The bumbling was an act, or a defensive construct, because there was just as much confusion in his hands as there was in his dark little eyes—namely, none at all. He laid his hand instantly on what he needed, and dropped it onto the high desk facing the right way, cover already coming open. “Yes, yes,” he muttered, “speed limit… point of impact… yaw marks…. shoe….”
He closed the cover and tapped it with his finger a few times, but when he looked up, there was no hesitation in his face.
“Al, you seem to be under the impression that this young lady was driving the car when it went into that tree.”
“That’s what they said.”
“If so,” said the expert firmly, “then she was steering from the passenger seat.”
XII
Nearly an hour later, we walked out of the reconstruction offices. Al steered me to a coffee house, leaving me at a table while he went off to fetch drinks. He put them on the table and sat down, saying nothing.
“Your man Ray is nuts,” I told him.
“True, but I’ve never known him get a reconstruction wrong.”
“Al, he’s barely looked at it.”
“You want to wait till he has?”
“So it wasn’t suicide. She was aiming at the gate, not the tree.”
“Kate, that driver’s side glass bothered both of us from the start. If Weber or Belmonte didn’t knock it out, who did?”
“Some homeless guy? Who first causes the accident and then decides to steal her purse? Anyway, I don’t know that we should trust Weber’s statement. You know how witnesses forget things—and he’s sure to have seen the road with the glass all over it the next day, after everyone from paramedics to the tow-truck driver had kicked it around. Easy to remember it like that from the beginning.”
“Then what about the car seat and mirrors? And those prints on the wheel?”
The seat and the side mirror had been adjusted for a driver at least six feet tall: Patty was barely five and a half, and the car’s owner, Tony Cardone, was listed as 5’8”. And one of the crime-scene photographs—only one—showed three smeared partial prints from Patty’s left hand in what Ray noted was an unlikely place. Officer Belmonte, back in 1983, had been meticulous at dusting them, taking pictures, recording them onto cards, then putting them away with all the other half-processed evidence when his boss decided that the death was an accident.
“Maybe she didn’t know how to adjust the seat. That could even have been the cause of the accident, that she couldn’t reach the pedals. And those three smeared partials, they could be anything. Like she, I don’t know, held onto the steering wheel while she was stretching to wind up the far window. Or she started out in the passenger side—they did find her left thumb-print on that seatbelt button—and then used the wheel to pull herself over to drive. Anything.”
“And the fact that there were no right-hand prints at all?”
The unanswerable question: why would a car’s driver leave no right-hand prints on wheel, seat belt clasp, or radio controls, but plenty of left hand ones? It wasn’t like she’d been wearing one glove, or had her arm in a cast.
I took a drink of the coffee, put down the cup, and looked up at him. “Okay. So what have we got here?”
“We’ve got a passenger who died, and a driver who fled the scene.”
“Doesn’t felony hit-and-run usually involve someone outside the car?”
“Not sure it matters.”
“No DA’s going to prosecute it after thirty years.” Back in 1983, sure—I’d imagine a rural District Attorney would happily lock away The Fonz for causing a girl’s death. But the kid in the leather jacket would be in his late forties now, and what would be the point in going after some upstanding citizen for an act of adolescent cowardice?
“That would depend on Ray’s final decision about those smeared prints. If it’s just a felony hit-and-run, probably not. But what if his report says that your sister grabbed the wheel in a panic, and tried to steer it off the road?”
Because that was one possible explanation for those three smeared prints: that Patty was being driven along Pipeline Road against her will. That Patty tried to stop the car, either because she was being abducted, or because she’d realized that her driver was dangerously drunk or high.
Of course, the other possible explanation for her grabbing the wheel took us back to where I had first come in: a suicide attempt, by a young girl too troubled by her life to continue with it.
* *
The car is driving at high speed along Pipeline Road, too fast for the upcoming curve, when the girl in the passenger seat pops her seat belt clasp (leaving a print of her left thumb behind). She braces her right foot against the door. Before the nylon strap of the belt has pulled all the way back from her right shoulder, she lunges forward to grab the steering wheel. Her left hand clamps around the hard surface and yanks it to the right.
For a brief moment, the car is aimed at the flimsy metal gate and the field beyond. The worn tires begin to slip, threatening a spin and a driver’s-side smash into the century-old eucalyptus tree. But before the spin is fully established, the steering wheel jerks back to the left and the brakes slam on. The front of the car tries to reverse direction, sending the heavy chassis into an uncontrolled skid.
The girl’s hand is torn from the wheel (leaving behind three smeared prints) either because the abrupt change throws her off, or because the driver’s arm swings out and smashes into her face. A split second after she hits the passenger-side door, the car meets the tree. Glass from the passenger windows explodes, mostly outward, some of it hurled back inside the car by the solid trunk. Steel crumples inward, trapping the girl’s right foot, freezing the seat belt around the girl’s arm, and shoving the front seat forward.
The car goes still. The driver tries to open the door, fails, and pounds at the window. When it breaks, pieces of glass fly across the roadway to the opposite shoulder. A grubby rag, which the driver found earlier in the door pocket and used to clear the windshield, now serves to wipe away sharp glass from the frame.
The driver climbs out, then uses the rag to wipe down everything that might have been touched (snagging a thread in a rough corner, caught on film by the police photographer the next day.) The door’s handle, window surround, its inner side. The radio dial, rear-view mirror, and steering wheel. Stretch inside for the brake release and door pocket, though he misses—call him he , for the present—a few minor places along the back of the steering wheel. After all, it is dark inside the car. And he’s in a hurry, since even on this road, he may not be alone for long.
The figure then stretches inside again to catch the sleeve of the girl in the passenger seat. He pulls. Bits of glass fall to the floor when she slumps onto the seat, and more when he wrestles to press the hand against the places he has just wiped: steering wheel, gear shift knob. But then it stops—he can’t reach the door latch or brake release with her fingers. He half-lies across the window frame, but can’t quite touch her other hand, to get it free from the damned belt.
He’d have to climb back inside, right on top of the girl.
Maybe he hears the sirens start up, through the cold night air. Maybe the farmer’s flashlight catches his eye, or he hears the bark of a dog. Maybe he just decides that he’s done enough, and no one will notice.
In any event, he does not try for any right-hand prints, just lets go of her arm and drops the rag, either on the ground or in the car, where it will fall out when Henry Belmonte, tonight’s first responder from the DLPD, uses a crow bar to pry open the door, a very few minutes in the future.
And then he walks away. The sky is clear, the moon is giving enough light (moon nearing first quarter , says the note from Ray Schulman) to show the rickety gate and the stubbled grass beyond. When the sirens stop along Pipeline Road, he is two fields away.
And the driver is right: no one notices the inconsistencies. Poor, troubled girl: went to a party, got a little high, borrowed a car, ended
up against a tree. It would be kinder to her family if we called this an accident and quietly put away the film and the fingerprint cards, burned her bloodstained clothing, let her go to her Catholic grave. Nothing to see here, sadness is all.
No one notices, until three decades later the girl’s sister happens to have a conversation with an inquisitive teenage daughter, and decides to ask a few questions, which lead to a few more, which lead to Ray Schulman and then to me, drinking coffee across a pitted table from Al Hawkin, looking into my former partner’s steely gaze.
“If your sister grabbed the wheel, it doesn’t matter a whole lot why she didn’t want to be driven down that road. It could be anything from manslaughter to second degree murder—or even felony murder, depending on what the driver was doing at the time. But from where we sit, it doesn’t matter.”
It didn’t matter, because any charges brought would be up to the DA. It was not up to Al or to me, as a sister or as a cop. But oh God, what had Patty got herself into, along that road?
Come on Kate , I ordered, pull yourself together. Then was then, now is now. And you’re a cop. Go with what you know .
I pushed away the cup, straightened my shoulders. “Okay, Captain Cold Case. What do we do now?”
XIII
What we did now was make another list and divide that up. My first task was a long phone call with the Captain, explaining what had happened and asking permission to be, basically, seconded to the Cold Case unit. Normally, a cop wouldn’t work the murder of a family member, but in this case, exceptions could be made—but only for one week, and only when it came to the background material.
“You get anywhere near identifying a suspect, it’s hands off, right?” he said. “You do nothing, absolutely nothing, that would give a lawyer reason to get a case thrown out, you got me?”
“Absolutely.”
“And this is not priority. If something else comes up, I need you back here. Otherwise, let me know how it goes. And Martinelli?”
“Sir?”
“Good hunting.”
* *
“You’re going down there again ?”
“I know, that drive doesn’t get any shorter.”
“Kate, that’s not what I mean. What is going on? Why are you packing a bag?”
“Because like I say, the drive to Diamond Lake doesn’t get any shorter.” I shoved in a sweatshirt and zipped the case shut, then turned to take Lee’s hands. “Honey, I actually don’t know what’s going on. I hope I don’t end up spending the night, but since it’s a three-hour round trip at the best of times, I’m taking a few things just in case. We’ll talk it over when I get back, and you and I can decide how much to tell Nora. But this is something I have to do.”
“As a sister, or as a cop?”
“Both.”
“Okay,” she said—then stepped forward to wrap her arms around me. Which made me all the less eager to drive off, but I did.
Lisa Ferraro—Diamond Lake’s Princess Di wannabe—had accumulated the faintest of digital footprints since the day she’d grinned at Patricia Martinelli over a painted backdrop. She’d married, had two kids, divorced, and vanished. No arrests, no headlines, no election to public office—at least, not under either surname I had for her.
I doubted she’d actually disappeared. As with many small towns, Diamond Lake’s older records were slow to be scanned and uploaded to a database. I could spend hours online and on the phone, or I could go down there—yet again—and talk to people like the bakery owner, the librarian, Lisa’s old teachers, and maybe even the chief of police.
So it wasn’t the coffee that made me start at the Village Bakery—or not just the coffee. Being morning, the overhead customer bell was kept ringing, and the only empty seat was at a shared table under the window. The red-haired owner greeted me as a regular, but I carried my coffee and muffin over to the empty chair until there was a lull at the counter.
When the bell slowed, I took my phone up and showed her the yearbook pictures. “I’m looking for a woman who went to Diamond Lake High back in the eighties. Does this girl look at all familiar to you?”
I wasn’t expecting much from the Bakery other than caffeine and calories, but the woman squinted at the little screen and said, “I think so. Can’t remember her name, though.”
“Lisa,” I prompted.
“Ferraro—oh, sure! She was older than me, but she lived around here for a long time. Had two adorable little girls—twins, they were. Lived north of town. She was married for a while to some sleazy guy. Real estate? Lawyer? Something, who dumped her for his… secretary?” She shook her head, and her eyes came back into focus. “Sorry, that’s all I remember.”
“No, that’s great. But she’s not still here?”
“If she is, I haven’t seen her, not for years.”
“What about any friends or relatives who might know where Lisa went?” Someone had come in, so when the baker’s gaze went to the side, I moved rather than stand in the way of commerce. But instead, she brought the new customer into the discussion.
“Hey there, Susan—look, this lady’s asking about Lisa Ferraro. Remember her? Tall, blond, twin girls, used to help out with the Diamond Lake Players productions?”
“Her married name was Mancini,” I offered.
“There’s a blast from the past,” the Susan beside me remarked. “Didn’t she move into some commune?”
“Really?” said my red-headed assistant sleuth.
“Not a hippie one, an artistic one. Somewhere in the Bay Area. Berkeley? Oakland—no, it was Santa Cruz.” Santa Cruz wasn’t exactly Bay Area, but I nodded. “And she changed her name. As a feminist thing, you know?”
I nearly said that no, I didn’t know what a “feminist thing” might be, but I kept the encouraging look glued to my face. “Any idea to what?”
Her face scrunched up in thought. “A Greek goddess. Started with an A?”
Which was most of them. “Aphrodite? Artemis? Athena?”
“That’s the one, Athena!”
“Lisa Athena?”
“I guess. Or maybe she just uses Athena.”
Oh, these artistic types, I thought but did not say, and asked a few more questions. But that was all either of them knew, and other customers had come in, so I thanked them and retreated to the dregs of my coffee.
But this seemed to be my day, because a quick search for “Lisa Athena, artist” gave me a painter who lived in Santa Cruz. And when I called for images, up popped one of about the right age and height, with hair that might once have been blond.
If it was Lisa Ferraro, she’d sure left the Princess Diana look behind her.
* *
Two hours later, after I’d met dead ends at Diamond Lake’s high school, library, and police department, I sat in my car and returned to the search function on my phone. It took a while, hunting for “Lisa Athena” contact information, but I eventually came up with a gallery that sold her work. I phoned them, got a recording with a referral number, called that, got put on hold—and was finally speaking with a human being, a woman with a brisk manner and an accent from India.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m trying to reach one of your artists, named Lisa Athena, or just—”
“She goes by Athena. Just Athena.”
“Fine, thanks. So, I know you probably—”
“We don’t give out phone numbers.”
“I know you probably don’t give out contact information,” I said more firmly, “but would it be possible for you to give her my number, and ask her to call me?”
“Is this about a sale?”
“It could be.”
“Because this isn’t a—”
My turn to cut her off. “You’re not a message service, of course, but it’s kind of important and I’d appreciate it if you’d try. You have a pencil? My name is Kate—er, Casey Martinelli. Athena knew my sister. Shall I give you the number?”
Unspoken questions crawled out of the phone, bu
t after a minute, her grudging voice prompted me to give the number, and she wrote it down. When she hung up—after reiterating that she really couldn’t promise anything and didn’t expect Athena would come by soon anyway—I sat and studied the screen’s phone display for a while.
I should go home.
I didn’t.
XIV
A drive to Santa Cruz, unrepentant enclave of the Sixties, had also been a part of that very first homicide case of mine. So had artists, for that matter. The freeway exit dumped me in town and I followed my phone’s instructions to a parking garage, walking down a street of shops, cafés, and homeless people to the gallery.
Athena’s work was hanging toward the back, and was better than I’d anticipated. No Greek goddesses in sight, or even a trace of the Feminine Spirit, merely calm, competent depictions of local landscapes: redwoods, streams, and a stormy ocean.
“They’re great, aren’t they?” a voice asked.
Not, fortunately, the Indian woman I’d talked to on the phone.
“I like the one of kids playing in the river.”
“That’s the San Lorenzo, maybe five miles from here.”
I made a point of stepping forward to look at the price, and nodded as if I were impressed with how reasonable it was. “It’s really great. And in fact, I’ve been trying to reach the artist. I wonder if you’d be able just to give her a ring and see if she might be free to meet up? I don’t have a number for her, and she’s not in the book.”
“Are you a friend, or something?”
“We fell out of touch, but I’d love to see her. If she’s busy or doesn’t want to see me, no problem, but she and my sister were really close, back in the day.”
I was the only person in the shop, and after all, I had looked at the price tag on a $725 purchase without recoiling in horror. “We don’t normally disturb our artists…”
Beginnings: A Kate Martinelli novella Page 8