He would send Drummond down to Sac for them in the morning.
On Tuesday at noon, another brilliant day, Nina was just climbing into the Bronco in the courthouse parking lot when who should appear but Doctor Ginger Hirabayashi, forensic pathologist, looking like a reindeer.
At least, her red nose did. The rest of her was black: black watchcap, black leather jacket, baggy black slacks, and a big black muffler. Above the nose she wore a big pair of black Ray Bans. She looked like a gangster or a Japanese hip-hopper. Her hands were plunged in her pockets.
‘‘Sandy said you’d show up here. Jump into my car. Let’s go somewhere warm. Get something to eat.’’
‘‘What are you doing up here?’’
‘‘Eating lunch. Come on. How much time have we got?’’
‘‘I have to be back in court at one-thirty.’’
Locking up the Bronco again, Nina crunched through the snow and got into the black BMW with the tinted windows and the full ski rack. A girl sat in the back seat.
‘‘Meet Caroline,’’ Ginger said. ‘‘She offered to keep me company.’’
‘‘Hi,’’ said purple-haired Caroline.
‘‘Eagle’s Nest okay?’’ said Ginger.
‘‘Sure. You know your way around here, Ginger.’’
‘‘I ought to. I own a condo here. As long as I had to come up, I thought we ought to get some skiing in.’’
Ginger drove them smoothly to Kingsbury Grade, the steep road that leaves the Tahoe basin and drops in a few miles two thousand feet to Carson Valley. The road she turned on led to a startling sight—a small city of condominiums built for skiers around the foot of the Heavenly Resort, on the Nevada side. Most amazing of all was an enormous complex high on a hill of hundreds of condos called The Ridge Tahoe. ‘‘That’s where my place is,’’ Ginger said, pointing toward it.
The Eagle’s Nest had a broad back deck with a vista, filtered through the trees, of one of the Heavenly runs. Just a hundred feet away, people were zooming past.
They ordered hot ham sandwiches, milk, and coffee. Heat lamps had been set up and the decking was swept clear of snow, but even so, most of the diners had chosen to eat indoors by the fireplace.
‘‘Take a hike, baby,’’ Ginger said to Caroline.
The girl stood up and stretched. ‘‘I’ll check out the view from the bar,’’ she said, and went in.
‘‘She knows I have to talk to you in private. This isn’t for phone lines or e-mail.’’ Ginger took off her leather driving gloves and tossed them onto the table.
‘‘You’re scaring me, Ginger.’’
‘‘Paranoia strikes deep,’’ Ginger said. ‘‘Murder cases are like that.’’
‘‘It’s the boots, right?’’
‘‘It’s the boots. First of all, I had visitors at the lab this morning. A South Lake Tahoe cop, accompanied by Sacramento County deputy sheriff. They took the boots and made a number of caustic remarks regarding obstructing a police investigation. Big words, unpleasant noises. You can picture it, I’m sure.’’
‘‘I’ll cover you, Ginger. Don’t worry about it. I knew the boots would be located eventually. I’m surprised the D.A.’s office didn’t just ask me to produce them. I was prepared to do that.’’
So Collier hadn’t chosen to mention sending his errand boys to nip at Ginger. Fine, she told herself. She had pulled a fast one on him sending the boots down there. He had only responded in kind. It was part of the job.
‘‘They also took my samples and records. Under subpoena, of course. They even took my computer.’’
A gust of cold wind made Nina shiver. She moved her chair closer to the heater. ‘‘I’ll get the computer back for you. Are you saying you found something?’’ she asked.
‘‘I finally got on the boots this weekend. Here’s a photo I totally accidentally forgot to hand to the cops. Of the soles.’’
Nina stared at the distinctive pattern of short parallel lines on the upper and lower soles, and in the middle, the chevron design with a logo showed that as much care had been taken in designing the bottom of these boots as the maker took with the tops. ‘‘Nice shot,’’ she said. ‘‘We need those autopsy pictures to see if this pattern matches the marks on the body. I wish I could have gotten them for you.’’
‘‘I wish you could have gotten the body for me.’’
‘‘So—we don’t know yet. Whether there’s really a pattern on the skin, or if there is, whether they can make a match. If they arrest Jim, you’ll get the pictures. We’re still in the game.’’
‘‘True, as far as the patterning.’’ Ginger took off her Ray Bans and wiped the lenses on her napkin.
‘‘Uh, oh.’’
‘‘I took a small sample of detritus from between the grooves on the sole. A very small sample. There’s plenty more dirt left that Clauson can collect, and besides they copped my lab notes, including the computer file. They know by now that I examined this sample on Sunday afternoon.’’
‘‘Don’t stop now.’’
‘‘I found something.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Brace yourself, Nina.’’
‘‘Just get on with it!’’
‘‘Two black cotton fibers.’’ Nina made the connections. For a minute she couldn’t say anything.
‘‘Alex’s turtleneck?’’ she finally whispered.
‘‘The autopsy report said he was wearing a black cotton turtleneck with some damage. I don’t have the turtleneck. They do. All I can say is, two black cotton fibers. If I found two with a minuscule sample, there will be more, probably all over both soles.’’
Nina put her head in her hands. ‘‘I can’t believe it. Jim would have had to—’’
‘‘Yeah, jump on him and then really grind those soles on the shirt—with the victim in it. It’s not a pretty thought. I had another stomping case a few years ago, a couple of rednecks who stomped an unconscious drunk lying in a gutter, for kicks. It’s an opportunistic kind of thing. It does happen.’’
‘‘There has to be some other explanation!’’
‘‘What are you going to do?’’
‘‘Ask Jim.’’
‘‘I hope he tells you the truth,’’ Ginger said. ‘‘Save the State of California and you a lot of stress and time.’’
‘‘I just don’t believe it, Ginger.’’ She was fighting not to believe it. Now there was physical evidence to add to all the bits she had been trying not to register.
She told herself, it’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There were still ways out. If it was murder, maybe someone else had done the murder. There had been ten minutes to do it, and everything Jim had told her would still be true. She tried to think about these things, to erase the pernicious flood of doubt that would kill her effectiveness as an advocate.
Ginger looked toward the deck door, where Caroline was just coming toward them. ‘‘They’re mostly guilty,’’ she said. ‘‘You can still make sure he gets fair treatment all the way down the line.’’
Nina managed to call the lodge at Paradise before she had to go back into the courtroom. Yes, Jim stayed around until about nine most nights, the hostess told her.
She went back to her civil case. Love the one you’re with. But when court adjourned at four, she narrowly avoided knocking her client to the ground in the swiftness of her exit.
As usual, the lodge was thronged with skiers. She plowed through them without paying any attention. Jim’s office door was open and she marched in. Judging by the trophies and photographs on the walls devoted just to him, he was one hell of a skier.
He had the phone pressed to his ear, but when he saw her, he said good-bye and hung up. He read her expression instantly. ‘‘Nina? What’s happened?’’
‘‘Not here,’’ she said. ‘‘Outside.’’ Ginger’s paranoia had struck deep all right. Jim put on his parka and followed her out to the bunny hill, quiet now that the lifts had stopped for the day. The sun had slipped behind the crest of the mo
untain. The winds had stilled. Even the birds had silenced, maybe gone for the winter already. A cold twilight was settling over the Basin. Nina drew her coat around her and brought up the collar.
There was no point in making small talk, even if she had it in her to make small talk. ‘‘Dr. Hirabayashi—you remember her, she’s the pathologist we sent the boots to
—found some fibers in the grooves in the bottom of one of the boots,’’ she said.
She waited for Jim to go through the same process she had, to forge the connections.
‘‘Fibers?’’ Jim seemed confused.
‘‘Black cotton fibers.’’
The news had no effect. Jim looked into her eyes, interested but unafraid.
‘‘How did black cotton fibers get on the bottom of your boots, Jim?’’
Now he got it. His mouth fell open. He almost sputtered. ‘‘What’m I supposed to say?’’
‘‘Your choice,’’ said Nina. She took his arm. ‘‘Alex was wearing a black cotton shirt the day he died. You can tell me what you know about that, or not. Whatever you tell me, I’ll never reveal to anyone.’’
‘‘I have no idea! No idea!’’
‘‘Jim, I want you to know I can still help you, no matter what you may have done.’’
‘‘Oh, no,’’ Jim said. ‘‘This is unreal. Some fibers you can only see under a microscope have made you turn your back on me. You think I did it, don’t you?’’
‘‘I can deal with it if you did.’’ She tried to sound confident, nonjudgmental, to hide her disappointment. While she waited for him to speak again, she concentrated on his eyes, wanting to see inside to his naked soul.
He turned toward a stand of tall pines, placing his hands in the pockets of his parka. He stepped up and down on the snow in place, gently, as if lifting his feet was very, very painful, apparently unaware of the grotesque congruence of his actions with the accusation. His profile in the shadow of the evening revealed nothing except some confusion, and possibly some anger.
He was studying the matter, turning it over in his mind, and Nina had no idea what he was thinking. At the best of times, she would guess he was a very guarded person. And so, she realized, was she.
He turned back to face her. ‘‘You can’t tell anyone anything I say unless I give you permission?’’ Jim asked. ‘‘Attorney-client privilege, right?’’
Did this mean he was breaking the standoff? Was he about to tear down a wall and unload the real truth on her? She could not help experiencing a moment of personal fear—was she about to find out that at this very moment, she was standing on a darkening, desolate mountain with a vicious killer?
‘‘That’s right,’’ she said, coughing slightly to give herself a moment to regain her composure. ‘‘It’s a law. An attorney must hold the client’s secrets inviolate at every peril to himself,’’ she said, quoting the Business and Professions Code section which had been drummed into her in law school and which she considered the most important ethical rule of the profession.
She tried to think practical thoughts, preparing to offer him her best professional support. Surrender him, maybe get a psych report, bring in a lot of character witnesses at the sentencing—
‘‘Then there’s no point in lying. I’m not lying, Nina. I just don’t have an explanation for those fibers, unless it’s just some dumb thing like—we all buy our shirts at the same store, and my father happened to have one in his car when my boots got tossed in there or that, if Alex was in fact murdered in the moments before I got to him, the killer also decided to frame me and somehow set this whole thing up.’’
From the lodge, only a couple of hundred feet away, came the sound of clanking knives and forks, happy chatter.
‘‘Please believe me,’’ Jim said. ‘‘Please. I know I didn’t do anything to Alex. And you tell me now that there’s something on my boots that proves I did. Well, if that’s so, someone else put it there. I didn’t get down below the Cliff for almost ten minutes.’’
‘‘What are you going to tell me if the soles of your boots have the same pattern as the marks on your brother’s skin, Jim?’’ Nina said.
‘‘Then—it’s just awful. And if I ever find the bastard that did that to my brother, I’ll take him out. Look, Nina. Those boots I wear are like—the Nikes of ski boots. There’s nothing unusual about them. I suppose there was enough time Alex was out of sight for someone to hurt him like that, but it’s foul to think about. And all I can tell you is, you’ve got to believe me because I didn’t do it.’’
‘‘I don’t know how much time we have left,’’ Nina said. ‘‘A few days, maybe, while the coroner goes over the boots and makes tests. Then a few days more while the district attorney’s office reviews all this. But the fibers really back up Clauson’s conclusion that Alex’s death was a homicide, Jim. And the boots are yours. That’s enough to charge you.’’
‘‘Fuck,’’ Jim said bitterly.
‘‘One more question. I’m sorry but I have to ask it. Was Heidi seeing Alex—outside the marriage?’’
‘‘You mean, sleeping with him? God, no! Who said that?’’
‘‘It’s just something I have to check out.’’
‘‘Well, it’s a lie.’’
‘‘You’re sure?’’
‘‘Positive!’’
‘‘You said one time that she’d drawn away from you—’’
‘‘My wife was not sleeping with my brother,’’ Jim said very deliberately.
‘‘Marianne mentioned to me that—’’
‘‘Marianne is a vicious little liar. She’d love it if Heidi and I split up. She thinks she’s still in love with me. Is she spreading that lie?’’
‘‘Okay,’’ Nina said. ‘‘I hear what you’re saying. Now, I want you to go home and think about all this. We’ll talk again later.’’
‘‘I’m not lying! Tell me you believe me, Nina.’’
‘‘I’m on your side, Jim. I’m not saying that I don’t believe you. I’m going to think about what you said, keep looking into it. Now, we’ve hired an investigator, Tony Ramirez. He’s looking for Heidi. Maybe we can find her and straighten this out.’’
‘‘I trust you,’’ Jim said.
‘‘I have to go.’’
‘‘Are you married, Nina?’’
Involuntarily, she glanced at her ring finger with its faint crease. ‘‘Why do you ask?’’
‘‘Just that—’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Nothing. Thinking about Heidi, I guess.’’
‘‘Here’s something else you should do. You need to put together some money in case you need bail.’’ She gave him the name of a good bail bondsman, just in case. ‘‘Can you get twenty-five thousand dollars in cash? I doubt the bail would be set higher than two hundred fifty thousand. You only have to put up a cash bond of ten percent. And your house.’’
‘‘It’s really going to happen, isn’t it? I’m going to be charged.’’ He sounded forlorn.
‘‘Try not to worry. I do have to tell you—I’m going out of town this weekend, leaving on Thursday morning. I’ll be back Monday night.’’
‘‘Leaving? Where are you going?’’
‘‘It’s a business trip. Sandy will be in touch with me if anything breaks.’’
Matt and Andrea said that Bob was welcome. The timing was bad, since he’d be leaving for his two weeks in Germany in three weeks, but she wanted to take this weekend with Collier more badly than anything she had wanted in a long time. Rising early and working late, she compressed the week’s work into three days and on Thursday morning took Bob to school. Matt would pick him up.
‘‘You’re sure it’s okay?’’ she said to him as he pulled his pack out of the truck and shouldered it.
‘‘It’s okay, Mom.’’
‘‘Really?’’
‘‘You have to promise I get to go with you next time.’’
‘‘Fair enough.’’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘
‘To Matt’s after school, don’t forget!’’ she called after him.
He joined the group of students walking across the field of snow toward his first class. He looked so tall. When had he gotten so tall?
11
ON LANIKAI BEACH. On the windward side of Oahu, away from the Waikiki scene, in a low white cottage built on sand. Benevolent gods and goddesses ruled from the fiery volcanoes, warmed the green sea, deposited the sand grain by grain onto the palm-fringed beach.
Collier had spent his healing time here.
She lay in his arms in the shade of a palm, snow and mountains and murder case forgotten, watching the cavalcade of walkers and joggers, silent for once. Implicit between them was their agreement: no talk of their work.
They swam through waves pleated with sun. The sea had an old calm. Underneath, in the shadowed shallows, a city of fish munching on the algae-covered coral, speckled, striped, translucent. She heard a crackling sound in the water when she dove down, as though the fish were talking to each other.
They came together way out from the beach, fitting as neatly together as two parts of a zipper. Nina swam away, laughing, and he followed her, toward the Mokoluas, the two wild islands in the distance.
Sunset. They sat at a table on the deck.
‘‘So—what do you think happened to you last year? I mean, how do you describe it to yourself?’’ Nina asked. She poured him another glass of wine. They were still in bathing suits.
Across the quiet sea, the Moks subsided into the twilight. The last kayakers set out from the tiny beach on the larger island, way out there, and headed back toward home.
‘‘Oh, I’d been on the job too long, been alone too long, grieved for my wife too long,’’ Collier said. ‘‘In our line, you have to have a life outside work, to keep it in perspective. I went into a tailspin, but I had to keep going, you know? Get up and get over to the office and try cases and make deals and talk to victims.
‘‘For a while it just took everything I had. That was all right, as long as I was still doing the job. The time came when I couldn’t do the job, though, and that was the end, because the job was my life. I started obsessing even more about my wife. I stopped sleeping. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before.’’
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