No Footprints

by Susan Dunlap

  Her hair was chin-length, dark, and matted to the back of her head. Matted with blood!

  The back of her head. She’d been struck. Killed. She hadn’t killed herself—someone had beat her to it!

  She was cold. Like she’d been on the bridge. No, not like that at all. She was cold now because she’d been dead for hours. I looked at her face. Blood had pooled on the side nearest me.

  Someone had killed her! Picked her up, laid her in a vehicle, and driven her . . . here! I couldn’t be sure—that was the cop’s job—but that’s what it looked like.

  But why? Who knew about our garage? Only Mike had any inkling about this woman.

  The grind of the tow truck reverberated off the walls, bringing me out of my reverie.

  I made it only to the side of the building before I threw up.

  Shane gave me water. I washed out my mouth. The air was still but I could feel it on the wetness around my mouth. I stood there numbly. Just stood. It was a couple minutes before I could make myself go back into the garage and double-check what I couldn’t believe I had seen.

  I scanned the area around her for a purse—none. No purse, no pouch. I wanted to leave it at that, but made myself feel her pockets—no cash, not even a tissue. But in her breast pocket was a credit card: Varine Adamé.

  I wanted to stay with her, for no sensible reason, just to do it. But I had to get outside in the air.

  Shane, the tow truck driver, was pulling out his cell to call 911. Once he’d done that he started grumbling about his truck and the junker still on the carrier, all the while standing with his back to the garage, as if rejecting the reality of what lay beyond. Finally, I told him to slide the car down next to the curb. I was as relieved as he was to have something do.

  But there wasn’t any space at the curb and he ended up leaving it on the sidewalk just clear of the garage doors. It sat right next to the space between the garage and the next building, right next to where I’d thrown up.

  When the police squealed into view, lights flashing, sirens keening, figures racing around, it all seemed overblown and irrelevant.

  "Do you know the deceased?” the detective asked.

  "I don’t know.”

  She heaved a big heavy, theatrical sigh. She’d told me her name but it had floated by me. She was young, African American, brusque.

  From the doorway, I could see into the garage, to the body lying on her side in that vintage brown suit. I thought I could make out a wrinkle around the hips from the skirt riding up as she pedaled, but I might have been imagining. She looked so "tossed away.” Like the rags Gary, Mike, or Gracie’d used to clean windshields when they’d had cars here, the rags John ranted about, not because he cared about them but because they might be a fire hazard and endanger some other discarded belongings.

  I didn’t save you from jumping for this! I felt like screaming at the stupidity of it all. The waste. What is life? I had hunted down, considered, imagined so much of a life for her. Ironically, without ever knowing her, I already missed her. And I would go on missing her, because . . . I didn’t know her.

  If only I had met her.

  Suddenly, I realized that on some level, I’d been assuming that would happen, that we’d sit over coffee and she’d tell me what had moved her to climb over that railing. She’d tell me what she’d been thinking as she biked out there in the cold fog. Having been ready to die, she’d tell me what life is.

  She’d say she was glad that I understood.

  If only I hadn’t wasted my day driving to Berkeley, getting caught up in Mac’s whatever the hell it was. His dumb leap into the too shallow water, his non-life-threatening injury.

  Could all that have simply been a diversion?

  If only I’d hunted her down, found her before . . . what?

  Before she died this way! Devastated is one of those words so overused that the meaning’s almost wrung out of it. But that barren emptiness in which nothing will grow again, that’s how I felt. I could have bawled.

  But not in front of the police.

  Before I walk to the start mark for any gag, before I run through it in my mind the final time, before I even push up into the skin of the character, I exhale, empty my mind, and stare at whatever’s ahead as if none of the objects have names, as if there is no space between them and me. I did that now, staring at the tow truck’s fender, at the shining in the light, against the shadows, at the curve above the wheel.

  Then I turned to the detective. "Yes, I’ve seen her.”

  "Her name?”

  "Doesn’t she have any ID?”

  She nodded. "What is it you’ve seen?”

  I started giving her the background but everything I said sounded ludicrous and there was, frankly, little chance this apparently logical woman believed a bit of it.

  "And now,” she said, "this body’s in your garage.”

  "How’d you know—? Oh, Shane. Okay. Yes, my family owns it. I’m renting the place to the movie company.”

  "To house this car that you drive.”

  "In the movie.”

  "Just that? You never drive it otherwise?”

  How’d she know that? Or was she fishing? "Not much.”

  "But you’ve done so? Come to this garage to pick up the car and return it.”

  "I have, but not today. Not alone. The whole film crew knows where this is. Everyone knows the lock’s useless. Macomber Dale came here this morning!” Macomber Dale! "I’ve been dropped here by Aaron Adamé and—and!—Declan Serrano! This garage might as well be in Union Square. I spent hours with the Berkeley Police, on the pier over there. I haven’t been alone all day, believe me.”

  "I’m not asking that.”

  "Uh huh? Then what are you asking me?”

  She eyed her notepad, but I had the feeling that was just to buy time, to try to get a linear sense of this tangle.

  "Here,” I said, "let me take a shot at what you should be asking: How come a woman tries to kill herself, then ends up with someone smashing her head in and dumping her body in a stranger’s garage? Why didn’t she take her new chance at life and get out of the city?” I turned away. I was on the thin edge of losing it. But I could see the way this investigation was going, and one thing I knew was I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.

  "Call Aaron Adamé, her husband,” I told her. "She came home last night, or, at least, that’s what he told me.”

  "We can deal with that. The question now is: Why is her body here, in your garage?”

  That was the question. "If you drove by here alone, you’d think: good place to hide something. No one’s going to be coming here.”

  "No one but you.”

  "But I wasn’t here this morning. I’d driven that”—I jabbed a finger at the miserable remains of the car—"to my place last night. It’s a fluke I’m here now. That car was in the bay. We had to drag it out. By rights it should still be under ten feet of water. It’s only because we managed to haul it out and then had to put it somewhere that I came back here at all.”

  She was staring oddly at me. "You drove the car into the bay?”

  "No, not me. Macomber Dale. It was an accident. Maybe. He was upset. I don’t know why he did it, but he did.”

  "Where is this Dale?”

  "In the hospital. Highland? Herrick? Somewhere near Berkeley.” Macomber Dale? "He came here this morning to pick up the car, but the car wasn’t here, because I’d taken it home last night.”

  "Wait here.” She strode into the garage.

  I weighed my options. I didn’t have options. I waited. I watched her check with a uniformed officer, mutter, "Not home? The husband?” A tech handed her something.

  While she was inside, a crime scene van pulled up and another patrol car. Doors opened and slammed. Flashers fought with flashers turning the street red, redder, then sucking out all color and leaving it gray as death. A woman hauled out the lighting; a guy grabbed a bag that could have held anything.

  An unmarked pulled up. Th
e head that popped out of it was tan, bald, and all too familiar. Declan Serrano.

  He had no business here.

  I eased back into the shadow.

  The cockroach’s engine was racing. Or, rather, it sounded that way against the sudden silence. No one was bantering. The techs headed into the garage where the smell was strong enough to drive me out. They looked eager to get in. And the detective who’d been questioning me looked suddenly stiff.

  What I needed was to get out of here before Serrano zeroed in on me. Of course, he knew I was here. Of course, he already knew this was my garage. He’d know that and what this detective knew plus a whole lot more. I wanted to bolt.

  But he’d hired the woman known as Tessa Jurovik to run his copy service. If he hadn’t cared about her as a person, he’d at least been concerned about her as a part of his kingdom.

  He strode through the garage to her body. The techs all but leapt back. He stood, looking down as one of the techs starting talking fixed rigor and pointing to her arms.

  Serrano dismissed him with a nod. He moved so he was nearly leaning against the wall, staring down at her face, not the way the techs had, but rather as if he was fitting this piece of evidence, her being dead, into a jigsaw in his head. Abruptly he turned away.

  The techs watched him go. They, and the cops, looked like they were holding their breaths.

  "Hey!” I called out. "What do you make of this?”

  "Not my business.”

  "Hardly! She worked for—”

  He shot a hand up, then opened the passenger door of his car.

  His phone rang. He ignored it.

  I slid in. Before I had the door shut he’d started the car, pulled away from the curb, and swung left around the corner.

  His phone rang again. Again, he let it go onto the message but put it onto speaker. It surprised me that my listening wouldn’t bother him. Was he that innocent? Or that cocky?

  "Detective,” a woman said, emphasizing the first syllable in a way I’d never heard before, "the missing person’s report was filed at nine this morning. Mr. Adamé said he hadn’t filed earlier because he believed he had to wait three days. He stated he’d believed his wife employed an alias but that now he believes she’s not using that anymore. He stated that he now believes she’s missing. Copy on your desk. No response from subject since. Not on landline; not on cell. No one at the residence.”

  The woman’s delivery was so idiosyncratic I wondered how Serrano ever focused on her content. Aaron Adamé had made a missing person’s report at nine this morning! But had never bothered to call me back? What did that mean?

  "So, Roach, the Adamés played you.”

  His jaw tightened so slightly I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been on the lookout. He knew what I meant. But he was waiting for me to spell out just what I knew.

  I was happy to do so. "You spotted a woman who you assumed was a ringer for the wife of the guy you’re after. Did you have a plan for her? Or did you—ah, yes, I can see this is it—you figured she was too good to pass up. There’d be some way you could use her. So you set her up in a marginal business, like a dog you feed just enough so it doesn’t starve but doesn’t have the energy to run off—”

  "Hey! She was doing okay. She turned that business—”

  I laughed. Good for her! "But you didn’t guess that Adamé had planted Varine for you to find. He put her there to keep an eye on you. Maybe more. Ah, Roach, he was playing your game, only better. When this gets out the whole Mission district’ll be laughing. Full rigor,” I said without pause for the big change of subject. "So that’d mean she was killed before midnight?”

  "Maybe.” He shrugged.

  "The coroner—”

  "Won’t say more.” Before midnight. I’d been with him for dinner, with Adamé after that, which left either one of them plenty of free time. And Macomber Dale, the guy who admitted being at the mouse hole this morning, had been out of my sight almost all night.

  "What’d they ask you?” Serrano demanded.

  It took me a moment to realize "they” was the detective. "About the garage. Who knew about it.”

  "You said?”

  You. I said, "Macomber Dale, the crew, Adamé. Why?”

  "What else?”

  "Who she was. I told them to call Adamé.”

  "You told them that?”

  "Hey, I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

  He shook his head. Then he pulled to the curb. "You know you could’ve been stuck in the station all night. I saved you. You should be thanking me.” He reached across me and shoved open the door.

  36

  Serrano pulled away, leaving me on a garbage-strewn corner convenient to nothing. He made another right and headed south. He was going somewhere fast, and I needed to know where. And, more to the point, why.

  But it didn’t matter where, because I had no wheels.

  And even if I had them, he’d be out of sight before I could tail him.

  But, dammit, he didn’t light out of here like that for nothing. He may not have known what I did, but I sure didn’t have a clue what he was after.

  I had to get a car and I had to delay him. Long shots both. The car would take some doing, but if I didn’t slow up Serrano first, the car wouldn’t matter.

  And when he realized I’d set him up, he’d be out for bear.

  I slipped into the first alley. If Serrano noted my phone number on his cell phone I’d be . . . bear. But he hadn’t paid attention before. If he answered—but he hadn’t always done that either. I spent precious seconds picturing myself at a desk outside his office. Then I punched in his number.

  "Leave a message.”

  I was so relieved I almost sighed. "Detective, the chief’s on his way to the crime scene. He’s demanding to talk to you. He’s—” I garbled a couple words and hung up. Then I pulled out the tow company card and called Shane. "Are you still at the garage?”

  "Yeah, I’m here. Cooling my heels watching nothing. Car’s sitting at the curb where I left it. No point in me being here. I got nothing to say. I told them, the lot of ’em. I got—”

  "Okay, okay, I get the idea! The tow lot on Folsom, you said you’ve got an arrangement with them. Can I pick up a car there?”

  "Hey, those cars belong to people. They’re not Avis.” Suddenly he was all business. "I’ve got standards, principles—”

  "How much?”

  "Five for the night.”

  "Two and I need to be out the gate in five minutes.”

  "Hey, I can’t even get outta here in that time.”

  "Make a call. Extra hundred.”

  "Okay, but I’m not promising condition. Like I said, it’s only an arrangement, me with them, not like I—. And you gotta have it back by morning.”

  I double-checked the address and ran.

  By the time I hit the tow yard I was panting too hard to speak. The car, a Camaro, was a CHP magnet, and white, the easiest color to spot on the road. "Why’d . . . this get towed?”

  His reply was a take-it-or-leave-it shrug. I took the keys.

  The surest spot to pick up Serrano’d be the one place I didn’t dare show my face—the crime scene. But I had an advantage there. After all the years of dropping off cars at the mouse hole, waiting for my brothers or my sister, Gracie, after they’d parked in the garage, I knew the area. The first year I had my license, I’d followed John, waited while he picked up something, tailed him home without being made, and won five bucks each from my other brothers.

  The alley I’d used back then was on the far side of the cross street. Serrano’d have to pass me when he left.

  I circled around, got caught at two red lights, and had barely turned into the alley when my phone rang.

  "Mike! I’m a little busy. What’s up?”

  Brakes screeched. The crime scene! Serrano! He slammed out of the car, grabbed the nearest guy in blue. He was yelling. Running, banging back into the car. Tires squealed as he shot forward, did a 180, and flew past my
corner.

  I hit the gas.

  "What’s going on?”

  "I’m on his tail.”

  "Whose tail?”

  "Cockroach. Gotta go.” I tossed the phone on the seat.

  Serrano was three blocks ahead and moving out. If he made the light at Cesar Chavez he’d be on the freeway before I finished looking at red. He’d be heading south, or north, and I’d have no idea which.

  I stepped on it, closing in. Just a block between us.

  The light at Cesar Chavez turned amber. Serrano shot through and swung left.

  I cleared it as amber turned to red, barely missing a van when it jumped the light.

  All three lanes of Cesar Chavez—formerly Army Street—were jammed and moving fast. I cut right, in front of a truck. Now an SUV with dark windows clogged the view. I veered right again. Was he in this center lane? That’d mean he was headed under the underpass, aiming to go downtown.

  No sign of him.

  I moved left. A horn blared behind me. Two cars ahead was Serrano, easing onto the on-ramp. He was getting on the freeway south. I followed close; I had bigger worries than being spotted.

  I grabbed the phone and called Mike. "He’s going south—south!—on 101! Maybe he’ll head for the coast, but—”

  "Yeah, odds are the airport.”

  "’xactly. Any chance you can see reservations?”

  "You want me to hack into airline reservations? You must think I’m God.”

  "Are you?”

  "Maybe.”

  "Can you check for Serrano?”

  "Not if he just bought a ticket. Nothing gets posted that fast.”

  I nodded as if to say okay, as if he could see me. "If he’s headed to SFO, he’s after Aaron Adamé—”

  "Because?”

  "Serrano doesn’t care about the murder. He’s after Adamé. Adamé’s kept him at bay for years. By now it’s personal. He thought he was setting up a sting of sorts with a double for Adamé’s wife, but instead, Adamé stung him. And I just stung him again. He’s pissed. He’s not wasting time.”

  "So where’re you getting all this?”