Point Deception

by Marcia Muller

  “I’m sure you have some explanation.”

  “Well, I haven’t. I don’t know how an imprint of my tires could get there. The truck was in the garage all weekend. I only use it for business, use Virge’s for personal stuff. Cleaner that way, in case the IRS starts looking at me. And I didn’t even take it when I went to Alan Lindsay’s house on Sunday, because Virge’s Toyota was blocking the garage door.”

  “Have you been to the Quinley property recently?”

  “I haven’t been there since the burger stand closed down. Hell, nobody goes there except real estate agents and prospective buyers. And your father, of course.”

  A chill tickled her shoulder blades. “Jack goes there? Why?”

  “To fish and take abalone, of course. That’s one rich cove.”

  “But it’s contaminated—”

  “Has your dad ever stopped to think about health hazards? Not once in his life. The old buzzard drinks a fifth a day, eats everything they tell you not to, smokes cheap cigars. He’ll probably outlive us all. He’s been fishing that cove for years. In fact, I saw him pull out of there last Friday morning.”

  Friday morning. Not Friday night or Saturday. Shame washed over her for having entertained suspicions of her own father.

  “You sure that’s when you saw him?”

  “Hell yes. Virge and I were heading up to Calvert’s Landing for lunch and some heavy-duty shopping. Your dad recognized the Toyota and beeped.” Will sighed heavily. “Such an ordinary thing, an ordinary trip. I never suspected that was the last lunch at Tai Haruru Virge and I would ever have.”

  The house where the photographer, Dave Moretti, had his studio was on a quiet side street at the northern end of town. At first Moretti was surprised but pleased to see Guy; he became silent and wary as Guy explained why he was there. Moretti’s protruding front teeth nibbled nervously at his lower lip, and he cast anxious glances behind him as if he were afraid someone was listening.

  “What exactly do you think was wrong with my film?” Guy asked.

  “Defective, I suppose.”

  “I doubt that. It looked to me as if it had been exposed.”

  “A light leak in the camera, maybe.”

  “A leak would produce a spot on the image, not eradicate it.”

  “A large leak—”

  “I would have noticed.”

  Moretti nibbled on his lip some more. “Since you’re dissatisfied with my work, I’ll be glad to refund the processing fee.”

  “I’d rather hear why you—an experienced photographer and processor—ruined my photographs.”

  “I didn’t—Oh, hell, why not? It wasn’t an official request.”

  “Someone asked you to destroy any film that came in for processing with my name on it?”

  Nod.

  “Someone connected with the sheriff’s department?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me guess: Deputy Wayne Gilardi.”

  “You got it. He told me you were gonna stir up trouble that the town didn’t need. Said if we all got together and discouraged you, you’d go back east where you belong.”

  “So you did this for the good of Signal Port.”

  “Hell, no. Wayne, he’s somebody you don’t want to get on the wrong side of.” He paused. “And I didn’t destroy the film.”

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh. Those prints and negatives you got, they’re not from your film. I got too much respect for other people’s work to ruin it. So I used some film I had laying around here and kept yours in case you figured out what happened and complained. Now… tell you the truth, I’m kinda relieved.”

  “How long will it take you to develop and print my film?”

  “Half hour, give or take.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Will Scurlock had decided he wanted to talk with his attorney before giving a more formal statement and promised to come to the substation at four that afternoon. After Rho left him she interviewed several more people on her portion of the witness list with little result, and now it was less than an hour before she and Ned Grossman were scheduled to meet with Wayne. A coil of anxiety wound tight in her stomach and she felt lightheaded. She’d eaten nothing all day, but the thought of food nauseated her.

  When she entered the substation she found Valerie sitting idle at her desk, hands folded, staring down at its cluttered surface. Rho said to her, “I never did thank you for bringing Cody back the other night.”

  “I should thank you for leaving him here. He was a comfort to me.” Valerie’s hands twisted, one washing the other. “Jack phoned. He said he told you about us.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you hate me for keeping it a secret all these years.”

  “Hate you? Never. You’re good for him, and you’ve been like a mother to me. More of a mother than my own was, and now I know why. Probably it’s just as well I didn’t find out until I was ready to accept it. Besides, we’re all entitled to our secrets.”

  Valerie smiled with relief and reached for a file in her inbox.

  Rho went to her desk and began her report on her interview with Will Scurlock. His statement that he didn’t know how the imprint of his truck tires came to be at Quinley’s had rung true to her at the time, but now she feared she’d placed too much trust in him. How well did she really know Will? How well did she know any of her friends and neighbors?

  The phone rang. Valerie spoke briefly with the caller, said, “Rhoda?” There was an urgent note in her voice that made Rho swivel away from the keyboard.

  “That was Wayne. He’s at home, cleaning up, and he wants you to come over there so the two of you can talk privately before he comes in.”

  “I can’t do that. I’d be violating—”

  “Rhoda, please, he sounded strange.”

  “How?”

  “Like he’d been crying.”

  Wayne, cry? Never. Unless—

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  Guy sat down at the desk in his room and shuffled through the prints Dave Moretti had made for him. The old car covered with pine needles. The oil sump with the stick glistening nearby. The Blakeley house. A few shots of the town taken along the highway. Images to refresh his memory when he wrote the book, back in New York a few months from now. Not particularly good photographs—he had little talent in that area—but serviceable enough for his purposes.

  He set them down and thought of the long winter months he’d spend in Manhattan, hunched over the computer in his TriBeCa loft—a spacious and comfortable place he’d purchased after memories of Diana had driven him from their elegant co-op apartment in the East Sixties. Occasionally consulting photographs, maps, and notes jotted on index cards, but mainly working from his own memory and emotions, he’d create a living portrait of this town, its people, its tragedies. Every evening after he finished he’d relax in front of the gas-log fireplace, drink in hand, and—

  Be lonely.

  He’d been lonely most evenings since he’d lived in the loft, but now he found he couldn’t face the prospect. The flickering flames that weren’t a real fire no matter how artfully simulated. The single-malt scotch that warmed his body but not his soul. The muffled pulsing of a vibrant city that he kept at bay with well-insulated walls. The occasional but increasingly rare call from an old friend, fruitlessly pleading into the answering machine, “Pick up, Guy!”

  He’d been lonely so long it had become a way of life that wouldn’t change once he was safely home again.

  Rho approached Wayne’s house on Jasmine Street, anxiety making her heart hammer. His truck was in the driveway but silence hung over the half acre crowded with old sheds and an ancient rusted trailer. Pink plastic flamingos preened by the front walk.

  When she rang the bell no one came. Oh God, she thought. She breathed deeply several times before she tried the doorknob. It turned and then she was inside and walking past the empty living room toward the den at the back of the house. Not bothering to call out, just
walking silently past the framed needlepoint sayings Janie had hung there.

  Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

  When Life Hands You a Lemon, Squeeze It and Make Lemonade.

  If It’s Not Broken, Don’t Fix It.

  Your Glass Isn’t Half Empty—It’s Half Full.

  Upbeat sentiments for an abused wife. There to normalize her situation.

  Nothing could normalize it now, though.

  The door to the den was closed. Rho hesitated, nerving herself, then pushed it open.

  Wayne was there in his faux-leather recliner chair. Dressed in his uniform for his final day on the job. Shoes shined. Fresh creases in his trousers. Badge polished.

  And blood all over everything. Scattered fragments of bone and brain matter too.

  Even though she’d expected this, Rho stood transfixed. Heard an animal-like moan, and realized it was hers.

  “Jesus, Wayne, why? Why?”

  She moved closer, flesh creeping, bile rising. Saw the gun whose kick had knocked itself from his dead hand. Saw the tape cassettes on the table beside him.

  Two cassettes, neatly labeled. One for Janie and one for her.

  Two forty. Still twenty minutes before Oriana Harrison—née Wynne—was due to call. Guy nibbled at the prepackaged sandwich he’d bought at the supermarket. Egg salad, probably yesterday’s, and with his luck he’d get food poisoning. After another bite, he rewrapped it and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  He switched on a couple of lamps against the gloom and went to the window. The sky had turned dark, and angry-looking clouds hovered offshore. There was a small TV on the bureau opposite the bed; he switched it on and surfed till he found the Weather Channel. Small-craft warnings. Possibility of dangerous wave action along the beaches. Heavy rain.

  The room had grown chilly and there was no wood or kindling for the fireplace, let alone matches. Why had he earlier entertained negative thoughts about the gas log in his loft? It would amuse his friends back home to know he was freezing his ass off in sunny California!

  Of course “sunny California” was a term descriptive only of the southern portion of the state, a place he’d found sociologically interesting but unappealing during the several months he’d lived there while consulting on film adaptations of his books. Northern California, at least the coastal area, was a land of unpredictable extremes. And, as he was finding out, unpredictable people—

  A knock at the door. He shouted for the party to enter. Becca Campos, her arms full of sheets and towels.

  “So you decided to come to work after all,” he said testily.

  She blinked at his sharp tone and wordlessly began stripping his rumpled bed.

  After a moment her silence shamed him. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Becca. I guess you were upset about the story in the San Francisco paper.”

  “Yeah. Seeing it all rehashed on the thirteenth anniversary… Well, it made me so nervous I just holed up at home.”

  “But you’re here now. What changed that?”

  She was tucking the sheet around the mattress, but she looked up and smiled shyly. “I’m getting outta Signal Port.”

  “Really. How’d this come about?”

  “Well, my boyfriend came over. Clay. You met him. And when he saw how upset I was, he went, ‘Honey, let’s split tonight, drive to Reno and get married.’ At first I couldn’t say anything, I was so surprised. But when I realized he meant it, I couldn’t turn him down.”

  “Congratulations, Becca. But I thought you said Clay was going back to his old life.”

  “That’s right. And now I’ll be going with him—as Mrs. Clay Lawrence.” She finished making the bed and fluffed the pillows. “But don’t you worry about being taken good care of, Mr. Newberry. I already got a girlfriend to take over here for me. Now I better get going. I got a million things to do—pack and tell the landlord I’m giving up the place; have the utilities turned off and close out my checking and savings accounts. And I gotta get my car serviced, because Clay’s truck is dead, so we’ll just have to leave it.…”

  In spite of her hurry, Becca prattled on and on, but Guy barely responded. She was happy, and he didn’t want to spoil it for her. He feared Clay Lawrence would do that soon enough. After he’d married her, run through her money, driven her car into the ground, and left her.

  Rho sat, her head bowed, numbed with grief, as she and Ned Grossman listened to Wayne’s final rambling message to her.

  It all started with Claudia. That surprise you, Rho? That I could ever be serious about a woman? Really love her? Well, I did. It started six months before. May seventeen. She’d gone into Santa Carla, was coming back late and had a flat down by Quinley’s. I stopped to help her. Had a bottle in the truck, and we shared it. For a couple of years I’d been taking women to this place I’d fixed up in the back of the old burger stand, so that’s where we went. I thought she’d be like the rest of them.

  But she wasn’t. I’d never known anybody like her before. She was smart, she had class, and she said if we got out of this place we could make something of ourselves. I was gonna leave Janie and the kids; she was gonna leave Mitch and her kid. But then on October eight she tells me she’s decided to stick with her husband. They were leaving the canyon because things had gotten too weird there. Going back to southern California. Her dad was sick and they could patch things up with him and start living like normal people.

  As if her and me couldn’t live like normal people. As if I wasn’t normal.

  You sure as hell know how mad I’ve been ever since then. I had something beautiful right there in my hands and all of a sudden it was gone. Really gone. She was gone. Forever. From then on, I’ve felt like I was drowning. Sink, push myself up, tread water for a while, sink, do the whole thing over again. And then that girl showed up. Jude and Leo Ackerman’s daughter. I don’t know why, but I suspected who she was as soon as I saw her body. Maybe something about her face. Anyway, there was her, and that asshole Newberry with his questions. And it all started weighing too heavy on me.

  It’s been too damn much and I’m too damn tired. I hate the man I am today. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve hurt my whole family. And you. I’m sorry I used you to cover up for losing those blood samples. Maybe if I hadn’t you wouldn’t’ve suffered so much after the murders. Or maybe you would’ve. I don’t know.

  I know I shouldn’t be asking anything of you, but here’s one last thing I want you to do. Go over all the old evidence and think about what those missing samples might’ve told us. I always felt they could’ve broken the case, but maybe that’s just on account of guilt for being so careless. God knows I got my share of guilt—and then some. I wish I’d made Claudia tell me what kind of weirdness was going down in the canyon. She never liked to talk about her life there, but maybe if I’d insisted they wouldn’t’ve got killed. Shoulda’s and coulda’s, huh? But please, Rho, go over the evidence again. Talk to Newberry. He’s an asshole, but he’s smart, and he might be able to help you put it together.

  Funny. I’m doing this on the anniversary of the murders. Of Claudia’s murder. Bad-luck thirteen.

  Not funny, huh?

  I’m sorry you’re gonna be the one to walk in on this mess, but I don’t want Janie or Cindy or Beth to find me. I know you can tough it out. I been watching you ever since that night in the canyon. You fell apart for a while there, but in the end you got through. Like I got through, in my own way. You’re just gonna get through a lot better, for a lot longer.…

  The rain started as Guy was waiting for Oriana Harrison’s call, now nearly an hour late. He swiveled away from the desk when he heard the first drops and watched as it began sheeting down, turning the world to gray and obscuring his view of the sea. The forecast had said it would continue through tomorrow morning.

  The phone shrilled. He caught up the receiver and spoke into it. Dun Harrison.

  “I’m here with Oriana,” he said. “She was delayed getting home. I’ll put her on n
ow.”

  The voice that hesitantly said his name was low-timbred, cultured, and adult. It surprised him, even though he knew Oriana was now nineteen, because in his focus on the murders he’d fixed her in his mind at age six.

  He said, “Thanks for agreeing to talk with me. Your uncle has told you about the book I’m writing?”

  “Yes.” Pause. “Do you think you can find out what happened out there?”

  “Maybe, with your help. How much do you remember about your life in Cascada Canyon?”

  “For a long time I remembered very little. I was only six when I left California, and Nana—my grandmother—encouraged me to forget. But when I was in eleventh grade I had a breakdown and went into therapy for a couple of years. A lot of things came out.”

  “Do you mind talking about them?”

  “… Not if you think it will help you.”

  Go slowly, Guy warned himself. She’s skittish and may bolt the conversation.

  “Were they good or bad things?” he asked.

  “Both.”

  “Let’s talk about the good things first.”

  “Well, it was pretty there. We didn’t have to go to school like other kids. My parents taught us a couple of hours a day, and otherwise we went to the beach or swam in a pond on the hill. Heath, Eric, Chryssie, and I had the run of the property; we made up all kinds of games. Heath and I had a great toy room. When the grown-ups had parties we stayed in the kid boxes and told ghost stories before we went to sleep.”

  “By ‘kid boxes,’ you mean those bunkhouses?”

  “Yes. Uncle Bernhard built them for us.”

  Guy jotted Ulrick’s name on a legal pad. Oriana’s tone had changed when she mentioned him. “He wasn’t a real uncle, was he?”

  “No, just a friend of my parents.”

  “Were you fond of him?”

  “At first. It’s complicated.”

  “Why?”

  Silence. Guy waited it out.

  “Excuse me for a minute, please.” He heard her muffled voice speaking to someone in the background, and then a door closed. Asking her uncle to leave so she could talk in private.