Last night at the Elks’ Club, dancing with him, she had thought, he hasn’t changed. He’s too uncivilized. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women. He likes to throw his weight around. But then she had thought, he hasn’t lost the old charm, or that nice broad set of shoulders.
So now he would be her investigator. She would keep a professional distance between them. Paul could be ... predatory, that was the word, and right now she felt too exposed.
He, too, was measuring her, though his face expressed nothing but a mild friendliness.
Nina wiggled her bare feet into a pair of soft shoes beneath her desk.
"I spent the whole week cooped up. Let’s go down the trail to the lake."
In the front office, Sandy had also just arrived and was tossing an embroidered bag on her desk.
"Sandy, this is Paul van Wagoner. He’s an investigator, a former police officer, up from Monterey. He’ll be working on the Patterson case with us. What are you doing here today? It’s Saturday."
Sandy opened her eyes as wide as an owl’s. "Guess what? I had work to do." Paul and Nina headed out the door, Nina shaking her head.
"I admire your choice of help," Paul commented after they had turned south, taking the trail that led toward the lake.
"You or her?" Nina smiled. "Oh, sometimes she’s just a royal pain, but I need her and she knows it. She’s bringing in most of my business at the moment. I hired her for all the wrong reasons and she’s made herself indispensable on every front. She’s so sure of herself."
"So are you, Nina. You’re handling this breakup with Jack with a lot of courage."
"Does it look like that to you? I feel like I’m scrambling uphill, just feeling for a toehold in gravel."
"What’s happened with you and Jack? I haven’t talked to him lately."
She wondered if it was true. "He served me with divorce papers."
"I’m sorry to hear that. As you know, I’ve been there."
"Doesn’t surprise you?"
Paul thought before speaking. "At first, when I heard you two had gotten together, I thought you had a lot in common. I like Jack and you’re a good woman."
"Thanks."
"You’re both lawyers who seemed, at least back then, not to want to take a fast track. You’ve got that ’save the world, spare the innocent’ type thing in common. Also Jack wanted a family so much, and you and Bobby made an instant one."
"Instant family, that’s a good one. He got more than he bargained for."
"More than he deserved. He inspired the break?"
She hesitated. "No. It was me."
"That surprises me. Jack is bad at the long haul. Steady jobs. Long mountain-climbing trips. Whatever. When it comes to figuring out where do we put all this sewage we’ve generated, he’s gone. For him, it’s got to be fun, new, or challenging. Otherwise, he fades out. He gets bored." He noted her face. "No offense, Nina, I don’t mean with you. With Jack, who would always rather be in Fiji."
Her hackles were up. She recognized it, but couldn’t do a thing to quell the anger she felt at his words. "I imagine Jack will tell you all about it, if he hasn’t already. The truth is, I cheated on him and he found out."
"Oh, it’s all your fault, huh? That simple?"
"Yep. It is."
"Okay. But why did you, Nina? And why did he give up?"
"That I don’t know, Paul," she said. She cupped her hands behind her head, then lowered her arms again, taking note of the way he looked at her, and thinking suddenly of Misty, how not knowing what happened was the hardest part. "Maybe I don’t get to know. And now it’s your turn."
"Not much to add to what I said already. I never much fitted the cop mold, had a number of problems in the department. Maybe Jack regaled you with a few over dinner," Paul said. "Things that didn’t seem humorous at the time have acquired that beloved patina of age. Sometimes I miss the people. Mostly I don’t. I’ve got a small office going. I’m a corporation. I have a secretary and a license and a Rolodex."
"You didn’t get married again, Paul?"
"Now, why mention that? You know someone who’s looking?"
The trail meandered over a footbridge across the upper Truckee River, which cascaded down to the lake a mile away. Vivid new green showed on the tips of the spruce trees. Purple lupine and blue columbine poked from the pine cones and pine needles carpeting the floor of the forest.
"What a place. Disneyland without the traffic," Paul said.
"I could hardly believe it when you agreed to come. I hope I can afford you." She meant that in every way. Now that he was here, this loose tie to her old life, she felt the complication of him. They strolled out of the forest into the soft, waving grass of the Truckee Meadow proper. At last, through the berry bushes along the shore, Lake Tahoe gleamed under a cloudless sky. Paul climbed a smooth granite rock and gave Nina a hand up.
"Tell me about your case, Nina."
She told him Misty’s story, all of it, and he listened without interrupting, creasing his brow when she talked about Anthony Patterson sitting at the bottom of the lake. They looked across it toward the north shore. A warm breeze played with her hair, and she realized spring had finally arrived. "What’s your take?" she said.
"There’s a question mark at the heart of it. She says she hit him with something that could have killed him. She says he was coming around and she went into the kitchen to call a doctor. After that, she says she went to bed. Nobody is going to swallow this story. How does the prosecution make this whole thing work?"
"I imagine they’re thinking she lured him out to the boat after the first blow and then hit him again, which would explain how she got him out there without having to carry him, or else she hit him both times out there. As for swimming back, you know they’ll play up the adrenaline rush stuff. Superhuman feat, et cetera."
Nina continued, twisting needles off of a pine branch. "From my point of view, either she killed him on the second blow, and dumped him somehow, and is repressing it or lying about it, or she really did go to bed as some sort of shock reaction, and some third party took him out, hit him again, and dumped him."
"Who?"
"How about her dad, just for the sake of argument? Now, here’s a guy who is a terrific swimmer, from what I hear. And he’d want the body not to be found, thinking that way Misty would be protected both from her husband and the law. Say he took the boat out to hide the body, ran out of gas, and jumped ship, hoping it would disappear quietly?"
They explored that theory, but without knowing more than she did about Misty and Carl Tengstedt, Nina couldn’t believe it. "After all, by then she’d been married for years, and she wanted her parents to butt out. They seemed to accept her choice, even if they didn’t like Anthony Patterson."
"How about this? You say she saw some footsteps in the snow when she got home. Say someone was already in the house, one of Misty’s lovers, or an angry former pal had climbed through a window. When Misty hit her husband and then conveniently ran off to bed, whoever it was took the opportunity to kill him. Someone who didn’t realize the water was so shallow where he was dumped in the dark, who thought the wind would blow the boat so far away there would be no way to link it with the body. Then Patterson wouldn’t be found at all."
"That raises interesting questions. Why not bring the boat back to the dock? Why not worry about not being able to get out all the bloodstains? Why swim back in that frigid water? Next, who was this person really trying to protect by hiding the body in the lake? Misty? Or someone else?"
"Maybe he came after her again, only this time she realized he was so violent he might kill her, so she connected again. Maybe that’s what she’s blocking out. A much more traumatic interaction. Let’s go back and look at the reports," Paul said. "Just because it looks like a turkey and smells like a turkey ..."
On Monday, April 30, the Tahoe City police department was contacted by Rich Eich, a homeowner in the Tahoe Keys who claimed his twenty-two-foot Catalina sailboat had been
stolen. An Officer Tomlinson, who spelled like a third grader, had been dispatched and prepared the report. Eich had been on vacation in Hawaii and noticed the boat missing from the mooring off his dock on his return Sunday evening, April 29.
Late Monday, the Coast Guard reported seizure of a boat found drifting about half a mile out from the Keys. An onboard thermometer recorded a water temperature of forty-eight degrees close to the surface of the lake. The gas tank was empty, which might explain in part why the boat was left to drift. And sailboats needed wind if their backup motor gas tanks were empty.
In the small cabin traces of what appeared to be dried blood were discovered on the flooring, and subsequent in- vestigation showed apparent blood traces on the deck. Further conversation with Mr. Eich revealed that neighbors sometimes borrowed the boat. He was worried about the blood and the possibility of an accident. Consequently, the Coast Guard searched the area and sighted, through clear waters, a shadow on sand approximately thirty-five feet down. A scuba diver found the body of Anthony Patterson.
Like all gossip, deputy district attorney Burton Lam’s held a grain of truth. Patterson appeared to be sitting—in fact his body was loosely arranged, feet on the ground, and head seeming to pull the body up into a sitting position. Underwater photographs, taken with a flash, showed his face, the eyes probing another world. His bathrobe, now untied, floated around him like a shroud. With some difficulty, he had been hauled up in a fisherman’s net. Preliminary examination showed a concavity to the skull, which might be either accidental or intentional. Anthony Patterson was identified by fingerprints on file for two previous Fresno arrests. His file showed his current residence address: 226 Tahoe Vista Lane.
The second report, typed by Lt. Julian Oskel, South Lake Tahoe City Police Department, described a visit to the Patterson house. On Monday, April 30, at 2200 hours, Oskel, along with Sgt. Juan Higuera, arrived at the residence in the Keys with a search warrant. Finding no one at home, they went through the house, finding no particular signs of violence. They discovered a small plastic Ziploc bag full of cocaine in a sock drawer in the master bedroom. From pay stubs located in the den they determined that the subject and his wife worked at Prize’s Casino. In the trash can they located a fresh garbage bag that held large amounts of broken glass, along with wads of stained sponges and cleaning utensils.
The Douglas County, Nevada, sheriffs department was called in, but was unable to interview subject’s wife as she had just completed her shift and couldn’t be found. Brenda Angelis, a co-worker, was interviewed and stated subject’s wife, Misty (Michelle) Patterson, had told her that evening that she had been fighting with subject. "He didn’t want to pay for her therapy anymore. That pissed her off,’’ the report quoted, and continued in damning detail.
Nina groaned. "She does talk," she said.
"An argument for either innocence or stupidity," Paul said.
Misty Patterson was arrested at the Lucky Chip Motel on the California side of the state border late Monday night. Branding Misty Patterson as "hysterical" upon arrest, it reported verbatim every word the officers heard from the time she was Mirandized. There were many.
"Oh, Misty, Misty," said Nina, reading the words with sick dismay. "I thought I had a big mouth."
The suspect was taken into custody and booked at the South Lake Tahoe jail facility. After refusing to make any further statements, she made one phone call.
A third report was prepared by the U.S. Coast Guard diver. "Interstate waterway," Nina explained to Paul. "Comes under federal jurisdiction."
"I knew that." The diver remarked on the extremely good visibility in the lake due to the lateness of the season. He requested and received permission to search underwater in the area where Anthony Patterson’s body was found. About two hundred feet closer to the Keys shoreline, the diver discovered an Eskimo soapstone carving, Aleut or Inuit, approximately ten inches tall. The polar bear, duly marked, went to the South Lake Tahoe police. A subsequent underwater search of the same area the following day resulted in no new findings.
Nina was up and pacing. "We need the autopsy report."
Paul left the room for a minute. "The technicians in Placerville are backed up. It’s done. You just can’t have it until next week."
"I’ll call her doctor today. He’s going to have to give me something," said Nina.
"You have somebody lined up to look at the physical evidence? The statue, the trash? The body?"
"You’re lined up. You think it’s necessary to see the body?"
"Sometimes the forensic guys interpret what they see based on what they want to see. There are judgment calls to make. Patterson will still be at the morgue in Placerville. I should go see the body," Paul said.
"Yes. We should do that first thing Monday morning."
"You don’t trust me to look over a dead body, Boss?"
"I want to see him, Paul."
"We could go tomorrow," he said finally. "Speed things up."
Nina thought. "Could we take some kids along? They could play at the park by the town offices. I feel like I never see Bobby."
He paused before his reply. "I guess."
That’s right, she thought. He had told her once he never wanted children.
"What else needs doing?"
"I’d like you to talk to the parents, the Tengstedts. Maybe her father will feel more comfortable with you. These people are keeping too many secrets. Then visit the casino."
"The Peter La Russa character. Guy who was a pit boss could have gotten mixed up in all sorts of things."
"So we meet Anthony tomorrow, the one person who knows exactly what happened that night."
"And he’s in no mood to talk either."
"Too bad."
Paul said, "Don’t expect tomorrow to be fun, Nina," and left her without the option of a last word.
10
PAUL HAD DONE what had to be done to arrange for them to visit the county morgue in Placerville on Sunday. What that entailed, Nina didn’t know or care. He had even offered the use of his precious van, a sleek new red Dodge Ram customized with water and electricity hookups and a pop-top. Bobby and his cousins, despite seat belts, bounced up and down while Paul gripped the wheel and held his mouth shut so tightly his lips turned white.
Almost at Placerville, at a place called Apple Hill, Nina asked him to pull off the highway to where the small farmers on the hill sold seasonal fruit, vegetables, and baked goods.
"Think they might have apple pandowdy?" she said. "I always wanted to know what that is."
"Wrong season for apples," Paul replied, diverted for a moment out of his mood.
"You’re right; I should know that."
He stopped the van at a roadside stand and bought a sack of nectarines. The proprietor stared when Nina asked about apple pandowdy.
"I’m from Mexico," he said. "We don’t have this dowdy."
"You realize your credibility is shot?" Paul said as they loaded the kids in back. "Remind me to go somewhere else for local lore."
"Never mind. I’ll show you seedy underpinnings while you’re up here. We’ll start at Harvey’s with the White Ghost slots, which give you a second chance to line up three bars. The Krazy Klown—you can triple your money. The Megamachines, hooked into slot machines all over the world, in Russia, Tanzania, the Galapagos ... and the blackjack machines, the ones that let you double your bet and play again right up to 999 quarters ... the poker machines, with kings that wink and jacks that smile ..."
"Smart locals don’t play slots," Paul said. "They play the only games you can win at, blackjack and maybe craps."
"What do you know? You’re just a turista."
"I know more than you think," Paul said. "And you think you know more than you do." Before she could react to this provocation, he went on, maneuvering nonchalantly around a hairpin curve with just his left hand, "You have to learn blackjack. It’s an essential survival skill living at Tahoe, like knowing how to make snowshoes from rabbit tendons
if you’re caught in a snowstorm."
"So teach it to me. Not the rabbit tendon stuff, the blackjack. I like to win."
"Sometime soon we’ll sit down with a fresh deck of cards. Right now, let’s find out what you know. For example, have you learned to beware of gambler’s ruin?"
"Gambler’s ruin," Nina said meditatively. "What’s that? Getting sloshed on free drinks?"
"No, no, although that is a well-known pitfall. Gambler’s ruin is a mathematical term for what happens when you don’t start out with enough of a stake."
"So how much of a stake do I need?"
"Assuming you practice my system, about two hundred times your minimum bet. Which in your case is the minimum house bet for blackjack, or three bucks," Paul said.
"I’m supposed to sit down for a little friendly card playing with six hundred bucks? I usually go down there with a twenty," Nina said.
"You and the other marks. Okay, I’m the dealer, showing a six. It’s a fresh deck; you’re holding a pair of sixes."
"Stand," Nina said.
"Nope, you split pairs of twos, threes, sixes, and sevens against the dealer’s two through six. With a fresh deck, always assume the dealer’s going to have a ten as a hole card. When he turns that over, he’s going to have to hit the hand again, and chances are he’s going to bust. You both have terrible hands, but odds are you’ll win both hands, because the dealer hits first. Also, you can hit each six and maybe come up with something better than a twelve on one or both."
"Or the dealer will pull a five to add to his sixteen. And I’ll lose twice as much," Nina said.
"Blackjack is no game for cowards. It takes faith, discipline, and an iron stomach," Paul told her. His stomach had a bodybuilder’s flatness under the khaki polo shirt, she couldn’t help noticing. "Something like what you’ll need today, viewing the remains. Actually, you will have a two percent edge over the house just knowing basic strategy."
"And just how much will I be making per hour, practicing your system with a six-hundred-dollar stake?"
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