Where Echoes Live

by Marcia Muller

  Lark said, “McCone, where are you? This is a Vernon number, right?”

  “Right.” I explained about my quick trip back here and what I’d found at the cabin.

  Lark was silent for a moment. “Why’d you go out there?” she finally asked.

  “It’s a complicated story. I’d rather tell you in person.”

  “Uh-huh. And these alleged bloodstains—you say they’re in the living room?”

  “Yes. And yes, I broke in there. The situation seemed serious enough to justify it.”

  “Huh.”

  I waited. When Lark didn’t say anything else, I asked, “Well?”

  “I’m thinking. The call from the station woke me up; I’ve been on a back-to-back rotation, working without Dwight— bastard’s off in Idaho—and I was sleeping pretty good.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Part of the job. What I’m thinking is that I want a lab crew to go over the place when it’s light. I ought to get a warrant, but that’s no problem because we’ve got plenty of probable cause and Judge Sims is always in chambers over at the courthouse by nine. Can you meet me at the cabin at, say, noon?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll see you then. And, McCone?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get some sleep yourself.”

  The moon was down by the time I reached the lodge. The grove lay in total darkness, the willow trees like huge black umbrellas over the cabins nestled on the slope. I left Ripinsky’s Land Rover next to Anne-Marie’s car and trained my flashlight beam on the ground as I descended.

  Not a light showed in the cabin. I felt in my jeans pocket for the key Anne-Marie had asked Hy to give me, then got the door open and stepped inside. When I switched on the ugly overhead fixture I saw a yellow sheet on the center cushion of the sofa, weighted down by the brandy bottle. The note said, “Wake me.”

  That’ll take some doing, I thought. Anne-Marie was a serious sleeper; she’d once told me that even as a small child she hadn’t bounced cheerfully from bed. In law school she’d trained herself to catch a few winks whenever and wherever convenient—sitting in the classroom before a lecture began, on buses, even while waiting in lines. In preparation for my chore, I went to the kitchen and fixed coffee in the small electric percolator. Then I went into her room and commenced shaking her.

  It was a full five minutes before I got her propped in a chair in the living room, mug of coffee in hand. Another two passed before she noticed the damage to my face. She made alarmed noises, but they were comically sleep-clogged. I related the story of my past few days as the caffeine did its work on her.

  By the time I finished, she’d come totally awake. She asked me some questions about the mineral survey that Alvin Knight had falsified, then hurried over to the dinette table and pawed through the papers that were spread there. “I do believe you’ve got what we need to stop that development,” she said. “I’ll go over these patenting applications, then contact the BLM and ask what steps we should take. We may have to file suit—” Then her face fell. “Oh, shit!”

  “What?”

  “I forgot.” She set down the file and returned to the sofa, the belt of her wool robe dragging on the floor behind her. I’m supposed to leave here tomorrow.”

  “Well, won’t you have to go to Sacramento to deal with the BLM anyway?”

  “Yes, but I’m only stopping there to pick up some clean clothing. The Coalition needs me in Humboldt County—anti-logging protest, and some of the groups are going too far with it. We need to point out the legal ramifications to them.”

  “When did you find this out?”

  “Around three this afternoon, when Ned finally got back from Sacramento. It was his decision to pull me off of this and send me to Humboldt; he seems to think he can wrap up the Stone Valley situation himself.”

  “Can he?”

  She shrugged.

  “Is he here now? Can we talk him out of sending you to Humboldt given this new information?”

  “Doubtful. Besides, if we want something from him, we don’t dare disturb his beauty sleep.”

  “You sound angry with him.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be? He was in Sacramento most of the week; half the time I couldn’t even reach him by phone. And then he came back here and started giving me orders like we were in the military.”

  “Did Ripinsky lay into him about telling Mick Erickson about the gold-mining potential here?”

  “No. I think he decided that we didn’t need any more dissension.”

  “Or maybe he had other problems on his mind.” Quickly I explained about what I’d overheard on the phone extension at Alvin Knight’s house.

  Anne-Marie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. After a moment she shook her head. “I can’t see Hy being involved with Transpacific.”

  “How do you explain Knight calling him to ask where Ong was, then?”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you still don’t want to believe Hy’s mixed up with them.”

  “No. I know what kind of man he is.”

  “I thought I did, too. But what do we really know about him? There’s that long blank period when he was away from Vernon—and the fact that he returned with a lot of money. Folks here may claim he was CIA, but I think that’s just a romantic notion. Agency people don’t make all that much. So where did he get it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Well, I called a contact on the SFPD homicide detail this afternoon and asked him to run a check on Ripinsky, among others. He said he’d expedite it, so I might hear tomorrow. Then maybe we’ll know more. In the meantime, we have to avoid telling him what I’ve found out.”

  “You mean you do. I’m to turn over those files”—she motioned at the table—“to Ned in the morning, and then I’m out of here.”

  “In a way that’s just as well. I can enlist Ned in stalling any discussions and just try to avoid Hy.”

  “And do what?”

  “I’ll decide that after I meet with Kristen Lark at Hop-wood’s cabin.”

  “Shar, there may be a problem with the Coalition paying you after today. Ned’s always been opposed to our bringing in an outside investigator, and now that he’s in charge—”

  “I’ll stay anyway. It’s almost the weekend.”

  She stood, pulling her robe tight against the chill in the room. “Dammit, I hate going off right in the middle of this! I hate the idea that the Coalition feels it can just order me here and there.”

  “Well, maybe when you stop in Sacramento you can talk with someone there, go over Ned’s head. Besides, it won’t take all that long in Humboldt county; then you can go back to headquarters and deal with the BLM.”

  The thought seemed to cheer her. “Maybe,” she said—and yawned.

  “Why don’t you go back to bed?” I suggested. “You’ve got quite a drive tomorrow.”

  “I guess I’d better. What about you?”

  “I haven’t had much sleep in days, but I’m not at all tired. I’ll have a drink; maybe that’ll relax me.”

  She nodded and went back to her room. I had no doubt that she’d be asleep in minutes.

  I poured some brandy and sipped it, but the shabby living room quickly began to depress me. It was too much like the one at Hopwood’s cabin, and my thoughts kept turning to what might have happened there. Finally I took my glass onto the porch and sat on the steps.

  It was after two now. A strong wind had sprung up; it rattled the brittle leaves on the overhanging trees and made their branches rasp together. I thought of the Mark Twain line Hy had quoted, about Mono Lake to the south, but equally applicable to this place: “wild, gloomy, foreboding … suggestive of sterility and death.” Maybe Twain had been right after all.

  Twenty-three

  Of course, once I got to sleep I did so with a vengeance. As a result I was speeding through Stone Valley, half an hour late for my appointment with Lark, when I spied a curious sight on the stream bank. I braked, veered to the right, and
drove over there to have a closer look.

  Bayard, the used-up hippie, and a woman with an abundance of dark matted hair hunkered down at the water’s edge, their heads close together as they tinkered with a piece of machinery. Three undernourished kids played listlessly in the dirt nearby. I glanced around for his shotgun and when I didn’t see it, got out of the Land Rover and went up to them. My initial impression had been correct: the machine looked like Lily Nickles’s hydraulic concentrator. I doubted she would have loaned it to anybody, much less someone as shiftless as Bayard.

  As I approached, the woman twisted around toward me. Her thin face was suntanned, but with an unhealthy yellowish undertone. Curiosity flickered in her dark eyes, and she poked Bayard in the ribs. He looked up at me without recognition.

  “Hey, Bayard,” I said, “remember me—Lily Nickles’s friend?”

  Slowly he nodded.

  “She loan you that?” I motioned at the concentrator.

  It was the woman who spoke. “Sold it to us, along with her other prospecting gear. And now the fuckin’ thing’s busted.”

  “Sold it? When?”

  “Last night before she took off.”

  “Took off for where?”

  The woman shrugged and scratched her armpit.

  Bayard glared down at the concentrator. “Bitch made us give her every cent we’d got saved from my disability, and now it’s busted.” He didn’t sound overly angry, though; I gathered such calamities befell the pair with regularity. He thumped on the machine and tried to start it; the engine gave a feeble cough.

  “Bayard,” I said, “I think it needs gas.”

  “Gas.”

  “Yes, it sounds dry.”

  “Gas,” he said again as if he’d received a divine inspiration. Without another word he stood and meandered down the streambed in the direction of their shack.

  The woman watched him go, her dark eyes unreadable. “Bay ain’t too smart,” she said after a moment. “I knew what the trouble was, but he don’t like his woman telling him what to do. You, now—that’s different.”

  “Lily didn’t say where she was going?”

  “Uh-uh. But she was going for good. Otherwise she wouldn’t’ve sold her gear. And that Jeep was packed with all her other stuff.”

  “How did she seem? Was she happy? Sad? Frightened?”

  The woman considered, biting at the inside of her lower lip. “Oh, I’d say she was frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Only natural to be frightened out here.” She glanced at the broken granite peaks that towered above us. “Me, I’m frightened all the time.”

  There was nothing I could say to that, so I merely thanked her and went back to the Land Rover. Instead of continuing to Hopwood’s cabin, I turned uphill toward Nickles’s house.

  A pile of trash that hadn’t been there before lay at the foot of the newly mended steps. I walked toward the house, calling out to Nickles. There was no response. When I mounted the steps I noticed that the rocker and jumble of prospecting gear were gone from the porch. Inside I found only more trash and the furnishings abandoned by the original owners. A single beer can stood in the dry sink. Nickles had taken off, all right.

  Why? I wondered. On Sunday she’d told me she was going to stick it out in Stone Valley for another season. Although she admitted to being afraid of what might be happening up on the mesa, even after finding Mick Erickson’s body she’d remained relatively undaunted. Between then and now what had happened to drive her away?

  I hurried back to the Land Rover and drove to Hopwood’s cabin.

  Its door stood open, and I could hear voices inside. Lark was conferring with one of the lab personnel next to a sheriff’s department van. She turned and scowled at me.

  “Christ, McCone,” she said, “I told you to get some sleep, but this is ridiculous.”

  “Sorry. I’d have been here sooner, but I stopped to talk with Bayard because I saw he had Lily’s hydraulic concentrator, and it turns out she’s left the valley.”

  “Whoa—stopped to talk with who, who had Lily’s what?”

  “There’s an awful lot I have to fill you in on.”

  “I know.” She turned back to the lab technician. “You got all that?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. I’m here if you need me.” To me she added, “I don’t suppose you’ve got any beer in that truck.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, I just happen to have a six-pack.” When I looked surprised, she explained, “Technically I should be off duty, and there’s nobody here who’ll complain. And the department isn’t picky about deputies transporting their groceries in official cars.”

  We went to the cruiser and she got out the beers. Then we sat down on the rocks at the edge of the stream. The afternoon was hot now, but a peculiar high overcast made the sunlight watery and pale. I glanced up at the sky.

  Lark said, “Gets like that when it’s edging into winter. In a few weeks there’ll be snow on the ground, and by Christmas it’ll be so deep that a lot of the roads, including the one into this valley, will be pretty much impassable except for snowmobiles.”

  “What do people do?”

  “Hole up or move into town. That’s when we start earning our pay. People get itchy from being cooped up; tempers rub raw. We break up a lot of bar fights—family fights, too. My first homicide was a woman who cracked her husband’s head open with an iron skillet. Didn’t even take the eggs out of the pan first.”

  “How’d you get into police work?”

  “My dad was county sheriff years back, and my brother’s a deputy. It just never occurred to me to do anything else. What about you?”

  “I trained as an investigator with one of the big security firms in San Francisco, mainly because I couldn’t find any other job after I got out of college. By the time I had my state license I knew there wasn’t anything I’d rather do.”

  “Funny how people fall into things. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

  I outlined what had happened since I’d left her office on Monday. Lark took notes on a pad she pulled from her shirt pocket, occasionally interrupting with questions. When I finished, she frowned, pulling at a short lock of perspiration-soaked hair.

  “Well,” she finally said, “I can’t say as I’m sorry they won’t be mining the mesa. And if what you say about the shenanigans with the BLM is true, there won’t be any resort development, either. But as for the rest of it … ”

  “The rest is a real tangle. I wish Nickles hadn’t gotten away before I could talk with her. I’d like to know what scared her off. Will you put out a pickup order on her?”

  “Sure. But it would help if I knew where she might have headed.”

  “Sunday she told me that if she left the valley she’d go back to Nevada. I suppose that’s what she did.”

  “Well, then, I’ll request that the authorities there hold her. She’s a material witness and shouldn’t have left without contacting us.”

  I stretched out my legs and leaned back on extended arms.

  Most of the stiffness from my fall on Tel Hill was gone, and the mirror had shown a marked improvement in my face that morning. “What did you find in there?” I asked, nodding at the cabin.

  “Just what you said we would. I won’t know more until I see the lab report, but I suspect we might get a match between the stains and Erickson’s blood type.”

  “Or they might match Hopwood’s. Or someone else’s, somebody we haven’t even thought of.”

  “You’re right. I’m just trying to make my job easier again.”

  “Keep this in mind, too: Hopwood and Erickson were family.”

  “Only by marriage, and you say that had pretty much busted up. Besides, I told you about the woman with the skillet full of eggs—purely a family matter.”

  A family matter. The words called up a hazy memory.

  “Anyway,” she added, “I’ll put out pickup orders on Hopwood and his daughter
.”

  A family matter. It was the explanation Margot Erickson had given me for her separation from her husband—the same explanation Mick had given his secretary, Connie Grobe. Grobe assumed it related to having or not having children, since she didn’t consider Mick and Margot a family in the usual sense. But if you took into account other relatives, such as the wife’s father …

  “McCone? You woolgathering on me?”

  “Sort of. How soon do you think you’ll have the results back from the lab?”

  “Not soon enough, given it’s Friday afternoon. We’re looking at next week, I’m afraid.”

  “Damn.”

  One of the lab men came out of the cabin and beckoned to Lark. As she scrambled to her feet she said, “Don’t leave yet.” I remained on the stream bank, sipping at the last of my beer and thinking about what sort of family matter could have caused a serious rupture of the Erickson marriage. When Lark stepped out of the cabin some five minutes later, she motioned excitedly to me.

  “Look what we have here.” She held up a plastic evidence vial.

  As I came closer I saw it contained a bullet.

  “Lodged in the wall behind the couch,” she said, “and there was a faint blood spray around it. Since it’s in relatively good condition—that pine is real soft wood—I’d say it passed through the fleshy part of the victim’s body.”

  “Meaning that whoever was shot was only wounded.”

  “Or killed by a second bullet that lodged in the body.”

  “What about the shot path?”

  “It’s interesting. From the blood-spray pattern on the couch and the angle at which the bullet lodged, I’d say whoever did the shooting was close to the floor. That indicates he or she might have struggled with the victim, been knocked down before firing.”

  “Self-defense?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What caliber is that?”

  “Looks like a forty-four.”

  “The same as the Magnum you found in the glovebox of Erickson’s Bronco—the one that had been fired.”

  “Uh-huh. And we haven’t been able to get a registration on it.” Lark looked thoughtful, then added, “Powerful weapon—too damned powerful to be used for anything but killing people. There’re plenty around here. A lot of macho assholes think they need them, but it’s just plain stupid to keep that kind of gun around. You’ve got proof of that in there.” She jerked her head at the cabin.