Last Ferry Home

by Kent Harrington

  He’d dreaded asking her to stay in Bolinas for a few days. He knew it would look like he didn’t want her at home with him. She couldn’t help but think that he was pushing her away a second time. But he knew he had to do it for her own good. He felt that Nirad Chaundhry’s government was going to come after him, try to hurt him, or even his daughter. He’d seen how the US spooks worked in Iraq, and it was usually bloody and effective. He expected the same from the Indian intelligence service.

  “But I don’t understand,” Rebecca said. “I just got home. I thought you wanted me to come home?” She was upset. He’d waited until they were half way to Bolinas to tell her he wanted her to spend a few days out at the beach.

  “I called Marin Academy. It’s all set up. You start in a week,” he said. He’d made a point of not telling her about Marin Academy until now, because he knew that she would be pleased and that might make up for her being sent to Bolinas.

  “I don’t want to go to Uncle Andrew’s right now,” she said.

  “You have to go,” he said.

  “Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Because I’m asking you to, all right?”

  “Do you have a girlfriend? I found hair … in the bathroom. It wasn’t Mom’s, and it wasn’t mine. Long blond hair. Is that it? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you just going to forget me and Mom? Is that it? Let me out!” Rebecca said.

  He pulled the car over in Lagunitas by the post office. It was cloudy. The south side of the road was deep in shadows, the road there lined by old redwood trees. The hills were obscured in part by fog, pushing in from the coast only a few miles away.

  “No.”

  “Whose hair is it?” Rebecca said.

  “A woman I’ve met,” he said.

  “A woman. You saw someone there — in Mom’s house. Did you fuck her?” Rebecca said.

  “I have to try and have a normal life, Rebecca. It’s been almost a year — it just happened. It’s someone from work. I — I don’t have to explain it to you.”

  “That’s why you sent me off, isn’t it? So you could fuck girls?”

  “No, it’s not why. I was depressed—okay. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist. I didn’t want you to be around me like that. I felt guilty that I couldn’t be a real father to you. I felt guilty that I had to see a doctor. I didn’t want you to know because I thought you’d think less of me. That everyone would think I was crazy. I knew your aunt June’s house would be normal. I wanted things to be normal for you.”

  A horse trailer passed them driving too fast, the trailer swaying disappearing finally into the fog.

  “Are you crazy? Sending me away now for no reason is crazy.”

  “There is a reason,” he said.

  “What is it, then? I want to know.”

  He reached for her hand, but she pulled away and got out of the car and ran back down Sir Francis Drake. He swore under his breath, watching her in the rear view mirror.

  “Shit.”

  CHAPTER 18

  It was 12:15 noon on Friday. He’d been determined to make his appointment with Dr. Schneider.

  “Have you had symptoms, since I saw you? Has the agoraphobia gotten any better?” Dr. Schneider asked. She seemed different, more intense, less clinical, as if they were friends who had a past rather than doctor and patient.

  “No large bodies of water in Pacific Heights. I’m acting in a self-destructive way, though. I can say that,” O’Higgins said. “I don’t know about the other. It might be better, or it might be worse.”

  Dr. Schneider gave him a puzzled look.

  He explained that Pacific Heights was where he’d caught the double murders. She said she’d read about the case of the Indian family in the press, and that it sounded truly horrific.

  “You were ready to discuss the accident. What happened that day?” She was fired up again, and wanted him to face that day.

  “Not today,” O’Higgins said blandly, stealing her urgency.

  Their relationship was changing. He’d come in, hat in hand, those first few times as The Patient who was ill and somewhat intimidated by the doctor’s fresh-faced, medical-voodoo aura. He felt different today about everything. Nothing looked the same. She appeared to be just what she was: a young doctor trying her best to confront an angry male psychology. Good luck with that.

  He’d taken his daughter, after a terrific fight, to stay at his brother’s place in Bolinas. The confession that he had another woman in his life was, he realized, a confession about their life going forward, and how it would be different. It signaled that they would both have to leave Jennifer’s death behind them, no matter how painful and difficult, for good, and search for life.

  Nothing they could do to themselves as punishment was going to change that, or bring her back. It was live now, fully in the present, with all that it implied, or wither away and die spiritually themselves. As soon as he confessed his affair, he understood that he was reaching for life again. It was clear now he’d turned the corner, all the things that had been wrong with him were a result of his not wanting to live. And now, surprisingly, he realized he did want to live.

  He and his daughter had ridden in silence after his pronouncement past Dogtown on the road toward Bolinas, the tree tops—pines and redwoods— glimmering green tips in the fog; the road cast at times in deep winter shadows—the winding black asphalt wet from fog. The afternoon hooded by a dark winter sky.

  As they drove in silence, he thought of outings taken long ago to nearby Limantour Beach, when Rebecca was just a baby and he was still a patrol officer. Jennifer would carry their daughter papoose style, wearing cutoffs and barefoot, her hair up. They would walk down the beach for miles to the north toward Point Reyes, picnicking in the dunes at the estuary, far from everyone, in a spot where it was said Sir Francis Drake had first come ashore in North America.

  It had seemed a holy place to him. It was starkly beautiful, sand and sky, great piles of driftwood bleached by the sun. The beach lonely and ancient feeling, and yet they were so young it seemed, even then, odd to think that they too would grow older, that the baby would grow up to be a young woman. Jennifer seemed almost like a teenager herself at the time. She’d been in her early twenties when they had Rebecca.

  Later, when Rebecca was older, he would walk her down to the surf and let her play in the tidal rush, naked, in what looked like a painting that might be called “Humans On A Beach”. All of that sacred-feeling past seemed like an impossible dream now. He remembered turning back and seeing his wife sunbathing, her top off, her Okie-white freckled skin almost completely hidden in the low grass-dotted dunes, his daughter’s joyful screams, sandpipers in flocks walking arrogantly along the edge of the surf, all lifting off at once in a burst, as a wave broke and rushed at them. Happiness. Joy. Nature.

  Jennifer would watch them playing at the water’s edge, her knees drawn up, smiling. He had to leave the memory there on that ancient lonely beach, as beautiful and wonderful as it had been. It was just that now: only a memory and ephemeral as life itself, like water on sand. He’d turned toward his daughter, wanting to speak to her and tell her that they only had the future. That they had to get along in order to build it together. But she was angry, and wouldn’t look at him. She played a game on her cell phone the rest of the way to his brother’s house.

  He had constructed a trap for Nirad Chaundhry and was waiting to spring it on him, knowing that the trap would, most likely put him and Marvin in danger. He didn’t care. On the way to his doctor’s appointment he realized that he was inured to consequences. Life and death were all the same to him. Life required taking chances. He realized that when he told Rebecca the truth about his affair with Madrone.

  What he wanted was to arrest Nirad Chaundhry for murder. If he was completely honest, he wanted to sleep with Asha, too. Since he’d sat with her on the floor of her hotel suite, watc
hing her chant, he’d wanted to draw her to his side, to comfort her, to explain to her everything he’d learned about death and its wake. By sleeping with her, he fantasized, in physical union they would burn up all their pain on some kind of sex-altar. It was crazy, and drug-induced at the time, but the feelings had lingered, the wanting. He was not proud of it, given the circumstances. But it was true, nonetheless. The truth, no matter how difficult, sets you free, the doctor had said once.

  “I’m working a strange case,” he told the doctor.

  “Okay, you want to talk about it?”

  “I’ve decided to spit into the establishment’s eye,” he said. “That’s dangerous.”

  “What does that mean, Michael?”

  “There’s been a murder — no, two murders, and the person who is probably responsible is above the law. Or seems to be, anyway. And I don’t want to accept that. It’s stupid. Everyone around me wants to accept it. But I don’t. It offends me. It’s personal.”

  “Why is that?” Schneider said.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. It makes me feel alive, I think. Fighting. When I was over there, I felt very alive. After the accident I felt just the opposite. I felt numb. For months now I’ve felt numb. I slept with this woman I met, and that broke the ice. Helped me feel something again.”

  “By over there, you mean Iraq?”

  “Yes. Iraq. The war. Killing. Soldiering. I was good at it. Too good.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to go after the bad guys?” she said. “You’re a policeman.”

  “When they’re poor, but when they’re rich and connected, it’s different. Completely different. This guy. The guy I’m after, he’s as connected as it gets. What I’m doing is probably career suicide.”

  “Then why do it? Everyone has a right to stop suicide, career or otherwise. Don’t take that call,” Schneider said.

  He realized she meant it. From a medical point of view, sacrifice was a kind of illness. He’d never thought of knuckling under to corruption as healthy, but he saw how society was moving that way, inch by inch. Descending toward something horrible, slowly every day. He saw how psychiatry could make the case that sacrifice was futile and harmful to the individual and therefore dangerous, like sex.

  It was the first time he felt the doctor was not following him, not really getting it. This was an existential fight, deeper than living contentedly inside a corrupt society, accepting its norms. He’d thrown down the gauntlet because he wanted to live, not be numb to his emotions, and this meant consciously living, being aware of what he wanted no matter how shocking or perverted it would seem to outsiders. He was going to climb out of his funk hole where he’d been hiding from life. He understood this, but she did not. Was she simply there, in her capacity as a doctor, to allow people to conform to the majority’s POV?

  Was conformity the necessary component of mental health? Conversely, was non-conformity a sign of mental illness? Was it that stark a choice? Was this the upshot of all his doctor’s fancy medical education? Were Freud and his ilk simply the crossing guards for what turned into German society’s Fascist death spiral? Was the human subconscious, itself, to blame for Hitler? For Stalin? For the 20th century’s impressive record of mass slaughter and programmed genocide—or was it something else? How could it not be all our collective fault?

  “I may have permanently damaged the relationship with my daughter. We had a terrible fight yesterday,” he said.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Schneider said.

  “That’s because you don’t understand what I was trying to say, and we only have an hour here. I’m sorry, but I need to discuss my daughter today and —”

  “What don’t I understand about career suicide? Help me,” the doctor said, not letting it go.

  “That it might be very good for my mental health. My anger feels good. I’m angry at this guy, and I should be. He’s an asshole. And he’s a killer.”

  “I assumed you wanted to keep your job. You’ve told me that it was important to you, being a police detective.”

  “I said it was important to me, yes. I saw it as a life preserver. I wanted to latch onto it, hold on to it. It’s true. I’m not so sure now. I live in the moment. Isn’t that what we’ve been going for? Leaving the past behind?”

  “So, as far as your happiness goes, you don’t have to commit career suicide. That’s all I’m saying. Whatever this man has done, it’s your job on the line is what I’m hearing,” the doctor said.

  “I’m a soldier. I fought for things I believed in, things that are important to me and make me feel like what I did over there has value and stood for something. That all the lives lost were not wasted. Otherwise, what did we achieve there?”

  “I’m trying to be practical, Michael. That’s all I’m trying to do here,” Schneider said.

  “Are you afraid that I’ll lose my medical benefits? I mean, we know that without a job I’m out the coverage, and you’re out a patient who can afford the hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour.”

  “That’s not fair. You seem to want to pick a fight. I’m here to help you. I’ve no desire to fight. This is not about me. This is about you losing your job, according to you. For what, exactly? It’s not clear to me why you’re putting yourself in harm’s way.”

  “My daughter may not forgive me for having a girlfriend. She wants to pretend that nothing has changed. She won’t accept her mother’s death. She’s worse than I am, I think. I didn’t realize that until yesterday.”

  “Maybe she should see someone. I can recommend someone.”

  “Yeah — maybe you’re right.” And he meant it.

  “Is there a reason she had to go to your brother’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid someone might want to hurt her.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  They looked at each other. He realized that he was out of her reach. He was heading somewhere new and he would have to leave her, and everything the doctor represented, behind if he was going to get well. He’d stepped through a door. He and his anger, together, fighting for his life.

  “Have you — are you able to tell —”

  “Who, the police?” he said.

  After his session with Schneider, he met with Rene Fields at a nearby Starbucks. She said that they’d found no prints on the knife they’d discovered, and after a second test, no traces of blood either. They discussed the coroner’s report in detail. People next to them stared when O’Higgins made a stabbing motion in the air.

  “What makes a wound like that?” he asked. “The girl’s wounds? The coroner said Kumar was ‘run through’ which I take to mean the blade was long, like a sword.”

  “Has to be something thin then, but knife-like, by the look of the wounds,” Rene said. “How are you doing, Michael? You and Rebecca?”

  “Holding up. Things are back on track now. It was rough. I won’t lie — so it was some kind of weapon, like maybe a sword, for wounds like that? You agree?”

  “But swords have wider blades, don’t they?” Rene said. “These were narrower wounds, like a boning knife. Narrower, even. And it was at least sixteen inches long, it seems from the report. Perhaps longer.”

  “I suppose. We turned the place over. No swords, or other edge weapons — just the ornamental daggers we found and the kitchen knives, which you said were all clean. And they don’t fit the wounds, anyway.”

  “He could have taken it with him, the weapon — Nirad Chaundhry,” Rene asked. “Left the house with it?”

  “Nirad wasn’t seen carrying anything at all when he left the house. A neighbor saw him cross the street and walk to the Gilberts’ place. The neighbor, a woman, said he was acting normally and she certainly would have mentioned seeing an obvious weapon, given what happened. She didn’t. Her inte
rview was in patrol’s report from that night. I reviewed all the interviews. No one else saw anything unusual. The woman didn’t recall exactly what time she saw Chaundhry, unfortunately. She was walking her dog and didn’t think much of it.”

  “So, we have no murder weapon at present?” Rene said.

  “Right,” he said. “Nothing that seems to fit Kumar’s sword-like wounds.”

  “So was the same weapon used then on Rishi Chaundhry?” Rene said.

  “Probably, is my guess. Rishi Chaundhry’s wounds didn’t match the width of the dagger we suspected either. I double-checked. The coroner has Rishi Chaundhry’s neck wounds at about 24.5 millimeters, and whatever was used traversed his throat and nearly came out the other side of his neck. The dagger you tested broadens too quickly. It goes to 50 millimeters plus, at the hilt. So it couldn’t have been the weapon used on either victim.”

  He drove down Broadway toward the Chaundhry mansion. The sky was clear and clean after the storm that had hung over the Bay Area seemingly for days now. He was parking the car when Marvin called him.

  “Where are you?”

  “On Broadway. At the Chaundhry place,” O’Higgins said.

  “She’s confessed. Asha Chaundhry. She walked into Bryant Street an hour ago. Told someone she was there to confess to our murders.”

  “What?”

  “She says she did it. Both of them. She caught her husband with Kumar the night before. I’m on my way to Bryant now. She’s there at Homicide now. Mike — are you there? Mike? What are you doing at the Chaundhry place? We turned the scene back to the family.”

  “Okay. Yeah, I’m on my way. I’ll be right there.” He ended the call and looked at his watch. It was quarter to four. He got out of the car and went up the stairs. He could see lights on in the house.

  He walked on toward the front door, feeling in a trance. He rang the bell. He didn’t believe she’d killed anyone. She was lying. But why?