"I don’t know. I had to work the rest of the morning. Later on, I had some time to think. Maybe he didn’t expect to see me there and it was just an awful shock."
"Please. This can’t be coincidence. Why would he be in Tahoe?"
"We met here. He must still have some roots. When I moved up from San Francisco last April I thought I might see him. I thought he might still be here."
"Did you try to find him?"
"I looked in the phone book, that kind of thing. But nothing came of it, so I tried to forget about it. Then Bob started obsessing about who his dad was, which is why I thought I might be imagining it when I saw him yesterday. But Kurt dropped off a note at the office saying he wanted to warn me about something and he wanted to meet me at seven this morning."
"Wow."
"I was pretty nervous, but I went. And he never showed. I feel so angry and ... tricked again. Brings back some old bad feelings."
Andrea put her arm around her. "You going to fill me in? You’ve never said a word about him before."
"I was too ashamed to tell you," Nina said.
"He was married."
"Yes. Separated. But yes, married."
"He left you when he found out you were pregnant."
"Worse. I never told him. He has no idea Bobby exists."
"Oh, Nina. Jesus. But how ...?"
"I was up here in the summer the year I started law school, staying at a friend’s cabin near Fallen Leaf Lake. You know how they have trouble with bubonic plague from the fleas on the squirrels up there once in a while? Well, the Forest Service wanted us evacuated, but I wouldn’t go because I was young and didn’t give a damn and that kind of terrible disease could never happen to me. I was determined to stay up there. I’d never had a month in Tahoe in my life and I would not go."
"You got bubonic plague. He was a doctor with experience in Africa who saved your life.
That made Nina laugh. "Not at all. I didn’t catch the plague. I had that whole part of the lake to myself. No, he was a summer employee for the Forest Service who took it upon himself to hassle me unmercifully. I’d get up and find him sitting on my porch steps, making sure no squirrels came up on the porch. If anyone was going to catch the plague, it would have been him. "
"Must have been lonely up there, with no one else around," said Andrea. She got up, her eye caught on a clump of invading weeds, which she attacked with a forked hand tool.
"Not for long. There was an old out-of-tune piano in the cabin, which he offered to fix. I invited him in to tune it."
"I’ll bet you did. What do you know about his wife?"
"Nothing. He wouldn’t talk about her. He was in the early stages of getting divorced. Or so he told me. She was down in L.A. the whole time I knew him. The whole six weeks."
"I take it things didn’t work out," Andrea said dryly.
"We all have unpredictable things that happen in our lives, people who change toward us for no reason we know, lotteries won and stocks busted, relatives who suddenly die...." said Nina. "It was like that. We fell madly in love, Andrea."
"This doesn’t sound like the solitary lady we’ve seen recently," Andrea said, but her smile softened her words.
"Madly, passionately, in love. I trusted him totally. I would have done anything for him, made any sacrifice. ... My life had changed utterly. We decided to get married as soon as he had the divorce."
"He must be quite a guy."
The words rushed out. "We made a plan to meet at the end of the summer. I had to go back to Monterey to get some things and he needed to get things finished up with his wife. I didn’t tell him when I found out I was pregnant. I was saving it for a surprise. He wanted to meet my dad and Matt. But he never came."
"Oh, Nina. How sad."
"I was going to pass on law school. Kurt was a fine musician, and he was going to join a symphony orchestra in Europe.... We planned a whole different life than the one I ended up with. But I did know he was keeping something from me, something important. I always knew that, but I convinced myself he’d tell me when he could. And then ... nothing. He never called, never wrote. He disappeared, just like yesterday."
"Why come back now?"
Nina shook her head. "No idea. He’s gone again, though, it seems." Her voice hardened. "Thanks for listening to my pathetic tale of romance and betrayal."
Having given up all pretense of gardening, Andrea opened the garden shed door and started putting her tools away. "Was it so easy," she asked, the clattering of hoes, rakes, and shovels making it hard to hear her, "to give up the idea of becoming a lawyer when you decided to get married?"
"I wasn’t sure I could do both things. You know, Andrea, to do this work I have to put on one hell of a thick hide every morning. I knew it would be a hard business for a woman with a family."
"But when he left, you went ahead."
Nina thought back. "That’s what made me realize how vulnerable I was. I knew being a trial lawyer would toughen me up, give me what I needed to deal with ... anything."
"Nobody messes with you and gets off lightly."
"Not anymore."
"You still got shot," Andrea said, almost casually, shutting the door to the garden shed and clicking the combination lock shut.
"Dammit, Andrea. What are you driving at?"
Andrea turned around, her small freckled face and pointed chin smudged and glowing from her work. "Maybe you’re ready to try a different approach, and drop the thick hide. I think you have already started."
"What do you mean?"
Andrea smiled. "You’re strong on the inside now. You’re opening up and showing a little more of that big-hearted and generous person I know."
"I’ll get eaten up alive by people like Terry London and Riesner if I drop my protections. The work I do—"
Andrea plopped down beside her again. "You can’t be ruled by fear. You go to the grocery store, right? Well, so do the lunatics. You can’t escape. They spit on your dang armor. Besides, most of these so-called crazies you’re so worried about aren’t violent."
"Okay, I’ll give you ’most.’ And remain alert."
The warm sun slanted through the trees onto the upturned dirt. From the house came the shouts, bangs, and thumping of children.
"I’d better go in and see what’s going on," Nina said.
"Wait a minute. I just had a thought. Who else was in court with you when Kurt skipped out? Is it possible he saw someone else he knew and didn’t want to see?"
"There were several people in the hall. And my client, of course. She’s been in Tahoe all her life. She might know him." Nina filed away this intriguing thought.
"What do you plan to do? Try to find him?"
"Don’t worry. He adiosed, and I’m not going after him."
"If you saw him again—would you tell him about Bob?"
"I never will."
The phone rang in the house.
"Will Matt get that?"
"He’s still in bed. Something’s bothering him, Nina."
"Let’s talk later," Nina said, making a run for the phone.
Collier Hallowell, brusque and businesslike, asked her to meet him as soon as possible at Terry London’s house. He hung up before she had a chance to ask why.
This time the way up the hill on Coyote Road was clear and dry, though pocked with mud holes. Rushing water from under the dirty piles of snow along the road ran in gullies down both sides. Two teenaged girls trudged up the road, talking excitedly. Nina wondered where they were going.
She had missed breakfast. She needed a cup of coffee. What could Collier want?
She followed the row of trees lining the drive to the gate and almost ran into an ambulance. The gate hung open.
The ambulance, rear doors gaping and waiting for someone; several squad cars, lights turning and flashing; and a firetruck with a couple of big men in yellow sitting on the back had all crammed into the small curve in front of the studio. Terry’s blue minivan looked lost amid the eme
rgency vehicles.
Down the short path to the left of the house, half-hidden in the pines, several people hung around outside the white bungalow where Terry worked. Nina drew up away from the other cars and jumped out, leaving her briefcase, walking quickly toward the group.
The spectators made way, but Nina was stopped at the door by a young South Lake Tahoe police officer who held his hand up and said, "No entry."
"Is Terry London here?" Nina said. "She’s my client. I’m an attorney."
He cocked his head to the side, said, "Nina Reilly?"
"Yes. What’s going on? Where’s Ms. London?" The cop nodded toward the inside, and Nina’s heart sank. "Sorry," he said. "You can’t go in there right now. It’s a crime scene."
"A crime?"
"The victim’s still in there," the cop said. "They’re getting ready to take the body away." Nina tried to push past him. "Hey!" he said.
"Let me in!"
Collier Hallowell, a deputy district attorney for the County of El Dorado, walked out onto the porch. She hadn’t seen him in months. His gray eyes looked bloodshot, as if he had been up as long as she had.
"What’s happening? What’s going on? Is it Terry?" Nina said, as Collier took her elbow and guided her to the side of the studio.
"I’m afraid so."
"What’s happened?"
"Gunshot," Collier said. He wore heavy beige rubber gloves, an old unpressed shirt, jeans. Plastic booties covered his deck shoes. No socks, she thought automatically. He looked like he had been rousted from his bed. The gloves and booties frightened her. He had lost his usual friendly and kind expression and looked unapproachable and fierce. "We’ve been here all morning. We’re ready to wind things down. Where’ve you been?"
"She did it, didn’t she?" She tore her eyes from him and closed them, trying to collect her senses. "She was awfully worked up about everything, somewhat unstable ... but it was just a short delay, we won the case...."
"She didn’t kill herself, Nina," Collier said. The gloves, stained on the fingers with something dark, transformed his hands into something terrible.
"Somebody came in last night and blew her away. You have any ideas about that?"
"Me?"
"Sure you do," he said, watching her closely. "You come over to my office first thing tomorrow morning. Do you have the film with you?"
"You mean Where Is Tamara Sweet? No, but I have a copy at the office."
"I want to have a look at it right away."
"I’ll see what I can do—"
"Where were you last night?"
"Me? Home in bed."
"Alone in your bedroom?"
"Of course. Why? You think I killed my client?"
"It’s happened," Collier said. "You had a scene with her at the courthouse yesterday. You were filing a motion to get out of the case. I’ll need to know all about that. "
"Okay, sure."
A white van drove up, with KTHO-TV painted on its side. "Shit," Collier said, watching the van. "I have to go back inside."
"I want to see her," Nina said.
"No. There’s no reason."
"She’s my client, and she’s been killed. I want to see her." She said it calmly, professionally, so Collier would understand. She would not make a scene unless he turned her down. He tried once more to move her along, but she crossed her arms, saying, "I’m not leaving." She didn’t have time to make him understand. She had to see Terry for herself.
Casting one more unhappy look at the news crew unloading the van and beginning to make their approach, he said, "Come on." To the officer at the door, he said, "Hey, Mike, don’t let the press in, whatever you do. Let me know as soon as the medical examiner arrives." He kept a hard grip on her arm, pulling her along with him, then drew her inside and closed the door.
She was back again in the long white room where Terry had shown off her equipment collection so proudly. But this time two homicide detectives and a fireman leaned against the wall, waiting for the photographer to finish.
Terry lay on her back on the carpet, close to an extended wing shelf, her right arm crumpled under her, her left arm flung out.
Nina noted the black pants and the billowing white cotton shirt bibbed with blood.
Starting with thick clots at the neck, a reddish-brown river had flowed down the side of her body, onto the slightly uneven floor, into streams several feet long.
The fireman left, and the remaining detectives watched Nina, keeping their feet carefully out of the evidence.
Terry’s dark yellow eyes gazed up toward the ceiling, emptied of personality. Another gusher of dried blood had flowed from the right side of her mouth, the direction in which her head, resting on a bloody pillow, tilted. Between her legs, a videocamera was propped.
A photographer in a khaki vest loaded with pockets moved slowly around Terry, dropping to her knees, leaning forward, documenting every feature of this final indignity, in close-up, in wide angle. With and without flash. Camera cases, a jacket, and a black baseball cap were stacked near the door, away from the mayhem, presumably hers.
The wall behind the counter, too, had been splattered with blood and tissue, seemed to have a hole in it....
The lights were so bright, and something smelled bad in here with the door closed, wet and hot and ...
Collier’s hand appeared in the confusion of talk and light, reaching out and taking hers, leading her to the door and opening it. She was outside, dazed. Neighbors and newspeople were asking questions, their faces ugly with curiosity.
"When can I see you?" Collier said, the suggestion sounding as incongruous to her after what she had seen as the rustle of the wind through the pines outside Terry’s studio.
"What?" Nina asked, startled out of her reverie by the question.
"I need to know everything you know," said Collier. "How about first thing Monday morning?"
12
TWO UNIFORMED OFFICERS CAME OUT OF COLLIER Hallowell’s office, too intent on their instructions to notice Nina. "You can go in now," the woman receptionist said. Nina waited for the buzzer and walked back into the joyless world of criminal justice, which she had never wanted to enter again.
In the large front room the secretaries hung on the phones, fighting to keep the frantic scheduling of witnesses and court under control, taking messages for the deputy district attorneys who were usually in court, soothing victims and processing paperwork. On the right side, the attorneys worked in cubicles in a line from front to back, forming an obscure status system she couldn’t fathom. Collier’s office was second from the back. He stepped out, arguing vigorously into the phone he held to his ear, and beckoned her in.
The office hadn’t changed since the last time she’d seen it: twice as much paper littering an office half as large as hers; nondescript paint flaking here and there; desk buried under teetering files; stuffed bookshelves; bare, scratched flooring; no paintings, plants, or curios; a phone, a computer, a fax, and one prosecutor conducting the state’s business from a swivel chair—disheveled, genial or grave as the circumstances demanded, perceptive, overcaffeinated, and potent.
"Tell them we don’t have the money to do that sort of thing anymore," Collier said to the phone. "Tell ’em not to fuck around. If they insist, I’ll talk to them directly." On that softly threatening note, he hung up.
Before Nina sat down, she spotted the only personal item in the office, the photograph that he looked at all day long, the one of his dead wife. A dark-haired girl, athletic, straight-backed, seated on a horse with High Sierra peaks in the background. He must have taken the picture, so the smile was for him.
"Are those the same papers that were here last time I saw you here, last summer? Or do you freshen them up once in a while?" asked Nina, tapping the side of one stack, unable to budge it. "Solid as a brick fence."
"Oh, they change weekly. There’ll never be enough room until I get the corner office I covet."
"Which leads me to ask, did you ever decide to r
un for D.A.?"
"I announced last week. I guess you missed it."
"Good luck. I mean that."
"I appreciate it. Before we start, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your client."
How should she respond to that? I’m not? Or Thanks, like a grieving relative?
She nodded and said nothing.
"Thanks for coming." His gray eyes drifted over the paperwork on his desk. He held a pen in his mouth, which hung like an exotic black cigarette, and chewed on its plastic tip.
"You told me to."
He opened a file folder with her name on it and said, "Mind if I record this?" Though she should have expected it, this question irritated her, bringing her back into her role of prickly defense attorney.
"Do I have a choice?"
This time he came around the desk and sat on it, facing her, catching her eye. "I’ve never gotten used to going out to murder scenes. Fragile, is how it makes me feel. All those people out there working at that house on Coyote Road may have looked callous to you, but they all felt the same—fragile. How did you feel?"
"Shocked. Angry."
"You want to tell me about it?"
She thought for a long time before saying anything. "I got shot in that courtroom last year. I saw people shot. So I said, never again. I’ll arrange my life so I never see that again. And Terry came to me with a problem that spiraled back down toward a place I tried to escape. Before I could pull out, she died. I suppose this will sound selfish, but I can’t grieve for her. I hardly knew her, and what I knew I didn’t like."
"I understand," Collier said. "You’re over the physical effects of the shooting? I mean—"
"You mean when I got shot? Yes."
"But there are other effects. I don’t mean to insult you—I really don’t. But you don’t look like yourself."
"Fragile’s one word for it. How about expendable? How about targeted?"
"And now you’ve been yanked back to that moment of terror like you’re hooked to a bungee cord."
She nodded again, feeling relieved to talk about it. Collier inspired confessions. That was his job. She should keep that in mind. "My family gets yanked back too. It’s as though we’re walking on narrow planks above an abyss—but it’s not empty like an abyss, it’s fulminating with violence and insanity. Have you ever been to Lassen and walked that trail into Bumpass Hell?"
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