Bob threw open the kitchen door and came in, dropping pine needles all over the just-swept floor. Nina scowled and pointed down, and he said, “Oops!” and tossed his hat on the couch and kicked off his shoes, which landed in two different corners of the living room. Hitchcock, ever game, skidded after the shoes, pushing the Swedish rug askew, and in a moment appeared at Nina’s side, his jaws full of sneaker. His paws had something slimy on them. In an instant the neat living room had been reduced to rubble.
Nina mouthed severe words. Bob was trying to get his shoe away from Hitchcock. His hands were filthy. Hitchcock danced around him in circles.
“Jessie—I’m sorry—just a minute.” Hand over the receiver, she said, “Wash ’em.”
“Trees aren’t dirty! He’s got my shoe!”
“Wash ’em!” He went to the sink. As he passed Nina she smelled the scent of the trees on him, the sap and the fresh needles. She reached out and tickled his waist under the baggy sweatshirt.
“Okay,” she said to Jessie. Hitchcock lost interest and set the saliva-shiny shoe carefully on the seat of the easy chair. Nina anchored the phone against her ear with her left shoulder, bent over to hug the dog’s barrel chest from behind with both arms, and pitched the dog back out the kitchen door.
“Dan had an attack in the boat,” Jessie said. “It came on—one minute he was fine, the next—I started rowing us in to shore, but he was writhing, that’s how bad it was, and it was choppy, a lot of whitewater—we went over. We were alone out there. It was overcast and the water wasn’t clear. I saw him struggling and I crashed through the water to him but he wasn’t there anymore. He had gone under that quickly.
“I went after him right away and I dove and I dove until I—it was deeper than I thought. I couldn’t see and the waves were crashing over the rocks about thirty feet away. Dan was—he was gone in the first few seconds. I think he swallowed water right away. I don’t know if he even knew he was in the water, he was in so much pain. I never saw him, never touched him.” Her voice broke. “He wasn’t even twenty-one years old. It was shattering.”
Nina saw them in the water, the boy sinking, the girl searching blindly, thrashing to the surface for breath, diving for him, reaching for him.
“I stayed out there and I kept diving. About ten minutes later another kayak came by and they called for help. They made me come in. I was completely worn out by then. Some guys fishing off the sandbar in Kaneohe Bay found him the next morning. I went there. My friend Bonita came and helped me. I wasn’t in very good shape.”
“It must have been unbearable.”
“Dan was a wonderful person.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“We never should have gone out in the kayak, not until we knew what was wrong with him.”
So Jessie was playing that destructive game called second-guessing. Nina played that game, too.
“There was an autopsy?”
“Yes, an autopsy and an inquest. It was at the inquest that I realized Mr. Potter blamed me for Dan’s death. What a sickening shock that was. He came up to me, his voice shaking, his face really red, and he said, ‘You can fool them, but you can’t fool me.’ ”
“What was the finding at the inquest?”
“Accidental death. But the police talked to me several times. I was under suspicion of—killing Dan.”
“That’s what Mr. Potter told them?” Nina said.
“Yes. Because there was no sign of anything wrong with Dan that would make him fall out of the boat. They just didn’t want to believe what I told them. The autopsy report didn’t find anything wrong with him.”
“But he’d been having these attacks—”
“Dr. Jun—we had gone to him twice, did I mention that?—testified. He had his records. But all he could say was that he hadn’t been able to make a diagnosis. He said that all the tests were negative and he thought Dan’s pain must be psychological. The medical examiner wanted to know if Dan might even have been poisoned. He was a friend of Mr. Potter’s. You see what Mr. Potter was doing? But even so, the medical examiner ruled it an accident. I was there and I told what happened and that was that, I thought.
“Dr. Jun didn’t know Dan had kept on having the attacks, because Dan had stopped going to him. One of the officers asked me why I was telling all these lies about Dan having an attack if it was really an accident. I felt like saying, Make up your minds! Did I poison him so he was sick, or did I lie about him being sick and kill him some other way? I felt like because I was a Marine, it actually hurt me. Like I was some kind of freak, a woman Marine, who might do something like kill her husband. I think I almost was arrested, but the police finally decided there wasn’t enough evidence.
“But they had dragged me into this nightmare, with Mr. Potter pressing them to arrest me, and my superior officer started looking at me in this funny way. I’d walk into a room and they’d all be talking about me. Some of the guys complained to my superior officer that they didn’t trust me. I think Mr. Potter spread the word that I had something to do with Dan’s death. Mr. Potter wrote letters to the newspapers saying the police weren’t doing their job. He hired a lawyer. But the police closed the case. All this happened in about a two-month period between February and April.
“Mr. Potter was doing things to me that whole time.” Jessie’s voice changed again as though her throat were constricting.
“My landlord asked me to leave and wouldn’t give a reason. I found out later that Mr. Potter and he both belonged to the Honolulu Club. My credit card was canceled. I started getting phone calls, hangups. I couldn’t sleep. I changed my number and it kept on. I reported the harassment. No more calls, but then I woke up one morning and someone had been in the condo while I was sleeping. Somehow he had gotten a key.”
“And how did you know that?”
“It’s disgusting. I haven’t told anyone else this. I should have called the police, but I—”
“Don’t worry. I’ve heard it all,” Nina said.
“I had a photo of myself dancing in costume at a powwow in Carson City a few years ago. It was in a frame, next to the TV.”
“And?”
“I walked into the living room and the photo was in the middle of the floor. And someone had—there was feces on it.”
“And you didn’t call the police?”
“No! I mean, I was afraid. What if they thought”—her voice got small—“that I was trying to deflect suspicion and did it myself? What if it was reported in the paper? What would they think on base? My life was harsh enough.”
“Still, you should have.” Nina was thinking, there is a sexual component to this, and a mighty sick one. “Wait,” she said. “Just a minute. I just can’t follow this. Why in the world was Dan’s father so positive you killed his son?”
“Because he’s crazy with resentment that I took his son away,” Jessie said. Her voice caught on the last word. “That his son died on my watch. He has a lot of money and power and there’s nothing I can do. He’s been careful, so I can’t catch him directly at anything.”
“But what motive could he possibly think you have?” Nina insisted.
“I don’t know!”
“So what did you do?” Nina said.
“I went to talk to Mr. Potter.”
“That was brave.”
“A security guard met me at the gate. He called the house and said Mr. Potter wouldn’t talk to me unless I had come to confess. Mr. Potter called the police and said I was stalking him, coming to his house. It was hopeless!”
“Then what happened?”
“I was lucky about one thing. My tour of duty finished in April. I didn’t reenlist. I had no future in the Marine Corps.”
“They should have rallied around you.”
“Yes. The fact that my buddies didn’t quite believe me hurt the most. Bonita was the only friend I had left. I decided to leave Hawaii and come home. Here. I made some zigzags in case he was still following me. I think maybe he was, but
when I came back to the Sierra last April, I didn’t notice anything. But I watched for him, expected him, any day.”
So she had been hiding for fifteen months, a long time to maintain such a high level of emotional intensity.
“Mr. Potter never asked Dan anything about me. He knew I was Native, and he knew I was poor and came from the mainland but that’s all he knew. My aunt—she’s not really senile or anything, just confused sometimes— anyway, she arranged for me to work part-time at the Smoke Shop—you know, on the highway right outside Minden. . . .”
“Sure. I’ve stopped in there. Jewelry and souvenirs. I bought a beaded barrette there once.”
“And cheap cartons of cigarettes. The ranchers come from miles around. Anyway, I—I took the long way home from work on Sunday night. I was, well, you could say I was upset about my life, or you could say I was crawling out of my skin from never doing anything but hiding and working. I just wanted to forget everything.”
“All alone?”
“Yes. But as soon as I hit Tahoe I started feeling very anxious. This was the first time I’d been out in such a public place in months. I thought I saw Mr. Potter pulling up outside Prize’s. I panicked and went down the aisles and sat down at a dollar slot. The Greed Machine. I would have been dead broke in another five minutes.”
Nina put down her pen and transferred the portable phone to the other ear. Bob trotted down the hall to his room and a fingers-on-the-chalkboard scratching started up at the door.
“Well? What do you think?”
“It’s a hell of a story,” Nina said.
“And now this. Is it really true? Am I—that is, is it—”
“Well, I’ve got the check. I’d say you have quite a history ahead of you,” Nina said. She laughed.
“So—do you see why I was thinking that Paul might help me? He can go to Hawaii and prove I didn’t kill Dan. It’s the only way. I have to face Mr. Potter, but with some facts.”
Oh, sure, Nina thought, two people in a boat, no medical findings, nobody’s ever going to prove anything. But all she said was “I’ll call Paul. Ten A.M. tomorrow, okay?”
“Uh oh.”
“Problem?”
“Someone’s at the door! I think he may have peeked in the window a second ago.”
“Don’t answer,” Nina said.
“Okay, I’ll just sit here until he goes away.”
“Hello?” Nina could hear faintly over the phone. “Meter man.”
“It’s just the guy who reads the meters,” Jessie said.
“Saying it doesn’t make it so.”
“You’re right. I won’t answer, then.”
“I just need a signature,” Nina heard.
“He’s wearing a uniform and everything,” Jessie said. “I don’t want to cause any trouble for my auntie.”
“Ask him to slip whatever he wants signed under the door,” Nina said. She heard Jessie’s phone clank against something, then Jessie telling her visitor just that.
“Sure,” the voice said. “No problem. You’re Mrs. Potter, right?”
Suddenly Nina was afraid for Jessie. She had just heard a hair-raising story and now Jessie was standing in a line of fire talking to someone who might have a gun. “Jessie!” she yelled into the phone.
“Jessie!” No answer, but she didn’t hear anything alarming either. A few moments later Jessie got back on the line.
“He wasn’t a meter reader.”
“I was afraid of that. What was he?”
“I don’t know. They’re legal papers. There are numbers on the sides of each sheet, and a stamp on the one on top.” Jessie was silent, reading. Then she said, “I don’t understand. ‘Application for Entry of Judgment Based on Sister-State Judgment.’ What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“There’s a whole sheaf of papers. What could it be? My name’s on the front. It’s some kind of legal notice and they call me a Judgment Debtor.”
Bob came out with his backpack on his back. The neck of his new electric bass stuck out of it. It would probably fall into the road on the first bump. “Bye,” he announced. “Going to Nikki’s.”
“When will you be home?” Nina said, putting her hand over the phone.
“Before dark.”
“Home by dinner.”
“It’s summer!”
“You heard me.” She said to Jessie, “I think he was a process server, Jessie. This could be too important to wait until tomorrow.”
“I just can’t get up to your office today. Tomorrow is okay, but not today.”
“Then fax me the papers.”
“There are fifty pages at least. I don’t have a fax. I’d have to go to a Mailboxes Etc. somewhere. It would be expensive.”
“You can afford it. Go and fax me the papers. Here’s my fax number at the office.”
“Look. I can’t get away, okay?”
“Why not?”
Silence. Nina couldn’t shake the feeling that Jessie still hadn’t told her everything. “This is important,” she said. “How do you think he found you? I have to see those papers right away.”
“Okay. I’ll fax them.”
“Right away. Can you get into town by ten A.M. tomorrow morning?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And Jessie?”
“What?”
“When you come, bring Kenny’s gun.”
“Huh?”
“The gun. Paul told me it was taken from his pocket last night.”
“Oh, no. Who would know it was there? He must have dropped it.”
“You knew it was there.”
Jessie protested. She said she hadn’t touched the Glock, hadn’t even noticed Paul picking it up off Sandy’s desk. She asked a lot of questions herself. She seemed to be startled, seemed to have no idea what had happened to the gun.
Ominous.
Nina hung up and rubbed her sore shoulder. She couldn’t take the urgent scratching anymore. She let Hitchcock in. Let’s see, purse, briefcase, contact lens case—leave Bob a note—
Hitchcock divined her purpose instantly and ran to the door, casting urgent looks back.
“I have to go to work, boy,” she said. “Bob’ll take you out later.” She looked at Hitchcock and Hitchcock let her have it, his heart on display in his brown Raisinet eyes. He was still shedding his winter coat in July and as he wiggled his body and wagged his tail, hair floated off his coat and glistened in the sunlight as it fell to the floor.
“You stay,” she told him. He understood this and his grin drooped. The brightness faded from his eye.
But when she gave up and pulled on her running shoes, the dog forgave and forgot, prancing around her, nudging with his head.
“You’re a nag,” she said. “G’boy. G’boy. Okay, walk.” She had uttered the magic word and his whole body thrilled with it. “A short walk,” she said. “No! Don’t slobber!” They went outside. She wrestled the dog onto his leash and walked up Kulow Street toward the Jicarilla Meadow. It was about eighty degrees. The forest of pines was all around her, the one her cabin sheltered in, and she looked at the trees gratefully. She knew she was safe for the first time in a long time, and she only wished Jessie Potter could feel the same way.
Jessie’s refuge had turned public. Where a process server had gone, others would follow. What was in those legal papers?
9
NINA SAT WITH her bare feet up on the desk, dictating a will for a young man with leukemia. Her watch, a thin-banded Gucci that her mother had worn, told her that it was four-thirty in the afternoon. It was still Monday. Time had stretched thin and long over the last couple of days.
The fax machine, stocked with a new roll of paper, hadn’t shuddered under the opening salvo of whatever pirates were after Jessie’s win yet. Nina had been checking it every ten minutes.
Sandy was filing a complaint at the County Clerk’s office on Johnson Boulevard, trying to beat a five o’clock deadline, and the town seemed to be in th
e grip of a midsummer afternoon snooze.
She put her notes down and stretched her arms behind her head, looking around. She had moved in two years before, after being downsized from a respectable appellate-law job in San Francisco. Her office might be just a modest suite on the first floor of a two-story redwood building on the highway, but it was her modest suite, where she was the boss. It consisted of Sandy’s office where clients waited, the inner office where she was now sitting with its big windows with their views of Mt. Tallac, a sliver of the lake, and the boulevard, and the conference-room-slash-library.
The suite had one major problem. Sandy constituted the only boundary between Nina and whoever came through the outer door. If she was down the street at lunch or in the conference room, Nina had to leave the inner office door open a crack in case someone came into the reception area. Now and then the visitors were disgruntled, unwilling to wait, or spooky. The office needed a partition with one of those glass windows that slide open. Maybe next January, the only time of year when no business was conducted at Tahoe, because everybody was out of money and too tired to quarrel. Meantime, her office door was wide open so that she could see the corner of the outer door.
The wide-open door had admitted several murder cases in the past year, and one or two big civil cases. Nina was developing a rep as a last-resort, pull-it-out-of-the-hat litigator, rash but effective. But there were also the quiet, nonadversarial legal tasks, the timeless ones like drawing up deeds and drafting wills. This client, a very sick boy of nineteen, wanted to give specific bequests to friends and family—his tennis racket to his brother, his high school ring to his sister, his bowling shoes—bowling shoes!—to his best friend.
She gave away the bowling shoes in a choked-up monotone that Sandy would have to decipher tomorrow. He was a brave boy. His name was Alex, and he would be coming in in the morning.
She finished that tape and turned to the other pressing cases, the contract matter and the custody battle and the marijuana bust and the fender bender, jumping up like a jackrabbit to check the fax whenever her anxiety got the best of her.
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