Too Close to the Edge

by Susan Dunlap

  I had to decide what I was going to do about Mr. Kepple, and about this flat. I couldn’t go on being jolted awake at dawn and putting off coming home until after dusk to avoid a forty-five minute monolog on the clay content in the soil. Mr. Kepple was an old man. His garden was his life. My disinterest was a slap in his face. And disinterest was the mildest emotion I felt about the pile of dirt outside my door. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I just wanted to live like a normal person. But that would never happen here. I’d been through it all before. I just didn’t want to face the obvious conclusion.

  I took another shower to wash the dirt off my arms and the chlorine out of my hair and finished half the pint of ice cream.

  It was just after ten when the dispatcher called. “Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Homicide by the inlet, next to Rainbow Village.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE NIGHT WAS DAMP with fog. My car windows were steamed on the inside, but I didn’t stop to wipe them. I cleared a rectangle with the side of my hand and drove down Cedar to San Pablo Avenue, running yellow lights, picturing Brad Butz with his thick, dark hair fluttering over that bruise he had complained about this morning. Did he have more than a bruise now? Or was it his assailant who now lay dead on that unpaved road next to the dump? Or was it a Rainbow Villager? Or had the body of someone unconnected with the waterfront community been dumped there?

  I crossed the freeway and took the access road beside it, turning right on Virginia Street, skirting the inlet, and driving beside the chins of the marina where the sports boutiques and playing fields would be. The road was rough and unlit. The musty smell of low tide rushed in through the window. In the middle of the inlet the half-sunken hull of a junk ship jutted black against the fog. And the headlights of the patrol car and the ambulance sent white cotton-candy cones across the water into the oblivion of the fog. The red pulsers blinked on and off, turning Rainbow Village an unnatural pink. That acre of sagging vehicles looked like a neon mirage.

  I pulled up next to the patrol car. A gusty cold wind blew in from the bay, carrying with it the fresher smell of salt water. By the entrance to Rainbow Village two homemade flags flapped. Both of the patrol officers protecting the scene had their collars turned up. Behind them a crowd of maybe seventy-five people had divided itself into three groups. The nearest and by far the largest section was predominantly tourists from the Inn, dressed for a casual dinner by the bay—men in sports jackets, women with vacation skirts pressed tightly around the backs of their legs and light jackets pulled around arms they couldn’t protect from the wind. A few still clutched wine glasses.

  Next to them, a dozen men and three women in fishing gear stood, several hunched against the night, hands in pockets, gazing straight ahead; several others smoked. For them death was not an abstraction. It lurked in the ocean waters every time they headed out into the vast predawn blackness of the Pacific. It hid behind a freak wave, or in a storm that rose with fatal suddenness, tossing forty-foot crafts, obliterating the shore. They stood silent, fearful, waiting. This close to the docks, the dead person could be one of their own.

  A knot of Rainbow Villagers clustered by the hurricane fence, as if that wall would protect them from danger or suspicion. Those villagers who had been around for a while had seen death here. And the transients knew well enough what it was to be undesirable, expendable, the obvious suspect of affront to “regular society.”

  The tourists divided their attention between the activity at the shoreline and the spectacle of the wary villagers.

  I moved on past them toward the three men at the water’s edge. The headlights threw their shadows—long, emaciated forms jerking spastically on the ripples of the water.

  Murakawa, the beat officer, turned toward me. He was assigned to Morning Watch, seven A.M. to three P.M.; he had covered for a friend on Day Watch; and now it was nearly midnight, but he didn’t look tired. “Drowning. No I.D.”

  The medics moved back and I saw the chair—the wheelchair—lying on its side.

  I took a breath, then moved closer. Next to it, laid on a tarpaulin, was the body. It was Liz Goldenstern.

  I turned away and swallowed hard. The nauseatingly thick ice cream welled in my throat. I swallowed again. I had seen my share of bodies, but those had belonged to strangers, not to a woman I had just pushed home.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed once more, then forcing myself to turn back and look down at Liz. The piercing white of the headlights struck her face, sending a dark triangle of shadow from her nose onto the forehead. Those dark eyes that had flashed with her anger and glowed in triumph when an Avenue merchant capitulated were coated with mud and brine. Her April-pale skin was colorless except for a brown oval beside her nose where the blood had settled after death. Her mouth, which I’d seen so often set determinedly, hung open. Death had so distorted her face that it looked not like Liz but a relative of hers, a relative I didn’t need to care about.

  But there was no flaccidity in her fingers; the skin was taut and the first two fingers were pressed together harder than I’d thought her damaged body would allow.

  “Drowned,” Murakawa said. “The chair was tipped; it must have catapulted her.”

  I stared down at her swollen face, then back at her hands.

  “Couldn’t have been more than a foot of water,” he said. “The bank drops off pretty sharply here. When the witness found her only her head and shoulders were submerged. Her hands were on the shore, above the water level.”

  I gasped, turned away, and clasped my mouth to keep from retching. I squeezed my eyes shut against the thought of Liz, but the image behind the lids was that green-walled staircase leading to the bedroom of my father’s cousin, who would be lying mashed under a pile of stiff gray blankets … waiting for us. By my feet, the water from the inlet lapped against the shore. I tightened my throat and stood staring across the dirt, which was alternating brown and pink, to the black of the inlet, picturing Liz as her body slapped down into the water, knocking the air out of her lungs. I could see her scrambling to pull herself up with arms that wouldn’t work. I could see her gasping, feel her terror as her nose and mouth filled with water.

  Anyone but Liz could have pulled herself out of the water without so much as swallowing a mouthful.

  “What makes you think it’s homicide?” I asked Murakawa.

  The glare of the headlights sharpened his cheekbones to raw edges under his eyes. As he looked down at Liz’s body, he was as pale as she. And when he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper. “The belt. She wore a seat belt to hold her in. They have those on wheelchairs. If you lack tone in your gluteals, your hamstrings, and your erector spinae muscles in the back there’s nothing to keep you from falling forward. The degree and effects of paralysis vary a great deal depending on where the injury occurred and how it affected the spine. There are cases …” He stopped abruptly.

  I put a hand on his arm. “Is this your first homicide?”

  “Does it show that much?”

  “Of course it shows. What kind of person wouldn’t be churned up seeing her like this?” I looked back down at Liz. The bay wind plucked at the dark curls that were still stuck to her face. The thick blue wool sweater that had protected her from the afternoon chill lay heavy against her breasts. It had dried just enough to give off the stench of wet wool and brackish water.

  I took Murakawa’s flashlight and bent down to check her face for marks, her hair and clothes for alien fibers. I pointed to a twig caught in her left sleeve. Murakawa nodded.

  “The belt,” he said when I stood up. “It was cut. The edges are still sharp.”

  I didn’t need to be told that, had the belt been buckled, Liz would have fallen well short of the water. “It’s not just that she’s dead,” I said as much to myself as to Murakawa. “Liz Goldenstern must have been some woman before the accident put her in that chair. Later, she made herself some woman, in spite of not having legs, arms, or even fingers she cou
ld use well. She was ready to take on any comer.” I shook my head. “This way of killing her—it’s such an insult.”

  “I guess that’s what murder is,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “You want shots of the chair?” It was the I. D. Tech. He would do the photography, dust for prints, take the molds, and preserve the samples. Behind him, by the Marina Vista construction shack, the press officer conferred with Lieutenant Collins, the Night Watch Commander. Three reporters stood a few feet away, one checking a camera, the others sidling in toward the press officer.

  I turned away from Liz, from “the body.” To the I.D. Tech, I said, “Take the chair, the body, and the shore twenty feet in either direction. Get what prints you can from the chair and molds of all the footprints within five feet of it. And make sure you label that twig that’s caught on her sleeve.”

  “Smith,” Murakawa said, “I checked the twig. It looks like it’s from the hedge up on the ridge.”

  “Get a sample up there,” I said to the I.D. Tech.

  “Right,” the tech muttered.

  I asked Murakawa, “Have you called for additional back-up? We’re going to need to talk to everyone in that crowd. I need two people to watch the rear of Rainbow Village.” I looked at the acre of vehicles. There were probably thirty or more in it. “And four or five to go door to door in there. And a couple more to check at the Marriott, the docks, and the rest of the lounges down here. If there’s anyone where he shouldn’t be, or acting out of line, I want him held till I can get there.”

  “Back-ups are on the way. I’ll call in and make sure they’re adequate.”

  “Have someone go over the hedge. See if you can find the spot this twig is from. Maybe more of it broke off.”

  “Right.”

  “Where’s the person who found her?”

  “Over there, sitting on the box by the fence, the woman in the black cape. She says she knows why she was killed.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “THIS IS AURA SUMMERLIGHT, a.k.a. Penelope Lynn Garrett,” Murakawa said with only the slightest suggestion of a sigh as he pronounced her self-appointed name. To twenty-four-year-old Murakawa, the sixties was an ancient oddity, characterized by old-hat political action and slovenly dress. Anachronisms like Aura Summerlight baffled him. “She discovered the body.”

  Half the Rainbow Villagers who had been standing by the fence watching our activity at the water’s edge moved off when we started toward them. The remaining ten edged in protectively to Aura Summerlight.

  I glanced at the group. There was no one member who could be taken as representative of all. Two men in their early twenties wore cheap, shiny polyester pants and jackets, garments that would betray them after the first wash. Next to them was an older man, for whom the next wash was well overdue. A woman in a balding, black fur coat, with the lining hanging from both sleeves and the hem, stood next to a couple in jeans, denim jackets, and cowboy boots. Aura Summerlight sat slumped against the fence. The filtered light from the windows of a purple school bus behind the fence skimmed her limp, light-brown hair.

  There was a theory in the psychic circles that contended the name you are called shapes your character because it is a symbol of you and, more prosaically, because you hear it more frequently than most words. Advocates chose to be called qualities they wished to embody. The aura of summer light was such a clear and hopeful image. It seemed to mock the very ungracefulness of this woman’s slumping body. As if to balance her own blandness, she wore a fringed black Punjabi cape embroidered with huge red roses. Even slumped as she was, the thin wool didn’t disguise her thick shoulders and full breasts. She had that type of narrow-hipped figure that carries its fat around the middle without losing the slimness of the ankles.

  I stepped between the blue-jeaned couple and looked down at Aura Summerlight. My body blocked the sporadic red light from the patrol car pulsers. The ground on either side of her blinked red, but she remained in darkness. I said, “I know this evening has been a shock. I don’t want to keep you any longer than I have to. Where can we talk?”

  “Lady, she can—”

  “Ms. Summerlight?” I said, cutting off the speaker, a crew-cut man in a red plaid wool jacket. He shrugged. It was obvious he had objected only for form’s sake.

  Aura Summerlight stood. Now I could make out her scrunched features: the short sharp nose, the tight thin mouth, the sharp cheekbones, and the dark eyes that were sunk so far in they seemed, in the dim light, to be empty hollows. “You can … come to my truck.” She walked to the gate. The wind lifted the flags above it, snapping the cloth back against itself. It blew Aura Summerlight’s hair across her mouth, but she made no move to push it away. She walked on, hurriedly, but making surprisingly little progress, as if she were on a moving sidewalk going the wrong way. Beside her, I found myself taking longer, slower steps, controlling my urge to grab her arm and run to wherever her truck was parked to find out why Liz Goldenstern had been killed.

  We passed the purple school bus. “University of Life” it declared in gold letters on the side. An old Buick, one of the ones with the three holes on the sides, had settled next to it. The light from the bus windows showed the rust on the Buick’s door. We passed a Ford wagon in not much better shape, two Volkswagen vans, and a pickup from the late sixties—new for this lot—with a tarp over a wide load on the back.

  Another time I might have taken her to my own car, but not now, not with the lights from the nearby patrol cars and the staccato squeals from their radios to intimidate her.

  “Here,” she said, indicating a white Chevy pickup that looked only slightly better than average. Behind it she had created a clear plastic lean-to from the fence to two poles. A hibachi, charcoal, lighter fluid, and two buckets huddled under it. In the wind, one of the plastic sides flapped against the fence, striking the metal fitfully, creating the type of irregular noise that would drive the average person crazy. But here, no one seemed to mind.

  Aura Summerlight climbed into the cab. I opened the other door and waited while she lifted paper bags, four of them, from the floor and fitted them behind the seat. I could smell the onions in one. She pulled a box of tissues across the seat toward her and shifted a cup with an immersion heater back farther onto the dashboard.

  “How did you come to discover the body?” I asked.

  She clutched the steering wheel, as if she were battling rush hour on the Bay Bridge, staring tensely ahead with the look of one prepared to cut off lane hoppers. I wondered if she had chosen to use the cab because it was more convenient to sit in or because she wouldn’t have to face me when she talked. “You see, I was walking. I came home late. Most days I’m here by sunset; the buses don’t run much at night.” The words rushed out. “But, well, I don’t know, I got hung up. I had things to do in town, you see. I got here late. Well, the thing is, you see, I was bummed out. A guy I worked for owes me money, fifty dollars. Fifty dollars may not seem like much to you, but I need that money, and, dammit, he owes me, and he’s weaseling out. So I went by his place and I waited. I waited a long time. And when he finally came, it was dark, but I saw him at the corner, and he saw me, and he beat it, and I ran after him, but he was too fast. I lost him. I was so damned mad. I was going to go back to his place and wait some more. He had to come home. But he has money—he could go to a bar and have a few drinks. He could wait me out. So I figured I’d better come on home, but by then the buses don’t run so regular, and I was hungry, and I went into one of those pizza places and bought myself a slice. I hadn’t eaten anything since I left here this morning, and I was hungry. There was a line, and then I couldn’t find all the change I thought I had, and it took me a while, and the little bitch behind the counter was getting all huffy as if she didn’t believe I really had the dollar fifty-five cents. A dollar fifty-five cents for one slice! But I was starved. I mean, I get like panicked when I’m that hungry. I can’t think straight. So I had to have it. And then by the time I got back to the bus stop
, the bus had gone and I had to wait another hour.” She was squeezing the steering wheel. Sweat covered her forehead. I couldn’t tell whether her nervous rush of words was a normal reaction to the shocks of the day or a screen of words to shield me out.

  “But you finally got here,” I prompted.

  “And then Marie in the bus over there was having a party. You could hear it halfway to the marina. I knew I couldn’t face people. I was too bummed out. I just walked along the water. Christ, I almost fell over the wheelchair.”

  “And then?”

  “It was awful. Her head was in the water, just her head. The water was only up around her shoulders. And she was dead.”

  I waited a moment; she stared straight ahead, silently. “What did you do then?”

  “That was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and there’s been plenty bad in my life.” She grabbed a big plastic purse and began rummaging through it.

  “Ms. Summerlight, what did you do when you saw the body?”

  “I knew she was dead. I’ve seen dead people before. When I was a kid a boy drowned in the river behind the school. It was at lunch time. One of the teachers jumped in and pulled him out, but he was dead. We all saw him. I know what dead people look like. I knew this woman was dead. So I ran up here and got Ian to call the co—the police.”

  Suddenly the musty closeness of the cab filled my nose and throat. “Didn’t you lift her head out of the water?”

  She squeezed the steering wheel tighter. “I don’t remember. I must have. I just remember … standing in the water. I was holding her, by the shoulders. She was dead. I knew she was dead.”