Trophies and Dead Things

by Marcia Muller

  “You mean because they were white?”

  He nodded. “All except for the Indian. You Indian, too?”

  “Some.”

  “Thought so. That offend you—me saying “Indian, instead of ‘Native American’?

  I shrugged. “They’re just labels, and I’m not much of a labeler.”

  He smiled his approval. “You know, seems like only a little while ago I was a Negro. Then I was black. Not real descriptive, since we mainly brown, but what the hell. Next thing I know, black’s out and African-American’s in. What a mouthful! Then the other day my grandson—he goes to college, know about that stuff—he tell me that’s out, now we’re ‘people of color.’

  “So I says to him, ‘What is that? Back when I was your age we were colored people. The way things goin’, pretty soon we gonna get to be niggers again.’ The young man, he didn’t find that funny.”

  I did, however, and I could tell my laughter pleased Cal Hurley. He’d probably been saving that story for a suitable audience. After a moment I turned serious, though. “About the kids in the pink house . . .?”

  “I getting to that. Don’t think I’m one of these old men that rambles. Just wanted to cheer you up some: you looked down in the mouth for a minute there. The thing about those kids not fitting in didn’t so much have to do with being white as it did with coming from money. Kids, they can put on old clothes, hang out in a poor neighborhood, scrounge for garbage—and to me that’s a filthy habit no matter how down-and-out you are—but they can’t get rid of the look. Maybe their people weren’t rich, but none of them except the Indian ever gone without in their lives. But they were quiet kids, didn’t bother nobody, so folks around here let them alone.”

  “What did they do while they were living here?”

  “Came and went. The fellow with the blond curly hair seemed to have some sort of real job; I had the feeling he didn’t really live there, just hung out. A couple a others worked part-time. But mostly they stayed inside the flat. Doing what, I couldn’t guess at the time.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Hard to say. You’d see people for a while, then you wouldn’t. But mainly it was the Indian, the blond girl, the blond boy, the little dark-haired girl, and the fellow with the scar.”

  Excitement pricked at me. This was the first time anyone had placed Tom Grant in the company of members of the collective. Cautiously I said, “Would you describe the one with the scar, please?”

  “Handsome kid, except for this ragged red gouge on his left cheek. Dark hair. Tall. Older than the others by a few years, I’d say. You’d see him alone or with the little dark-haired girl. There was something about him . . . well, like he wasn’t really part of things. Like the girl was his connection to the rest. When they’d walk down the street with the others, they’d stay apart. But when it was just the girl, she’d walk with her friends.”

  Interesting, that dynamic, I thought. “Was the man with the scar there at the time the three were arrested?”

  “Yeah. Afterward, too.”

  “What about the blond-haired boy?”

  “Oh, he was gone by then. Months before.”

  “But the man with the scar stayed on after the arrests?”

  “Well, not exactly. They raided the place, you know. The feds, they came in there and took all sorts of stuff away. And the man with the scar was with them.”

  “What? Was he handcuffed?”

  “Not that I could see. If they arrested him, they must of let him go later. That flat was sealed up all through the trial, but when they took the seal off, he was living there again. And after she got done testifying against her friends, the little dark-haired girl stayed with him for a while. The she was gone, and the next thing I knew, end of the month a family moved in.”

  “So when was the last time you actually saw the man with the scar?”

  He considered. “Well, a day or two after the little dark-haired girl left.”

  I leaned back against the cigar-musty upholstery, revising quite a few of my preconceptions. And putting together some things that hadn’t made sense or seemed important before. But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions; I needed proof.

  I asked, “If I brought you pictures of those people, could you identify them?”

  “Think so. The older I get the sharper I am on things that happened a long time ago. Damn, I wish I could say the same for what’s going on day to day.”

  “I don’t think you’re doing so badly. I’ll see if I can get hold of some pictures, and as soon as I do, I’ll check back with you. Meantime, if you think of anything else, call me, please.”

  All Souls was as quiet and deserted as if it were a sleepy Sunday afternoon. No clients or media people waited in the parlor; Ted’s desk was vacant. I went past it and stuck my head into Rae’s office. Empty. I frowned, checked my watch. Four thirty-seven, too early for everyone to have gone home. Then I heard a murmur of voices in the kitchen. I hurried back there, feeling what I told myself was an unreasonable foreboding.

  The scene in the kitchen reminded me of wakes I’d attended. Rae, Ted, and Jack sat around the table, faces somber, drinks in hand. Ted clasped Ralph the cat is if he were a security blanket. Alice, subdued for once, perched on the windowsill. I set my bag and briefcase on the counter and leaned against it, braced for bad news.

  “There you are,” Jack said, a little too heartily. For once he didn’t cast a lustful glance at my legs or cleavage. Jack was recovering from a divorce and for some reason had made me the object to his yearnings. If he wasn’t ogling me, something terrible must have happened.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, my voice matching his for false cheer. “You guys starting the Friday happy hour early?”

  “Something like that.” Ted stood and handed Ralph to me. You look like you could use a drink.” He went toward the cupboard where the glasses were kept.

  I took the last empty chair, setting the cat on my lap. He tucked his tail around his front paws and stared solemnly at me. I turned him around so I wouldn’t have to undergo his yellow-eyed scrutiny. “What’s going on?” I repeated in a more urgent tone.”

  Ted returned with a glass of white wine and handed it to me. “Hank had additional surgery this afternoon. He started bleeding internally again, so they had to go in and tie off some blood vessels. None of us could work, so we decided to knock off early.”

  I froze, glass halfway to my lips. “Will he be—”

  Rae said, “Anne-Marie called a little while ago. He’s in recovery, holding his own.”

  I set the glass down on the table and pressed my hands against Ralph’s round sides, so hard he grunted. “What does that mean—holding his own?”

  It was a stupid question; no one bothered to answer me.

  Did I imagine it, or was there a tension in the room that hadn’t been there when I entered? I looked around the table, saw in the others’ guarded expressions that they didn’t know quite how to deal with me. To them I was not the same person they thought they’d known before last night. Rae had seen my face just before I’d started up the hill after the sniper; Jack and Ted had arrived with the police and found me straddling his supine body, gun pressed to his skull. I doubted any of them would every fully reconcile their prior conceptions of me with the near-murderous stranger they’d seen. And while time would somewhat dull the memory, it would always be there, always set me a little apart form them.

  The realization filled me with sadness. I squeezed Ralph harder, and this time he let out a tiny mowl of protest. “Sorry,” I whispered, and handed him back to Ted. Suddenly I needed to be out of there, to be alone. I got up, grabbed my bag and briefcase, and fled into the hall. Behind me Rae said, “Let her go. She’ll be okay.”

  But footsteps followed me. I turned and saw Ted, still clutching the cat. “Shar—”

  “What now?”

  He blinked, recoiling from the harshness in my voice, “I only wanted to tell you there’s an envelo
pe for you on my desk.”

  “Oh. Oh, thanks, Ted.”

  The sadness came on more strongly. As I went down the hall my sight blurred from tears. Angrily I brushed them away, got the manila envelope from Ted’s desk, and took it up to my office. It contained the copy of the report Wolf had promised me. I sat down at the desk and began to read.

  Wolf appeared to have consulted the same published resources as I had, plus interviewed a number of people who had known Jenny Ruhl. The most fruitful of these talks was with a woman who was Ruhl’s roommate during their freshman year at Berkeley. Although their lives took off in very different directions after those first semesters, the two remained close. The woman confirmed that Andy Wrightman was the father of Ruhl’s child. He was, she said, a campus hanger-on who was auditing the course Ruhl was taking on the origins of the Vietnam war when they met; they lived together a year or so before Ruhl became pregnant. When she told him about the expected child, Wrightman disappeared from Berkeley. But he returned to Jenny before she moved from the East Bay to San Francisco, and after the trial, when Ruhl’s friend contacted her to see if there was any way she could help out, Ruhl and Wrightman were living in the flat on Page Street.

  I read the report twice, the second time trying to guess what Jess Goodhue’s reaction to it had been. Then I reviewed my contacts with the anchorwoman, eventually focusing on the telephone conversation we’d had late on the afternoon she picked up the report. I’d told her that I thought Tom Grant figured in my case more than he would admit; said one of the other heirs had been startled by my description of Grant; said he’s said something about Grant being the “right man.”

  But by then Goodhue had known it was a name—Wrightman. The name of her father. And Grant was someone she’d met, had interviewed and found “charming.”

  Then I thought about the conversation I’d had with Grant the next morning. We’d set our meeting for nine that evening because he’d scheduled a client dinner and then an appointment for “an interview.” When Angela Curtis had told me he’d sent her out to the movies because he didn’t want her around the house, I’d assumed the interview was with a prospective employee, possibly a replacement for Curtis. But media people also schedule interviews. And when I’d tried to call Goodhue before I’d left for Grant’s, she’d supposedly been in her dressing room, where no one ever bothered her.

  It was time, I thought, to have a frank talk with Jess Goodhue.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Goodhue was already on the air by the time I reached KSTS. I didn’t want to risk missing her in case she planned to leave the studio between broadcasts, so I told the receptionist I’d wait. There was a grouping of chairs to one side of the lobby, and an assortment of magazine on the low table they surrounded; I selected Metropolitan Home and leafed through it, glancing at the ads but barely seeing them. My thoughts were preoccupied by the upcoming confrontation with the anchorwoman—and the unpleasant truths that might emerge during out talk.

  The hands of my watch moved slowly toward seven o’clock. The lobby was deserted and the building seemed hushed, as if everyone were holding his breath until the newscast was successfully completed. The impression, I knew, was deceptive: frantic activity would be going on behind the locked door by the reception desk; stories would continue to break up until the eleven o’clock report; other stories would constantly be updated. And Goodhue could very well use that activity as an excuse for avoiding me.

  So far no one had entered the studio from the street. It occurred to me that there was a door from the parking lot. If Goodhue wanted to duck me, she could slip out that way when the receptionist told her I was here. I glanced at him; he was reading a current best-seller, totally absorbed. When I got up and meandered around the lobby, pretending to study the blowups of KSTS personalities, he paid me no attention. I moved closer to the locked door, staring at the faces of Les Gates, Goodhue’s co-anchor.

  At five minutes to seven, a tall, curly-haired man strode into the lobby, announcing that he had to see someone named Rick—was he in the building, and if so, where?

  “Studio D,” the receptionist said, his hand moving automatically to the buzzer.

  The man hurried over to the door, opened it as soon as the buzzer sounded, and went inside. I caught it before it closed and slipped through. The man was already at the other end of the corridor and didn’t notice me.

  The pace in the newsroom was even more hectic than it had been on Monday afternoon: phones range; people rushed about; the sound was turned up on the monitors, and the competition’s newscasts blended into an unintelligible babble. I entered as if I had business there and went straight to Goodhue’s empty cubicle.

  The anchorwoman’s desk was covered with papers; scripts, memos, correspondence, a copy of the Examiner, sheets from yellow pads. As I was about to sit down, one of the latter caught me eye; it was covered with doodles that looked like crude representatives of Tom Grant’s fetishes. At the top of the sheet was a name and a phone number—Harry Sullivan. Sullivan was one of the city’s top criminal attorney’s; it looked as though Goodhue planned to consult him.

  Quickly I flipped through her appointments calendar on the desk. Notations were scrawled all over it, but there was no indication of a meeting with Sullivan—not in the past couple of days nor in the near future. Goodhue must have been debating calling him. Ironic what she’d doodled while thinking it over.

  Voices rose louder in the newsroom. I recognized Goodhue’s. Footsteps approached the cubicle. I turned as she and Les Gates entered.

  Gates looked mildly surprise to see a stranger there. Goodhue blanched and exclaimed, “You!” Her eyes moved from me to the yellow sheet on the desk; when they met mine again, they were flooded with fear. Her mouth twisted as if she suddenly felt sick.

  I said, “Jess, we have to talk.”

  She took a step backward. “No.”

  Gates was frowning. “Jess, what’s wrong? You want me to call security?”

  “No!” She turned quickly, bumping into a woman who was passing.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Goodhue ran for the door of the newsroom.

  Gates put a restraining hand on my arm. “What’s going on? Wait a minute—aren’t you the investigator who collared that sniper? How come you’re here—”

  Typical newsman, all questions. I wrenched free, went after Goodhue. The door to the lobby was just closing. I ran down there, yanked it open, saw her pushing through the street door. As I ran across the lobby, the receptionist shouted, “Hey, what were you doing back there?”

  Outside, the Embarcadero was gray with mist. Heavy traffic moved swiftly in both directions; from above came the hum of cars on the Bay Bridge. Goodhue was running awkwardly across the railroad tracks that fronted the building. She caught the toe of her high-heeled shoe on one side of the rails, stumbled, righted herself, and kept going.

  I yelled for her to stop, but she didn’t even pause at the curb, dodging cars and trucks on her way across the Embarcadero. A sports car screeched to a stop, barely missing her. Horns blared. Goodhue ran for the piers on the other side, seemingly oblivious to the commotion.

  I started after her, was almost mowed down by a van whose driver screamed obscenities at me. Goodhue had reached the sidewalk and was angling to the left, past the SFFD’s fireboat station. I stepped into the crosswalk, holding up my hand to stop an oncoming car like a traffic cop. It braked, and the cars traveling in the opposite direction halted, too. I spotted a look of astonishment on one driver’s face as I sprinted in front of him and down the sidewalk.

  It was cold, and the wind blew strongly off the bay, redolent of creosote and salt water. Ahead, a gust threw Goodhue off her stride as she reached the wide strip of promenade. I passed the fireboat station, gaining on her.

  Goodhue stumbled, looked over her shoulder, and saw me. She glanced at the traffic whizzing by, then at the chest-high seawall to her right. For a moment I thought she might climb it and fling her
self into the bay. Then she kicked off her shoes and ran faster.

  Ahead as a concrete shelter topped by a flagpole—part of some waterfront design plan that didn’t appear to have come off properly. The promenade widened at that point, jutting out into the bay. Goodhue made a sharp right turn and suddenly disappeared from sight. I sped up, reached the corner of the seawall, and rounded it.

  On the other side was an area between the wall and an arm of the promenade that looked like a large boat slip. Steps led down to it and vanished under the lapping waves. Goodhue was descending them. I shouted for her to stop. When she reached the bottom step, she didn’t hesitate a beat, just waded into the water.

  Two concrete landing piers rose a couple of feet above the water in the middle of the slip—another part of the design plan that hadn’t been thought through, since there was no way or reaching around them without getting soaked. Goodhue was slogging toward the closer of them, in up to her knees now. I ran down the steps and waded in after her, the water felt icy through my athletic shoes.