Nina helped the girl scramble back to the ledge. Her skirt had been ripped right off her. They clung to the rock face, breathless, Nina holding her arm gingerly, waiting. A very long time later they heard a distant crackling and then a soft thud as the Bronco sank into the forest.
Nina started up the hill first, climbing slowly and carefully, followed by Michelle. They were almost back up to the road when Michelle said, "He wouldn’t be up there waiting for us?" They looked at each other, and tried to be quiet.
Nina lifted her eyes up over the edge first. All she saw was the road; and half a mile farther down, the curves, and the lights of Twin Bridges. No car and nobody. She pulled herself up. Michelle was right behind her. They didn’t need to say it. If anybody came out of the bushes, they would fight, but nobody came.
Then they fell down in a heap at the edge of the blacktop.
Nina looked at the ragged pile that was Michelle. Michelle turned glassy eyes on the woman who was her attorney.
"You look like a semi rolled over you a coupla times and poured its load of cow shit on you for good measure," said Michelle, after a few more moments passed without incident, picking herself up and dusting herself off with those long fingers, now grubby and bruised.
"Oh, yeah?" Nina turned a cold eye on her companion. "Well, you look like you got cut up and reassembled by a three-year-old ... lunatic." That made them both crack a smile. Nina, too, was trying to stand up but was having more trouble.
"Oh, yeah? How ’bout this? You"—Michelle pointed somberly at Nina, who had one hand on her knee and was trying to push herself into a stand—"you look like what the alley cat dragged in, ate, and threw up." By now they were laughing, tears smearing through the dirt on their faces.
"It was worth the whole thing just to get rid of that awful skirt of yours," Nina said unsteadily. Michelle laughed so hard she gave up and fell one more time onto the rocky, moonlit path.
16
"THE BRONCO’S TOTALED," Nina said. Following a long night and a long morning, she was telling Sandy about the accident. "There’s a logging road down at the bottom. Matt’s talking winches and derricks and heavy equipment. The insurance agent is out at Twin Bridges this afternoon to look at it with him."
"At least you’re not totaled. You should go to the doctor," Sandy said. She sat behind her desk, majestic and implacable, a fixture already. Nina, sprawled in one of the reception chairs, could see why some of the clients preferred to wait out in the hall.
"Yeah. I live to fight again. Sore arm, bruised everywhere, but nothing broken. I never experienced a miracle before, Sandy. You can’t imagine how great it felt to wake up this morning. Plus, the insurance company has already agreed to pay for the car this week."
"Now we are talking miracles. How’s the client?"
"She’s safe at the shelter. She was still asleep when I called. Andrea says her back hurt her this morning and she sprained a finger. Andrea’s taking her to the doctor this afternoon."
"What do the cops say?"
"They say, without a better description of the car that rammed us, there’s not much they can do. They say the curves at Twin Bridges are notorious for fatalities. They say it was dark and somebody came up on us too fast and then ran."
"But you say they’re wrong," Sandy said.
"We were hit too hard. It was ferocious. It was deliberate. Somebody was trying to kill me or Michelle, or both of us."
"I didn’t tell anybody where you were going," Sandy said. She looked ruffled.
"Bruno says nobody knew at his end either. I’ll ask Michelle if she told her mother, Rossmoor, anybody."
"Why couldn’t it just be a coincidence?" Sandy said. "I was in two accidents just last year. What with the wind, the mountains, the blizzards, and the drunks, you can’t live up here without accidents."
"I was there, Sandy. I felt the ... intent of the driver behind me. Oh, God."
"What?"
"I told Greenspan we were going to the City. What if he did it?"
"Why?"
"I don’t know why, but he knew about the trip. Sandy, call Paul in Monterey. Ask him if he can check Greenspan out more thoroughly."
"Paul already called. He’s sending his reports by overnight mail. He’s coming back up next week. I can catch him if I call right away." Sandy flipped open her Rolodex and started punching the phone. Nina got up, massaging one arm, and went into her office. She had to proof her motions to suppress evidence, because the preliminary hearing was only one week away, and they would be heard at the same time. Then she would go home and lie down.
Calla lilies—how thoughtful of Paul or Sandy, she thought, greeted by a bold arrangement in the middle of her desk. Better tell them tactfully sometime that these alien-looking creatures belonged at funerals, not on a person’s desk.
She plucked out a small envelope tucked into the bouquet with a plastic clip, opening the envelope and pulling out a card. As she read it, her legs wobbled, and she fell back in her chair.
Better luck next time, the card said. It had been printed with a felt pen. There was no signature.
The police would not be impressed, but she got it.
A message of malice and death.
She was still sitting there, not moving, when Sandy came in. "I got Paul," she said. "I forgot to tell you, Collier Hallowell made an appointment to see you after lunch. Says he has some papers for you." She looked at the flowers and back at Nina.
"How’d those get in here?" she said.
An old vacation home at the end of Ohlone Street, close to Regan Beach, the Tahoe Women’s Shelter had been built by a lady named Annabella Wright. She had donated the building to South Tahoe when she died ten years ago, leaving a large private fund to keep things going there. The town used the building for the battered women’s shelter, though you had to have a very good reason to know that. Because of the way the will was written, all the money went to maintenance, meaning there was limited funding for improvements, so the kitchen had no dishwasher or garbage disposal, but Andrea had talked an appliance shop into donating a heavy-duty clothes dryer two weeks before, assuring everyone that she would get everything they needed eventually, that private funding was out there to be tapped. Michelle believed if Andrea said she’d get it, she would. She was a woman who could quell a hurricane with a look.
If everybody doubled and tripled up, eight women and twelve children could live there. People made an effort to get along, because they were all in trouble with the law or their husbands or their fathers, and they needed peace, although once in a while, Andrea said, somebody had to be calmed down. Nobody could stay more than thirty days, which was too bad, because Michelle woke up, had breakfast with Andrea, and realized how lonely and lost she had been, and how this place was perfect for her.
Her little finger hurt and she couldn’t bend it. Andrea had wrapped it up and announced they would see the doctor at three o’clock. In spite of the pain Michelle felt issuing from her toes to her forehead, she concentrated her attention on her escape from death.
She kept going over the accident in her mind, especially that first moment when they rolled forward over the cliff. First she had thought, I’m going to die now. Part of her had said, about time; it’s finally gonna be over; what a relief. When the car hit for the first time, in that loud moment, she understood what death meant—the end for Michelle, the extinguishing of everything—and another part of her said, I am not ready.
So today, walking around the shelter, she tiptoed through a different world, one richly magnified by the miracle of her survival. A table radio played a tune for two kids making dizzy belles, spinning with laughter and falling on the floor; a woman’s necklace of glass beads glittered and breathed with the rising and falling of her chest.... Oh, she could think of so many happinesses here, and these soft tears she wiped away as she smiled were tears of thanksgiving, not fear and self-hate anymore.
There had to be a reason she was still around.
Michelle had
never had much to do with kids, but on that wonderful morning in May, several of the ten children staying at the shelter pulled out an old Monopoly board in the living room and asked Michelle to play. Most of the houses and hotels were missing, but that didn’t matter; they used poker chips for money and just rolled their way around the board, picking up properties and Chance and Community Chest cards.
After the board game they all went outside and walloped the ball against the garage door in a vicious game of dodgeball. Michelle watched the kids play tough, play mean, take care of each other, and make up again, better than miniature adults, nicer.
Everybody but Andrea and Michelle went to the movies to see the Disney dog flick after lunch. The tickets took a deep bite out of the weekly budget, but Andrea said, "Screw it. The whole idea at the shelter is to remind the mothers and children that life goes on and they can even have fun sometimes." Andrea went into the office to experience the unusual quiet and pay bills. Michelle lay down for a while.
She curled up in her bunk, not to sleep but to remember. She had so much to remember. She wasn’t going to be afraid of her memories anymore.
Dr. Greenspan could help her. She got up again and called the number, which she had memorized, from the pay phone in the hall. She could tell it was Mrs. Greenspan who answered. The regular staff must be at lunch.
"It’s me, Michelle Patterson. I’ve been trying to make an appointment," she said.
"Michelle Patterson," Mrs. Greenspan repeated.
"You know, Misty?"
"Your lawyer terminated you as a patient. The doctor cannot see you," she said.
"I’ll talk to my lawyer. Meantime, please make me an appointment."
"You’re terminated. Don’t call again," the woman said.
The phone went dead.
Nina skipped lunch. When Sandy came back she said, "Good work. Fix these two typos in the Points and Authorities. Make four copies of each set of papers. Take the originals and two copies over to the county clerk before five. File the originals and have them conform the copies. Give me a set now and when Hallowell comes in I’ll serve him personally. Know how to do a proof of personal service?"
She was showing Sandy a sample form when Collier Hallowell stuck his head through the door, saying, "Am I interrupting?"
"Oh. Hello, Collier. Come in."
The prosecutor walked in and sat down, setting his battered attaché on the rug. "Hi, Nina. Nice flowers," he said. "I heard about the accident. You ought to be in bed."
"I’m going there as soon as we’re done, Collier. I mean, I’m not trying to chase you out or anything."
"Mind telling me about it?"
He sat across from her with his hands folded as she ran through her story. Andrea had filled her in on his private life, the adored wife now dead for two years, the dedication to work that got him through. Tahoe had all the gossip of a small town. Just the air was cosmopolitan. She recognized his expression right now, that of a man who had seen and heard everything without becoming jaded or cynical. Collier Hallowell was a man who seemed willing to consider alternative stories to fit the facts at hand. Too bad he hadn’t applied that same open-mindedness she saw him use right now in the Patterson case.
She left out events that had to do with Bruno. When she finished, he was silent for a time. Finally he said, "It may be that someone was trying to kill you. Maybe it has to do with one of your cases. Maybe it has to do with your client. Maybe you cut someone off without noticing it just before Twin Bridges. Maybe some mentally ill salesman had just decided to run somebody off the road last night. Remember the sniper who hid by Highway Fifty a few years ago and shot four drivers? There is always the possible random."
"What about this?" Nina handed him the card for the flowers.
He read it out loud, looking up at her with his eyebrows raised.
"Whoever tried to kill us isn’t finished yet. That’s what it means."
Pocketing the card and envelope, he said, "I’ll ask one of the deputies to trace the florist shop and ask around."
"Thanks. Even if you don’t believe me."
"Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you," he said.
She felt so grateful, she forgot for a minute who he was.
"Look." He clicked open the attaché and broke the spell. "I wanted to come over personally with these papers. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea." He pulled out a thick manila envelope and handed it to her.
"I know. Today’s the last day for filing motions. Here are the defense motions," Nina said absently, and gave him a set of copies that Sandy had just brought in. She was already reading. Initial disbelief quickly escalated into horror. This was no motion. It was a search warrant.
The warrant and supporting declarations were for all records of Bruno Cervenka, M.D., Ph.D., connected with examination and/or treatment of Michelle Patterson, and requested the cooperation of the San Francisco Sheriffs Office for the search. Attached to these papers was a court order setting an evidentiary hearing as to admissibility of any seized materials, to be held on June 10 in the El Dorado County Superior Court. Nina looked up at him, and he met her gaze steadily.
"Might as well read the declarations and the research," he said, so she went on, her training allowing her to concentrate somewhere beyond the knife-strike music that filled her head. She read to the end and put the papers down.
He knew what he had done to her. Before she could speak, he said, "I’m sorry."
"How did you know about Dr. Cervenka?" Nina whispered. "Anyway, he’s an independent consultant. You can’t seize his records."
"I can’t tell you how we learned about this, Nina. Our informant has requested anonymity. I couldn’t let this go by. We have reason to believe the session included some therapy. His notes, tapes, anything he has is discoverable."
"I hired him," Nina said. "The session is privileged. It’s work-product."
"File Dr. Cervenka’s declaration, Nina. Make sure he swears he didn’t do any hypnotic-regression therapy on your client. That would be therapy, not privileged under the attorney work-product doctrine."
"Even if it was therapy, you can’t have it. That’s still privileged under the physician-patient confidentiality doctrine."
"Not if you intend to put your client’s mental state at issue. Remember the Menendez brothers? Their attorneys fought for three years to keep a tape of a session with their therapist out of the evidence. Eventually they lost, for that very reason."
"I noted your citation. You can bet I’ll be able to distinguish that case," Nina said angrily. "And I’ve got another one for you. Attorney-client privilege. My client needed to communicate with me certain things, but could only do so under hypnosis. Dr. Cervenka was just the agent of that communication.’’
"I’ll look forward to receiving your papers before the hearing on June tenth, Nina. Unless you’re still too shook up and want to put it off a week or two ..."
"I’m not as shook up as you’d like me to be, Collier."
"I mean, from the accident. For chrissake, Nina, I didn’t come over here to watch you squirm. I want to play fair with you."
"When is this ... search and seizure at Dr. Cervenka’s office going to happen?"
"It’s happening right now."
Nina nodded. Her hands were trembling, from rage or panic she couldn’t tell. She wanted him to leave. She had liked Collier Hallowell, but this ... betrayal felt so personal. But Nina knew he was just doing his job, same way she would, doing his best.
Then she thought of something else.
He saw the queer look on her face and said quickly, "What? What is it?"
"Your confidential informant," Nina said. "This mysterious person who told your office I was going to San Francisco with my client to see Dr. Cervenka yesterday. This person who knows so much about my movements ..."
"You think ..."
"That’s the driver, Collier."
Hallowell’s face changed as he seemed to wage an inner struggle. "I’m
in a bind," he said. "I don’t want to endanger you or Mrs. Patterson. I don’t want you to think I would let anything happen to you. But I’m under an ethical obligation to keep the informant’s name secret. That’s the promise that’s been made. If had any hard evidence ..."
Nina stood up. "If you won’t give me the name, Collier, I think you’d better leave."
"I can’t give you the name, Nina. But I promise you one thing. I will have that person watched."
As soon as he was gone, Nina got into her rental car outside and drove home. The house would be empty for another hour. She took three aspirin, went to her room, and turned on Oprah.
Michelle should be safe at the shelter with the alarm system, security patrol, and secret location to protect her for now.
Nina, however, hung out there in the wind, twisting, twisting.
Not happy to be a passenger in Andrea’s car, Michelle sat back against the seat, belted tight, sweating where the heater blew on her feet, and wishing she could stop at Cecil’s for a drink.
As if she were reading her mind, Andrea said, "Dr. Francis isn’t far. She’ll take a look at your bones. But you know there’s more to you than flesh and blood. Tomorrow at noon there’s a meeting over at the Episcopal Church I’d like to invite you to."
"Church? I had enough of that for my next eight lives."
"No, this is not religious."
"What is it, then?"
"An informal meeting of women who have decided they want to quit drinking. It’s—"
"No, thanks," Michelle said quickly. "I don’t have a drinking problem. It’s just all this shit I’m going through, for God’s sake."
Andrea let the words echo around the car, then said, "Ask, if you decide to go."
Several other people waited in a room that opened onto an atrium. A few kids bounced a ball away from the window. A nurse had Michelle pee into a cup and carry the unpleasantly warm liquid back to a counter. She thumbed through magazines for almost an hour after that before she was called in. Cheerful and brisk, Dr. Francis asked her a lot of questions and took shorthand notes, then gave her a quick physical.
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