by Susan Dunlap
“What do you think the real reason was?”
“I just don’t know. Maybe he was avoiding someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He’d been in Alaska for four months. Possibly someone from the bar where he was bartending. Or some guy on the AlaskOil maintenance crew.”
“Were any of his fellow workers from either of those places in San Francisco?”
“I did ask him that. He said no.”
The cooling breeze chilled the sweat on Kiernan’s shoulders and made her aware of how tense she’d become. “I know this is hard for you, Maureen, but every insight you can give me will make it that much more likely I can help. Please think calmly about what I’m going to ask. Garrett said he wanted to spend time with you. But he went to the city alone. Why?”
“He said he had a meeting.”
“What kind?”
“With a representative of a gallery.”
“Why didn’t he take you?”
“The representative was a woman. Garrett believed, and he was right, that there’s always a sexual element in any negotiations between men and women, and that this woman would do better by him if he dealt with her alone.”
“Could he have been having an affair with her?”
The color vanished from Maureen’s face. “No!”
Kiernan waited a moment. Maureen Brant’s denial wasn’t a statement but a protest. “But you’ve considered it, haven’t you?”
Slowly the color returned, but irregularly, blotching her face. “Of course. I doubt there’s any possibility I haven’t thought about. If he hadn’t insisted on going to San Francisco, alone, our lives wouldn’t be over. What was so important? I have no more idea than I did three years ago.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“Of course I did—before he left, when he was in the hospital, when he came back here. I asked him this morning before you arrived. He wouldn’t tell me before. He won’t tell me now. Maybe he doesn’t even remember her name. A lot of things have faded for him. It’s like his mind is disappearing from the edges in.”
“He still thinks like he did three years ago, right? So if he felt that he had reason to keep this woman’s name from you then, he would still have that mind-set now?”
“I don’t know his rationale. The point is he’s not going to reveal her name.”
“Maybe he’ll tell me.”
Maureen stiffened. “It’s possible. But there was some reason he was keeping that secret, so to get him to reveal it you’d have to know the right questions, the right tack to take. A straight-out query wouldn’t do it.”
“What do you know about the gallery or the area it was in, or anything about it?”
“Nothing. Garrett was careful not to reveal anything.”
Kiernan let her gaze rest on Maureen Brant for a long moment. What had that drained face expressed three years ago?
“How long was Garrett in Alaska without you?”
“Almost two years.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“There was no way I could have survived in that cold. Besides, I had a career of my own—I couldn’t just leave whenever it suited me. Anyway, Garrett would call me every couple of days—or, more accurately, nights. One of his self-appointed perks was making free calls from some of the empty offices—his way of getting even for such a drudge of a job: he was on a maintenance crew there. And the last time he called me he was really excited about coming here. I thought it was because he missed me. But I’ll never know, will I?”
Kiernan took a deep breath and watched the branches of the redwoods sway in the growing breeze. Slowly she said, “I’m going to go and make a couple of calls from my Jeep. While I’m gone, I want you to consider very carefully about hiring me to find Robin Matucci. Finding her will mean discovering why Garrett went to San Francisco. Are you quite sure you want to know?”
Maureen started to speak, but Kiernan held up her hand.
“No, don’t answer yet. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
8
K IEMAN LEANED AGAINST THE Jeep, hoping that the deep cool and the fragrant aroma of the redwoods would scour away the grief and fear and demand that filled the Brant house. The presence of the millennia-old trees had always been able to calm her before, but today they might as well not have existed. She was still edgy when she climbed into the Jeep and grabbed the phone, ready to speak to Marc Rosten after twelve years. Should she be calm or angry? She laughed at herself. What difference would it make? She recalled only too well the year after Marc’s departure, when any thought of him turned to fury. But she hadn’t phoned him then.
She drove the Jeep back to where the road crested a hill and punched the number for the coroner’s office. Marc Rosten wasn’t in. She didn’t leave a message. No point in giving him extra time to think. He’d had twelve years in which to explain himself. And he’d used the element of surprise last. Now it would be her turn.
She called Tchernak. “This is Brad Tchernak,” his recording began. “What can I do for you? Leave your mess—”
“Hello?” Tchernak was panting.
“Hi. Been out running?”
“Ezra hates it when you’re gone. He’s been moping all day. I thought a long run would take his mind off you, or at least tire him out enough so he’d leave me alone. When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I have to go to San Francisco and see if there’s anything that merits my taking the case. If there isn’t, I’ll be home the next day. Right now, I need you to find the insurers for Robin Matucci’s boat.”
“Are you planning to hook up with them?”
“Just covering bases. Insurance, you might say.” She grinned. Her facial muscles felt strained, and she realized how tense she had become during her visit with the Brants. “I’ve got an acquaintance in the San Francisco coroner’s office. I should be able to get into the morgue on the Q.T., but if I have to go to court with anything, I’m going to need a legitimate excuse, like a connection with the insurer, in order to see the body again.”
“If your friend let you in once, why wouldn’t he let you in again.’
It didn’t do to tell Tchernak too much; Kiernan had learned that the hard way. “Rosten and I were interns together. We didn’t part on good terms. Odds are fifty-fifty he might not let me in at all.”
“Kiernan, it’s been ten, twelve years since then. No normal person holds a grudge that long.”
“Pathologists are rarely classified as normal.”
“Even so,” he said, “what could you have done that was so terrible he’d still have you on his blacklist all this time? Wait a minute. You threw him over, right? And then it dawned on him that he was missing something. No wonder he’s still pissed.”
She laughed. ‘Tchernak, if you had to sweep up all the blarney you throw out, you’d be behind the vacuum twenty hours a day.”
“About this guy Rosten?” Tchernak insisted.
Kiernan sighed. ‘Truth is, I don’t know what happened with Marc Rosten. I only know he was angry when we finished our internship. Angry enough to pull strings at the last moment and get a residency in the East. It was four years before he came back to San Francisco. I didn’t see him then or later. But after I was fired from my own county coroner’s office, I heard, third hand, that he was the only forensic pathologist in the Bay Area unwilling to sign a statement supporting me.”
“What?”
She could picture Tchernak’s tanned face knotting into a scowl. Before he could verbally slam Rosten into the turf, she said, “I’m sure you’re right. Twelve years is a long time. He’s probably forgotten whatever it was that set him off. Besides, I have to make this call. And Marc Rosten really does owe me one. Talk to you later.”
She drove back to the house and walked past the abandoned pool to the Brants’ open door. Maureen was staring at her husband’s paintings of the Alaskan mud fl
ats. At the sound of Kiernan’s footsteps, she spun around stiffly. Her hand was streaked with blood. She had rubbed at the raw spot till the skin was gone.
“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” she asked in a tight voice.
Kiernan shook her head. “I’ll go up to San Francisco and see if I can get into the morgue. I’ll check with Olsen.”
“Will you call me after you see the deckhand’s body?”
“It’ll be too late by then.”
“Call me tomorrow, in the morning. We don’t have a phone here, but I’ll be at the grocery at eight.”
“Make it ten. In the meantime, I’ll need some background information on you and Garrett. The questions are on the form: full names, where you grew up—”
“But why on us? I want you to investigate—”
Kiernan rested a hand on the mantle. “This investigation is about Garrett. Any facts I have on him make it that much easier for me to judge what someone else tells me about him, which means I can also judge the validity of everything else they’re saying.”
“But I’m not the focus. Why do you want—”
“Look, at this point I’ve got virtually nothing to go on. I’ve no idea which bit of information is going to be important and which isn’t, so I need everything I can get.”
“Still, I—”
Kiernan stood up. “My way or not at all! This is a very iffy business. Just to get the ball rolling I’ll have to call in a favor someone won’t want to give. A favor erasing a big debt. And I’m not willing to waste that favor on a case full of holes, one on which I have to ask myself why my own client is hesitant to give me the name of the town she grew up in.”
“No, wait. I’m sorry. I’ll give you what you need.”
Kiernan sat on the arm of the sofa, watching Maureen complete the form, read the contract and sign it. Had she caved in too quickly? Kiernan couldn’t be sure. Never leave a question untended: that was one of the first rules of investigating; questions could be postponed, or withheld to ponder, but never merely passed over. When Maureen looked up, she said, “What else are you not telling me?”
Maureen’s eyes closed and the muscles of her face tightened. The sunlight had moved eastward, leaving Maureen in the shade. Goosebumps formed on her bare legs. She opened her eyes. “I don’t think this is connected. Or maybe I do and don’t want to believe it. But I’m sure someone has been here, in the house.”
“A burglar?” Kiernan asked skeptically. Five miles off the main road was a long way to come to rip off a television or stereo.
“He didn’t take anything.”
“How do you know he was here, then?”
“Things were out of place, just a bit.” She looked up. “Garrett noticed. He’s fanatical about things being in place now. Keeping things exactly where they belong, where he can find them, gives him stability. If either of us leaves something in a different place, he has no clue where it might be.”
Kiernan slid down to sit on the sofa. “When was this break-in?”
“There may have been more than one. Gar complained about things being moved, but I didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t until yesterday that I saw a change I knew neither of us could have made. But maybe I was just looking more carefully.”
“Maybe you were thinking about Robin Matucci.”
“Maybe.”
Kiernan turned to face Maureen directly. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? It could be important.”
“I realize that. I’m sorry. The whole thing’s just so overwhelming. After the last three years to finally have the chance of getting that woman …”
Kiernan stared at her. “Maureen, is there anything else I should know?”
“No. You’ve got it all.”
“You’re sure? Think.”
“I’m sure,” she said, irritably.
“Okay. I’ll be in touch.”
“Tomorrow. Ten o’clock,” Maureen insisted.
Kiernan headed the Jeep west, into the wind and the bright afternoon sun. Was Maureen’s story of the break-ins true? Was that story what she’d been hiding? That was the question to hold and ponder.
Why had she agreed to take this case? Certainly not for the money, which at best she would feel guilty about accepting. Was it for the excuse to face down Marc Rosten? She mentally shook her head, knowing at the same moment that she was lying. Making Rosten break the rules for her was part of it. But not all. Was it the thought of passionate Garrett Brant, now become the ultimate unreachable lover? Or was it the absolute horror of Maureen Brant’s future: life imprisonment with a man she could scarcely recognize?
9
KIERNAN WAS IN MONTEREY when she got through to Marc Rosten. “Rosten here.” The voice was gruff, but a note of excitement tempered it. Kiernan could picture Marc Rosten poised anxiously for a call, a lab report, the answer to something he couldn’t wait to know. But it was the Marc Rosten of twelve years ago she envisioned: a small, wiry man with black curly hair and watchful brown eyes that seemed always on the lookout, as if what he knew was never quite enough—as if the next elusive fact would be the one that would provide him certainty.
“Marc, Kiernan O’Shaughnessy.”
“Kiernan? … Oh … Kiernan. … This is a surprise. What can I do for you?” There were pauses between each phrase.
His tone changed from the sharps of curiosity to the flats of wariness. No social niceties, she noted. But that had never been a part of their relationship.
“I need a favor.”
“A favor?”
“I need to see one of your cadavers.”
“Oh, are you back with the coroner’s office?”
Was that a note of condescension? Obviously she wouldn’t be back with the coroner if she’d needed his support. Taking a moment to make sure her own voice didn’t betray her anger, she said, “No, I’m private, investigating a hit-and-run. Your cadaver is only incidental to it. I could get an okay from his family or his lawyer, but that would waste a lot of time. The trail goes cold fast in cases like this one.”
Over the phone she could hear another phone ring, a door slam. “Surely,” he said, “you recall the rule here: the morgue is not a zoo; we don’t give tours.”
“And surely, Marc, you don’t expect me to believe that holds true for the acting coroner,” she said, her fury seeping out of control. Out of control: that summed up her months with Marc Rosten.
“Kiernan, I’m in charge here. It’s up to me to uphold the rules. I—”
“You owe me! You know that. Let me see Carlos Delaney’s body and we’re square. This is an easy out for you.”
He didn’t reply. She could picture him nervously moving a report from one pile to another, as if keeping things in motion would prevent them from settling long enough to threaten him. She pictured his bushy eyebrows drawn tight in angry consideration, his full lips pressed together. She could tell him she knew about his refusal to support her when she was fired, but she hated to waste her last card. Instead, she said, “I’ll be there at eight tonight, at the parking lot door.”
10
MARC ROSTEN SLAMMED DOWN the phone. “Damn her!” He realized his jaw was tight with anger, his free hand jammed into a fist. And his groin hard. That last discovery made him even more furious. “Damn her to hell!”
He glared down at the stack of “While You Were Out”s his secretary had put on his desk before she went home. Connelly at Northern Station about the Jessup report—third call. Connelly was one of those cops who never got the idea that bacteria couldn’t be rushed. For Connelly, lab reports should take as long as it took to type them up. Well, Connelly could damn well wait. He crumpled the message and threw it into the garbage. Merke, the architect, re: the specs for remodeling the tox lab. An Anita Kole from the Northern California Association of Pharmacology, re: his lecture. Postmortem reports from the last two days to initial. Call from the tox lab. Call from Heins, the forensic dentist. Call from … Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. Dammit, he was not
going to have thoughts of her interfering with his work. Not again. It had taken him nearly a decade to erase them.
It was too quiet in the Medical Examiner’s office. The pictures of the ME’s wife and kids were gone, but the place still had his potted plants, his desk set, and his chair—made for a man eight inches taller than Rosten. Every time he sat in it Rosten felt like a kid who has sneaked into his daddy’s chair. He was used to the office he shared with three other pathologists, where the phone was always ringing, there was plenty of talk, and clerks would stop to chat when they brought in reports. There was always something going on.
He picked up the phone, punched Merke’s number. No answer. It was after five; he must have gone home. Rosten replaced the receiver and looked down at the desk. But it wasn’t the desk he was seeing, it was that first day on pathology rotation twelve years ago. There had been only one postmort in progress when Susman had guided the clutch of them in. “Well-nourished white female,” he remembered Bailey muttering with a snicker as they neared the whalelike shape. The Y incision had already been made, and whoever was doing the work was clipping the rib cartilage with a tool that looked like something meant to prune rosebushes. The whole scene made him want out. But slinking off was not the Rosten style. He’d forced himself to push his way toward the front. He should remember the corpse, but he didn’t. He couldn’t even recall the pathologist.
What he remembered was Kiernan, the green scrubs hanging loose on her small body, her dark eyes focused entirely on the corpse. What was it about her that had hooked him? He remembered her firm breasts, the round of her hips … but that was later. Then it was all intensity, that passion vibrating just below her skin. Other guys had found her obsessed with medicine, too fascinated with forensic pathology, too bright, too abrupt, too unyielding. But he had seen a passion that matched his own.