One Through the Heart

by Kirk Russell

  Raveneau thought she had someone in mind but she shook her head and took his card saying she would think it over. He felt her watching him walk to his car and then heard the front door close just as he got in.

  SEVEN

  Rather than catch the 101 southbound and return to San Francisco he drove through San Anselmo and on up to Fairfax and the road that ran out through watershed and skirted the shoreline of Alpine Lake before climbing steeply through trees to the spine of Mount Tamalpais. From there you could go left and follow the ridge to the summit or over and down to Highway 1 and the coast. Raveneau did neither. He eased off the road and parked between two redwoods near the start of a trailhead sign.

  Both Marin detectives were dead, one of a heart attack, the other drowning in rough surf on a long-awaited vacation to Antigua. That left Hugh Neilley and Ray Alcott. Alcott was happy to talk about the RV he was restoring and equipping with rooftop solar panels. He and his wife planned an extensive tour of the national parks next spring and summer, starting with the desert parks, Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, places where the summer heat would be too much for his wife later. Raveneau learned about the new tires going on the RV, but nothing about the Coryell investigation, and Alcott’s explicit message was that he was retired.

  Raveneau started south on the trail and was soon on the open flank of the mountain where the rye grass was pale brown, knee high and rustled as he walked across and down. At the horizon a thin fog colored gold as the sun lowered. He found the offshoot trail he was looking for and soon was well down the slope, hesitating now, stopping as he looked for the Y-shaped oak he remembered.

  He spotted the oak, the crooked Y a third of the way up, the tree taller and fuller. When he reached the tree he reoriented himself again with two steep ravines, and then worked his way down to where the clearing had been and where brush grew now. Last night he watched the video made of the kill site and knew he was in the right spot now. He also reviewed tape of an Albert Lash interview done in the old homicide office. Lash’s left hand had a faint tremor and he wondered if that was nervousness, as it was read as then, or whether it was a precursor of the disease that left him crippled now.

  But Lash didn’t make the phone threat. Lash didn’t burn the candles or leave an iPhone and in part Raveneau made the trip up here to try to get his head around the difference between now and then. He ticked through various ideas: that she was killed here but walked down at gunpoint or under some threat by Lash, or that he had help, or that she was abducted as she went once again back into the eucalyptus grove trying to locate where the screams came from. The unnamed, unknown, random abduction was where Alcott and Hugh finally settled. But they had no evidence of that. What they had was a lack of evidence of anything else.

  Raveneau looked down to the coast highway below. A car came into view and disappeared again. Twilight wasn’t far away, the light softening on the ocean and the water turning from blue to gray. He didn’t have any new insights about why she was brought here. It was likely just that it was relatively remote, a gunshot wouldn’t be heard and animals would find the body first. They had.

  Was she murdered because of her writings? Was it someone who read her blog and became enraged? Sure, that was possible. They were out there. Coryell wrote that genocide is a cancer in our collective psyche. She drew from the Holocaust and cited the French dispute now with Turkey over acknowledging the slaughter of Armenians nearly a hundred years ago, her point being that it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t leave us until we face and acknowledge the wrong.

  Raveneau took a last look at the ocean and then turned. He thought of her, youthful, frightened and rain-soaked, yet vibrant, standing in the doorway of Lash’s guest cottage. He began to climb the slope. He spoke to her. I have not forgotten you. He climbed toward the Y-shaped oak and was startled to see a man standing there.

  As he got close, he saw the man was waiting for him. He saw a white guy in his mid thirties, tall, thin, long-legged and slightly stooped at the shoulders. He wore glasses with the popular black frames of the moment. Narrow blonde sideburns crept down a long head and he sported a little bit of a goatee, also trimmed narrow. He wore a black T-shirt, and despite his pale arms and stoop, Raveneau saw strength at the shoulders, a stark contrast to the rest. His eyes were bright as if anticipating something in this encounter, and that he was there at all made Raveneau wary. This wasn’t a trail and he didn’t see anybody earlier and the guy was clearly watching him approach, waiting.

  ‘Brandon Lindsley,’ he said. ‘I was a grad student in history at the same time as Ann Coryell. I knew her fairly well. I talked to her all the time. I remember when she first raised the idea of our collective unconscious as a living thing. I always come here in the early fall around the time of year she disappeared, but I’m not some freak, Inspector. Don’t worry. I don’t have a hidden gun, but I do know who you are. I know the case is open again. I was hugely influenced by her and I liked her a lot and I care that her killer is caught.

  ‘There was a TV report last night on the skulls in the fallout shelter. They said you and your partner were investigating the case, so I googled you both and found photos. That’s how I recognized you, but I came out here this afternoon because I was thinking about her. I still miss her. I miss the way she saw the world. She was special.’

  ‘I’m a little slow here. You were at Cal with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your name is Brandon Lindsley?’

  ‘Yes. I was in grad school at the same time and we both were writing dissertations on aspects of nineteenth-century American history. But I wasn’t in her league and I didn’t last in grad school. I couldn’t really find my place. I didn’t fit and fumbled around and wasted years. I had the money to pay for it, so I didn’t have to get things figured out. Sorry, I know that’s too much information.

  ‘I got to know her much better when she was living in Lash’s guest cottage. I knew Lash pretty well. He was my professor also and if I had a role model it was him. I’m still trying to imitate him. I’ve written a couple of pop history books, though I haven’t sold any yet. One of them is up on Amazon if you want to check that out, but I’m still looking for a publisher. I can name the characters in every book Professor Lash wrote. I know he was a suspect but you’ve got to admit he’s a pretty clever guy. I’m working on a new one now, a book about a miner living in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, Mark Twain meets Grizzly Adams.’

  ‘Do you want to walk up with me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Are you still in contact with Professor Lash?’

  ‘I saw him a month ago but he’s pretty sick now. I never believed he killed her. SFPD didn’t either.’ He turned and smiled. ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘I think it’s going to get dark soon.’

  They climbed back to where Raveneau had parked and, as it turned out, Lindsley as well. Raveneau gave him a card and got Lindsley’s cell number as he asked again how Lindsley happened to be out here this afternoon. He checked out Lindsley’s car and got the plates and ran them on the drive back to San Francisco.

  EIGHT

  Raveneau heard her scream though it was faint and masked by wind rattling through the dry eucalyptus trees. The trees shed long tinder-dry strips of bark which broke underfoot as he worked left through the grove, turning once back upslope, using the stick frame of the cottage to tell where he was. He needed to hurry. La Rosa was impatient with the idea to start with and wouldn’t remain in the bomb shelter long.

  A surveyor’s map showed an easement for underground power lines that slashed across part of Lash’s former property and then angled down through the eucalyptus. His guess was the builder of the bomb shelter quietly reopened the trench and added the air intake duct after the power went in and the utility crew left in 1962. If that was true he should be able to find the other end of the vent feeding air into the bomb shelter. Somewhere it surfaced.

  He crossed a shallow gulley and started up the other si
de when he heard her voice from behind him. He turned and yelled, ‘Elizabeth!’

  He couldn’t make out the words but she called back to him and the sound came from somewhere close by, and after staring a long moment he put a hand on a fallen tree and then ran his hand along it in disbelief. It was concrete, colored concrete, a cast of a eucalyptus log. He squatted down. He looked behind it and found concrete rocks in the shadow, then made out a steel grate. Some sort of mesh was in front of it though torn. He yelled into it to la Rosa and when she didn’t answer he stacked rocks so he could find it again.

  When he got back up the slope la Rosa stood with her hands on her hips waiting for him. She let her hands fall. She was hoarse and not all that happy.

  ‘We could have gotten a smoke stick and an electric fan and blown smoke out the vent. We could have used a boom box or anything that made enough noise. You’re walking around with a map in your hand. Maybe they were all writing about the nineteenth century, but we’re not living in it. This is a halfass way to do this and I still don’t see the point, and aren’t we too late now?’

  ‘It was worth it. Coryell heard screams and it’s worth knowing if a woman’s voice could carry from in there. Yours was faint but I could hear you.’

  ‘You could hear me, OK, fine, but what good does this really do us? The trip here to do this chips three hours out of today. I just don’t see it helps. But all right we proved a woman’s voice will carry out the air vent. Now what?’

  ‘Now we go see Lash.’

  The Gordon G. Wright Senior Living Centre was a new building. As Raveneau signed the guest register he had his chance to ask who Gordon Wright was but missed it. They followed the manager, a petite and earnest woman who seemed to want to tour them through the building before taking them to Lash. She used the walk to probe and try to find out what their goal was today. She was protective, wanted them to understand Lash could handle questioning but not interrogation.

  ‘He’s far along,’ she said. ‘He’s quite fragile.’

  Most lived three years after a diagnosis of ALS. Fourteen percent made it past five years. Five percent beat the six year mark and a remarkable few lived decades. It’s a cruel disease, attacking the motor neurons but leaving the mind intact and trapped inside a frozen body. For Lash, as with most, it started with his legs. All that he could move now was his head. He had reached the beginning of pulmonary issues and that’s where it would end.

  On the third floor, the top floor of the Gordon C. Wright Senior Living Center, they saw the movie theater and dining area and the room where residents worked on projects and did crafts. La Rosa rolled her eyes. She was agitated today. But Raveneau figured that if it was important to the manager to walk and talk with them they could spare the additional ten minutes.

  Carpets and bathrooms were spotless. They looked at the dining room where the residents ordered off the menu and were waited on. After a meal they could return to their apartments or gather in the common area adjacent to the dining room, or perhaps go out on one of the excursion busses.

  ‘We work at making it a happy place,’ the manager said.

  ‘Is Albert on this floor?’ la Rosa asked.

  ‘No, he’s on the first floor. All of those who need twenty-four-hour care are on the first floor. We’ll go there now.’

  The once thick head of dark hair was snow white. The bones of his shoulders propped up his coat, the skin of his face papery and splotched, right cheek twitching, yet his eyes were the same and his recognition instant and apparent. Raveneau didn’t doubt that he’d watched the TV reports. He studied la Rosa longer and when he spoke the words were very labored and slurred and directed at Raveneau.

  ‘What – do – you – think of – meee – now?’

  ‘You’re still the brightest guy in the room.’

  ‘Very . . . diffi–cult.’

  ‘Albert, this is my partner, Elizabeth la Rosa. The investigation is active again and you may be able to help us.’

  ‘By . . . con–fessssssing?’

  Raveneau saw the light in Lash’s eyes and smiled.

  ‘I didn’t kill errrr.’

  Lash had a mouse he could move with his head and tap Y for yes and N for no. He used that and used speech. The mouse was painstakingly slow, but he answered every question, the same cooperative guy he always had been. He acknowledged he knew about the bomb shelter and said he hadn’t been in it since his father was alive, thirty-six years ago or more. He didn’t mention it when the property was searched because it was locked and hidden, staring at Raveneau as he said this, both of them aware of how many years he’d had to get ready for the day it was found.

  ‘You’re saying you haven’t been inside since your father died in 1984. Is that correct?’

  Lash tapped Y. He tapped N when asked again if he had it built. It was his father’s project in 1962. He typed out 1962. He didn’t know of anyone who’d been in the bomb shelter. He tapped N to knowing anything about two partial skeletons and the skulls. He waited for the next question and Raveneau didn’t ask it. He didn’t ask anything about the cot. He wanted to take this in small pieces with Lash.

  ‘We’re going to come back and see you again soon.’

  ‘If – I’m – still – here.’

  Lash watched him pick up the new file with the photos showing what was inside the bomb shelter.

  ‘One final question, Albert, and I almost forgot this one. When did you meet Brandon Lindsley and how well did he know you and Ann?’

  NINE

  They were back in the car when Raveneau said, ‘Let’s stop by Berge Properties and see if Lisa is there. We’re only ten minutes away.’

  ‘Confronting her will only make her more stubborn.’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘I can go in alone. All I want to do is let her know it’s not going away. We’re not going away.’

  This was a thing about Raveneau she didn’t like and she hoped now that Berge wasn’t there, but as soon as they turned in la Rosa saw the black Lexus. Berge was sitting behind her desk staring through the glass wall into the reception area when they walked in. She flinched and her mouth tightened and there was no need to talk to the receptionist. Berge was already on her feet coming at them.

  ‘Why are you here? I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for.’

  ‘You gave us a copy of a lease and just about nothing else,’ Raveneau said. ‘My partner doesn’t think so but I think we ought to arrest you and question you about your role in this plot. You covered up for them by removing the tape and you’re blocking us from finding out who wrote the rental checks. It’s not going to stand.’

  Berge got red in the face. She was angry, and la Rosa stood back and watched. She didn’t believe in this cowboy approach and refused to join in, in fact, enjoyed it as Berge closed on Raveneau and jabbed a finger at his chest. For a moment she thought Berge was going to punch him. She looked capable.

  ‘I’m going to sue you personally, Inspector. I’m going to get you fired. Berge Properties has been around a lot longer than you.’

  ‘Blow smoke somewhere else. You’ve until four this afternoon.’

  ‘You won’t have a job next week. You’re an embarrassment to San Francisco.’

  ‘I asked you not to go into the apartment or touch anything. I told you it was a murder investigation and the tape recording was a link we needed. You broke that link and were in a hurry to do it, so for now you’re on the other side of the wall. You’re a possible suspect. You can change that.’ He laid a card on her desk. ‘Four o’clock.’

  When they got back to the car, la Rosa said, ‘That doesn’t work for me and I don’t like being part of it. She’s prickly but I could have gotten everything from her without getting in a screaming match. Sometimes you make it harder than it has to be and that’s about as nice as I can say that.’

  ‘It would take weeks for you to get that from her.’

  Raveneau was st
ill agitated from arguing with Berge so la Rosa chose her words.

  ‘It might take more time but in the end we’d still be able to talk to her. Instead, she’s going to call and complain about us and we’ll still have to pull teeth to get information from her.’

  ‘I’m going to get to her.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t like being dragged along. It doesn’t work for me and this threat is almost certainly bogus. Only a nut would cite something out of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘I won’t drag you along.’

  ‘So now your answer is you’re going to go off on your own. You want to know a truth, Ben? You like to work alone.’

  ‘I like working with you.’

  ‘But you do it your own way almost every time. I’ll have to answer for the complaint she makes just the same as you and I’m not staring retirement in the face. I can’t just quit if I get angry enough, and I am angry because I didn’t get any say in this. That sucks.’

  ‘She’s not going to file any complaint and she’ll think it through and decide to cooperate.’

  ‘You aren’t listening to a single thing I’m saying. I stood in that bomb shelter this morning and screamed because we had to do it your way. Now you’re picking a fight with her. I don’t get it.’

  They hit traffic driving back and Raveneau got a text that absorbed him. He was quiet then turned to her.

  ‘I just got a text from Brandon Lindsley. That’s the guy that appeared on the mountain. He’s offering to set up a meeting with some people he knows who are completely into Ann Coryell’s writings. He says there’s a chat room they go to.’

  ‘So what?’

  Raveneau glanced at her and then started to text Lindsley back. It angered her that he was not listening, not willing to have any real conversation about how they worked together. For a moment she considered asking for a transfer, asking for a new partner today.