Acts of Malice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  ‘‘Were his clothes torn?’’

  ‘‘I don’t remember—let me think—I think his parka was open. Yeah, it was.’’

  ‘‘He wouldn’t wear it unzipped, would he?’’

  ‘‘Oh, he might’ve. Alex spent half the winter in T-shirts. He had a metabolism like a volcano—never needed a blanket at night.’’

  ‘‘Well, give it your best shot. Zipped or unzipped?’’

  ‘‘The sun was out. It wasn’t especially cold. He was wearing a medium-weight parka—I’d say it was open.’’

  ‘‘So you could see the bibs? Alex’s bibs?’’ she said, rubbing her mitten against the rough rock she sat on. She took off the mitten and cleaned off a small area of granite.

  ‘‘The bibs? I suppose they had blood on them. I wasn’t thinking too straight. I couldn’t decide whether to stay and hope someone would come, or get going down the mountain. I sat beside him and I lifted his head, tried to brush off the blood. He was losing consciousness. I freaked and I was yelling, ‘I’m going for help, I’ll be right back . . .’

  ‘‘I was patting his hand and yelling for help when his body gave a sort of jerk. His eyes went half closed, not moving. He seemed to stop breathing and I gave him mouth-to-mouth but it wasn’t working.

  ‘‘After some time I gave up. I skied down the hill and found Jerry. I was shouting, limping from my fall, raising the alarm.’’

  ‘‘Did you listen to his chest?’’ She had to keep at it, get Jim’s story, the one he was going to stick to . . . She scanned the rocks, cleared a tiny pocket of snow, listening with painful concentration because she really wanted to know, had to form a judgment before the prelim as to whether he was telling the truth.

  If he was lying, his pretense of grief was diabolical as he described Alex’s last moments in this voice full of stops and starts, full of pain.

  He had to be innocent, had to be. But the agonized words that fell from his tongue were contradicted by an ever-increasing amount of evidence. A mountain of evidence, with slippery slopes . . .

  Knowing that her face would betray how critically she weighed his words, she didn’t want to look at Jim. Instead, she looked down at the rock, rubbing angrily on it with her bare hand.

  And cut her hand. ‘‘Ow!’’ she said. ‘‘What was that?’’ She bent and pushed up her goggles. Without that rimy layer obscuring her vision, she could see that the rock was not really gray, it was bicolored—dark, then light, then dark.

  The light parts stuck out. ‘‘Wait,’’ she said, holding up her hand to stop him from talking. ‘‘Look at this.’’

  He got down on his knees in the snow so that his eyes were level with the rock and said, ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘The rock. It’s sort of striped in dark and light.’’

  ‘‘Uh huh. Looks like thin veins of quartz in the granite. Not so unusual.’’

  ‘‘But they’re at a different height from the granite.’’

  ‘‘Striations. They’re a different hardness, so they don’t erode at the same rate.’’

  ‘‘Climb up there on the sharp rocks and see if the tops have the same kind of markings,’’ she commanded. He stared at her for a moment, then jumped up and ran lightly along the rock shelf and leaned over the outcropping, tearing off his goggles and ski gloves as he went.

  ‘‘It’s the same up here!’’ he yelled. ‘‘Come on. I’ll help you up!’’ In about two seconds they were both running their bare fingers up and down the irregular rocks and straining their eyes, looking for bloodstains.

  ‘‘Here! And here!’’ Jim said. Within a few inches of an area with the staining, she could see it—striated rock, the quartz running in slender veins.

  ‘‘It’s all over,’’ Nina said. ‘‘Everywhere! All you need to do is look.’’ She thought of Doc Clauson’s Coke-bottle glasses behind a pair of tinted goggles. All that magnification hadn’t helped. He had missed it.

  Jim was waiting for her to say something. He had bitten his lower lip so violently in his excitement, a drop of blood began to form and roll down. Breathing hard herself, she ran her fingers and her eyes over the raised striated areas. They were both kneeling on the rock now, their noses two inches away, like a pair of raccoons at a full garbage can.

  ‘‘We might have something here,’’ she said soberly, and sat back on her haunches.

  ‘‘It might make a pattern, maybe?’’

  ‘‘It might make a reasonable doubt.’’ Furrowing her brow, she got down to look again. The raised lines of quartz were still there.

  What if—what if Alex had hit the striated rock somewhere on his way down? Could it have left a faint pattern on his skin where it hurt him so terribly?

  A jury might think so.

  In that moment, she allowed the lineaments of the case to shift back in her mind to the most likely truth— that there had been a tragic accident. An accident, nothing more.

  They looked at each other.

  Nina said, ‘‘You need to bring Tony up here—can you take him tomorrow? We need an independent witness with a camera. Ginger! She’ll come up too. Maybe she can rig up some sort of simple test. Maybe they can find some blood somewhere up here that the police missed, in addition to the obvious bloodstains. And we might send up a geologist or something before the prelim. I’ll have this area cordoned off again.’’

  ‘‘Sure. I’ll take anybody. I’ll do anything. I’ll fall down on the rocks myself. Everything has changed, hasn’t it? I thought I was in real trouble.’’

  Nina said, ‘‘The police—the coroner—should have noticed this.’’

  ‘‘Damn right!’’

  ‘‘Maybe it was an accident, just like you said.’’

  ‘‘It was! Like I said all along!’’ His expression had already moved from relief to triumph.

  He moved toward her as if he was going to hug her. Nina moved slightly away and he stopped.

  ‘‘Can you talk to the district attorney and stop all this craziness without me having to have a hearing?’’ he said, dropping his smile.

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Nina said. ‘‘I don’t even know yet if I want to reveal this before the hearing. We’re not obligated to tell anybody about this in advance. It will have a huge impact on the judge. I’ll bring him right up here if I have to. We’ll put on a defense and get the case dismissed formally. That’s it. That’s the easiest way—’’

  She babbled on, thinking out loud, and he hung on every word, until a pang of shame hit her. She could no longer allow her doubts about Jim’s innocence to contaminate his defense.

  Jim seemed to realize this at the same moment. She thought she read an accusation in his expression.

  ‘‘I have to get back to the office and make some calls,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Listen, Nina—’’

  ‘‘We should hurry.’’

  ‘‘You thought I did it. I’m sensitive to women. I notice things.’’

  ‘‘I hadn’t formed an opinion,’’ she answered, weaseling in classic lawyer form.

  ‘‘You almost let me down. But it’s okay. No matter what you were thinking, you stuck with me. You’re a loyal person, and that’s everything to me. And you came up with these markings very fast. So don’t worry about it.’’

  Nina said, ‘‘Thanks, Jim.’’ The snow that had melted above her wrists had hardened to an icy bracelet. ‘‘Let’s go,’’ she said, shivering, grabbing her poles and shaking snow out of her hat before replacing it on her head.

  13

  COLLIER TURNED ON the hot water and stepped into the shower, his razor and a pair of manicure scissors in one hand. Once he had slammed the door, he remembered his watch. Just in time, right before that arm went under the spray, he took it off, setting it on the top edge of the shower, praying it wouldn’t fall off before he was finished. He was beat. He had just had a long jog after a long day at the office and he planned to sack out early.

  To get the spray on his head he had to stoop. The bat
hroom of his apartment had been outfitted for a midget, but the spray fell hot on his shoulders and the tension oozed out of his body like a croc out of the mud. He turned to the guaranteed fogless mirror hanging over the shower wall and began trimming his beard.

  The phone rang. It always did. He kept a cordless on the sink. He reached out the door and brought it into the shower, keeping it out of the spray.

  ‘‘Hallowell.’’

  ‘‘You don’t know me, Mr. Hallowell.’’

  ‘‘Then how did you get my number? Call my office.’’ He was about to punch the button cutting her off when he heard the remote female voice at the other end of the line say, ‘‘I’m calling about the Strong case. I understand you’re in charge.’’

  ‘‘What about it?’’

  ‘‘I know something that might help.’’

  ‘‘All right, give me your name and number.’’ He wasn’t exactly sitting at his desk, but if it was about Strong, he wanted to hear it.

  ‘‘I can’t do that. I’m sorry.’’

  He turned off the shower and stood there dripping, clipping a few more wild hairs in the shaving mirror, pressing the phone between his shoulder and his ear.

  ‘‘But I overheard a conversation between Jim Strong and his father. Philip Strong.’’

  ‘‘I’m listening.’’

  ‘‘This happened only two days before Alex died.’’

  Collier noted the use of the first name. Someone who knew the family. A housekeeper, he thought, or one of the lodge employees?

  ‘‘Mr. Strong had Jim in his office. He asked why Jim fired the night host—you know, the guy that greets and seats people at the restaurant.’’

  ‘‘His name?’’

  ‘‘Gene Malavoy. He doesn’t know about this conversation.’’

  ‘‘And?’’

  ‘‘So Jim says, he says, I’m the manager at the lodge, so why don’t you just let me do my job. Butt out of my business. And Mr. Strong gets all bent out of shape and says, don’t forget I’m the managing partner of the resort. Gene’s a hit with the customers. He needs the work. Marianne’s not gonna like it. And Jim says something like, he’s a loser and I want a girl for the job.’’

  ‘‘So what did Mr. Strong say to that?’’

  ‘‘Then Mr. Strong says pretty calmly, but you can tell he means it, Jim, listen, I think it would be better if you let Alex take over for a while, the administration side isn’t for you. So Jim laughs in a really nasty way and says, ‘That’s funny, ’cuz I had to give Gene a reason. So I told him Alex got him fired.’ ’’

  ‘‘Then what?’’

  ‘‘Mr. Strong says, you shouldn’t have done that. And Jim says, but I did, and he laughs again. He says, ‘It’s always Alex. Well, not this time.’ ’’

  ‘‘And?’’

  ‘‘The phone rang and the door opened and that was it.’’

  ‘‘I need to talk to you more about this,’’ Collier said, trying to stay businesslike, hoping not to scare his caller off. ‘‘Let me talk to you, just briefly. Fill in a few blanks. How about I meet you at a coffee shop in town?’’

  ‘‘I just had to tell somebody,’’ the girl’s voice said. ‘‘I wondered if Jim did kill Alex ’cuz Alex was going to take over the lodge again.’’ The line went dead. Collier hung it on the soap rack and returned to his beard.

  In five minutes he was done, more or less dry, dressed in his old plaid flannel boxers, and on the phone again dialing Sean’s beeper.

  He padded into the kitchen and cracked a beer, then lay down on the living room couch. The fireplace still sent out plenty of heat, and he was beginning to feel luxuriously sleepy when the call came.

  ‘‘Yo,’’ said Sean.

  Collier said, ‘‘We have a confidential informant in the Strong case, so confidential she wouldn’t even give me her name. I need you to find her tomorrow and bring her and another witness in for me to talk to if you can.’’

  ‘‘On a Saturday?’’

  ‘‘I’ll be there all afternoon. First, a guy named Gene Malavoy. He was working at Paradise Lodge as a host, at least until October twenty-first. Second, a girl, probably works at Paradise, probably under the age of twentyfive, was in the vicinity of Philip Strong’s office two days before the Alex Strong killing.’’

  ‘‘Now how am I supposed to find the girl?’’

  ‘‘Well, get Gene Malavoy at least. Run with that, but keep it quiet. Don’t let Philip or Jim Strong find out what you’re doing, at least until I’ve talked to these people.’’

  ‘‘Done.’’

  ‘‘Call me as soon as you hit.’’

  ‘‘You got it.’’

  Collier hung up, got a pad of paper, wrote down exactly what the caller had said, dated and signed his note, went to the refrigerator and poured himself a celebratory second beer. Could be a break. Could be good.

  No one could have been more cavalier than Bob as dance night rolled around. He had decided to go, not with the girl who had called him, of course, but alone, and Taylor Nordholm, his buddy, was supposed to meet him. Nina couldn’t get him to tuck his shirt in or to wear his best sneakers. She had gathered from Bob’s vague answers that contact would occur, but on an elaborately casual basis.

  She still didn’t know anything except the girl’s name, Nicole. She was ‘‘some girl.’’ All Nina could discover was that Nicole was a little older than Bob. When she pressed ever so delicately at the dinner table, he retaliated by bugging her about getting a laptop computer, which set them to bickering and effectively terminated the topic.

  However, Nina had continued to think about this watershed event all week. The girl had set a challenge for Bob that he might not be ready to meet. Now that she had called him he wanted to go to the dance because her interest interested him, but because she had embarrassed him with her interest he intended to ignore her. He might never say a word to her all night but Nina bet he wouldn’t miss a single move she made.

  By Friday, Nina sympathized with the girl. Nicole was in for one of those nights Nina was not too old to recall in which the boys stand against the wall making disagreeable comments and acting obnoxious while the girls wait in vain for an invitation to dance.

  ‘‘Promise me you’ll ask her to dance at least once,’’ she said to Bob, ‘‘or dance with her if she asks you.’’

  ‘‘Nobody ever dances.’’

  ‘‘What do you do at a dance, if you don’t dance?’’

  ‘‘Eat. Play some of the games.’’

  ‘‘You want her to like you, don’t you?’’

  ‘‘She already likes me. She called me.’’

  ‘‘But, sweetie. Don’t you know that if you don’t show that you like her, she might lose interest in you?’’

  ‘‘Fine,’’ said Bob with the blithe brutality of a thirteen-year-old.

  ‘‘You don’t want to hurt her feelings, do you?’’

  ‘‘I won’t hurt her feelings. Relax, Mom, okay? Don’t get your undies in a twist.’’ Snickering, he went off to dig through the laundry for his favorite, soiled, corduroy pants.

  At quarter to eight, they arrived at the school. Bob jumped out of the Bronco, slamming the door before Hitchcock could follow. The gym, a stucco sixties relic like so many California school buildings, looked so decrepit that more snow might cave in the roof, but at least it was brightly lit. With nary a good-bye or a wave, Bob plunged his hands into his pockets and went to join the long line of middle-schoolers snaking toward the doors.

  Some of his classmates were very tall, usually females, and some were very short, usually males. Some wore unusual hair colors and some wore clothes as bizarre as costumes. The majority dressed like Bob, in jeans and sweatshirts. A few smoked surreptitiously; a few shoved; a few complained at the shoving.

  In the mild cold of the evening the generally underdressed preteens and teens spewed out excited, rattled chatter that sounded vaguely dangerous to Nina, like neon crackling in a rainstorm. From inside, she hea
rd, over drums and guitar, a cool, sardonic voice singing: ‘‘Your ultimate bliss—Will be my terminal kiss.’’

  God, this isn’t the way I imagined his first dance, she thought. She wanted to get him, take him home, break his legs and stuff him back into his crib. When she let him out again, she would make him wear an ascot like Prince William and attend only cotillions.

  She drove by Collier’s apartment. A faint light behind the shades seemed to indicate that he was home, and she pulled into a parking space, letting the faint stirrings of longing have their way. But no one answered the bell.

  They were out of milk and laundry detergent. The Raley’s was open and wouldn’t be crowded. Better to hit the bigger Raley’s grocery store by the casinos, because . . . because that made it so much easier to drive right by the Raley’s and turn into the Harrah’s parking lot because it was so easy to park there.

  Although the space actually turned out to be some distance from there, she had her coat after all and her jar of quarters jingled merrily as she opened the glove compartment, which got her to thinking about how intensely mindless playing quarter slots is, you can forget the whole pressure cooker full of kids growing up as fast as weeds and clients in bad fixes and the mortgage payment on the cabin and not incidentally being in love with a prosecutor, and maybe you can sit on a red vinyl stool without working too hard and a bell will ring while it all comes pouring out, quarters and fame and love and beauty and art, and true to the usual pattern of events when she started feeding quarters to her favorite machine inside the hot, crowded, red-carpeted palace of greed she had somehow entered, it responded obediently and excitedly and gave her cherries and bar-bar-bars, so that she became convinced that she was special in this machine’s life, she and the machine were soulmates at this exciting moment, so she started feeding in three quarters at a time, upon which a dry spell ensued, in fact it kept landing two sevens on her line with the third seven just above, tantalizingly out of reach of the jackpot, which made her aware that the machine had begun to tease her, and she in turn became stubborn, knowing that it couldn’t according to the laws of probability go sixteen rounds without even a cherry payout, but it was doing it, and so she coaxed it and said, ‘‘Come on, now,’’ and tried a few experiments, punching the buttons gently and then forcefully, but the machine seemed to have folded its arms and begun sneering, until she ran out of quarters and, inflamed and in the heat of battle, demanded of the change lady several more rolls of coins, and now she had enough ammunition for a titanic battle of wills between her and the machine, she would force it to pay out, the son of a bitch was fixed but she would ride it out, ride it out, ride it out. . . .