"What did he say about Nina Reilly?" Paul said.
"He heard her raggin’ on me in court day before yesterday. He stopped eating, stayed up all night, and then went up to Reno to run a race. Something happened. They fired him, and he came back mumbling about the lawyer lady. Monster trucks was just about the only thing he loved. He locked himself in his room today. I could hear him carryin’ on in there. He was really upset. I was thinking I’d have to take him back to the hospital. "
Paul assumed he was talking about Nina. He didn’t interrupt.
"She made it seem like Ralphie killed Terry—he wouldn’t take kindly to that. Terry was like his guru, I’m not kidding. She had an evil hold on that boy. She treated him like a dog, but he didn’t mind. Ralphie thought Kurt Scott did it, and the lawyer lady was accusing him just to get her client off. A reporter tried to talk to him. He hates attention like that."
"Of course he does!" Paul shouted, losing his temper as they climbed the hill toward the ridge, "He was lying to you! He did kill her!"
"Gah-damn! Ain’t you listening! I told you and that Miss Reilly, he was sound asleep! I was there! As God is my witness! I ain’t goin’ any farther. You can find the goddamn lookout yourself." Kettrick pulled the door handle and the door on the van swung open in the dark, catching against some bushes.
Paul wanted to let him jump out, but he still needed him. He took a firm hold on Kettrick’s arm and said, "Take it easy. You want to help him, stick with me."
Kettrick allowed himself to be drawn back in, muttering, "I oughtta know ... I was there...." Gradually he calmed down and resumed giving directions, at the same time resuming the tale of Ralph’s babyhood. "Anyhow, his mom, Meredith her name was, got out of bed one night and went outside onto Haight Street. She was barefoot, wearing her night-gown, a shawl, so forth. All the girls wore those clothes anyway back then. She didn’t bring any money, but somebody was tryin’ to be nice and gave her some tabs of windowpane. Acid. And a speed chaser."
"Where’s the turnoff? Goddammit, I can’t see it!"
"About two hundred feet farther. There you go. The dirt road there. Her poor little heart gave out. Ralphie, he lost his mother. How I loved that little girl. I wrote a song about her. Made it into the top 100 during May 1972. I buried her in the mink coat I bought her on my last tour with the Dead, and—"
They turned onto Angora Ridge Road. Paul slammed on the brakes as he passed Nina’s Bronco, shadowy off the side of the road. He pulled over in front, and the two men jumped out, Paul praying she was sitting safely in there, waiting.
No such luck. She must have tried to sneak up on Ralph. The Bronco was empty.
"Come on," Paul said, climbing back in and starting up again.
"I came back here to take care of him. I love him," Kettrick said next to him. "Every parent loves his kid, you know? You think I don’t know it’s my fault?"
Ahead, Paul saw a light.
Ralph Kettrick held a flaming torch above his head, his grotesquely twisted features lit from above, a horror show in real life. When he saw the van, Kettrick tossed the flaming torch toward a small shed next to the fire-spotting station.
Jerry Kettrick jumped out of the van, stomping at the fire. Paul joined him, tossing dirt on the flames.
Somehow they managed to stop the fire before the gas ignited. Ralph had run back inside, still holding the can.
Silence. The air itself crackled with ghastly possibilities.
In his years as a homicide detective, Paul had never had to deal with death personally. The bodies were already there, anonymous, cases to close, evidence. He had never known a victim. Sometimes there had been danger, but it was only to himself, and he could handle that.
Never in that time had he felt the gut-wrenching fear he felt now.
He had no idea what to do. Kettrick was in there with Nina and Bobby, and he could shoot them or set them all on fire any second.
Jerry Kettrick put his hand on his arm, said in a low voice, "Keep your mouth shut." Then he called over to the shed, "Ralphie! Hey, Ralphie! I come to take you home! "
"Dad?" Ralph Kettrick’s voice said.
Another voice yelled, "Help! He’s going to kill us!"
"Dad? You hear that?"
"No, boy, I didn’t hear anything, just some crickets down the hill. It’s late. I’m going to take you back home now."
"I have to finish my game."
"Come on out, boy, or I’ll have to take you back to the hospital in the morning."
"You’re gonna do that anyway, Dad, quit lyin’ to me."
"Ralphie. I love you, boy. Let me help you with this trouble. "
"Dad? I ain’t never going to be famous now. I’ve been killing girls. Did you hear what I said, Dad?"
"I couldn’t hear that, Ralphie. The breeze is out. But I bet you’re hungry. Come on home with me."
Silence.
In the pitch blackness of the shed, Ralph said, "This is it." Nina sensed the Colt moving through the air as he listened for their breathing. They lay sightless in the corner of the dark room. Suddenly a small flare of light turned the dark into dimness. She realized Ralph had dug a cigarette lighter out of his pocket so he could see to shoot....
Her pocket! She twisted and plunged both her hands, still bound together, into her pocket. And found nothing but Bobby’s squeaky seal. Ralph clicked the lighter several times, but it kept going out.
Something about rats. They fought the dogs and killed the—
"Squeee-ak!"
Ralph twitched. She heard the lighter clatter to the floor, and watched fearfully for a spark that didn’t come. "Omigod, Ralph! There’s a rat in here!" Nina cried. "Right behind you!"
"Squeak! Squeak!"
"Oh no, no ..."
"A bunch of them, don’t you hear them? Rats! Everywhere! Huge!"
"Squeak!"
"Ugh!" Ralph wheeled around and shot the wall behind him.
"Red eyes! Up in the ceiling!" Nina wailed. "They’re everywhere!"
Ralph shot the ceiling, tottering back as if he expected a rat body to land on him.
"Squee-eeek!" Screaming, Ralph ran outside.
To where Paul waited, gun drawn. "Put it down!" Paul yelled.
"Please," Jerry Kettrick said. "Please, boy. Put it down ......
Ralph turned toward the shed, raising the gun again to shoot into it, and Paul aimed, released the safety ...
But it was Jerry Kettrick who shot Ralph, the loud, stinging report echoing down the hills on both sides. Ralph looked down at his chest, then at his father, fell to his knees, and said, "Dad, you shot me," in a bewildered, childish voice.
He fell heavily to the ground and lay still.
Jerry Kettrick dropped his rifle. "It’s my fault, boy," he said, "that I didn’t kill her a long time ago."
He rushed to his son and Paul rushed inside.
She was babbling about rabbits and Krafft-Ebing and rats, tied up like a human sacrifice, huddling with Bobby in the corner of the stinking shed, but they were both alive.
43
AT COLLIER’S REQUEST, MILNE POSTPONED THE TRIAL for a week. Bob was resting at home. The doctor had insisted that he stay in bed. He had a black eye and bruises on his wrists and ankles, but no other physical trauma.
He talked about Ralph a lot. The worst and yet somehow the best part of it had been the moment when he knifed him there on the hillside, defending his mother against her attacker. He called Harlan in Monterey and Nina heard him describing how he had saved her, pride bursting in his voice. He boasted about it to Troy, who sat by his bed and wanted to hear the story over and over. It seemed to compensate for the terror of the experience. He had been brave, had fought back.
At the same time, Nina knew how relieved he was that he hadn’t killed Ralph. The doctor couldn’t tell her whether Bob had fallen asleep or fainted during the last hour in the shed. "Babies and children often just switch off when they are very frightened for a long period of time," he said. "I had
a baby in the hospital this morning who choked on a pebble. His mother called 911. By the time the medics arrived she’d knocked it out of him. He fell into a deep sleep in the ambulance and we were afraid of brain damage, but the baby had just used up all his adrenaline and fallen asleep. Bob went to sleep, I think."
Andrea had recommended a child therapist. Nina had decided to wait and see.
On Sunday, two days after Ralph’s death, Paul called her at home. "I know this is the last thing you want to be thinking about now. But you’ll be back in court on Friday and I can’t stop thinking about it. Ralph didn’t know about the film, but his dad did," Paul said. "When we interviewed Jerry, he said so."
"Mmm-hmm." Paul was right about one thing. She’d spent two days talking to many people and staying close to Bob. She didn’t want to talk anymore.
"Listen to this. Jerry Kettrick hears the shot, sees Kurt run out. Doesn’t call the cops. He walks over and blows Terry away."
"What brings all this on?"
"I can’t stop thinking about what he said right after he shot Ralph. He said, ’It’s my fault. I should have killed her a long time ago.’ "
"That’s not a confession. Besides, how—"
Then she thought, Jerry Kettrick loved his son. He hated Terry. What if ...
What if Jerry walked over after Matt shot Terry and ran out the back, and what if she wasn’t dead, she was wounded and she was making the tape when Jerry came in ...
"A pfennig for your thoughts," Paul was saying. She was remembering Terry in the death video, mouthing the words Angel of Death, looking up as though—as though someone else had just come in! And then the video went black....
But ...
But Terry hadn’t reached up to turn it off after Matt left. The video would have shown her reaching up.
Someone else turned it off.
But how do you kill someone without leaving a mark? All that blood, Terry lying on the floor, the bloody pillow under her head ...
"Oh, Paul," Nina said.
You put the pillow over Terry’s face, just like she had done to her own daughter....
Justice with a capital J. "It’s possible," she said. "I wonder if Jerry did kill her. But he saved me and Bob. He helped you find us, even though it would be the end for Ralph. And he—he shot Ralph."
"No way to prove it," Paul said. "Kurt’s going to be all right. No jury would convict him now, with Ralph right next door with no alibi and his dad the eyewitness."
"Why don’t we ask him, Paul?"
"I like that. Simple and direct. I’m on my way out of town. I’ll stop by."
When no one answered Paul’s knock at the Kettrick place, he tried the door, which was unlocked, and went inside. On the living room floor, empty bottles, pills, and a plastic bag with a couple of pills remaining inside ringed the recliner. So Kettrick had gone on a bender. He had loved his son, in spite of everything, the lunacy, the murders, that room.... He called out, but the cabin was silent and cool, the windows blanketed against the summer sun outside.
Down the hall, he could see the door to Ralph’s room, closed. He went the other way, and found a bed, neatly made with a light cotton spread, unwrinkled, untouched. The bathroom door stood agape, and the peeling vinyl floor was bare. He walked down the hall, back toward Ralph’s room, calling Jerry, but getting no reply. At the closed door he stopped to think. A draft blew up from under the door, chilling his brow, which he realized was sweating. Ralph—or Jerry—must have left a window open in there. One part of him put his hand on the knob. Another part held back. Here he stood at the gate to hell and the abyss, a madman’s city of woe. All hope abandon ...
He opened the door. He stepped inside.
Late that night, Paul called Nina again. Sounding subdued and unusually shaken, he simply said that Jerry Kettrick had hanged himself in his son’s room, leaving a short note in which he confessed to killing Terry London.
He didn’t describe the scene in detail. He didn’t have to. He had told her about Ralph’s room before. She could imagine it.
"But why?" she said.
"Ralphie had told him she was going to make a movie about him. Jerry thought he knew what about. He thought she’d corrupted him and now was going to profit from exposing him. Ralph had told him about Tamara."
Nina was quiet, thinking about how Matt would feel when he heard about it. Paul, all of them, would think Jerry had fired the second shot.
"Terry spread all that death," Nina said finally. "So many who came into contact with her didn’t survive."
"You, for instance. You went to hell and back. How are you feeling?"
"Relieved."
"I’ll be there for the court appearance," Paul said. "Take care."
"Paul."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you again for everything."
"I was doing it for you."
On Friday morning, Milne entered a directed verdict of acquittal and dismissed the jury.
Pandemonium. Amid the noise, Kurt hugged Nina, holding her for a long time, while Paul stood impatiently by. When he had finished, Paul shook his hand. Well-wishers came up, patting her on the back, full of praise and compliments. Collier managed to work his way through the throng. "Here you’ve gone and done it again," he said, telling her he’d call her with his congratulations after he had fully licked his wounds and disappearing into the mob.
They led Kurt back to the jail to be processed out. She said nothing to him, nor he to her, about what would happen next.
Outside in the corridor, flashbulbs popped, questions were lobbed, and people jostled to shake her hand. Smiling, she said only that she was pleased that justice had been done. The jurors waited for her, and she went over to talk to them and thank them. Mrs. Bourgogne told her she liked her style, but she should keep her hair out of her face and wear longer skirts. Then Paul helped clear a path so they could get out to the parking lot.
44
BOB TOOK A SHOWER THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Saturday, without any reminders. He wore his favorite baggy T-shirt and shorts and the new black hat that Nina had given him. His new hat looked just like the old hat that sat anonymously in a police locker, with "No Fear" embroidered in white just above the brim.
At noon exactly, the doorbell rang. Matt was making punch in the kitchen, and Andrea had run out for some more charcoal for the grill.
Looking through the spyhole in the door, Nina saw Kurt, standing with a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and balloons in the other.
"Bob," she called softly. He came running and stretched up on his toes to peer through the spyhole with a kind of strained anticipation.
"What do you think?" She put her arm around him, whispering, "Ready?" Then she opened the door.
Twelve years, Nina thought, as if she’d never seen Kurt in jail, never gone through the trial—twelve years, and he’s come back.
Kurt handed her the flowers and Bob the balloons. He cleared his throat and said, "Hi," and Bob said, "Hi," to him.
"You must be Bob," said Kurt.
"And you must be ..." words failed Bob. Nina gave him a little nudge.
"I’m your dad."
Bob put out a hand to shake, which Kurt solemnly took. They shook hands for a long time, looking at each other. And then they laughed.
Then they rushed together, knocking Bob’s hat to the ground. Bob’s arms reached around his father, one hand still clutching the balloons.
After a long time, they both turned to her.
Two pairs of identical green eyes smiled at her.
After dinner, Kurt and Bob went for a walk. They hadn’t touched the hot dogs Matt had grilled. Nina watched them go, sitting on the grass of the front lawn with her arms around her legs.
"It’s unbelievable. They look so alike," Matt said. "It’s like seeing Bob grown up. Say, Nina ..." he began.
"What?"
"Is it true what they said about Jerry Kettrick? I mean, you wouldn’t rig something like that just to save me. Would you?"
"He killed her, Matt. She was lying there making this video. She didn’t resist. I think she wanted to die, Matt. It was over with her and Kurt. Her hatred for him consumed her life, and she used her dying moments to condemn him."
"I wish to God it never happened. But I can live with this," Matt said. "If you can."
Nina said, "I think of what she might have done if you hadn’t been there....’’
"Let’s forget it happened. That’s my plan."
She didn’t believe a word of it, but she appreciated the forceful words from her brother. He didn’t want her to worry about him, so she would try to respect that. He would deal with what he had done in his own way, in his own time. "Have some more wine," Matt said. "It’s good for your heart—I heard it on a talk show.
"Oh," he added, "and I have a present for you."
"What might that be?"
"You’re going to fly like a hawk tomorrow night, lady. The breeze calms at five or so. The lake goes flat. I’m taking you for a ride."
High in the sky, looking down at the mountains and the blue water ... "I could handle that," Nina said.
Andrea came out in white shorts and a straw hat, carrying a crystalline glass of white wine.
"So who’s it going to be?" she said. "Paul? Or Kurt?"
When Kurt and Bob came back, Kurt said, "Can I borrow your mother for a minute?"
"Okay, but don’t forget. I have to show you my computer later."
"I won’t forget."
Nina and Kurt went across the street to sit on a stone wall over a brook, dangling their bare feet in the water. Kurt, so handsome beside her, so different from the desperate man behind bars, made her feel shy. He seemed thoroughly relaxed. His life had changed completely. He had a son, and he was freer than he’d ever been since she first met him. Gradually, in fits and starts, wetting their toes in the sunshine, they began to talk, just chatting, not trying to cover everything, just touching bases. A tacit understanding between them said, there will be time now for everything.
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