"So he's furious, right? You're the psychologist-people wanting vengeance tend be your angry people, right? "
"Yeah."
"You could say murderous, even?"
"Yes. Apparently so in Brian's case."
"So what does he do with all his murderous vengeance? He kidnaps his shrink's wife, has tea with her, locks her in a closet, gives her a chair, and then shoots at her through a locked door? Huh? Why?" His tone had grown way too sarcastic for my comfort.
"I don't know, Sam. I guess he didn't want to watch her while he, you know, killed her."
"He didn't want to watch? Are you kidding me? Think about it. This guy is eager to inflict pain. He wants to torment her. I mean, if I know him right, he'd pay extra to watch her head explode. He's bought his ticket and he wants to watch her die. If you put it on tape for him he'll play it back a hundred times in slow motion and freeze-frame. He's rageful enough to kidnap her, and he's rageful enough to kill her, but you're telling me that when push comes to shove his sensibilities are offended and he doesn't actually want to watch her die?
Sorry, buddy, but it does not compute."
I was tempted to order another beer, but I'm a cheap drunk and I thought it might take me over the threshold of inebriation and didn't want to have to take a cab home. I passed.
"What you're saying makes sense, Sam. I have to think about it some more, but it makes some intuitive sense. Now go back to the second problem you found again. I don't get that either."
"This ranch house of theirs? It's a big house, all on one level. From the news footage, I counted at least twelve doors to the outside. That includes the garage doors, patio doors, all the doors. Okay?"
"Okay"
"What are the odds that these two cops with their scopes and high-powered rifles are going to be set up in exactly the right place to shoot this guy when he makes his break from the bedroom deck? How the heck do these geniuses know that he's coming out that door?"
I was playing with the cocktail napkins on the table, making patterns of diamonds and squares.
"Sam, why do I get the sense that you already know the answer to your own question?"
He laughed. "
"Cause I do. I tracked one of 'em down. One of the two shooters. I got his name, found out where he lives, and gave him a call at home. He's a welder in Lamar now. You know where Lamar is? He says that it was all deduction.
That they guessed that the guy had ditched his car in the woods near those bedroom doors by that deck. So they figured that's where he would run out to make his escape. He and the other deputy had already taken up position. Had their weapons ready. The guy I talked to, he called it a duck shoot."
Sam's voice was still singing a melody of suspicion. I said, "But? You're not satisfied. I can tell you're not satisfied."
"But? But do you know who did the deducing? Raymond Welle and Phil Barrett, that's who."
I shrugged. My own conclusion was that this second argument Sam was making wasn't anywhere near as compelling as the first had been. I said, "Somebody had to do the deducing. And it sounds like they did it well" He sat back on his chair.
"No, you're not getting it. With a hostage inside a house, cops don't put all their eggs in one basket like that. The reason is that kidnappers don't usually make a run for it in hostage situations the way Sample did.
"Strategically, if you only have a few deputies you certainly don't set up snipers waiting for a kidnapper to scoot. The kidnapper is in there for a reason. Before you commit resources you have to know what that reason is. The kidnappers barricade themselves in and hunker down or they make demands or they take pot shots at the cops. Sometimes they set fires. They ask for a helicopter and a zillion dollars. They want to talk to reporters or they want to talk to their mother. But they're there for something. I've never seen anybody in Sample's circumstances just run for it when he knows that there's a couple of cops with rifles aimed right at his intended escape route."
"Sample knew they were there? He could see them from the bedroom where he was?"
"Clear line of sight, according to the videotape you gave me. The cops' vehicles were out in the open. One of the bedroom windows faces the front of the ranch.
He could've seen them. Have to assume he did see them."
I considered the circumstances Sam was describing. Tried to conjure up Brian Sample's state of mind and tried to imagine his tortured decision-making process. It wasn't easy. I said, "Brian Sample underestimated them, I guess."
"I… guess." He raised an eyebrow.
"Fatal damn error" I decided to try another argument.
"Maybe he just didn't care. He was a very depressed man."
Sam scowled and flagged down our waitress to order another beer. Before it arrived, I decided it was time to start to tell him about the visit I'd received from Brian Sample's son Kevin the previous weekend.
When I finished the story Sam's beer was gone and he had an evil little smile on his lips. He said, "See? What'd I tell ya. The kid is making a variation of the same argument that I'm making. The story doesn't make sense.
What his father did when he was in that house-hey, the whole thing is too goofy for words."
"What's the alternative explanation?"
"Don't have one. Its not my job. But it was that sheriff's job. What was his name? Barrett? Yeah, Barrett. He took the easy way out. He had an obvious crime with an obvious perp. He closed his case even though his solution doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"Even though Barrett couldn't really explain what really happened inside, or why. That's your point?"
"That's my point." "Interesting," I said, still unconvinced by Sam's argument. I excused myself to the bathroom, and stopped at a nearby pay phone to make sure Lauren was home safely. I got the answering machine. My watch told me it was only 8:30. I decided to forgo panic until at least 9:30.
Back at the table, without preamble, I said, "That reporter from the Washington Post? The one I told you about who wanted to talk with me about Raymond Welle's fundraising?"
"Yeah?" I could tell he was disinterested in the new topic. I also knew that his disinterest would evaporate as I leaked out more details.
"I was up in Steamboat earlier today on that Locard thing. I was actually up there with two other Locard people. A forensic specialist and a pathologist.
While we were there, Dorothy Levin-the reporter-disappeared from her hotel room. The room showed evidence of a major struggle. I saw it; there was a lot of blood."
"Was she murdered? I didn't hear there was a homicide up there."
"They haven't found a body."
"Witnesses?"
"Not really"
"Suspect?"
"They're looking at her husband. They're separated. He's a jerk. Some violence in the history."
"But the local cops aren't sure?" "No," I said.
"They're not sure."
"She's the one who was in the line of fire with you at the Welle fund-raiser, wasn't she?"
"Yes"
"Nothing new on that, though?"
"I've been checking the papers, haven't seen anything."
"But this reporter friend of yours? She's been both shot at and kidnapped within a forty-eight-hour period?"
"I guess."
He slowly moved his eyes away from the two young women who had just been seated at the next table and froze me with his glare.
"What the hell are you messed up in this time, Alan?"
Nine o'clock had come and gone by the time I'd finished regaling Sam with the details of my visit to Steamboat to be a supplicant in Ray Welle's regal court at the Silky Road Ranch. Nine-thirty had finally rolled around when I was done adding the fine points to the story of Dorothy Levin's disappearance. I traipsed back to the pay phone, where I had to wait in line while a drunken man named Lou-"Come on, babe, it's me, Lou"-tried to lure a recalcitrant woman named Jessica to join him for a pitcher of beer and a game of pool. Jessica wisely wanted none of it. Lou finally hun
g up, or at least gave up. The receiver never quite made it back into the cradle.
I called home and got the machine again. Worried, I tried Lauren's cell phone and heard an out-of-service recording. I walked back to the dining room with as much calm as I could muster.
"I can't reach Lauren, Sam."
He spotted the concern in my eyes, wisely searching the edges for telltale signs of paranoia.
"She should be home?"
"She should have been home over an hour ago. She was at some committee meeting."
"It wouldn't have run late?"
"Unlikely. If it did she would have called."
I watched as his mind ticked through some mental checklist. Calmly he asked, "Is she on call for the DA tonight?"
"You know, I didn't even think about that. I don't have her call schedule with me."
"But it's possible?"
"Sure."
"Do you know the number of the pager she carries when she's on call?"
"No, I don't have it memorized. It's in my appointment book."
"Which you don't have with you, right?"
"Right. He successfully refrained from criticizing me. I was grateful for the effort.
"I can get it from the department dispatchers. I'll be back in a minute.
Do you have any quarters?"
I handed him all my change and watched him stride from the room. I waited at the table for about three minutes before my anxiety rose to a level that my false patience couldn't arrest. I followed Sams trail to the pay phone and ran into him outside the men's room.
He held up his hand like a traffic cop controlling an intersection.
"Its cool.
She got called in on a rape. She's right down the street at Community. Said she just left you a message on the home machine. She's fine. Said to tell you she loves you but that she'll probably be a while." Sam showed absolutely no discomfort passing along the message about my wife's affection.
"Thank God. Thanks."
He put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Let's you and me go home. You haven't had a very good day."
Better than Dorothy's, I thought.
I wasn't ready to sleep when I got home, so I parked myself in front of the computer and continued my narrative report to A. J. Simes. I wrote about my summons to Steamboat. My meeting with Ray Welle at his ranch about his treatment records. Dorothy Levin's disappearance.
By the time I printed the report and faxed it to D.C. the clock told me it was almost eleven-thirty. I waited up until after midnight for Lauren to get home.
We had both witnessed a lot of misery that day and talked for at least another hour before we fell asleep.
The phone woke me up at 6:45 the next morning. After I identified the noise as emanating from the telephone, my first thought was that they had found Dorothy Levin's body. I managed a pasty-mouthed
"Hello."
A wrong number. Someone wanted to speak to Patricia.
PART FOUR. Satoshi
Her father had surprised me so much during my brief visit to see him in Vancouver that I cautioned myself not to have preconceptions about what Satoshi Hamamoto would be like. I was certain I would fail to imagine her correctly.
On the congested drive south down the Peninsula from the San Francisco airport my mind, despite my intentions, continued to conjure images of her. The portraits I composed were mosaics of fragments of the various photographs I'd seen of Satoshi's dead sister, Mariko. Without ever having met her, I was unable to picture Satoshi as anything more than a composite of her sister. My mind insisted on perceiving Satoshi as Mariko was at sixteen-her skin tawny, her smile alluring. For some reason, my imagination would not allow Satoshi to have an identity separate from her sister. I concluded that I was so eager to actually know Mariko that I was desperate for her sister to be her twin. I wanted Satoshi to be a window into her sister's life, and I wanted to gaze through that glass and see what had led Mariko to walk with her killer.
In 1988, when Tami and Miko disappeared, the two friends were sixteen years old.
Satoshi was younger, thirteen or so-a girl. But the person I was about to meet in Palo Alto was somewhere around twenty-five, a woman.
She'd asked me to meet her on campus at Stanford. I found the building where we were to meet without too much trouble. Locating the specific room was not so simple. The room numbers made little sense and the building was chockablock with culs-de-sac and dead ends. I begged for directions at least three times.
The students I asked for help seemed to be as clueless to their surroundings as I was.
My watch told me that I had found the appointed room with only a few minutes to spare. The door was open and I stepped in after a cursory knock. Satoshi wasn't there. No one was.
I suspected from my own days in graduate school that this room functioned as a group office that was shared by at least four grad students. Desks and tables were crammed against three walls. The fourth was lined with shelves and file cabinets. Computer equipment, some new and some old enough to be considered quaint, littered every horizontal surface.
"Dr. Gregory?"
The voice came from behind me. It was light and friendly and almost without accent.
I turned and saw a young woman standing on the far side of the hallway outside the door. In one hand she held a can of Coke. The other hand gripped a laptop that she was pressing tightly against her chest.
The woman was certainly of Japanese ancestry. I said, "Satoshi Hamamoto?"
She said, "I've been thinking that it's too nice a day to stay in here. Would you mind if we go outside to the courtyard? Is that okay?" I said, " I'll follow you."
As I walked toward her she stepped back from me. First one step, then quickly, two more.
She said, "This is awkward, but…" Satoshi's black hair was pulled back and it mostly disappeared beneath a floppy beret the color of dying bluegrass. Her head swayed slightly from side to side as she asked, "May I see some ID? Maybe your… drivers license?"
The request puzzled me but I didn't have a reason not to comply. I tugged my wallet from my pocket and fished out my Colorado license.
She juggled the can and her computer and examined my ID for half a minute before she handed it back to me.
"I'm sorry that was necessary. But thank you."
This time she didn't shy away as I moved closer to her. Satoshi was tall and thin, like her father. Her face was narrower than Mariko's had been, though her cheeks were full, the bones below taking on definition only when she smiled.
Her manner displayed more confidence than I imagined Mariko had ever managed to accumulate in her limited years on the planet.
She asked about my flight and my drive from the airport and if I'd had any trouble finding her office. When I admitted I'd gotten lost inside the building she laughed along with me.
Outside we settled on a stone bench beneath a tree that she told me was a laurel.
"This is my bench. I come here every day. Almost." She placed her laptop and a shoulder bag on the grass at the base of the bench and faced me.
"Thanks for this," she said.
"For coming all the way here. And even more for caring about what happened to Mariko." The moment was poignant but she met it head-on.
Her gaze stayed locked on mine. I watched as the corners of her mouth turned down infinitesimally, hinting at some lingering sadness about her loss. Her dark eyes glowed from within like black pearls.
I said, "I'm grateful that you're meeting with me. It's not easy, or pleasant, to dig up painful memories."
She placed her hands behind her on the stone and leaned away. She was wearing a loose top that was cropped near the waistband of khaki cargo pants. The top rode back onto her abdomen, exposing a band of caramel flesh at her navel. I tried not to look. I failed. She appeared not to notice. She said, "That sounds suspiciously like a platitude. My father didn't prepare me for that about you.
He said to expect you to be forthright."
I
don't know what it was that I had expected from Satoshi. But it wasn't confrontation. I fought surprise as I said, "Despite the circumstances, I enjoyed meeting your father. And I hope you won't be disappointed and end up disagreeing with his assessment of me. I can only assure you that my comment wasn't intended as a platitude. I believe what I said before. The territory we need to cover is painful. I have trouble with it, and I never knew your sister or Tami Franklin."
Her eyes closed briefly and she said, "I think that you are trying to be kind.
It's not necessary. You don't know-you can't know-the agony, Doctor. No matter how hard you've looked, how many people you've talked to about what happened, I promise you that you don't know the half of it."
When her eyes opened again she was looking away from me, her lips dry and parted. I noticed her breathing had changed; she was exhaling through her open mouth. I followed her gaze to the distance. The sky on the western horizon was hazy. The rolling hills of the coastal range appeared as ghosts. It was as though I were peering at the edge of the world through gauze.
"Before I begin with my story," she said, "there is something to which you must agree."
I waited. I couldn't begin to guess what she wanted now. The driver's license request had seemed odd enough.
She leaned forward from her waist and folded her hands on her lap in a way that left her palms open and cupped to the sky.
"You must agree not to divulge the information that I am about to provide to anyone beyond the membership of your committee. Your group-I believe it's called Locard. Is that correct? And your committee must agree never to divulge the information to anyone else. Simply, this story I will tell you must not become public. Specifically, my parents cannot ever-ever-learn this information. If it does become public-or if my parents learn the details-I will not only deny that I told you this story but I will also deny that it is true. I guarantee you that you will find no independent source for the information I plan to give you today. If it turns out that what I say is useful, I hope your organization will be able to exploit it to guide your inquiry into my sister's murder. But you must develop your own proof. Do you understand?"
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