"Adventurous but steady."
"You?"
"Good going, Watson."
"But you’re in Carmel."
"I can come up there for a while, give you a few days now and more time as you need it. Say the word."
It had never occurred to her that Paul would want to come up himself. One of Jack’s oldest friends, they hadn’t seen much of him since they moved to San Francisco. Now the thought of him and their shared past felt cozy as an old sweater, a feeling that begged to be scrutinized.
"Well, shoot, Paul. I’d love to hire you." Damn the torpedoes.
"I can drive up day after tomorrow. It’s about four hours—"
"Driving a Concorde?"
"Ah, Nina. It’s such a delight to hear your voice," he said. "Now tell me how I find you."
Nina couldn’t get through to Bruno Cervenka at the UC Medical Center in San Francisco until four-thirty. He was teaching a seminar in something called depth psychology.
Bruno was old, ancient. The school had been trying to get him to retire for years, but he refused, forcing a compromise. He continued to teach a couple of graduate courses and consulted on legal cases; the school still carried him as a full professor. There wasn’t anything else they could do. Bruno had many friends, and an unalterable conviction that if he ever retired, he would die instantly. "Like old Sarah Winchester, who had carpenters building onto her house until the day she died, convinced that if they stopped, she would die. Work is life," he had told Nina once. He had testified in many capital cases, always on behalf of the defendant. Nina’s firm in San Francisco had used him as a consultant on several appeals.
His age and his orientation toward the defense weakened his credibility as an expert witness at trial. On the other hand, as Nina had learned working with him on the appeals, he was a brilliant clinician. He understood people. He had no preconceptions. This made him much more useful than a sharp-edged Stanford Ph.D. who mainly manipulated computers and lab rats.
"I have a case for you, Professor," Nina said. "A young woman who has total amnesia about her childhood to about age ten. She’s beautiful, unfaithful, and struck her husband on the head with a statue a week ago. She says she went to bed and fell asleep while he lay bleeding, and still breathing, on their couch. Her story’s so outrageous I’m wondering if she simply doesn’t remember what happened. Her husband was found in Lake Tahoe, apparently pushed off a boat. She says she knows nothing about it. She’s been charged with murder."
"Has she ever received psychiatric treatment?" Cervenka asked, sounding frail and far away. Nina wondered if he could make the trip over these mountains or if the elevation change might kill him.
"A few months ago she began having emotional problems. It sounds like she was suffering from some form of depression. She went to an M.D. who does hypnotherapy. From what she says, she was feeling better, but the therapy still hadn’t resulted in recovery of her childhood memories."
"Are her parents still alive?"
"Yes, and she has asked them about it. They say she had an ordinary childhood. She has no brothers and sisters. I don’t know if it’s part of their religion or what—they’re Christian Scientists—but they don’t have any old photo albums around to jog her memory."
"Does she have other episodes like this, in which she has lost important memories?"
"Just her entire childhood and the episode with her husband."
"Traumatic amnesia, with denial and repression mechanisms. Epilepsy. Fugue. Multiple personalities. Prevarication. It could be anything, based on what you tell me," Cervenka said. "There are probably two separate sets of precipitating events to account for each of the amnesias."
"Prevarication ... you’re suggesting she’s a liar, Professor?"
"Naturally. There is a rather serious charge against her. If she does not like what she remembers, perhaps she is simply not telling."
"She could hardly make it worse for herself. If she did watch him die, then took the body out and dumped it, we still have a case for self-defense. He was assaulting her at that time and previously. What I can’t deal with is not knowing what happened."
Cervenka said, "I would have to know much, much more to help. I could talk with the young lady, perhaps hypnotize her myself. We can start with her physician’s treatment records. Who knows? Maybe the physician was negligent. The hypnotism could be adding to her amnesia trouble instead of helping."
"Can you come to the mountains, Professor?" Nina asked, a little tentatively.
"Whenever possible, the mountains must come to Mohammed, my dear," he said, sounding almost jolly. "I am currently using a wheelchair until my new hip cooperates better. So send me her records, and then we will make arrangements."
’’Within a week, Professor. Thanks for being willing to look into this."
"You may not need me at all," Cervenka said. "Many traumatic amnesia cases clear up on their own. What does her physician say?"
"I’m meeting with him next week, to pick up her records and find out what he knows," Nina said. "But I want you on the case, Bruno. Her doctor is a treating physician. His thoughts and records are going to be freely available to the DA. I need your help as a consultant."
"My pleasure," the old man said courteously on the other end of the line. Nina hung up, ignoring the unpleasant feeling that Bruno had given her. He made it seem too complicated. Misty blocked unpleasant things out, that was all. Amnesia controlled her, not lies. Okay, give credence for a moment to the concept that Misty was lying. That still made the charge manslaughter at worst.... With Nina’s smarts, a top investigator, and a great shrink, what could Riesner offer that was better?
9
NINA PAID HER two bucks and took her ticket. Andrea waited for her inside the old Elks’ Club building. She could feel the backbeat vibrating through her spine without being able to identify a recognizable tune. The crowd rushed forward and carried her in.
"Good excuse to celebrate," Andrea had said earlier, when Nina told her about the Tengstedt check. "Let’s go to the Firemen’s Ball."
Nina had been sitting on the couch, the manila envelope from Ms. Cherry’s office she had just opened in her lap. In it she found the marital settlement agreement; twenty pages precisely dividing up assets and debts, outlining the procedure for selling the condo, providing for attorney’s fees to the prevailing party in the event of a breach of the provisions. Jack’s large, familiar signature was sprawled across the bottom of the last page, just above Ms. Cherry’s.
"The Firemen’s Ball is the highlight of the spring social season," Andrea went on, pseudo-Boston. "You get your Crab Feed in two months, and then the big Pancake Breakfast in August. But this is where you get your dancing."
"Hmmm."
"To the Movers, the wildest electric guitar playin’, bassthumpin’, screamin’, poundin’ rock ’n’ roll band this side of East Sacramento."
Nina had sat there, the papers loosely clasped in her hands. Seeing the envelope at the post office, she had known right away what it was. A wet pain slipped roughly around inside her chest like a bloody scalpel.
Friday night tonight, and she felt allowed. She would close and lock her bedroom door, removing the leather shoes, the stockings, the suit skirt and jacket, and finally the underwear. Over her head she would throw the long green silk night-gown. Then she would lift the yellow spread from her soft mattress, curl up and disappear.
She would apply something she had learned in the past: You could adjust to anything after the first twenty-four hours. If you could get to sleep, the time went that much faster. The ego erected a membrane of rationalizations and defenses around the pain, fragile but efficient as the bubble of a blister. By tomorrow, she could bear it. "No, Andrea. I’m more dead than alive. It’s been a long week. I need a long, hot bath and bed...."
"A long week? I’ve been slopping around in freezing muck for five months. I’m sick and tired of being buried by snow and too cold to count on my fingers. Let’s go someplace warm." Andrea had tilted he
r head, surveying her. "Sleep is not what you need. You’re always so damn fierce and serious. Why don’t you ease up for tonight? Tonight’s an old Tahoe tribal tradition to celebrate the end of the cold season. Everybody comes to dance, except kids and their baby-sitters and your brother, who hates crowds even more than you. This thing’s our opera, ballet, and off-Broadway." She took her sister-in-law by the sleeve and tugged. "I don’t want to go alone, so you’re coming."
Nina shook her head. "Don’t push me. I’m not budging."
Andrea plucked the envelope from the couch and hit Nina on the head with it. "Admit that you won’t be able to sleep."
Andrea kept after her until Nina washed her hair, let it dry, ran a spiky brush through it, put on a red sweater she thought might distract from the winter pallor of her skin, and went with her.
She drove Nina to a barn outside town, lit up in the middle of a field. The moon had not come up, but the stars clustered so brightly in the sky that the grass in the meadows shone white. Four-wheel-drive vehicles in all shapes and sizes pressed up against the brush alongside the road anywhere the trees had been cleared, for what seemed like miles.
Inside, the town whirled. Behind the long bar in back, dozens of white-shirted amateur bartenders passed out paper cups of beer and wine. Peering through the darkness, Nina could see a few long tables lined up with benches, mostly empty, surrounding the dance floor.
"Good love ..." The band played old rock ’n’ roll songs off somewhere in the gloom. Andrea passed her some red wine. Everyone else was singing and moving, sloshing beer from the cups they clutched. She drank the cup and went for a refill. Warmed by the wine and moiling bodies, and overloaded on all sensory fronts, Nina soon found herself part of a blurry group of friends. "Lay-la," they all sang. They danced together, alone, in groups, bumping everybody else, beer flying in a constant thin spray, laughing and yelling.
Hundreds of pounding hearts, thumping and mindless, carried Nina along as the band launched into a fast-forward version of "Brown Sugar." A few minutes later, on her way to search for a sip of water, she took time to unstick the damp sweater from her body.
Leaning against the bar, trying to attract the bartender, she felt a hand clasp her waist. A firm arm steered her from the corner to a stool. "Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m moving through, here," said the man, disappearing into the crowd. The touch, like a flash of electric light, woke her up. She saw the men, the bodies under the clothes, and they looked good to her, very good. Not San Francisco jogging types, these guys had weight and muscle. Maybe it was all that wood chopping they did. And she’d never gotten over a predilection for beards.
For five years she hadn’t gone out without Jack. They’d critiqued all the known Japanese restaurants in the City; watched, then postmortemed, the Kurosawa flicks at the Castro Theater, and caught up with music when they could. They’d read The New York Times all day on Sunday. They had gone through her mother’s death together, talked law together, filed their tax return together. But mostly they had worked, six or even seven days a week. Where was her son in all this? And where was the rest of Nina, the dancing part?
She drank water, then some more wine. Downing the dregs of her cup, she set it on the counter and jumped back into the crowd. She shouted and the people nearby smiled at her. She stamped her feet and the wooden floor bounced.
She danced until she saw Paul van Wagoner pushing his way over to her. Disconcerted, she looked around for Andrea, but Andrea had melted into the color wheel. Then Paul was in front of her, and he was ... dancing, his limbs loose but awkward. He reached out, grabbed at her with a brusque confidence, and began pulling her toward him, twirling her, catching her, keeping the beat, while her surprised body remembered the old moves. His hair was plastered to his head and his blue denim shirt and jeans looked lived-in. He had been there awhile. He didn’t try to speak, and neither did Nina.
The band relaxed into a slow tune. He pressed himself tightly against her, closing his eyes. Swaying slowly, they relaxed into each other, into an easy, familiar-feeling rhythm: his hip slides, her hip slides, their hips slide together. After a few songs they edged toward the door a step at a time. When Nina could feel the evening’s cool on her hot cheeks, he took her hand and maneuvered her gracefully through the jovial phalanx that blocked the door.
Outside, couples leaned against the wall or sat in cars with the doors open. Two kids on skateboards raced through the parking lot. Nina could suddenly hear her fast breath mixed with a ringing in her ears. Sweat dried cold on her forehead: A cup of red wine appeared to have fallen onto her white pants. She released Paul’s hand and stood at a slight distance. "You got here fast. How’d you find us?" she asked. "Oh, you went to the house and Matt told you."
"He sent me here," Paul said, looking up at the night sky. "More stars here than in Monterey. That’s why I rushed." He’d had a beer or four, Nina realized suddenly, and he hadn’t shaved, and he’d popped a button on his shirt, exposing some soft blond chest hair. At her glance, he also looked down at his shirt, shrugging and grinning at the same time.
"See you tomorrow," he said, still smiling, and disappeared into the darkness.
"Nina." Andrea came up. She, too, showed the effects of the dance—shirttail out, face shiny, and a slight limp. "We’ve got to go before I cripple myself."
They started for the car. "You don’t waste a minute, do you?" said Andrea, watching the departing back.
"Give me five minutes to get divorced, Andrea. Paul’s an old friend. He’s doing some work for me."
"You like him, though." They walked in silence until Andrea said, "He’s an old friend of Jack’s, isn’t he? I think Matt told me something about him. You dated him, right? Rough stuff, right?"
"Matt ought to mind his own business."
Nina crawled under the comforter, her body still humming with music. Tossing, punching up her pillow, checking the clock, adjusting the sheets, she could not find a comfortable place. Finally she took the second pillow and lifted her leg over it as a man substitute. It was right then that she discovered the iron band constricting her solar plexus, encircling her so tightly she could hardly breathe. Breathing shallowly, she tried to suck air into her belly, wondering how she could have been walking around like this, without even noticing. She couldn’t breathe, much less sleep. How long had she been in this condition? Why, she was barely alive.
She hoped nobody could hear her, because there was nothing she could do to stop what presently became a pitiful display. Stuffing her face into her pillow, she soaked it with tears and snot until she had to get up and blow her nose: her face in the bathroom mirror—now, that was something to cry about.
Bobby woke up about six and came into her room softly, climbing in beside her. She put her arm around his warmth and they both fell back to sleep, awakened finally by the pounding of cousins on the door about nine.
Saturday. Washing her face with cold water, she marveled at her swollen eyelids.
"What happened to you?" Matt asked, when she walked into the living room.
"Fun, fun, fun," Nina croaked.
Matt let out a chuckle. "The Firemen’s Ball has a way of wringing the blood right out of you. Let’s go for a hike up the hill behind the house. I’m taking the kids."
"I have to go to the office. The reports on the Patterson case ought to be in the mail today. The guy you sent to the Ball last night? Paul van Wagoner? He’s a private investigator now and I’m hiring him to do some work."
"That explains why he came sniffing around in the dead of the night. He’s a pro." He said it without being mean. "I remember him from Monterey."
"That seems like a long time ago. Sometimes I miss Monterey."
"This is a good place to settle, Nina," he went on. "Know why I love Tahoe? The trees. Millions more trees than people. Towns of trees, nations of trees, hermit trees, incense cedars, sugar pines, lodgepoles, ponderosas, white fir with snow so heavy on it the branches bend into curves ... so many people hardly
notice what’s all around them. The mountains are too high. The lake is too big and deep. The trees soften all that scary grandeur."
It was a long speech for Matt. But taking her coffee to the porch, watching sunlight drift through the morning wood-stove haze, she understood what he was trying to say. A hundred feet above the ground, the trees had turned together toward the sun, and the tips of their branches wore a new, brighter green. They lived and grew in a slower time frame, serene, ignoring the human hullabaloo beneath their canopy of light and shade.
She wanted to stay and she knew Bobby would be happy here, but she wasn’t ready to consider happiness for herself just yet. She buried the marital settlement agreement under her bed before she left.
Paul came through the office door about two o’clock while Nina was copying the Patterson reports on her newly leased machine. She turned around and saw him more clearly than the night before, daylight revealing a few deeper creases in his face and dark blond hair longer than in his police days. He waited, measuring her degree of warmth, and she was obscurely embarrassed by the night before, so she said, "Paul!" and held out her hand, trying to look cool and professional.
Jack and Paul had gone to Harvard as undergraduates. Jack had gone on to law school, but Paul moved into criminology. She had met Paul through Jack five years before, when they all lived in the Monterey area. In fact, she had gone out one interesting evening with Jack and Paul and another woman, and she couldn’t remember now who had been dating whom. In Monterey she had known Paul as a hard cop, very physical, with a cynical, rather patronizing attitude toward women and a quick, dangerous temper.
Nina had heard stories from Jack about Paul’s insubordinate attitude for years. It was a testament to his abilities that he had been promoted to homicide detective. She had been attracted to Paul, but she had chosen Jack. Since then they had seen Paul occasionally on his infrequent visits to San Francisco, Paul always escorting a new woman. Nina remembered suspecting once that he brought the women by for Jack’s stamp of approval. Who knew about these male friendships?
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