“I’m lonely, sweetie, I fell in love. Please try to understand. I didn’t intend for that to happen. Yes, we had an argument—but I never hurt anyone before. I was trying to keep her quiet—”
“You slit that other woman’s throat!”
“A horrible thing. Yes. Horrible.” He looked at his daughter. “Please, don’t look at me that way. I needed a fresh start. I thought I might help you. That was my intention all along, to help you. You’ve had such difficulties. So much pain, with all of this.”
Kelly walked swiftly around the bed to her father. She slapped him stingingly, once, and stepped back quickly. Her mouth was trembling. He didn’t move, though his skin reacted, pinking. “Don’t even try to blame me.”
Nina said loudly, “Get back from him, Kelly. Don’t touch her, Philip, or I’ll shoot you.”
“You won’t like where you’re going,” Kelly said, “and don’t get any ideas about preventing it.” She looked over the bottles on the table and began picking some up, throwing them in the purse on her shoulder. “I’ll leave the aspirin. Nina, let’s go.”
Kelly took one more look at her father, her eyes hailstones. “You’re lucky I don’t have the family penchant for murder.”
“Sweetie, don’t leave me. Don’t, please, I need you. You have to forgive me. I’m your—”
“Don’t say it. I never want to hear that word again.” Kelly looked around the room. On the bureau sat a framed picture of a woman in a sixties bouffant. Kelly took the photograph and went back to her place at the door. Her bravado was beginning to desert her.
Philip stared down at the covers, his lips working as though he was talking to himself.
“Do you need a doctor?” Nina said. “I think I need a lawyer.”
“You sure do.”
“Well? You’ve been good to me,” he said.
Nina said, “I will say this: there’ll be a sale all right.”
“It’s all Jim’s fault. So much. He’s responsible for me losing the resort. I was doing my best for my family.”
“Jim’s just a chip off the old block.”
Strong shut his eyes.
Paul appeared behind them. “Hi, honey. Sorry I missed the calls.” He had a bandage on his ear.
Nina handed him the pistol and allowed herself to sag against the wall. Paul said, “Have you called the police yet?”
“Philip won’t leap up and run away, Paul,” Nina said. “We were finishing our conversation, me wondering if he’s capable of showing any real regret at all for what he’s done, and finding he isn’t.”
“Are you recording him?”
“Of course, including my resignation as his counsel.” She turned back to Philip. “Where’s your son? Where’s Jim?”
Philip looked confused. His mouth hung open.
“Jim? Jimmy. Your son. Where is he?”
“Oh.” Philip let out a long breath. “Jimmy’s at the bottom of the lake. I see him there, nights. I see his bones and wonder what is going on with him. Do you know, do they live on after they die? Do they think about us?”
“You beat the police to Jim’s grave, then?” Nina asked.
“I couldn’t let his body be found. That would have stopped the escrow account from being opened. I found it very hard, digging out my own son. Very, very hard. Though, yes, I had come to hate him. May I have some water? I’m so thirsty.”
“I’m sure the police will give you some,” Kelly said.
“How cruel of you, Daughter.”
Kelly put her face in her hands.
Paul turned to Nina. “Make the call, my phone’s out in the car.”
Nina reached into her bag and pulled out the recorder first, still going. She clicked it off, rewound it a short way, then clicked it back on. “—digging out my own son.”
She clicked it off, took out her phone, and made the call.
Strong rolled over on his side toward the window, and Paul said sharply, “Don’t move.” But Strong kept moving as Paul propelled himself toward the bed. Philip rolled over to face the window. Then he pulled himself up. Then he stuck his head out and his torso out. Paul, who had jumped onto the bed, reaching for him, missed catching him, too late.
They heard a noise below, and it was Nina’s turn to put an arm around Kelly, holding her while Paul pulled himself to the window. He leaned out.
Paul pulled his head back in. “It’s rocks down there. Not good. Nina, you and Kelly wait here for the police. Don’t let her downstairs—and don’t let her look.”
CHAPTER 35
Two hours later Nina and Paul lay in an exhausted heap on her couch in front of the smoldering fire. Philip Strong had been taken into custody and they would be reporting to Cheney in the morning, right after making the calls to Stamp and Korea that would stop the wiring of funds into an escrow account.
Paul had his big, muscular leg over Nina’s. He snored rhythmically. Nina’s mind drifted from point to point, thinking about pianos and horses and how it was all right to rest. She had to sleep—she felt the pillow that had almost taken her life pressing down. She felt she had traveled beyond some personal boundary and would never be able to feel the solace of sleep again, so she opened her eyes and watched the fire burn.
The phone rang. She pulled her arm gently out from under Paul’s and checked her watch. Two-forty a.m.
She disengaged from Paul, who did not waken, and padded into the kitchen.
Fred Cheney spoke. “Thought you and Paul should know. Philip Strong died while we were trying to get him moved to an ambulance for transfer back to the hospital. The paramedics were right there, but his injuries were too great, too much blood lost, and his heart probably gave out.”
“Thanks, Fred. Did you call his daughter?”
“She wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Somebody needs to come take charge, make some arrangements. Do you know anyone?”
“No. No, I don’t. We’ll see you in the morning, Fred, good night.”
“Sleep well,” Fred said. And just like that, she did.
Bob came down the stairs. “Hey, Paul.”
“Hey. Isn’t it getting late, even for someone who plays until all hours like you, or me?”
“What are you doing up so early?” Nina asked.
“Spanish again,” Bob said. “Mr. Acevedo. He’s tough on us. Quiz once a week. I don’t get Spanish. It would be better if I was learning Swedish. At least I remember some of that. But as for right now? Mom, I’m hungry.”
Nina got up to microwave a burrito with green chili sauce, which Bob ate with gusto.
“Done studying?” she asked Bob as he headed for his room.
“It never ends.”
“Bob, it’s going to be a difficult day. I want you to go to Uncle Matt’s after school.”
“Again?”
She felt bad, looking at his easy smile, at his forgiveness.
“Just giving you grief, Mom.” Bob smiled bigger. “I’m old enough to know how to crack the skull of an interloper, if one shows up.”
“Interloper? Wait, no!”
“Oh, Mom, don’t work yourself up. Anyway, I’ve got Hitchie here to protect me.” The dog bowed his head under Bob’s hand.
“I’ll lock all the doors.”
“Of course you will,” Bob said, emitting a long-suffering sigh as he closed the door to his room behind him.
“Matt’s phone number is—,” she called out.
“Got it. I know Uncle Matt’s number by heart,” he called back, “just like for the past many years. Oh, and I decided not to go to Sweden with Dad. Not right now, anyway. You couldn’t handle it. You need me too much. So, okay, see you later, Mom.”
Paul made a phone call.
Nina listened on the sidelines as the voice coming through his phone rose in tenor, argued, and finally came around.
They suited up against the snow shower that had sprung up and went outside.
“Let’s take my car,” Paul said. While she was getting into the c
ar, he pressed his fingers so hard against the steering wheel she heard them crack. “I want what’s best for you, even if it means going to prison. I mean that, honey.”
She put her hand on his, the one closest to her, and felt the tension leaching out of his skin and into hers.
“Last escape route comin’ up,” Paul said. “Keep going and head down the mountain to Reno. The airport’s there. We can take the next flight to somewhere.”
“You’re not serious?”
“No. I was wrong not to wake you that night two years ago. I was wrong not to call the police.”
“I’ve thought so much about that night. What you did for me and Bob. I’ve thought about everything. I have dreams.”
“I can’t make it okay this time, sweet one. This is bad.”
She put her hand on his. They turned onto Ski Run Boulevard, then toward Cheney’s office.
“Hope you got more sleep than I did,” Cheney said, letting them into the building himself after they buzzed, waving off the uniformed officer of the day.
They sat down and spent a little time talking about Philip, the murders, the escrow. “Hendricks is in custody,” Fred said. “So let’s get a statement from last night.”
He asked them numerous questions, and both of them reported what had happened to the police stenographer who was making notes. Nina kept hold of Paul’s warm hand.
Finally it was over. The stenographer left to prepare written statements for them to sign, and Cheney offered them coffee. “Job well done,” he said. “You should have called us earlier, though, Nina. It was too dangerous to go to Strong’s house, even if he was bedridden.”
“I never would have known somebody as sick as he was could still have so much strength in him.”
“Desperation will make almost anyone strong for a few minutes.” Cheney pushed his chair back, and Nina saw how weary he was and felt twice as awful, because he wasn’t finished yet.
“Fred, there’s another statement I need to make, on a related topic,” Paul said.
“Oh?” Fred yawned. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“Are you recording this?” Nina asked.
Cheney shook his head. “You know, Counselor, I have to notify you before recording.” He cleared his throat, pushed a few papers around on his desk. “You saying you want me to?”
“No.”
“All right, then. Let’s hear what this is about, before we start recording things.”
“Right,” Paul said. “We’re here to talk about Jim Strong.”
“Paul, let me tell him,” Nina said. “In a minute.”
“Please.”
Paul sat back in his chair.
“Two years ago,” Nina began, “Jim Strong was my client.” She recounted her nightmare to Fred and to Paul, describing the way Strong had traversed along the top of the hill and caused the avalanche that killed her husband. “He used to say he took whatever you loved most. Then came the night he came to my home to kill me.”
“How can you say you know what he was thinking?” Cheney asked, fingers thrumming the scarred wooden desk.
“I do know,” Nina said. “After months of working with him, I knew what was going on in his mind. He hated his family. He wanted them dead, Kelly, his father, Philip, everyone close to him. He hated me. He understood I had betrayed him.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“You lost his case intentionally?”
“Yes.”
“You believed he had killed his wife, Heidi?”
“I did, and for that I paid such a price. He killed my husband when he realized that I had guessed.”
Cheney shook his head again.
“I was there on the mountain that day my husband died. I saw what happened. I spotted Jim up there, watched what he did—” Nina took a long minute. “He had violated me and my family and I continued to be scared to death of him. A few days later, after he had disappeared and everyone thought he had left town, I even thought he might be outside, watching my house in the night. He wanted me dead. I called Paul to tell him how panicked I felt. I had already sent Bob to my brother’s, where I thought he might be safer.”
Cheney had picked up a pencil and was either doodling or taking extensive notes.
“Why not call 911?”
“To say I was afraid? I had Paul.”
Cheney gave Paul a look of disappointment and sadness, like a father who expected so much more. “Strong showed up?”
“I watched from my car as he went to her back door,” Paul said, taking up the story.
“And then?”
“I watched him jimmy the lock on her back door. I watched him pull out a folding knife, snap it open.”
“Ah.”
“I—engaged him.”
“You told him to stop. You showed him a weapon. You called the police.”
“Not exactly.”
“But you went there to protect her. He was out there breaking into her house. With a weapon?”
“Like I said, I saw his knife.”
“And you felt Nina was in imminent danger.”
“Yes. So we fought.”
“He used the knife?”
“I did. The knife nicked an artery. He bled out fast, while I tore off my shirt and was trying to use it as a pressure bandage. Couldn’t believe how fast he went.”
“You didn’t mean to kill him?”
Paul said honestly, “Hard to answer that. Once I realized I hadn’t killed him immediately, I did try to save him. I couldn’t. Then I buried him in the grave you excavated later, Fred. I took a tarp from under Nina’s house, wrapped him in it, and buried him. Like I told Nina, I took out the garbage.” Paul explained that he and Nina had sent the e-mail tip-off about the location of the grave.
Cheney nodded his head slowly. The room was quiet. Outside, Nina could hear a clanking noise, like the jailers coming to lock them up forever. But it was only a deputy’s equipment banging against his hip as he walked past outside.
“Why not come and tell me then, Paul?” Cheney asked. “We’re old friends, or so I thought. I consider myself a fair man.”
“I should have,” Paul said, “but you know, I had a problem with the idea of being locked up. I didn’t think I could take it.”
“What are you saying, Paul?”
“Back then I decided that I’d—well—kill myself before that happened.”
Nina bit her lip.
“What about leaving Strong’s family not knowing he was dead?”
“It caused them a lot of emotional distress and other harm, as it turns out,” Paul said. “I honestly never thought of that. I thought they’d be relieved. He threatened all of them at various times. I believed they thought he was a monster. I believed they’d be relieved that he disappeared.”
“Hmm,” Cheney said. During the next long silence, Nina kept her gaze on Paul’s boots, covered with wet mud.
“I see the problem,” Cheney said. “You covered it up for two years. You ought to be ashamed.”
“Was it wrong, Paul protecting me? That man came to my home that night to kill me. His sister-in-law, Marianne, told me he told her that,” Nina said hotly.
“I’m disappointed in both of you. I should take you both into custody.”
“I don’t know what is right anymore, Fred,” Paul said quietly. “I’m leaving it to you.”
“Hmm.” Cheney made a loose fist and began hitting it lightly with the palm of his other hand. It was exactly like an old-fashioned cop on the beat hitting his hand on his truncheon as he talked to a couple of juvenile delinquents.
Paul put his hand on Nina’s knee, giving it a squeeze as if it were the last time.
“It’s not my job to be a judge, but here I am. I know you people.” Cheney pointed to Paul. “You killed a man. Not going to the police, burying the body, wasting law enforcement resources—we looked long and hard for this fool—bad judgment, Paul. However, I find it really hard to believe a jury would convict
you of much.” Cheney tilted his head. “You read Shakespeare?”
“Not lately,” Paul said.
Nina remembered a night at Sand Harbor in August, warm and beautiful, the lake shining behind the set. They produced Shakespeare plays every summer, and she had seen most of the performances over the past several years.
“‘Which is the justice, which is the thief?’” Cheney said. “That’s in King Lear, and it is a line I remember. I wish I knew the answer to that question.”
“I’m not good at literature,” Paul said, “much as I admire it. But, Fred, please, what’s your point?”
Cheney paused for a moment and wrote notes with an old-fashioned pencil. They listened to the scritch scritch scritch. “Philip Strong killed his own son and buried him in the woods. Years later, after an investigator came close to discovering that he was the one embezzling from his own business, he dug his son up and permanently disposed of the corpse in Lake Tahoe. He had the idea that he would steal the escrow funds and leave the country, escape before he got found out, and before everything went to the debtors.”
“But Philip hired Eric Brinkman to look into the resort’s finances. Why would he do that?”
“He realized his daughter, Kelly, and daughter-in-law, Marianne, were catching on. He was delighted when Eric Brinkman never found any proof. So he looked around for a fresh start. He killed his girlfriend because he had told her what was going on and she wasn’t about to go along with it. He killed that poor Minden woman, slitting her throat like a monster. All to spare his own curly tail.”
“People are no damn good,” Paul said.
“Maybe I’m no damn good either,” Cheney said, “but I’m not going to do anything with your information because I earnestly do not believe the district attorney will do anything with it. I’ll note you made a full report to me. I won’t go into particulars.”
“You’re not even going to take this to the district attorney’s office and see if they feel it warrants an indictment?” Nina said.
“Those kids? I’ll save them the time,” Cheney said.
EPILOGUE
Under a mountain sky, four bodies lay side by side, dreaming. A warm breeze shifted the bushes around them, and in the distance children laughed and ran in and out of the water, their splashes faint. Dogs barked, but the sound drifted over the lake and far away.
Dreams of the Dead Page 31