I’d arranged to meet Steve Shoemaker at his law offices in Old Town, near the waterfront. It was a picturesque area full of renovated warehouses and interesting shops and restaurants, tricked up for tourists with the inevitable horse-and-carriage rides and T-shirt shops, but still pleasant. Shoemaker’s offices were off a cobble-stoned courtyard containing a couple of antique shops and a decorator’s showroom.
When I gave my card to the secretary, she said Assemblyman Shoemaker was in conference and asked me to wait. The man, I knew, had lost his seat in the state legislature this past election, so the term of address seemed inappropriate. The appointments of the waiting room struck me as a bit much—brass and mahogany and marble and velvet, plenty of it, the furnishings all antiques that tended to the garish. I sat on a red velvet sofa and looked for something to read. Architectural Digest, National Review, Foreign Affairs —that was it, take it or leave it. I left it. My idea of waiting-room reading is People; I love it, but I’m too embarrassed to subscribe.
The minutes ticked by: ten, fifteen, twenty. I contemplated the issue of Architectural Digest, then opted instead for staring at a fake Rembrandt on the far wall. Twenty-five, thirty. I was getting irritated now. Shoemaker had asked me to be here by three; I’d arrived on the dot. If this was, as he’d claimed, a matter of such urgency and delicacy that he couldn’t go into it on the phone, why was he in conference at the appointed time?
Thirty-five minutes. Thirty-seven. The door to the inner sanctum opened and a woman strode out. A tall woman, with long chestnut hair, wearing a raincoat and black leather boots. Her eyes rested on me in passing—a cool gray, hard with anger. Then she went out, slamming the door behind her.
The secretary—a trim blonde in a tailored suit—started as the door slammed. She glanced at me and tried to cover with a smile, but its edges were strained, and her fingertips pressed hard against the desk. The phone at her elbow buzzed; she snatched up the receiver. Spoke into it, then said to me: “Miz McCone, Assemblyman Shoemaker will see you now.” As she ushered me inside, she again gave me her frayed-edge smile.
Tense situation in this office, I thought. Brought on by what? The matter Steve Shoemaker wanted me to investigate ? The client who had just made her angry exit? Or something else entirely . . . ?
Shoemaker’s office was even more pretentious than the waiting room: more brass, mahogany, velvet, and marble; more fake Old Masters in heavy gilt frames; more antiques; more of everything. Shoemaker’s demeanor was not as nervous as his secretary’s, but, when he rose to greet me, I noticed a jerkiness in his movements, as if he were holding himself under tight control. I clasped his outstretched hand and smiled, hoping the familiar social rituals would set him more at ease.
Momentarily they did. He thanked me for coming, apologized for making me wait, and inquired after Jack Stuart. After I was seated in one of the client’s chairs, he offered me a drink; I asked for mineral water. As he went to a wet bar tucked behind a tapestry screen, I took the opportunity to study him.
Shoemaker was handsome: dark hair, with the gray so artfully interwoven that it must have been professionally dyed. Chiseled features, nice, well-muscled body, shown off to perfection by an expensive blue suit. When he handed me my drink, his smile revealed white, even teeth that I—having spent the greater part of the previous month in the company of my dentist—recognized as capped. Yes, a very good-looking man, politician handsome. Jack’s old friend or not, his appearance and manner called up my gut-level distrust.
My client went around his desk and reclaimed his chair. He held a drink of his own—something dark amber—and he took a deep swallow before speaking. The alcohol replenished his vitality some; he drank again, set the glass on a pewter coaster, and said: “Miz McCone, I’m glad you could come up here on such short notice.”
“You mentioned on the phone that the case is extremely urgent . . . and delicate.”
He ran his hand over his hair—lightly, so as not to disturb its styling. “Extremely urgent and delicate,” he repeated, seeming to savor the phrase.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
His eyes strayed to the half-full glass on the coaster. Then they moved to the door through which I’d entered. Returned to me. “You saw the woman who just left?”
I nodded.
“My wife, Andrea.”
I waited.
“She’s very angry with me for hiring you.”
“She did act angry. Why?”
Now he reached for the glass and belted down its contents. Leaned back and rattled the ice cubes as he spoke. “It’s a long story. Painful to me. I’m not sure where to begin. I just . . . don’t know what to make of the things that are happening.”
“That’s what you’ve hired me to do. Begin anywhere. We’ll fill in the gaps later.” I pulled a small tape recorder from my bag and set it on the edge of his desk. “Do you mind?”
Shoemaker eyed it warily, but shook his head. After a moment’s hesitation, he said: “Someone is stalking my wife.”
“Following her? Threatening her?”
“Not following, not that I know of. He writes notes, threatening to kill her. He leaves . . . things at the house. At her place of business. Dead things. Birds, rats, one time a cat. Andrea loves cats. She. . . .” He shook his head, went to the bar for a refill.
“What else? Phone calls?”
“No. One time, a floral arrangement . . . suitable for a funeral.”
“Does he sign the notes?”
“John. Just John.”
“Does Missus Shoemaker know anyone named John who has a grudge against her?”
“She says no. And I. . . .” He sat down, fresh drink in hand. “I have reason to believe that this John has a grudge against me, is using this harassment of Andrea to get at me personally.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The wording of the notes.”
“May I see them?”
He looked around, as if he were afraid someone might be listening. “Later. I keep them elsewhere.”
Something, then, I thought, that he didn’t want his office staff to see. Something shameful, perhaps even criminal.
“OK,” I said, “how long has this been going on?”
“About six weeks.”
“Have you contacted the police?”
“Informally. A man I know on the force, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. But after he started looking into it, I had to ask him to drop it.”
“Why?”
“I’m in a sensitive political position.”
“Excuse me if I’m mistaken, Mister Shoemaker, but it’s my understanding that you’re no longer serving in the state legislature.”
“That’s correct, but I’m about to announce my candidacy in a special election for a senate seat that’s recently been vacated.”
“I see. So after you asked your contact on the police force to back off, you decided to use a private investigator, and Jack recommended me. Why not use someone local?”
“As I said, my position is sensitive. I don’t want word of this getting out in the community. That’s why Andrea is so angry with me. She claims I value my political career more than her life.”
I waited, wondering how he’d attempt to explain that away.
He didn’t even try, merely went on. “In our . . . conversation just prior to this, she threatened to leave me. This coming week-end she plans to go to a cabin on the Lost Coast that she inherited from her father to . . . as she put it . . . sort things through. Alone. Do you know that part of the coast?”
“I’ve read some travel pieces on it.”
“Then you’re aware how remote it is. The cabin’s very isolated. I don’t want Andrea going there while this John person is on the loose.”
“Does she go there often?”
“Fairly often. I don’t . . . it’s too rustic for me . . . no running water, phone, or electricity. But Andrea likes it. Why do you ask?”
“I’m wondering if John . . . whoe
ver he is . . . knows about the cabin. Has she been there since the harassment began?”
“No. Initially she agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea. But now. . . .” He shrugged.
“I’ll need to speak with Missus Shoemaker. Maybe I can reason with her, persuade her not to go until we’ve identified John. Or maybe she’ll allow me to go along as her bodyguard.”
“You can speak with her if you like, but she’s beyond reasoning with. And there’s no way you can stop her or force her to allow you to accompany her. My wife is a strong-willed woman . . . that interior decorating firm across the courtyard is hers, she built it from the ground up. When Andrea decides to do something, she does it. And asks permission from no one.”
“Still, I’d like to try reasoning. This trip to the cabin . . . that’s the urgency you mentioned on the phone. Two days to find the man behind the harassment before she goes out there and perhaps makes a target of herself.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d better get started. That funeral arrangement . . . what florist did it come from?”
Shoemaker shook his head. “It arrived at least five weeks ago, before either of us noticed a pattern to the harassment. Andrea just shrugged it off, threw the wrappings and card away.”
“Let’s go and look at the notes, then. They’re my only lead. ”
Vengeance will be mine. The sudden blow. The quick attack.
Vengeance is the price of silence.
Mute testimony paves the way to an early grave. The rest is silence.
A freshly turned grave is silent testimony to an old wrong and its avenger.
There was more in the same vein—slightly Biblical-flavored and stilted. But chilling to me, even though the safety deposit booth at Shoemaker’s bank was overly warm. If that was my reaction, what had these notes done to Andrea Shoemaker? No wonder she was thinking of leaving a husband who cared more for the electorate’s opinion than his wife’s life and safety.
The notes had been typed without error on an electric machine that had left no such obvious clues as chipped or skewed keys. The paper and envelopes were plain and cheap, purchasable at any discount store. They had been handled, I was sure, by nothing more than gloved hands. No signature—just the typed name, John.
But the writer had wanted the Shoemakers—one of them, anyway—to know who he was. Thus the theme that ran through them all: silence and revenge.
I said: “I take it your contact at the E.P.D. had their lab go over these?”
“Yes. There was nothing. That’s why he wanted to probe further . . . something I couldn’t permit him to do.”
“Because of this revenge-and-silence business. Tell me about it.”
Shoemaker looked around furtively. My God, did he think bank employees had nothing better to do with their time than to eavesdrop on our conversation?
“We’ll go have a drink,” he said. “I know a place that’s private.”
We went to a restaurant a few blocks away, where Shoemaker had another bourbon and I toyed with a glass of iced tea. After some prodding, he told me his story; it didn’t enhance him in my eyes.
Seventeen years ago Shoemaker had been interviewing for a staff attorney’s position at a large lumber company. While on a tour of the mills, he witnessed an accident in which a worker named Sam Carding was severely mangled while trying to clear a jam in a bark-stripping machine. Shoemaker, who had worked in the mills summers to pay for his education, knew the accident was due to company negligence, but accepted a handsome job offer in exchange for not testifying for the plaintiff in the ensuing lawsuit. The court ruled against Carding, confined to a wheelchair and in constant pain; a year later, while the case was still under appeal, Carding shot his wife and himself. The couple’s three children were given token settlements in exchange for dropping the suit, and then were adopted by relatives in a different part of the country.
“It’s not a pretty story, Mister Shoemaker,” I said, “and I can see why the wording of the notes might make you suspect there’s a connection between it and this harassment. But who do you think John is?”
“Carding’s eldest boy. Carding and his family knew I’d witnessed the accident . . . one of his co-workers saw me watching from the catwalk and told him. Later, when I turned up as a senior counsel. . . .” He shrugged.
“But why, after all this time . . . ?”
“Why not? People nurse grudges. John Carding was sixteen at the time of the lawsuit . . . there were some ugly scenes with him, both at my home and my office at the mill. By now he’d be in his forties. Maybe it’s his way of acting out some sort of mid-life crisis.”
“Well, I’ll call my office and have my assistant run a check on all three Carding kids. And I want to speak with Missus Shoemaker . . . preferably in your presence.”
He glanced at his watch. “It can’t be tonight. She’s got a meeting of her professional organization, and I’m dining with my campaign manager.”
A potentially psychotic man was threatening Andrea’s life, yet they both carried on as usual. Well, who was I to question it? Maybe it was their way of coping.
“Tomorrow, then,” I said. “Your home. At the noon hour.”
Shoemaker nodded. Then he gave me the address, as well as the names of John Carding’s siblings.
I left him on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant—a handsome man whose shoulders now slumped inside his expensive suit coat, shivering in the brisk wind off Humboldt Bay. As we shook hands, I saw that shame made his gaze unsteady, the set of his mouth less than firm.
I knew that kind of shame. Over the course of my career, I’d committed some dreadful acts that years later woke me in the deep of the night to sudden panic. I’d also not committed certain acts—failures that woke me to regret and emptiness. My sins of omission were infinitely worse than those of commission, because I knew that if I’d acted, I could have made a difference. Could even have saved a life.
I wasn’t able to reach Rae Kelleher, my assistant at All Souls, that evening, and by the time she got back to me the next morning—Thursday—I was definitely annoyed. Still, I tried to keep a lid on my irritation. Rae is young, attractive, and in love. I couldn’t expect her to spend her evenings waiting to be of service to her workaholic boss.
I got her started on a computer check on all three Cardings, then took myself to the Eureka P.D. and spoke with Shoemaker’s contact, Sergeant Bob Wolfe. Wolfe—a dark-haired, sharp-featured man whose appearance was a good match for his surname—told me he’d had the notes processed by the lab, which had turned up no useful evidence.
“Then I started to probe, you know? When you got a harassment case like this, you look into the victims’ private lives.”
“And that was when Shoemaker told you to back off?”
“Uhn-huh.”
“When was this?”
“About five weeks ago.”
“I wonder why he waited so long to hire me. Did he, by any chance, ask you for a referral to a local investigator?”
Wolfe frowned. “Not this time.”
“Then you’d referred him to someone before?”
“Yeah, guy who used to be on the force . . . Dave Morrison. Last April.”
“Did Shoemaker tell you why he needed an investigator?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. These politicians, they’re always trying to get something on their rivals. I didn’t want any part of it.”
“Do you have Morrison’s address and phone number handy?”
Wolfe reached into his desk drawer, shuffled things, and flipped a business card across the blotter. “Dave gave me a stack of these when he set up shop,” he said. “Always glad to help an old pal.”
Morrison was out of town, the message on his answering machine said, but would be back tomorrow afternoon. I left a message of my own, asking him to call me at my motel. Then I headed for the Shoemakers’ home, hoping I could talk some common sense into Andrea.
But Andrea wasn’t having any common se
nse.
She strode around the parlor of their big Victorian—built by one of the city’s lumber barons, her husband told me when I complimented them on it—arguing and waving her arms and making scathing statements punctuated by a good amount of profanity. And knocking back martinis, even though it was only a little past noon.
Yes, she was going to the cabin. No, neither her husband nor I was welcome there. No, she wouldn’t postpone the trip; she was sick and tired of being cooped up like some kind of zoo animal because her husband had made a mistake years before she’d met him. All right, she realized this John person was dangerous. But she’d taken self-defense classes and owned a .32 revolver. Of course, she knew how to use it. Practiced frequently, too. Women had to be prepared these days, and she was.
But, she added darkly, glaring at her husband, she’d just as soon not have to shoot John. She’d rather send him straight back to Steve and let them settle this score. May the best man win—and she was placing bets on John.
As far as I was concerned, Steve and Andrea Shoemaker deserved each other.
I tried to explain to her that self-defense classes don’t fully prepare you for a paralyzing, heart-pounding encounter with an actual violent stranger. I tried to warn her that the ability to shoot well on a firing range doesn’t fully prepare you for pumping a bullet into a human being who is advancing swiftly on you.
I wanted to tell her she was being an idiot.
Before I could, she slammed down her glass and stormed out of the house.
Her husband replenished his own drink and said: “Now do you see what I’m up against?”
I didn’t respond to that. Instead, I said: “I spoke with Sergeant Wolfe earlier.”
“And?”
Time of the Wolves Page 9