Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Why should I?” Lisa groused.

  “Because she’s dead. And no one knows why.”

  Lisa sank back to the floor and leaned against the bed. Long seconds passed. She drank absently from the wine bottle, staring straight ahead, slipping into some postnarcotic daze.

  When she spoke her words were flat and unaffected. “Why did it have to be her? That’s what I want to know. If it had to be someone why wasn’t it him?”

  “Your father?”

  She nodded. “He’s vomit. A total jerk.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything important.” She took a long pull at the Cabernet, draining the bottle and tossing it aside. “You got any hard booze on you?” she asked halfheartedly, as though she had pledged to get bombed and was willing to honor it even though she didn’t want to.

  I shook my head. Lisa shrugged, still in a fog. “Mom’s a jerk, too, sometimes,” she said suddenly, her tense as confused as the rest of her. “People think she’s so great, you know? Doing so much for the city and all that? Well, she did a lot more for them than she did for us. She was always down at that fucking crisis center, listening to the bullshit artists. Or if she wasn’t down there she was on the phone, counseling someone. What garbage. Poor little junkie, poor little schizoid, poor little whore. Why didn’t she pay attention to us once in a while? Huh? Answer me that.”

  “Was there a special problem you needed her help with, Lisa?”

  “Nah. I didn’t need her near as much as Daddy did.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Lisa lowered her head. “Aw, just that he wouldn’t have done the shit he did if she’d given him what he needed, right? He wouldn’t have gone out sniffing up all those skirts if he had a good thing going for him at home, would he? I mean, it’s her fault he—” She bit off her final words.

  “He what?”

  “Nothing. He’s a void. They both were voids. Now I got to get out of here. Take me back to the avenue.”

  “Lisa?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your father thinks you killed her.”

  “Dianne?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “He didn’t say it. But I know that’s what he thinks.”

  Lisa’s eyes betrayed a swift alarm. “So are the cops after me?”

  “No. And they probably won’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your father is going to confess to the murder himself. He’s going to admit he did it and then he’s going to plead insanity.”

  “He’s doing that for me?”

  I nodded.

  “Jesus.” She shook her head in wonder.

  “You didn’t see him do it, did you? You lied to the police when you told them you did.”

  She paused, then nodded.

  “And he didn’t threaten you, did he? That’s why you weren’t at the arraignment, because you were afraid they’d learn you were lying if you showed up in court.”

  She nodded again.

  “Do you know anything at all about your mother’s death?”

  She shook her head, only half listening. “Just what Cal told me.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. “Cal? What does Cal know about it?”

  “I don’t know. Listen. I got to think. I’m not talking to you anymore, so there’s no use asking questions. I got to get out of here. Now. You can come or stay, it doesn’t matter.”

  She grabbed her pack and left the room. I retrieved her bag of pot and hurried after her, as relieved as if I’d broken out of jail.

  TWENTY-SIX

  It was after six when we left the hotel. I’d missed my appointment with Bart Kinn, but if Lisa Usser didn’t decide to be honest with me it wouldn’t matter if Kinn ordered me off the case. Lisa was all I had to go on, and if she didn’t change her mind and tell me everything she knew about the storm that struck the Usser house some two months earlier, I wasn’t going very far.

  Within a few minutes were were coasting down Ashby, heading back toward the campus. Lisa was huddled against the far door, gazing out the window, lost in thoughts that must have included murder if she knew what I thought she knew.

  At the Tanglewood intersection I asked her where she wanted to go. The encounter in the hotel room had embarrassed us both, so badly that we wanted out of each other’s way regardless of the consequences. “Take me back to my old man’s place,” she mumbled. “There’s still some stuff I got to get.”

  “If you need a place to stay, I can make a suggestion.”

  “Where?” she sneered. “With you?”

  “No. With—”

  She waved off my offer of the Renzels’ home with an insolent twitch. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything else you got to say.”

  “You’re supposed to be smart, Lisa. But you’re not acting very smart. You keep on this way and you’re going to end up in jail. Or worse. Whoever killed Sherry and your mother might decide you know too much to let you stay alive.”

  The dome light on my car flashed on. I slowed down. “You keep up that shit and I’ll jump out right here,” Lisa threatened. “I mean it.”

  “Okay, okay. Shut the door. I just want you to be careful. Okay?”

  The light went off. Lisa sulked in silence. I kept my promise as I took Claremont, then Warring, then Dwight Way, and approached the entrance to Hillside Lane. “Go slow,” Lisa ordered as I started to make the turn. “I want to make sure my old man’s not around.”

  I eased into Lisa’s street and drove slowly through the dogleg. There weren’t any lights on in the Usser house, and no car out front. I drove to the end of the street, turned around and parked in front of her house.

  Lisa reconnoitered. “He’s probably down at his precious law school,” she said bitterly, “getting stroked by the little lady lawyers.”

  I thought of the mixed reception that was awaiting Usser at the law school and I smiled. Lisa saw me. Her lip curled angrily. “You think it’s funny, huh? You think it’s just some fucking sport, don’t you? Like rugby or something. You’re pathetic, you know that? You make me sick. All of you.”

  Lisa kicked open the door and scrambled out of the car and started up the steps to her house, her long thin legs as white as birch trees in the dusk. I reached behind me and grabbed her backpack off the rear seat and got out on my side and called out to her. “Wait, Lisa. If I was like that, I’d have taken you up on your invitation back at the hotel. Right? Come back and get your pack.”

  She stopped, turned, looked down on me like a dark and dubious archangel, then trudged back down the steps. When she reached out her hand for her pack, she kept her mouth shut, which was as close as she could come to an apology. I wasn’t certain she owed me one.

  Instead of giving her the pack I put it on the sidewalk and took out my wallet and got out a business card. Then I took out a twenty and handed the bill and the card to Lisa. “Here’s where you can reach me if you want to talk,” I said. “If you want to stay out of the Youth Authority, I think it’s pretty important for you to tell someone all you know, and do it soon. Me or the police. If you decide to go to the cops, the guy to see is Bart Kinn. He’s tough, but he’s smart and he’s fair.”

  “Fat chance,” Lisa said, then held up the twenty. “What’s this for? You change your mind and want to buy a quick blow job in the back seat?”

  “That’s for you to buy yourself a meal.”

  “Meal, hell. Soon as I find the Maniac, I’ll buy myself a couple of lines. The Berkeley Hills Diet, don’t you know?”

  Lisa laughed at me with a seamless contempt. Our discussion had so focused my senses I hadn’t noticed the car that had turned into the street and crawled ahead, lights off, until it was almost opposite mine. It was too dark to identify the driver even after he got out of the car and started for us.

  Lisa was tugging on her pack straps, preparing to throw it onto her sho
ulder, when the man spoke to her.

  “Hi, Lisa.”

  Lisa dropped her pack and spun toward him. “You.”

  Her eyes were bright in the evening shadows, as though she saw something she didn’t believe existed. I squinted and looked again. The man was Lisa’s father, dressed the way I’d seen him in court that morning, slouching, hands in pockets, his shoes scraping on the street as he approached, looking more like a prisoner than the men who had been led away in chains.

  “Are you coming home, Lisa? I hope so.” Usser’s voice was shy, a bashful plea.

  “Never,” Lisa blurted. “I’ll never come back to you.”

  “Please? Can we just talk about it? Then if you still want to leave I’ll take you. Wherever you want to go.”

  “I won’t go anywhere with you, don’t you get it? I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  “Mr. Tanner can come, too, if you want. If it bothers you that much to be alone with me.”

  “It bothers me to look at you. It bothers me to smell you. It bothers me to know you’re alive.”

  Usser retreated from her assault, stumbled down the curb, had to grab the fender of my car to keep from falling. When he stepped back up onto the sidewalk, he wore the empty aspect of the penitent. “I’m your father, Lisa. I know you can’t believe this now, but I love you very much. I love you enough to do whatever you want me to do to make things the way they used to be with us. Anything. I’ve just been to see Dr. Lonborg. He’s made some suggestions about how I can … improve my behavior, toward you and toward the people I work with. I’m going to try to change, Lisa. I promise you I am. So will you give me a chance? Please?”

  Usser clasped his hands. I thought he was going to sink to his knees but he just stood there, open to his daughter and the world. I felt a twinge of sympathy, but I also wondered what he’d done to distance his daughter from him.

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Lisa was saying.

  “Get what?”

  “That I will never forgive you for what you did. Never. Till the day I die, which I hope like hell is soon.”

  Lisa reached for her pack again and swung it over her shoulder. With a final, cutting curse she started down the street, shoving her father out of her way, silencing me with a glance of white-hot hatred.

  Usser looked at me helplessly. “I don’t think there’s any point going after her,” I told him. “If she’s going to come around, she’s going to have to do it on her own. It’s not something you can force on her.”

  “I suppose not.” I could barely hear his voice.

  “I need to know something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “What made you think Lisa killed her mother? Was it some argument they had, or did you find something at the scene that incriminated her?”

  “I … I’d better not talk about it. Jake Hattie said I shouldn’t.”

  “They’ve found another body, Usser. Killed by the same person who killed your wife.”

  “Who?”

  “Sherry Misteen.”

  Usser’s face seemed to empty of all but disbelief. I followed his eyes as they looked imploringly at the house across the street, as though he prayed that Sherry would magically appear and render me a liar. Behind me, I sensed Lisa had stopped to listen. “Who … What happened to her?” Usser stammered.

  “She was murdered a couple of months ago. Sometime later she was buried in People’s Park. Whoever did it recorded the burial on videotape and put the tape in the Reds cartridge in your study so you’d come across it by accident. Why would someone do that to you?”

  Usser pressed his ears as though what he’d heard had injured them. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea.”

  “Come on, Usser,” I said. “Your little game is getting dangerous. Tell me why you thought Lisa killed your wife.”

  He lowered his hands and met my eyes. “I found a book.”

  “What book?”

  “It’s called The Astral Light. I noticed Lisa carrying it around after she started running wild.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Under Dianne’s body. It was terrible. It was soaked in her blood. I got it all over my hands but I couldn’t just leave it there, I had to hide it. God, I was sick. To think that Lisa could do something like that, my own flesh and blood, I … If Adam Lonborg hadn’t helped me see that I could eventually save Lisa, I think I would have killed myself.”

  I thought back to my search of Usser’s house. “I saw the book on your shelf, didn’t I? Why didn’t you toss it out?”

  “I was afraid the police would find it, no matter what I did. Then somehow I hoped it might eventually exculpate Lisa.… I was irrational, is what it comes down to.”

  “Is that why you cleaned up the mirror, too? Because you thought Lisa had written all the slogans?”

  Usser shook his head. “The police asked me that. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I still don’t.”

  Usser fell silent. The evening breeze sighed high above us, saddened by what had been visited upon the little dead-end street. As I was looking to see where Lisa was a shot rang out, a faraway explosion that shattered the silence of the street the instant before it shattered the windshield of my car.

  Bits of glass flew over Usser and me, as though it was raining chips of ice. Twenty yards in front of us, Lisa Usser screamed. I thought for a moment she’d been wounded, but she just stood motionless, stunned, her senses shut.

  Usser said, “My God,” and looked to the end of the street where the gun sounds had originated. I yelled for him to get down, but he ignored me. I ran to Lisa’s side and slipped my arm around her waist and carried her back behind the car. Another shot rang out as I dumped her to the ground and tackled her awestruck father. This round struck something far behind us.

  We waited, looking at each other nervously, measuring our safety and our courage. The air still seemed pregnant with the brief explosions, to be charged with echoes and excitement.

  Lisa began to cry. Her father put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off with a violent twist. Usser’s glasses aimed reflected light at me. “Who was it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The only gun I’ve seen in this case belonged to the Maniac.”

  “Who?”

  “Nifton. Your former client. I told you about him this morning. He and Lisa are soulmates.”

  It came out more disparaging than I intended. Lisa swore, sniffed, and swore again.

  “But why would he try to kill her?” Usser asked.

  “To keep her quiet.” I looked at Lisa. “Right?”

  “You don’t know who it was. You’re just trying to scare me.”

  She was right. Although I had no indication who had been the target, I thought if Lisa was convinced that someone was trying to kill her she’d decide to talk to me. But even attempted murder didn’t shake her. She started to stand up. I reached for her arm and held her down. “He could still be down there. Let me go first. I get paid to do this stuff.”

  I curled my legs under me, preparing to make a dash for Usser’s car, the first stop in working my way toward the shrubbery that must have hidden the shooter. I took a deep breath and had begun a pagan prayer when I heard a door open somewhere behind me. “Are you all right?” a voice called out. “Please. Are you all right out there?”

  I knew who it was. The poetry reader, who had some bones to pick with the local librarian. “Please call the police!” I yelled back.

  “I have already done that. I have told them it is an emergency condition. Was I in error?”

  “You were exactly right.”

  “Good. You will pardon me if I don’t come out of doors until they arrive.” The door slammed shut.

  I smiled to myself as a siren sounded in the distance. From the end of the street I heard a car door slam and an engine fire, then fade away after a squeal of tires. It might have been the errant assassin, it might have been a chemistry major on the way to the lab to c
heck his latest titration.

  I stood up cautiously and peered down the street. Nothing moved, nothing took a shot at me, nothing but my windshield seemed changed at all by the fact that one of us had nearly died a small moment earlier.

  I was about to do something brave and slightly foolish when a police car turned into the street and raced to where we stood, then screeched to a stop. Two uniformed men got out, revolvers drawn, and crouched behind their car doors. “Throw down your guns,” one of them called out. “Then put your hands on your heads.”

  “We’re unarmed,” I yelled back. “We’re the ones he shot at.”

  Another car careened around the corner and came to a stop behind the blue-and-white. Bart Kinn got out slowly, as though he was in the Safeway lot and needed a loaf of rye. He strolled to the crouching policemen, talked to the one on the driver’s side, then strolled down the street toward us. I walked to meet him, feeling like the Saturday heroes of my youth.

  Kinn’s smile was his usual display—aloof, mocking, a challenge to my every preconception. “You shoot somebody?” he asked.

  “Got shot at. Along with Lawrence Usser and his daughter.”

  “Anyone hit?”

  “Only my car.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “The bushes down there, I think.” I pointed toward them. Kinn turned and yelled for the uniforms to go down and check it out. Then he looked back at me. “Any idea who did it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any idea which one of you he was shooting at?”

  I thought about it. “It’s just possible he wanted to kill us all.”

  “Who?” Kinn asked again.

  “It’s just a guess,” I replied. “I haven’t got a shred of proof, but I think it must have been Nifton, the Maniac.”

  Kinn looked at me. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s the only one that fits all the parts of the puzzle. He knew Sherry Misteen, he knew Mrs. Usser, and he was crazy enough that motive wasn’t necessary.”

  Kinn’s smile had broadened with my every word. “You know, when I first saw you I was afraid you were good,” he said. “I thought you were going to show me up, solve my case for me, make me look like a big dumb nigger. But you’re not gonna do that, are you, Mr. Tanner? You’re not going to embarrass me at all.”