Hard Fall

by Pascal Scott

  Elizabeth slouched, as if the conversation was beginning to bore her. She looked at the prisoner on her left, another young woman in an orange jumpsuit, having a quiet conversation with a little girl on the other side of the glass. The little girl was being watched protectively by an older woman with a sour expression. Elizabeth looked back at Stone.

  “You were there,” she answered. “And you were easy.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Wow,” Stone said.

  She hung up the phone and stood. She had never taken off her commitment ring, she realized suddenly. She was still wearing the damn ring. She yanked it off her finger and left it on the counter on her side of the transparent wall between them.

  “Goodbye, Emily.”

  Chapter Fifty-six

  “You think she’ll get murder?” Stone asked.

  “I doubt it. A good attorney could argue for involuntary manslaughter. And well, Elizabeth Taylor Bundy is probably a sociopathic personality. Sociopaths can be very charming. She may charm the jury. But I doubt she’ll be acquitted. That’s the case against her in California. In Georgia, she’d have to stand trial for attempted murder. One way or another, she’ll do serious prison time.”

  Zoe sipped her wine, watching the sun set over the Sausalito marina.

  “Do you think we’ll ever know what really happened?” Stone asked. She was drinking beer.

  “Probably not. All we’ll ever know is what she tells the court.”

  “Have you talked to Emily’s father?”

  “I have.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “The way you might imagine. He said it’s too bad she’s not being tried in Indiana because they still have the death penalty there. Electrocution.”

  “Wow.”

  Zoe changed the subject. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “My folks want me to have dinner with them. Or I could have dinner with Marcus and his new boyfriend.”

  “Marcus has a new boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he work at State, too?”

  “No, he works for a florist.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Yeah. What are you doing?”

  “I’m driving up to Sonoma to spend it with my family. You wanna come with me?”

  “What? And meet your family?”

  “Yeah, we’ve been saying it’s time to do that. And you never did take me up on my offer to teach you how to shoot. We’ve got that shooting range on the estate. What do you think? Go up, spend a long weekend? Shooting, fishing—”

  “Fishing?”

  “There’s a lake on the property, too.”

  “Wow. Just how rich are the Martinellis?”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. So what do you say, huh, Stone?”

  “Only if I can take you home to meet my family next. Maybe for Christmas.”

  “I would love to meet your family.”

  “That’s because you haven’t met them.”

  “That’s a deal,” Zoe said. She raised her glass. “To family.”

  “A la familia,” Stone replied. “Teaghlach go deo. Family forever.”

  They watched the sun disappear beyond the horizon, splashing the sky and water with vibrant reds and yellows. Soon the lights of the city would come on, one by one. They would watch from the deck of the houseboat on Freedom Dock, and then later, they would watch from Zoe’s bed, through the big clean window, as the stars came out in the night sky. And then finally, with Zoe safely in her arms, Stone would sleep. She would sleep the whole night through.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  At the sound of the door chime, Elizabeth came out of the kitchen and peered down the hallway. Someone was standing behind the beveled glass. She glanced at her watch. It was 6:05 p.m. She had to be at work by 8:00 p.m. Walking toward the door, she was stopped by the vision of a ghost on the other side of the glass.

  “Emily,” she said, opening the door.

  “In the flesh,” Emily replied.

  “My God! I’m, uh, surprised to see you.”

  “I’ll bet,” Emily said, advancing through the doorway.

  At the curb, a yellow taxi was pulling away. Elizabeth closed the door behind them. Emily surveyed the long parquet-floored hallway that led to the kitchen at the far end of the house. She glanced right at a dieffenbachia in a blue ceramic pot. The plant was beside a narrow table displaying one lone, fist-sized cluster of quartz crystal. Emily stepped to the table and picked it up, holding it in one hand.

  “Nice touch,” she told Elizabeth before setting it back down.

  She glanced right to the entryway to the living room and the door to the bedroom, and then left to the door that led to the garage. After taking it all in, she set her steely blue eyes on Elizabeth. “I’d kill for a drink,” she said.

  “Sure,” Elizabeth responded.

  Even though it wasn’t her house, Emily led the way to the kitchen. That was so typical of Emily, Elizabeth thought—that assertiveness, that authority, that Emily sense of confidence and entitlement. Emily was wearing heels, tight jeans, and a light sweater that was gold in color. She looked perfect. She always looked perfect. Like a fucking beauty queen contestant. Emily seated herself at the small oval table in the kitchen, pushing aside a stack of books piled on the stained tablecloth. Elizabeth opened the freezer of the refrigerator fronted with postcards and photographs.

  “I think we’ve got some Absolut in here.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Here it is,” she said, pulling out a frosted bottle. “Somebody gave it to us for Christmas.”

  “Us?”

  “My girlfriend and me.”

  “Girlfriend, huh. Good for you.”

  “How do you take it these days?”

  “Same as always. On the rocks.”

  Elizabeth set the bottle on the counter and took out a tray of ice cubes, then reached up to a cupboard and pulled down two short tumblers. After filling the glasses with ice, she poured in the vodka as Emily made the two fingers sign. Elizabeth brought the glasses to the table and sat down.

  “Salud,” Emily said, lifting her tumbler.

  “Salud,” Elizabeth repeated as the glasses clinked together.

  Elizabeth took a sip. It was strong. She wasn’t used to drinking strong liquor. Emily took a long swallow. Obviously, she was.

  “It’s been awhile,” Elizabeth said.

  “It has,” Emily agreed.

  “How’d you find me?”

  Emily smiled. “It wasn’t hard. In fact, it was like looking in a mirror.”

  Elizabeth sipped her vodka. “Mm-hum.”

  “You seem to be doing well,” Emily continued, swirling her ice cubes. “A house, a girlfriend, an income. You’ve got it all, don’t you? It seems that you thought of everything. Except me.”

  She finished her drink in one long swallow and lifted her glass in a gesture that meant more. Elizabeth obliged with fresh ice and two more ounces of vodka before reseating herself. She took a deep breath.

  “What do you want, Emily?” she said flatly.

  “What do I want?” Emily repeated, more slowly. “Now that is a good question.” She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe I want my life back, maybe that’s what I want.”

  “I understand,” Elizabeth said. “And we can talk about that. I can explain everything.”

  “I’m sure,” Emily said sarcastically.

  “But this is not a good time for me. I’ve got to leave for work soon. Maybe we can get together after my shift?”

  Emily drained her vodka and set her glass on the table with a loud clunk. “Yes,” she said, standing. “That would be good. Let’s do that.”

  “There’s a place in the Castro. Hot ‘n Hunky. It’s open all night. Why don’t I meet you there, around 2:30?”

  “Fine,” Emily said. She stood, squared her golden shoulders, and began walking toward the front door.

  �
��Can I drop you off somewhere?” Elizabeth asked, following her.

  Emily waved away the offer with a loose wrist. “Don’t bother. I’ll get a cab.”

  Emily’s long fingers were reaching for the front doorknob.

  “Where are you staying?” Elizabeth asked conversationally. “With friends?”

  Emily glanced back at Elizabeth. “No, I’m at the Wingfield.”

  She turned her back again on Elizabeth, her hand on the brass doorknob. Her cashmere sweater looked so soft that Elizabeth had the sudden urge to caress it. No. Elizabeth shook her head to clear it. In another moment, Emily would be gone. She needed to think. Did anyone know Emily was in town? It seemed not, if she was staying at a hotel. Had she told anyone? Revealed what she knew? Elizabeth couldn’t be sure. She never knew with Emily. She had never understood how her brain worked, that brilliant, mean, game-playing brain. She had to think. But there was no time to think.

  Emily’s long fingers were still on the brass doorknob, turning it as if in slow motion. She paused there, seeming to remember something. Elizabeth’s hand had begun moving of its own volition toward the hall table.

  “Oh, Lizzie,” Emily began, turning slightly, “one last thing—”

  Elizabeth swung the quartz cluster in a long, deliberate arc. One particularly sharp crystal landed squarely on the side of Emily’s head just above her right temple. Emily’s face took on a strange, dazed expression. A small gash opened in her blond hair, filling with red, almost like a highlight.

  “Hey,” Emily said, going down on her knees.

  Damn it! Elizabeth thought. She hadn’t planned this. Emily had brought this on herself. There was no turning back now. Elizabeth stepped in front of the kneeling figure, reduced to this ridiculously weak position on her knees. Who’s queen now? Elizabeth felt her hands go around Emily’s throat. She squeezed. She shook Emily’s head back and forth, pressing her thumbs against the fragile bones of her throat. Elizabeth closed her eyes and thought of her foster father, in the garage with the door shut and no escape. She squeezed harder and harder, forcing out the memory of him and of Emily, of Mistress Gina and Buddy, and everyone who had ever used her.

  Emily’s throat made an odd gurgling sound as her feet kicked out of her heels. She flailed and fought, and then her shoulders stiffened, and she gasped one last time before her body went limp. Elizabeth held on for a few seconds more before letting go. Emily’s head rolled back loosely, her mouth hanging open in an obscene O. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated so that there was only a small outer circle of their vivid blue. Elizabeth released her grip and stood. The body fell away from her and lay back, crumpled in a strange, contorted pose. Elizabeth shook her head again to clear it as she came back to herself.

  Damn it! She had to think. She checked her watch. It was 6:30 p.m.. She had to be at work by 8:00 p.m. There was no time, no time. She had to think. Disengaging herself from the body, she leaned over the corpse—what she assumed was now a corpse—and felt the throat for a pulse. There was none.

  She stood and considered. Opening the garage door, she realized that the sliding door of the van was right in front of her, two steps down and a few feet away. How convenient. She hadn’t planned to kill Emily, but if she had, she couldn’t have planned it better. Stone would be drinking at Mabel’s until at least 8:00 p.m., maybe later. Elizabeth looked at the hallway. Except for the crystal on the parquet floor, there was no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened. She would wipe up the blood—on the crystal, on the wood—before she left for the club.

  She slid the van door open. The cargo area was still covered with the tarp she had used when she had bought the dieffenbachia for the entryway. Maybe there is such a thing as fate, Elizabeth thought. Maybe there really is karma. Emily was heavier than she looked or maybe that was the true meaning of “dead weight.” Elizabeth put her elbows under Emily’s armpits and dragged her through the doorframe to the garage. All 120 pounds of Emily’s body had settled in her calves and feet, it seemed. Her center of gravity had lowered.

  Elizabeth struggled, moving backward carefully down the two steps, the corpse thumping down and finally propelling both of them backward through the open door of the van. Elizabeth let the top half of Emily’s body sit awkwardly against the opened van door while she slipped around her. Kneeling in front of the body, Elizabeth pushed. It wouldn’t budge. She put her shoulders into it and tried again without success.

  She stood, took a deep breath, and tried one last time, emitting a loud groan as she did. The body went up and into the van. Elizabeth fell over from the effort. She righted herself and arranged the corpse, pulling and unfolding an emergency blanket she kept in the back of the van. She covered the body with the blanket, tucking it into place. Then she slid the door closed.

  She checked her watch. It was 6:55 p.m. She wouldn’t have time to dump the body, and where the fuck do you dump a body? She hadn’t planned this. She wasn’t a killer. This was all crazy. She had to stay calm. She closed the garage door and went to the kitchen. Taking a glass out of the dish basin, she poured a straight shot of vodka. Breathe, breathe, she told herself. From under the sink, she grabbed a spray bottle of Lysol cleaner and a dust cloth. In the hallway, she scrubbed the wood floor where amazingly only a small amount of blood had dropped. She took the quartz chunk to the bathroom and washed it with soap and water until it shone. Crystals are healing, that was what everyone said. Ha!

  She dried the crystal on a hand towel and returned the rock to the hall table. Retracing her steps, she put the Lysol in the kitchen cabinet and tossed the dust cloth in the clothes bin in the laundry room, then thought better of it and threw the cloth in the trash. She pulled the bag out of the can and walked it out the back door to the big aluminum trash can outside.

  She came back in and considered another vodka. But no, she didn’t want to risk getting pulled over by the police. That was all she needed! Instead she made a cup of strong coffee. She needed to think. She needed to think.

  She checked the flat one last time and then drove to work. She parked on Broadway, leaving the body in the van. By the end of her shift, Elizabeth had come up with a plan. She would drive to the Marin Headlands, to Raptor Ridge, the spot that she and Stone had discovered on a rough road that circled up and around to the very edge of the cliffs. That’s where you dump a body.

  ****

  At 2:30 a.m., at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, Elizabeth took the Alexander Avenue exit, turning left at a stop sign, then right on Conzelman Road. She followed the road up more than nine hundred feet through the fog until she had reached the summit of Raptor Ridge. At the end of the gravel road, her van came to a chain, hanging loosely between two short metal poles, placed far enough apart to allow access by emergency vehicles. She turned the van around and backed through the chain, breaking it neatly. Watching her sideview mirrors, she moved backward slowly until she was as close to the edge as she dared.

  Jumping out of the driver’s seat, she left the door open, the headlights on, and the motor running. In one movement, she slid open the side door. The interior light came on, revealing her dead cargo. Pulling back the blanket, she saw Emily’s lifeless shape. Elizabeth felt the bile rise in her throat and fought it down. She took a deep breath. It was almost over.

  Hoisting herself up into the bed, she slid behind the corpse, rolling it until it fell heavily onto the gravel. She stepped down onto the road, kneeled, and pushed, rolling the body over and over. The hill was flat until about fifteen feet from the cliff, where it angled down toward the edge. She struggled, rolling the dead weight until it hit the angle and rolled of its own accord, down and down and finally over, dropping on its own. She watched the body go over the edge. Elizabeth stood back and listened. She could hear the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below, but nothing more. No splash. No indication that the body had found water below and not sand. She walked slowly, cautiously toward the ledge and looked down. She saw phosphorescent
waves breaking on black rocks. She squinted and tried to see more. But there was nothing, no sign of Emily at all.

  She looked around. No one. Nothing. Not even a bird. She drove the van back to the Vista Point parking lot at the north end of the bridge. The tarp and emergency blanket went into a trash can. She emptied the glove compartment of everything she had inside—the vehicle registration, a pack of gum, a pair of sunglasses, a ballpoint pen, a nail file—and dumped it all. Reaching into the garbage container, she pulled up a couple of Coke bottles and a McDonald’s bag and arranged them on top of her evidence. Returning to the van, she rolled down the window and left the keys in the ignition. This was San Francisco. It would be gone before sunrise and chopped down to be sold as parts.

  Looking toward Sausalito, Elizabeth started the fifty-minute walk along the path made for tourists, the scenic one by the ocean. She knew exactly where she was going, the only place now where she would be safe.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  When the guest in room 621 of the Wingfield failed to check out by noon, the day manager sent a clerk up to remind her. The manager, a mild-mannered, conscientious gentleman, ran a tight ship at the four-star property where he had been employed for nearly a decade. Originally from London, Mr. Terence Swan considered himself fortunate to have found this job in San Francisco, which, like London, was a world-class city. Mr. Swan respected status and standards; he liked to have things done properly.

  The clerk, a younger man new to the hospitality industry, reported back that the room was undisturbed, the bed still made with its signature towel animal, a puppy, lying in front of two luxury pillows. A Louis Vuitton suitcase lay unopened on the folding luggage rack. The only sign that someone had once inhabited the room was an empty mini-bottle of vodka and a glass of melted ice cubes.

  The clerk asked what he should do. Mr. Swan instructed him to retrieve the suitcase, put it in their lost and found, and have the floor maid clean the room. Checking the hotel’s records, he saw that room 621 had been booked for only one night, the night of Thursday, October 12, 1989. The guest had given her most recent residence as an address in Mexico but had failed to provide a phone number. She had used a Platinum VISA card. Mr. Swan ran the charge. It went through. The bill was paid in full. He made a note to remind himself to send a standard letter with a personalized salutation, alerting the guest to the item left behind. In the meantime, the suitcase would remain in the hotel’s lost and found for one year. If it was not retrieved by then, it and its contents would be given to charity.