glanced at the group. There was no one member who could be taken as representative of all. Two men in their early twenties wore cheap, shiny polyester pants and jackets, garments that would betray them after the first wash. Next to them was an older man, for whom the next wash was well overdue. A woman in a balding, black fur coat, with the lining hanging from both sleeves and the hem, stood next to a couple in jeans, denim jackets, and cowboy boots. Aura Summerlight sat slumped against the fence. The filtered light from the windows of a purple school bus behind the fence skimmed her limp, light-brown hair.
There was a theory in the psychic circles that contended the name you are called shapes your character because it is a symbol of you and, more prosaically, because you hear it more frequently than most words. Advocates chose to be called qualities they wished to embody. The aura of summer light was such a clear and hopeful image. It seemed to mock the very ungracefulness of this woman’s slumping body. As if to balance her own blandness, she wore a fringed black Punjabi cape embroidered with huge red roses. Even slumped as she was, the thin wool didn’t disguise her thick shoulders and full breasts. She had that type of narrow-hipped figure that carries its fat around the middle without losing the slimness of the ankles.
I stepped between the blue-jeaned couple and looked down at Aura Summerlight. My body blocked the sporadic red light from the patrol car pulsers. The ground on either side of her blinked red, but she remained in darkness. I said, “I know this evening has been a shock. I don’t want to keep you any longer than I have to. Where can we talk?”
“Lady, she can—”
“Ms. Summerlight?” I said, cutting off the speaker, a crew-cut man in a red plaid wool jacket. He shrugged. It was obvious he had objected only for form’s sake.
Aura Summerlight stood. Now I could make out her scrunched features: the short sharp nose, the tight thin mouth, the sharp cheekbones, and the dark eyes that were sunk so far in they seemed, in the dim light, to be empty hollows. “You can … come to my truck.” She walked to the gate. The wind lifted the flags above it, snapping the cloth back against itself. It blew Aura Summerlight’s hair across her mouth, but she made no move to push it away. She walked on, hurriedly, but making surprisingly little progress, as if she were on a moving sidewalk going the wrong way. Beside her, I found myself taking longer, slower steps, controlling my urge to grab
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