False Memory

covered it with eighteen inches of soil. She found a loose rock the size of a bag of sugar and placed it over the hole.
    They were unarmed, defenseless now and with more enemies than ever.
    At this moment, she was too burnt out to care. Besides, she didn’t want to fire a gun ever again. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, she would feel differently. Time might heal her. No, not heal. But time might harden her.
    Housekeeping completed, Martie returned to the dead men’s car, and Dusty drove into Santa Fe.

     
     
    Cruising south on the Pacific Coast Highway, between Corona Del Mar and Laguna Beach. Not much traffic. The residents of the coast at dinner or cozy at home. Only tattered clouds remained, unraveling eastward.
    Cold stars, moon of ice. And the silhouette of wings. Night bird seeking prey.
    He wouldn’t critique his compositions this evening. He’d grant himself a respite from his obsession with high artistic standards.
    Tonight, after all, he was less artist than predator, although the two were not mutually exclusive.
    The doctor felt as free as a night bird and young again, fresh from the nest.
    He hadn’t killed anyone since he presented poisoned petits fours to his father and made a lasting impression on Viveca’s heart with a half-inch drill bit. For more than twenty years, he had contented himself with corrupting others, dealing death through their obedient hands.
    Homicide by remote control was infinitely safer than direct action, of course. For a man who was a prominent member of his community with much to lose, it was necessary to develop a refined sensibility in these matters, to learn to take more pleasure from the power to control other human beings, from having the power to order them to murder, than from the act of murder itself. And the doctor took pride in the fact that his sensibilities were not merely refined or twice refined but distilled to an exquisite purity.
    Nevertheless, in all honesty he couldn’t deny an occasional yearning for the old days. Ever the sentimentalist.
    The prospect of getting right down into the wet nastiness of ultimate violence made him feel like a boy again.
    This one night, then. This one indulgence. For old times’ sake. Then another twenty years of unwavering self-denial.
    Ahead of him, without benefit of a turn signal, the pickup turned right, off the highway, onto an approach road that led down through a section of undeveloped shore property to a parking lot that served a public beach.
    This turn of events surprised Ahriman. He drove onto the shoulder of the highway, stopped, and switched off his headlights.
    The pickup had descended out of sight.
    At this hour, especially on a cool January night, Skeet and the blushing man were most likely the only people visiting the beach. If Ahriman drove in immediately behind them, even this clueless pair would have to suspect a tail.
    He would wait ten minutes. If they didn’t return in that time, he’d have to follow them into the parking lot.
    A lonely stretch of beach might be a fine place to whack them.
    70
    By daylight, Santa Fe had been enchanting. On this snowy night, every street along which they drove seemed sinister.
    Martie had a far stronger awareness of altitude than previously. The air was too insipid to nourish her. She hunched around a weakness in her chest, a shriveling sensation, as though her lungs were half collapsed and wouldn’t inflate in such thin atmosphere. A lightness in her body, an unpleasant buoyancy, gave her the queasy feeling that at these rarefied heights, gravity was diminished and her ties to the earth at risk.
    All these sensations were subjective, and the truth was that she wanted out of Santa Fe neither because the air was really gruel-thin nor because she might slip the bonds of Earth. She wanted out because here she had discovered qualities within herself that she would have preferred never to recognize. The farther she traveled from Santa Fe, the more easily she might be able to make peace with these discoveries.
    Besides, the risks of staying in the city even until they could catch the first flight out in the morning were too great. Perhaps Kevin and Zachary wouldn’t be missed for many hours yet. More likely, they were expected to report to someone at the institute when they had completed their assignment, which they ought to have done by now. Soon, people might be looking for them, for their car—and then for Martie and Dusty.
    “Albuquerque,” Dusty suggested.
    “How