by Thomas Perry
Fowler nodded. “I understand. I just have to ask all these things, because somebody has to, and I’m the one it fell to. If something we’re supposed to get on the record came out later, and we hadn’t already covered it, that might make us both look bad. Let’s see. You said that at first she wasn’t affectionate or friendly. Did she resent you for saving her?”
Mallon reflected. “I’m not sure. Maybe a little.”
“Did you have to struggle with her, maybe to get her out of the drink, or make her go with you after?”
“No.”
Fowler looked at him with a furrowed brow, as though asking him for a favor. “Sometimes drowning people get a panic grip on you—climb right up on you and hold you under. You might have to hit them to keep them from dragging you under with them.”
“No,” said Mallon. “She was unconscious.”
“Even then,” said Fowler. “An unconscious girl is just a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight. Sometimes you have to grab them any way you can.”
“I used a cross-chest pull, my arm over her left shoulder and under her right arm. She didn’t fight, and I didn’t have to do anything but swim. When I got her to the shallows, I took both her wrists and dragged her up on the sand. It didn’t hurt her, and all I was worried about was keeping her face above the surface. When I got her to the shore I gave her CPR, and she coughed up some water. She never said anything about pain, so I assume there was none.”
Fowler said, “Okay. Thanks very much for coming in and telling us about this, Mr. Mallon. It will help us clear this up. When a young woman like that dies, it’s just … mysterious.”
“You’re welcome,” said Mallon. He stood up to leave, but Fowler made a quiet uh sound, and Mallon turned his head and waited.
Fowler was looking at his notes, then at Mallon, then at his notes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll need to have you give the evidence guys your prints and a blood sample.”
“Why? The most my DNA would tell you was that we had sex, and I already told you that.”
“Standard procedure. We do it in any case like this. It’s mainly to eliminate you if something should come up later. If there’s a second set of prints on the weapon, you’ll want us to know right away they’re not yours. Likewise, blood and so on.”
Mallon was sure now that the detective had been lying to him from the beginning. He had been prodding Mallon with these questions because he suspected him of something: killing the girl, or maybe rape. “It doesn’t sound like standard procedure. Should I call my lawyer?”
Fowler’s jaw tightened, and he let out a breath in a speculative hiss. “That’s up to you. I’m certainly not going to go on record telling any citizen that he’s wasting his money to get an attorney. I will say that you just spent over an hour telling me a long story voluntarily, and that I wasn’t planning to ask you any more questions.”
Fowler looked innocent, even mildly disappointed and insulted. But Mallon was aware that a cop conducting an interrogation had no legal responsibility to tell a suspect the truth. Mallon reminded himself that he had nothing to protect. If they wanted his fingerprints or his blood, they would get them eventually, and how could they incriminate him? He said, “Okay. I guess there’s no need to wait around for my lawyer.”
He followed Fowler into the hallway, and then through a door near the end of the hall. There was clearly something about the death of the girl that had not been in the papers. He chided himself for rediscovering the obvious. How could he have imagined that there would not be?
When Mallon left the police department he drove home, then admitted to himself that the only sensible thing he could do was to see his lawyer, Diane Fleming, to tell her what had happened. He turned on his front steps to go back toward his car, but then changed his mind, left it in the driveway, and instead walked down Anacapa Street toward her office. He had been sitting in the police station for hours, and he told himself he needed to walk and arrange his thoughts before he spoke with her. But after a block, he found that there was an unexpected aftereffect of failing to persuade the girl not to kill herself: it was forcing him to revisit parts of his own life.
Mallon knew much more about what might happen to him than he had told Fowler. The slow, methodical procedures of the police and the courts were very familiar to him. When he was eighteen, he had disappointed his parents and gone into the Air Force instead of going to college. After he had gotten out, he had returned to the still half-rural area outside San Jose where his family had lived since the gold rush, and disappointed his parents again by going to the police academy to become a parole officer. He had worked in the San Jose department for four years before he’d reluctantly conceded to himself that his optimistic longing to take people who had made mistakes and repair their lives had not made him good at it. All his sincerity and hard work had accomplished was to make him feel like a failure, case by case. He’d felt that he was smothering himself in problems that he could not hope to solve. He’d handed in his badge and a short letter of resignation and had gone to work as a carpenter on a construction crew.
After a year of construction work and some intensive study, he had gotten a contractor’s license and hired his own crews and begun to build houses. On his father’s advice, since he had joined the Air Force he had been putting all of his savings into buying pieces of farmland. He had simply held it, paying the bank and the taxes by renting it to neighboring farmers who wanted more land to cultivate.
After his construction business had begun to prosper, he met a girl named Andrea at a party, took her out a few times, fell in love, and persuaded her to marry him. It was only two years later that his parents both died—first his father, and then a few months after that, his mother. He was terribly sad, but not particularly surprised. In a way, he had been expecting it, and when it came, it seemed almost overdue. It seemed to him that they had begun to die on the day when the call from Boston had come about his older sister, Nancy.
Nancy had been the smart one, the only one who’d ever played the piano that sat in the parlor of the family farmhouse, a beautiful, tall, strong girl with an open-mouthed, loud laugh and long, light brown hair that the sun always bleached a bit in the summer. She had gone off to college in Boston when he was twelve and, according to his parents, had done beautifully for the first three years. She was still doing just as well on the day when she had made her telephone call.
The day became such a part of his history that he had never seen another month of March arrive since then without remembering. He had answered the telephone and been surprised, because long-distance calls were expensive, and scholarships didn’t pay for them. He remembered being a bit confused, because she seldom called, and this conversation didn’t seem to be about anything much. She had seemed disappointed when he’d told her that both of their parents were out, but she had filled the time by asking him what he’d been doing, how his grades were, and had even teased him a bit about girls. She had seemed reluctant to hang up, as though she were hoping their parents would arrive. He had offered to have them call her back later, but she had said, “No, never mind. I don’t think I’ll be around then. Just tell them I love them. I love you all.” Then they’d hung up. The next call from Boston had been from the head of the campus police. It had fallen to him to tell the family that she’d killed herself.
It had been the most important day in the life of Mallon’s family, the day when everything had changed. His parents had been different after that, in a slow decline that lasted until he was a married, self-employed, and successful contractor. And when that had been accomplished, they’d died.
Mallon went on, remodeled the old family house and moved his wife into it, and kept building his business. In time, the monetary value of the land he had bought became so compelling that he needed to devote some attention to finding something to do with it. His wife, Andrea, had always been ashamed that he was essentially a tradesman who worked with his crew and came home in blue jeans soaked in sweat
and covered with sawdust. She had, since their wedding day, referred to her husband as a “developer,” but had lately refined her story to promote him to a man who “owned land,” and so she welcomed any sign that he was actually interested in the property, and not in getting his hands dirty.
He began to build houses on the farmland. He was one of the many beneficiaries of the steady population growth of northern California, and soon he began to act very much like the man Andrea had been saying he was. Then, ten years ago, as their growing prosperity was becoming noticeable, she had decided that it was time to leave.
Mallon’s divorce from Andrea had been an ugly, drawn-out campaign with charges and counterattacks that had been painful but meant nothing, since it made no legal difference in the state of California if he was taciturn and distant or if she’d had affairs. Once they were no longer living together, the battles finally had nothing to focus on but the sums that could be produced by the sale of things that had once been treasures. Their meeting on the day of the final decree had ended the marriage in a last conflagration and a division of spoils.
The property division had required that they sell their house. It had been in his family for four generations, and had originally been a working farm. Even when he had been a boy, it still had been far enough out in the country so that he and his father used to take target practice with their rifles at the edge of their backyard. In that direction there had been nothing to hit for miles. Since then, the city of San Jose had simply grown to engulf the farm and make the hundred acres worth more than all the crops ever grown there. He had felt a deep guilt for not contriving a way to prevent the sale of the house. He had not, in any emotional sense, owned it. He had not been one of the people who had built it, or fought the droughts and the politicians to hold it. He had merely covered over a few more of the fields with grass to enlarge the yard, turned his grandmother’s kitchen garden into a tennis court, torn out his father’s swimming pool and put in a better one to please Andrea. He had, by default, been this generation’s caretaker, holding the house for the next. When it went, he had mourned it like a death, but the house had not been a surprise. She had not liked the place.
The sale of the construction business Mallon owned had been a surprise, because he had never before seen Andrea make a decision that seemed contrary to her own best interests. He had offered her a monthly income that would have consisted of half his profits. But she had insisted on having the company appraised—trucks, tools, trailers, telephones—and getting half of the total in cash immediately.
Andrea’s demand came just at a time when northern California was gripped in its most frantic growth spurt. Mallon had run out of land that he had already paid for or inherited, and had begun borrowing to buy more empty land and build developments on it. He had needed to use all his credit, so when her demand came, all Mallon had been able to do was agree to sell out and give her what she had asked for. But her timing was perfect. A much larger company made a preemptive offer just so they could keep the buildings going up without a pause. None of his crews even got a day off when the exchange was made. Mallon had told his lawyers to handle the sale, pay off the debts, give Andrea’s attorneys a check for her half of what was left, and send his share to Wells Fargo bank.
A week later, Mallon had been given an appointment with two women in the private banking office in Palo Alto who were specialists in managing people’s investments. He had explained that he needed to have them invest his money conservatively so he would not be left short before he found a job. The two had looked at the printout that contained his balance, and looked at each other. The older one, who had silver eyeglasses on a silver chain, wrote something on a piece of paper before she spoke. “Mr. Mallon. This is what your investments will throw off in an average year.” She had spun the paper around to face him so he could read the number she had written.
Mallon had thanked the women, signed the various forms they handed him, and then walked out of their building. He’d looked up and down the sidewalk, then up at the sky. As he’d stepped along, the implications of the numbers had begun to demand his attention. The figure the woman had shown him was five or six times what he had spent even when Andrea had lived with him.
He could not stand to live in San Jose anymore, to take circuitous routes just to avoid passing by his family’s farm or his old construction business or Andrea’s new house. He stopped at the office one last time to say good-bye to his former employees, then drove two hundred and eighty miles south to an apartment in Santa Barbara because he had visited the city a few times and had no unpleasant memories of it. After a month he had invested in an old brick colonial house above Mission Street near State. He spent nearly a year remodeling it, doing most of the work himself, and trying to think about his future but failing. He knew nothing about the future, but the past was full of problems he had not solved. During that year, the investments he had left with the private banking people up north had begun their steady growth. At the end of the year, instead of selling the house, he moved into it. There had never again been any practical reason for Robert Mallon to do anything in exchange for money.
In his new life in Santa Barbara he walked everywhere he went, driving only when he needed to carry something bulky or fragile. He acquired a great many acquaintances, because he had plenty of leisure time, spent much of it in public, and spoke to anyone who spoke to him. He made sure he spent two hours a day getting some form of outdoor exercise and two hours reading. But at the end of ten years in the city, Mallon knew that if he disappeared, there would be little notice. He was not a person who was living a life here. He was just very, very slowly passing through.
Diane Fleming’s office was in one of several low Spanish-style buildings on De la Guerra Street painted blinding white with big brass plaques beside their doors. She kept him waiting for five minutes, then rushed into the outer office and shook his hand, and held on to it. “Robert!” she said. “Come on in!” She was in her mid-thirties, and had the distinctive broad-faced blond look that half the women in Santa Barbara had. They had big legs and strong hands like small men, and their appeal was not femininity but a kind of frank robustness. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, but I was on a call. Sylvia should have told me sooner.” She kept his hand in hers as she led him into her office and sat beside him on a leather couch, then released it.
“It’s okay. I should have called for an appointment,” he said. “But I need your help with something.”
“What kind of something, and what kind of help?”
“I’ll let you decide. Have you read about the young woman they found dead in a field two days ago?”
She nodded, her face allowing an acknowledgment that was cautious, tentative. “I did see that in the paper.”
“I had pulled her out of the ocean a few hours earlier. I guess she tried again and succeeded. I went to the police and told them. They listened, then asked for a blood sample and fingerprints.”
“They think you killed her?”
“That’s not what the detective said, but I don’t think he would tell me if he did. It’s possible.”
She rolled her blue eyes. “Robert, I’m basically a tax attorney. You’re going to need a criminal lawyer right away. I’ll make some calls and see who we can get. Now go home, and I’ll call you later.”
He had somehow expected a longer conversation, and he had especially expected that she would spend some time reassuring him and telling him there was nothing to worry about before she called in a criminal lawyer. But obviously she agreed that there was something to worry about. He saw no reason to delay her telephone calls. He stood and walked to the door. “Thanks, Diane,” he said, and left. As he was walking through the reception area, he saw Sylvia pick up her phone. She said, “Sure, Diane, right away.”
He went for a long walk down State Street to pick a place to have lunch, but the idea was a failure. He had no appetite, just a restlessness that kept him walking. Mallon barely saw the streets as
he walked, because the memory of the girl flooded his mind. He knew that the smooth, beautiful skin he had touched was now cold and lifeless, the voice silenced, but he could still see and hear her, and the knowledge that even that vestige would fade made him want to weep.
He tried to decide whether he had fallen in love with her. He had not been naïve enough to allow himself to let go, to place his fate in her hands that way. He had been fairly certain that their day together had been as much of an aberration as what had caused it, a violent diversion from the normal trajectories of their lives. He had, at every moment, been prepared to relinquish her, to send her back to the world, where she would make a life with people her own age. But he had loved her. He had listened to her and watched her and touched her. She was a creature he had been glad he had preserved, somebody he was delighted with and wanted to live on and on, even if he never saw her again. Now that was over, beyond reach. Nobody else seemed to know what a precious thing had been wasted.
When he reached his house, Diane had already called and left a message on his answering machine. When he called her back, she said, “They’re not treating you as a suspect.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“It’s a long story. They also don’t really know who the girl was. The name she used in the motel didn’t match the name she gave when she rented the car she parked there. She left no other identification in the room, no purse, no keys. There were none in the field where she was found, either. You didn’t happen to see any on her, did you?”
“No,” he said. “And I didn’t see any purse, either. There was nothing but what she had on.”
“Which was—?”
“Shorts, sneakers, a little top with thin straps.” He paused. “I remember seeing her standing there by the rocks. Then she just started walking toward the water and didn’t stop. It was kind of odd. She didn’t dive or swim or anything, just kept walking until the water was over her head and disappeared. I didn’t even notice about the shoes at first.”
