Point Deception

by Marcia Muller

  The hairs were a match with Ackerman’s. She—or her body—had been in the Blakeley house at some point. Virge’s autopsy was inconclusive. She could have died in an accidental fall, or been pushed or thrown off the ledge, or been killed elsewhere and transported there. Photographs appended to the report showed that footprints in the mud matched the tread of Virge’s shoes, but not the prints inside the two houses.

  The door opened and Valerie stuck her head in. “What are you doing here, pray tell?”

  “Enjoying some privacy.”

  The clerk bristled. “Well excuse me.”

  “It’s not you I’m trying to avoid.”

  “Oh. He is acting bearish today.”

  Rho nodded, not trusting herself to say anything more about Wayne. “Nothing from Grossman?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder why he went to Santa Carla.” Getting an ID from Lily on Ackerman’s purse could have been accomplished by a less senior officer.

  “Well how should I know?” Valerie said. “I’m just the clerk here.” She left the door open and went back to her desk.

  Probably Grossman had trampled on Valerie’s already tender feelings, Rho thought. He could be abrupt, and he didn’t understand what an institution she was, both here at the substation and throughout the town, where people were fond of saying, “You don’t know? Ask Valerie Middleton. She knows everything.”

  Rho remained where she was, content to sit alone in the dimly lit room. From up front she could hear Wayne cursing; probably the old printer, which budgetary constraints prevented them from replacing, was out of ink. She tensed as his footsteps shambled down the hall. He stomped through the door, not seeing her as he headed for the cabinet where the cartridges were kept, then stopped short.

  “What the hell’re you doing in here, Swift? Why aren’t you in Santa Carla with your buddy Grossman?”

  “I wasn’t asked along. And he’s not my buddy.”

  “Looked like it this morning at Quinley’s. Where’ve you been since then?”

  “Interviewing a couple of witnesses about Ackerman. They weren’t very helpful.”

  “Not like my sister, right?”

  “Wayne, I’m sorry about Lily.”

  “Don’t be. She deserves to pull some jail time. Give her a good scare, maybe knock some sense into her. What’d the techs turn up at Quinley’s?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t stay around to see.” The room seemed hot now and Rho felt claustrophobic. She wished he’d take his cartridge and get out.

  Wayne appeared to have no intention of moving. He studied her with narrowed eyes for a moment. “It took all that time to conduct a couple of routine interviews?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Or maybe they weren’t so routine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I heard Grossman talking to somebody on the phone when he got back from Quinley’s. He said you were following up a lead on the canyon murders.”

  Dammit! There could be only one reason Grossman had talked about that in Wayne’s hearing: He wanted to prompt Wayne to ask her about the interview with Cordova, in the hope he’d somehow implicate himself. Unfair to take advantage of a relationship that went back for more than a decade. And, thinking of fairness, didn’t she owe it to Wayne to tell him what she knew? Allow him to prepare for the accusations that were sure to be leveled at him?

  “Okay,” she said, “I was talking with Gregory Cordova, down at Point Deception. It came out that he saw Claudia Blakeley meeting a man on the highway across from his property during the month before the murders. A man who took her to the ruins of Quinley’s for extramarital sex.”

  Wayne’s face paled and stilled. It was clear what she’d said was worse than he’d expected. A mixture of rage and hurt muddied his gaze. “You set out to gather evidence against me? You, Rho?”

  “I’m sorry, but don’t you see? Now we can clear this thing up.” She put out a hand toward him, but he was already gone, rushing down the hall, across the office, out the door. By the time she reached the parking lot, his truck was laying rubber on the highway.

  He was heading north, in the opposite direction from his home. Running, maybe, and it was all her fault.

  Guy ended his phone conversation with Dun Harrison and went to stand at the window of his room, staring out over the roofs of the unfinished subdivision at the flat gray sea. Dun had reluctantly admitted to enticing him into the project. He had a buyer for the canyon property, he said, a well-known theatrical producer who wanted a private West Coast retreat and felt the place’s notoriety would ensure that privacy. A man who wasn’t squeamish about violent death and didn’t believe in ghosts. But before the property passed from his hands Dun wanted one last chance at learning the truth of what happened there thirteen years before.

  You couldn’t blame him, and it was Guy’s own fault he’d walked into the situation without knowing all the facts. His working methods dictated that. Still, he’d expressed enough annoyance at Dun’s lack of straightforwardness that he’d extracted a promise from him.

  His files were spread on the table in the semicircular space formed by the turret window. He picked up the one containing the profiles of the victims and removed the photograph of Oriana being escorted to the plane at San Francisco International by her maternal grandmother. The child’s face was a study in anguish as she looked behind her. Guy wanted to ask her what she’d been feeling at that moment, as well as if in the intervening years she’d remembered anything more about the murders. He’d made Dun promise to ask her if she’d consent to a telephone interview.

  He set down the photograph and looked out the window again, feeling oddly hollow. He should have been elated at Dun’s willingness to speak with Oriana. He should have felt good just being alive. Since he’d come to Signal Port he’d had a sense of an awakening, a return to his old self. But today he once again felt numb and disconnected.

  “Why is that?” he asked, reaching for some connection, if only an imagined one.

  Diana’s voice didn’t respond.

  God, what if it continued to be silent? Then he’d be totally alone.

  After numerous attempts to reach Wayne both by phone and radio, Rho finally called Grossman at the Investigations Bureau in Santa Carla and explained what had happened. “You deliberately let him overhear you talking about a lead in the canyon murders, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew I’d feel obligated to tell him what we’d found out.”

  “Yes, again.”

  “Well, you got more than you bargained for, if he’s really on the run. And I feel responsible.”

  “Maybe you should stop taking on the world’s troubles, Swift. Concentrate on yourself for a change.”

  His words shocked her. She barely knew Ned Grossman, and it wasn’t the place of a superior officer to give such personal advice. But he was right. She felt responsible for Wayne, her other colleagues, Valerie, her father, her fellow townspeople. Hell, she felt responsible for people whose names she barely recalled, people with whom she hadn’t spoken in years!

  Grossman said, “I’ll put out a pickup order on Gilardi, and see you at the substation tomorrow at eight hundred hours.”

  As the dial tone buzzed in her ear, Rho found her gaze pulled into the chaotic pattern of the garment Valerie was knitting at her desk. Her thoughts had spun into a similar pattern, quite out of control. Suddenly she felt a need to anchor herself in the familiar. “Valerie, if anybody needs me, I’ll be at Jack’s.”

  Rhoda was coming down the steps of the substation as Guy crossed toward it. There was a tension in the set of her mouth and the way she moved. Something wrong, but, since she hadn’t yet seen him, for once it wasn’t his fault. He waved and she stopped, jiggling her keys.

  “You on official business?” he asked.

  “No. Were you looking for me?”

  “Yes.” He explained about his call to Dun Harrison. She seemed distracted while he spoke
, and her reaction wasn’t all he’d hoped for.

  “Well, that’s good news. If she agrees to talk with you.”

  He frowned. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”

  She hesitated. “I could use one, but I’ll tell you what: Why don’t we let my father give us a cup. I’m on my way to see him.”

  Curious about the man who had raised her, Guy followed in his car to the yacht harbor. It seemed like the loneliest place in the world today, and that wasn’t just due to his mood. Many of the docks had collapsed and lay submerged in the oil-slicked water; a derelict fishing boat, its paint cracked and blistered, listed to one side on the murky bottom; sand had reclaimed much of the channel; trash dotted the jetty. The Rhoda A, no longer a handsome craft, was the marina’s only functional tenant.

  Rhoda came up beside him. “Pretty grim, huh?”

  “In a way. Why does your father stay here?”

  “There’s no place else he wants to be.”

  Meaning he didn’t care about his surroundings, and Guy wondered why.

  Rhoda motioned to him and they began walking along the dock toward the CrisCraft.

  A large man with razor nicks on his clean-shaven chin and broken veins on his nose was sitting on deck, an amber drink in hand. He pushed back his baseball cap and watched them approach, his apparent pleasure at seeing his daughter becoming tinged with wariness as he regarded Guy. “Come aboard, Deputy,” he called. “Who’s your friend?”

  Rhoda stepped onto the boat with the natural ease of someone who had spent a good part of her life on the water. Guy followed clumsily. When Rhoda made the introductions, Jack Antolini’s eyes glinted knowingly. “So you decided to take your old man’s advice, did you?”

  “For once.”

  Now what did that mean?

  Jack led them below and offered them a choice of coffee or Irish whiskey. Rhoda opted for the former, and Guy, in the interest of manly fellowship, took the latter. As they sat down at the small table Jack motioned at a police scanner that was muttering on the galley counter. “I hear they’re looking for your friend Wayne. He finally go too far?”

  Rhoda’s face grew troubled. “I don’t know what to think, Dad.” Guy listened with growing surprise as she explained about Wayne’s sudden flight.

  Jack shook his head. “Not right to put out a pickup order on him, Deputy.”

  “It was Ned Grossman who put it out. And before I reported to him, I did everything I could to raise Wayne on his personal radio, as well as called his house and anybody who might have seen him. If he’s running, we can’t politely ask him to come in and tell his side of the story.” There was a testy note in Rhoda’s voice that Guy hadn’t heard before. Some friction between father and daughter.

  Jack said, “I don’t care what Wayne’s involvement with those canyon people was, he’s not a man who’d murder anybody, much less children.”

  “But this Chrystal Ackerman—”

  “She may’ve been thrown off the cliff behind the old filling station, but that doesn’t prove Wayne did it. He took the Blakeley woman there over thirteen years ago. That doesn’t mean he’s been back since.”

  Rhoda made a helpless gesture with both hands, then laced her fingers around her coffee mug. The tension in the small cabin was palpable now.

  Guy said, “I think you’re right, sir.”

  They both looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.

  He cleared his throat and went on. “Wayne’s a violent man, but his sister told me he only started acting out after the canyon killings. It’s possible he really cared for Claudia Blakeley, and her death started a process of decline.”

  Jack glanced at Rhoda. “Well, he did lose those blood samples.”

  Now he was allying himself with her, as Guy had intended. “An honest mistake,” he said.

  “He let my girl take the blame.”

  “Covering his ass, and she let him.”

  “He might’ve known who did the killings and was trying to protect them.”

  “Might have.”

  Jack frowned, confused by Guy’s shifting point of view. Rhoda stifled a grin. Guy was beginning to understand the dynamic between them, and while it amused him, he sympathized with both.

  He said, “Rhoda mentioned you were in law enforcement all your working life. You must have some interesting stories.”

  Beside him Rhoda sighed, but the sound was full of relief.

  At close to six when her father asked Guy to make a run to the supermarket for another fifth of Bushmills, Rhoda started to protest. But some unspoken agreement had been struck between the two men, and they ignored her. After Guy left she leaned on her elbows at the table, watching Jack tidy the galley and turn on the cabin lamps against the encroaching dusk.

  “You’ve got that New York City journalist tamed good, honey,” he said.

  “He’s far from tame, but at least I can keep an eye on him.”

  “Heard you took him to Vegas with you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Ned Grossman know about that?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Better not tell him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Violation of procedure. Besides, Grossman’s interested in you—and not just because you’re a good deputy.”

  “What on earth would make you think that?”

  “Not what—who. Valerie Middleton. She claims she can see it every time Grossman looks at you.”

  “When did she tell you that?”

  “Last night, when I went by her house to try to cheer her up.”

  “You what?”

  “Valerie had just lost her best woman friend. She needed some company.”

  The idea of her father calling on Valerie struck Rho as odd. Was that why he’d shaved and, she thought, raggedly trimmed his hair? “I didn’t know the two of you were close.”

  “Valerie’s the best friend I’ve got. How could you not know that? For over thirty years she took my phone messages and brought me coffee and held me together when things got to be too much.”

  Rho shook her head in amazement.

  Jack frowned. “What, I can’t have a woman friend? I was supposed to live like a monk after your mother took off?”

  “But Valerie’s husband—”

  “He took off not much later. And things just happened.”

  She thought back to her childhood, remembering little things: the fudge and cookies Valerie would send home with Jack; how she was always there for her when he couldn’t be; the weekends when she and Valerie’s son, Joe, would be tended by a sitter while both parents were away from home. Easy to understand why such details had not added up when she was a child, but why hadn’t she caught on later?

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I can’t believe how little we know about the people we’re closest to.”

  Jack sat down and took both her hands in his, bringing back memories of long, serious talks as he tried to be both father and mother to her. “Honey, since you discovered boys in seventh grade, you were too caught up in your own romantic life to notice mine. And you haven’t been close to anybody for thirteen years now.”

  He was right. She hadn’t. Tears welled up as she thought of all that lost time. Lost love. All that loneliness as she’d hidden within her carefully crafted emotional armor.

  “Now don’t cry. You hear me, Deputy?”

  “Yeah, I hear you.” She pulled her hands away, grabbed a tissue from a box on the table, wiped her face, blew her nose.

  “Everything’s changing for you now,” Jack said. “Changing for me, too. For the town. You can feel it.”

  “But is it changing for the better or for the worse?”

  “In the long run, for the better, I think. How could it not? My pretty girl’s got two men interested in her.”

  “Two? Who’s the other one?”

  “Good God, Deputy, use your eyes. It’s written all over this Guy Newberry’s face, even if he doesn’
t seem to know it yet.”

  When they left Jack Antolini’s boat shortly after nine, Guy had to lean on Rhoda to keep from staggering. He and her father had gotten on like old pals, and even the huge deli sandwiches and potato salad that he’d brought back in defense against the fresh fifth of Irish hadn’t counteracted the prodigious amount of booze he’d consumed.

  “Nize man, y’r father,” he said, and cursed himself for slurring his words.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “You need some fresh sea air. We’ll take my truck and you can walk over for your car in the morning.”

  “Nize woman. You don’ yell at me for drinking too much. Where’re we goin’?”

  “There’s something you need to see if you’re to understand this county.”

  Just what he needed at this juncture, a sightseeing tour. But anything was better than returning to his empty room, where Diana had ceased to speak to him. With some difficulty he climbed into the passenger’s seat and fastened his belt securely. Even though she hadn’t been drinking, this was a woman he could trust to drive like a maniac.

  She took it at a reasonable speed on the access road and north on the highway to the town limits, then opened it up. Lights of the close-in houses flashed past, grew more sparse, and finally there were none at all. Rhoda kept her eyes on the road, her pleasure in driving evident. Guy hummed an aria from some opera—he couldn’t remember which—and relaxed.

  A sign for Deer Harbor appeared, and Rhoda braked, slowing for a wide place that contained nothing more than a propane company, garage, coin-operated laundry, and market. A few teenagers hung out under the market’s lighted sign, smoking and passing around a bottle.

  “Oughta arrest them,” he mumbled.

  “Why?”

  “They’re bad.”

  “They’re exactly like I was at that age.”