His mother didn’t understand that, but he didn’t want to make her sad, so he’d stopped telling her she was wrong, that people knew what they were saying and that they didn’t like him. Nobody called people they liked those names, threw those names like rocks at his head, but mother wouldn’t hear about it. Didn’t like him to talk about “sad things.”
Didn’t like that he was different or that he couldn’t remember so much all the time right away. She said if he tried his best, he’d see how well he could do, but that wasn’t true, either. He did try his best but things felt hard that other people didn’t complain about. He thought it was different for him, but his mother said he was wrong.
Tracy understood. She knew what was true.
Mother said people didn’t mean to hurt him. They were ignorant, she said. That meant they didn’t know better.
He couldn’t understand why their mothers hadn’t told them. His mother had told him not to be mean to other children even though she didn’t believe other children were mean to him.
His mother said he was as good as anybody. That he had a learning disability. An accident had happened when he was getting born, so some things were hard for him, she said. She made it sound like not much. She said she was a taxpayer and the schools were public and that he partly owned them, too, so he should just ask the teacher to repeat herself if he didn’t understand. But when he did, the rest of the class got angry. Sometimes the teacher got angry, too.
His mother said it didn’t matter. Not the accident when he was born or the way he had to go slower than other people in school. “Slow and steady wins the race,” she said, but he never won. Except in real races. When he ran.
It didn’t matter to her, maybe, but it mattered to him. And it mattered to other people. They didn’t like him in their class and they didn’t like him at their parties. They didn’t like him anywhere. Sometimes, he didn’t have to do anything—not say a word or make one move—and they still looked angry that he was there.
That he was.
His father was like that, but he didn’t see his father much, so that wasn’t so bad.
He thought that was all over when he was out of school and in his own house not bothering anybody. But now, look. A jail cell and people hated him more than ever.
He couldn’t tell his mother how it had been, how it was. She was already too sad.
He told animals. It didn’t matter to them. And they had no words to call him. But there were no animals here and he wasn’t allowed to go where they were. And Tracy was dead and there was nobody to talk to.
Not Michael Specht, for sure. Maybe the lawyer was ignorant, because he looked like those people his mother said were ignorant. He talked too fast, and he wanted Gavin to answer too fast and his mouth curled when Gavin couldn’t, or when he was thinking, or said the thing Mr. Specht didn’t want him to say even though he wouldn’t tell Gavin what would have been the right thing to say. He said that was illegal. His voice changed, his lips got little and curled like they were starting to say something—something Gavin knew would be angry or mean. He never said it, though. There was a big space in the air where he wanted to say it.
He acted as if Gavin were a dumb kid. Gavin couldn’t answer as fast as Mr. Specht wanted, but that did not make him a dumb kid. He was a man, but he didn’t talk fast enough to explain that to the lawyer.
A lawyer who thought he was a dumb kid was not, no matter what Mother said, going to help him.
Gavin Riddock sat in his holding cell, his hands folded on his lap, head bowed. He looked as if he might be praying, but he seldom did. Instead, he was thinking about how much he hated being here, locked away from everything on earth he liked. From his dog and his cats and the animals that weren’t his and the people he liked.
They said he killed Tracy. Banged her against the horse statue or maybe hit her with a rock, he wasn’t sure.
They said maybe he was in love with her. Mr. Specht said that maybe Gavin loved Tracy. Maybe he tried to kiss her. Maybe do it, everything, with Tracy.
Those words made him feel sick low in his stomach and in his throat.
Maybe, Mr. Specht said, she was so pretty and nice but she didn’t love him back the same way? Was that the trouble?
Gavin didn’t know how he was supposed to know what Tracy felt. Tracy was beautiful and he liked looking at her and he did love her and he said so. He had loved her since fifth grade when she told everybody she was his friend, and the kids teasing him backed off. There wasn’t any trouble the way Mr. Specht said.
Tracy was kind, Tracy was his friend. But she married Robby a long time ago, so everybody knew Gavin wasn’t her boyfriend. It was dumb to think that if Gavin loved Tracy, he’d kill her. It didn’t make sense, but Gavin didn’t think he was supposed to tell the best defense attorney in the entire Bay Area when he was wrong. His mother would be angry if she heard he was rude to the lawyer. Getting out of line, she’d say.
Mr. Specht said maybe Tracy said something mean.
Mr. Specht got angry when Gavin said she wasn’t mean and shook his head fast, the angry way. Wrong answer, dummy. “I didn’t mean she was mean all the time, Gavin.”
Mean, mean. Confusing.
Gavin didn’t understand why Mr. Specht made Tracy sound angry, the way he was. “She was kind. She was my friend. She ran with me. She said she could tell me things. Could trust me. She made me tapes.”
“Of what?”
“Music. To listen to. To run to.”
The lawyer sighed. Wrong again, even though it was true. “She was scared,” Gavin said. “Not angry.”
“Scared of what?”
“I don’t know.” She said he could maybe help her, but he thought she didn’t say how, except now he didn’t know whether maybe she had said, and he didn’t listen right. Sometimes he only listened to the wind, or the air. Maybe then, and maybe that’s why she was dead, his fault.
“Why do you say she was scared?”
“Because she was.” Words jumbled between his lips and Mr. Specht’s ears. “But she was going to make it better.”
“What was ‘it’?”
“The thing that scared her. I was supposed to help.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Mr. Specht took a deep breath. “Let’s go back to when Tracy died. Did the two of you…were there angry words between you? I’m not saying you were there when she actually was killed, let’s let go of that for now, but maybe at some point the night before she died.”
“No.”
“Meaning what? No angry words?”
Gavin’s head got swimmy because the pieces of what they already said were gone and he couldn’t look back and find them again and Mr. Specht acted like Gavin hadn’t been trying.
Gavin wanted to ask what was wrong, why Mr. Specht was so angry, and if he was supposed to help Gavin the way Mother promised, why didn’t he?
Mr. Specht leaned close, and when he spoke, every word came out as if it was all alone. “Okay. That. Morning. The. Night Before. Whenever. Did. Anything. Unusual. Happen?”
“What happened was Tracy died,” Gavin said. “That was unusual.”
“I’m here to help you,” Mr. Specht said. “But if you don’t try, Gavin, then I don’t know how much I can do for you.”
Do not cry, Gavin told himself. It was another thing he did that made people angry. Made them make fun of him, call him a baby. Do not cry. Do not.
Mr. Specht sighed, but more softly. “Without your help, my hands are tied. You’re vague on where you were, with whom, and Gavin, there is that blood. Tracy’s blood.”
Gavin nodded. “On me. On my hands.”
Mr. Specht looked sad. “Yes,” he said softly. “And on your warm-up, too. You do remember, don’t you?”
For once, Gavin knew exactly what Mr. Specht meant. “I remember that.”
“Can you tell me how it got there?”
That was harder. When he remembered that part, his head squ
eezed tight until there was no light and nothing to see. When he tried to remember that part, because his mother or Mr. Specht asked him to, it hurt, gave him that sick feeling, and what he saw behind his eyes was swimmy and confusing. She was there, Tracy, and so was he, and it was dark, the sun coming up behind the fog. He saw himself running in the cold dawn, heard the foghorns, saw the heron on the edge of Richardson Bay. He stopped to watch the way it walked on its long legs. Then he saw Tracy over at the statue, and the rest went black.
“You touched Tracy?”
“If you say so.”
“I didn’t say so. I won’t want to put words in your mouth, so tell me. Tell me about Tracy and you. That morning.”
“She didn’t come to my house.”
“Did she usually?”
“Not always. Sometimes she couldn’t run, so I went out by myself.”
“And?”
“So…I went to run by myself. And then…” In between his house and Tracy, still clear in that morning mist. The bird walking slowly, and then he ran straight into fog. “I couldn’t see much. Had to get close. I…she was there. I was surprised.”
“Why?”
Now who was dumb? Wouldn’t anybody be surprised to find a girl out before the sun came up, sitting on the wet ground in Blackie’s Pasture where people weren’t allowed to stay at night? “Because she never was there before when she didn’t come to my house.”
“Oh, Gavin…I meant…” He closed his eyes. Gavin knew that kind of look, like the person couldn’t go away like they wanted to, so they just didn’t look at him. The lawyer shook his head again and opened his eyes. “What was she doing when you saw her.”
“Sitting, kind of.”
“Was she alive then?” His voice was low, purry, like he was Gavin’s friend. Like he did want to help him. “Gavin?”
He was trying, that’s what was taking long. He was trying to look back through time, to before they put him in this place, to exactly what had happened before he started running and shouting—or was it before? Had he been running first? He did run there, early, when he could see his breath puff in the air that was still mostly nighttime.
It hurt to think about it.
Hard to breathe slowly and his eyes getting wet again, and he shook his head and tried not to cry in front of Mr. Specht.
“Gavin?” Mr. Specht said from far away, behind a wall or inside a cavern.
“I don’t remember.” Gavin closed his eyes, didn’t want to see the curled mouth. He heard a small snap. Mr. Specht broke his pencil tip again, the skinny lead in a mechanical pencil, because he pressed too hard with it. He broke the tips of pencils every time Gavin hadn’t answered the way he was supposed to.
“I want to help you,” Mr. Specht’s voice came from farther and farther away.
“I was running,” Gavin said. “There was blood.”
“Let me…” He was a foghorn, thick and indistinct and low. “You…” Sound, not words. Gavin shook his head and waved at the air, brushing away the sound, the foghorn in the cell. “Leem-mmmmmeeeeeeee…youuuuuuuu…” It was low, a moan, it bounced off the walls, in through his head.
“No words,” Gavin said. “No more words.” He put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes.
Four
“Do whatever you can. Ask around, see who you can find. We’re going to have to do it for him because he’s…” Michael Specht, who seemed a man never at a loss for words, faltered. “He’s not helping his case,” he said, his lips tight.
He was very much Prestigious Lawyer, tailored to perfection, fingers with manicured nails clasped in a pose of utter sincerity as he explained the situation to Billie.
“There’s a lot of bad history about the Riddocks in Marin,” Specht said. “The father, you know…”
Billie didn’t know. “I’ve only lived here four years.”
“Emma didn’t fill you in?” He frowned, then erased it. “She must really be down with that flu.”
Emma wasn’t all that sick. Billie wished she knew if Emma “forgot” so many things because she wanted Billie to look inept, because she had a dreadful memory, or because she was the worst instructor on earth.
“Gavin Senior?” Michael Specht said. “An early high-tech zillionaire. Biotech in his case. Made a pile and from that day on, behaved as if he’d bought the county and all its inhabitants. There was the malpractice business after his son was born. Then he wanted to build a house about the size of San Francisco City Hall on the ridge top. It broke every Tiburon zoning rule and the town turned him down. So he sued. Turned down again. Sued again. He boasted that his legal budget was larger than the town’s which was true, and he vowed to bleed the town treasury dry if necessary to get his house. He might have done it—this went on for years—except he lost interest. Met a new woman, got divorced, remarried, bought a Belvedere mansion and then repeated the cycle—new woman, new house, this time in Ross. But the Riddock name came to stand for the arrogance of extreme wealth. I still hear echoes of it, put-downs, as soon as I mention Gavin’s name. So the kid’s got two strikes against him from the get-go: his oddness and his family’s reputation. It’s tough finding friendly witnesses. It’s tough even finding neutral ones.”
“I’ll do my best,” Billie said. “I have your list as starters, and I’ll see where it takes me.”
“All anybody can ask.”
His smile surprised her by its ability to change him completely. Humanized him and made him undeniably attractive.
“Now the budget here is large, the divorce left Mrs. Riddock an exceedingly wealthy woman and her mission in life is to insist that her son is perfectly normal, whatever it costs to say so. So feel free to follow up on good-sounding leads and don’t overworry about that aspect, long as you keep me up to speed.”
“Fine. Should I phone you?”
“Better in person. Call and we’ll find a mutually good time.” His hands were now clasped, and he leaned forward, his flat abdomen up against his sweep of blond wood desk.
“No problem,” Billie said, amused by the obvious change in the lawyer’s attitude toward her. When she’d phoned for this meeting, he’d been audibly peeved by Emma’s defection, pointing out the significance and urgency of this case, and why it required an experienced pro, the woman he’d originally hired.
But his demeanor changed the instant she entered his office. She saw herself mirrored back, not as a possibly incompetent PI trainee, but as an attractive woman, and she watched with amusement—and interest—as Michael Specht tried to disguise his interest in her non-PI self.
Billie could stand being reminded that she was twenty-eight years old, and that despite the exhausting logistics of her life with a job, a child, not enough money, and no real support system, she hadn’t yet been sanded down to sexlessness.
“The Speck” they called him behind his back, but he was anything but a microscopic bit of nothingness. He was a somethingness indeed. And no wedding band, although that didn’t necessarily mean much. Was it unethical if something were to happen between an investigator and a lawyer?
She caught herself up short. She was here in a professional capacity. The Speck was trying to keep it that way and so should she. Shape up, pay attention, and ignore the signals the man across from her was trying to muffle. “Do you think my talking to Mrs. Riddock would be worth anything?” she asked.
“He’s not married.” Michael Specht realized his mistake, and covered quickly. “Oh, Zandra. His mother.” He considered this. “Maybe. Maybe she’ll remember somebody, something more. Maybe a woman…I’d thought Emma, more her age, although the two are nothing whatsoever alike. Wait till you meet her.”
“Why? What is she like?”
He rocked back in his chair, his fingers laced, and a small smile played over his features. He had a fine, expressive face and he knew it. “Somewhat mythic,” he said after a short pause. “The scary myths. She’s the sort who’d eat her own young if it would upset her former husband. She got m
ore money in the split than she can ever spend, but she lost her status, her ranking as ‘wife of’ and is she ever still mad about it.”
Billie grimaced. “Something to look forward to.”
His expression grew more serious. “That’s part of why she’s so unintentionally hard on Gavin. She won’t allow him to be brain-damaged. She pushes, which would seem good, except she pushes him into situations where he’s doomed to lose. But I think it had to do with the father, with this war between them.”
“Must be difficult.” An inane thing to say, but also true. Hard enough raising a child with all capabilities intact.
“It’s about reputation, to her. The same way her divorce was. Gavin has been a drain on her social status instead of adding to it, the way proper privileged children should. Let’s face it, we live in a pampered corner of the world and the Riddocks are close to the most pampered of all. Except that they aren’t getting full perks. Their son hasn’t accomplished anything and can’t. People like Gavin—to the manor born—they’re supposed to shine, to be envied and emulated. What’s the point of all that wealth if nobody looks up to you?
“Sorry to sound cynical, but that’s my take. And for good or for bad, her money is able to keep up the pretense that he is normal. She can cocoon him in that so-called cottage, provide a housekeeper-guardian who watches out for him, sustain the pretense of his eventually going to college.”
“She probably thinks it’s helping him. Making him feel ordinary.”
“It’s had precisely the opposite effect. At least from my viewpoint. He’s…frustrating.” Michael Specht raked his fingers through the side of his hair. He’d done that earlier in their meeting as a holding action while he thought about what he was saying. Billie thought that it was lucky he had such thick and springy hair, or he’d end each day looking like a cartoon’s mad scientist. “Either he won’t think,” he finally said, “or he can’t think. I’m not sure. Either way, it isn’t helping him. Or me.”
Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2) Page 3