Dead Midnight

by Marcia Muller

  Only static on the line now. I looked at the digital display on the phone, saw the words “no service.” There are dozens of places in the city where wireless reception is spotty to nonexistent—and I was idling right smack in the middle of one.

  I didn’t kill J.D.

  I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but I took out the card of the Tillamook County detective in charge of the case and reported Houston’s call.

  Jane Harris was what I call an unreconstructed hippie: gray hair hanging down to her waist; dangly earrings and sandals and tie-dye. The odor of incense mingled with the smell of marijuana in her ground-floor apartment. Beanbag chairs, bead curtains, and Flower Power wallpaper were alive and thriving there.

  I’d met Jane a few times at dinner parties at J.D.’s apartment, and over the course of our mostly one-sided conversations had learned her personal history. She’d been married to a minor Beat poet in the fifties, a minor rock musician in the sixties, a minor artist in the seventies, and in the eighties a major distributor of soft drinks who had died and left her well enough off to buy the building and become a benevolent landlord. Her rents, J.D. had told me, were proof that her favorite decade lived on in her heart.

  And apparently it was a generous heart. As she waved me into her living room she continued a conversation on her cordless phone: “Now, don’t worry about a thing, honey. I’ll contact J.D.’s pastor”—she rolled her eyes at me—“and discuss the service. I’ll arrange for the flowers and get some ideas for places to hold the reception afterward. He had so many friends, we’ll need a good-sized space… . Right. By the time you and Mr. Smith arrive here, all you’ll have to do is choose.”

  Half a minute later she ended the call and turned to me, sighing. “His poor mother. She’s so upset she can hardly think. He was an only child, you know.”

  “What’s this about a pastor? I’ve never known him to set foot inside a church.”

  “The parents are very religious. Doesn’t matter to him anymore, and if it’ll give the Smiths some comfort, I can handle a few white lies.”

  “You’re a good friend, Jane.”

  “Not all that good. Something was wrong with J.D.’s hot-water heater; he complained of a sulfuric smell. But I kept putting off calling the plumber because I’m budgeting toward a new roof. Now I feel terrible. The poor boy had to smell rotten eggs during his morning shower on the day he died.”

  Regrets …

  I was a neglectful landlady.

  I hung up on him.

  I thought about going up after Roger, taking him a bottle of Valentine’s Day wine… . Then I thought, the hell with it… . And the next morning there it was on the TV news… .

  We were close. But apparently not as close as I thought.

  There must’ve been signs. We could’ve helped Joey.

  No, I wasn’t thinking at all. Not when it came to my brother.

  The hell with regrets.

  I said, “I’ll take a look at J.D.’s apartment now.”

  Every time I’d visited J.D. I’d been impressed by how he managed to convey an aura of simple elegance with furnishings that for the most part he’d purchased at Cost Plus. Plain woven grass mats, canvas director’s chairs, rattan tables and bookcases were accented by colorful framed museum posters of art exhibits, and a jungle of tropical plants grew in the window bay. Interspersed were what he referred to as his “finds”—interesting junk, basically, that he cleaned up and displayed in unusual ways. Various engine parts, pieces of pipe, old tools and bottles all became treasures after his careful reclamation. I stood in the living room fingering a model of an airplane made from a spark plug, some sheet metal and wire, with the business end of a leather punch as its propeller. He’d often tried to give it to me, but I’d refused, thinking it was better off with its creator. Now I slipped it into my purse—something to remember him by.

  I went down the short hallway to where two bedrooms flanked the bath. The one where he slept showed signs of a hurried departure: bed unmade, clothing—including the soaked yellow sweater that was the twin of the one in which he died—tossed on a chair, drawers left partially open. The office across the hall was equally untidy, with books strewn on the floor and papers mounded beside the computer. I sat down at the workstation and turned the machine on. It was a type I wasn’t familiar with, but I played around and finally accessed his recent files. None were of interest except for some notes he’d made Thursday night on our conference with Max Engstrom. It was titled “Bullshit 101.” He’d apparently had no time on Friday to record whatever had sent him to Oregon on a flight that the newscasts said had departed SFO two and a half hours before mine.

  I shut off the machine and left the room. The apartment had a westward exposure, and the afternoon sun had begun to warm it. It still felt lived in, as if at any moment J.D. might walk through the door and ask, “What the hell’re you doing here, Shar?” But soon his parents would arrive, the memorial service would be held, and his home would be stripped bare, repainted, readied for new tenants. A few years from now few people would remember that a talented man who died before his time had once lived there.

  I remained in the living room for a moment, trying to say my good-byes to his lingering presence, then turned toward the door. There was an old-fashioned wood-and-brass coat tree next to it, and J.D.’s raincoat, which he’d worn Friday morning, hung from it. I’d forgotten about mine up to now, had left it at InSite, but he must’ve gone back inside for his.

  I took the coat down. It still felt damp in places. I stuck my hand into the left pocket, found nothing but lint. The right was full of pieces of paper. I removed them and stepped into the adjoining kitchen to examine them.

  Receipt from Miranda’s for our Thursday morning breakfast; he’d insisted on buying. Parking ticket, weeks old and mangled. Business card of a personal shopper at Nordstrom’s. Folded sheet of yellow scratch paper.

  I smoothed the sheet out on the counter and studied it: Circled names with arrows connecting them in multiple ways: Nagasawa, Houston, Remington, Engstrom, Vardon, Donovan, Chen. They formed an ellipsis, and the arrows crossed and crisscrossed in a confusing pattern. Below were words and abbreviations with question marks after them: Afton? Econ? CWP? ER? LR? TRG?

  I stared at the diagram till the lines and circles blurred, finally shook my head. It had meant something to J.D.—but what?

  As I was walking back to my car from J.D.’s building, I glanced up at Parnassus Heights where the U.C. Medical Center complex loomed, and thought of Harry Nagasawa. Roger’s brother interested me because, while he professed intense dislike of him, he’d apparently fallen apart in the aftermath of his suicide. Harry had terminated our interview very abruptly, and I was certain there was more I could learn from him, if I approached him in the right way. I decided to walk up the hill and see if he was on duty at the hospital.

  It was windy on the Heights, and even on a Sunday afternoon Parnassus Street was clogged with buses, taxis, and other vehicles. Visitors streamed into the buff-colored hospital bearing flowers, plants, gift packages, and stuffed animals. I checked the directory, took the elevator to the cardiac care unit. A nurse with curly black hair hunched over a computer terminal behind the reception desk; when she turned to me I saw her eyes were tired.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Harry Nagasawa,” I said. “Is he here today?”

  Surprise animated her drawn features. “Dr. Nagasawa’s no longer on staff.”

  So they’d caught on to his substance abuse. “When was he let go?”

  “He was put on suspension in January, pending a disciplinary hearing, and offered his resignation a week later.”

  “But—” What had he said when he arrived at the family home for his appointment with me last week? I got tied up at the hospital. “D’you know if he’s on staff someplace else now?”

  “Sorry, no. Are you a patient?”

  “An old friend. Can you tell me why he was suspended?”

  She glanc
ed around, obviously torn between hospital policy and the temptation to gossip. Leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “I don’t know all the details, but I believe it had to do with him accessing confidential patient records.”

  “Patients other than his own, you mean.”

  “Right. I’ve heard a couple of rumors. One is that he was altering the records. The other is that he was passing them on to another party. Either way, that’s a very sensitive area, and the board was happy to receive his resignation.”

  I thought of what Roger had told Jody—that he’d forced someone to do something unethical, and the person’s career had been put in jeopardy.

  Harry?

  “Any way you can find out whose records they were?”

  “If you’re his friend, why don’t you ask him?”

  “I didn’t even know he wasn’t on staff any longer. I doubt he’ll want to talk about it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. As I said, it’s a very sensitive area, and nobody’s discussing it.”

  Except the people who are floating those rumors—and you.

  I left the hospital and crossed Parnassus to the parking garage, where I took the elevator down to Frederick Street at the base of the Heights. A roundabout walk back to my car would give me time to ponder this latest turn of events.

  The governing board of the medical center hadn’t wanted to make public what Harry had been doing with confidential records, so they’d allowed him to resign quietly—so quietly that his own family members weren’t aware he was no longer on staff there. Easy enough for him to conceal: his mother was no longer living at home, and his father was preoccupied with his busy practice and the impending wrongful-death suit. Chances were he hadn’t been taken on by another hospital; the signs of substance abuse were so severe now that any health-care professional would have spotted them.

  So what did Harry do with his days? Absent himself from the Cow Hollow house at the appropriate times, in case the housekeeper noticed his presence and called attention to it. But where did he go? The movies? A girlfriend’s home? The bars? How could he fill the time a resident’s busy schedule demanded? He was out of control, unsuited for any other vocation, or even avocation. Tomorrow I’d put an operative on the Nagasawa house—Julia could use some experience in surveillance—in order to find out where Harry went and get a handle on how to approach him.

  I was halfway down the short block of Arguello Boulevard that runs between the medical center’s garage and Kezar Stadium—a restored 1925-vintage football field that now hosts high school games—when one of the row of Edwardian houses caught my eye. It had once been the home of my client and old friend Willie Whelan. Willie, a professional fence who had, as he put it, gone legit by establishing a chain of cut-rate jewelry stores, had caught the eye of a talent agent while doing his own over-the-top TV commercials. Now he lived in New York City, where he starred as an immensely popular villain on a soap opera. Rae, who had survived a fling with him during his days as “the diamond king,” taped the more amusing episodes and shared them with me.

  I smiled wryly in remembrance of the old days. The investigation that had brought Willie and me together seemed simple next to the tangle of facts and questions I faced today. More and more I found myself relying on sophisticated equipment, technical assistance, and experts of all sorts. Fortunately, I knew an expert who would work on Sunday for the price of a meal.

  Mick and Charlotte’s condo, which he had purchased last fall with the help of his father, was small, starkly white, and would have been characterless at the hands of many people. But they’d each put their individual stamp on it. A specially constructed hall tree held Charlotte’s collection of fancy evening bags and sequined baseball caps—my favorite was a black one with silver stars. Mick’s motorcycle memorabilia—logos, scale models, framed advertisements—lined up on a plate rail that he’d installed at eye level. The furnishings were mainly Ikea, and carefully chosen.

  When I arrived there around four-thirty, they were enjoying a glass of wine in the living room. The balcony door was open and the rumble of traffic on the Embarcadero was deafening, even in the last hour of a Sunday afternoon. Mick closed it, Charlotte brought me a glass of Chardonnay, and I got down to business.

  “You hear about J.D.?”

  Their faces turned somber. “Yeah,” Mick said. “Must’ve been tough for you, finding him. A couple of reporters called here, wanting to know if we knew where you were. They got Dad and Rae’s unlisted number, bothered them too. I said I hadn’t heard from you; Dad wasn’t as polite.”

  I nodded. My former brother-in-law could be prickly when anything penetrated his shield of privacy. “Well, I’m staying someplace where no reporter can get to me.”

  “RKI’s building.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Nope, you didn’t. Right, Sweet Charlotte?”

  “I didn’t hear a thing.”

  Mick asked, “So what’s happening? This isn’t a social call.”

  “No. I’d like to trade you a dinner in exchange for letting me run some things by you on your day off.”

  “Cool. There’s a new place we’ve been wanting to try, but money’s tight this month.”

  Actually the promise of a dinner on the agency wasn’t necessary. As I outlined certain details of the case, both of their expressions became focused and fascinated. They were natural investigators and enjoyed a challenge. When I finished, I asked, “Anything come to mind?”

  Charlotte said, “Roger wrote in his journal that he’d deleted all his files and destroyed everything he didn’t want anyone to see?”

  “Right.”

  “But he didn’t destroy the journal full of very personal stuff.”

  “No.”

  “That makes me think that he wanted someone to see it, someone who knew he kept it.”

  “Maybe, but it was hidden in a very unlikely place.”

  “A place that maybe the person he wanted to read it knew about.”

  “Of course—Jody Houston. When she saw I’d been reading it she recognized it and said he’d kept it hidden. And she tried to get it away from me.”

  Mick said, “That last journal entry, where he said he’d left an insurance policy for Houston, it sounds like a message to me.”

  “Could be. But insurance against what?”

  “Hard to say, but if I were you I’d want to take a good look at the files he deleted.”

  “How? They’re gone.”

  “Not really. It’s very difficult to completely delete anything. And if you have the proper skills, you can retrieve most files.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He glanced at Charlotte. “You explain it. You’re better at putting stuff in layman’s language.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Take my personal computer.” She motioned at a workstation in the corner. “A Windows PC. I receive or send an e-mail, hit the Delete key, and the mail’s stored in the recycle bin. I empty the bin, and it’s gone— right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wrong. It may be gone from the bin, but somewhere in the machine’s memory it still exists. It’s just not easy to get at. There are a number of firms whose sole business is to go into the offices of clients and retrieve deleted files from their employees’ computers, in order to investigate possible improprieties. The service is called computer forensics and, believe me, there’s a growing demand for it.”

  Mick said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about offering it as an agency service. Most of the work has to be done after business hours when the employees have gone home, but you can charge substantial fees—”

  “Get me something in writing,” I said. “An actual description, including initial outlay, operating expenses, and a fee structure. Then we’ll discuss it. Is it common knowledge that you can do this?”

  “Not really. If more people knew, they wouldn’t say the things they do in their e-mail.”

  “Do either of you
have the skills to copy what might still be in Roger’s machine’s memory?”

  They grinned at each other.

  Mick said, “The head of our new computer forensics programs would have such skills. Yes, indeed.”

  The flat on Brannan Street seemed even colder tonight. The refrigerator still made its ominous gurgling sounds, and more plaster had fallen from the ceiling around the skylight. Mick and Charlotte were oblivious of the chill; they carried a portable computer into the front room, set it up at the workstation, and began tinkering.

  “This’ll take about half an hour,” he told me. “Go watch TV or something. You’re hovering like a great big buzzard, and it’s distracting me.”

  Dismissed, I wandered through the living room and, after a couple of turns around the dining area, sat down at the table.

  A great big buzzard.

  What did you have to do to command the respect of your employees? Not hire relatives, I supposed. Mick had been on to me since age seven, when he figured out that I really wouldn’t kill him as I’d threatened to when he wouldn’t pick up his toys.

  Now they were laughing in there. I strained to hear.

  He: “… bitchy lately.”

  She: “Yeah, Hy’s definitely been gone too long.”

  He: “Better not come home jet-lagged, because she’s gonna jump his bones—”

  Me: “Not everything’s about sex, you know!”

  Silence. Then suppressed giggles.

  Me: “Go ahead, laugh! You’ll laugh even harder when you find out your free dinner is at an In-N-Out Burger.”

  But, God, they were right. I missed Hy in more ways than one.

  I got up and went into the kitchen. Opened the door to the pantry and peered inside. The pancake-syrup bottle was still married to the tomato-juice can. The oily substance still lurked on the floor. I closed the door, went to the fridge, studied the jars of pickles in cloudy brine, the bottles of salad dressing. Opened the freezer and reinventoried its contents. Torn bag of lima beans, spilled and stuck to the shelf. Blue ice, container cracked and staining the frost beneath it. Regular ice, shrinking in its trays. Baggie full of mystery meat.