The Little Death

by Michael Nava

  The CHP concluded that the car, driven by Jeremy Paris, had been headed east into Nevada on highway 80 at the time of the crash. It was dusk, a few days before Thanksgiving, the road was icy, traffic was light and there had been a snowstorm earlier in the week. The Paris car had been in the far left lane, nearest the center divider, a metal railing about four feet high. There was reason to believe that Jeremy Paris had been speeding.

  About twenty miles outside of Truckee, disaster overcame the Parises. Their car suddenly went through the center divider, skidded off the side of the road across four lanes of westbound traffic, nearly hit a westbound car, and plunged off the road where its fall was broken by a stand of trees. Within a matter of moments, the car burst into flames. Christina Paris was dead when the police got to her, having been summoned by the driver of the car who had narrowly avoided being struck by the Paris car. Jeremy Paris died in the ambulance.

  The driver of the other car, Warren Hansen, was the only witness and had provided details of the accident to the police. Hansen had been returning home to Sacramento from a week’s skiing. He, the report noted in cop talk, was HBD—had been drinking, shorthand for drunk. Hansen claimed that the Paris car was going too fast for the road and that it appeared to be followed by another car, tailing it from the next lane over. He remembered that the second car was dark and its lights were off. He said that just before the accident the dark car had been striking against the back bumper of the Paris car.

  All these statements were duly noted by the cop who took the report. They were then dismissed by the sergeant who signed off on the report and who remarked that Hansen was drunk and further disoriented by the shock of nearly having been in a serious collision. The sergeant concluded that Jeremy Paris had simply lost control of his car as he sped down the icy roads at dusk, the most treacherous hour for motorists. It was plausible. I could almost hear the sergeant sighing with relief as he filed the report; another mess averted.

  I turned to the coroner’s report. Sitting without a jury, he accepted the findings of the CHP as to the circumstances of the accident, based upon the brief testimony of a single witness, the sergeant. He added some information from the autopsies; charred meat is essentially all that had been left of Christina and Jeremy Paris. Finally, he fixed the times of their deaths. According to the coroner, given the circumstances of the accident and the conditions of the bodies, the deaths could be characterized as essentially simultaneous. When I came upon that phrase, simultaneous death, something clicked in the back of my mind.

  I went on to the next page. It was a death certificate, made out for Warren Hansen who died on April 27, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Six months after the accident. I looked up at Terry.

  “Up to this,” I said, holding the death certificate, “I could almost believe it was just an accident.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “But as soon as I got it, all the loose ends unraveled again.” She explained that it made no sense to hold the inquest without calling the only eye-witness to the accident, or the paramedics who brought the bodies up from the crash and who could have testified to the times of death. “But then,” she continued, “it dawned on me that that was the whole reason for the inquest. To set the times of death. There’s no other reason to hold a coroner’s inquest for a simple car accident. They don’t usually call the coroner unless there’s some question about the deaths.”

  “But there wasn’t any question here,” I said. “And certainly no reason to hold the inquest hundreds of miles from where the accident occurred and three days afterwards. The only difference between the police report and the coroner’s inquest were the times of death. Someone wasn’t happy with the fact that Jeremy Paris was still alive when they pulled him from the car.”

  “Naturally,” she said, “I thought it was the judge who requested the coroner but I was wrong. It was John Smith, Christina’s brother, who arranged it.”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, maybe he suspected,” I replied, “and wanted a coroner’s independent examination of the accident.”

  Terry laughed derisively.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That’s not what Smith got,” she said. “The examining coroner was Tom Fierro. Do you know about him?” I shook my head. “He’s the guy they discovered with the suitcases of money under his bed. My dad used to talk about him and said that Tom was everyone’s favorite coroner. When you bought him, he stayed bought.”

  “Do you think he was paid off?”

  She sighed eloquently. “Of course I do, but who am I going to ask about it?” She gathered up the papers and stacked them neatly. “What’s our next move?”

  “All this means something,” I mused, “and if I just sat still long enough it would come to me. But I can’t sit still. These calls to Napa,” I said, lifting the phone bills. “Maybe Hugh said something to his father that could help us. That’s where I’m going. You work on finding out more about John Smith. He may hold the key.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I think there are too many doors for just one key. Stay in touch.”

  The street sign was so discreetly placed that I missed it the first time and drove on until I found myself at a dead end. I turned around and drove slowly until I saw that the narrow opening between clumps of dusty bushes was, in fact, a road; a back road off a back road at the edge of Napa’s suburban sprawl.

  It was one of those luminescent autumn days. The sky was radiantly blue and the air was warm and silty. You drank rather than breathed it. At my right, a white picket fence appeared and beyond it, orchards and pasture. These gave way to a large, formal lawn, arbors, tennis courts, and a rose garden, looking for all the world like the grounds of a country club.

  Only there was no one around.

  I looked over to my left and saw a white antebellum mansion shimmering like a mirage in the heat of the day. Smaller bungalows surrounded it at a respectful distance, each in the shade of its own great oak. One or two people moved slowly down a walk between the big house and one of the smaller ones. I turned into a circular driveway and drove up to a parking lot at the side of the house. I got out of my car and went up the steps of the great house, crossed the veranda and touched the doorbell. Above the bell was a small brass plate with the word “Silverwood” etched into it.

  A husky young man dressed in orderly’s white appeared at the door. “May I help you?”

  “I’ve come to see Mr. Nicholas Paris,” I said, extracting a business card from my breast pocket and handing it to him.

  He studied it.

  “Are you expected?”

  “I was his late son’s lawyer,” I replied. “He’ll know who I am.”

  The attendant looked at me and then opened the door. I stood in a massive foyer. There was a small table off the side of the staircase where he had been sitting. He went to the table, picked up the phone and dialed three numbers.

  “There’s a lawyer out here to see one of the patients.” He paused. “Okay, clients, then. Anyway, he’s out here now.” He hung up and said, “Have a seat,” gesturing me to a sofa against the wall beneath a portrait of a seventeenth-century gentleman. I sat down. The attendant went back to his book, something called The Other David. The house was still, but the air was nervous.

  “Where are the patients?” I asked.

  “Everyone takes a nap after lunch,” he replied, looking up, “just like kindergarten.”

  “You a nurse?”

  “Do I look like a nurse?” His muscles bulged against his white uniform. “I keep people out there,” he gestured to the door, “from getting in and people in here from getting out.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” I observed.

  He grunted and went back to his book.

  A moment later, a short, bald man stepped into the foyer from a room off the side. He wore a white doctor’s coat over a pale blue shirt and a red knit tie. He looked like an aging preppie and I was willing to bet that he wore argyle socks. The attendant handed
him my business card.

  “Mr. Rios,” he said, “I’m Dr. Phillips, the director. Why don’t we step into the visitor’s lounge?”

  I followed him into the room from which he had emerged. It was a long, narrow rectangle, paneled in dark wood, furnished in stiff-backed Victorian chairs and couches clustered in little groups around coffee tables. The view from the windows was of a rose garden. A dozen long-stemmed red roses had been stiffly arranged in a vase on the mantel of the fireplace. A grandfather clock ticked away in a corner. Except for us, the room was deserted.

  Phillips lowered himself in a wing chair and I sat across from him. The little table between us held a decanter filled with syrupy brown fluid and surrounded by small wine glasses. He poured two drinks. I lifted a glass and sniffed, discreetly. Cream sherry. I sipped, crossing my legs at my ankles like a gentleman.

  “Now, then, Mr. Rios, what can we,” he said, using the imperial, medical we, “do for you?”

  “I represent the estate of Hugh Paris, the son of one of your patients—”

  “Clients,” he cautioned.

  “Clients,” I agreed. “At any rate, Hugh Paris died rather—suddenly, and there are some problems with the will I believe I could clear up by speaking to his father, Nicholas.”

  Phillips shook his head. “That’s quite impossible. You must know that Nicholas Paris is incompetent.”

  “Doctor, that’s a legal conclusion, not a medical diagnosis. I was told he has moments of lucidity.”

  “Far and few between,” Phillips said, dismissively. “Perhaps if you told me what you need, I could help you.”

  “All right,” I said. “I drafted Hugh Paris’s will which, as it happens, made certain bequests that violate the rule in Shelley’s case, rendering the document ineffective. I had hoped that Mr. Paris, as his son’s intestate heir, would agree to certain modifications that would effect the testator’s intent, at least as to those bequests which do not directly concern his interests in the estate.”

  Phillips’s eyes had glazed over at the first mention of the word will. He now bestirred himself and said, “I see.”

  “Then you understand my problem,” I plunged on, “I am responsible for drafting errors in Hugh’s will. There’s some question of malpractice—”

  Phillips perked up. “Malpractice?” He was now on comfortable ground. “I sympathize, of course, but Mr. Paris is hardly in any condition to discuss such intricate legal matters.”

  “I only need ten minutes with him,” I said.

  “Really,” Phillips said, lighting a cigarette, “you don’t understand. Mr. Paris is not lucid.”

  I could tell our interview was coming to an end.

  I tried another tack. “But he’s being treated.”

  Phillips lifted an eyebrow. “We can do very little of that in Mr. Paris’s case. We try to make him comfortable and see that he poses no danger to himself or others.”

  “Is he violent?”

  “Not very.”

  “Drugs?”

  “The law permits it.”

  “You know, doctor,” I said, “even those who cannot be reached by treatment can sometimes be reached by subpoena.”

  Phillips sat up. “What are you talking about?”

  “A probate hearing, with all the trimmings. You might be called to testify to Paris’s present mental condition and the type of care he’s received here. It might even be necessary to subpoena his medical records. I understand he’s been here for nearly twenty years. That’s a long time, doctor, time enough to turn even a genius into a vegetable with the right kind of—treatment.”

  Phillips fought to keep his composure.

  “I could have you thrown out,” he said softly.

  “And I’ll be back with the marshal and a bushel of subpoenas.”

  In an even softer voice he asked, “What is it you want?”

  “I want to make sure he’s too crazy to sue me.”

  Phillips expelled his breath, disbelievingly. “Is that all?” He rose from the chair. “Ten minutes, Mr. Rios, and you’ll go?”

  “Never to darken your doorway again.”

  “Wait here,” he said abruptly and left the room. I poured my sherry into a potted plant.

  When Nicholas Paris entered the room, the air went dead around him. He wore an old gray blazer over a white shirt and tan khaki slacks. No belt. He might have been a country squire returning from a walk with his white-blond hair, ruddy complexion and composed features—there was more than a hint of Hugh in his face. But then you looked into his eyes. They were blue and they stared out as if from shadows focusing on a landscape that did not exist beneath the mild California sun. I felt the smile leak from my face. Phillips sat him down in a chair, scowled at me and said, “Ten minutes.”

  I approached him. “Nicholas?”

  He inclined his head toward me.

  “My name is Henry. I was Hugh’s friend.”

  He said nothing.

  I knelt beside the chair and looked at him. It was as if he were standing behind a screen: the thousand splinters refused to add up to a human face. I saw that his pupils were moving erratically. Drugs.

  “I was his friend,” I continued. “Your son Hugh.”

  He looked away, out the window.

  He said in a voice hoarse from disuse, “Hugh.”

  “Hugh,” I said.

  I kept talking, softly. I told him how I had met Hugh and how much I had cared for him. I told him that I believed Hugh’s death was a murder. I was telling him that I needed to know what, if anything, Hugh had said to him when he visited here.

  Nicholas Paris stared out the window as I spoke, giving no indication that he heard anything but the loud chirping of a bird outside.

  And then, suddenly, I saw a tear run from the corner of his eye. A single, streaky tear.

  He said, “Is Hugh dead?”

  He hadn’t known.

  “Oh, God,” I muttered. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s enough,” a woman spoke, commandingly, above me. I looked up. Katherine Paris stood, coldly composed, beside me. Her face was red beneath her makeup, and her small, elegant hands were clenched into fists. I glanced up at the doorway. Phillips was standing there and, behind him, two burly orderlies.

  I rose from the floor. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Paris.”

  She raised a hand and slapped me. “Get him out of here,” she ordered Phillips. He gave a signal and the orderlies moved in.

  7

  IT WAS DUSK WHEN KATHERINE Paris’s bronze-colored Fiat came off the road that led from Silverwood and turned onto the highway. I switched off the radio, started my car, and followed her. There was no reason to think she would recognize my car; blue Accords are so common as to be almost invisible on the roads of California. She led me past vineyards, orchards, farm houses, and a desolate-looking housing tract with street names like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It was getting chilly out, a sign of autumn in the air. We drove on and on, deeper into the country between gently wooded hills now gloomy in the thick blue light of early evening. She turned her lights on and I turned on mine. A truck roared by and then a motorcycle and then it was just the two of us again, and the dense smell of wet earth rising from the darkened fields around us.

  It would have been nice, I thought, had Hugh Paris been beside me. There was a restaurant in St. Helena that I’d been to once and liked. We could have driven there for dinner and stayed overnight somewhere and visited the wineries the next day. Eliot had it wrong about memory and desire; they smelled like wet earth on an autumn night and had nothing to do with spring.

  My thoughts drifted back to the task at hand. The Fiat’s turn signal flashed on and we went down a narrow road. A brightly-lit three-story building rose just ahead of us. A sign above the entrance identified it as the Hotel George. The hotel was constructed of wood, painted white with green trim, a charming old place. A wide porch surrounded the first floor and chairs were lined up near the railing. They were mostly empty n
ow. She parked and I watched her climb the steps and walk quickly across the porch into the building.

  I waited in my car to see whether she would come out. There were some hot springs in the vicinity and I imagined that the George was a place from which people commuted to them. There were only three other cars in the lot; business, apparently, was slow.

  When she failed to come out after five minutes, it occurred to me that Mrs. Paris might be meeting someone. Who? A member of the family? It was a small family to begin with and events had savaged it.

  Of Linden’s grandchildren, John and Christina Smith, only Christina married. She and Robert had two sons, Jeremy and Nicholas. Of the two sons only Nicholas married and he and Katherine had produced only one child, Hugh. Of these four generations, the only survivors were John Smith, the judge, mad Nicholas and Katherine herself. The decimation of Grover Linden’s descendants proceeded as if in retribution. I shook myself out of my musing and realized that another five minutes had passed. I decided to go in after her.

  The lobby was a little rectangular space, the floor covered with a thick gray carpet, the furnishings dark Spanish-style chairs and tables. A polished staircase beside the registration desk led to the upper floors. Across from the desk was an open door with a small neon sign above the doorway identifying it as the bar. I went over and looked in. Through the dimly lit darkness I could see her, sitting on a high stool at the end of the bar. I walked in and approached her from behind. She was alone.

  I took the stool next to her, ordering bourbon and water. I wished her a good evening.

  Her head swiveled toward me until we were face to face. I saw exhaustion in her eyes so deep that it quickly extinguished the flash of anger that registered when she recognized me. There was contempt in her look and disdain and beneath it all a plea to be left alone. I regretted that I could not comply.

  “May I buy you a drink, Mrs. Paris?”

  “Why not,” she said mockingly. “I’m sure they’ll take your money here and I never refuse a drink.” I summoned the bartender and ordered refills. “You follow me here?”