Dead Midnight

by Marcia Muller

  “Did he contact anyone on the paper?”

  “Not that I know of. To tell you the truth, he made me uncomfortable. He was completely obsessed with getting back at those people, and at the time I wondered how much of this stuff wasn’t coming from his imagination.”

  On the last Friday of the month Jody received a call from Max Engstrom asking her to come to his office to discuss her most recent freelance assignment; there, in the presence of Jorge Amaya and Lia Chen, he rejected her graphics for a story on California housing markets as not being up to the magazine’s standards.

  “I was pissed. There was nothing wrong with my work. I’d had to struggle to come up with something that was visually interesting, and it had taken longer than it should have. And I was counting on their check to pay some overdue bills. I tried to be reasonable at first, but Max wouldn’t listen.”

  For most of the meeting Engstrom stood with his back to Jody, staring out his office window at the beehive of staffers below. Jorge Amaya examined his manicure and smirked. Lia Chen squirmed and refused to make eye contact. When Engstrom made an imperious gesture of dismissal, saying his mind was made up, Houston lost it.

  “Totally lost it. I reamed into him. Said the trouble with his magazine was that the people in charge didn’t give a fuck about the staffers or freelancers—in fact, took pleasure in hurting and humiliating them. Max told me I had no proof of that, and I said the scratches on Rog from when Dinah went after him were proof enough. And then I made my big mistake.”

  “Which was … ?”

  “I said they’d better tell Dinah not to put her claws on Rog again, and the rest of them better watch their behavior too, because he and I had proof of everything that was going on there, and could nail them bad. And then I stormed out.”

  That night Jody told Roger what she’d said. He seemed shaken, but quickly covered up, trying to make light of it. She suggested that if anyone asked him, he should tell them she was simply making idle threats, and he said he’d do that. And he’d also be more careful in collecting his final pieces of evidence.

  “But after that night everything was different between us. He started to avoid me. If we ran into each other he’d be polite, but he turned down my offers of drinks and dinner. Then on Valentine’s Day he showed up at my door around ten in the evening. I thought he wanted to apologize for ignoring me, but instead he asked if he could use my computer to send a couple of e-mails; his server was down. He was in my office for five or ten minutes, then thanked me and left. I thought about going up after him, taking him a bottle of Valentine’s Day wine. I mean, I valued the friendship. In a way, I loved him, even if I wasn’t in love with him. But then I thought, the hell with it. He’d been using me, was all. So I didn’t go up, and around eleven-thirty I heard the elevator going down from his floor. And the next morning there it was on the TV news: Roger Nagasawa, son of prominent …”

  “Hey, don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Those e-mails, did he leave them on your computer or delete them?”

  “He deleted … Oh, God, I don’t know what to do!”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know who to trust.”

  “Try me.”

  “But how do I know … ? I’m in worse trouble than you can imagine.”

  “Then you need me to help you get out of it.”

  “… Okay. All right. But before I tell you anything else, there’s something I better show you. I’ll get it. It’s upstairs.”

  She got up and went along the hallway. I waited, listening to the gusting of the wind and the rattling of the window-panes. A roofbeam gave a tremendous crack, and I looked up apprehensively. When several minutes passed and Houston hadn’t come back, I went upstairs after her.

  The second story was one room, with a dormer window at the front. The window was open, and Houston was gone.

  Saturday

  APRIL 21

  The white curtains billowed out from the window, and fog-damp touched my face. Somewhere on the floor below a clock chimed—one, two, finally a dozen times.

  Dead midnight.

  I hurried to the window and looked out. No sign of Houston. A drainpipe was within easy reach of the sloping front porch roof; from there the drop to the ground was short. I ran downstairs and outside. The Taurus was still in the driveway.

  So what had happened here?

  Houston hadn’t wanted to trust me, but I thought I’d won her over. Terrified as she was, what could have prompted her to run away into the night on foot—especially when she was so close to confiding her fears in me and getting the help she needed?

  I stared into the shadows, looked down at the ground. Something wrong here. The travel bag that I’d carried from the car in order to impersonate an airlines courier wasn’t where I’d dropped it when I pushed inside the cottage. I peered into the shrubbery, went along the walk checking to either side. Nothing. Had Houston taken it?

  The small microfiber bag that I kept packed in the trunk of my MG—in case, like today, an investigation took me out of town on short notice—contained nothing important. Some toiletries, a change of jeans and tee and underwear, a knit dress and shoes suitable for pretty much any occasion. My business card was in the identification slot on the bag, and in a side pocket were some rough notes on the investigation that I’d made on the plane. That was it.

  I went back inside the cottage, locked the door, returned to the second story. Checked out the view from the window. Houston would have been able to see most of her front garden and the street. Had she spotted someone out there? Fled either to or from that person? A suitcase and a tote bag sat on the floor, partially unpacked. What Houston had taken out was draped over a wicker chair. The bedclothes were rumpled and twisted; Jody had been wrestling with her demons. I went through the luggage but found nothing of significance.

  Downstairs was a small bathroom; a jumble of toiletries lay on its counter. A prescription bottle was lined up next to an electric toothbrush in its charger: Ambien, a mild sleep aid. In an unpacked travel pouch I found a compact of birth control pills. The presence of the prescriptions might mean Houston would return for them; possibly she was watching the cottage, waiting for me to leave.

  In the kitchen, I unlocked and cracked open the window in the breakfast nook. Then I shut off all the lights, left by the front door, got into my rental car, and drove away. An alley intersected Beach Street three doors east of Houston’s cottage; the houses in between were shuttered and dark. I drove for two blocks, parked by the seawall, cut back to the alley, and followed it to Beach. No lights came on in any of the houses I passed; no dogs barked; I saw no one on the street. At Beach I crossed Houston’s neighbors’ backyards and slipped through the shrubbery to the window I’d left open. Raised the sash and climbed inside.

  The cottage was so quiet I could hear the tick of the clock in the front room. Cold from the open window upstairs had penetrated the first story; the smell of old ashes, dry rot, and mildew was borne on the air currents. I shut the kitchen window and moved toward the front of the house, feeling my way with outstretched hands. The clock chimed the half hour.

  By the time I reached the entryway my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The staircase rose to my left, and beyond it was an archway leading to a front room. I went in there, saw the back of a sofa and a potbellied woodstove. The clock— ornate and ugly—sat on a round table by the window. I went over and peeked through the closed blinds. Nothing but the swaying branches of the rhododendrons and the Taurus in the driveway.

  I decided to fetch a quilt I’d seen on the bed upstairs and camp out on the sofa in case Jody returned. But as I was crossing between it and the woodstove, my foot slipped and I nearly fell. Something slick coated the floorboards. I leaned down, and it smelled—

  Like blood.

  I fumbled in my bag for my flashlight, shone it down. The substance was blood, all right, a fair amount of it. Sticky, congealing. I moved the light
in a wide arc and saw marks on the dusty planks, as if something had been dragged across them… .

  I followed the marks to where they stopped in the hallway. The wall under the staircase was board-and-batten; black iron hinges and a latch showed where a door was set into it. Before I touched the latch I pulled the sleeve of my sweater over my hand to avoid leaving fingerprints.

  The closet was small, with a steeply slanting ceiling and coats and hats and umbrellas hanging from wall pegs. A row of cardboard cartons was stacked below them and in front of it lay a man. The stillness enveloping him was total, the stillness of death. The rag rug on which he’d been moved was flung over his head and he wore—

  I knew that sweater. At least I knew its mate, the one that had gotten soaked in the sprinklers’ downpour at InSite, and then in the rain outside.

  For a moment I was unable to move. Then, feeling sick, I knelt and pulled the rug away from his head. His unruly cowlick wafted around. I touched his neck, found no pulse. His flesh was cooling, but not yet cold. I turned him over, stared into empty eyes that were already glazed and flattened. Congealed blood stained the front of the sweater.

  I closed my eyes, but found no comfort in darkness. After a moment I put him back the way he’d been, replaced the rug, and stood. A wave of dizziness overcame me; I staggered over to the stairs and collapsed there.

  Why, J.D.? Why? What were you doing here?

  The answer, of course, was obvious. I’d asked him to look into the Remington and Houston disappearances. He contacted his sources, came up with a lead—probably from someone who knew Jody owned this cottage—and flew north before I did, on the trail of a story. What had happened between him and Houston and why she’d killed him I couldn’t guess. Only Jody knew that, and she was on the run again.

  I’d believed her story of being afraid for her life. Been taken in by her nervous sidelong glances and startled reactions. Assumed she was terrified when in reality she’d fooled me until she figured out a way to make her escape. The only thing Houston had been afraid of was me finding out she had a body stashed in her closet.

  The body of a man who had been my friend for nearly a decade.

  We’d met at a party at a mutual friend’s apartment, and when I complimented him on a recent feature article, J.D. flushed with pleasure and exclaimed, “Nobody reads the bylines on stories. Nobody!” And I said, “I do.”

  Once he’d taken me along as an undercover companion for a piece on panhandlers, and we netted five dollars and sixty-two cents, which we spent on pizza slices and Cokes.

  Each year he enlisted my aid in soliciting funds for his favorite charity, a literacy project. We joked that I made a better panhandler than fund-raiser.

  Two years ago, when his date bailed on him, he’d taken me to the city’s big charity extravaganza, the Black and White Ball. We stepped all over each other’s feet the whole evening.

  Last fall he’d visited Hy and me at Touchstone, and we went on a whale-watching cruise. J.D. threw up fifteen minutes out of Point Arena. Next fall he planned to try it again, fortified by Dramamine—

  I closed my eyes and hot tears leaked out. A sob choked me, the sound small and pathetic in the empty house. It took several minutes before I had myself under enough control that I could take out my phone and dial 911.

  “This complicates matters considerably,” Glenn Solomon said. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not indifferent to your pain over your friend’s death, particularly as it comes so close on the heels of your brother’s suicide. But I have to think about the situation from my clients’ perspective.”

  It was close to eleven in the evening, and we were seated at a big stainless-steel table in the kitchen of Glenn’s Russian Hill condominium. Unlike his offices, which were full of mahogany antiques and oriental carpets intended to soothe the most nervous of clients, the condo was up-tothe-minute chic, incorporating the bold, bright colors and clean-lined furnishings that were the hallmarks of the work of Glenn’s wife, interior designer Bette Silver.

  Glenn reached for the remote control and turned on a TV—one of three in the spacious room—mounted under the cabinet opposite us. A local newscaster with laminated hair was speaking, his face solemn but his eyes betraying the glee that a juicy story brings out in his kind. Then a photograph of J.D. appeared, and I looked down at the files spread in front of me.

  “They picked up the story from their Portland affiliate,” Glenn said. “Tomorrow his picture’ll be on the front page of the Chron, along with commentary from his former editor, colleagues, first-grade teacher, and the family dog. They tend to overdo when one of their own buys it.” He glanced at my face, saw my distress. “Sorry. I was speaking in generalities.”

  The newscaster’s voice droned on, but I heard only phrases: “… isolated seaside community on the Oregon coast … veteran reporter … two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee … body found by a visitor to the cottage, where his rental car was parked in the driveway … all-points bulletin on Jody Houston, owner of the cottage, who is said to have been in the area … anyone having information is requested to contact …”

  Glenn shut off the TV. “It’s a good thing the sheriff’s department up there was willing to keep your name out of it, but it won’t be long before—”

  “Look, can we go over these files, please?” My voice rasped with pent-up emotion.

  Glenn heard it. “Sure. Give me a recap from the beginning.”

  I paged through the documents and transcripts, touching on the high points and ending with last night’s conversation with Houston. When I finished Glenn got up, fetched a bottle of brandy, and set it and two snifters between us. “Conclusions?” he asked.

  “A few. Tentative. First, I think Houston was telling me the truth, but not all of it, so far as Roger went.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow as he poured our drinks.

  “She was panicked because she had J.D.’s body in the closet—much too panicked to be able to weave a story like that out of whole cloth. So she gave me some of what she knew, hoping I’d be satisfied and leave.”

  “There’s a grain of truth in it, I’ll give you that.”

  “More than a grain. There’s a consistency with things that other people told me about Roger. Let me read you some.” I paged to the first of several paperclips I’d attached to pages.

  “These are exact quotes from his friends and acquaintances. ‘Rog was basically a decent guy. Very decent. He once told me he’d always wanted to be a person who could make things right. And he acted on that principle. He even gave blood once a month. How many of us do that?’ ” I flipped to the next paperclip. “ ‘He always struck me as naive, but in a nice way. Easily shocked when it came to stuff most people take for granted, like marginal business practices. And after he got over being shocked, he got angry.’ Another friend says, ‘When I first met him he seemed depressed, but last fall he changed, acted like he was high most of the time. Maybe he was taking Prozac?’ ”

  “Was he?” Glenn asked.

  “According to his physician and the coroner’s report, no. I think he was experiencing a natural euphoria, because of his resolve to bring down the VIPs at the magazine. Here’s a telling statement: ‘Was Rog depressed for a long time before he killed himself ? I guess so. I mean, aren’t all suicides depressed? But he wasn’t depressed enough to give any of us cause for concern. He seemed … well, the word purposeful comes to mind. Like maybe he was putting his affairs in order?’ And this is even more telling: ‘Yeah, Rog was real quiet and single-minded toward the end. Like he had a plan and was following it to the letter. But the last time I saw him, on the street outside his building the night he went off the bridge, he seemed … well, sad. Deeply and profoundly sad, the way people get when they feel all their dreams’ve been taken away from them. I don’t mean the ten-million-dollar house or the new Benz or the yacht—the kind of stuff yesterday’s Silicon Valley tycoons’re moaning about. Whatever Rog had lost, it meant a hell of a lot more than mon
ey. Maybe he felt he’d lost himself.’ ”

  I shut the file, waited for Glenn’s comments.

  “Okay,” he said, “it tends to back up what Houston told you. And it reveals a different Roger than I knew. For instance, until I read his journal, I had no idea he’d been drawn to the idea of suicide his whole life.”

  “Neither did his parents.”

  Glenn closed his eyes, spoke from memory. “ ‘The circumstances. The failures. I wish I could undo them.’ ” When he looked at me again, his eyes were moist.

  I covered his hand and after a moment his fingers curled around mine. How many times had he read those lines? He must have loved his godson very much.

  After a bit he said, “I understand what you’re trying to tell me, my friend. Roger’s life hadn’t worked out anywhere near as he’d planned. The woman he loved didn’t love him. He was disillusioned and disgusted by any number of people. Given his predilection to suicide, it was a given.”

  I nodded.

  “During this past week I did an extensive analysis of the literature on the Tokyo karoshi case. While the basis for suit fits Roger’s situation as Daniel and Margaret understood it, it’s not at all compatible with what you’ve found. I very much doubt that I can use it as a precedent in an action against the magazine—or pursue a wrongful-death suit of any kind. But there’s a larger issue here, given the Houston woman’s fear and J.D. Smith’s murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll proceed. Keep digging into this. Find out what Roger had found out that made him so sad. And why that woman killed your friend.” He sighed deeply, looking very tired. “It’s getting late. Tonight I think it’s best you stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “The press has a way of finding things out very quickly, and there are leaks in even the best of law-enforcement agencies. You may have reporters camped on your doorstep.”

  “I’ll check on that.” I went to the wall phone and dialed my next-door neighbors, the Curleys, whose daughter Michelle looked after my house and cats whenever I was away. Her mother, Trish, informed me that Channel 7 had been first on the scene, followed by Channel 4, whom she’d had to tell not to block her driveway.