by Susan Dunlap
The ranch house huddled on the right, its withered boards bowed inward and its roof collapsed. I turned off onto the bumpy, unpaved road. I hadn’t gone twenty-five yards before the trees closed in, sheltering me from the rain, muting the light. The truck jostled from rut to rut. I opened the window and let the clean smell of wet redwood flow in.
The road rose, coming to a clearing, then descended the far side of the mountain. Here on the north side, the land got the full brunt of Pacific storms. Dirt had soaked to mud. I downshifted into first. When the road flattened, in the crack between mountains I could see tracks from another vehicle. There was no way of telling how long they’d been there. The trees were two feet from the sides of the truck. What would happen if Bryn Wiley drove out? Would one of us have to back up for miles on this hilly, deeply rutted lane?
The road curved sharply to the left. I yanked the wheel; the truck skidded in the mud before it responded, and I almost hit Bryn’s van parked halfway into the road. I slammed on the brakes, sending out a wave of mud. Then I spent the next ten minutes maneuvering a seventeen-point turn so the truck would be facing out.
Ahead there was little more than a path. The redwood branches formed a thatched roof over it. With each step, the fanny pack with my semi-automatic in it tapped my stomach; I found it comforting. I slipped the hood of my anorak off and walked along the soggy ground inhaling the strong, clean aroma of the trees. Like walking through a giant cedar chest. I laughed silently. I might be a stranger to myself, but that stranger was still a total city woman.
My mouth was still slightly open from the laugh when the wind snapped the smaller branches and a sheet of water slapped my face and doused my hair, and started slowly seeping down my back. I had forgotten just how well wool holds water.
Doubtless native Americans of old could differentiate the flap of dozens of birds’ wings, tell by the snapping of a twig at a hundred yards whether they walked with deer or bear or raccoon. To me the forest seemed totally silent except for my feet on the soggy leaves, and the rhythm of my breath. I glanced to the sides, and every few minutes behind me, but in the dim light and the rain a stealthy bear could have had me for a snack before I spotted him.
As thoroughly as the thatch of trees kept out the light, it held in the cold. My hands were fisted in my side pockets, pulling my jacket tighter around me, and its wet collar stuck against my bare neck.
About half an hour into the walk it struck me all at once how totally exposed I was. I might as well have been standing at Seawall and University with a thousand-dollar bill hanging out of my pocket. No, there I’d be better off. There, the patrol would come rolling by sometime soon. There, I could turn on an attacker and yell, “Police, get your hands where I can see them! Do it!” I’d done it often enough; I expected suspects to obey me. Here there was no patrol, no car parked outside with the flashers on so backup knew where to find me; no comforting city smells of Chinese food, gasoline, newsprint; no solid ground under my feet in case I needed to push off to pursue.
I felt like I was walking in a dream. The heavy anorak dragged on my shoulders, and the gun smacked harder against my stomach. My newly shorn wet hair clung to my head and neck. Three times I reached back to cover it with the ponytail that was no longer there. I didn’t feel merely out of place; I felt like I no longer had a place. I was the short-haired woman with the different-shaped face; the driver of trucks and buyer of oranges, the woman who had tossed aside her career and the chance of making a Berkeley safe for people like Karl Pironnen. The ground was no longer solid under my feet. I looked down, and saw mud; that made me smile at last. But when the smile faded, I still felt hollow.
I walked more quickly, checking around me with my antennae up. I heard birds, of course, and rustling leaves, but when I crossed the last rise, I heard something unexpected: the sound of an unattended door creaking on its hinges. I slowed, circling away from the path.
The clearing around the cabin ran from grasses near the house to underbrush, to scrawny trees before it disappeared into forest. Stealthily, I moved around the side of the house. The cabin was just that, a twenty-foot wooden square with a peaked roof. From the untended looks of the grounds, Bryn used her visits here to do absolutely nothing.
I moved toward the back, stepping carefully, keeping behind the trees. A back stoop led down two steps to the ground. The door was slightly ajar, like someone had stepped out for a moment. Or perhaps someone else had walked in.
Taking pains not to snap twigs or rustle leaves, I approached the house, squinting to see in the dark windows. The one by the back door—probably a kitchen window—was propped open, but I couldn’t see whether anyone was inside.
I stepped beyond the trees into the underbrush.
And a bullet whizzed by my head.
Chapter 26
I HIT THE GROUND and rolled. Brambles scraped my hands and snagged my jacket. My gun cut into my ribs. I scrambled behind a tree and pulled my gun free. On patrol in a situation like this I would have been behind the car door, and wearing a protective vest. “Police,” I would call out, “Put down your weapon.” I’d be calling in 10-99: Officer needs help. Patrol cars would be speeding in. All I’d have to do would be stay down and wait.
Here I could wait until I died.
Another shot snagged the tree in front of me. So much for concealment. Whoever was in the cabin knew exactly where I was, and probably that I was alone. But he, she, or they probably did not know who I was. I didn’t intend to point out to them that they were dealing with a cop. “Bryn,” I called, hoping it was she in there, “it’s Jill. Why are you shooting at me?”
“Jill who?”
It was Bryn. “Jill Smith, from Berkeley.”
“What the hell are you doing creeping around my grounds here?”
“I’ve come to warn you. Step outside where I can see you.”
“Hey, this is my house. I don’t—”
“You tried to kill me!”
“Okay, okay. I’m coming out the front door.”
She almost jumped out, banging the door behind her, then stopped abruptly, like she had been jerked back on a leash. Her hands were empty. She was a ghost of the woman I’d seen days before, a ghost who’d been through a terrifying death. Her short chestnut hair stood out in clumps, weary hollows turned her angular face gaunt, and her blue eyes had an eerie shine. Her sweater was struck through with brambles and twigs. I’d have put money on the fact that she hadn’t slept in days. But for all that, she could still aim and come within a hand span of killing me.
“Are you alone, Bryn?”
“Uh, yes.”
I glanced at the windows again. No sign of a companion or captor. No way to be sure, though. I could keep my gun out, ready to shoot. Or I could put it in my fanny pack, with the safety on, and be dead before I could get it out. There was no middle ground.
My gut feeling was to trust Bryn. I stashed the gun and walked toward her.
Under the thick maroon sweater those strong swimmer’s shoulders of hers were hunched in fear. Her hands were shaking. Those unnaturally shining eyes jerked around like they were on overload. She was on the verge of mental collapse. I shepherded her back inside.
The house was the size of a two-car garage and looked like it had been built in a week. Plain pine walls. A wood stove for heat, a line of bottles to be carted to a stream somewhere, a paper garbage bag by the door. Open shelves and a closet rod for clothes. The only accommodation to visitors was the extra director’s chair by the round wood table. A futon sofa, ready to take up the rest of the floor space, was still folded on its frame. No doubt sleep had been so far from Bryn’s mind she hadn’t thought to stretch it out.
I motioned her into a chair, pulled out an orange—the worse from my rolling over it—and handed it to her. “Eat.” Before taking the other chair, I closed and locked the back door. Then, fanny pack still on, gun still by my stomach, I took the untouched orange from her hands and began peeling. “Bryn, I’m here to pr
otect you, you understand that?”
She nodded mutely. Sitting there, warily fingering the orange sections I handed to her, she looked more like Ellen Waller than she did herself. This was the woman who had done triple back flips forty feet above the water. She had pushed aside the terrifying possibilities that loomed in the air above and the hard water below her. Now those possibilities had caught her.
“If you want me to help you, Bryn, you’re going to have to be straight with me. Okay?”
She nodded obediently.
“Okay?”
“Yes.” Her voice was almost a whisper. The cables on her sweater were brown with dirt. She must have fallen outside, in the mud. Her shoulders were hunched, this time against the cold. I glanced at the wood stove—no fire. Two blankets were wadded on the futon. She probably hadn’t thought to make a fire all night. I wanted to heat water for tea, to check outside for wood, but there was no time. I needed to be sure who the killer was. Wrapping one of the blankets around her I asked, “The National Diving Trials? Why wasn’t Fannie on the plane to Hawaii?”
She dropped the orange section she was holding as she shrank inside the blanket. “Tiff—Fannie—missed it.”
“Why, Bryn? You didn’t miss it.”
“The travel agent gave us the wrong time on the itinerary. The flight left three hours earlier. He couldn’t reach Tiff in time.”
“Right. Because she had moved. But Bryn, you and Tiff trained together every day. You spent hours in the water, and hours out of the pool doing dry land training. You two talked. You knew what a hard time she had with her former roommates. How many times did she tell you about those girls who didn’t understand what it was like to be on athletic scholarship? Those girls who thought Tiff was just weaseling out of her share of the work? You knew about them. And you knew she moved.”
“So?” She was shivering inside the thick blanket.
“So, you knew where she moved. When the travel agent told you about the mix-up in flight times, you could have told Tiff.”
“If I’d thought of it. I was rushing around; I was all caught up, getting ready … I …” She was staring blankly out the window into the gray. Then she gave her head a sharp shake. “Look, the Nationals were do or die for me. I just didn’t think.” Her words had the ring of an explanation well used. But not true.
“No, Bryn. There’s more to it than that. The travel agent said he called Tiff. She never got the call.”
“It was a shame.”
She wasn’t accusing the travel agent of incompetence.
“Bryn, I called the travel company. The agent didn’t get fired over this. His boss swears he tried everything to get hold of Tiff. He took Helena’s ticket out to her. He even went out to Tiff’s address.”
She nodded. She’d heard all this before.
“But he went to the wrong address. Her old address. The one where she lived with roommates who weren’t speaking to her. Why did he go there, Bryn? Because you told him that address was current?”
“No. He never asked me. He never said he asked me, never, not to his boss, or Tiff or anyone.” She picked up the orange section.
So I hadn’t gotten the mechanics right. The itinerary listed the flight leaving at 6:56 instead of the correct 3:56. What had happened when the agent realized his mistake that noon? He had called Bryn and Helena. He’d left a message for Tiff. When she didn’t respond, he hadn’t called Bryn or Helena back. He had tried too hard to reach Tiff; why hadn’t he bothered to ask her teammates where else to find her? “You went into the travel office to pick up the new ticket. You saw the travel agent there.”
Her fingers closed around the orange.
“And while you were there, he asked you about Tiff. You looked at the address and phone number he had in her file. He must have lost the new address he’d written on something, a scrap of paper, a message sheet. You realized the address was the old one. And yet you said nothing.”
“That’s crazy. Why would I do something like that to a … friend.”
“Because Tiff was better than you were. You had to make the cut in the Nationals. You’d only been in the top eight twice, seventh once, eighth the other time. This was your last chance to get the three ‘top eights’ you needed to make the Olympic Qualifying Trials. With Tiff there your chances were minimal. Then, suddenly, the universe offered you a gift, right? All you needed to do was keep quiet. So tempting; so easy. A panicked decision made by a nineteen-year-old. A decision that makes a mockery of everything you stand for, everything you’ve done since. If word got out, your reputation would be ruined. The very name ‘The Girls’ Team’ would be a joke. You’d be like Ellen—you’d have to hide out.”
The wind stopped and there was no sound but the odd settlings of the cabin, board against board, squeaking futilely. Her face was ashen, her eyes unseeing. Her tight throat turned her words gravelly. “Tiff could have … checked with the agent. She didn’t. She could have … called the airline. No. She didn’t do anything. It was her fault the flight was at the last minute. She had an exam that day. Helena and I, we put off our flight for her. We should have gone a day early. But we didn’t; we waited for her …”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t change anything.”
The wind rattled the windows, scraping branches against the panes. It chilled my fingers. I looked down at Bryn’s hand; she had mashed the orange section to pulp.
“It just happened. I didn’t plan to do it. It was split second. I was there picking up my new ticket. The agent had the file open on his desk. There were two sheets of memo paper with Fannie’s name, her address, her phone number. Both places, the old and the new. I just picked up the new one and stuck it in my pocket. Nothing more than that.”
“On impulse.”
“I didn’t know it would keep her from getting to the Nationals. He could have called; her old roommates could have given him the new number. She could have called him to confirm. He could have called Information …”
Tiff wouldn’t have bothered to list her name with Information in her new place with only a couple weeks left in the term, but I didn’t want to interrupt Bryn. She was just throwing out excuses she’d tried on herself and rejected over the last twelve years, hoping desperately that this time they wouldn’t be too slippery to stick.
Her shallow breath caught, she breathed in deep and glared at me. “Okay! Okay, it was wrong, but I didn’t force her to go up on the platform and crack her spine. She could have just gotten drunk and come up with nothing more than a hangover. She didn’t have to dive.”
“But she did dive. And you do feel guilty,” I said softly.
“Guilt?” She looked puzzled. I wondered if she had walled herself off from emotion so completely that she had never even named the emotion she was hiding from. No wonder she had never been able to face Tiff. But she had allowed Ellen Waller to bring her confessional bench into her living room.
For the first time I could see the bond that had kept her and Ellen together, the pain of living with unmentionable guilt. Guilt that could never be voiced, never atoned, never forgiven. Ellen had agreed only to drive a getaway car; she had never dreamed she’d cause a death. Bryn had made a snap decision expecting to delay and disconcert her rival, not to maim her. Youthful, self-absorbed, ill-conceived decisions, pebbles tossed with no thought of the water. One killed, one injured. How many other lives corroded? Not the least of them Ellen and Bryn.
Now Bryn’s charge up to the microphones in the Olympics shone in a different light. “Could you have allowed yourself to win a medal?” I asked. Or had she been so obsessed with injustice at the Olympics she couldn’t have concentrated on diving?
She looked blankly at me. I wasn’t surprised, only disappointed. Bryn was not an introspective person and she’d had years of practice blocking out thoughts of error. “But Ellen did bring in the confessional bench. And she did start to talk about the benefits of confession, right?”
Bryn laughed, a weak sound, but still st
artling. “She tried. God, she tried. I told her if I’d wanted a therapist there were probably six within spitting distance—from every person in Berkeley!”
A gust of wind shook the house. For a moment I thought it was an earthquake. The rain smacked down on the roof. The windows rattled in their frames. Branches scraped across their panes like giant claws. Bryn Wiley sat rock still, braced as if against lashes of retribution.
I wondered if she was as maimed as Fannie Johnson, as dead emotionally as Karl Pironnen. But of course, emotionally dead is hardly the same as having a tag on your toe.
Outside, the rain was as thick as plastic sheets. In here, it was dark as dusk. I could have used that bowling ball of a candle I’d bought on the Avenue. But I didn’t dare light a candle. If anyone had followed me, he or she could trot up within spitting distance of the house and I’d neither see nor hear. Right now the killer could be out there.
Or in here.
Bryn was a good enough shot to have taken out Ellen. And setting her house on fire after Ellen was dead neatly turned the focus back to herself. Everyone assumed that Bryn was the intended victim. She could go on being Bryn Wiley, the Olympic Hero. Eventually she would get another secretary, and people would forget she’d ever had this one.
Bryn had snatched Tiff’s address impulsively. A quick, sure movement, the way she walked, sat, drove. I remembered her the night she shot out of the driveway and nearly hit the nudist.
But not everyone was this impulsive. Some killers needed time to prepare. I had a thought. “Bryn, Ellen wasn’t comfortable driving, right?” I asked.
“She hated it. She drove like a snail and stopped dead if she saw a squirrel.”
“So anyone who had observed the two of you pulling into the driveway would know the difference?”
“I should hope,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
I was amazed how quickly she could regroup. Were the wheels already turning to push today’s disclosure behind her? “If you had called her to pick you up, would Ellen have gotten back in the car and driven to get you?”