Point Deception

by Marcia Muller

  The subject: Young, probably in her early twenties; pretty in a hard, streetwise way. Argumentative set of jaw, defiant tilt of head, posture sullen yet potentially seductive. In short, trouble.

  The setting: A turnout on the ocean side of the highway; asphalt pitted and broken, littered with cans, bottles, and other debris. Tumbledown split-rail fence barely blocking access to a long sloping plain dotted with burned-out trees and strange plants whose fluffy beige fronds swayed in the offshore wind. Sun-browned grass crisscrossed by deer tracks and footpaths. Old Chevy truck with a salt-caked windshield and pitted paint pulled close to the fence.

  The problem: The Mercedes had broken down suddenly, so the girl barely had time to nurse it beyond the stripe dividing the turnout from the highway. She’d probably been there a while, and nobody’d stopped to help her. Nobody would stop, given her appearance, and certainly not Guy Newberry. He didn’t need that kind of trouble. Besides, he had a reservation at the Sea Stacks Motel in Signal Port and was anxious to get registered, settled, and explore this new and potentially fertile territory.

  As his view of the girl disappeared from the car’s mirror Guy congratulated himself on his still-keen powers of observation. Even a three-year hiatus from the writing business hadn’t appreciably impaired them. Perhaps the scene he’d just witnessed would play a small part in his upcoming saga of a town in trouble. A metaphor for—

  You know, Guy, you really can be an asshole.

  Diana’s voice, spoken with humor. Her gentle reminder that he was about to fall victim to his own high opinion of himself.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m an asshole. I suppose I should’ve stopped to help that girl, but she looks like she’s got a major attitude problem.”

  And a major car problem.

  “Stop nagging me. It’s a sign of poor mental health for a man to drive along the highway holding a defensive conversation with a dead woman.”

  Well, what about that live woman back there?

  He sighed, pulled onto the shoulder, and made a U-turn. It was hell, he thought, when the most lasting thing a man’s wife had bequeathed him was a conscience.

  Now, as the morning sun began to dapple the sea, Diana’s voice nudged him again.

  Apparently not that much of a conscience.

  “I went back, didn’t I? Wasn’t my fault she was nowhere near the car.”

  You could’ve called out, looked for her.

  “I could’ve, but I didn’t. Good Samaritanism only goes so far.”

  Yes, you can be an asshole.

  Rhoda Swift put on a pair of sweats, went out on the porch, and whistled for Cody. In good weather she made it a point to walk her property on the ridge above Signal Port—for exercise, but also to bask in the pride of ownership. She’d lived in the brown-shingled cottage on ten acres for two years and still couldn’t believe it was hers. The house needed a new roof and cosmetic work, and the cost of a replacement septic tank loomed large in the near future, but there was a big chinaberry tree in the front yard, an apple orchard, woods, a stream, and what local real estate people—laughably, to Rho’s way of thinking—called a filtered ocean view. On a clear day like this one, she could probably see the Pacific if she stood on tiptoe on the porch railing.

  Cody came loping from a stand of pyracantha bushes, twigs caught in his ears, and fell in at Rho’s side. The four-year-old blond Lab loved these walks and made numerous detours to check out sounds in the underbrush, interesting smells, and burrows that he hoped moles might be enticed from. Rho headed for the woods where the old boarded-up outhouse stood, crossed the stream, and wandered through the gnarled apple trees, where the air was pungent with last summer’s windfalls. But what was usually a keen pleasure in her surroundings was spoiled by the intrusive image of the young woman at Point Deception. Guilt was what she was feeling, guilt over not helping her.

  And guilt, her father—once also a deputy with the department—had often told her, was humanity’s most wasteful emotion. “You’re feeling guilty about something,” he’d say, “take action. If you can’t right one wrong, address another.” She didn’t always agree with Jack Antolini, but in this case he was a hundred percent correct.

  “Come on,” she said to Cody, “we’re going to town.”

  The shabby red pickup truck almost didn’t stop for Guy Newberry. He stepped back to the safety of the motel driveway, and the vehicle came to a screeching halt inches from where he would have been had he proceeded.

  “Asshole,” he muttered, and was about to give the driver a one-fingered salute when he saw she was very pretty: close-cropped black hair; small, fine-boned face; big momentarily horrified hazel eyes. A yellow Labrador retriever sat on the passenger’s side, wearing its seat belt.

  “Sorry!” the woman called.

  He went over to the window, which was half rolled down, and patted the Lab’s protruding snout. “That’s okay. I wasn’t paying attention either.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She gave him a faint smile and a wave of the hand before she shifted gears and drove on. Guy watched the truck until it turned into the parking lot of a small strip mall, noting the bumper sticker that said SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. Then he angled across the highway to the Signal Port Hotel.

  The two-story weathered frame building with a sagging front porch and balcony was easily the largest and most prosperous-looking in the half-mile-long business district. It no longer offered lodging, but its kitchen had been serving up hearty meals since 1877. That much he’d learned the previous evening when he’d stopped in for a few beers, fish-and-chips, and some local color.

  He crossed the lobby to the dining room, a high-ceilinged space with a small gas-log fireplace and chrome-and-Formica tables and chairs reminiscent of the 1950s. No other customers were there, nor were there signs any had been. He sat at the table by one of the front windows, and after several minutes a surly-looking blonde waitress appeared, looking annoyed at his presence, and took his order. Across the lobby the bar was open, an optimistic sign advertising Saturday brunch, Bloody Marys and mimosas included, but from where he sat he saw no takers.

  The scene in there had been pretty much the same the night before. When he’d expressed surprise to the bartender that business should be so slow on a Friday, the man said it was status quo after Labor Day. Signal Port had four bars, fewer than four hundred and fifty residents, and on weekends what tourists came through blew their money at Tai Haruru on Calvert’s Landing Pier up north or down at Restless Waters in Westhaven. He, the barkeep, preferred it that way.

  Guy then took a corner table and nursed his beer. A stocky gray-haired man whom the bartender had greeted as Will was going over some plans with an urban type in a cashmere sweater. The urbanite’s blonde, bored wife played the pinball machine and cast glances at the male patrons. Her eyes rested on Guy for a moment, then dismissed him. Possibly he looked too much her own kind to interest her. A mixed-race couple—the man Asian, the woman Caucasian—were quarreling in low voices, she doing most of the talking. Something about how their luck would run out someday and then he’d damned well wish he’d spread around more good karma. He kept telling her to let it rest, there was no reason he should’ve done a stranger any favors. A man with an earring—gay, from his mannerisms—was knocking back martinis at the bar. After his third he asked the bartender what the hell was wrong with this town. The barkeep said, “Can’t help you there, Kevin,” and went back to drying glasses.

  Now, with similar friendliness, the waitress brought Guy’s austere breakfast of a toasted bagel and tomato juice and slammed it down on the table with a force that would have registered on the Richter scale. He tried to engage her in pleasantries—usually an easy task for him—but met with stony resistance. When he asked for a newspaper, she told him he’d have to buy one at the stands in front of the supermarket. Then she withdrew, leaving him to eat while contemplating the highway, where car
s mainly passed through without stopping and beside which few pedestrians walked.

  Yes, he told himself, toasting his good fortune with his tomato juice, he’d come to the right place. Signal Port would make excellent fodder for his next “penetrating and seminal”—God, the things reviewers will say!—examination of a town in trouble.

  Today he’d start asking the serious questions.

  That was a close call with the man on the highway, Rho thought as she turned into the parking lot of the Soledad County Coastal Substation. At least the guy had been nice about it—not common behavior in Signal Port, where locals tended to be prickly about anything to do with traffic. He was a stranger, of course, and not a bad-looking one, with that thick silvery hair and tanned, craggy face. From the city, probably, and trying to fit in on the coast, but his wool shirt was too good quality and his jeans too crisp and new for him to escape notice. Coming from the Sea Stacks and heading for the hotel, an overnighter who would soon be on the road and, hopefully, forget about the woman who had almost run him down on his way to breakfast. Who would never realize said woman was a sheriff’s deputy.

  The parking lot in front of the rambling prefab building tucked behind the cable TV office and hardware store was crowded this morning. Sheriff’s department cruisers, a highway patrol car, and several California Department of Fish and Game vehicles overflowed the marked spaces, and a county minivan was pulled in front of the substation’s entrance. DFG officers were herding a line of male prisoners—all of them Asian—onto the van for transport to the jail in Santa Carla.

  So this morning’s pre-dawn raid on abalone poachers operating down at Pelican Cove had happened as planned. Rho squeezed her truck between the trash Dumpster and a cruiser and got out. “You stay here, Cody,” she said. The Lab whined, but stopped straining at the seat belt. As she took the steps of the substation two at a time, one of the DFG men grinned and flashed her a victory sign.

  As usual, Valerie had the heat turned too high, and the interior was stifling. Rho twisted the thermostat’s dial, and the clerk looked up from her knitting—another of those strange garments that were too short to be capes and too long to be collars. They seemed to be all Valerie Middleton knew how to knit, and eventually each of her acquaintances would be gifted with one which, after enthusiastic thanks, would be consigned to the back of the closet. Now she set her needles aside and regarded Rho with bright little eyes set deep in her beaky bird’s face, the corners of her mouth twitching in disapproval.

  She saw, Rho knew, the signs of a hangover. Valerie had worked for the department since Rho’s father was a rookie, and was thoroughly familiar with all the deputies’ histories. The clerk had been known to come down hard on the men for reasons as trivial as allowing their wastebaskets to overflow or leaving the seat up in the restroom, but other than this facial tic she’d offer no criticism to Rho. Her gruffly maternal attitude toward the substation’s only female officer could be a source of embarrassment, but on mornings like these Rho appreciated it.

  Valerie said, “It’s supposed to be your day off. What’re you doing here?”

  “Just couldn’t tear myself away.”

  “That’s just as well. Wayne was asking after you.”

  Wayne Gilardi, her counterpart on the morning shift. “Was he in on the bust?”

  “Yes. You’ll find him in the interrogation room with one of the suspects.”

  Rho set her bag under the desk she and Wayne shared and went down the hall to the room that did double duty for departmental meetings and interviews with witnesses and suspects. When she stuck her head through the door she found the big, gray-haired officer seated at the table across from a slender Asian in baggy work clothes. Wayne got up and joined her in the hall, shutting the door behind him.

  “So what’s happening?” Rho said.

  “For openers, we collared a dozen poachers. All Vietnamese. We suspect they’re affiliated with that ring operating out of Oakland.”

  Poaching of the endangered abalone had become a huge industry along the coast, involving not only divers, but wholesalers, buyers, and deliverymen. Both in season—which ran from April 1 to June 30, and again from August 1 to November 30—and out of season, individual divers would harvest more than the legal daily limit of four shellfish and pass them off to middlemen who then sold them to restaurants, mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area. Six months ago a group of property owners near Deer Harbor had gotten together to patrol their coves in the early hours of the morning when poachers typically slipped in by boats laden with their scuba diving gear. Acting on their tips, Fish and Game had arrested six Vietnamese men whose statements hinted at a much larger operation. An investigation, called Haliotis IV, after the abalone’s scientific name, had been ongoing since then, and hopefully this morning’s arrests would lead to the ringleaders.

  “So what’s with the guy in there?” Rho nodded at the interrogation room. “It looks as if you’ve already processed the others.”

  “Right. DFG’s waiting on a second minivan to take the last six to County, but this one—a diver called Zhi Phung—might have something for us. As soon as I read him his rights he tried to make a deal, swap information. And not about their operation.”

  Of course not, Rho thought. That information was DFG’s concern. Besides, the poachers were known as a tight-knit group, bound by their culture and, in many cases, family ties; so far those who had been arrested had adamantly refused to inform on their fellow members.

  “What kind of information?” she asked.

  “About a crime he witnessed—a kidnapping.”

  “That’s major. What did he give you?”

  “Zilch. While we had him in the holding cell he changed his mind. Probably was persuaded by the others not to cooperate. Now he’s claiming I misunderstood him because he doesn’t speak much English, but his was as good as mine when I arrested him. Even the threat of an obstruction charge didn’t sway him.”

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “Yeah. You’re better with these ethnic types.”

  Better than you, anyway. Rho entertained few prejudices, while Wayne was notorious for his distrust and dislike of minorities. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Zhi Phung was still seated at the table when Rho entered the room, his eyes focused on the beige wall across from him. They moved slowly to her, but otherwise he didn’t acknowledge her presence.

  She introduced herself, added, “I hear Deputy Gilardi’s been giving you a hard time.”

  The man’s expression remained blank, as if he didn’t understand her, but she saw intelligence and comprehension in his dark eyes.

  “Deputy Gilardi becomes impatient when someone makes him an offer of information and then withdraws it,” she added, “but I am a very patient person.” To emphasize her point, she sat down across from him.

  Zhi shrugged and looked away.

  “I understand you’ve witnessed a kidnapping,” Rho said. “That’s a very serious crime. For information about it, I think my department would be inclined to persuade Fish and Game to do some very serious dealing.”

  “I do not have much English,” Zhi said.

  “You have enough to answer yes or no to my questions. Did this kidnapping occur here in Soledad County?”

  No response, but why would he offer to make a deal with Wayne if it hadn’t?

  “Did it happen this morning?”

  Nothing.

  “Last night?”

  Zhi’s eyes moved toward hers, and she saw a nervous flicker.

  “Was the victim a man?”

  Nothing.

  “A woman?”

  Another flicker.

  “Was the kidnapper—”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Mr. Zhi, was the kidnapper—”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  No fool, Mr. Zhi. He’d said the words that by law would force her to put an immediate end to the interrogation. Rho stood, leaned across the table till s
he loomed over him. “I suggest you tell your attorney what you know. He’ll be able to work out a deal that’s in your best interests.”

  A kidnapping, she thought as she left the room. Here in the county. Last night. A woman. Witnessed by an abalone poacher who would’ve had to drive north on Highway 1 to one of the abandoned piers where the divers typically launched their boats. Who would’ve had to drive past Point Deception and a woman left vulnerable because of a broken-down car.

  Guy stepped onto the porch of the hotel, bracing himself against the strong offshore wind. Behind him the waitress affixed to the glass door one of those signs that said “Open Again At” above a clock face with movable plastic hands, and pulled the shade behind it. Saturday brunch had not met with success, and the staff was forgoing lunch in favor of the cocktail hour.

  Unpleasant woman, he thought, and the folks at the Sea Stacks were her equals. Come to think of it, most of the people he’d encountered during his brief stay were a shade off-putting, except for the pretty woman in the red pickup, and she’d tried to kill him before he’d even had his breakfast.

  Town in trouble.

  He remained on the porch for a few minutes, surveying the businesses strung out along the highway. Chevron station, unprosperous-looking real estate brokerage, supermarket, drugstore, cable TV office, hardware store, nursery, thrift shop, coin-operated laundry, propane firm. A couple of bar-and-grills that looked as if they catered strictly to locals. Post office was the busiest establishment at this time of day, but the people who greeted each other coming and going didn’t linger to talk.

  The Sea Stacks was the only motel, and not a very good one. There were no real restaurants except the one in the hotel, no shops catering to tourists. Side roads lined with frame houses on small lots led up into the hills, where a TV satellite dish and a church spire rose above the pines. A mobile home park advertised gracious seaside living, but most of its spaces were empty.