Invasion of Privacy

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  "Yes, I have. Bumpass is the guy who fell in and got boiled, right?"

  "I think so. Anyway, for the first mile or so of the trail you’ve got these spectacular views of Lassen, Diller, and Diamond Peaks. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Sierra, almost to Tahoe. It’s all the deceptively benevolent world on display for your viewing pleasure. Then you reach a summit. You drop into a hydrothermal area. Steam billows out of the ground. You get hotter and hotter. Pits of mud bubble and spit at you. They warn you not to step off the trail because the earth’s crust is so thin there, you would sink in and be scalded.

  "There’s a volcano under you all the time. Whether you feel it or see it, it’s there, alive and waiting. Terry’s death reminded me of that place, where it’s hot and potentially lethal, waiting to get you if you step off the trail, or if the planks you’re walking on break through. That kind of sudden disaster is always out there."

  Collier said, "I see it in my work every day."

  "Yet ... you stay."

  "I do."

  "Why?"

  "For the same reason you do."

  "I get sucked in!"

  "You may not want to admit it to yourself, but you make a decision about it, just as I do."

  "I’d much rather move to a South Seas island and live on piña coladas. Be a bartender at a thatched-roof bar."

  "Then why don’t you? Because hiding doesn’t work. Already been tried. Marlon Brando bought himself an island, but trouble found him anyway."

  "Well," Nina said. "Here’s a short bounce of the bungee. I brought my copy of the film, and I’ll answer any questions you have. Then I’m going to go back to my office and draft the dullest trust instrument you ever saw, and forget all about Terry London." She leaned over and laid the film canister on his desk.

  "Tell me about the last time you saw her," Collier said. He was still sitting on his desk, and she had to crane her head up to see him. She got up and moved toward the bookcases, closer to the books on homicide investigation, criminology, criminal law, evidence ... fascinating books in the abstract. He worked in Bumpass Hell, all day, every day.

  "The last time? That would be on March thirtieth, at the regular law and motion session of the Superior Court. Jeff Riesner had filed a motion to clarify the language of the proposed order I had drafted. Milne ordered us to meet again and submit a joint order."

  "Terry was present throughout?"

  "She was there, but we hardly spoke until the hearing was over. She became very irate in the hall, irrational, I would say. I couldn’t calm her down. I walked away from her and she followed behind me. Then ... "

  "Then ...?"

  "She ran out to the parking lot and pushed past me. I didn’t see her drive off. I’d forgotten some papers and had to go back inside."

  The phone buzzed. Collier ignored it. "Why was she angry?"

  "Her case ... the delay ..."

  "Was she going to lose money? How serious was the delay?"

  "Not serious. She had sold the film to a TV show, but the date for airing it hadn’t been set. The producers were working with her on it."

  "Then why? What was the source of her anger?"

  "She was angry at me." Nina explained as well as she could the disintegration of that particular lawyer-client relationship. When she told him about the burglary, Collier closed his eyes, leaning back as though trying to comprehend.

  His eyes still closed, he said, "How did you know Terry was the burglar?"

  "I knew right away it was personal when I saw the condition of my room. She was the one who was mad at me at the moment."

  "Why didn’t you tell the police who it was?"

  "No proof. But my son was missing, so I went to her house. This was about two weeks before the hearing. I think I frightened her. If she’d hurt Bobby ... but as it turned out, he’d run off to Monterey. She returned my letters. I had what I’d come for. I left."

  "Was anyone else there?"

  "No ... oh, at first, when I came in. A neighbor. Ralph Kettrick, I think it was. He lives next door with his father."

  "Jerry Kettrick," Collier said for the tape’s benefit, and Nina thought, maybe one of them saw something. The cops must have talked to them, because Collier already knew all about them.

  "I’d like to see the letters you took back from her. I may have to see them."

  "They’re gone, Collier. I burned them."

  He didn’t believe her. She didn’t care. She had put them into a safe-deposit box and intended to leave them there for herself, till she had a home of her own someday. He would need a court order to go after them even if he knew they existed, and nobody was going to know except her and the bank.

  "This may surprise you, Nina, but you may have been Terry London’s main contact with the human race during her last weeks. She handled her business by phone and fax. She doesn’t seem to have had any close friends. Her parents and her older sister were killed in a plane crash in the early seventies."

  "You mean to tell me she had no men friends? She was attractive. We never talked about her past."

  "No boyfriends that we’ve found. We’re looking into her past now. I need to know who you think might have killed her. Your speculations could be important. I’m sure you’ve thought about it—"

  "Not really. But there are four people who were fighting to suppress that film. The plaintiffs—Jessica and Jon Sweet, Tamara Sweet’s parents, and Michael Ordway and his wife, Doreen. They must have spent a ton of money on this case, and they had essentially lost it. The thing is ..."

  "Go ahead, I’m interested in your thoughts."

  "Well, in the same way that Terry’s motives for making and distributing the film seemed obscure to me, their motives for suing her seemed obscure. I mean, they had stated surface motives. It’s just that I felt undercurrents from both sides. Maybe one of them ..."

  "Killed Tamara Sweet," Collier said. "I look forward to seeing what kind of evidence she’d gathered."

  "You won’t see much hard evidence, although everything in the film is based on fact. It’s impressionistic, moody, an art piece as well as an investigative piece. And the stuff about the other three girls who disappeared seems tacked on. I guess what I’m saying is, the film’s not that threatening to any of them. You figure it out. "

  "Oh, I will. At the very least, we’ll be looking again at all four of the disappearances."

  He was rubbing his cheek, as if he had realized he needed a shave. When he didn’t speak again, Nina said, "Anything else?"

  "One thing. Did you notice anything missing at Terry’s?"

  "No, but I was so shocked."

  "Okay. That’s it for now." Loud knocks at the door. Collier’s next customer had come calling.

  "Oh, no you don’t," Nina said. "Before I go, I want you to give me one honest-to-God straight and sincere answer."

  "What other kind have I ever given you?"

  "I want to know if there is any danger at all to me or my family, based on everything you know to this point."

  "No," Collier said. "I believe not. We have a suspect in custody, seen running from the house after the shots were fired."

  "Great. Who is it?"

  "Can’t give that out yet. But this person will be locked up. So you can relax."

  "Okay."

  "Drop by sometime after court. We’ll talk."

  "It could happen." He let her out and a frizzlyhaired policewoman in. As the door closed, Nina heard her say, "You’re not going to believe this, Collier," so naturally she stopped and leaned up close to the door.

  Faintly, through the door, she heard the policewoman say, "The London case? Do you believe this? The victim turned on her video camera after she was shot."

  "She was still conscious?"

  "Still conscious—and she made a fuckin’ tape."

  "Can I help you?" said the secretary at her elbow. Nina let herself be led to the door, full of unanswered questions.

  Out in the courtyard between the county
offices and the courthouse, Nina saw Riesner heading her way. He didn’t extend his hand. She hadn’t planned to shake it anyway.

  "Provocative, your client getting knocked off like that," he said.

  "In what way?"

  "Because the police have made an arrest in the murder, and I have been contacted regarding representation. So, if you learn anything new regarding the murder, I expect to be contacted immediately."

  "It’s more likely I’d be contacting Collier Hallowell," Nina said. "Sorry, but anybody you represent is probably guilty, and I have an interest in assuring that the person who killed my client is put away. Who has been arrested, anyway?"

  "I don’t know why I even do you the courtesy of telling you. However, his name is Kurt Scott. I will be talking with him later on today. And stay out of it. You’re on notice." Without another word, he walked past her. She saw him beep open the lock on his red BMW, get in, and roar off.

  Her breathing had stopped. She leaned against the courthouse wall for a minute or two, looking blankly after him. She looked at her watch. Eleven-fifteen. She went inside to the bank of phones and called her office. "Sandy, I’m going to go over to the jail for a while," she said. "I’m not sure when I’ll be back."

  "You’ve got a deposition here at three. The doc in your malpractice case."

  "I’ll be back."

  "You better."

  13

  THE DEPUTY OPENED THE DOOR TO A LONG CORRIDOR and a series of open cubicles facing glass windows. Similar cubicles on the other side of the windows held inmates. Nina sat down, pulled out her yellow pad, and waited to see Kurt Scott for the second time in nearly twelve years.

  She picked up the phone, licking her lips to quell the dryness caused by her agitation. She had brought herself to the jail quickly, before she could feel anything. Now the emotions growing in her were entirely personal, not professional. She wondered how much she had changed or if he would notice, then shushed herself, thinking, why should he care? He’s had other things on his mind, such as a life in prison.

  She replayed what she knew in her mind: He had killed Terry. He knew Terry, and Terry knew her, hated her. Why? What was going on?

  She would ask him. Meantime, another narrow plank fell into the darkness. She looked at her own past.

  She had waited for him on the day they were to meet at the Tinnery, the restaurant overlooking Lovers’ Point in Pacific Grove, dressed up for once, excited about her news. He had said he wanted to come straight to the house to meet her father, but she put him off. He should hear about their child first. She wanted to tell him, to toast their new life together in this beautiful place looking out at the ocean and the sunset. They would be leaving for Europe soon. She wanted him to know her favorite spot, and love it like she did. She had arranged for a room for the night at the Seven Gables Inn, with a view and fireplace.

  As the hours ticked by and he didn’t come she was worried, then frantic, then dumbfounded. From a pay phone she had called Kurt’s Forest Service work number in California, but no one there knew anything. She had called his apartment without getting an answer.

  When night came, bringing with it a heavy drizzle, she walked to the hotel alone, checked in, and sat in her soaked dress on a flowered armchair by the window until she fell asleep there. In the morning, nauseated and faint from the pregnancy, she had gone back to the restaurant, asked for messages, and called again, all for nothing.

  She waited all that morning on a bench at the cliff edge, watching the happy people enter and exit the doors to the restaurant. By afternoon she had started to shake.

  She had gone home to bed.

  The next day she unpacked her bags, filed her passport in a box, and called the Monterey School of Law, saying she hoped there still was a place for her in the fall. There was.

  For three or four months, she felt nothing when she thought about Kurt. She was working, pregnant, going to school, trying to stay together. Her pride had come up strong, like iron walls in her heart.

  Then, one fine Saturday, she woke up in her aunt’s small Victorian house and looked out the front window. Six blocks down the hill, Monterey Bay floated, emerald and turquoise in a sapphire sky. The view was so heartbreaking that she cried for three days. At first she didn’t know what she was crying about, but when his name came wrenching out of her mouth over and over, she knew. And when the crying finished, she put him away very deep where he wouldn’t ever hurt her again.

  Twelve years passed.

  Through the glass he suddenly appeared, a man in the orange jumpsuit issued to the guests of El Dorado County. The man who now sat down heavily in the chair opposite her and picked up the phone was not the boy she had loved. The uniform, pushed up on the left arm to reveal a gauze bandage; his long, lank, uncombed hair; the downcast look; the spiritlessness of him made him a stranger. When he sat down, though, he put his hands on the table in front of the window, and she saw that his hands were the musician’s hands she knew, large and long-fingered, with clean, square nails.

  He raised his head, and his face still compelled her: the eyes, greenish-blue, darkly fringed; the strong nose and finely cut lips; the narrow jaw. But the hope had left him: this man was marked by experiences that had knitted his brows and hollowed his cheeks.

  She heard the unforgettable voice. "Hi," he said. "A blast from the past."

  "Hello, Kurt."

  "You shouldn’t have come."

  "It was the only way I was ever going to see you again."

  "I don’t know why you would want to. You don’t owe me anything."

  "This was something I owed myself. Besides, you seem to have murdered a client of mine. I was curious." So an oily reservoir of anger still existed to fuel her words. His presence through the glass disturbed the old sorrow, resurrecting it. She didn’t want to feel it again. She had to remember, this was a different person, shaped by unknown forces. "Why did you come back?"

  "To find you." He smiled a little, and said, "You look great. But you swore you were going to get through life in jeans. Look at you now. You’re a lawyer."

  "And you’re a cold-blooded killer. I never would have predicted that for your future."

  Something like pain moved through his eyes and quickly retreated. "Hmm. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you bought the party line."

  "Contrary to movie wisdom, the person in custody is almost always the person who ought to be in custody."

  "You even talk differently, more authoritatively. And you wear lipstick. But under all that I see you," he said, smiling and nodding a little as if with melancholy pleasure. "And you still doodle what you’re thinking."

  With a start, she looked down at the yellow pad she had brought out from habit. She had sketched a few lines, a stick woman in the left margin, a stick man in the right, with a wide expanse of paper between the two.

  "Do you still look for the secret of life in your psychology books, with your philosophers? Is your bedside table still stacked high with books?"

  "No," Nina said.

  "Did you wait a long time at the restaurant, all those years ago?"

  "No." Through days of hell and weeks of misery, she had waited. "Not long."

  "That’s good. You won’t believe me right now, but I loved you—I never have loved anyone but you. I’m sorry, Nina."

  "It doesn’t matter anymore," Nina said. "I moved on."

  He dropped the hypnotic gaze that had held her. Suddenly he looked older than he was. "Congratulations," he said. "Mr. van Wagoner told me about your engagement."

  Nina dropped her pencil. She took a long minute to find it. When she straightened up again she said, "When did you talk to Paul?"

  "He hasn’t told you? You should talk to him."

  "Oh, I will."

  He had cocked his head to the side, as if to see her from this angle. Every expression on his face reminded her of something long buried.

  "You kept up your music?" she said unwillingly.

  "I’ve been living
in Germany. I worked most of the time in the Taunus Forest in Hessen, not too far from Frankfurt, as a kind of naturalist. I labeled trees, caught poachers, cleared brush. I had decided to give up music, along with everything else, but after a few years I discovered I couldn’t do it. I bought a used spinet piano from an old lady in Wiesbaden. Every night I came home to my apartment on Moritzstrasse and played. There were no distractions. The walls are thick in those nineteenth-century buildings. I entered a local Bach competition, and won."

  "The fugues."

  "Yes. And so, occasionally, I played concerts here and there under an assumed name. And that became my life, until now, when everything has changed again."

  As he spoke, she too was remembering so much happiness, followed by so much anguish.

  "How did it go with you?" Kurt’s accent sounded slightly foreign. He had spent twelve years in exile. Why?

  "Pretty simple. I finished law school, got married to another lawyer, became an associate in a firm in San Francisco. After five years, I left the firm and divorced. That was last year. My brother had moved to Tahoe. I moved here, too, and started a solo practice."

  "If only you hadn’t come here," he said after a minute. "If only Mr. van Wagoner hadn’t found me—"

  "Paul went to Germany?" She would have to have a long talk with Mr. van Wagoner.

  "He mentioned that you were in South Lake Tahoe. I knew she was here. I decided to come here to warn you."

  "About what?" But she already knew, she was only waiting for him to say it.

  "About your client. Terry London."

  Nina waited.

  "She was my wife, when I met you."

  "Your wife!"

  "I didn’t lie. I had filed for divorce. But I ... omitted some things. That she opposed the divorce. That she and I had a child."

  Nina made a sound, a choked-off moan. "It was all based on lies," she said. "You came back here and you killed her. I should go."

  "Go. Good idea."

  "Why should I stay here!"

  "You shouldn’t."