I smacked the book closed and tossed it onto the floor.
Jenna glanced at me and started to speak, but I turned toward the window. I could not handle talking at the moment; my mind was too busy wresting through all the information.
Maybe I had unconsciously transferred the Face. And then tainted Erin’s memory by allowing her to study the various features for so long that by the time she saw the whole drawing…
I stared out the window, trying to think, think. We were over the Bay. On the radio, the Norcal controller was handing Jenna off to the tower at Oakland Airport so we could fly through its air space. In the distance I could see San Francisco, draped in a shawl of fog and shimmering like the mysterious city of Oz. I thought of the Cowardly Lion, cowering before the great Wizard, asking for courage. Courage was what I needed right now—in major quantities. Courage and conviction. But I felt little of either. What amounts I’d possessed were slipping away from me with each passing second, as surely as the hills and freeways of Oakland now slipped beneath our wings.
What if I was leading us all down a false trail? I’d convinced myself that the Face on that Redwood City street was Lisa’s killer. But then, I’d also convinced myself he was in our house four nights ago—a paranoid notion that was proven entirely false. Now we were fleeing to the Bay Area, and far worse, Detective Chetterling was headed there as well, pursuing a lead that may be equally false. Meanwhile Lisa’s killer could be roaming the streets of Redding or even Grove Landing.
And no one would have the slightest idea what he looked like.
The Oakland runways stretched at an angle below. Jenna stayed at two thousand feet, as I’d vaguely heard the controller instruct. The westernmost finger of the Bay rolled beneath us as our flight following was routinely canceled and Jenna listened to San Carlos weather, then contacted the airport tower. Before us lay the Peninsula—the Bay Area cities between San Francisco and San Jose that melded together into one huge machine of humanity.
From the corner of my eye I saw movement. I looked over my shoulder to see Stephen pumping a victory fist in the air at sight of the Peninsula cities. The movie projector in my head turned on, flicking through pictures of his various shady friends, all with beckoning fingers and smirking grins. I shivered.
What had I done?
Jenna followed the controller’s instructions for altitude over the San Mateo Bridge, informing him when we glided past the cement plant landmark at the edge of the Bay. Easing into the pattern established for air traffic, we were cleared to land.
Back in the Bay Area.
I focused on my lap, exhaustion kneading its knuckles against the back of my neck. Stephen would wear me down, then waste no time hooking up with his druggie friends. Kelly was separated from Erin. Jenna would mourn anew the loss of her job. And I would wait every anxious moment for the Phone Call from Detective Chetterling—hoping against hope that they’d caught Tip, the Face, and that he looked just like my composite.
The phone call I now doubted would ever come.
Chapter 33
Jenna and I spoke little as we put the plane away in the hangar, hauled our bags to her Toyota Camry, and drove to her town house in Redwood Shores. One look at my face and she knew something was wrong. It would take little insight for her to know that my anxiety arose from what I read in The World of Forensics. Kelly shot me a couple of questioning looks, and for her sake I feigned a smile. She was not fooled.
“All right!” Stephen crowed as we pulled onto the freeway for our short jaunt to the next exit. “Civilization!” He bobbed around, thumping the backseat with his thumb as if listening to a private radio station in his head. “Mom, I want to call Nate as soon as we get to Aunt Jenna’s. I told him I would. You can take me right over there.”
Here we go again.
On top of all my other worries, the thought of dealing with Stephen and his attitudes made me slump. Already I found myself rationalizing that of Stephen’s friends, Nate was the least worrisome. Why couldn’t I let my son go there? Just get him out of my way for a while, let me try to sort out the ambivalence in my head.
“I want to call Emily first,” Kelly insisted, speaking of her best friend in the Bay Area. “‘Cause her mom said I could come over there.”
“Stop arguing, you two. I don’t need that right now.”
I didn’t mind Kelly’s staying with a friend. And as for Stephen, if by some remote chance the Face heard we were in the Bay Area and chose to come after me, shouldn’t both my children be off somewhere? Hadn’t I wanted them to be with their father?
Really, this was all Vic’s fault.
My cell phone! I’d turned it off while we were in the plane.
Detective Chetterling could call at any time. Pulling it out of my purse, I turned it back on.
Jenna’s town house is a two-story beige stucco affair, with the main bedroom upstairs and the second, which was set up as an office, off the entryway on the first level. The couch in the office could transform into a decent bed for me. I placed my bags on the blue carpet, beside Jenna’s desk and computer. Jenna lugged the soft suitcase she’d just packed for Grove Landing the night before back up to her room. The kids threw down their things in the hall and headed for the kitchen—and the nearest telephone.
I sank onto the office couch and stared at the telltale rectangular bulge in the top zipper section of my suitcase. The forensic art book mocked me. Within the space of an hour it had managed to chop my darkling forest of knowledge about Lisa’s killer into kindling and sawdust.
“Steph ennn!” Kelly’s protest bled into my thoughts.
“Too bad, I got it first!”
I heard the sound of an impatient finger punching digits into the phone. Distantly I watched my son veer out of the kitchen with the receiver stuck to his ear. His quick footsteps took him down the tiled hall and onto the hushed carpet of the living room. I heard the tone of his voice, if not the words, as he talked to Nate—that “hey dawg what’s up” chugging-engine tenor that signaled his intent to cruise down roads of which I would not approve.
Wearily I hauled myself from the couch and out the office door. “You can’t go anywhere until I talk to his mom, Stephen,” I called.
Kelly stood with her arms folded, leaning against the threshold of the kitchen. Waiting none too patiently. “He’s just gonna end up with T. J. and Jack and all of them.” Sunlight oozed through the leaded glass in the front door, coating one half of her firm-jawed face. I could not tell if her disdain was really due to my letting Stephen go or if she was just mad that he’d gotten to the phone first. I nodded, searching for a response and finding none. All I could do was walk over and hug her. Hug my beautiful daughter and tell her I loved her. She’d been through too much in the last few days.
Stephen brayed for me to “come talk to Nate’s mom!”
Rationalizing all the way, I left Kelly and headed toward the living room.
In a little over an hour I’d borrowed Jenna’s car and hauled Stephen to Nate’s house in Redwood City, and Kelly to Emily’s in Menlo Park. As I drove Kelly down El Camino through Atherton, I couldn’t help but think of Edgar Sybee’s expensive house, just one block east. The address had seen quite a media parade during Sybee’s trial. Even I had been curious enough to drive by the house when I was in the area.
Crystal Sybee had to feel mighty lonely now, knocking about such a large home with only her son.
My heart went out to her. True, she made a bad mistake in marrying the wrong man. But then, so did I. And I knew what loneliness was all about.
Jenna and I still had found no way to talk, agreeing in silent communication that we would do so upon my return.
I drove back to the town house, relief and guilt doing a dance in my stomach. If Stephen got into trouble in the next few days, I didn’t think I would be able to handle it.
As I stepped through the door of the town house, my cell phone rang.
Chetterling.
The sound burne
d through me like a smoldering brand. I jammed my hand into my purse in search of the phone and knocked the bag to the floor. A second ring. Collapsing into a kneel, I grabbed the purse and snatched up the phone.
“Hello?”
Jenna emerged from the office, the forensic art book in her hands. Had she read anything? If so, she now understood the source of my fear.
“Annie, this is Detective Chetterling.”
“Oh. Yes. Hi,” I panted, feeling so exposed, as if he could look into my head and see the unraveling threads in our cloak of logic. I slow-pivoted off my knees to sit on the entryway tile.
“Where are you?”
“At Jenna’s house in Redwood Shores. We just got here a little while ago.” My sister raised her eyebrows at me. I gave her a little nod. “Where are you?”
He sighed and my heart plummeted. It could only mean he hadn’t found one policeman who recognized the faxed composite of the Face. I locked gazes with Jenna, seeking calm in her eyes, and was dismayed to see a reflection of my own worry.
“Sitting in my car outside the Redwood City Police Station.”
“You’re already here?”
“Yup. Been here since ten. I left Redding around six. Had to get moving on this thing.” He paused. “Look, I don’t have any real good news to tell you so far. I met with the detectives who handled the Draye murder, plus two others who’re working in tandem with police from nearby jurisdictions on trying to bust a Peninsula-wide drug ring. The detectives on the drug case suspect there’s a higher-up who’s the main supplier for a lot of little guys like Sybee, but they haven’t gotten anyone to point the finger at him yet. They’re watching numerous suspects. But I have to tell you, neither of them has seen anyone looking like the composite. While I was in their office, they faxed the sketch around to a few other officers they’re working with. Of course, not everyone was in their office and could respond. But those that could—nada.
And nobody’s heard the name Tip.”
“I see.” That’s all I could say. The movie projector in my head turned half comic on me, choosing black-and-white footage. Out spat jerky frames of an
Old West sheriff with a cowboy hat and day-old beard, puckering his jaw over a grainy composite and shaking his head. “Ain’t seen nobody lookin’ like that in these here parts, Mister…”
“As for the homicide detectives—” Chetterling’s voice pulled me back—”they didn’t recognize the composite. And they assured me that Sybee was the only murderer in the Draye house that night. I let them read Sybee’s story and they laughed the whole thing down. Said it sounded like a suspect’s last-ditch effort to save his skin. If I was in their shoes, I’d be inclined to agree.”
Even with my own uncertainty, the notion of detectives laughing at Chetterling galled me. “Did you tell them about how I saw the guy on the street and how he wanted the file?
They shouldn’t just blow that off.”
“I know. And they couldn’t explain it. Except to say that whoever the guy is, they still don’t think he has any significance to their case.”
I dug my fingers into the top of my hair. “Okay. So now what?”
“Well, I’m hardly giving up. I’m making sure copies of the composite are posted around the area. It’s going into the San Jose Mercury tomorrow, and some of the local city papers.
Someone has to know who the guy is; after all, he talked to you on a Redwood City street. I do think that in the next day or two leads will start coming in.”
“So are you done here already? Are you going back to Redding to wait for those calls?”
“I don’t want to go back too soon. When leads start coming in, I want to be here to run them down. As for the rest of today, I’ve got a stop to make. In fact, I’m headed there now.”
“Where?”
“To meet with the deputy D.A. from the Sybee case.”
“Art Springer.”
“You know him?”
“Sort of. I saw him every day in court. I covered the Sybee trial, remember. Art would recognize me if he saw me.”
“Oh yeah.”
“So.” I shifted my position on Jenna’s floor. The tile was feeling harder by the second. My sister remained at the office threshold, watching me intently. “You’re going to show Springer the Sybee file, too, see if he thinks there’s any merit to it. See if he’s got any idea who Tip might be.”
“You’ve got it.” Chetterling’s voice betrayed his doubts.
“Does Springer know you’re coming—and why?”
“Basically.”
“I’ll bet he’s thrilled.”
Chetterling grunted.
I could picture Art Springer pulling at the collar around his goose-thin neck, his protruding eyes flicking at the ceiling as he talked to Chetterling. One of the deputy D.A.’s eyebrows always seemed to be higher than the other, and this feature, combined with the rest, gave him the appearance of a suspicious praying mantis. As for Springer’s defeat at the Sybee trial, it had not set well with him—or the entire D.A.’s office, for that matter. The last thing he’d want is to revisit the case. Some out-of-jurisdiction detective positing the “second man” theory would be about as well received as whale blubber at a Greenpeace convention.
“Well, I need to get going.” Chetterling’s voice turned all business. In the background I heard his car engine start. I envisioned him pulling out of the parking lot at the Police Station and heading for the courthouse, formally called the Hall of Justice and Records, in downtown Redwood City—a drive of only a few minutes. My head then flashed a close-up sequence of
Art Springer as Sybee’s verdict is read. His buggy eyes widen, a flush rises to his cheeks, followed by the poker-faced hardening of his narrow jaw. He stares straight ahead as if looking through the courtroom wall, through some hazy scrim dividing this world from the next, searching for a logical reason for a decision that looms so illogical in his mind…
The scene was so vivid, I could almost feel the colored pencils in my hand, hear the faint scratch of point against paper as I captured Springer’s expression. To think that while I blithely drew this picture and others of Sybee’s trial, the bricks were being laid in the path to Lisa Willit’s destruction…
Before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth. “Let me go with you to see Springer.”
Chetterling’s hesitation spoke volumes. His gut reaction to deny my request was no doubt tempered only by his promise to keep me informed. “Why?”
“Because I found the file, in my house. None of this was supposed to happen. So now I have to help. And I think I can with Springer. He’s not going to like talking about the Sybee case, which he lost, with someone who wasn’t even at the trial. At least I was there, and he’ll remember me. Maybe I can be sort of a…buffer.”
I cringed at the last word. Surely the last thing Chetterling thought he needed from anyone, much less me, was some form of protection.
“I appreciate your willingness,” he said rather formally,
“but I’m not sure what you could accomplish.”
“What I can accomplish is continuing to help in this investigation. I did draw the composite for you.” I blinked at the force of my reply but could not back down now. “Please.
I promise you, if I can’t say anything helpful, I’ll stay quiet.
But it won’t hurt to have me there, and you never know what might come up.”
Silence.
“I’m not that much farther from the courthouse than you.
If you’ll wait five minutes, I’ll be there.”
Chetterling exhaled into the phone. My own breath stilled. “All right. I’ll meet you outside. Don’t take long.”
He clicked off the line.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it.
“What’d he say, what’d he say?”
I looked at Jenna, stymied. “He said okay.”
“Well then, go!” She strode over to help me off the floor.
Not
until I was driving down the freeway did I allow myself to think of what I hadn’t told Chetterling. True, Art Springer would remember me as a courtroom artist at the trial. But like everyone else in that courtroom, other than Sid Haynes, he didn’t know whose daughter I was. That would have to be revealed as Chetterling and I explained our story.
Knowing how much Springer hated the law firm previously known as Gerralon & Haynes, I could only hope he wouldn’t throw both of us out of his office.
Chapter 34
By the time I pulled into the covered parking lot near the Hall of Justice and Records, doubts blew through my mind like an ill-begotten wind. Everything seemed wrong, down to the khaki pants and short-sleeved blouse I’d flung on before dashing out of Jenna’s town house. They were better than the sweaty T-shirt and shorts I’d worn in the plane, but I’d had no time to iron them. My thrown-together appearance mirrored how I felt on the inside.
I pulled myself out of the car, slinging my purse over my shoulder. Musty air swirled through the open sides of the parking area, sending a balled-up piece of trash skittering across my foot. For a second I stared at it, drawn to its wayward journey across the oil-stained cement.
I’m just as buffeted as that ball of paper.
Hurrying along the sidewalk toward the courthouse, I felt anything but the professional I’d once been in these surroundings. The familiarity of this walk, the building, the wide steps leading up to the entrance, pulled at me in ways I couldn’t fully comprehend. Edgar Sybee’s trial seemed eons ago.
I spotted Chetterling waiting for me near the door, out of the sun. Compared with his clothes, mine looked well ironed.
His sport coat hung from slumped shoulders, and his pants bore the scars of his road trip to the Bay Area. The man had barely slept during the past five days. Chetterling’s huge hand cupped the spine of a blue notebook. Something about the hunch of his shoulders, the way he bounced the notebook off his thigh, spoke of impatience. No doubt it rose from regret for allowing me to come.
My hand lifted in a brief wave. Why had I done this? I should have stayed at Jenna’s. Art Springer would not welcome me—the daughter of the man who defeated him, even from the grave. All of Springer’s defensiveness would rise to the top like clotted cream in rancid milk. And Chetterling would be royally ticked at me. He wouldn’t want me to have anything to do with the rest of the investigation. Maybe wouldn’t even tell me what was happening.
Brink of Death Page 17
