“I saw your brother,” he said.
“Are you going to help me?” Her eyes were bloodshot. Her face looked thinner and she looked younger. Like one of the girls downstairs, he thought, challenged by her own beauty. Was that all it was? He wanted her despite everything. Was he a monster?
“What’s wrong with you?” he said.
“The guru called and said it was all right. That I would lose my mind, and I was to let it happen. Let it be lost.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My mother’s guru. Don’t you understand?”
“No. No, I don’t,” he said.
“My brother told me you have a secret. Is it true? About an accident?”
He looked at her sitting on the floor, smelt the raw dope and saw the pools that were her eyes. They seemed huge. He remembered the silences of Angkor Wat in the morning, recalled Jennifer moving down a stone temple corridor wearing blue jeans and a yellow tank top, a lone monkey watching her as she approached it.
“Yes.”
“So, you understand this madness then? It’s forced on us,” she said.
“Yes. Helpless. You feel helpless,” he said.
“Yes. Helpless.” She reached for his hand and held it. Then put his index finger on her bindi and pressed it onto her forehead, exactly on the mark.
“This is the Command Chakra — do you understand? It should be red turmeric, but I don’t have turmeric here.”
“No. I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. But you can feel that energy. Madness’s energy. Chakra energy? The Guru says we should not avoid it, madness. That we have to let it come. To be the helplessness. To be the madness — to be the anger. They all have to play out, they have to. Do you understand? What would we be if they didn’t play out? Nothing. We would be nothing. Not alive. I saw you on the boat, and you had it coming out of here.” She touched his third-eye spot and held her thumb against it. “That’s why you were stuttering and looking so frightened that day. Rishi said it might be madness. See, my husband saw it too — your madness.”
“Stop it,” he said. He grabbed her wrist, offended that they’d talked about him that way.
“Nirad killed his son—why? This is madness. It’s real, all around us. There is madness. Do you understand that? The world,” Asha said. She took a hit of the pipe. He saw the square looking piece of gold colored hash in the bowl. Its edges turned red-orange and flamed as she sucked on the pipe.
“Is your brother an Indian intelligence officer?”
“Yes. And my father too, once. They’re working hard to help me. Will you help me?”
“Yes,” he said.
There was a knock on the door and a well-dressed young man walked into the room.
“Detective, I want you to meet Robert — Robert Thomas.”
The men looked at each other, both sensing a rival.
“How do you do. I ran into Asha on the street, trying to buy drugs,” Thomas said. “You must be O’Higgins, the detective who called me.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Thomas helped me. I needed this, oblivion — it’s the world, you see, it makes us mad. I know you’ll help me. Both of you.”
CHAPTER 17
O’Higgins got out of bed. The hashish he’d smoked with Asha Chaundhry had knocked him out and he’d not needed a Valium to fall asleep. He’d slept well, without the horrible dreams he’d been having since the accident. Dreams where he was always searching for his wife, still wearing his life jacket.
He went to the kitchen and made coffee, surprised by his drug taking and by the fact that he’d enjoyed being seriously zoned out, sitting on the floor of Asha Chaundhry’s hotel suite and staring out at the City’s night lights, listening to Asha repeat a mantra over and over. They were both crazy. It was obvious, and he woke up accepting the fact. All his trips to see his psychiatrist weren’t effecting a cure.
Okay, I’m nuts, he’d thought, lying in bed. He wanted to make love to Asha Chaundhry. He couldn’t escape the feeling of physical attraction, nor could he explain it exactly as it was far more intense than just physical lust the way it was with Madrone.
He noticed, as he passed in the hallway, that his daughter’s bedroom door was closed and he remembered that she’d stayed overnight. It felt good to know she was home again. He went down to the family room, opened the wall safe and took out Bharti Kumar’s iPhone, bringing it upstairs with him to the kitchen. He brewed a pot of coffee. It was just after seven in the morning.
A text from Marvin hit his cell phone as he went to the kitchen table with his coffee cup.
I’ll come to your crib this AM.
OK, he texted back immediately.
He would have to play Marvin the tape of his conversation with Asha’s brother, and he had no idea how Marvin would react. But it was time for them to touch base on the physical evidence and on the coroner’s autopsy reports. He intended to interview Nirad Chaundhry again, allowing Chaundhry, to believe that Bharti Kumar’s phone was still intact and a real threat to him.
He heard his daughter get up and move around the house. When she finally came downstairs, she was wearing brown yoga pants and a T-shirt that had belonged to her mother. She seemed to be even skinner than usual, and it worried him. Her arms looked incredibly thin.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Hey, Dad. Late night?”
He didn’t answer. “I’m glad you decided to stay,” he said instead.
“Yeah. Sacramento is okay, but — it’s kinda boring. The cousins are cool. But not much to do there, really.”
“What about school?” he said.
“I want to go to Marin Academy, if they’ll have me. Kate is there.” His daughter had been a good student before the accident, but since, she’d been slipping, spending more time dancing than studying. Marin Academy was the county’s premier private high school, and expensive. They had debated sending her, but they couldn’t afford it and have a savings account for her college. Their wealthy friends in the neighborhood had sent their children, afraid of the public high school, which was predominantly third world and full of the children of immigrants, half of them non-English speaking.
“Sure. Okay. You want me to call them?” he asked. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out some frozen waffles. His daughter liked them.
“It’s expensive, I know. Can we, like, afford it?” She poured a cup of coffee and sat across from him, holding her cup in both hands the way her mother used to.
“Yeah, we can,” he said.
His wife had left a life insurance policy, one of the perquisites of her job at Cal. He’d intended to use the two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars she’d left for his daughter’s college. But the Marin Academy where a lot of her friends were going, and very near their house, was a good school. He wanted her to be happy, right now, more than anything else. And he felt guilty for sending her away. He owed her this.
“Okay, I’ll go there and see about enrolling, what it takes. I mean, if you call about the money. I want to try out for the SF ballet school, too. They have try-outs next week.” They heard the waffles pop up. “Excellent,” she said. “Waffles!”
“I need your help,” he said, picking two waffles out of the toaster.
“Okay.”
“That kid you knew, the propeller head. The tall Iranian kid,” he said, finding a plate. “These are for you. I want you to eat them. Alex?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I want to see him. Can you get him to call me?” he asked.
“Sure. He’s working at the Apple store in Corte Madera now.”
“How much do you weigh?” he said, plating the waffles.
“Ninety-seven and change,” Rebecca said. She was lying. She weighed ninety pounds the last time she’d checked, weeks ago.
“I want you to gain some weight, okay? Didn’t you eat while you were at your aunt’s?” He put the plate in front of her.
“Yeah …” She looked down at her coffee cup, avoiding his question.
He knew a lot of ballerinas fought to lose weight because the “look” the ballet companies wanted was of wafer-thin, long-necked girls. His daughter had the look they wanted but she, like so many dancers, fell prey to eating disorders, trying to appear more than perfect.
He got syrup from the cupboard and made a show of putting her breakfast on the kitchen table. “I’m getting butter out, too. Please use lots of it. It’s good. You’ll love it.”
“Yuck! Animal secretions … A guy came by last night looking for you,” his daughter said. “He was wearing a turban thing. Big guy.”
He stopped pouring a second cup of coffee and looked up.
“He said he’d come back. He knew my name. He said ‘You must be Rebecca?’ He left a card. I put it out by the front door. He was kind of creepy. Asked me where I was going to school.”
He finished pouring his coffee without saying anything, playing it off. He reached into the refrigerator, got the butter dish out, walked it over to the table and set it down in front of her.
“Eat your breakfast, will you please. Then call Alex for me. See if I can stop by his place.” He watched as she poured only a little line of syrup on her waffles. When she was little she would drown them. He wished she would do that now. He bit his tongue, not wanting to fight with her on her first day back home.
They couldn’t talk right away because Rebecca had come in and sat with Marvin. Marvin had known his daughter since she was a little girl, and the two had always been close. Rebecca had spent weekends at Marvin’s house, as Marvin’s two daughters were the same age. It was the first time that Rebecca had allowed herself to be natural with Marvin. Both, after the accident, had felt awkward, not knowing what to say to each other. He enjoyed seeing them together, with their small talk and jokes. And he knew that if something ever happened to him, Marvin would make sure his daughter was all right.
When Rebecca left to see about the Marin Academy, he’d played Marvin the recording of his conversation with Neel Roa from the night before.
“I’m going to load Kumar’s phone with some bullshit to show Nirad Chaundhry. So he thinks Kumar’s phone is still working and intact.”
Marvin looked at him. The nanny’s iPhone sat on the coffee table between them.
“That should be over at the crime lab,” Marvin said.
“Yeah. Well, if her cell was wiped clean, I didn’t see the point.”
“What’s wrong with you, man? Really? Are you losing your shit, completely?”
“Nothing is wrong with me. I think that Asha’s brother is telling the truth. I think we need his help or we’re going to get played. You can see who we’re up against now. The Indian government. And maybe the CIA, too.”
“It’s illegal to include him in our investigation, and will destroy our case if you’re found out. You’re the police. He could even be a suspect. Have you thought of that? You’re conspiring with a suspect’s brother, for Christ’s sakes,” Marvin said.
“It’s not illegal. Not really. He says he was in New York City the day of the murders. You heard him. I’ve not told Roa anything, and I’m not going to. But if he wants to call me to talk. What’s wrong with that?” O’Higgins said.
“You believe him? This Roa guy,” Marvin said.
“Yes, I do. Nirad Chaundhry is an asshole. You saw how he acted. He was scared when we questioned him. He didn’t act normal from the get go. And why did he send his grandkids back to India? What did they know?”
“You’re digging a deep hole here, Mike. You see that, don’t you? This whole investigation is going off the rails, man.”
“There’s something else. Here, look at this.” O’Higgins slid a business card across the coffee table. “It’s a guy named Das. The same Consulate guy who demanded we let him enter the Chaundhry house the night of the murders. He came here. Rebecca talked to him. He knew her name, Marvin.”
“Shiiit.” Marvin picked up the business card and looked at it. The coin finally dropped: the Indian Consulate was targeting them.
“I’ve got to know if you’re in or out about Neel Roa. Are you cool with it, yes or no? If you’re not, I’ll swear you didn’t know anything about it, if it blows up on me. You have my word,” O’Higgins said.
“Rebecca. My kids? Have you thought about that? Maybe it would be best if the FBI did take over. All we have to do is play this tape for them. That’s obstruction of justice,” Marvin said. “Their killing of the nanny’s iPhone. Attacking a police officer. All of it.”
“I don’t trust the FBI. For all we know they’ll do a grassy knoll and stitch up Asha Chaundhry. And how can we ever prove Indian spooks are working for Nirad Chaundhry? Neel Roa isn’t going to come forward. He can’t,” Michael said. He looked at his partner. “I don’t trust anyone else but us. Not on this. I believe Roa. And besides, the FBI could fold under pressure from Washington. Why wouldn’t they? You know what they’re like when the big political dogs get off the porch. They’ll go along — and we’ll be fucked and fucked over.
“We are the only ones who can win this,” he continued. “We’re just the local cops doing our job. They can’t stop us investigating a murder.”
“They can stop the DA from prosecuting whoever we arrest,” Marvin said. “What about Rebecca? What about my kids?” Marvin said. “What am I supposed to do if they come after them?”
“I’m going to tell Rebecca to go stay with my brother in Bolinas for a week or two, until we get by this. I think we can make an arrest soon. Can you send your kids to your mother-in-law’s?”
“I guess. But it’s crazy. Jesus, Mike. Why should we care so damn much?”
“We can’t let this rich bastard run the table, Marvin. We can’t. I didn’t serve in Iraq to let foreigners push us around here at home. And Nirad Chaundhry is trying to fix this case so an innocent woman goes down for something she didn’t do.”
“How do you know Asha Chaundhry didn’t do it? You still don’t know that she didn’t. We don’t know who did it yet, Mike. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“If it turns out Asha Chaundhry committed these murders, we’ll arrest her. I promise you.”
“Yeah, okay. You got to tell me the truth, first. Are you having an affair with Asha Chaundhry? Did you hook up with her, after you met her on the ferry? Is that what this is about, Mike? Have you slept with her? Just tell me the truth, man.”
“No. And if you’re thinking that I was the one to kill her husband—no, I didn’t kill her husband, either.”
“Where were you that day? The day of the murders. Before we got the call?”
“Here. And the pistol range at Point Richmond in the morning. They have cameras. And I paid with my credit card.”
“Did anyone see you? Did anyone visit you here in the afternoon?”
“No. From about eleven on, I was here — yeah, someone did see me. The UPS guy saw me. He came to the door around 3:30 or so.”
“Fire up your computer and show me the range charge and we’re good,” Marvin said.
“You’re evil, Marvin.”
“Just do it, man. You’re acting so crazy I don’t know any more about you. Really. I got other news for you: the judge gave us the green light to look at the neighbor’s bank account for probable cause. I just got a call from Wells Fargo’s legal department. Paul Gilbert got a wire transfer from a German bank for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars—just ten hours after the murders.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. Now, show me your credit card charge, you jackass.”
While they were looking up O’Higgins’ credit card account online, the coroner’s investigator Millikin called and told O’Higgins that
not only had Bharti Kumar been pregnant when she was killed, but her wounds were too deep to have been caused by a conventional knife, like the ones they’d found in Rishi’s office. She’d been “run through almost” in several locations, the investigator said.
“And now we don’t have a murder weapon either then,” O’Higgins said, putting down his phone.
***
He’d come home that afternoon from a meeting with the District Attorney, who said that she’d gotten complaints from the Indian Embassy in Washington, as well as from the US State Department, both accusing O’Higgins and Lee of harassing Nirad Chaundhry.
The DA herself wanted an explanation. All of the accounts she cited had been completely false, including one of a Ford, like his, parking in front of the Chaundhry mansion with someone who looked like him — “a tall white man” — behind the wheel. All lies.
She also had claims of calls to Nirad Chaundhry’s offices and cell phone, recorded by Nirad, of someone telling him to confess or “We’ll get it out of you one way or another.” The person making the threats said he was “a friend of the detectives.” The accusations were being taken seriously.
He’d had to assure the DA that he had not done anything wrong, and that Chaundhry was making these accounts up to get him and Marvin off the case. They were just doing their job. After hearing the facts, she’d assured both of them that they had her support. O’Higgins didn’t believe her. He thought she was only pretending to support them for the benefit of the SFPD’s brass, whose support she needed if she was to run again.
He’d called Chaundhry’s lawyer and set up a meeting with Nirad. He’d walked in with Kumar’s iPhone and asked Nirad if there was anything incriminating on the phone that he should know about. The look in Chaundhry’s eyes turned murderous. He’d gotten up and walked out of the conference room without saying another word.
“I want you to stay out at the beach, at your uncle’s. I can’t explain. Not right now. I’m sorry, but it’s for your own good,” O’Higgins said. His words sounded mean even to him. They drove fast, west toward the turn off for Dogtown where Sir Francis Drake split and became Highway 1 in West Marin. He’d told his daughter, when they’d gotten in the car, only that they were going to Bolinas to drop something off at her uncle’s house.
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