"You are the most obdurate, the most exasperating, the most long-eared mule who ever dug her heels in and wouldn’t go," Andrea said. "Let’s talk about something else."
"How’s Michelle?"
"Back in Fresno. She starts Lamaze classes next week with Steve Rossmoor as her partner. Isn’t that a kick?"
"He’ll want to marry her. Don’t think she’s ready, do you?"
"She’s been calling every day. She’s found a woman therapist. Her parents had a rough week. They came through the bad time. You know, I think they were half dead before. Hiding Stokes’s death took so much energy. I think their lives will be better now. The baby’s coming soon, so they’ll be busy. Nobody talks much about Greenspan being the father. I wonder what Michelle will tell her child about the father."
"The baby will inherit Greenspan’s estate," Nina said. "They had no children."
"Ohmigod. Only a lawyer could think about something like that."
"I’ll never forget Greenspan’s expression when I told him about the baby. He had Michelle’s medical chart. He knew she was on the Pill. He didn’t know she’d missed a few that month."
"That disgusting pervert, giving good therapists a bad name," Andrea said firmly. "They were both twisted." She turned her wedding ring around on her finger for emphasis. "After what he did to Michelle ..."
"I’ll call her tomorrow," Nina said. She wanted to say to her, thank you for your faith. Michelle had been the only one to trust Nina unflaggingly, and she had had the most to lose. And Michelle would say, thank you for believing in me. Nina had been the only one.
They were so different, but shared so much, bad and good. Now Michelle, too, had a child to tell some difficult truths to. What about my father, Mom? Nina was waiting for Bobby to ask that question. Maybe Michelle would do better. Did these events drop rotten burdens through the generations, fruits of poisonous trees? They would talk about it.
"Jack came up to see you, but you were out of it," Andrea went on. "He brought the divorce decree. You’re single again."
"Ouch," Nina said. She had jerked involuntarily.
"He cried right here in this chair, if that’s any consolation to you. Here, let me fix your pillow. Other news: You’re famous, at least for a few miles around. Sandy is collecting the appointment requests. According to the Mirror, you rode in here on a big white horse and ran the bad guys out of town. Saved an innocent girl when no one else believed in her.... You’ll be embarrassed when you read the articles. They even reported the shootings on CNN. Matt saved the tape."
"Me? What’d I do? I muddled around, making mistakes, until I got shot."
Andrea grinned. "You never learned how to pat yourself on the back, did you? I’m going to have to do it for you." She leaned close to Nina’s pillow and patted her softly on the shoulder. "Congratulations, Nina. We’re all proud of you."
But when she had gone, leaving behind a novel about sleazy lawyers involved in big-firm chicanery, Nina lay there, troubled. The Greenspans were dead. She could never ask Ericka Greenspan exactly how Anthony Patterson died. Okay, she had found him wounded, lying on the couch. Okay, she was strong, she had seen the keys on the kitchen counter and hauled him to the boat. Somehow, she had swum back.
But why go to all that trouble? Why not just hit Anthony again, and leave Michelle to face a murder charge?
She shook her head and reached out painfully for the cards stacked on the nightstand. Judge Milne had sent her a Hall-mark get-well card. She last remembered him scurrying off to his chambers like a panicky weasel to its burrow. She would never be afraid of him again.
Collier’s card played "You Only Live Twice" in tinkly computer music when she opened it. Inside was a folded copy of the mistrial order. "Congratulations, Counselor!" the card said.
Smiling a little, she looked around. Silver Mylar balloons from Paul flew above a champagne bottle with a note that made her laugh and blush at the same time. Flowers from Michelle, chocolate-covered macadamia nuts from Nina’s father in Monterey, a soft wool blanket covered with bird designs from Sandy. A scribble from Bruno: "Classic countertransference. An intriguing footnote to Freud. I’ll send you my first draft."
She found the Judgment of Final Dissolution of Marriage at the bottom of the card pile. The effective date was the same day she had been shot. Ultraprofessional Ms. Cherry had written a cover letter regarding the details.
Clipped to the top of that letter was a note from Jack saying he knew she’d be out there again soon, persevering until even the impossible gave way, and wishing her luck. She stared at the note a long time, till the nurse came in with a cupful of pills that erased all her pain.
On October 13, the morning before she left the hospital, Nina’s doctor came in to give her discharge instructions. To him she was nothing but a right lung. Take this and this and this, he said in the excessively cheerful bedside manner affected by the medical profession, and come into the office in a couple of days.
A couple of days. Those were Michelle’s words, the first time she came into the office. Anthony Patterson, too, had seen his doctor a few days before his death.
Nina dialed the phone.
"Sandy, it’s me."
"Well, I’ll be."
Hearing that familiar flat voice on the phone actually choked Nina up. "How’s it going? Are you hanging in there?"
"It’s a barrel of laughs," Sandy said. "I’ll come see you tomorrow with a U-Haul full of new files. You are still going home tomorrow?"
"I’ll be there. See you after lunch."
"With pen in hand."
"Listen, Sandy. I have a chore for you. Could you find out the name of Anthony Patterson’s regular doc? It must be somewhere in the case files. Right away."
"That’s what you pay me for," Sandy said. She called back ten minutes later with the name, and Nina thanked her. "Sure," she said. "By the way, there’s a powwow at the Washoe Center all this week."
"And?"
"I took down those awful gray photographs. Got tired of staring at ’em all day long. Those things took all the life and color and drained it right out of the landscape. What we need’s a couple of bright Washoe wall hangings in here."
"You took down my Ansel Adams prints?"
"You’re gonna love it," said Sandy.
33
HER HEART POUNDING, Nina called Anthony Patterson’s doctor with her question. He was in and talked to her. Lunch came, something pinkish and something greenish and something whitish.
While a nurse organized medicine on a tray, she called Al Otis in Sparks. He asked no questions, just said he’d be glad to stop in. He couldn’t come until later.
Otis poked his head around the door late in the afternoon and tiptoed in as if she had died after all. A red-haired man in a ponytail once more, he must be running out of disguises.
"Brought you a little something, Counselor," he said, reaching into his vest pocket and pulling out a tiny silver flask. "Hair of the litter. Go ahead, the nurse is down the hall."
She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. It was very good Scotch, about an inch, which made her cough, which in turn made her groan, but it was worth it.
"You’re lookin’ good, considering," he said, pulling up a folding chair. "It happened to me in Nam. See my leg?" He pulled up his trouser leg and she inspected the puckered white scar. "Worse things happened to my buddies. Goin’ home soon?"
"Tomorrow."
"Good, good." He seemed lost in thought. "Did you hear they caught the sumbitch that rammed my baby?" he asked suddenly.
"You mean ... Sharon?"
"My baby," he said, and began to cry. "Love is cruel," he continued after a while, blowing his nose loudly. "I’ll never love like that again. It was a geek named Blackie she met at a bar. She had some friends of hers rip off his bike, and she sold it to one of her best customers. Blackie saw the customer riding the highway out in the desert, by Pyramid Lake, took it back and beat up the rider. Then he got loaded and wiped Sharon out, t
here at the side of the road. She was only forty-three. Forty-seven if you believe her driver’s license." He wiped his eyes.
"I’m sorry," Nina said. She really was sorry.
"She loved me, and she let me try out anything on her," Al said in a melancholy tone. "And she was loyal to her friends."
"Anthony was her friend. Was she loyal to him?" Nina said.
"If you only knew," Al said. He snuffled into his tissue and drank some Scotch.
"But I do know, Al."
His eyes grew big and wide. "About the night Anthony bought it?"
"I know, and you know. It wasn’t Ericka Greenspan. Sharon told you about him, didn’t she, Al?"
"Sharon told me what happened, and Sharon never lied. Steal, yes, beat up on somebody, yes, but she had a strong moral compunction about lying. She told me."
Nina sat up, repressing another groan. "Al, Michelle Patterson was on trial for murder. You had crucial information. Why didn’t you call me?"
"I did, once. Right before the trial. But your secretary put me on hold for so long I changed my mind. And Sharon wouldn’t have wanted me to tell you. She lived outside the law.
"And we never owed pretty Misty anything, that little stinker. She was out of control. She showed her husband no respect. She was drivin’ that man nutso, cheatin’ and lyin’...." Al pulled at his ring, which was again missing its bright zircons. "Besides, I knew you’d get her off. I trusted you from the minute I seen you step into my trailer. Great legs."
"Thanks," Nina said weakly. "So..."
"And you paid your dues, and took care of business, so I didn’t have to be a witness and blow my cover."
"Al, I suspect that I’ve got the story in substance. Now I want to know what Sharon said."
"Promise you won’t hold it against her? She was a very moral girl, in her way. She was just carrying out Anthony’s last wishes."
"I won’t hold it against Sharon," Nina said. "Al, please."
Al Otis smiled. "I like to get ’em begging," he said. If she’d had the strength to reach him she would have shaken him. He put up his hand as if to fend her off, saying, "Relax. I’m harmless."
"Al."
"You don’t want to play no more?" He drained the last of his flask, cleared his throat interminably, and finally said, "All right. Here’s how it went down.
"Sharon rode up the hill to see Anthony about ten. We owed him a few grand from the week’s take. Don’t ask me what else they did, I never asked myself. They were friends. That was her business. So she gets there, and she’s half frozen, and she has to haul in some logs and get a fire going because Anthony’s lyin’ there on the couch in his robe, and at first he won’t even talk to her.
"So she gets a fire blazin’ and strips off her leathers. The guy has hardly moved, and she keeps askin’ him what’s wrong. She fixes some drinks and gets him talking, and he tells her two bad things have happened. I mean bad with a capital B."
"Go on."
"His doc has just confirmed that day he has lung cancer. He’s been smoking for twenty-five, thirty years, what did he expect? It’s advanced, there are a few cells here and there, he’s got about six months. He cries on Sharon’s shoulder for a few minutes, they have some more drinks. Then he tells her—"
"How are we doing?" said the nurse, sweetly. Pill time. Al watched sympathetically while Nina swallowed and swallowed.
"What did he tell her then?" Nina said as the nurse bounded out in her springy white shoes.
"Anthony had been puttin’ out Misty’s fires all over town. He was shuttin’ down that schoolteacher guy, Tom, by talkin’ to his wife. And he thought there was some hankypanky with the doc whose wife blew him away at your trial, so he talked to the wife there. The thing is, he really didn’t know what to do about Misty, because he knew if he bitched at her like he wanted to, she’d move out for good.
"That day, right after he saw the doc, his snake-eyed compadre Peter La Russa came by and handed him a security video of the fourth-floor hallway, trained on the general manager’s apartment up there. It showed Misty leaving, maybe the day before, maybe that very day, with heavy smooches and gropes all around. It’s a wonder she ever got any sleep."
"How did he react?"
"I’m telling you. Sharon had never seen him like that. She said he was in black despair. He was a hard man, but even the hard ones have a soft spot, and Misty was his. All those suspicions, and he never really believed she was cheatin’ until that day. He was too quiet, then he’d start raving. She calmed him down some, put him to bed. She hoped he’d stay there until morning, maybe wake up thinking straight. Those were some bad knocks he’d taken.
"Then it was after midnight, and Sharon knew Misty’d be coming in from the night shift. Sharon didn’t want to be there. Anthony was snoring away, but she was worried Misty would wake him up. She heard the Subaru in the driveway and she slipped out back and looked into the living room from outside. She’d parked the bike down the street."
Al paused. "No reason for me or Sharon to invent this shit, right?" he said.
"No," Nina said. She was rubbing her forehead, rerunning scenes in her head. Dr. Clauson in Placerville, smoking stoically next to Anthony’s body, telling her and Paul about the cancer; La Russa, testifying about the videotape he had given Anthony; Steve Rossmoor, telling Paul he had videotapes of his hallway that would prove he’d ’never gone out the night Anthony died.
Here, right here, was where Michelle Patterson had come in. And, according to Al, it all happened just as she had told Nina, eons ago in her office.
"After the fight Misty ran into the kitchen. Sharon was thinking Anthony must be hurt bad. She could see he was bleeding. She was going to come around and see if she could help. But then she saw Anthony get up. He was moving okay. He stood by the kitchen door. And when Misty came back out, he clipped her. Sharon said it looked like he was being careful to do it so he would just knock her out.
"He carried her into the bedroom. Then he went into the kitchen, and he picked up the bear statue Misty had hit him with, and he went outside. No coat, no shoes, just holding that red robe of his closed in front.
"Sharon came around the side of the house to meet him, but he was already crossing the snow, heading toward the neighbor’s boat. There was plenty of moon and the snow had slowed down to a sprinkle. She called to him but he didn’t pay no attention. By the time she got over there he was cast off and a hundred feet out.
"Then she hollered across the water, ’Come back, you crazy motherfucker!’ "
"And he yelled back, ’Don’t let on!’
"Those were his last words. He disappeared out there in the dark with a wave, and Sharon watched for him a long time, but he didn’t come back."
Al’s voice trailed off.
"He framed his own wife," Nina said. She had been sure, but hearing Al tell the story she still felt a kind of awe. She slumped back in the bed.
"Give me a call when you get back on your feet, Counselor," A1 said, rising. "We’ll talk some more. I’ll teach you some cards." Then he was gone.
Sometime later, the nurse brought her a heavy brown package. Nina broke the twine with her teeth and let the paper fall to the floor.
"The police gave this back, but it’s a bad memory for me. Keep it, Nina, and think of me and all the good you did by believing in me and trusting yourself." The card was signed by Michelle. Inside white tissue, she found the polar bear statue. She placed it next to her bed, on the table in front of the window.
She closed her eyes, allowing herself to appreciate fully that she had come at last to the heart of her case, the heart of a dead man. She felt she had known Anthony all these months. All the emotions had begun with him. He had made everyone in the case into unwitting instruments of his revenge.
For a moment, she hated him. She had almost been killed. Because of him.
But this feeling was replaced by a grudging sympathy. Now that she understood him, she could not hate him. His suicide had been h
is declaration that he would die his own death, his own way. He had defied the fate that awaited him: divorce, illness, and loneliness. He had placed his faith in love, and avenged himself when his love was betrayed. In the midst of his brutality and the limitations of his personal history, she could not help seeing a thumb-your-nose kind of bravery in his actions.
She understood him at last. And at last she believed she knew his story. Exhausted with her thoughts, aching with cold in the chilly room, she lay back against her pillows. She lay back to dream the story of the jealous lover. She heard the song Michelle hated. She saw him waving back to Sharon on the dock, shivering, going down to the galley where it was warmer. She imagined him thinking of Misty, wanting her never to forget. He was halfway drunk already. All it would take would be one firm blow and he would sink below the cold, black surface. The moon had even sent a trail along the water for him; the lake would do the rest. She could see him close his eyes, lean out, bring the statue up hard ...
The nurse was shaking her shoulder gently. "Dinner," she said. "Are you cold? You’re shaking." Something bluish had been added tonight, in a plastic bowl. Must be dessert. "Yum," Nina said, thinking of Paul wolfmg his food at the Freel Peak Saloon. She missed him.
After she ate, she dialed Michelle’s number in Fresno. While the phone rang, she considered whether to tell Michelle what she knew, a simple tale that went beyond the facts and connected all the dots. Knowing what happened the night Anthony died might burden her with new guilt, but protecting her wasn’t respecting her for the woman she had become, a person who played the hand she was dealt.
Should she suppress this final truth?
She hung up. There was no rush.
She was tired again. The last thing she saw shaping itself on the inside of her eyelids as she drifted off to a dreamless sleep was the same thing she saw every day now: the familiar window of her office, her porthole on the world, the zigzag of Mt. Tallac looming outside, purple and magnificent, waiting patiently for her.
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