A Hopeless Case

by K. K. Beck

  “All right,” said Leonora. “That’ll be really good. You know, I used to think the reason Dad never talked about her was that he loved her so much his heart was broken when she died. But I don’t think that now.”

  “I guess he just doesn’t know what to say,” said Jane.

  “I don’t think he loved her. I don’t think her parents did either. It means no one really loved her, doesn’t it?” said Leonora.

  Now Jane didn’t know what to say. “Sometimes, it seems we’re all alone. And other times, it doesn’t.”

  “I know,” said Leonora. “But when we feel most alone, we can’t remember those other times.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” said Jane, changing her tone. She suddenly remembered how young Leonora was. How young and motherless.

  “Yes, I’m all right. But I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t be,” said Jane. “I’ll be in touch. I’m not giving up, and I’m going to find out about your mother for you.”

  “Is the kid okay?” Calvin asked after she hung up. “That sounded like pretty heavy-duty stuff you girls were talking about.”

  Jane sighed. “She’s so young. And she already knows what a bitch life can be.” She looked down at the notebooks. She wished there was more there for Leonora.

  “There aren’t any dates on these things,” she said, riffling the pages. “Which one do you think is the last one?”

  “One of them was only half-full,” said Calvin. He flipped through the pages of the hot pink one. “Here. This one.”

  She opened it up somewhere in the middle. In purple she read:

  A flock of robins fly into the window and around my bed. They want me to fly with them. It isn’t the flying dream, though. Instead, one of the robins grows big and speaks to me in a voice of chimes. Follow me, she says. I have what you’re looking for.

  So purple must mean dreams. Green seemed to be mundane daily matters and red was a sort of journey of the soul in the waking state. Jane read a few more passages to check this theory.

  In green:

  Kenny’s taking the post office test. I hope he doesn’t get it. Who’ll take care of Lullaby? I want to be able to come and go when I need to. He says they have good medical benefits. It’s so pathetic, he doesn’t realize we are protected by our own—my own—spiritual strength.

  Jane flipped forward a few pages. If only Kenny had got that post office job, he and Leonora would be in fat city. He’d almost have enough years for a decent pension.

  In red:

  I feel closer and closer to the center. I know that I am being called to a great spiritual life.

  Jane flipped to the last pages of the pink notebook that Linda had written.

  In green:

  Went over to Mom’s. She and Dad are impossible. They nagged me again about the money. I don’t care about money. What happiness has it ever brought them? They are such tiny people with such tiny minds. Won’t they be surprised when the End Time comes and they aren’t part of the New Time. It is the bad energy of people like them that’s dragged the world down into the totally screwed-up place it’s at now. I borrowed Mom’s sewing machine to make new curtains for the living room. I found some cool material at Home Yardage. Big red flowers on dark blue with red leaves. It was $1.19 a yard, and there were three big remnants, so I’ll have enough. Maybe I can make some pillows to match. Totally bummed out by Mom and Dad and their attitude. They are so closed to spiritual development. But they’re probably too old to learn, anyway. Came back and did a couple of numbers with Kenny, and calmed down. He really is sweet. Even though he’s not as spiritually developed an entity as I am, he really helps me get mellow when I need it. I’m glad he’s here to take care of Lullaby. If I had to think about her all the time, I couldn’t do what I’m meant to do. This is such an important time for me now—and for the world. In his own sweet way, Kenny’s place in the whole Plan is important, too.

  In red ink she had continued:

  It’s weird how calm I am. I keep on living my regular daily life on one level, and all the time I know about what’s happening and my place in the Change Time. I realize now how every single thing that’s ever happened to me has all come together to make me the special person I am now. I’ve come through the flames and into the light. My dreams are poems that will come true. My mind’s a magic lantern and a window to the future. But there is no future, no past, only the Now and Forever. It’s all so clear to me now. The history of the New Time is written in my dreams and in the voice of the bird and in all the Chosen. We are the Children and the Parents, and together, we are God. God is me and I am God.

  The third entry, in purple, read:

  I’m at Bellevue High School. I am supposed to take a science test, or I won’t graduate. Then, a golden sleigh comes down from the sky. I step in and sail away, far away. Pretty soon, I am flying all by myself. I zoom over my house and then across the lake. I am skimming the water, and then I stop and dance on the water. It is night and the moon has left little dapples of light all over the surface of the lake. The dapples of light dance with me on the water, and then they turn into little silver fish. The fish are singing, and their voices are like chimes. Then, the dolphins come and circle us and they speak, and I understand them and learn that all the history of the cosmos is coming from their smiling mouths.

  It figured. Linda was just the type to believe that the dolphins had the accumulated wisdom of the ages in their streamlined skulls. While Jane thought dolphins terribly appealing, with their nice lines and mouths that looked like human smiles, she had never for a moment suspected they were more intelligent than humans.

  Until she’d bumped into this trite opinion, she’d actually found Linda’s dreamlike prose rather seductive. But one thing stood out, however. If Linda was suicidal, why was she concerned with buying curtain material at a dollar nineteen a yard? Planning to run up new curtains and suicide just didn’t mesh.

  On the spiritual front, there was another disquieting note here. It appeared that Linda had been sucked into the ultimate delusion and the gravest heresy. She thought she was God—all fuzzily connected to all of creation and in league with whoever the Chosen were—but God, nevertheless. Jane believed that thinking you were God posed a very grave danger to the soul. In Linda’s case, maybe it had put her in physical danger as well.

  Chapter 18

  And just where the hell have you been?”

  It was seven o’clock in the morning. Jane was standing on her front porch, putting her key in the lock. When she heard the man’s voice, she jumped.

  He stepped from the shadow of the overgrown camellia and stood next to her. She recognized the detective who’d talked to her at Richard English’s Studio, but she couldn’t remember his name, if indeed she’d ever known it.

  “You scared me,” she said sharply.

  “Well you scared me, too,” he said. “My main witness in a homicide investigation checks herself out of the hospital against medical advice—before I have a chance to question her—and disappears.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I wasn’t thinking, I guess.”

  “I guess you weren’t,” he said, frowning, “because whatever you were doing, it wasn’t as important as a homicide investigation.”

  “I already apologized,” she said. “And there’s no point in my apologizing more than once, is there?”

  “I’m sorry if I snapped at you,” he said. “I’ve been kind of irritable lately, to tell you the truth.”

  Jane looked at him carefully. He actually seemed to be smiling a little. She smiled back, but in a restrained fashion. “Would you like to come in?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I would.”

  She felt like hell and probably looked worse. She had hoped to take a shower and change. She’d slept in her clothes, and she wanted to wash her hair. Instead, being constitutionally unable to invite another human being into her living space without offering refreshment of some kind, she
made coffee, while the detective, who said his name was John Cameron, sat patiently on one of Uncle Harold’s stiff sofas.

  When she came back into the living room, he was staring up at the old engraving of Saint George mixing it up with the dragon. “Kind of corny, isn’t it?” she said, as if she wanted to disassociate herself from Uncle Harold’s ideas of art.

  “I like it,” said the detective. “Saint George, right? If he isn’t the patron saint of police officers, he should be.” He accepted the coffee she handed him.

  “I’ve been very eager to talk to you, Miss da Silva,” he began. For the first time, she really looked at him. He looked about forty. She’d remembered his brown eyes and his voice. Now she took in the planes of his face, and the way his fine dark hair sprang from a broad brow. It was a nice face with a firm mouth and a slightly cleft chin. He was tall and he was wearing a brown suit and a blue silk tie with narrow brown stripes.

  “It’s Mrs., actually.” She didn’t know why she always said that. Out of loyalty to Bernardo, perhaps.

  “I see. You’re married.” He looked around the room, as if expecting to find a Mr. da Silva lurking in a corner.

  “No. I’m a widow,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Now what is it you wanted to know? I told you everything I remember about the attack.”

  “Yes, and the crime scene substantiates what you’ve told us. What we don’t understand, though, is what you were doing there in the first place.”

  “Well, I had an appointment with Mr. English.”

  He set his cup down in the saucer a little too vigorously and splashed some coffee into it. “Yes, we’ve been over all that. Why?”

  She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “No problem. I get paid by the hour.” He took his cup and saucer up again and sipped, looking expectantly at her over the rim of the cup.

  “Well, it’s just that I thought Mr. English could help me find out—” She stopped. What did she have to tell him? Did she really want the police involved?

  “Let’s get one thing real straight,” he said forcefully, after letting her pause hang in the air for a few seconds. “A man is dead. He was killed. A woman was beaten. That’s you. It’s my job to find out who did it and why. If there is a why, which there isn’t always. I expect you and any other good citizen to help me. Which means I want you to tell me everything. I’ll decide whether it’s important or not.

  “You seem reluctant to tell me about it. You may have your reasons. But they’re not important anymore, because we’re involved in a police investigation. A couple of felonies have been committed. Now let’s start over again. Why were you meeting Richard English?”

  She took a deep breath. “I thought he could tell me about someone he apparently knew many years ago.”

  “Good. Who was that?”

  “Her name was Linda Donnelly. She might have used her married name, Martin; I’m not sure.”

  “And where is this individual now?”

  “She’s dead. She died sixteen years ago.”

  “I see. What did you want to know about her?”

  “I’m helping her daughter find out about her. Linda was a member of the Fellowship of the Flame. She died— drowned—right after she’d given them all her money. I was trying to see if Leonora—that’s her daughter—could get it back.”

  “I see. And why were you doing this for Leonora?”

  “Because it’s hopeless,” she said. All of a sudden, she realized how bizarre everything sounded. “I’m supposed to find hopeless cases and help them,” she said with exasperation. “Like Leonora. My dead uncle wants me to, and I want to, so I can send for my Jaguar and have charge accounts all over town. Oh, the whole thing’s ridiculous. I should have gone to law school or something, instead of sitting here with a fat lip trying to tell you all this.”

  The detective’s face took on an expression of veiled alarm. Jane started laughing. “I know, I know,” she said. “I sound like a complete nut case, don’t I?”

  “Not necessarily,” Cameron said warily.

  “Yes I do. All right. I’ll try to tell you everything.”

  And so she did. But she left out one detail. Until she had time to make copies of the notebooks, she didn’t want to have to hand them over. She’d tell him soon enough.

  After she’d finished, he leaned back in his chair and looked at her from beneath lowered lids. “So you’re telling me that you’re trying to be some kind of a volunteer avenger or something? Under the terms of your uncle’s will?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mrs. da Silva, please take some personal advice. Drop the whole thing.” He sighed. “What you describe is a very flaky way to make a living. And what you’ve involved yourself in now is a very dangerous enterprise.”

  “So you do think that English and the Fellowship of the Flame are somehow connected?” she said.

  He gave her a noncommittal look. “We’ll be investigating all avenues.”

  She stood up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  “We’ll check out the Flame people, naturally, after what you’ve just told me. I wish you’d told me sooner,” he added a little severely. “I remember them from years ago, when I was on foot patrol in the University District. We used to get a lot of noise complaints about them. They can’t still be around, can they?”

  “Beats me,” said Jane.

  He rose too. “Thank you, Mrs. da Silva. We’ll be in touch.” He looked down at his empty cup. “Thanks for the coffee,” he added.

  She saw him to the door, and he turned and looked down at her. “You live here alone?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t release your name or address to the news people,” he said.

  “I really appreciate that,” she said. “I know how the press can be.” After Bernardo died, she’d learned that clearly enough. Right after the accident, standing in the pits while the smoke still hung in the air, and they were still cutting him out of his car, they’d turned on her, like a pack of jackals, clicking away with their cameras, pushing and shoving and shouting to her in a dozen languages, blocking her way as she tried to find a vehicle to take her to the hospital.

  Then later, at the funeral, they’d waited for her outside the church and pushed forward when she came out. She remembered thinking that if Bernardo had been there he wouldn’t have let them crowd his wife like that. He’d have kept one hand on her arm, guiding her through the crowd, and using the other to push at her tormentors, lifting his chin up belligerently and calling them sons-of-bitches in Portuguese.

  “Be careful,” Cameron said. “And call me if anything comes up.” He took out a card and wrote on the back of it. “My home number’s on the back. Call anytime.”

  As soon as he left, she went upstairs, took off her clothes, and got into the shower. She washed her hair and scrubbed herself hard, even though the bruises and scratches hurt.

  When she got out, she wrapped herself in a terry bathrobe and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

  She’d read all of Linda’s diaries last night, and followed her spiritual development through vague, pantheistic odes to nature, through the excitement of the Fellowship of the Flame, to her final apocalyptic ramblings about the End Time. Well, she’d got that part right. For her, it was the end time.

  Glimpses of her daily life seemed incredibly mundane, although there had been some nice bits about her baby daughter that might make Leonora feel better.

  Taken as a whole, however, the notebooks were pretty tedious. The self-indulgent work of a pretentious, unsophisticated young woman. Still, Jane felt sorry for Linda. There was a kind of desperation in those notebooks, a mad search for meaning. And for more. The Fellowship of the Flame seemed to give Linda what she needed most. A sense of her own importance.

  Jane wanted to go to sleep. Instead, she willed herself up off the bed and put on her oldest, softest jeans, a nice, faded T-shirt, and sneakers, and drove to t
he West Seattle ferry terminal.

  Vashon Island lies in Puget Sound, about thirty-five minutes away from Seattle by ferry boat. There are no bridges to the island. When Jane was a little girl, her family had come here every year to visit some friends who owned a vacation cottage on Quartermaster Harbor. Around the edges, the island had been a summer place. In the middle, it had been a rural area with dairy farms and orchards.

  Calvin Mason had given her a rundown on the island today. It combined old-fashioned farms, where the dairy cattle still grazed, with quaint roadside businesses and the odd bed-and-breakfast, some middle-aged hippies with ratty dogs and ratty trucks holed up in leaky waterfront cabins and corrugated tin outbuildings, and a determined band of commuters willing to put up with ferry lines, ferry strikes, rising ferry prices, and the occasional shutdown of the system altogether during heavy fogs or fierce winds. It was a sacrifice they were willing to make for the pleasures of country life within striking distance of a city. For a while at least. The turnover in this last group was high.

  At the dock, which gleamed wet in the light morning rain and smelled of salt water and creosote, the last of the morning commuters were straggling over as Jane arrived. Volvos and Hondas and Datsuns drove off the ferry with a big clunk where the metal ramp met the dock. The walk-on passengers were wearing business suits and day packs.

  The boat was half-empty going over. She parked on the car deck, then went up the metal stairs and out onto the passenger deck. The engine made an agreeable throbbing noise, and she watched the white wake from the stern and listened to the gulls.

  In the distance, a container ship slid through the mist. She squinted up at the sky and the smudgy, pale disk of sun veiled by fog. She remembered how the weather worked here and knew the fog would burn off soon enough.

  By the time she drove off the ferry on the Vashon side, the fog was lifting, lingering in patches among the dark limbs of the fir trees that lined the curving road.

  Soon, the dark trees gave way to green pastureland and farmhouses, and occasional roadside signs. HOT TUBS. HONEY. QUILTS. U-PICK RASPBERRIES. A small cedar A-frame structure had a big plastic sign that read MAPS OF THE ISLAND. A smaller sign below it read simply REALTY. She pulled over into the gravel parking lot and went inside.