by Paul Moomaw
In the meantime, if not at his home, where? In or around Spokane, obviously. Someplace quiet and secluded, but easy to get in and out of. An idea begins to form and I find myself nodding. I pick up the telephone, dial Angwin’s number, and get his answering machine. I tell the machine that I will traveling through Seattle in a few days, and may call him. I do not identify myself. I am sure he already recognizes my voice. As I hang up, I recognize a pattern: I always spend time at home before I do a job. Something about sitting quietly in my own nest prepares me psychologically. This time it will also give me a chance to connect with Guido and cajole him into a job reference.
Chapter 14
On Wednesdays, Katherine Danner goes over the mountains to the town of Ellensburg. On Thursdays, she continues east to Spokane. This is her schedule most weeks. I learned it from her secretary. She works on the twenty-third floor of the Columbia Center, for a firm that practices something called land law.
I told the secretary I had been referred by a mutual acquaintance. I try always to stay close to the truth; it simplifies things. She gave me the names and telephone numbers of the motels Katherine Danner stays at in Ellensburg and Spokane, and let me know I would not be able to reach her on Friday mornings, as she is allowed that time off to recuperate from her travel. And she volunteered the information that her boss always flies on these trips, because her car is very old.
I go to her house the same way I did before, running along the Burke Gilman trail. As I near the road where I will turn down toward the lake, the image of her as I saw her last slips into my mind, and I realize that I am feeling anticipation so intense that some might call it excitement. I slap my cheek lightly with the palm of my hand to push the feeling away. Excitement has no place in my work.
The Volvo is parked in the driveway. The house is locked this time. Katherine Danner’s trust has limits after all. The lock is, however, nothing special. There is not even a deadbolt, just an in-the-doorknob Schlage of indeterminate age. The cylinder is worn and loose, which will make it easier to pick; and someone has blown graphite into the keyhole very recently. It is as if Katherine Danner knew I was coming, and wanted to be helpful. The door still squeaks when I open it. I close it behind me and begin to explore.
The house needs work. The floor just beyond the entrance carries a scuff mark where the door scrapes against it from being out of plumb. In the kitchen, two cabinets have lost their handles, and the faucet leaks. A strip of metal has come off the bottom of the refrigerator, and has been placed against the wall. A light bulb is missing from the wrought iron chandelier that hangs above the dining room table. One of the chairs at that table has an arm pointing askew. It is what some call a widow’s house—one that is falling into disrepair because it lacks a man to do the odd jobs that keep a place up. The boy that I was lived in a house like that, in the town of Livingston, on the Yellowstone River in Montana. A widower’s house, rather, because the boy had no mother, and his father, although competent with his hands, was occupied too often with holding up the walls at the Long Branch Saloon. Every western town seems to have a Long Branch. They say the one in Livingston was there before the town, and that the community was founded, in fact, by a group of men who were, one winter evening, too drunk to go home. The father I speak of was seldom too drunk to go home, but going there put him into a bad mood, which he often took out on his son. The father was a mechanic who repaired locomotives; and the only attempt at decoration in his house was a picture of a Great Northern steam locomotive crossing Marias Pass, and a stolen railroad station sign, white with square, black letters that said ESSEX, MONTANA. The picture of the boy at twelve shows him in railroad coveralls, with a Burlington Line hat on his head. I think he learned to love trains as much as he learned to hate his father. Perhaps they represented freedom to him, or power, but I do not know that. He is too distant from me now, although I continue to have a great love for trains, and take them whenever I am able.
Katherine Danner’s house is filled with plants. They nestle in the corners, and hang from ceiling hooks. Redwood planters heavy with flowers line the window sills. Above the fireplace she has hung a large lithograph, a primitive work in bright colors of a field filled with bright daisies. To the right and left of the lithograph are two large paintings, well executed in what appears to be a gouache watercolor. The one on the left is of a zebra, standing in the middle of a wild, heavy jungle. Other creatures, some with only their eyes showing, peek out from the foliage. The zebra stands quietly, as if waiting for something, with an air of resignation, almost passivity. The painting on the right is of a tiger, striding toward the observer, fangs bared and eyes glowing with an unnatural light. The landscape is sere and wasted. A large, dead tree fills the background, a baleful, yellow-green moon shining through its branches.
A book case stands to the left of the fireplace, filled with a mix of hardcover and paperback volumes. I pick one up. The Tale of Young Werther. Next to it is The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, and three titles down Arthur Miller’s biography of Marilyn Monroe. I pull out other books at random. Most deal with sudden and untimely death. There are also volumes on reincarnation. I pull out one called The Sacred Book of Death. The front section says it is about Hindu spirituality. It was published in 1905. Next to that are The Search for Bridey Murphy, a book called Someone Else’s Yesterday, and another titled Children’s Past Lives. I pull out yet another one, Reincarnation for Everyman, published in 1935.
A scattering of newspaper clippings lies atop the book case. I shuffle through them. All are obituaries and notices of funerals and memorial services. On the wall above the book case are pictures, all of dead women. Isadora Duncan, whose long scarf broke her neck when it caught in the wheel of her car. Jayne Mansfield, who lost her head, literally, when her car went under a tractor trailer truck. Ironically, her children were lying down, asleep, and so survived. One of them has become a better actress than her mother ever dreamed of being. There is a picture of Sharon Tate, whose life and eight-month pregnancy was ended abruptly by the Manson Family. There are pictures of Judy Garland and Janis Joplin. There is a poster, old and a little faded, an advertisement for a 1948 movie called The Red Shoes, about a dancer who has to choose between love and fame, chooses fame, and comes to a nasty end. I shake my head and wonder what drives Katherine Danner. The riot of plants speaks to a love of the living, but she also seems fascinated by death.
The bedroom, its door open, lies down a short hall. The bed is king sized, almost too large for the room. A brightly colored spread of blue and yellow stripes makes it look even larger. A dressing table stands against one wall, under a window. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a low chest of drawers against the opposite wall. There is no mirror, and the dresser itself is bare. Several framed photographs stand on the chest of drawers. One is of the young girl I saw with Katherine Danner, and a third is of the same girl in the lap of a blond woman. The resemblance between the two is so striking that I realize the child must be that woman’s daughter, not Katherine Danner’s.
I pull the top drawer out. Inside, clothes lie in a jumbled heap. A brassiere, panties, a sweater, a pair of hiking shorts, and a flowered blouse share the space. The other drawers are similarly jammed, and the disorder contrasts oddly with the neatness of the room itself.
I walk into the bathroom. It is very clean, and smells of pine disinfectant, but the faucet in the bath tub leaks, and a constant drizzling sound comes from the toilet tank. I open the medicine cabinet above the sink. The shelves are crammed with makeup cases, perfume bottles, and equipment for contact lenses, in no particular order, interspersed with containers of prescription medicines. I inspect those. One is for Amitriptyline, which people take for depression, and sometimes for chronic tendon or muscle pain. Another is half filled with Valium, and the third is marked Doriden, a dangerously powerful sleeping pill that I have had occasion to employ professionally. The prescriptions on the first two bottles carry recent dates; but the Doriden, althou
gh it appears unused, is more than two years old.
I return to the chest and open more drawers. The disorder I found in the top one repeats itself in the others, and in the bottom drawer another photograph lies, turned face down. I take it out. It is a picture of Edward Angwin, the blonde woman, and the child, sitting on a sofa. He has one arm around the woman. The other hand rests on the thigh of the little girl, who looks uncomfortable.
I close the drawers and look around. Something nags at me, but I cannot pin it down. The sound of water dripping in the bathroom invades my awareness. I return to the bathroom and try to shut the faucet off. I manage to reduce the trickle to an occasional drip. I shake my head in exasperation. Waste distresses me.
I decide I have seen enough for now. I return to the front door and let myself out, allowing my impressions to churn and bubble, not trying to draw any conclusions. As I begin to jog up the driveway toward the road again, I realize what has been scratching at the back of my mind. Nowhere in the house is there a picture of Katherine Danner.
Chapter 15
It is a Sunday afternoon and I am back at the Ridpath Hotel. Valenti has done me the favor I asked, and provided me with a reference to pass on to Arden Frost. The reference is not from him personally, but from a police lieutenant who feels an obligation to Guido. He is not on the pad, as they say; but his daughter has married one of Valenti’s cousins, and so there is a personal tie. Frost is clearly delighted to believe that I am what I say I am, and wants to know when I can begin work. He wants me to start right away, of course, but I tell him it will be a couple of days, because I have some loose ends to tie up. He becomes more demanding, and sounds like he may begin to whine, so I hang up.
I do have loose ends to deal with. They involve his demise, but he does not need to know that. I stand at the north-facing window in my room at the Ridpath and try to add more structure to the idea that began forming earlier. The park along the river draws me. Maybe it is just a poetic thing, to have Frost depart the world from the same place Clarence did. Maybe, once again, it is the river. I decide I need to take a walk. There is a place I think I remember, but I need to be sure that it can be as serviceable as I recall.
I leave the hotel and walk toward the river. Not far from the IMax theater I see what I am looking for. It is a small aerial tram. It goes nowhere, really. The small cars swing out over the river, directly above the cascade known as Spokane Falls, then swing back again. It is a short ride for a cheap price, something to do on a whim while you decide how you really want to spend your day. The chairs are moving as I approach, but by the time I reach the small, corrugated steel building that houses the motor and ticket window, they have fallen still. A man is closing the ticket window, over which a sheet metal sign in dirty white with black block letters states, SEE THE FALLS FROM THE AIR $2.50.
As I reach the little building, the man exits through the main door and closes it behind him. He threads a chain through the door handles and secures it with a lock. He turns and sees me and says, “Hope you weren’t wanting a ride today.”
I shake my head no.
“That’s good. We’re closed now until next Friday. Not enough business this time of year to stay open all week. You should come in the middle of summer, though. You can take the ride at night then. A lot of people like that, couples especially.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say. The man nods, throws me an informal salute, and walks away. I take a closer look at the building. The lock is a heavy-duty affair, the kind designed to withstand all but the most determined assault. The chain, on the other hand, is flimsy. It looks like something from a pet store, meant to tie a dog down in its yard. A pair of wire cutters small enough to slip into a jacket pocket will cut through it like butter.
I look up again at the little tram, and realize that I am nodding and smiling. I know exactly how Arden Frost is going to die.
Chapter 16
Today I will bump into Katherine Danner. I have learned as much as I can from a distance. Since breaking into her house, I have been watching her. On Friday mornings she runs on the Burke Gilman Trail, has a late breakfast, and does her shopping. The weekdays she is in Seattle she goes to her place of work early and stays late, sometimes not leaving until ten or later in the evening. She goes home alone. She works a normal day, drives home and has supper by herself. Once she stopped at a videotape rental shop and emerged with a film. Monday noons she goes with a woman friend, one I assume is also an attorney, to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant on Olive street. I have eaten there. It is small, unpretentious, and the food is well prepared. Tuesday noons she eats in the over-priced restaurant on the street level of the Columbia Center. The times I have watched she has brought what looks like a legal document to read as she eats, and pays more attention to that than she does to the food.
She sits there now, alone at a round Formica table, an open face sandwich in front of her, and reading material in her hand. She wears what I think of as lawyer clothes—a pleated skirt of modest length, and a floppy bow tie wrapped around the high neck of a shimmering cream-colored blouse that drapes closely around her breasts and still manages to be decorous. I walk toward her table with an intuition that she will look up and see me.
She does, and smiles. I return the smile. All at once I feel awkward and timid, and my smile is tight. I scold myself silently. I want to get to know this woman with an intensity of feeling that goes far beyond the usual intellectual curiosity I feel about my targets.
She keeps her eyes locked on mine, and continues to smile, until I finally say, “You’re the woman who was biking with her daughter the other day.”
“Not mine, I’m afraid.” She lays the legal document down on the table, and I take that as an invitation to step closer.
“Have you found a house?” she asks.
“Nothing that interests me as much as yours.”
“If I ever sell it, you’ll have first refusal.” She smiles again.
I pause. “How is the food here?”
She shrugs. “Convenient.”
“If you’re just getting started, I’d like to sit with you. I hate to eat alone.”
“I’d like company myself,” she says.
The place is the kind where you order at a counter and they bring the food to you. I ask for a pasta salad, carrot cake and coffee. Katherine Danner watches me all the way back to her table. As I pass next to her, I look down on the top of her head and see that there are strands of gray twisted through the red, and a trace of silver root at the forehead. I have to will my hand consciously not to touch her.
“What’s your name?” she asks as I sit down.
In my pocket I carry a case of business cards with different aliases. I think of giving her one, but suddenly I blurt, “Daniel.” It flies past my teeth, and I cannot call it back. It is my name, the one I received at birth. I have never known whether my mother or father gave it to me, or why it was chosen.
“I’m Katherine,” my table mate says. “Glad to meet you.”
She holds out her hand and I take it, and we shake hands; and then we are both laughing at our formality. I hold her hand until the laughter dies, and she gazes intently at me.
“What do you do?” she asks as I release her hand.
“I’m a consultant. I help people with contracts.”
“So you travel a lot.” When I nod, she adds, “Eat alone a lot, too, hate it or not.”
“I don’t mind it that much. I sit and watch the other people in the restaurant, and make up stories about them.” I glance from her clothes to the legal document on the table. “I’m guessing you’re a lawyer.”
“A traveling lawyer. I’m out of town as often as I’m here. I spend a lot of time in rural court houses, helping people sort out old deeds and titles. There’s a lot of that in this part of the country. People weren’t always too particular about documenting things a hundred years ago. It has a lot to do with water rights, too. You wouldn’t believe how messy the law can be the
re.” As she talks, her eyes become more animated, but there remains the touch of sadness I saw in them on our first encounter. At some point in the conversation, our hands brush together and stay that way. I can tell she is aroused by the touch. Her nipples, under the sheer fabric of her blouse, suddenly stand erect. I am aware of my own excitement, and the part of me that stays always detached asks how much is sexual, and how much is something else beyond my awareness.
A man who has spent many years observing wolves once described a peculiarity of their style of hunting. They did not necessarily select the oldest, or youngest, or weakest of the herd they preyed on, he said, but seemed to negotiate in some silent manner, so that at some point the herd moved on, and one animal stayed behind to wait for the pack to kill it. It is as if a hidden hand places them together for reasons of its own. Perhaps it is the same here, and Katherine Danner somehow knows that I am supposed to kill her. I play with the idea for a moment, then brush it away with the fingers of my mind. It is too bizarre.