Unfit to Practice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “After you,” Wish said. They all squeezed out the door into the walkway right outside the salon. Slot machines pinged all around them.

  “Nina’s waiting. We have an appointment set up for you,” Paul said.

  The two women looked sick. Brandy said, “Mr. van Wagoner, I don’t know if we can go through with this. We went back to my house in Palo Alto last night and there’s still no sign of Bruce. I’m scared. I don’t think we should tell anyone anything. Maybe Cody kidnapped Bruce!”

  “And I’m worried about my family.” Angel bit her lip.

  “What should we do?” Brandy asked, agitated. “Tell the police Bruce’s kidnapped? I don’t even want to see the police. I want to stay out of this thing. Maybe he’s fly-fishing somewhere in Alaska for a few days with some client of his who’s got money to burn. That’s more logical, more real. That guy, Cody, why would he go after Bruce anyway?”

  “Right! He’d go after us!” Angel said. “He won’t be thinking about my kids and my husband. They’ll be safe because he’ll want me or my sister. We want to hide until they all go away.”

  “Where?” Paul asked. “Where would you go?”

  Brandy looked at Paul and Wish. “Somewhere only we know.”

  Angel shook her head. “I’m so confused. Oh, man, this is the point on TV where people don’t tell the police what they know and get whacked.”

  “Nobody’s going to get whacked,” Wish said, horrified. “We’d never let that happen.”

  “You have no choice,” Paul told them. “The police can arrest you as material witnesses if you don’t come forward. Believe me. Talking to them is the wise thing to do.”

  “Can’t Nina just tell them what we told her?” Brandy asked. “She knows the story.”

  “You have to tell the D.A. what you saw,” Paul answered, tired of arguing. “Let’s go.”

  “And exactly who are you, anyway?” Brandy asked Wish.

  “She sent me to protect you,” Wish said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Brandy gave him a radiant smile and Wish dissolved into his high-tops.

  Paul didn’t think telling her they weren’t leaving without them would improve the situation. “We’re here to escort you safely to the police. Once the D.A. has your statement about what happened at the campground, you’ve done your duty,” he said. “You’ll be safer. It’s like insurance.”

  “Angel, if you don’t come back in here right now,” said a voice from inside the salon, “I’m going to get up and walk out of here with one half of my head full of pink curlers, then I’m going up to Raley’s and tell everybody there why I look so foolish.”

  “Coming!” she said. “Look, I have to finish Mrs. Gerdes before I can leave.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Let’s see, finish rolling, then the perm, wash it out, dry it. Make it look outstanding. At least an hour, maybe longer.”

  “We’ll wait,” Paul said. “But you’ll go?”

  Angel looked at her sister, then back at Paul. “Yeah, we’ll go.”

  When Paul’s stomach began to rumble as loudly as Wish’s, he sent him out for some food. Paul balanced himself on the flimsy bench in the salon and observed Jill’s frosting of the coneheaded woman and the manufacture of artificial curls on the head of Angel’s client.

  Brandy sat with him. She spoke hardly a word to Paul, but she perked up when Wish arrived, slightly bent with the weight of bags full of quesadillas and nachos. They spread the food between them and ate and talked. Brandy asked Wish questions about his studies. Listening to them, Paul learned that she had been a philosophy major at community college and that she didn’t feel like she belonged in Palo Alto. She didn’t talk about her fiancé, Paul noticed. Wish seemed to be making a conquest. Or he was being vanquished, Paul wasn’t sure which.

  After a while, Angel finished and joined them. They all piled into the Mustang.

  “You know, we always intended to go to the police. We wouldn’t have let that bastard get away with killing her,” Angel said as they drove alongside the lake toward Al Tahoe Boulevard. “We’re just afraid.”

  “Sure you are,” Paul said.

  “Why did Cody have to kill Phoebe?” Brandy asked.

  “You know why,” Angel said. “Sexual jealousy. She was with another guy.” Sitting in the front seat beside Paul, she pulled her feet up on the car seat as if settling down for some titillating gossip. “This is what we heard. Phoebe is sleeping with Mario but he gets arrested and lands in prison for a long time, like maybe a whole year,” she explained. “He and Cody were old friends from way back, and so Phoebe and Cody’re hangin’ out together moaning about poor Mario. And then one fine night they get-”

  “Down and dirty,” Brandy said from behind her.

  “And Mario gets out of prison earlier than anyone expected,” Angel continued. “He shows up out of the blue at Cody’s house. Well, it makes sense. He goes to see his best friend first thing-”

  “Wanting to spend the night on the couch and collect the money Cody’s keeping for him,” Brandy said.

  “But Cody’s surprised and not that happy to see Mario after all. He’s cagey. He doesn’t want Mario to know about Phoebe hanging with him, so he makes up an excuse and says, ‘You can’t stay here.’ He swears he doesn’t have the money but promises to get it and bring it to Mario the next day.”

  “They were in on a drug deal together and Cody held the money for Mario while he was in prison,” Brandy said.

  “Taking the rap, I think,” said Angel.

  “So Mario asks, ‘Well, then, where the hell can I go?’ ’Cause you have to remember, he’s got practically no money,” Brandy added.

  “So then Cody gives him twenty bucks or so and sends Mario to the campground with a ratty old tent and a bag. Some friend.”

  “Meanwhile, guess who’s listening from somewhere behind the drapes?” Brandy asked rhetorically.

  “Mario’s old girlfriend, Phoebe, who’s actually been missing him or maybe is just getting very sick of Cody, his second-rate stand-in,” said Angel. “Mario was definitely the better-looking one.”

  “So Phoebe sneaks out and follows Mario to the campground. And initiates a rowdy reunion. If she’d only known. It’s so awful. I guess that’s what those other people who had our campsite before really objected to. Probably they were hanging all over each other,” Brandy said.

  “Indiscreet,” Angel agreed.

  “So Cody-he came back late at night. And he killed her! Angel, should we really do this?”

  “It’s for the best, Bran.”

  They fell silent, both with one arm folded, the other resting under a chin.

  Paul turned up Al Tahoe, intrigued and moved by these two young women. Telling the story lightened their emotional load. Nina, the amateur psychologist, would probably say their reworking of these memories helped them to gain control over their fear. And then there was the relationship between them. They were like children of exactly equal weight on a teeter-totter, shifting back and forth in perfect harmony. He sighed, thinking of his own sister in San Francisco. The last time he saw her, he had been in the hospital with a broken leg. The moment he regained full consciousness and saw her there at the foot of his bed, all he could think about was how to send her scurrying home.

  “Then Cody showed up,” Paul said, prompting them.

  “He’s got this shattering motorcycle engine. I mean, you couldn’t hear a china cupboard collapse over the noise of that thing,” Brandy said.

  “Or a house fall down, for that matter,” Angel added.

  “A Harley,” Wish said. “Or maybe Kawasaki? They make some really powerful engines.”

  Brandy, sitting next to him, seemed startled at this sudden show of interest. “Who knows?” she said. “Just really loud.”

  “Cody hops off the bike,” Angel said, “and the fighting starts. He’s really pissed about Phoebe. He says she’s already jumped in the sack with Mario, hasn’t she?”


  “Which is literally the truth,” said Brandy. “I always wondered if those double bags were roomy enough.”

  “Mario says, ‘F-off! She was mine before and she’ll always be mine. And by the F-ing way, where the F is my mother-F-ing money?’ ”

  Paul stifled a laugh. Mario’s language had even the bold Angel cringing.

  “So they got into a fistfight, and I called the ranger and the ranger came and ran Cody off,” Brandy finished suddenly. “That’s the whole story.”

  “Except that Cody came back and strangled Phoebe,” Angel said.

  This time, no amount of prompting could lift the sisters out of their silent funk.

  They found Nina leaning against her Bronco in the parking lot at the county offices. She went into the D.A.’s office with Brandy and Angel while Wish and Paul waited outside for a long time.

  When the women returned, Angel looked wrung out down to the ends of her bleached hairdo. Brandy had lapsed into introspective gloom. Nina had a court appearance in another fifteen minutes in the building across from the D.A.’s office.

  “We have lined up a place for you two to go that’s safe,” Nina said.

  “What?” Brandy said. “I thought you guys said talking to the D.A. was our insurance.”

  “This is just intensive short-term protection,” Paul said smoothly. “The D.A.’s office agrees it’s a good move.”

  “We’d like you to move into a shelter operated by my sister-in-law, Andrea Reilly, at least for tonight,” Nina said. “The location is kept very private. They have excellent security, and it’s just the spot for you two until the police can arrest Cody Stinson. It’s my advice that you go there immediately. They have everything you need for an overnight stay.”

  “Forget that,” Angel said. “I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight. We’ll bar the door. Sam’s still out of town with the kids, so they’re all safe, and I am so tired of running around. We’ll be fine at my house.” She shook her head and twisted her mouth at the thought. “We’re not going to some icky place for abused women!”

  “You hired me for advice. Now take it,” Nina said firmly. “This is a good, clean place with some wonderful professional people who know how to make you feel comfortable in addition to providing security you need. As long as Cody Stinson is out there, there may be danger for you both. The district attorney’s office has placed people at the shelter before.”

  “No.” Brandy folded her arms. Angel followed suit.

  Nina and Paul both argued hard, but in the end, the two women, armed with their elbows and stony expressions, formed an impervious blockade against all imprecations.

  When Nina had to leave, Paul and Wish offered to take Angel and Brandy back to the salon. Angel announced that she was ready to call it quits for the day. She and Brandy wanted a ride back to the Harveys parking lot to pick up Angel’s car, then they planned to head straight back to Angel’s cabin. Subdued, they said little about their meeting with the D.A. other than to report that he seemed like a fair man who believed them and now would go out and get Cody Stinson and lock his butt up.

  With that hopeful analysis behind them, they clammed up. Wish rose to the occasion, suddenly voluble on several topics, beginning with motorcycle lore, skipping to detective lore, finally landing upon hip-hop music, which sparked some interest.

  Paul dropped the sisters at the casino and drove around the corner. A few moments later he watched the two jump into Angel’s car. The women drove off into the late-afternoon traffic. Paul followed behind a couple of cars.

  “We’ll escort them safely home,” Paul said. “I’m thinking we’ll sit on their curb tonight.”

  “Well, sure. They’re in danger.”

  The sisters passed the turnoff at Al Tahoe that would lead to Pioneer Trail. At the Y intersection, Angel swung the Echo right. Brandy held a small purple mobile phone to her ear. Holding tight with one hand to the oh-shit bar above the door to keep herself steady against Angel’s erratic driving style, she talked. Since Paul knew she lived on Blackfoot Avenue about two miles west of Nina’s, he also knew that they were not, as advertised, going directly back to Angel’s.

  At Camp Richardson, the Echo swerved right. Paul narrowly avoided missing the entrance. The dapper little car jaunted all the way to the end of the narrow camp road, past the one-room cabins lining it, and stopped in a marked spot at the end where the asphalt broadened. Paul and Wish followed a few seconds later.

  The girls had landed at the Beacon Bar and Grill. Paul heard them ordering espressos while he and Wish hunted for a table where they could observe without being noticed. They ordered iced tea, which arrived in wet, cold glasses. Wish busied himself with a multitude of sugar packets while Paul squeezed his lemon slice.

  At this late hour, Lake Tahoe rippled in a steady breeze. Gulls coasted above. Even the narrow stretch of beach sand wore a glaze of tiny airborne granules. Umbrellas above the tables adjusted dangerously. Behind Mount Tallac the sun slipped low and the sky shifted from azure to indigo. The wind hushed, bringing that moment of quiet before the onset of evening.

  The girls packed away two hot drinks each rather quickly, checked their watches for the time, and with what must have been a zinging buzz, left a pile of one-dollar bills on the table and set off down the beach at a near run. Paul and Wish established a slightly more leisurely pace but stayed close. “Getting some exercise,” Wish guessed, “staying fit.”

  “They’re meeting someone.”

  “Ah. The phone call. The time.”

  “Right.”

  The sisters walked west toward Kiva Beach, passed by a succession of joggers and bikes until Beach Road ended, then entered that sparser realm just a few steps past all public areas where only the intrepid ventured. Trees crept closer to the edge of the water, their long shadows casting triangles, blotting the beach.

  “Who could they be meeting?”

  “If I were to guess,” Paul said, “I’d say Brandy’s boyfriend, Bruce, is supposed to appear.”

  The women stopped suddenly, turned away from the lake, then stepped into a black patch of shade and ducked into the woods.

  “You don’t think he will?”

  “Damn!” Paul said, breaking into a trot, then a run as a shout, then a scream rode toward them.

  “Wish and Paul saved our lives,” Brandy said, sobbing in Nina’s office a half hour later. Nina had stayed late after receiving Paul’s urgent call. “If they hadn’t happened to be walking along the beach at the same exact time-”

  Angel put a hand on her sister’s head. “Bran, wake up, they didn’t happen to be there.” She looked up at Paul. “You followed us.”

  “Exactly what happened?” Nina asked.

  “Brandy got a phone call while we were going home from a guy that said he was a friend of Bruce’s, that he had asked this guy to call and let Brandy know he would meet her at Kiva Beach at a certain time.”

  “You weren’t suspicious?” Nina asked.

  “Of Bruce? He didn’t have his cell phone. That’s unusual, but not impossible. And I always thought he might follow Bran up here.”

  “Why the beach?”

  “He said he wanted a quiet spot for them to talk. It’s a public place, you know,” Angel said. “I wasn’t about to let her go alone, even though she told me not to come.”

  “We walked along the beach,” Brandy said, “then we heard someone calling us from the trees. It was windy-not like you could identify a voice. Anyway, even if it hadn’t been Bruce’s voice, when someone says, ‘Over here,’ you go over there.”

  Paul coughed and shook his head in the direction of the floor.

  “And he leaped out at us like-like a rabid dog,” Brandy finished, “a wild creature. Angel tried to jump him, so he knocked her down right away, the entire time just jabbering. I screamed and tried to fight him. He grabbed me from behind but before he could do anything else, Wish and Paul ran up and pulled him off me. I-I-”

  “She was screaming
her head off,” Angel said. “So was I. Paul wanted to know were we okay, but it took us a minute to realize there was no blood anywhere on us. Not even a nick. We were so lucky.”

  “That wasn’t luck,” Brandy said. “Wish and Paul being there wasn’t luck at all.”

  “He got away,” Paul said, and a world of disappointment underlaid his words.

  “You recognized him?”

  Paul nodded. “Same as the guy in the paper, Cody Stinson.”

  Wish said matter-of-factly, “It was definitely a Harley chopper. Heard it first, and glimpsed him taking off.”

  “I tried to get them to see a doctor but they refused. We have agreed they’ll spend the night at the women’s shelter. They wanted to come here first,” Paul said.

  “Yes,” said Angel, turning her attention back to Nina, “because any way you look at it, Cody would never have come after us if you hadn’t lost that file.”

  “It sounds mean, but yes,” Brandy said, “a man attacked us today, and it’s all your fault.”

  “He’s out there, and you know what?” Angel asked. “He wants my sister dead.”

  “So our question is-”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  13

  T HEY DON’T HANG PEOPLE in Old Hangtown anymore. They don’t even call it that anymore; it has mutated into the innocuous foothill resort town of Placerville where they pop the accused into the sleek new El Dorado County Jail, all very civilized.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Paul exited and drove uphill past swatches of red dirt to Forni Road and parked in the second parking lot. He followed a long concrete walkway inside to the blue-and-white-painted glass-walled entry of a brick building that resembled a college campus. Only a closer view to the left of the main building, behind barbed-wire-topped fencing, exposed slitted windows that revealed its true purpose.

  He walked into a blue-and-white room on a color-coordinated white vinyl tile floor speckled with blue toward the reception area behind glass at the right, wondering what considerations determined decor for a place that housed criminals. Were these two colors thought to be neutral? Upbeat? Tranquilizing? He spoke into a metal disk-shaped speaker in the center of the glass, signed paperwork, and slipped it through the slot below. The clerk directed him first to a set of blue-and-chrome chairs permanently attached in rows balanced on one bent leg apiece where he waited for a few minutes. Then the clerk moved a hand toward him, allowing him through the door and into the windowless bowels of the building. A green stripe led the way.