I felt surprisingly calm as I counted the regulation four rings that preceded his brief message, and barely swerved when I did, indeed, get the infamous beep, and not the actual man. Taking a deep breath, I told his electronic proxy that I was sorry to have spoken to him quite so sharply (“Get out” seemed to fit in that category), that I hoped we would in time become friends, and that I had something important that I needed to talk to him about.
Third, I phoned Faye to tell her that I had survived the night, and to inquire about her own mental health.
“I’ll live,” she said gloomily.
“You got a paper in front of you?”
“The Tribune. Why?”
“When’s Tommy Ottmeier’s funeral scheduled?”
I heard Faye suck in her breath. “Em, I don’t even want to think about dead children right now, if you don’t mind!”
“Good. Sorry. But it’s important.”
I heard pages rustle. “Saturday. That’s tomorrow. Two P.M. Why?”
“Because I have five aces up my sleeve. Is your airplane fueled up?”
“I told you, I’m not flying.”
“Even if I copilot?”
She didn’t answer right away. “What do you have in mind?”
“A quick trip to Reno. They can take care of one’s marital status quickly there. Or are you and Tom still being stuck?”
After another pause, she said, “I’ll think on it.”
FOR MY NEXT trick, I had to figure out how to get around on my sprained ankle, in the snow, and without a vehicle. If I’d still had my wandering truck, I might have tried it, but there was no way I was going to risk stacking up Faye’s Porsche when I couldn’t even take enough weight on that foot to make it down the stairs. Fortunately, being a procrastinator by trade, I had not yet gotten rid of the crutches I used for my broken leg before my original cast was replaced with a walking cast. So I got them out of the closet and hobbled around my apartment a bit, remembering how to use them. I hobbled into the kitchenette and took a photograph off the refrigerator and put it in my pocket. It was my one picture of myself smiling into the camera as part of the Raymond clan. A summer snapshot. A picnic. Lots of uncertain laughter on my part. But every living member of that extended family stood or was being held, babes in arms, within the frame of the photograph.
Next, I called a cab, then went downstairs to the front porch to wait for it.
I HAD THE driver take me to Ava’s. Unannounced. And wait. I told him I would tip extra if he would roll down the window and witness the conversation I was about to have. He did so. I walked up the flagstone path and mounted the front porch. I rang the bell, praying that my timing was right. I wanted to talk to Ava while Katie was still out for her morning run.
“Hello, Ava,” I said, when she opened the door.
She pulled back in uncomfortable surprise.
“I won’t be staying,” I said. “I won’t even come in. I just wanted to ask you a question.”
She thought about this for a moment, her face hanging in a pensive sadness. Then she said, “Certainly, dear,” although she seemed to utter the words more to mollify me than to express anything akin to affection.
I took a deep breath. “Is Katie here?”
“Out jogging. Ask your question.”
“Exactly what form did Sidney Smeeth’s threat take?”
Ava’s eyes glittered. “I’m not at all certain what you’re asking,” she said.
“Was it just that she was going to expose Hayes Associates for the cracked welds in the stadium roof? Or was she going to make it specific to Enos, for having specified the trusses?”
Ava stood a long time looking at me, watching me as if I were part of some action occurring across the street from the house—a fire in a trash barrel, or some kid writing graffiti on the neighbor’s garage. Then she stepped back solemnly and closed the door.
I HAD THE driver take me next to the University of Utah campus and drop me at the Seismic Station. The building had an elevator, which was great, and Wendy Fortescue was in, which was lucky, because I hadn’t phoned ahead. I knew that the tough part was going to be getting her to talk to me, so I had decided to just go up there and shove.
“I understand you live in the basement apartment at Dr. Smeeth’s house,” I began.
“I ain’t talking.”
“That’s fine. I have just a couple more questions.”
“You deaf?”
“Look, I know it was murder. I’m just wondering about a few things, like—”
Wendy’s eyes got real little, and her lips drew up as tight as a raisin. She said, “Listen, Em. I’m not known for my social skills. So if you want to stay in one piece, I suggest you buzz off while you’ve still got one good leg to stand on.”
“Just tell me the parts that are public record.”
“Go read them at the cop station.”
“I got my reasons to avoid that location, and I think you know them.”
A wry smile rippled across her little face. “Yeah. I heard Mr. Beautiful got hisself another squeeze.”
I took a long, deep breath and stared at her levelly. It was unpleasant to discover that my geological colleagues had been discussing my relationship to Ray in my absence, but she had in the process told me a lot—namely, that she knew who Ray was. I took an intuitive leap and said, “So. The good officer Raymond has been around to question you.”
“Yeah.”
I tucked this information firmly into my data bank. “I’m going to let you in on something free and for nothing, Wendy. If you told Ray anything at all, you got yourself snookered. When he talked to you, he wasn’t on duty.”
Her eyebrows went down like a freight elevator. “Bullshit. I know official business when I step in it. He was wearing the blue. I’ve had cops climbing all over me.” Then she smiled, apparently savoring that image.
“Not bullshit. He may have shown up in uniform, but here’s something he didn’t tell you: He’s not working Homicide.”
“Then why’d he question me, smart-ass?”
“I’d like to know that myself. Let me guess: He came around the morning of the day after the murder.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s working evenings, Wendy.”
Her jaw descended. Fury began to contort her face. She tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Okay, ask your questions. I will answer them if you’ll leave immediately after.”
“I’ll do my best. Give me the scene: Who found her? Where? When? How did the killer get in?”
She let her breath out in a huff. “Pet Mercer found her. She had come to do an interview. She found … Sidney … below the deck. It’s a twelve-foot drop, with the slope, onto rocks. Sidney liked to use her deck, because it’s a great view of the Salt Lake valley. I imagine she had left the front gate unlocked so Pet could get in. I don’t know. It was about six-thirty. She’d been dead half an hour or more. I was taking a shower.”
“You’d just woken up?”
“Are you nuts? You think I could sleep through an earthquake? Get real. When that quake hit, I got up and ran down to the station here to make absolutely certain everything was running. You know, ogle the strip charts. It was better than sex. Then I ran home to get a shower and some breakfast, because I knew it was going to be a long day at the Seismic Station with all those media geeks staring over my shoulder.”
“So you wouldn’t have been looking out at the deck—or out from underneath it because you were in the basement—when she was killed. When was the last time anyone interviewed her there?”
“Huh?”
“It’s not a trick question. When was the last time anyone interviewed Sidney on that deck?”
“A day or two before. She was doing a series on geologic hazards. She liked to do her arm-waving bit.”
“So that’s how the police knew that the railing had been intact until the murder. She would not have had TV crews out there without a railing, and the station that shot t
he previous interview had the tape showing it in place. And no ice, I’ll be willing to bet.” I pulled at my lip as I thought it through. “So he took the railing out and poured water on the deck. What a dumb shit. Like he thought that would fool anyone.”
Wendy looked at me sideways. “You say ‘he.’ How do you know it wasn’t me, for shit’s sake?”
“Police grilled you, huh?”
She snorted.
I ignored her bitterness, said nothing about how frightening it must have been to see her landlady dead and then get grilled by some homicide detective. If I’d said that, she might have cracked, and I wasn’t yet ready to have the real Wendy, the soft thing that lived inside this hardened shell, show herself. For the moment, I wanted her to stay tough, and spit out the story free of emotional embellishment. So I changed the subject. “The deck squeak much?”
“Like a fool.”
I thought out loud. “So you would have heard it if things had actually come down that way anyway. And he wouldn’t have dared set it up like that if he’d known there was a downstairs apartment. Too risky.”
Wendy stared at me.
“But wait,” I said, beginning to perceive a hole in my own logic. “You would have heard him rip that railing apart. So what aren’t you telling me?”
Wendy finally took her hand off the mouse she had been using to plot P and S waves when I first came in. She rubbed her eyes. She said, “Listen, you’re welcome to your fantasies. What happened to the railing? You got me. I was in the fucking shower. I’m god damned glad I didn’t hear it. Pet found her, and now Pet’s dead, too. I saw nothing. I know nothing. I don’t know about you, but I like staying alive.”
I began to ask a scattershot of questions, hoping to hit something. “Is the only way onto the deck through the house?”
“Go see for yourself. I gotta get back to work. It’s the sucky part of staying alive.”
“What’s the address? It’s not in the phone book.”
She stared at me blankly for a while, then gave it to me, her tone flat.
“Was she bloody?” I asked, now ready to press her over her emotional limit if I had to. “I saw a body after it had taken a big drop once. Pretty gruesome.”
Wendy peered at me like I was some bug on the stage of a microscope and she had been set the task of examining me. She opened her mouth and said, “She didn’t die from a fall.” With that, she turned her face back to her computer. Her narrow little shoulders followed, and I found myself staring at her back.
I asked ten or a dozen more questions but got no replies. Within the world of Wendy Fortescue, I was a bug that no longer existed.
There was a loose thread here, dangling, teasing me, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. I decided it was time to get out my photograph of the Raymond family. I stuck it under her nose. “That’s Officer Thomas B. Raymond,” I said. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Who else looks familiar?”
Wendy shot me an acid look. “Great, I got snookered by an off-duty cop. Now his shit-heel girlfriend is giving me the full-court press. Go fuck a duck, will you?”
I jabbed my finger at Enos’ face. “How about him?”
Wendy’s sharp little gaze slid down toward the photograph and back toward me. “Yeah.”
“Yeah what?”
“He’s been around.” Her face had gone stiff. After a moment she said, in a much smaller voice, “A real lover, that one. And if you don’t leave right now, I will call security.”
IT’s A GOOD thing that Salt Lake City cabs are relatively cheap. I called one to take me to Sidney Smeeth’s house next.
I had the cab wait, and it didn’t have to wait long. The tall iron gate out front was locked, and there was no way I was going to try any fence climbing with a game ankle. What I did learn from that lap around the track was that there were plenty of places to hide nearby if you were interested in ambushing a state geologist, and that once inside the gate, an intruder could not be seen from the road.
I turned and looked up the hill. I hadn’t been paying much attention as the cab drove up to the house, but as I stood there, watching the fat white flakes of snow settle on the fancy landscaping across the street, I realized that Sidney Smeeth’s home stood on the road that led uphill toward a posh neighborhood I knew well. It was the neighborhood where Ava Raymond lived. And at this time, while their expansive, expensive house was being constructed, Enos and Katie Harkness lived there, too.
I HAD THE cab drop me at the Tribune office, where I identified myself to the security guard as someone who wanted to speak to whoever was taking over Pet Mercer’s stories. I was shown into the newsroom, a newly remodeled place with a blue Mac computer in every cubicle. The place was buzzing with activity, especially the zone right underneath a special sign that read OLYMPICS.
A tall, lanky fellow named Bart came over to talk to me. He was almost as reticent as Wendy Fortescue—more used to asking questions than answering them.
“Thanks for seeing me, Bart,” I said. “I’m here because I was working with Pet Mercer the afternoon before she was killed.”
Bart’s eyes lit with sudden interest. “Tell me.”
“We went up the clock tower at the City and County Building. It was pretty wild. We were looking at how the seismic retrofit fared in the quake.”
“Cool,” said Bart, beginning to smile in a way that I suppose was meant to put me at my ease and keep me talking. “Can I get you a cup of java? Then maybe you can tell me why you’re here.”
For once in my life, I turned down a free cup of coffee. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m kind of in a hurry. The thing is, I’ve been feeling a little bit jumpy ever since. You know, murder and all; I was wondering if she had her notes from that afternoon with her. Because whoever killed her might have, you know, ah … seen them and, like, gotten my name. The police won’t tell me. I’m, ah …”
Bart nodded. “Scared.” He led me to Pet’s desk. It was empty.
“Did the police take away her stuff?”
“I suppose.”
“Damn. Clean as a whistle. Unfortunately, negative results don’t mean that the killer doesn’t have my name. Did they take her hard drive?” I wrung my hands and glanced around furtively, trying to convince him that I was scared witless, which was not entirely an act. “Or are you on a network?”
He took the bait. He flicked on Pet’s computer, tickled some keys, brought up some shreds of what she’d been writing. He scrolled down, searching for my name. “Nothing,” he said.
Not exactly nothing. I was able to read a few lines over his shoulder, grabbed a few phrases. “‘Steel tubing,’” I read out loud. The next term sounded like something Pet had said. “‘Moment frame.’ Wait—don’t turn that off. Are those notes from the new stadium?”
“Looks like it.” He moved around in the file. “Yeah. Looks like she was talking to one of the designers.”
She had indeed. I saw the name I was looking for: Enos Harkness.
I PHONED THE UGS from a sidewalk phone booth and asked to speak with Logan de Pontier.
“Em,” he said. “How’s the ankle?”
“Better, thanks.”
“I’m glad to hear from you. Want to go out and catch a movie tonight?”
I gave myself a brief moment to consider the option, to ask myself whether I trusted my judgment around men any better than I had the night before. With a sigh, I answered, “Can I take a rain check? There’s … a lot going on just now.”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly. “So, to what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“Tell me about moment frames.”
There was a pause. “You mean as in structural engineering?”
“Yeah.”
“They used them in Northridge. That’s in California, near L.A.”
“I remember. Big quake back in ’94.”
“Exactly. That put the concept to the test. A lot of them failed.”
“Why?”
�
��Well, the idea is that the moment frame is flexible. You build vertical members, which are designed to sway with the motion of an earthquake. That way, you can design for bigger openings in walls, or wider spans in a roof. This is as opposed to the braced frame, which has cross-members at forty-five-degree angles, or near that, designed to take up an earthquake by standing rigid.”
“And the moment frame didn’t work in Northridge.”
“Remember all those photos of collapsed buildings?”
“Right. So the moment frame wouldn’t be used anymore?”
“Well, not entirely. It’s often a cheaper way to build, because there’s less steel in it, so I suppose there are places where it’s a good idea. Big spans with no supports right beneath them, like certain roofs, or big archways.”
“Like perhaps in a place like Salt Lake City, where the seismic building code is less stringent?”
“You’re quick, Em. But even here, it depends on how they’re constructed. I’m sure that some of them perform as expected.”
“How come the moment frame works sometimes and not others?”
Logan said, “The problem is that the metallurgists keep coming up with better steel.”
“How is that a problem?”
“Well, you see, the welds used to be the strongest part of the structure. The moment frame idea was that the tubing would take up the flex. You know, sway side to side. Now the tubing is stronger than the welds, so at Northridge, that’s where the structures failed.”
“And a roof truss would sit on top of a moment frame?”
“It could. Yeah. Like in the new stadium. Shitty design. I understand that the architects designed it differently but that the builders changed it.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Sadly, no. Changes happen all the time. Sometimes for the best, sometimes not. This time, I’d say the builder was being cheap.”
Fault Line (Em Hansen Mysteries) Page 24
