Obstruction of Justice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  He drew the name out, enjoying the words on his tongue, obviously relishing the opportunity to talk about a woman that still lived in his heart while others had moved on and forgotten her.

  "Do you have a picture?"

  Hallowell pulled out a three-by-five glossy, handing it over to Paul. The picture, taken outdoors in sunlight, showed a woman’s face. A tanned young woman with neat dark brown hair smiled, but not too generously, holding back some. Small, even teeth gleamed in a full-lipped mouth. Because of the sun, half of her face was shaded, and the strong, straight nose cast a shadow over one glowing cheek. Dark eyes, intelligent-looking, brown probably, crinkled up in the light. She had been a pretty girl who wanted to be taken seriously, Paul guessed.

  "That picture was taken three weeks before she died," Hallowell said.

  "Bad luck," Paul said. "Makes you wonder whether there’s any justice in the world. Criminology was my field too. Any kids?"

  "She had a miscarriage the year before, and we were trying again." He paused. "So, no."

  "Other than her work, what did she like to do?"

  "She loved to ride, ski, hike, skate, bike, camp. Anything outdoors. She loved to get out." As Hallowell talked about his wife, the restraint that had been part of him for as long as Paul had known him fell away, the features on his face softening and looking more human. "And although she had a solemn side, she could be funny as hell."

  "Excuse me for saying so, and granted, I only see you between four walls, but you’ve never struck me as an outdoorsy type yourself. Your job doesn’t lend itself to abundant free time."

  "She got me out, when she could. She taught me about nature. I still hike whenever I get a chance."

  "You brought the police reports?" Paul asked.

  "Everything. Here." He passed over the file with a relieved sigh.

  "Tell me what happened."

  "I always think how normal it was, how comfortable it was that day when she got home. I was at my desk in the living room. I’d come home early to finish some work. I don’t even remember what case I was working on. I did work at home sometimes, although she played a game about it with me. She would ’kidnap’ me, take me to dinner or a movie. You think you have to do the work right then, that you can never make it up, but somehow the work always gets done. It’s the rest of life that stays unfinished....

  "So that night, I was preoccupied. She told me she wanted to talk to me about something." His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap. "She liked to talk, so I didn’t think much about it. But this time ..." Hallowell stopped dead.

  "Yes?" Paul prompted after a long moment.

  "I figured whatever it was she wanted to talk about could wait for half an hour. I knew she planned to go to the grocery store that afternoon before dinner. I had been counting on that time to finish my work, so I told her to go on to the store and that we’d go for a walk after dinner and talk. She loved walking outside after dark, especially during the summer. She knew all the constellations and would point them out to me. What’s that old Irish expression? ’May the seven summer stars shine on you, may heaven’s brightest angels bless you’.... She was an angel, Paul...."

  As Hallowell continued, his expression alternately nostalgic and agitated, Paul saw that he was reliving those last moments, every word that had passed between them, every chance he had passed up to change his wife’s destiny.

  "I walked her to the door. She had this bright orange-colored dress on under her suit jacket; pretty, like a sunset. I pulled the jacket off her and hung it in the closet, telling her she wouldn’t need it, it was so warm. At the door, we didn’t kiss, just hugged. She had a way of collapsing in my arms when I held her, like it was the only place she could really relax, but in retrospect I realize that this time she didn’t relax. There was something on her mind. And I’ll never know what it was. Something small and silly? Or something that led to her death?"

  "She was tense?" Paul asked, bringing him back.

  "Yes. When I realized how upset she was, I said, okay, the food can wait; let’s talk. But she was halfway out the door. She said she would hurry, but now she wanted to go and get it done.

  "So I let her go." Hallowell’s voice broke. He looked down at the floor. Paul could imagine how many sleepless nights that instant had cost him.

  "She took the car down to Raley’s at the state line. The air-conditioning was broken, so she must have parked at the far edge of the lot under the trees to keep the car cool.

  "After shopping, she headed back to the car. About fifty feet before she reached it, after she had already opened the locks with the remote on her key chain, a large light-colored car came across the lot and hit her from the left. She hit the windshield and fell off."

  "Died immediately?"

  "Massive brain damage, but she lived for two days."

  "And the car?"

  "No skid marks. Never slowed down."

  "Terrible. But that’s a busy corner. The lot must have been full of shoppers. Couldn’t anyone describe the car better than that?"

  "Nobody else had parked that far out. There was only one witness, a woman. She ran after the car to get the license plate number but she hurt her ankle and had to stop."

  "You’ve talked to her yourself?"

  "Of course. Kim Voss. Her statement is in the file. She’ll talk to you."

  "No trace of the car?"

  "Permanently disappeared in somebody’s garage, or driven to Mexico and parted out, but not repaired over a two-hundred-mile radius, I guarantee you that." Hallowell’s jaw clenched, and Paul got a glimpse of the steely resolve that would not let him give up or let go.

  "Sometimes the car leaves ... traces on the victim," Paul said, choosing his words with care.

  "She hit the bumper, then the windshield," Hallowell said. "No paint chips. The autopsy and lab reports are in the file." He polished off the beer, his head leaning back, his throat working as he swallowed it. Paul had another one open and waiting for him, which Hallowell took without comment, setting it neatly next to the empty.

  "Even though they never found the car or the driver, her death was ultimately ruled an accident, of course," Hallowell went on. "There was no evidence of premeditation."

  "And she gave you no hint at all about what she wanted to discuss?"

  "No. Later I talked with her boss, Marvin Gates. He couldn’t think of anything unusual."

  "None of her clients had threatened her? That happens to probation officers. Somebody goes back inside because she gives him a bad report. A relative blames her for not doing her job, or for doing it too well."

  "There were no threats I had heard or that Gates knew about. He had nothing but praise for Anna. He said she had a rare rapport with offenders. Said her clients liked her, in fact."

  "Did he know who she saw that day?"

  "He had a list of her appointments, but that’s next to useless. Anna wanted to help these people, and she tried to be accessible whenever possible. If someone came in before they were due, she always accommodated them, so some people she saw on that day might not show up on that list."

  "Anyone else in the office who might know exactly who came in that day?"

  "It’s a busy place and each officer operates fairly independently. They had very heavy loads. I doubt anyone else was keeping track of Anna’s clients other than Anna and her boss, but even he could only give her half an eye."

  "Who was Anna supervising at that time?"

  "She had sixty-two felons, mostly women but a few men, on her case list."

  Paul whistled.

  "Most of them were nonviolent, drugs and white-collar stuff. They checked in, they gave her the forms from whatever detox program or counseling thing they were in. She called the workplaces to make sure they were still there on the job and helped ’em when she could. You know the routine. She did what she had to do, but she tried to be compassionate."

  "Still," Paul said.

  "Still," Hallowell agreed. "It could be one of th
em."

  "It’s been three years," Paul said.

  "For a long time, I expected the guy would come out of the woodwork if I was just patient," Hallowell said. "Somebody would get picked up on an unrelated charge and have some information to trade, or a wife would find out and have a crisis of conscience, I don’t know. But it never happened."

  "So why start this whole thing up again?"

  "Because ... I haven’t been able to move on. It’s affecting my work, my attempts to have a life outside work. I went for a hike a week ago—you may have heard about it from Nina. The damnedest thing happened. A terrific storm came up. Another hiker who had come up just behind us was struck by lightning and died. I had been thinking about Anna the whole way up the trail, about one time when we hiked that same trail. I don’t know if it was the storm, exposure, the shock.... I didn’t handle it very well. In fact, I had a little breakdown or something. I thought this dead guy I was giving CPR to was Anna. I realized I—I’m not much good for ... anyone else. I have to know. Who killed her? Why did she die?"

  "You were hiking with Nina, huh?" Paul said.

  "Right."

  Paul got up and went to his window, looking down at the Hog’s Breath Inn’s outdoor courtyard, where the happy-hour crowd was sitting around in their casual California togs mellowing out on merlot or chardonnay from the little local vineyard where they’d gone wine-tasting that afternoon. In a little while they would meander down Ocean Boulevard to the main beach to watch the sunset, pleasantly fuzzy, just the way he intended to be in half an hour.

  So Hallowell was the reason for his recent demotion by Nina to best buddy.

  "I don’t want revenge," Hallowell was saying. "I just want some peace...."

  "I oughta take her over my knee and spank her," Paul said to the heedless happy people.

  "What?"

  "Never mind," Paul said, turning back to face Hallowell. "I’m expensive."

  "I haven’t had much to spend my money on. This seems like a good buy."

  "I’m based here. You’d have to cover my expenses at Tahoe."

  "Fine," Hallowell said. "You’d have a free hand."

  Paul thought, This might be a good time to go up there.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "Just going over my schedule mentally," Paul said. "I could get up there on Monday."

  "Great."

  "You staying over tonight?"

  "I’m driving back in the morning."

  "You like sushi?"

  "My daddy was a samurai."

  "Good, because I know a Japanese joint called the Robata with eel and squid and all that good squishy stuff. Let’s go get a bite to eat, talk some more about your case. And mutual friends."

  "Mutual friends? You mean Nina?" Hallowell said.

  "Why, yes. I do mean Nina," said Paul.

  5

  IT’S YOUR OWN HOME, NOT TOO BIG TO HANDLE, with a fence and a gate, on a plot of land, your land. It’s your fireplace in winter, in which you build fires from the woodpile outside, and your garden in summer, bursting with vegetables. Through tall windows what feels like your own sunlight pours in. Soft rugs caress your hardwood floors, a thick comforter protects your bed, oranges on the table welcome you home from the fray....

  Nina was dreaming. Her dream was so peaceful, so nice. She lived in a chalet under the pines, and no one knew her address....

  Someone was pounding on the door. She stuck her arm out from under the covers and looked groggily at her watch. Nine-fifteen. Saturday morning. Correction, someone was not pounding. Matt’s new dog, a large slobbering hound named Hitchcock with a checkered past she didn’t care to think about, wanted in. He liked Nina. He loved her. She rued the day Matt had taken in this mangy cur.

  His scratching at the door was like fingernails on a blackboard. She knew what he wanted. He wanted a walk. Well, by God, somebody else could take him, this was her day off, and ...

  Hitchcock left her alone for a minute, then commenced a kind of keening, like a black, furry banshee. "No!" she commanded. Peace descended, and she felt the snoozes taking her down into that soft, delicious place.... The keening resumed, gaining in intensity, punctuated by occasional nerve-shattering scrapes on the door.

  Cursing, she sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Bob was still off in San Francisco visiting his father, and she could really use some time to herself, but she wasn’t going to get it in Matt’s household, with his two kids bouncing off the hallway walls and Hitchcock whining and Matt drilling in the garage.

  She had been living with Matt and Andrea in Matt’s house on Pony Express for almost two years, ever since her move to Tahoe from San Francisco and her divorce from Jack McIntyre. They had been as good as gold to her, helping with Bob, giving them both a warm and well-run household to live in. But the arrangement was supposed to be temporary.

  Sometimes her work caused trouble for the family. Although Matt understood how much she loved her work, he hated what she did. He considered her legal work, as mundane as it usually was, riddled with potential violence. In those rare moments when things got out of hand, he had been too involved not to notice. Matt and Andrea must feel crowded at times, as crowded as she felt this morning.

  A deep, loud bark came from the door.

  "I’m going to get you, you dirty dog," Nina said, hobbling over to him, wrapping her robe around her.

  When Nina finally made it to the kitchen for coffee, Andrea was already tossing dirty cereal bowls into a sinkful of suds, her red hair looking almost toned down above her brick-red shirt. "There’s our big filthy beast," Andrea crooned, waving a bowl at the dog. "Ready for your kibble, boy?" Hitchcock perked up his floppy ears, trotting eagerly toward his food bowl, drool hanging from one flap of his jaws. While Andrea tenderly mashed canned dog food into the kibble, Nina made herself a bowl of Rice Krispies and a cup of coffee. She said, "I had to put him on a leash at the bottom of the hill. He was chasing the cars."

  "He’s not very bright," Andrea said. "But he does have a way about him." She smoothed his coat while Hitchcock crunched through an enormous bowl of kibble.

  Matt slammed through the open back door, grabbed a cup from the shelf, poured himself coffee, and sat down, shooting a spray of fine sawdust in all directions.

  "Has anyone else ever noticed that everything men do is noisy?" asked Nina. She didn’t see much of Matt these days. He spent most of his spare time lately in the garage.

  "And grungy," Andrea added, giving him a careful kiss on the forehead. She put a hand up to push back his hair. "You have to hunt for a clean spot."

  "Good morning to you, too, ladies," said Matt, bending down to pet Hitchcock, who had appeared at his side and cocked his head at just the right height for an arm hanging at loose ends.

  Matt had a frizzle of ash color over his ears these days. A dirty cap disguised the rest of his hair, but couldn’t hide his mood. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind, a lot to do, as disturbed and lacking in peace as Nina was. The hand he rested on one knee jittered to the rhythm of his private thoughts.

  "Matt, I’ve been thinking ..." started Nina.

  Matt stood up abruptly, holding tight to his cup, screeching the wooden legs of his chair over the floor and heading briskly for the back door. "Man, this morning’s flying by. Well, I’ll leave you ladies to your chat...."

  "Matt, sit down. This will only take a minute," said Nina firmly, "and it concerns you, too."

  He sighed, and sat down.

  "I’ve been thinking. You guys have been so great to us. Bob and me. You’ve put up with a lot."

  "True," said Matt.

  Andrea swatted at him with her hand.

  "But when we came here, we only meant to stay until I knew what I would be doing. Now I’m settled here. I really want to know whether you guys are still happy with the arrangement. I mean, we could find a place of our own now. Bob’s old enough to bike a few blocks to see his cousins, and I’ve been making some money. Maybe everyone’s
ready for that?"

  Andrea came over and sat down by her at the table. She had a redhead’s milky skin and freckles, and a no-nonsense way about her. A part-time director of the Tahoe Women’s Shelter, she carried responsibility as if it weighed nothing. She cooked, she cleaned, she raised kids and held a responsible job. She was an affront to working women like Nina who could barely cope with half that.

  "You could find a place close by," Matt said.

  "Matt does have a use for the space," Andrea said at the same time.

  So she had guessed right. It was time to move.

  After Matt descended down the stairs into the cave of his garage workshop, Nina pushed back her chair, fending off Hitchcock, and said, "Well, no time like today. I’m going to start looking around."

  "You know, Nina, we love you guys. You don’t have to rush."

  Nina was grimacing. She and Bob had overstayed their welcome. Sheer laziness and her own self-absorption had prevented her from recognizing what had clearly become an issue for Matt and Andrea.

  Andrea said apologetically, "They’re forecasting an early winter, with lots of snow. I know he’s worrying about getting things in order. He’s got two tow trucks now, and three more he wants to buy. It’s turning into a good winter business. I hate to tell you this, but I have a feeling he’s got his eye on your room for an office. "

  "Oh, it’ll be fun," Nina said. "We’ll buy a castle on the lake. You and Troy and Bree can come visit and zip around in our Boston Whaler without Matt until I find it in me to forgive him for throwing me out."

  Andrea showed the dimple she usually kept sequestered in her right cheek. "We’ll miss all the excitement," she said. "The break-ins, the kidnappings, the shootings ... Find a place close by, okay? One with good security."

  Before leaving the house, Nina called Bob in San Francisco.

  She missed him. A week away from him, even in this bustling household, made her aware how much she depended on him for company. An eleven-year-old boy said and did a number of unexpected things, she was finding out, and she’d only recently realized how much she enjoyed his spontaneity.