“No, of course not. We have a life,” Nina said. “We have a dog, a big one. He could teach Franz a few things about bringing down funky prey. My brother and sister-in-law-I’m crazy about them. Bob loves his cousins.”
“You know, Bob’s very protective of you.” He said this as though it had great significance.
“He’s fourteen, just a kid. I watch out for him. What are you getting at, Kurt?”
“He doesn’t want to let you out of his sight.”
“He has so much heart. He doesn’t get incredible grades-he’s not like Silke Kilmer, you know? He’s a complete, perfect, normal human being. He goes to school. He plays ball. He loves his dog…”
“You don’t have to tell me. I wonder if you have any idea how well I know him and how intensely I love him.”
“Stop. Kurt. Please, stop. You make me feel guilty.” She stopped and faced him.
“He has your focus and pragmatism, Nina. Your depths of emotion.”
“He has your musical talent.”
“Keep after him with lessons.”
“He looks like you.”
“He reminds me of you. He reminds me of us.”
An earthquake of feelings shook through her. She touched the scar on his cheek. He flinched.
“Sorry.”
“I try to forget it’s there.”
“Did I ever tell you,” she said, wishing she could bring him up to date on who she was now but afraid they had lived too many years apart ever to make up for the lapses, “that I was shot a few years ago, before you came back into Bob’s life? It happened during my first murder case, when I had just set up my practice at Tahoe. A bullet brushed my lung. I hate the scar.”
“Poor Nina,” Kurt said. He appeared angry, but after a minute or so, during which he put his hands in and out of his pockets a few times, balling them up and releasing them, he finally said, “When you’re young, you can’t foresee the amount of tragedy, how much baggage you’ll carry into adulthood. No wonder we all seem so serious and burdened to the young.”
“It’s true.” The girl she was saw sweet things ahead. The hardships, like car crashes, struck so suddenly there was no preparing.
“I try to remember the alternative and appreciate that all I received was a scar,” Kurt said. “But I don’t like being marked.”
“That’s it. You never forget. You just don’t get over it. I’m really feeling bad about involving you in this violence. I put you at risk. I didn’t realize-”
“It’s everywhere,” Kurt said. “Don’t worry, I can handle it. It’s you and Bob I’m concerned about.” He put his arm around her.
“Don’t,” she said, shrugging it off. “You watch out,” she went on. “I’ve been through a lot lately. I’m not myself.”
They came to a pond where swans glided, bordered by a grassy yard with a carousel. They sat down on an iron bench and watched a few kids go round and round. A few feet away she saw a gaily decorated cart selling hot dogs. It was just another November weekday in Germany, not a holiday for them, not many people about.
Cold, she held her arms around her chest. Kurt had picked up a stick from somewhere and begun to draw lines on the gravel.
“So this is Germany.”
“It’s the Kurpark. We have a casino here in Wiesbaden, pretty famous. I’d take you under other circumstances.”
“What time is the flight?”
“Eight-forty. Listen, Nina, about the flight. I have to tell you something. It’s hard to say.”
“Well? What could be so difficult after-”
“I only bought two tickets.”
Puzzled, Nina said, “What about Elliott? He’s coming back with us.”
“He’s going back with you. Bob isn’t.”
Nina shook her head. “No, no, no,” she said. “This is crazy. You can’t take Bob away from me.”
“He asked me how he could get a gun when he goes back.”
“What?”
“He said he would protect you that way.”
“Oh, no.” But she thought about the bolos, Bob’s relentless rock-throwing. “No.”
“You’ve put yourself in a line of fire twice in the past month,” Kurt said. “What if Bob’s beside you next time, sick with worry about you, immature. Trying to be the man in your life.”
“It’s not like that with us. I’m the parent. He knows that I’d do anything to keep him safe. He’s fine!”
“Anything?” Kurt sounded almost, not quite, casual as he asked what amounted to a piercing question. “I called the high school and talked to the vice principal. She faxed me a permission form to allow Bob to take a leave until after Christmas vacation. She’ll work with his teachers. They can send him lesson plans so he won’t fall behind.”
“You can’t do this! I need him with me.”
“You have to sign the form.”
“I won’t.”
“Do you remember that time you wouldn’t leave the cabin at Fallen Leaf? The local squirrels infected with plague. Signs all around. Signs hammered into trees. Danger. Hints of an ugly death. Still you wouldn’t leave.”
“Of course I do. Note, please that I didn’t catch anything.”
“Then you were alone. You risked only your own life. I believe,” he said, “individuals should control their destinies, right down to choosing death, if they must. I admired your left-brained willfulness. You said the odds favored your survival.”
“Is that why you parked yourself out front and made me your mission?”
“My destiny was different. Mine involved-” He sighed. “Shall we walk some more? There’s a path around the lake.” His voice stayed calm.
They walked for a while along the gravel path. A pale setting sun broke through the cloud cover and more children came out. She couldn’t take her eyes off one particular chubby-cheeked toddler running back and forth across the grass, bundled into a sphere in his red coat.
“Look, Kurt, what I admire about myself is that I can admit it when I’m-occasionally-wrong,” Nina said, feeling pain with every breath. “Bob stays with you.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her so she faced him, appearing entirely unsurprised at her change of heart.
“Did you already tell him?” Nina asked.
“No. We’ll tell him together. This will be a good time to consolidate our power. Two parents can prevail when one might not.”
“This murdering animal is ruining my life,” Nina said, unleashing only a little of the anger that burned in her. “The minute he’s caught, Bob comes home.”
“Of course. You could stay, too. Reconsider. Paris is only eight hours away by car.”
“No. I do my job. I always do.”
His head tilted as he considered that, as he considered her, in her wholeness.
Paul would be mad. Kurt wasn’t. What did it all mean?
“Sweet of you to offer,” she said.
“Once you would have followed me anywhere.” He was smiling now, looking at her with Bob’s deep-set bluish-green eyes. “We didn’t follow up very well after the trial.”
“How do you mean?” Nina said. “You and Bob got to know each other. He spent a whole summer with you in Sweden.”
“You were with Paul.”
“And you? Were you alone?”
“A girl from Uppsala. An artist.”
“Ah. The paintings in your room?” He nodded. “So…”
“So. When my contract ended in Sweden, I decided to come back to Wiesbaden. We met for a few weekends, once in Copenhagen. But it petered out.” He pondered this, then added, “Franz never accepted her. She sneezed when he merely rubbed demandingly against her leg.”
“You’re alone now?” Nina prodded.
“I’m used to it.”
“Well, just don’t get used to having Bob around.”
He offered her a wry smile. “I guess we should be getting back. How did you like the pie? Homemade. Momma Scott’s old family recipe.”
�
��Magnificent,” Nina said. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I remember you couldn’t, back when I knew every freckle on you.”
She felt a blush creeping up her neck, which she tried to stop by thinking of cool things, green trees, the ocean, the Truckee River splashing. “When Bob came along I had to learn. I’m good with macaroni and cheese. Someday, when this is all over, I’ll cook for you.”
“Or maybe I’ll cook for you. Frog legs in aspic. Something yummy like that. Sans noodles.”
“Or we’ll order food from people who know their food.”
“From a Moroccan waiter. And if you flirt with him, I’ll follow him into the kitchen and kick his butt.”
25
NIGHT ON THE PACIFIC, MOONLIGHT ON cloud-tops. A painted torpedo toy streaking through the vault of sky, stuffed with human beings ignoring their precarious situation.
Most people were sleeping. Elliott had purchased an airplane pillow at the airport. He slouched in his seat, pulled the inadequate blanket to his chest, leaned his head back, and let his mouth fall with gravity. His breath was sour with the wine he had drunk, and shaving had not been on the agenda.
Nina, in the window seat, waited until he had not moved for almost an hour. Then she carefully lifted the blanket away from his chest. He wore his parka, unzipped, over a striped shirt, the top buttons undone. His naked Adam’s apple moved regularly up and down and she could see scanty chest hair.
She inserted a hand inside the parka, just above his heart. He seemed to heave a sigh as she slowly removed the notebook, as though his heart noticed and regretted the theft. No jerky movements, she told herself as the hand snaked back home with its prize.
The seat light sent its focused beam onto a thick black leather-covered notebook, about four inches square, held shut with a laughable silver lock like the one on the pink diary Nina had kept in seventh grade.
The toothpick from the dinner plate worked, though she had several other possible tools ready. She wondered how this thing that Elliott protected like a dragon could have been locked so flimsily.
But it wasn’t the lock, of course, it was where he kept it, right next to his heart. She squeezed the ends of the lock and it clicked open. Reading glasses! They were gone, no, they were on her head. Don’t get excited, she told herself. If he woke up, she would calmly hand it back and admit it.
The inside of Elliott’s universe was as neat as the toothpick that had opened it, no loose scraps of paper, no cross-outs and scrawls. Obviously this was where he kept results, not work in progress. Flipping through it, she estimated that there were three hundred pages of neatly written notes and calculations and beautiful graphs. Each page was dated.
She turned back to the beginning. The cover page said, “Elliott Wakefield’s Theory of Everything. Do Not Enter. Or you are Cursed.” There was also a boy’s drawing of a skull and crossbones, and a curlicued “EW.” On the next page, the first date showed that Elliott had been keeping this same mathematical diary for ten years. He must have been in about eighth grade when he started it.
She flipped through it again. A doodle or two, no blank pages interspersed. Elliott had been rigorous with himself, amazingly so for the boy who had begun this venture. She glanced at him, at the boy in the man this time, and realized that she really, really wanted it all to be true-that he had solved the mystery of the prime numbers.
If it was true, what she held in her sneaky hands would be immortality. Prizes and honors would only be the beginning. This book would go to a museum.
She turned back to the first pages, where the writing was bigger. He had used a fine-tipped mechanical pencil throughout. The pages had gold edges. Water had stained the tops of some of them. The notebook itself was pliant, the cover soft.
The book began with the harmonic series, in some form she could barely recognize. Even at thirteen, Elliott was ahead of her. She saw signs she recognized as calculus, and some infinity symbols and ellipses, and knew he was working with series of numbers and their limits. That pi sign meant “prime number.” “Let something be the something of something something.”
If only Mick were on this flight. If only a copy machine were back there with the chatting flight attendants, right next to the microwave. Could she copy any of it on her napkin? What should she copy? She turned to the last page and did copy the equations as well as she could, though most of the symbols were new to her. The folded napkin went down her blouse, near her own heart.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to give it back yet. She was touching the dragon’s jewel, running her fingers over the leather, feasting her eyes on page after page of the dragon’s magic formulae. Elliott’s universe.
She wanted to keep it. But he would miss it immediately, and this was no cave she could flee.
Please be true. She wished it passionately for him, because his grief for his friends was real and deep and she might have had a hand in causing their deaths.
After a while she lifted the blue blanket again and opened the parka, slipping the book home again. Elliott dreamed on while Nina watched and wondered. Thirty thousand feet down within the still ocean, whales swam through the night, singular, extraordinary.
26
FIRST SNOW FELL OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. Betty Jo Puckett, Elliott, Sandy, Nina, and a transcriber sat around Nina’s conference table. The espresso machine coughed on the counter nearest the door, and the lamp was lit in honor of winter’s arrival.
Elliott had already told his story, changing nothing from his talk with Nina in Germany.
Betty Jo had caused no trouble about the lack of notice regarding the changed deposition. Nina suspected that she had had second thoughts about not attending and was relieved to be able to do so at Tahoe. She wasn’t her flippant self, though; she said little and listened carefully, making occasional notes.
Elliott stared at the table in front of him. He had been asked about the Heddesheim shooting, but Nina had made it as merciful as possible. Getting him out of bed this morning had been difficult. She was afraid that jet lag and grief were turning into depression.
But he did his duty, and at last an eyewitness account of Sarah Hanna’s death had been given.
“Do you have any questions to ask the witness?” she asked Betty Jo. Though it was Nina’s show, Betty Jo had every right to go over whatever she wanted. She had taken notes throughout Nina’s questioning, and as the story poured out, the card counting, the money, the shooting, the primes, XYC, she never blinked. She was on a mission and she had her own theory, that was obvious.
She regarded Elliott with her head cocked as if taking his measure. She had worn a tweed suit and UGG boots to the deposition, which did not make her look ridiculous, as she had long toned legs, and her fluff of silver hair was set off by the silver of the suit. With her steady eyes and dark eyebrows, the slight shadow of a mustache, she was formidable behind the down-home facade.
“Well, Elliott, you’ve been avoiding having to do this for a long time, haven’t you? I mean, you could have contacted Mr. Hanna a long time ago and shared this information with him, couldn’t you?”
“As I said, I was afraid. I didn’t see how I could help.”
“You were afraid to tell the truth?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Do you agree with Ms. Reilly here that the motel should have done more to protect you?”
“I-I-don’t know.”
“Ms. Reilly must have explained to you that you’re a straw defendant, that she used a legal trick that required callin’ you a defendant. You know that, don’t you?”
“She said she had to do it to get my testimony.”
“And she’s not trying to get any money from you regarding this incident, is she?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You and she are good buddies?”
“I like her all right.”
“Stayin’ at her house, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re workin’
together to get some money from the Ace High Lodge?”
Elliott looked surprised. “No, I don’t want any money.”
“But you’re helping her, to get her off your back so you can go home?”
“It’s about my friends at this point.”
“Feel guilty about them dying, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it was probably my notebook he was after. Like I said.”
“You feel guilty about rushing the robber, don’t you?”
“Not really. Maybe a little.”
“Sure you do,” Betty Jo said. “I would.” She paused and took a sip of water.
“Did you at any time see the motel clerk, Meredith Assawaroj, during this incident?” she went on.
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you at any time see the owner of the motel, James Bova, during this incident?”
“No, ma’am, unless he was the man in the mask.”
Betty Jo showed him an eight-by-ten photograph. “Defendant’s Three,” she said. “Now, I will represent that this is a recent photograph of James Bova.”
She passed another print to Nina.
“I’ll stipulate that this is Mr. Bova,” Nina said.
“Did you ever see this man? Have you ever seen this man?”
“Not unless he was the man in the mask. As I said.”
“I will represent to you that Mr. Bova is just over six feet tall. Counsel?”
“We can verify that later,” Nina said.
“I believe you said that the man in the ski mask was of medium height, is that correct?”
“It was dark. I would say he wasn’t unusually tall or short.”
“In your mind, is someone over six feet tall medium or tall in height?”
“I guess tall,” Elliott said. “I’m five-eleven and I consider myself tall.”
“So this man was not tall?”
“I didn’t notice that he was unusually tall.”
“How much did this man weigh? The robber in the mask?”
“I would say he was on the skinny side.”
Case of Lies Page 26