by Susan Dunlap
“So what’s missing here. Ellen lucked into this job because she happened to resemble Bryn.”
“She didn’t happen to look like Bryn, Smith. A couple days before the event she didn’t look anything like Bryn Wiley.”
Chapter 16
I ASKED ABOUT ELLEN’S background, but Ott didn’t know.
“Find out, Ott!”
He didn’t object.
“And Bryn Wiley, Ott. The woman walked out of here with nothing but an overnight duffel. She doesn’t have a car—we’ve got that in impound. If she’s in town, I want to know where. If she’s gone, I want to know where.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, opening the door to indicate our meeting was over.
“No, Ott, I’ll call you. Tonight.”
I was out in the hall before I could wonder what it was that motivated Ott’s incredible docility. Ninety percent of my requests he turned down flat. There were times he’d thrown me out of his office on principle. And here he was not only agreeing to track down Bryn Wiley, but acting like a chastened schoolkid when I snapped demands. Something was making him anxious to learn about Ellen Waller and to find Bryn Wiley. And I wanted to find out what that was.
I drove slowly back to the station, thinking about Ellen Waller. Ellen had presented herself as the poor relation, long-suffering but able to preserve her sense of humor. I had bought her package without question or thought. Foolish as it was, her deceit hurt my feelings.
That I could have shrugged off. But I couldn’t dismiss what it said about my judgment. I’d let my instincts block out my training. More Berkeley than cop, indeed. Maybe I wasn’t Detective Division material anymore.
A cold swirl of panic filled my chest. Homicide was life and death; any other assignment was … a lot less important. After probing the psyches of men and women desperate enough to take another person’s life, how could I ever be satisfied with separating 415 squabbles or searching for stolen cars? It would just be a way to fill forty hours. If I couldn’t make it as a detective anymore, what would I do?
Only Herman Ott would understand, because, I was sure, he felt that way, too.
The station was Sunday-afternoon empty—no harried officer at reception, no one going through the card files for photo lineup shots, no one from Community Relations looking for volunteers or warning us off a plate of pizza squares intended for the civilians in their academy class. I checked my mailbox for papers, my voice mail for phone messages, and the computer for print-out backgrounds. Sam Johnson’s was a mile long. He was known to the FBI. He was a major player on CORPUS (the countywide arrest information network which listed each arrest and its progress through the legal system). The man had had more dates—arraignments, court hearings—than a prom queen. But it was on Records Management System that he really shone; there every contact with the department is listed, whether the subject is the responsible or the complainant. Between his political activity, The Heat Exchange, and the home building site, Sam Johnson must have ticked off every citizen in town. About half of The Heat Exchange complaints—mostly for noise—came from Herman Ott. Was Ott, I wondered, the finder of record for his neighbors, or was he merely representing his own pique? On PIN (warrants) and NCIC (nationwide warrants) Johnson was clean.
Karl Pironnen was known to Records Management via residents on the routes of his nocturnal dog walks. I could imagine Pironnen so caught up in pondering his next chess move that he lost track of those three big dogs till one of them knocked over a trash can and the householder assumed there was a prowler.
Jed Estler had made his mark with Traffic. Another speeding ticket and he’d be walking.
Bryn Wiley’s contribution was just as I would have guessed. Her complaints about Sam Johnson probably justified half a clerk’s position here. Otherwise, she was clean. Not so much as a stop sign roll-through.
On Ellen Waller there was nothing at all. It was like she didn’t exist. And maybe she didn’t. Why should her name be more real than anything else about her? We had followed the state law and sent a set of Ellen’s fingerprints and a forensic dental chart to the Department of Justice in Sacramento. They’d be inputted into the John and Jane Doe computer and checked it against the Missing Persons reports. They’d be sent to Criminal Identification and Investigation Division to see if the prints matched anyone known to CI&I. We’d also forwarded the prints to the FBI; but the feds would take weeks at best. In the meantime she would remain a Jane Doe, listed with all the other unknown dead lying unclaimed in morgues across the country.
I looked at the last of the records: Fannie Johnson’s. For the first time I smiled. Her driver’s license said Fannie Johnson. Probably the deed on their property said Fannie Johnson. But our records said aka Tiffany Glass. Tiffany Glass! Poor woman. She probably would have married anyone just for his name. I scanned up her records. There were a few minor traffic violations but no 415s (disturbance) or even 602s (trespass), the most minor arrests made in demonstrations. From the look of this, while Sam Johnson was staking out People’s Park or blocking off intersections, his wife was home with a good book.
But it was the earliest entry that stopped me. It was from Records Management. Tiffany Glass had been transported by ambulance from the Harmon Gym pool to Alta Bates hospital. The date was a month before Bryn Wiley dove off the high platform in the Olympics.
Tiffany Glass. Tiffany? Where had I heard that name? I thought hard. Wasn’t Tiff the Cal diver who’d been injured when Bryn Wiley was at the Nationals Meet?
I grabbed the phone and dialed Bryn. She could have left Ott’s and just gone home. No answer. I left a message on her machine, called the dispatcher, had her ask Adam 2 to check out the house in his most official mode. If Bryn was there, she’d know the police wanted in. If she came home later, she’d find a note on the door.
Then I called Inspector Doyle.
“Can’t this wait, Smith. I’ve been up forever and I just got home. I’ve got my grandchildren here from Portland. They’re leaving in the morning.”
“Sorry, ’Spec. I need Heling’s report on Bryn Wiley’s house to see if it gives me any hint about Ellen Waller’s ID.”
He sighed. “Smith, your assignment was to take Wiley to the morgue—”
“—to ID the body. Well, sir, Wiley’s vanished and the body’s still a Jane Doe.”
“I know that, Smith. I knew it when I read Heling’s report. It won’t answer your questions. But take a look for yourself.”
I could hear a small child shriek with pleasure somewhere in the Doyle house. The receiver rustled against Doyle’s face or hair or maybe shirt. “Inspector, things have changed radically since Heling was in there. When Heling went through that house she was assuming Bryn Wiley was the deceased. She was figuring the murder victim’s bedroom was the large one. She didn’t know the true victim had no history whatsoever, that her bedroom was the small one, or that the one item she insisted on bringing to that house was the skeleton of a confessional booth.”
“Wha—?”
I knew that confessional would get Doyle, the lapsed Catholic. “I—we—need to get in there and go over that confessional.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Smith.”
“Ellen Waller is a Jane Doe; Bryn Wiley’s in on the cover-up. What’s to keep her from going home as soon as it’s dark and destroying every scrap of paper relating to Ellen? These are exigent circumstances.”
“What’s exigence in one set of eyes can be blinked out of another, Smith. You don’t have minor children in danger in that house. But you may have evidence in danger. Okay, Smith. Check Heling’s report. Write up the warrant. Brucker will be back tomorrow; he’ll appreciate it.”
“Maybe I should just send it directly to Sacramento.”
Doyle didn’t say anything. He waited a moment then hung up. It was a more ominous response to my sarcasm than any words. It said Doyle knew Brucker’s career goals and he was in no position to object. Brucker had that much clout. It t
old me to watch my mouth, and my tail.
And to move the latter. Gathering enough information to support a request for a warrant is no afternoon at the beach. It requires summarizing all the relevant reports, which requires finding all the relevant reports, and deciphering the handwritten notes in same. (Doyle was right about Heling’s report. It didn’t answer my questions.) I must have thought twenty times in the next two hours: I’m starving; I’ll run downstairs for a doughnut. A Hershey’s. A Snickers. By the time I picked up the phone to call the assistant DA on weekend duty, I would have chomped through my pencil if it had been coated in chocolate. Any illusion I had about being cured of my cravings was gone. For pizza maybe; it is, after all, only food. But chocolate is the nourishment of the soul.
The ADA, just back from hiking on Mount Diablo and on his way to the Warriors game, listened as I read him the papers and answered his questions for twenty minutes. My neck, my throat, my stomach were all knotted; my head pounded. I wasn’t even thinking of chocolate; my reaction reflected a much deeper panic. It was all I could do to concentrate on the questions and formulate sensible answers. When I hung up, I sat staring at the wall. It was the color of mint chocolate. Or pistachio. It was insane to let a bet yank the stability out of my life. I had enough real problems without creating more. If Howard couldn’t see that, well, too bad. It wasn’t a question of asking Howard for an out; I’d tell him. I picked up the phone and dialed the Fresno police.
It rang three times before I put it down. I’d been right; it wasn’t a question of asking Howard for an out. I walked over to the water fountain, took two Tylenols and then a long deep breath before I dialed the judge. Marcus Redmon was the worst judge for a cop in a hurry. He was impatient, and a stickler for order. And he had just taken a lot of heat about two warrants he’d issued for another department. I dialed.
After all that, Redmon was out. He’d be back at seven o’clock for a few minutes. So I had a two-hour reprieve. I could make sure this request was in Redmonian order. Or I could find out what the story was with Tiffany Glass and Fannie Johnson. I didn’t have time for both. But I had to have both if I had any chance at all to solve this case before it went to Brucker. I’d have to deal with Fannie damned fast.
In most places, putting a blazer over a sweatshirt does not rate as tie optional, but in Berkeley such a move shows intent. Some places too much intent.
The Johnsons’ house was one of those. Here a jacket was as de rigueur as Spode china at McDonald’s. Or a Tiffany lamp—there or here. I left the jacket on the hook and ran up the steps. In a navy turtleneck and jeans I was still overdressed.
The place hadn’t been much last night, but without the cloak of darkness it bared its stucco to the world. A layer of cream-colored paint had been applied when the stucco had dried in the 1930s. Perhaps it had been advertised as “the only coat you’ll ever need”; certainly it was the only one this place had gotten. Above the level of the stoop, stucco shone through like scabs; below it was splattered mud from the cars that had parked on the patch of brown that stood in lieu of lawn. Definitely not a setting for Tiffany Glass.
The door inside the screen was open. I knocked.
“Come on in,” a male voice called. It wasn’t Sam Johnson’s.
I stepped into a small foyer and left to the living room that covered the front of the house. A four-window bay revealed a bright, airy view. I’d seen this model of house with a sumptuous leather couch by those windows, an Oriental rug in front of it, and the white brick fireplace at the far end of the twelve by twenty room, a sheepskin rug tossed cozily over the sofa back. Then, the room had just about wrapped its arms around me and offered me wine.
The Johnsons’ sofa was Danish modern, with thin, faded orange cushions. In front of it was a pine-veneer door cum coffee table, adorned by flyers, new and recycled into scrap paper. The room had a unity of colorlessness. Even the two middle-aged guys sprawled on the sofa dressed in the worn cloth of their outrage and the post-teenager on the edge of the table flapping a sheet of paper could have faded back into the mist here.
“Fannie here?” I asked.
“Back room,” the nearer couch guy said. “Fannie! Someone here for you.”
I started through the dining room cum office with the built-in china cabinet—stacked with old newspapers.
The bedroom door swung slowly open. I had to take two steps into the room to spot Fannie, on a rumpled bed behind the door. Herman Ott had called her attractive in an arty, young-Jacqueline Kennedy way. There are times when it amazes me that one so utterly devoid of perceptive discrimination survives as a private detective. There was nothing arty about the pale, square-faced woman in old and quilted bathrobe, with faded comforter drawn around her. Nothing young. It was hard to believe she was diving at Cal the same time Bryn was.
Earphones in place, she gave a last glance to a book before putting it down, cover down. The window shades were drawn. With as little light as got into this house, how had so much managed to fade? The one attempt to break the pervasive gray was Fannie’s flowered bathrobe, and that effort, clearly, had been made years ago. The room screamed—no, nothing so energetic, it moaned—of inertia.
I needed her to reveal things she didn’t want to deal with. Here, in this room, in the aura of entrenched depression, she wasn’t going to tell me a thing. I didn’t have time to … but I had no choice. “Get dressed. We’re going out.”
“Who are you?” She pulled off the headphones.
“Jill Smith. Police. You talked to me last night.”
“Are you trying to take me to jail?”
“No. To coffee.”
Chapter 17
I HAD BEEN ONLY half surprised Fannie Johnson didn’t object to breaking bread with a member of the city’s finest.
I could have taken her to the Med, the original European-type coffee house—it was closer—but I wanted her away from Telegraph Avenue and Sam’s colleagues. She seemed relieved when I suggested the French Hotel Café, and more relieved when I asked her to follow in her car. A good thing it was; explaining the liability issues of my driving a witness in my own car in a city that is self-insured would have taken me the entire trip across town.
The French Hotel is named for the laundry that used to occupy its space, in a long, narrow brick building. I hadn’t realized how fast I’d been driving until I sat in the supermarket lot beside it, waiting for Fannie’s Nova to pull up. When Fannie got out, she was dressed in wool slacks and a short, boiled wool jacket, in red. The jacket was not secondhand, and it certainly hadn’t been cheap. It shouted of a stubborn inner core, or maybe just counterculture in-your-face. Her ensemble was a more stylish equivalent of her husband’s button-down shirts. The Johnsons must have made quite an entrance at the anarchists’ conventions.
When Fannie started toward the hotel, I almost gasped.
“Limp” didn’t begin to describe her unwieldy walk. Instead of swinging one leg after the other, her two steps became parts of one great thrust that yanked up her left leg and sent the force down her right side to jerk that leg along. The force gone, the next step began anew from a cold start. The process looked as awkward and exhausting as driving in first gear with stop signs every twenty feet.
I stared, horrified. I wanted to run up and help, to say how sorry I was even though her condition had nothing to do with me. I yearned to look away, but I didn’t; I just stood, staring blankly. Every step seemed agonizing. God, what was her life like? Each time she wanted a glass of water she’d have to question whether she wanted it enough to move for it. And if she took too many steps, would the stress on her joints create new pains—sharper or heavier? Was this the outcome of that trip to Alta Bates twelve years ago? Had she been limping like this for twelve long years? Most of her adult life?
She was almost to the door of the French Hotel Café when I caught up with her. “Let’s go across the street.”
She hesitated only momentarily. Then a smile lit her square face, and in that mom
ent I could see where Herman Ott had gotten the notion of Jackie Onassis. “You cops must have hefty expense accounts.”
“I invited you for coffee, not the prix fixe dinner.” So it would cost more than the French Hotel; it was worth it to go to Chez Panisse. Fannie would be pleased—and perhaps, more forthcoming. It would also take longer than the counter service at the hotel. I glanced at my watch. It was already five forty.
I led the way in through the trumpet-vined gate, across the brick patio, to the stairs. Chez Panisse, the birthplace of California Cuisine, occupies a two-story brown shingle adorned with buffed wood railings and prairie-style sconces, and huge sprays of exotic flowers. The prix fixe rooms downstairs are quietly elegant. Fannie passed by the entrance and hoisted her weak leg onto the first step.
“Oh God, I forgot about the stairs!” I blurted out. “We can go to the French Hotel.”
Fannie turned, taking a moment to catch her breath. “Not on your life. I was a high diver. I’m used to climbing to the ten-meter platform. Besides, when we get up to the café, you’ll feel so guilty you’ll buy me seconds. Maybe ply me with liquor. I love their Kir.” She turned and maneuvered her leg to the next step and the next, awkwardly, but with speed that amazed me. Maybe it was not the woman in the boiled red jacket who was the anomaly but the one in the faded bathrobe.
“In the bar?” she said, standing by a black marble café table.
“No, it sounds like you’re going to need a whole table.”
If it hadn’t been the middle of the afternoon, we’d have been lucky to get a spot either place without an hour’s wait. But now we followed the waiter into the front room that must have been a sleeping porch when Shattuck Avenue was still a sleepy street. I ordered Fannie her promised Kir, and scanned the dessert choices: poached pears in red wine, apple crepes, chocolate decadence, Tarte Tatin, and Timbale Panisse. The last two I dismissed because I didn’t know what they were. But it was really no contest—nothing, no matter how elegant, original, and superbly prepared equals chocolate.