Point Deception

by Marcia Muller

  “I rest my case.”

  The truck slid neatly around a hairpin turn, its headlights illuminating a sign for Deer Harbor Campground. Guy closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the tires on the pavement as Rhoda sped up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been pleasurably drunk. It had to’ve been before Diana—

  Before. After.

  He opened his eyes, trying to fight off the memories and sustain the good feeling. “Where are we?”

  “Almost there.”

  “You’re not a very informing woman. Not very.”

  “What’s an ‘informing woman’?” She sounded amused.

  “One who tells me where the hell she’s taking me.”

  “Have patience.”

  He watched the walls of what he assumed were large oceanfront estates slip past. “Money here,” he said.

  “Lots of it. Most are second-home people.”

  “And you locals don’ like them.”

  “That depends. The ones we like want to be part of the community. They help our economy by shopping here and hiring local people for their yard work and repairs. The ones we don’t like import everything from food to labor.”

  “If I had a second home here, I’d shop constantly and hire everybody in the whole damn county.”

  “If you had a second home here, I’d have to drive by constantly to keep tabs on what you were up to.”

  Odd note in her voice, even though the tone was light. What did it mean? He felt more sober now, and he looked analytically at her, but couldn’t interpret it.

  Rhoda braked abruptly and waited for the glaring lights of an oncoming car to pass, then turned left into a driveway flanked by stone pillars. Old stone pillars, judging from the cracks and coat of moss her headlights revealed. She drove slowly toward the sea, gravel crunching under the tires. In a cleared area surrounded by those strange plumed plants he’d seen at Point Deception she stopped and killed the engine.

  “We’re here,” she said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  He got out of the truck, shivering in the chill air. “These plants, what are they?”

  “Pampas grass. It’s worse than bamboo, takes over everything.” She began walking along a path made of railroad ties. “A few years ago the county funded a program to eradicate it, and for a while we thought it had worked, but now it’s back full force.”

  “Pretty stuff. Why kill it?”

  “Because it kills everything that gets in its way.”

  Guy thought of Cascada Canyon. And a faraway place called East Timor.

  They continued along the path for some fifty yards, the sound of the sea ever louder. At its end a promontory jutted out over the water, surrounded by a low stone wall. Two figures stood there, shimmering white in the light of the full moon. Statues. Women in old-fashioned dress looking out to sea.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s called Women Who Wait. A monument to those who died at sea.”

  “Who put it here?”

  Rhoda walked between the statues, sliding an affectionate hand over each.

  “This land belonged to Constance Giordani, the wife of a man who ran a fishing fleet out of Calvert’s Landing in the late eighteen hundreds. He and his partner, her sister’s husband, were drowned in a storm at sea. You see that light flashing on the point over there?”

  He looked where she motioned and saw it reflected off a distant wall of fog.

  Rhoda said, “That’s the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Was built in eighteen eighty. In nineteen twelve the light-keeper died and a replacement couldn’t be found, so Constance and her sister volunteered for the job and became, so far as I know, the only female lightkeepers in California. They kept the light until nineteen thirty-nine, when the Coast Guard took it over. Back then it had a crystal-and-brass Fresnel lens, which must’ve been a hell of a lot of work to maintain. Quite a tough job for two women. Now, of course, the light’s unmanned and fully automated.”

  “What happened to the sisters after the Coast Guard took over?”

  “They lived in their house on this property—we’re standing on the old terrace—for the next thirty years. When Constance died, she willed the land and her remaining fortune to the county, with the stipulation that the house be torn down but the statues, which are modeled on her and her sister, remain in perpetuity.”

  Guy circled the figures, studying each. He’d expected their faces to show loss and grief, but he saw only strength. “The guidebooks don’t mention this place.”

  “No. That’s also in keeping with Constance Giordani’s wishes. She wanted it to mainly be a private refuge for county residents. Some of us come here when we need… whatever it is we need. I’ve come here often during the past thirteen years.”

  Guy moved toward where she stood by the stone wall. Her face was very pale in the moonlight, her hair dark and sleek. “You brought me here. You must trust me not to write about it.”

  “Yes. And I brought you here because you need to know that this coastline is about more than violence.”

  Unconditional trust. How had he come to deserve this?

  He was beside her now, and to cover his confusion he peered over the wall at the sea. Waves crashed at the base of the cliff, tearing at the land like monstrous jaws. Somewhere he’d read that the rate of cliff retreat—erosion caused by wave action—was a foot per year. How long before this promontory and those statues of the brave women were gone? Sorrow washed over him with every swell of the surf.

  “Guy?” Rhoda touched his sleeve. He turned toward her, and she put a hand to his cheek, guided his face down to hers, and kissed him. A real kiss, unlike the school-boyish peck he’d given her the night before.

  When she pulled away, her eyes searched his, glittering dark in the moonlight. Her hand remained on his cheek. She asked, “What is it that makes you so sad?”

  He wanted to say he wasn’t sad at all, but he couldn’t give voice to the lie.

  “At first I dismissed you as detached and arrogant, a sophisticated New Yorker viewing us with amusement and using us for his own purposes. But that’s not so.”

  He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

  “That’s the real reason I brought you here. So you could tap into whatever this place has to offer. And I hoped you’d tell me…” She waited, eyes still on his.

  At first his old self-protective mechanisms kicked in. There was no way he would allow another human being to witness his pain. Then he thought, She’s already witnessed it. She needs to know where it comes from.

  And I need to tell her.

  The realization made him weak, both with relief and dread. He moved away from her and sat down on the retaining wall with his back to the relentlessly devouring sea. Unburdening himself to Rhoda would mean letting her into his life, and he knew all too well that a person who enters one’s life can just as easily be lost. Of course, there was also a measure of loss in keeping someone at an arm’s length.…

  “I was married once,” he began, “to a woman named Diana.” Just speaking of her conjured up the image of her warm eyes and thick fall of chestnut hair. He could feel the softness of her skin, hear her low-timbred voice, smell her light perfume.

  Rhoda sat down, leaving a respectful two feet between them, and waited. After a moment he went on. “We were happy. I suppose most people who’ve lost a spouse claim that, but in our case it’s true. We shared both our lives and our work. But the work, that’s where it went wrong. Maybe if we hadn’t…”

  He shook his head. For too long the thoughts of how it might have gone differently had tortured him. “Three years ago, Diana and I were on a two-week trip to East Timor. The former Portuguese colony that’s resisted being absorbed into Indonesia for over twenty years.” He heard his voice becoming flat and unemotional, even professorial. As Rhoda’s had sounded when she’d taken him to the canyon. He was insulating himself too.

  “I was gathering material for a book, and Diana was taking photographs. We were
going to document the plight of eight hundred thousand people who were suffering extreme violations of their civil rights at the hands of the government in Djakarta. We thought we could make a difference.” In his peripheral vision he saw Rhoda nod; she was also a person who wanted to believe she could make a difference.

  “We were staying at a monastery outside of Dili, the capital city,” he went on. “Guests of an old monk who was active in the struggle for independence and had offered to put us in touch with knowledgeable and forthcoming sources. The work went well, but the atmosphere was bad there. Government troops were everywhere. By day they caused a tension that was exacerbated by the heat. They were less noticeable by night, but still there was a feel of menace in the soft breeze.

  “After a few days Diana and I realized we were being watched. By the beginning of the second week the old monk, who had acted as if he’d seen it all and feared nothing, became nervous. Diana wasn’t a timid or fanciful woman, but she became infected by his fear. She begged me to leave early.”

  This was where the emotional terrain grew dangerous, where he could sink into a mire of self-loathing and -pity. He paused for a long moment before he added, “Four more days, I told her. Four more days to get the last few pieces of information I needed, and we’d be out of there. It was the worst mistake of my life.”

  He heard the sudden raw note in his voice and glanced at Rhoda. Neither her expression nor her body language acknowledged it. Allowing him his feelings without embarrassment. He swallowed before he went on.

  “The night before we were to fly home, the monastery was set on fire. The monk urged us to escape while we could, to the countryside where one of the sources I’d interviewed would shelter us. We hid in a shed on the man’s property for a week, sleeping on the ground, refusing most of the food he tried to give us because we knew he needed it for his family. When he thought it was safe, we went back to Dili. The monastery was in ruins, the monk gone, presumably dead. And government soldiers were waiting for us.”

  Now he began speaking faster, rushing to get through this before he broke down. “The commander of the unit told us their orders were to escort us to the airport, but I doubted we’d ever arrive there. I could tell Diana did too. She was…” His voice broke and he shook his head. Raised his arms and pushed his hands palms-out in front of him, hoping to somehow relieve the pressure in his chest.

  “She was worn out. Weak from lack of food and sleep. But she wasn’t afraid, not like I was. She was angry. I saw her getting her camera ready. I should have stopped her, but instead I did nothing. As the soldiers approached us, she raised it for a last photograph. I heard the shutter click at the same time one of the soldiers shouldered his carbine and shot her in the head.”

  Rhoda moaned, a sound that told him she was living it with him.

  “To this day,” he said, “I can’t sort out the sequence of events after that. Chaos and disbelief and pain, that’s all. Then I was on a government transport plane, flying to Bangkok, where a State Department official met me.”

  “What did the government do about it?”

  The fact that she’d spoken startled him. He looked into her eyes and saw the same kind of anger he’d seen in Diana’s. Rhoda still believed in justice, and he feared someday the lack of it would break her.

  “There was a cover-up, of course. The Indonesian government hadn’t intended any harm to come to either of us; the soldier had acted on his own. They called it a dreadful, regrettable incident. And our government wasn’t willing to offend an important Asian country of two hundred million people, so they accepted the official version and apology. They had Diana’s body returned for burial in Massachusetts, where her family lives. And I had no strength to fight either government, so I retreated from the world. Where I’ve more or less been ever since.”

  “Less now.”

  “… Maybe.” His eyes were full of tears; he closed the lids against them, but they leaked out and slipped down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried in three years, not since the night after Diana’s funeral, shut away in the apartment that, without her, would never again be home. When Rhoda’s hand touched his, a shuddering sob caught in his throat. He let it out and when he could speak again said shakily, “There’s a footnote to the story.”

  “Oh?”

  “Six months later I received a package postmarked Sydney, Australia, containing Diana’s camera. Sent through one of those mailing services, no note or explanation, and the final roll of film still inside. It was a year before I could bring myself to take the roll to the processor, but when the prints came back I had my evidence. A shot of a young Indonesian soldier, his eyes hard with hatred, raising his carbine as his superior officer smiled in approval. That photo and its negative now live in my safe-deposit box, and if I ever find a way to use it, I will.”

  His tears were falling freely now, but he felt no need to stem them. He’d finally told it all, to someone who cared. Told it all, as he’d never have to tell it again.

  Chrystal: Before

  Friday, October 6

  12:37 P.M.

  Okay, there it is—Forrest Wynne’s old Buick. All covered up with pine needles so you can’t hardly tell what color it is. I remember him working on that car while Leo made music and smoked dope.

  Jude said go around here to the right, walk six paces this way. Well, here I am.

  Down on my knees now, scraping needles away. Thirteen years of ’em. Damp, and they smell moldy. There it is, though, just like she said—the manhole cover. Grab it, pull—

  Shit! My nail! All torn and bloody.

  Big deal, Chryssie. Buy yourself a manicure when you get home. You’ll be able to afford one.

  Okay. I got hold of it. Heavy. Pull up, push it over here and—Oh, yuck!

  Oil and God knows what else, but down there’s the leather pouch sealed in layers of Ziplocs.

  Oh! It’s like feeling around in a sewer. Where is it?

  A stick, find a stick. There. Okay. Poke it in and—

  Here it is! Lift up. Careful now.

  Yes! You just grabbed hold of your future, Chryssie, even if it’s all oily and disgusting—

  Oh, Christ! What’s that what’s that?

  Somebody yelling.

  Hey, what’re you doing there?

  Hey!

  Runnin’, that’s what I’m doing.

  Runnin’ for my fuckin’ life.…

  Thursday, October 12

  To Rho, the group that assembled in the interrogation room for their 8 A.M. meeting seemed severely diminished, perhaps because up to now Wayne had played such a large role in her professional life. Ned Grossman, Denny Shepherd, and Harve Iverson would not feel the absence of their colleague as keenly; the two detectives had barely known him, and Iverson’s tenure as commander was less than two years.

  She sat at the table while the others got coffee, avoiding their eyes as her thoughts strayed to Guy Newberry. It wasn’t the first time she’d been preoccupied with a man while waiting for a meeting to start, but never in quite this way.

  Guy’s story of his wife’s tragic death and the grief he carried with him had touched her deeply and allowed her to open up to him about the full extent of the effect the canyon murders had had on her life. They’d connected on an intimate level, and she knew that if she’d given him any encouragement at all, they’d have ended up in bed together. But much as she was tempted, such a close to the evening didn’t seem right. They were still too damaged and the emotional connection too new and frail to sustain the additional pressure that making love would surely bring. So she’d dropped him at the bed-and-breakfast and gone home to a cold, empty bed.

  “Swift? Are you with us?”

  She looked up, saw Grossman frowning at her. “Yes, sir,” she said quickly.

  “Good.” He shuffled his papers, cleared his throat. “First of all, Deputy Gilardi was picked up in a bar in Eureka last night. He’s returning from Humboldt County voluntarily, and I’ll be interviewing him this aft
ernoon. In light of your long-standing relationship, Swift, I’ll want you to sit in.”

  She nodded, her spirits plummeting. What was Wayne feeling right now? Fear? Humiliation? Betrayal? Anger?

  Try all of the above.

  Grossman went on, “Chrystal Ackerman’s purse was recovered yesterday morning, and I took it to Santa Carla for identification by Lily Gilardi. The lab processed it, found stains of a substance that also appeared on Ackerman’s skin, tube top, and the passenger-side floor of the Mercedes. Motor oil, old and full of sludge, that didn’t match what was in the car’s crankcase. Any ideas on where it came from?”

  Shepherd said, “The site of the old gas station, of course.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no evidence the car was ever there.”

  He shrugged and jabbed the tip of his pencil into his scratch pad.

  “Swift? Harve?” Grossman said.

  Iverson shook his head.

  Rho said, “No idea, sir.”

  “Okay, the contents of the purse were the usual items, except for a couple of sheets of paper with directions scribbled on them. They look to be directions to Cascada Canyon, which would support the presence of the hairs and the ankle bracelet Swift found.” He passed around photocopies.

  Rho skimmed them. “What’s this at the bottom: ‘stream, bridge, well, F.C. six paces’?”

  “The location of Susan Wynne’s money, of course,” Grossman said.

  “Did she get it?”

  “If she did, it would provide a motive for her murder. Quarter of a mil is more than enough to kill for. Now, on to the evidence from Quinley’s.” He passed out glossy photographs. “Tire tracks. Two sets, not including the ones left by Alex Ngo’s truck. Recent.”

  Rho compared the photos. The tread shown in one appeared new, while that in the other was nonexistent in the center, worn on the edges.

  “The first is easy to identify,” the detective said. “Firestone heavy truck series, the best they make. Very little wear. Driver pulled in as close to the cliff as possible, backed out, turned south on the highway.”