by Saul Black
She went down to Computer Forensics. Nathan was on his way out for lunch.
“You’re not going to like me,” she said.
“I don’t like you already. No one does.”
“Can you set me up with the Grant stuff?”
Nathan looked at her. Understood.
“I know, I know,” she said.
He closed his eyes.
“Is it boxed up?”
“Naturally. Where’s the fun for you if it’s not boxed up?”
Twenty minutes later she sat alone in the windowless lab. Four hard drives, no cigarettes, no booze—and no idea what she was looking for.
* * *
It was a long, long day, and she realized halfway through it that she’d chosen this partly to eat up the hours before the conversation she was going to have with Nick at its end. The realization brought panic—but she squashed it. She’d done all the inner wrangling she was going to do. Granted, there was still a blank space when she tried to imagine what would follow from that conversation, but there was stark comfort in knowing that soon everything would be out in the open and at the mercy of their shared forces. At least she’d be free of the burden of secrecy, which—not surprisingly—was now a physical sensation in her belly.
She worked methodically through the files, the emails, the receipts, the photographs, the videos. She kept her mind open, intuitions limber—but she found nothing.
Nathan came back, worked at the other desk in silence, stood over her when he was ready to go, said, “You’re wasting your time, Val,” then left.
By 10:00 P.M. her eyes were aching. There was only the hard drive from the Campbellville desktop left unexamined, but she doubted she had the energy or the will to start on it. She sat back in her chair and stretched. A text from Nick arrived.
Going for drinks with the nerds. Don’t wait up.
No endearment. No x. Fair enough. She’d earned it. It didn’t matter. Trivial hostilities that would evaporate in the face of what she had to tell him.
Still, the idea of going home to an empty apartment and waiting for him didn’t appeal. There would be time to kill, and space in it for her confessional resolve to weaken.
She opened up the Campbellville hard drive.
Sick of looking at print, she started with the My Photos file. Not, truthfully, because she expected them to yield anything, but because there was still, whether she liked it or not, a fascination with this family which, for all the time she’d spent considering it, remained strangely opaque.
The photos were what she’d expected. Thirteen years of ordinary life, albeit of the well-heeled variety. Christmases, Thanksgivings, vacation beaches. A lot on the boat. There was a nightmarish mesmerism to looking at so much normality in full knowledge of where it would end up, namely with Adam Grant murdered. All those moments and days, smiles, glances, poses and funny faces, each snapshot testifying to a terrible ignorance of what lay ahead. It was as if Death was an invisible presence in every picture, smiling, waiting patiently for its appointed time, while the subjects went about the bright business of Being Alive, never for an instant suspecting they weren’t alone. From which it followed, Valerie knew, that we were all in the same predicament. Which person’s photos wouldn’t, in retrospect, have the same invisible guest—if they ended up murdered?
One folder was titled “Better Late than Never.” Opened, it revealed a dozen or so pictures of Rachel Grant’s university graduation—though surely not more than six or seven years ago. Interesting, if irrelevant. Rachel had presumably gone back to school, as what was euphemistically called “a mature student.” Valerie wondered what she’d majored in. Maybe literature, given the omnivorous nocturnal reading. Which thought took her back to the neighbor, Vincent Lyle, he and Rachel exchanging a small-hours wave of shared literary insomnia. Again, it niggled: Dwight Jenner spotted on the Lyles’ back lawn, kitted out in black gear and ski mask. What the fuck, exactly, was he doing there? Okay, better concealed access to the Grants’ from the rear—but why not just get into their yard to start with?
No answer.
Too many no answers.
The next folder was marked “Kruger Party.”
Dan Kruger, obviously.
He appeared in the first of the pictures—though it took her a moment to recognize him, since he was bare-chested in leather trousers with his hair wet, holding what appeared to be a live white dove. He was standing with his arm around a guy dressed, as far as she could tell, as Humphrey Bogart. Costume party then. Kruger, she realized, had made use of his natural coloring (and indeed a basic resemblance) to present himself as Rutger Hauer’s replicant from Blade Runner.
The rest of the pictures—interior and yard of a swanky and clearly very large house—confirmed the theme was movie stars or movie characters. It was only the third time Morticia Addams cropped up in a shot that Valerie recognized her as Fiona Perry. The only people not in costume were the hired hospitality crew, glimpsed here and there bearing trays loaded with champagne flutes or canapés. The guests had taken the dressing up seriously, since they could afford to. All the gear looked professional, tailored, rented. Costume parties, Valerie observed, revealed two kinds of person, one who was happy to put glamor aside, and another who used the opportunity to enhance it. The demographic at Kruger’s bash fell squarely into the second category. There were no King Kongs, Mickey Mouses, or Big Birds. On the other hand there were two Barbarellas and three Jack Sparrows, though none of the men who fancied themselves Johnny Depp looked remotely convincing, and one of them should really have put himself in a corset first.
It took her a while to spot Adam Grant. He was Indiana Jones, pictured raising his glass to the camera, flanked by Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra and Raquel Welch’s fur-bikini’d cavegirl from One Million Years B.C. The latter looked like she’d spent a year working out for it, and the result was, Valerie was forced to concede, impressive.
There were a lot of photographs, and the quality suggested Kruger had hired a professional photographer. Examining them was—after the dreary hours of scouring the other documents—fun. Count Dracula. Princess Leia. The Joker. Scarlett O’Hara. Valerie’s heart warmed to one small guy in his sixties who’d gone, with convincing hilariousness, as Norman Bates’s mother from Psycho. Not surprisingly, since the photographs appeared to be chronological, the costumes and makeup suffered as the evening wore on and people got drunk.
It occurred to her—with a dumb belatedness that scolded her for losing focus—that Rachel Grant hadn’t shown up in any of the images so far. Either that or Valerie had been fooled by a costume. Not invited? Unlikely. Maybe she couldn’t go. Maybe she was away with Elspeth. Maybe she was sick. Clearly, since here were the photographs, Adam Grant hadn’t kept it a secret. Maybe (this seemed feasible, given the little Valerie had seen of her) this just wasn’t Rachel Grant’s kind of thing.
She began going through the remaining twenty or so images with renewed concentration.
Then stopped. At a picture near the end of the collection.
The photograph she was looking at showed Adam (Indiana) with his back to the camera. And his hand resting in the small of a blond woman’s back. She, too, was facing away from the lens. She was wearing a white halter-neck fifties dress that left her arms and shoulders bare. Marilyn. From The Seven Year Itch. The dress of the famous scene where the skirt blows up over the subway grille.
The next picture—Valerie could all but hear the photographer shouting “Hey, you two!” over the noise of the party—changed everything.
In it, “Marilyn” had turned to glance back over her bare shoulder.
The hair wasn’t quite accurate. It was a little longer and more voluminous than its screen original’s.
And shorter than Sophia’s in the three pictures from Adam Grant’s darkroom.
But there was no doubt it was her.
What Adam’s three hidden pictures had obscured—courtesy of the tilted-back head in the kitchen, the fall of the hair in
the study, the gag and blindfold in the bedroom—namely the face, was, in this snatched shot, visible.
Even then Valerie’s circuits jammed. All she could think was why on earth would Adam Grant take his mistress to a party where surely some of the guests would have been expecting his wife? Moreover (sweet satisfaction), it proved Dan Kruger had lied when he said he didn’t know her.
Then she looked at the final photograph in the sequence.
In it, Sophia was staring straight into the camera, frowning.
Valerie forced herself to resist what her eyes told her. In the moment of resistance she heard some inner voice—or rather a combination of voices, only one of which might have been her own—saying How could you not, but why would she, he took it or she did with a timer, you only see what you’re expecting to see, that’s the trouble, expectation. You see what you’re expecting to see. Expectation is blindness. You never saw the face, really. You never, clearly, saw it.
She enlarged the image.
The resistance melted away.
The woman dressed as Marilyn Monroe, the woman in the photographs from the drawer in Adam Grant’s darkroom; the woman bent over the desk; half-naked on the kitchen worktop; bound, blindfolded, and gagged in bed; the woman from the hotels’ CCTV, hidden behind a bigger blond wig and giant sunglasses—Sophia—was Rachel Grant.
41
September 17, 2017
Valerie didn’t go home, didn’t sleep.
Laura Flynn came in at 7:30 A.M. and set her regulation giant latte down on her desk. “You been here all night?” she said, seeing Valerie’s face.
“Found Sophia.”
“No shit. Really?”
“It’s Rachel Grant.”
“What?”
“There is no Sophia. There’s a redhead in a blond wig and shades whose face we’ve never seen clearly. Rachel Grant.”
Laura was halfway out of her jacket. She stopped. Processed. “Rachel “was fucking Jenner?”
“Apparently.”
Laura shed her jacket and joined Valerie. Traffic cam stills were running in sequence on the desktop.
“What’re we looking at?” Laura asked.
“Just got this from ALPR. Last point of coverage between Orland and Campbellville.”
“Great. But I’m only three sips into this, so, you know … er … What?”
Valerie didn’t answer. Three more stills of vehicles clocked by the camera.
“Or I could just guess,” Laura said. “But I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
“This is July thirty-first, the junction just east of Chico,” Valerie said. “Where the 99 meets the 32. Which is what you take for Campbellville, the Grants’ country house. We know Jenner was at the Orland rest stop a few miles west of there that night. As was Rachel Grant. Ergo…”
Two more stills. A third. Valerie froze it. Zoomed. Enlarged. No reflection on the windshield this time. The faces of the vehicle’s occupants were visible.
“Jesus,” Laura said.
“That’s Rachel. In blonde mode. And that’s Dwight Jenner in the passenger seat next to her.”
“I can’t believe she was screwing him.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think she killed him. After getting him to kill her husband.”
“But she was … I mean she was—”
“Stabbed, yeah, I know. Not fatally. Either something went wrong or it was part of the arrangement.”
Will Fraser arrived just as Valerie was getting off the phone. He knew her well enough to pick up the gearshift.
“Fuck,” he said, after she’d brought him up to speed. “For the money?”
“Partly. You’ve seen the will and the insurance payout. A trust for Elspeth and enough for Rachel to live like a queen for the rest of her life.”
“She was already living like a queen. Why risk it? A simple divorce would’ve seen her royally set up. There’s Grant family money goes way back, and Adam had a chunk of it.”
“Partly for the money, I said. There’s more to it.”
“What?”
“I’m working on it. Meantime, we know Rachel and Dwight were at the Campbellville place on the night of July thirty-first. That was the last time Dwight was seen alive, and it’s now pretty obvious he was killed by the lake. The question is: Was he killed that night? If not, he’s still in the frame for Adam Grant’s murder. If he was, we’re looking at a brand-new suspect.”
“When did entomology say he bought it?” Will asked.
“Four to six weeks prior to discovery of the body. Useless, thanks to the two-week gray area. We’re getting an ALPR cross-check for Rachel’s plates on the Chico cam from July 31 to the estimated date of Jenner’s death. If it flags they’ll send the relevant footage. Ed and Laura can go through it. We need to know Jenner was alive long enough to have killed Adam. If he was, there’s a chance he’ll show up on the cam again with Rachel. For now she’s officially under investigation for conspiracy to commit murder. Find out everything you can about her. Personal history, vital records, all of it.”
“So you get the rock and roll and I get the desktop?”
She got to her feet and grabbed her purse. “Even God needed angels for the grunt work,” she said.
Captain Deerholt’s office door opened when she was halfway down the corridor.
“Val, in here, please.”
Nothing good. As long as you were doing your job, Deerholt left you alone. It was only when you fucked up that he wanted to talk to you. Valerie entered and closed the door behind her. She knew what was coming.
“One question,” Deerholt said. “What happened between you and Adam Grant?”
Pause. Kruger. Naturally.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Why do you do this?”
“Sir?”
“Put a crack in the foundation of every house you build?”
“I take it Dan Kruger called?”
“Yes, Dan Kruger called.”
“Sir, nothing happened. I had dinner with Adam Grant four years ago. We shared a cab home. He dropped me off. He left.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” she said.
A great deal passed in the silence that followed, as they looked at each other. Deerholt knew the way she’d been back then. The booze, the guys. Morally it made no difference to him. Aside from the Work, Valerie knew, nothing made a difference to him. It was what they had in common. They were like a father and daughter between whom the love was so obvious they had no need to acknowledge or express it. In everything except the Work they were liberated into complete mutual indifference. But this, unfortunately, was the Work.
“For the record,” Deerholt said, “Kruger says Adam Grant told it otherwise.”
“Then you either believe him or me.”
He nodded, unsurprised. His face said she was telling him exactly what he knew she’d tell him. And that what she was telling him might very well be a lie. That didn’t matter, either. All that mattered was whether the investigation was compromised.
“Is there any way Kruger can prove anything?”
“No.”
Not, strictly, true, but short of Adam Grant having secretly recorded their evening or photographed her half-naked and asleep, true enough.
Another silence. More volumes unspoken.
“You know the consequences,” Deerholt said.
“Yes, sir.”
He looked down at the papers on his desk. “Fine,” he said. Then, when she was at the door, added: “I hope you’re right.”
* * *
Sylvana Bianchi, part of the team at the DA’s office who, along with Adam Grant, had prosecuted the doomed Grayson Webb “Lucifer” trial, was on vacation in Bali. Former DA Logan Myers, however, was at his home in Sausalito. He sounded spry enough on the phone, for a man pushing eighty. Yes, he knew about Adam’s murder, and yes, he was willing to talk to Valerie—in person only. Even
on the phone she could tell he was quietly delighted to be involved, however peripherally, in a case. Beyond his voice she sensed the months and years of deeply pleasant and wholly unsatisfactory retirement. Golf. A boat. The Sunday papers over long breakfasts. Boredom.
Nick called her when she was halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge. She thought twice about picking up.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” She’d assumed she would be the one apologizing.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I was pissed at you.”
No mistaking the tone of voice. Guilty. No mistaking it because it was rare.
“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t blame you.”
A pause.
“Seriously?” he said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Valerie was baffled. She was also aware that whatever advantage she had at this moment was precarious. Silence was the smart option.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
She waited.
“I got wasted, that’s all,” Nick said. “I passed out and Lomax put me in his room.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m still at the Pullman.”
I’m sorry I didn’t come home last night. She almost laughed. Almost.
“Right,” was all she said.
A long pause.
“I was expecting to wake up to an angry message,” he said.
She flirted, briefly, with lying. She had a sudden glimpse of breaking up with him. A conversation in which staleness expanded between them, became a solid wall. Not without a flicker of excitement, she imagined the peculiar scintillating emptiness of losing him. A return to the old familiar wealth of inviolate selfhood. The challenge was to make yourself enough. No husband, no kid, no love. Just the stark geometry of your own choices and actions and thoughts and dreams. It was clean and cold. With an extraordinary clarity she thought: If we break up I’ll take a vacation somewhere with snow and mountains. Scandinavia. A big wooden lodge hotel with schnapps and fire and the muted conversations of strangers. The image made her present reality—of hard city sunlight bouncing off storefronts, people in T-shirts and sunglasses, the secret life growing in her womb—a profound irritant.
