I walked around the pile. There was an antique mission style chair placed in the corner of the room, facing the windows, a lamp beside it. I imagined Sharon Steele placing it there. Selecting the location after surveying the room, making a futile effort to make the house feel more like a home — more like her home — on the day her stuff was delivered. I kicked at an unraveled sweater, half of which had been drug off somewhere, likely as material for a nest, but no mice scurried from the open boxes. I moved a tall wardrobe box to one side, hesitating, waiting for something hideous to leap out at me. Nothing. I took a deep breath and laughed at myself; the laughter echoed through the empty house.
Liz asked, “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.” And I really didn’t. “We’re just kind of looking, I guess.”
I unfolded the cardboard flaps of the boxes on the top of the pile. One was full of books, another filled with papers and files, and the third contained the photo albums I assumed Becky had been talking about. I opened one and its plastic pages, stuck together with heat and time, turned in clumps of two or three. Liz opened another.
Peeling several pages apart, I examined the pictures with an odd, detached interest. Scenes of people I did not know, taken in a living room during what might have been Thanksgiving. It looked like the late 70s, or maybe early 80s. There was a small girl in one of the pictures and I wondered if it was Becky.
I tried to identify Steele in some of the pictures, but could not. As I stood there, catching a glimpse of the those private things Sharon Steele had run off with in the days before her death, I realized I couldn’t identify her in any of the pictures because I did not know what she looked like. I had seen a few pictures of her in the news reports about the murder, but I had lost those few images and now had nothing to identify her by. I put the album back and grabbed another. The problem persisted.
Liz looked up at me with a sadness coloring her eyes. “I think these are all of her family. These were the things that she wanted to preserve.” She set the photo album on the pile like it was made of thin, delicate glass. “It’s just so sad. These are the things she chose to take with her when she finally had the courage to leave her failed marriage.”
I picked up the box of pictures to set them aside and the bottom fell out, sending the books tumbling to the floor. I tossed the remains of the box back behind me and piled the photo albums off to the side. As I pushed the stacks of boxes further apart to get at one that had fallen between them, I noticed that, at the bottom and in the middle of the pile was a wooden box.
“Hey, check this out,” I said.
Liz helped me pull the rest of the boxes away from it. “What is it?”
I slid it out from the pile with my foot. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s Becky Steele’s long lost hope chest.”
The chest was about three feet long, a foot deep and a foot and a half wide. It was old and solid, well made and heavy. I picked it up by the ornate brass handles at each end and gave it a shake. The thick brass lock dangling from the hasp rattled, but nothing shifted inside when I shook it. I set it back down, placed the photo albums on top and lifted it again. I carried the pile out to the car and placed it in the trunk.
“At least Becky can get these things back,” I said, as Liz closed the trunk.
She stood beside me, close, nearly leaning against me. “I hope that’s not the only good thing to come from this whole mess.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to turn and take hold of her, but resisted. It didn’t seem right. Whether because of the haunting quality of the house or because I was too scared to upset the fragile balance Liz and I had attained, I couldn’t say.
Instead, I lingered for another minute and said, as I walked back to the house, “Best of all, K&C can pay for the shipping.”
Liz followed me back inside. We poked through the rest of the boxes, none of which seemed particularly interesting. Then we stood for a minute, watching dust particles drift through the shafts of light streaming in through the windows.
I went to the kitchen with a sudden urge to clean up the mess we’d made. Liz stood and watched me scrape the broken glass into a pile near the back door and toss the rock back outside.
“I don’t suppose it matters much,” I said. “I suppose Becky or someone will have to come out and get the rest of the stuff at some point. Then I guess they’ll sell it.”
Liz looked around the kitchen and then at me. After a few seconds she said, “They’ll have to do something about that bad deed first.”
27
I hit the west side at rush hour and dropped Liz at her place. Then I braved the jammed freeway all the way downtown. It took forever and it was late when I finally made it back to the firm. I parked the rental car in the basement garage and lugged the hope chest and photo albums up to my office where I placed them in a wide, four-foot long file drawer and locked it.
I was only there a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Ed. He sounded flustered.
“Man, good to talk to you. You make it up to Topanga?”
I told him all about it. I could hear him rummaging through paperwork as I talked. He was only half listening.
He said, “That’s great. I can’t believe that stuff was still there.” I could feel him masking some kind of dark worry. “Hey, listen, I can’t talk long. I don’t think we’re going to make it to the press tomorrow morning. My editor is excited but understandably concerned. He wants to be sure this thing is right before we run it.”
“Of course.” I did not want to wait another day.
“So look, man. I’ve been talking to some people about Steele and Andersen. Most people have said they never knew anything like that, never suspected anything. I even had one guy say he didn’t remember. Can you believe that? Anyway, no one wants to get involved. You know, no comment and all of that. I’ve still got a few more leads and people to get a hold of, but it’s getting late and I doubt I’ll make much more progress tonight.”
“Is anyone talking at all?” I was concerned that I’d hitched myself to someone who couldn’t get the job done. But who was I to complain?
He said, “I started trying to find guys that went to school with either of them. I found a guy who was at law school at Berkeley with Andersen. He said that a bunch of them used to go hang out in the Castro sometimes, you know, go to the clubs, the bars. He said he remembers seeing Steele around sometimes. Andersen and Steele could have met there. Hell, this thing between them could have been going off and on since the mid-70s.”
“Really. That’s interesting. But I can’t believe that Steele was able to keep something like that secret all those years.”
“I can’t either. But it happens. People in the gay community aren’t in the business of outing people, so as long as Steele was discreet, maybe people figured they had a friend in high places. But something like that would also make Steele very vulnerable to blackmail too. So, I don’t know.”
We talked for a few minutes about who might want to blackmail Steele. It didn’t seem likely to me. We knew that Sharon wanted a divorce. That seemed like the most likely reason for the murder.
“True,” Ed went on, “but Andersen represents a lot of big oil companies. I think the reason Andersen seemed so concerned when you called him is because there’s more to this than just an affair. I agree with you, I don’t think Andersen would care too much about that coming out because it’s already out. I think Andersen had something to do with Steele changing his mind on the Alaskan oil issue.”
I grimaced. I couldn’t tell if Ed was a loon or really on to something. He seemed obsessed with the issue. “Well, yeah, maybe. I mean he might have lobbied for his clients or something. I mean, that’s a helluva political contact to have. But even so, how does that have anything to do with Steele killing his wife?”
My dose of reality and logic seemed to calm him. The line was silent for a few seconds. “Hmmm. Well, I don’t know that it does,” He finally admitted.
/> “Okay, so what now?”
“Look man, you just gotta lay low another day. We’re going to hit the press with this Wednesday morning. Just spend the day tomorrow hanging out in a crowd, doing nothing. I’ll call you when the story’s done and you can come down here and confirm it and then it’s a go.”
“Right on, man.” My effort to speak in Ed’s vernacular came out cold. Then I added, “Have you seen that black car anywhere?”
“Uh,” Ed paused, the worry welling up in him. “Well, I don’t know. There are lots of black sedans out there when you start looking for them. They’re everywhere.” He uttered a forced laugh.
“I never thought of that.” I laughed too and added, “But then, it’s like a professor of mine always says, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.’”
“Ha, yeah, right.” Ed’s voice trailed off. “That’s a good one.”
When I hung up, I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I began to drift off immediately and forced myself back awake. Despite the daylight outside, I was spent. I needed to sleep, but it was only then that I realized I had nowhere to go. Laying low meant staying away from home, and home was trashed anyway, so it wouldn’t have done me much good.
I thought about Ed’s comment about black cars. I wondered if he really was being followed. If he’d been making a lot of phone calls, word had probably gotten back to Andersen. There was something comforting in the thought that I might have at least diverted attention from myself for the time being. I hadn’t intended to use Ed as a decoy. But if that was the effect, I couldn’t complain.
I found myself reclining and relaxing again, with my feet up on the desk. I felt comfortable and safe high above the city streets, out of harm’s way. I could see a long black car moving through the night, cruising through the pools of streetlight like a steel shark, sensitive to any strange movements, any minor vibration or disruption, ready to attack.
The rising, electric bleat of the phone awoke me. I sprang forward as if reacting to an emergency of some kind. I answered it before it had another chance to ring.
It was the firm’s research librarian, telling me he had the report for the license number I’d given them. The guy was getting ready to go home and wanted to know if I needed him to drop it off. I told him I’d come down and pick it up. At the very least it would give me something to do. Something to keep me from falling asleep in my office.
The guy in the library was waiting for me at the door. He handed me a single sheet of paper as I came in. “Hope this helps,” he said, as he tried to catch the elevator. I could barely utter a thank you before he was gone.
I read the paper as I walked, pausing to digest the information. The black Taurus was registered to a Gary Rollins. As soon as I read it I remembered Andersen’s secretary telling him that a “Mr. Rollins” was there to see him. That was definitely the guy who was sitting in the lobby when I walked out. It was the same guy in the car who followed me. So it was Andersen who was having me followed. I’d suspected it so much that the confirmation hardly seemed surprising.
I’d only been gone five minutes, but when I got back to my office, the light was blinking on my phone. It was a message from Ed.
“Hey man, great news. This guy called me and said he’d heard I was looking for info on Steele and Andersen. He said he knew about them and would talk to me, but not on the phone. He seemed really freaked out, paranoid. You should of heard the guy. I’m meeting him in a bar in West Hollywood later. He was funny. He refused to give me his last name. He’d only give me his initial: G. Said his name was Ray G. Funny huh? Totally paranoid. Anyway, I’ll call you in the morning to let you know how it goes.”
The name sent chills up my neck. I wrote it down and almost started laughing. It wasn’t Ray Gee. It only sounded that way when you said it out loud. Leave it to the journalist to ask the follow up question: Is that an initial or a name?
Ray G. I sat there with the printout from the library and stared at the name as I wrote it. Ray G. And then, for no reason at all, I remembered Liz’s work party, the guy that knew Andersen. I felt a sickness in my stomach. He said Andersen was a great lawyer, as well as a guy who loved anagrams.
Ray G, rearranged, was Gary.
Gary Rollins.
Son of a bitch.
Was I crazy? Could it really be the same guy? Why not, I thought. I reached for the phone and tried to get Ed. But he wasn’t at work and his cell phone was off. I left rambling, excited messages that probably made no sense. I begged him to call me back right away. Then I hung up, telling myself I had to be crazy. I was reaching, groping, making connections that didn’t exist. I was the one who was paranoid. Suddenly everything was interrelated. I had to be wrong.
To convince myself it wasn’t a late onset of schizophrenia, I went back through my notes. The conversations with Detective Wilson, Carole Bishop, and Jessica Bishop all referred to Ray Gee. But they’d all just spoken to him. Detective Wilson had written it down as “Ray Gee” and I just assumed that’s what it was.
Ray G. had asked Wilson about the alibi, about Matt Bishop, the details of the 911 calls. He’d asked the Bishops about the night of the murder. Jessica said he tried to bribe her. If Ray G. was Gary Rollins, then Andersen was probably behind these inquiries.
What was Andersen looking for? Was he trying to find a way to get Steele out? They had been lovers. Perhaps they intended to be again. But why wait twelve years? I thought about all the research I’d done. I thought about Carver’s comment that all of the appeals in state court were just a joke, that nothing ever happened until the federal habeas case. If that were true, then Andersen surely knew it. Had he merely been biding his time all these years?
Then I remembered Jessica Bishop’s comment about Dan Kelly driving a new Corvette. Ask him what he did to get that, she’d said. Now I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Dan Kelly had been paid to sharpen his memory, to perhaps remember a little more than he otherwise had a right to remember. Perhaps Carol Bishop had been right after all. Dan Kelly really was always trying to get her boy in trouble.
I tried Ed again. I wanted to talk it through with him. The revelations were coming too fast and I felt like I wasn’t really putting it all together. There was just too much information.
I got up and paced around the room. I had to get out of there, but I couldn’t go home. I could always sleep in the office. I’d damn near fallen asleep only an hour before. But the thought of sleeping there disgusted me.
As I stood at the window, looking down, I was struck by the obvious. I was surrounded by hotels. I checked the file drawer again to ensure it was locked, grabbed my briefcase, shut off the light, and hit the elevator. Three minutes later I was checking into the Bonaventure. Five minutes more and I was riding to the twentieth floor in the glass elevator that ran up and down the side of the building like a pod on a space station. For a minute I enjoyed the view of the city and wondered how long my life could go on like this.
28
I woke up early thinking of Liz and realized I had forgotten to call her. I was so exhausted when I made it to my room the night before that I had simply passed out. I reached for the phone and dialed. Her voice answered, groggy. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Ollie? Where are you? What time . . .” Her words trailed off as she took her mouth away from the phone to look at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Christ, it’s quarter to six. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m staying in a hotel downtown. We’re hoping to have something in tomorrow’s paper.”
Liz moaned something, only half awake at best, then spoke in a sleepy voice. “I was worried about you last night. I thought about calling you.”
“I wish you had.” I realized I really meant it the instant I said it. I could feel the same emotions from the day before — the urge to speak, to say more. If I could say the right things in t
he right way, if I could show her I meant them, that I regretted my mistake, then couldn’t I . . . ? The silence lingered on the line and I hesitated, fearing those necessary steps and words. She could reject me then and there when I needed her the most. The moment passed, and she spoke again.
“Today’s paper?”
“No. Tomorrow’s. I just have to let them get the story together and then I’m good. Last night I think I figured out who was following me. I think it’s the same guy who went around asking everyone all kinds of questions earlier in the summer. He’s working for Andersen. Maybe Steele too, who knows?”
“If you know who he is, maybe you should go to the police now. They can arrest him.”
It was a good point. I was pretty certain that the guy in the black car was the guy who was following me. Beyond that though, I was really only guessing. There was no hard proof. I said as much to Liz. I was afraid of the cops just asking questions and letting people back on the streets. I was only safe if everyone involved was locked up. “I have to be careful,” I said. Then I added, “I just want my life back.”
“I know,” She responded in an ambiguous voice.
“Well,” I hesitated again, wanting to beg her to forgive me. “I’ll call you later today to let you know how it’s going.”
“Okay.”
“Alright.” Neither of us had hung up. Each waited for the other to say something more, to establish something, anything. I stared at the desk across the room, with its hotel lamp and hotel chair, distracting myself. “Bye,” I finally said. And she said the same and hung up.
I lay there, unsure what else to do until I spoke with Ed. I tried his cell again from the hotel, but he didn’t answer. I wondered if he actually met with Ray, or Gary, or whoever the guy really was. Maybe Gary would offer to pay him off too. Maybe it would all fit into Ed’s master plan about the Alaska Wilderness Preserve.
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