by Lia Matera
When I finally caught up to him, he denied he’d done anything to keep me out of trouble. He rejected my gratitude gruffly and utterly, and he never asked me out again.
I tried to tell myself I still owed him. It would have been nice to bathe my reluctance in the soft sepia of an old favor. When I reached Clarke Street, I’d almost persuaded myself that was part of the reason. But most of it, I knew, was moral sloth. I might talk a fine game, but responsibility was so exhausting.
My uncle hadn’t returned yet. I expected he’d stay with the fire until weariness and Johnnie Walker cut the legs out from under him. I left him a short note saying I was back home and in bed. Then I hurried upstairs to make that so.
But I didn’t sleep through the night. The extension phone on my night table woke me at about four in the morning. With all that had happened, I didn’t leave it for the answering machine. I picked up.
It was Jay Bartoli. “Sorry to wake you.” His tone was all business, as if coworkers listened. “I’m phoning in my official capacity to ask if you know the whereabouts of your client, Bradley Rommel.”
“No.” I supposed the police had checked the roster of local pilots at the airport, seen Brad’s name there. But were they waking everyone on the list? Or had they found the charred plane beside his cabin? “I haven’t spoken to Brad since after Tuesday’s hearing. What’s up?” I tried to sound more curious than worried.
“We’re unable to locate him. We’re about to execute a warrant to search his house. Our deputies went up there earlier and found the remains of a small aircraft.” He paused for my reaction.
I couldn’t think of one.
“The aircraft burned up or blew up last night or this morning in front of his house.”
“That’s not where he kept it. He kept it at the airport.”
Bartoli was silent.
“I’d like to be there when you search my client’s house.” Though it was customary for the DA to be present during a search, it was a courtesy rarely afforded defense counsel. “Could you swing it for me, Jay?”
“I guess.” He sounded pleased I knew it was a favor. “You’ll have to park at the end of the paved road and let us escort you the rest of the way up. We’re still sifting debris from the plane.”
“No sign of Brad?”
“No.”
“How bad’s the plane?”
“It’s a shell.”
“Did it crash?”
“We don’t wish to speculate.” His voice was pure deputy: opaque, formal, slightly impatient.
“You’re assuming it was used to bomb the mall.”
“I can’t comment on an investigation in progress.”
“But you don’t have any proof of that, do you?”
“I can’t comment.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to decide whether to press for answers or show my gratitude by shutting up. “Thanks a lot, Jay. I appreciate the call.”
“No problem.” He sounded a little relieved.
“Is the mall fire under control?”
“Pretty close.”
“Anybody dead?”
“Everybody in the theaters got out fine. Fire started at the other end, and the theater’s got good sprinklers. Probably not going to have much damage there. A few laggers got wet, that’s about the worst of it from that end.”
“So no casualties?” His “from that end” suggested otherwise.
“I’m afraid we’ve got one body on the south side. The mall was closed, but … We’re worried about finding other bodies—teenagers hanging around. But we haven’t had any reports of missing persons.”
“Whose body? Do you know?”
“We can’t tell much from what’s left. We’ll have to check dental records.”
I didn’t want that to sink in, not until I was fully awake. “Is the mall going to be a total loss?”
“I never saw a fire so big, but I’m no expert. Your uncle’s probably the one to ask about that.”
I assumed Uncle Henry was home in bed by now. I didn’t ask Bartoli. I’d already spent too much time on the phone. The deputies wouldn’t wait for me to begin searching Rommel’s cabin. “I’ll be up there as soon as I’m dressed, Jay. Thanks again.”
I hurried. Freezing dampness had seeped through the walls, making everything—towels, clothes, shoes—clammy and cold. I didn’t look forward to a shivering drive through dense fog. But I was even less happy about seeing Connie Gold, likely to be there helping to execute the warrant. I didn’t relish lying by omission to her and to the deputies.
I tried to collect my wits. Where was Brad Rommel?
For the first time, it sank in: The reticent kid who’d outrun the police and endured a black eye for me might have grown up to become a killer and a bomber.
Jay Bartoli used to wrestle with Brad, play ball with him, go camping with his brother. Maybe that’s why Jay had been willing to discuss the case with me until now; he hadn’t believed it of an old friend, either. Maybe today he too felt the hackles of uncertainty rise.
I found my Uncle Henry slumped at the dining room table, papers spread over its oiled wood. His face was ashen. Dark circles made slits of his eyes. Even at his drunkest, he didn’t look this sick, this old. I stepped beside him, putting my hand on his shoulder.
“I think they’re going to accuse Brad Rommel of bombing the mall.” Looking down, I could see how much his gray hair had thinned. I could feel how sharp his bones were under his cardigan. The divorce had aged him. His son was gone, his cousin (my father) was dead. Now this.
His head drooped forward. The mall had been his jewel, the one improvement he’d made in a community of dying industries. “Did he do it, Laura?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned with the suddenness of a striking mongoose, knocking my hand from his shoulder. “Screw the son-of-a-bitch!” His eyes were bright, his lips pulled away from his teeth. “How can you defend a bastard like that?”
I took a shocked step back. “I can’t drop him as a client. Everyone would assume I knew he was guilty. That I dropped him because of you.”
“Damn it!” He leaped from the chair. “He bombed the best thing—practically the only good thing—about this county! You’re not going to get him off scot-free!”
The best thing about a county with miles of abandoned beach, first-growth redwoods, plants so lush and ancient it seemed a historic miracle to walk among them? The best thing was its mall?
“I know how you feel.” To my uncle, trees were goods to harvest, plants were nuisances to clear. Progress and prosperity mattered. “But listen. All they have on Brad is that his plane burned up last night. Someone could be trying to frame him.”
“Oh don’t give me your lawyer bullshit. I get enough of lawyers all day long.” He sank heavily back into his chair.
I scanned the table for his usual bottle of Johnnie Walker, seeing instead only lists of bankers and developers.
My uncle was sober. His anger was unmitigated. I bent to give him a quick hug. He reeked of smoke from the mall fire.
He shouted something at me as I walked out. Whatever it was, it would wait. The search warrant wouldn’t.
16
It shocked me how little of the plane remained. It was a mere skeleton of itself, most of its guts smothered under thick foam. No fire truck could be spared, but available county fire extinguishers had been rushed to the scene in sheriff’s cars. They’d been enough to quell what was left of the blaze, which had been close to burning itself out when the deputies came to question Rommel.
The area around it was bright with police spotlights and deputies on hands and knees systematically searching the area. A single fire marshal stood talking to a plainclothes investigator, shaking his head. As I walked past with Jay Bartoli, I heard him say, “No way in the world your people go near that plane f
or another four hours at least. Make sure everything’s cold, good and cold, ‘cause you just can’t tell sometimes. All it takes is one ember and a few drops of fuel still in the tank, and you’ve got burned deputies.”
The air stank of scorched rubber and smoke and firefighting chemicals. We kept our distance going uphill toward the house. I stopped for a moment to gawk.
“All that foam, Jay,” I observed. “Are you sure it’s Rommel’s plane?”
“Whether it is or not,” he stopped walking, “I don’t have to tell you, there’s a difference between enough evidence to get a search warrant and enough to get an arrest warrant.”
“If it’s his plane, you’re going to arrest him for what? Arson?”
“We’ve got a dead body on our hands, so we’re looking at manslaughter or worse.” A snide glance. “In addition to arson.”
“This”—I gestured toward the plane—“could be a frame.”
“Well, he’s got a pilot’s license. And a witness saw a plane circling the mall before the fire. And here’s a goddam plane. Rommel needs to come forward and tell us where he was last night. If he wasn’t in there.” He nodded toward the froth-soaked shell. “We’ve notified the court that we’re unable to locate him, by the way.”
“You’ve only been looking for him, what, two hours? Three? A three-hour absence is not bail-jumping.”
“But remaining available is a condition of his bond.” One side of his face was white from the harsh searchlights around the plane. The other was golden with light spilling from the cabin windows and porch. “If Rommel’s not back soon, we’ll get his bail revoked. We’ll go after him.”
He seemed braced for protest. But deputies were already searing Brad’s cabin. I’d argue later, when it might make a difference.
I started toward the porch. Before I got there, Connie Gold appeared in the door, dramatically narrow in slacks and a square-shouldered jacket. In silhouette, she looked like a stretched claymation figure, in danger of disappearing if she turned sideways.
“Counselor,” she said irritably. She glowered at Bartoli. “On whose authority did you bring Ms. Di Palma?”
“She’s Rommel’s attorney.” He stated the obvious.
“But on whose— Oh, never mind.” She turned and went back inside. “Let’s get on with it.”
The source of her irritability (beyond nature and nurture) became clear within the hour. Rommel’s house had been searched a number of times already. Everything of possible legal detriment had been long since tagged and removed.
We remained at opposite ends of each room as it was searched, careful not to discuss Rommel or our case or the mall bombing. As we had nothing else in common, we stood in frosty silence, watching beefy sheriff’s investigators sort through papers and teaspoons and bed linen and toiletries, finding nothing of particular interest, but evidence-bagging everything not immediately identifiable. Brad Rommel would again return home to find that his colognes and aftershaves gone to the lab for analysis, this time to determine if they’d been used to make firebombs.
Eventually, the room lightened with the dawn. Even ransacked, it retained a mountain hominess enhanced by a wood stove, a rag rug, and afghan-covered couches. The one thing it lacked was framed photographs. Brad had had several scattered over walls and dressers the last time I was here. But most of them had been of himself and Cathy Piatti—at parties, skiing, kayaking on vacation. I guessed he couldn’t bear to have her smiling at him from happier times.
I made a list of everything the deputies bagged. I doubted any of it would help the cops, but it might help Brad to have the list, if only to shop for replacements.
The things I’d dreaded seeing—leather straps, buckles, wire—weren’t there.
I was relieved to walk out into the cold morning. Nothing obviously damaging to Brad had been discovered in the cabin.
As Bartoli and I walked the margin of the driveway, one of the men sifting gravel for clues looked up. “They know yet whose plane it is?” he wondered.
I stopped, turning to Jay. Connie Gold was just a few yards behind us, returning to her car.
“That’s not Rommel’s plane?” I accused him.
He hesitated, glowering at the big-mouthed deputy.
“Is that Brad’s plane?” I repeated.
From behind me, Gold said, “His plane was impounded by order of the court as a condition of bail.” Her tone was sarcastic, “As you should know.”
“Orders can be violated.” It was an effort not to add, “you sneaky bitch.”
“Mr. Rommel’s plane remains booted at the Dungeness Airfield.”
“Then whose plane is this? Where did it come from?”
Bartoli said, “We won’t know till the fire marshal says it’s okay to pick through it.”
The sun had risen behind a wall of white clouds. Above the torn-paper silhouette of trees, the sky glowed like a yellow pearl. In the pale light, the skeleton of the plane dripped foam in spots, steamed in others.
“When we find out where Rommel got the plane,” Gold said sourly, “we’ll be sure to let you know.”
I didn’t turn. “You and your Hollywood agent?”
I continued walking with Bartoli.
“Someone’s out to frame him, Jay,” I said. “Leaving this plane here and blowing it up so you couldn’t get prints off it. Someone’s after Brad Rommel. You’ve got to protect him.” I stopped, putting my hand on his sleeve. “Maybe you believe he’s innocent, maybe you don’t. But the possibility exists. You’ve got to protect him.”
“If we can find him,” Jay said simply. “Though I doubt he’d want that.”
Until this moment, I’d have insisted the police keep away from my client, allow him his privacy despite the fact that he was out on bail and legitimately their concern. “This,” I gestured toward the plane, “changes everything. What if he’d come home and seen it parked there? He could have been blown up with it.”
If the bomb had in fact been rigged with a motion sensor, it might easily have been intended as a trap for Brad.
“If you’d found Brad’s body in the plane or near it, you’d have assumed he’d flown it, wouldn’t you? You’d have closed the books on the Piatti case and on the mall bombing both, wouldn’t you?”
Jay looked down at me with his best poker face. “I really couldn’t speculate.”
“I wish you’d told me it wasn’t Rommel’s plane,” I fretted. As if I could have done something useful.
I looked at my watch. Five hours until Sandy flew in. I wished I’d let him be chivalrous, after all.
17
By the time Sandy arrived, we knew the worst. The body at the south end of the mall wasn’t a loitering teenager, as Jay had feared. But I almost wished it had been. I wished it had been some stranger, some irrelevant tragedy, not part of my case.
Burnt beyond recognition was the woman Brad Rommel was accused of murdering. Cathy Piatti’s body had finally turned up.
It proved Brad Rommel hadn’t tossed Piatti off his boat. But it eliminated the hope of finding her alive. And the corpse was too badly burnt to establish date or cause of death. The DA would probably attempt to prove Rommel had stashed Piatti somewhere, bleeding her to keep her quiet.
Connie Gold, pointing to the charred plane in Rommel’s driveway, would probably accuse him not only of murder, but of bombing the mall.
I sat in the municipal airport waiting room—two rows of connected orange plastic seats—staring at gray and blue flecked linoleum and listening to the clatter of an ancient pinball machine. Sandy’s flight would be filled with freelance reporters. The ones from UP and AP and Newsweek had arrived in leased planes already. Those from the Bay Area had driven up in camera-intensive vans. They all wanted to talk to Brad today. Unfortunately, they’d settle for me.
I recalled a thousand instances of people rapping
at the door for my Uncle Henry, his eyes lighting as conviviality (real or assumed) hit him like a shot of whiskey. After the shouting roomful had cleared, it always took several shots to wind him back down. Just like me and my vodka.
Except that my uncle seemed to enjoy it. And I was tired of publicity. I was tired of limelight and reproach, of cautiously framed responses that were sardonically accepted but never believed. I was in the business of speaking for the record. But sooner or later, I always seemed to succumb to the desire to really say something. It had cost me my last job. I’d have to be careful to keep myself in check this time. The prospect made me weary.
Right on cue, a reporter from Time magazine pushed through the door. Sandy’s plane had landed without my noticing.
The reporter walked swiftly by, hitching the straps of his camera and carry-on. Bill something—I’d met him several times, unfortunately—glanced at me, walked on, stopped. Then he turned back, a smile of wondering good fortune stretching his lean face.
“Di Palma!” He spoke the name with a collegiality he had no right to feel. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna diddy.” Diddy-mau-mau: decades-old slang for ‘leave.’ Like Bill’s ponytail and denim work shirt, it was supposed to tell the world he was still a hippie at heart. A hippie who wrote for Time magazine, organ of the dull, long-winded middle.
“I’m meeting someone.” It was no use being rude, just as it was no use being friendly. Neither would change his behavior.
He sat on the plastic seat next to me, letting his bags slide to the floor. “Have you talked to Brad Rommel today?”
“No.” I watched the door to the airport’s only gate. A older man and woman, as plump and colorfully dressed as Care Bears, entered together.
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Bill kept his tone casual, as if that would lull me into relaxed chat.