She scrunched up her face, remembering. “Late May, I’d say. Right around the time of the terrorist attack.”
“Related to that?” Beth asked.
“I don’t think so, no. I can’t imagine how. It started before that, I’m pretty sure, but not too long before. But after that, it just got out of control.”
“What did?” Ike asked. “Specifically?”
“Well, drinking for starters. And then.” She paused. “Then all the women.”
“He had affairs?” Beth asked.
Jill shook her head, her lips tight. “I don’t know if you’d call them that. I don’t think there was any real relationship with any one woman, although I may be wrong there. He just started seeing other women. Getting drunk and going home with them. I don’t have any idea what that was about. But the bottom line is that we seemed to be going along fine, all of us, having a normal life, and then this . . . this thing started, and within a month he just got more and more unpredictable, more irrational, and then he just packed some stuff one day and told us he was moving out.”
“And you don’t think this had anything to do with the terrorism?” Beth asked.
“I don’t know. I know that screwed up a lot of people. Maybe the attack made whatever it was get worse. I just don’t know. Nothing really seems the same since then, anyway. San Francisco is a small town. Everybody you meet was there or was shot or knew somebody who was shot. Everybody’s world is just different now. It’s like everything you thought you knew about people was a lie. It’s like finding out your husband cheated. You suddenly doubt everything else you thought you knew.” She brushed at the air in front of her face. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Nothing makes any sense. You guys must see that a lot, I’d bet.”
Beth again nodded, noncommittal.
Ike asked, “So he moved out in June?”
“June tenth. Just gone.”
Beth found her voice again. “Have you seen him since then?”
Jill nodded. “I wanted to go to a marriage counselor, and he agreed at first, but it didn’t take. He just didn’t want to work anything out anymore. He said he was done with the whole life we’d . . . we’d put together, and after three appointments he just said it was a waste of time and he stopped going.”
“And you stopped seeing each other?” Ike asked.
“I haven’t seen him in about two months now. Last time was our sons’ birthdays. Which was another disaster, maybe the worst one actually.”
“I’m sorry,” Ike said. “Your sons’ birthdays? Was that one or two of them?”
“Two of them. Same birthday. September sixteenth. They’re twins, both nineteen now. Eric and Tyler. Good boys, although this whole experience with their father has really messed with their heads. And now, with this . . .” She looked plaintively at the inspectors. “Now there’s no fixing it, is there?”
After a beat of silence, Ike broke it. “So what happened on the birthdays?”
Jill hesitated another second or two. “Well, the short version is that Peter got drunk and decided it would be a good day for him to come by and touch base with us all again. He seemed to think that maybe we could all just move ahead and forget that we used to be a family, and since he didn’t have any hard feelings, we should feel the same way. It just hadn’t worked out, the whole family thing, and if it bothered any of us, we should just get over it.”
“And how’d that play?” Beth asked.
“Not so good, as you might imagine. Peter got about halfway through this truly ridiculous pitch, trying to get us all to understand that he hadn’t really deserted us and blah blah blah when Eric just had enough and basically jumped him and started swinging . . . not that Peter didn’t deserve it, but it was the worst. Tyler and I had to pull them apart, everybody was bleeding. It was just awful.”
“I’m so sorry,” Beth said. “That must have been very hard on you.”
“I don’t know what happened. He just became a terrible man.”
“Where are your boys now?” Ike asked.
“Both off at school. Eric’s at Cal and Tyler’s at Chico. Oh my God, how am I going to tell them this? Those poor boys.” Abruptly, she stood up, brushing her hands against her pants. “I’ve got to call them. I can’t have them hear about it on the news or in the paper.”
Beth and Ike got to their feet. When they got back to the front door, Beth reached for the doorknob and then stopped and turned. “I’ve just got one last quick question if you don’t mind, Jill. Please don’t take offense, but what’s happened to your face?”
“My face . . . ?” She brought both of her hands up to her cheeks. “Oh!” She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “I had a rhinoplasty last week. A nose job. And an eye tuck, if you want to know. I figured if I wasn’t pretty enough for Peter anymore . . . maybe if I changed how I looked . . .” Her shoulders gave an inch and suddenly to Beth she seemed about fifteen years older. “Stupid,” she said. “Just stupid vanity.” Then, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to call the boys.”
“Of course,” Beth said. “And we won’t bother you further. But before you do call them, could we trouble you for Peter’s cell phone number? We’ll need to get the records to try to figure out where he was and who he was with on the night he died.”
* * *
“Well?” Beth asked as they pulled away from the curb. They’d been partners for over two years and Ike didn’t need her to explain what she was asking about.
“One to ten,” he said, “with ten meaning she absolutely did it, I’m giving her a two, maybe a one. In fact, she might even be a zero.”
“Have we ever had a zero before? I don’t remember one.”
“I don’t think so. I’d eat my badge if she turns out to be his killer. We just totally blindsided her. She had no idea.”
“I agree.”
“But I wouldn’t mind talking to the boys before she did.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s not happening.” Beth chewed her cheek for a minute. “You noticed,” she said, “that the one at Cal—Eric—he’s closer, a BART ride away. Plus, he’s the son who went at him. Physically assaulting your dad is no small deal.”
Ike looked over at her with a half-grin in place. “Eric at Cal, the one who attacked his dad. You remember that? What are you, a detective or something? It’d be interesting to know if Eric had a gun, or a car, or both.”
“I’m sure we’re going to get to find out.”
“Plus, it would be good if we could narrow down a time of death, within a day or so.”
“Plus that, yes. That’d be nice.”
They drove on in silence—one block, two blocks. They pulled up to a stop sign and stayed stopped an extra six or eight seconds. A longish time.
“Okay, I give up. What?” Beth finally asked.
“What what?”
“Whatever it is you’re pondering. You want me to drive so you can think harder?”
“Hey. I’m doing great, multitasking here.” He looked left, then right, then pulled out into the intersection. “What do you think happened that he changed so much all at once?”
“I’m going to chercher some femme here, Ike. I’m thinking he got himself a girlfriend.”
“Evidently, according to Jill, more than one.”
“Well, we don’t know about that. One could have done it.”
“But on the other hand, getting out from under the family might have just set him free. You think it could have had something to do with the terrorism, after all?”
Beth considered, her mouth set. “Those sons of bitches.” She went inside her head for a moment, and then she shook out whatever it was. “I’m not ruling out anything in terms of reactions people had to that day. But Jill said whatever it was, it had started before then. Not that it couldn’t have been exacerbated . . .” She went silent. Then, “I can see the drinking. Especially if he was close to where it happened, or even in the Ferry Building. His firm’s in Embarcadero Two, right across the street. He could’
ve been there.”
“And that pushed him over some edge?”
“If he was teetering, it couldn’t have helped. And let me tell you, if I wasn’t a monstrously strong woman trying to raise a super-sensitive daughter all by myself, I might have become a common drunk. Or addicted to Oxy.”
“I don’t think so. Not you, under any circumstances.”
“Well, thanks for saying so. But I don’t think I slept for six weeks. And it wasn’t all the physical pain. So yeah, I could see Peter Ash starting to act out after the attack, especially if he was anywhere near it. Bottom line is I’d be shocked if it didn’t play some role, get him into some reckless behavior, and that in turn might have helped get him killed.”
“You think?”
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue, Ike. For all we know, he was killed in a random street robbery and dumped in the ocean.”
He looked skeptically across at her.
“Not my first choice, either,” Beth said. “Because if there’s no connection between Ash and whoever killed him, we won’t solve this thing. It would be like trying to find out who the fucking terrorists were by knowing the people they killed. So if we’re going to be doing anything at all, we have to assume a connection between Peter and his killer. But if he was any kind of victim of what went on that day down at the Ferry Building, I’ll tell you what.”
“What?”
“He’s got my full attention.”
13
THE SINGLE BULLET THAT HAD taken Kate out passed through her body, just missing her heart and her backbone, but nicking her left lung, causing it to collapse. After the initial internal cleanup, she then developed some serious medical problems relating to her resistance to the standard antibiotics they were using, and by four days after the attack, they had had to move her into the intensive care unit with a dire prognosis of imminent death. To make matters worse, she then developed pneumonia in her damaged lung, which somehow spread to her other lung as well. Her injuries and these complications finally made it necessary to get her onto a breathing machine in the ICU, where she remained for two more weeks. During that time, she flatlined twice, and both times they were able to bring her back.
And then, miraculously, the treatments in the hospital started to work. On July 1, Ron came down and picked her up and drove her to their home on Washington Street, where she was still mostly bedridden, although even on that first day, she could get up and walk to the bathroom on her own. With physical therapy, she had regained more of her mobility day by day. Without further medical complications, the consensus had been that she would be completely back to normal within another couple of months.
And this turned out to be the case. Physically, she seemed to be recovering.
Although saying that the rest of the family was completely back to normal would not be accurate. Ron and both Aidan and Janey, great communicators all, treated her with concern and kindness, but much more as though she were a visiting invalid instead of their wife and mother, respectively. She had been physically healed for three months now, and here it was October and she and Ron still hadn’t restarted anything like their love life.
Now, on the day after Peter’s body had washed up under the Cliff House, Kate sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, with the Chronicle open before her. The kids had dutifully eaten their healthy breakfasts in the same kind of nervous peace that had characterized the house’s atmosphere ever since Kate had come home from the hospital. They had both kissed her and gathered their books and backpacks and driven off to school.
As had become his custom since she’d become mobile, Ron stayed upstairs while Kate and the kids had breakfast. He would come down a few minutes before he left for work, and drink a civilized cup of coffee with her. But he’d drink it quickly, covering the day-to-day logistics of the house in his organized, kind, understanding, distant fashion.
Waiting for him today, the news about Peter on the front page of the newspaper, her stomach was already churning. She thought it was possible she was going to be sick.
Their house telephone rang, and she was pushing herself up to get it as she realized that Ron had picked up the extension in the bedroom. She heard his muffled voice echoing down through the house.
She settled back down in her chair, reached for her coffee, and took a sip. Folding the paper closed, she pushed it out into the center of the table. She rubbed the scar left where the bullet had gone in.
Ron was still on the phone, but she really couldn’t make out what he was saying. When the words stopped, his footsteps sounded on the stairs, and then he was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Who was that?” she asked with a blithe false gaiety.
“Geoff,” he said. He glanced at the newspaper. “He had some pretty horrible news. You might have seen it already in the paper. It looks like somebody killed Peter Ash.”
She swallowed. “I did see that. It’s unbelievable.”
“It is.” He gestured toward the counter. “Let me just get some coffee.”
“Do you want to eat anything? There’s still some bacon and an English muffin.”
“No, thanks. Coffee’s good.”
Filling his mug, he stayed where he was, hovering over the machine, hands planted on the counter on either side of him.
“Are you all right?” Kate asked.
With another heavy sigh, he turned, waited another second, then crossed to the table, and sat down. “Do you have anything special planned for this morning?”
“Just the usual. Physical therapy, then grocery shopping for dinner. Why?”
“I just thought . . .” he began. Looking over the table at her, his body seemed to come to a dead stop. “I think we need to have a talk.”
* * *
Ron wore what Kate called his brave face.
Carefully calibrated midway between an understanding smile and a glowering frown, his brave face signaled to Kate that Ron was near the end of his emotional tether. When Aidan had been in the car wreck when he was twelve, Ron had broken the news to her wearing his brave face. Likewise, for when he had to tell her when those bastards at his previous firm, Crandall and Dodd, had laid him off just after Janey’s birth, over Christmas vacation. And again when he’d had to bow out of the Tekkei representation.
Now, his hands cupped around his coffee mug, his eyes unfocused somewhere across the room, he cleared his throat and finally looked at her again. “First off, I want you to know that I love you. We all love you. No matter what, nothing is going to change that. We’re all just trying to deal with it in our own ways, make sense of it, understand what it was all about.”
She cocked her head to one side, an inquisitive bird. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ron.”
He nodded as though that was the answer he expected, then after a beat came back to her. “I know, Kate,” he said. “Don’t you understand that? I know. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids have figured it out as well.”
She set her jaw, stared across at him.
“Not everything,” he went on. “Maybe not even most of it, but the basic facts are pretty much beyond dispute.”
“The facts,” she said, dismissively.
“It wasn’t like I was snooping, trying to find something. But of course, with you in the hospital, who else was going to have to take over paying the household accounts if not for me? And opening the mail?”
She turned her coffee cup on the table, staring at it. A quarter turn. A quarter turn back.
“I got the customer satisfaction survey,” he went on, “addressed to you, and asking how you had enjoyed your stay at the Meridien. So then I checked that date against the AmEx bill and there it was. And as I looked some more, also the Uber rides to and from. The bottle of Silver Oak. So I went back and checked our calendars, thinking maybe I’d forgotten something, or maybe we were putting somebody up at the hotel, one of your old friends coming into town I’d forgotten about?”
“It wasn’t—”
&nb
sp; Ron raised his left hand, palm out. “Please. Let me go on. I might even have let all that go, except that life around the house here got a little crazy when we all thought you might not survive. It became clear that something serious beyond your condition was bothering the kids—we were all talking about real stuff most of the time you were in the ICU—life and death, as you’d imagine. Anyway, you know both of them have this rarefied moral sense . . .”
“Okay.”
“Okay, so you’ll remember those days Aidan didn’t go to school last May. Well, he didn’t just go and hide out someplace. He went down to the Embarcadero—you know, Pier 39, the restaurants, and guess where else? The Ferry Building. The towers. And he saw someone that looked like his mom go into the Meridien. But Aidan hadn’t ever seen you dressed that way before—in his words, like a hooker. And with nothing else to do, he followed, just in time to see you check in.”
“And he told you this? Did he say what he thought I was doing?”
“He didn’t know. He and Janey couldn’t figure it out. So I covered for you.”
“And how did you do that?”
He held his right fist out on the table in front of him. A slight tremor traveled up his arm. A muscle worked on the side of his jaw. “I told him that you sometimes took luxury days for yourself, went to a hotel or a spa or someplace just to break up the routine at home. If you’d gone to the Meridien that day, that was why. And they both seemed to buy it. But, of course, I knew that it wasn’t true. I knew you’d gone to see somebody, though I didn’t know who.”
Kate sat still as a statue, her hands still clasped around her coffee mug.
Ron nodded at her, weariness all but leaking from his pores, his anger under control now, leached out. “But then a few days later when we all came down to the hospital to visit one night—you were still pretty out of it—who did we run into just outside the door to your room but a guy who looked a little familiar to me, and who turned out to be Peter Ash. Clearly embarrassed to have run into us, making up some story that he was down there visiting somebody else and had seen your name on the door and remembered it from the time we’d all met at Geoff’s and he looked in. As excuses go, this one was ridiculous on the face of it, but it brought everything around full circle for me, and, I think, for our brilliant kids, too. We didn’t have to say a word to each other. After that, we just knew. All of us.”
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