“Confessing, you mean?” Thomas said.
“To something you didn’t do,” O’Higgins said. “Yes.”
“Not sure, exactly,” Thomas said. “Guilt. I wanted to protect Asha. It was obvious what was going to happen if I didn’t. And some men came here and said they’d make sure she got her children back if I said I’d done it. That I’d found his cane in the foyer. That I snuck in and killed them.”
“I don’t understand. The photos they had weren’t enough to convict you,” O’Higgins said. “We had the murder weapon. You weren’t connected to it, Nirad was. It was his cane-sword. There were photos of him with it everywhere.”
“I had been there, you know — stalking her. I’d stalked other women. I had a problem with that,” Thomas said. “But Asha was different. I couldn’t get her out of my mind once she walked into the store. It wasn’t just the sexual attraction, that was the thing. It was something else.”
He looked at O’Higgins. Thomas had been diminished by the jailhouse jumpsuit and the bad food and the fear of dying in a room with people watching him go. But for a moment he was back there, in the store, the day Asha had walked in off the street by chance. O’Higgins understood what he was saying about her, about her presence, about her power over them.
“I’ve nothing but time,” Thomas said. “In Hinduism there’s something called a Bodhisattva, I’ve read. A holy being, I guess they are. Is she one — Asha?”
“Maybe,” O’Higgins said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I read you were exonerated,” Thomas said. “For the shooting on the beach.”
“Line of duty,” O’Higgins said. “The feds cleaned it up. I was in their way. Nirad’s wife is going to be Prime Minister of India. It’s all the same to them. I just have to keep my mouth shut.”
“I want to — I was going to write you. I want to give you something. Something from the store. They’re selling everything soon. But I made arrangements with the lawyers,” Thomas said. “It’s a painting, a painting of Tomales Bay.”
“Okay. Thank you. I still don’t understand,” O’Higgins said. “Why?”
“I’ve done bad things. Doesn’t matter now, I suppose, but I was changed. She — did something. I didn’t want to do those things anymore. I love her. Asha. That’s why. I can’t quite understand it all myself. I wish I did. I just know I love her.
“Would you come?” Thomas asked. “When they — you know. Would you be there? They say you can’t see who is watching. But if you were there — I would like that. I don’t have any family left.”
“Sure,” O’Higgins said. “I promise. I’ll be there.”
***
51 Altamont Rd.
Mumbai
India
Dear Michael,
I’m so glad you were able to go — when Robert was executed. He said he’d asked you to go. He said he didn’t want me there, or I would have gone. I would have done anything he asked.
He said he left you the painting of Tomales Bay. I’m so glad you have it. It’s a remarkable painting. I remember so well the day I first saw it. I was standing on Geary Street and it was in his window.
I hope you keep it, and that I can come to see it. May I? I would like that very much. If you want me to.
The girls are fine, and call you uncle Ganesh.
Love,
Asha
O’Higgins put down the letter. Like Robert Thomas’s, it came in wonderful old-school air mail envelopes, blue and red, sometimes with stamps depicting one of the Indian gods. He folded up the letter carefully, slipped it back into its envelope and walked to the kitchen window, holding it. The crows were back in the eucalyptus trees. It was summer again in San Rafael.
***
That morning of the execution, the entire morning before they came for him, he wasn’t afraid. Robert Thomas was not in his cell at all, not really. He was looking at the wall of paintings in his gallery on Geary Street. He went to all the places in California again, walking slowly by each one, the way he had some mornings before he opened for the day.
Even when they finally injected him, he wasn’t really there. He had turned and looked, once last time, at Asha Chaundhry as she walked through the door.
“It’s a Piazzoni,” Robert said, smiling at the young Indian woman. “My name is Robert — Robert Thomas.”
And then he was gone.
Acknowledgments
I am very much indebted to those who have helped me understand the world of the two homicide detectives portrayed in this work. Many people in law enforcement have generously given me help in understanding how things work. Anything in this novel that is on-point about police work is certainly due to their generosity.
I especially want to thank Detective Michael Rodriguez of the LA County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau, without whose assistance this novel would simply never have been written.
Det. Rodriguez made time for this novelist and my countless questions. Without his help I would not have had the confidence to take on this kind of book. It was Det. Rodriguez, too, who suggested I visit the department’s famous Murder School, which LASD runs for new homicide detectives. That opportunity was the chance of a lifetime. Good fiction needs to be inspired fiction, and I can honestly say I left my visit to the school inspired and determined to get things right. I only hope I did.
I must also give a special thanks to Detective Richard Tomlin of LASD for taking me aside during lunch at the Murder School. In many ways Last Ferry Home started there over lunch with Detective Tomlin who had, I learned that afternoon, worked the Phil Spector case. His insights—given in a wonderfully cinematic way—concerning that case, and the extra pressures a homicide detective faces in high-profile murder cases, really brought his world to life for me. That conversation also, I think, infused this novel with something undefinable— perhaps just the spirit of a great and compassionate homicide detective.
Criminalists, the scientists who patrol homicide’s always complex crime scene, are much more interesting, I think, than the characters we see portrayed on TV shows. TV misses something important about them as people and as front-line troops. They are not only highly intelligent and highly educated men and women—some have expertise in many related fields, from cell-phone cloning to blood cast-off patterns—but they are truly the murderer’s bête noire.
So, to the Criminalists who helped guide me and took my calls: Tiffany F. Shew, Senior Criminalist LASD-SSB Biology/DNA Section, Criminalist Christy Henry, and Criminalist Cordelia Willis—thank you so much!
About the Author
Kent Harrington is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including The Good Physician, which was named as one of the best novels of the last ten years by Booklist, Dark Ride, Dia de los Muertos, and The American Boys. Of Dark Ride, Michael Connelly said, “It reads like Jim Thompson interpreted by Quentin Tarentino.”
Visit him at http://www.kentharrington.com.
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