See Her Run

by Peggy Townsend

  Aloa looked up as the bus halted and a stooped old woman got on, dragging a battered baby stroller filled with what looked like all her possessions.

  “In for the night, Gladys?” the bus driver asked.

  “Unless you want to check me into the Fairmont, Bobby,” the woman answered, and they shared a forlorn laugh. Aloa had heard of the homeless riding buses in lieu of a dangerous bed on the streets. She guessed these two had shared the same joke many times before.

  The bus pulled away from the curb.

  Aloa dug out her Moleskine and made notes, the picture shifting but still out of focus: RedHawk develops a new product called Pro-Power 500 (some kind of supplement powder) and gives it to eight men. Marketing? Product testing? For six men, improved health is followed by terrible side effects, but the victims have remained silent. Most likely because of some kind of large cash settlement, and now all but one, the suicide, are living a life of disability and forced chastity, which would be enough to bring down Tremblay’s company if the news ever got out. Her pulse ratcheted up a notch.

  A mechanical voice announced Aloa’s stop and she descended the steps. She checked her phone: 10:58 p.m. Almost too late. She decided to risk it anyway and dialed.

  “Yes,” came Emily Poole’s voice. The single word contained whole paragraphs of exhaustion, of grief.

  “Hi. It’s Aloa Snow from Novo. Sorry to call so late.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m up anyway.” She sighed. “I had a bad day.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aloa knew of bad days. “Did you get my message?”

  “I did. That means you talked to Jordan, right? You saw how she wanted to destroy Hayley.”

  “I spoke to Jordan Connor, yes.” Keep things vague. “By the way, has anybody called you? Another reporter?”

  “No.”

  “Can you do what I asked and not talk to anybody else if they call?”

  “Isn’t it better to have more publicity?”

  Aloa tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Not right now. It could hurt my investigation. Things are happening.”

  “I knew it. It’s Jordan, right?” Emily’s voice took on an edge of smugness. “She undermined my Hayley. She got her so far down Hayley couldn’t get back up. There are laws against that. I read it yesterday. Like when people on the internet talk somebody into committing suicide. She should be in prison.”

  Aloa interrupted. “Can you do what I ask, Emily? Not talk to any other reporters.”

  “I guess.”

  “I have a few more questions, if that’s OK?” Aloa said.

  A bicyclist dressed in wizard robes with a cat perched on his shoulder rode past. Another of the city’s eccentric denizens.

  “Did Hayley ever mention that Ethan was writing a book?” Aloa asked.

  A pause. “She told me not to talk about that.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you told me now.”

  Emily seemed to ponder the statement. “I suppose not.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “Not really. But he had an agent and everything. Edie Brightwood was her name. I remember because I thought that was a sign of the bright future ahead for my Hayley. It was going to be a bestseller.”

  Aloa jotted down the agent’s name. “What about Hayley and Hank Tremblay? How were they getting along?”

  Aloa could hear the frown in Emily’s voice. “They got along fine. Hank did everything for Hayley. He paid for her rehab. He got her that annuity. It was a big hassle and he stepped right in. He backed that insurance company into a corner. All by himself.”

  Tremblay had told her the same thing at their first meeting but then amended it to say his lawyers had done the work when she’d pressed him. Which of the two was the lie?

  “I heard they had some conflict,” she said.

  “What? No. Who told you that? I mean, Hayley had distanced herself from a lot of people, but Hank understood that. He said we should just let her have her space. He loved Hayley.”

  “I understand she broke into his office.”

  “You can’t write about that,” Emily sputtered. “That was a misunderstanding. Hayley was drinking. She wasn’t right.”

  “Did she ever say what she was doing there?”

  “I don’t know. Something about showing Hank he had to pay for his sins. Hank said addicts need someone to blame for their problems and that Hayley obviously blamed him for Ethan’s death because he sent Ethan to Africa. He understands those things. He got her into rehab and make sure the annuity came through. She was lashing out at everybody then. Even me. Hank is such a generous man.”

  “Sounds like it,” Aloa agreed. Keep the conversation going.

  “But then Hayley got better,” Emily rushed on. “She had her movie and her races and she and Hank were back in touch.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Hank told me. I called to thank him for the Calm-V powder he sent. Valerian root. It didn’t help as much as I hoped but I wanted to tell him how much the gesture meant. He said he had something important he needed to deliver to Hayley, something Hayley had asked for, and he asked me if I knew where she was. I told him I didn’t because Hayley hardly called anymore.”

  “When did he call?” Aloa asked.

  “I guess it was a few days before . . . before, you know.”

  “Her death?”

  Silence.

  “Did Hayley mention anything about RedHawk having a problem with one of its products?” Aloa asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Like bad side effects. Something that might hurt his company?”

  “Why are you going after Hank? He’s done nothing but good for people.” Emily’s voice rose. “I thought you were looking into what happened to Hayley. Not Hank. He’s a good man. He watches out for people. He supported Hayley and Ethan. He supported me. He even gave me a loan because I couldn’t work after Hayley . . .” Emily broke off the sentence. “You leave him alone.”

  Aloa kept her voice calm. “Just checking everything.”

  “Well, there’s no need to check Hank.”

  The window of cooperation was closing. “I have to go, Emily, but I’ll be in touch. And remember, don’t talk to anybody else.”

  “Well . . . ,” Emily said, and Aloa clicked off the phone.

  She stared at the sidewalk. Did Tremblay really have something to give to Hayley or was he looking for her in order to destroy the threat facing his company?

  The unlocked front door swung open at her touch.

  She frowned. “Tick? P-Mac? Doc?” she called.

  A deep thud came from somewhere in the house, and Aloa stepped through the door into the dark hallway. “Are you guys in here?” she called.

  She heard footsteps rumble across the hardwood floor, a crash of something heavy. She flipped on the hall light just in time to see a man in dark clothing come out of the living room. He had her old suitcase in one hand, and a ski mask obscured his face.

  “What the hell?” Aloa cried.

  The man looked up and, for a moment, their eyes locked.

  “Drop the bag,” Aloa growled.

  Later, when she thought back on what happened, Aloa couldn’t remember the exact moment when she’d plucked her grandmother’s old cane from the umbrella stand, but she could visualize, with clarity, the instant the intruder ran down the hallway, grabbed her prized Aldo Rossi coffee press from its shelf, and hurled it at her. The glass and steel coffee maker flew through the air, and she batted it away with the cane. The container shattered.

  “Dammit,” Aloa cried as the second culinary missile, her cast-iron skillet, came hurtling in her direction.

  She leaped out of the way as the skillet thudded against the wall and then looked up just in time to see a glass jar of coffee beans headed toward her skull. She ducked and heard the container shatter behind her.

  “Stop it,” she yelled. What kind of burglar fought with kitchen gear? One
that didn’t have a weapon, Aloa answered herself, and raised the cane above her head.

  The man hesitated a nanosecond before bolting for the back door with Aloa pounding down the hall behind him.

  The intruder leaped down her back steps, heaved the suitcase over the neighbor’s fence, and started to follow it just as Aloa made it outside.

  She swung the cane as if the burglar was a piñata at a five-year-old’s birthday party. “Oh, no you don’t,” she yelled, feeling the cane connect with soft flesh.

  She heard the intruder curse, and felt the brush of his heel against her ribs as he kicked out at her.

  Aloa gave a primal yell and swung the cane again. This time the wood connected squarely with the man’s kidneys and he grunted and fell to the ground.

  “Shit,” he groaned, pulling himself up onto one knee.

  Aloa raised the cane over him. “Don’t move, asshole,” she said.

  The man’s face was shadowed, his eyes unreadable, and so Aloa did not anticipate what happened next: the hard fist that plowed into her stomach, making the breath leave her body in one quick and painful gasp. She doubled over and dropped to her knees, hearing rather than seeing the intruder take two running steps and vault over the fence. She moaned and curled into a ball on the tiny patch of half-dead lawn that was her yard, knowing, even through her pain-filled nausea, that the burglar and whatever he’d taken were gone.

  She waited for the queasiness to pass, rolled to her hands and knees, got up, and limped into the house. Her jeans were dirt-stained, her ego wounded. The remains of her coffee maker shimmered under the hall light.

  She pressed a hand against her sore stomach and went into the living room, which looked as if some rock band had decided to throw a party. The rosé chair had been dumped on its side, its bottom slashed to ribbons. The couch cushions had been flung to the floor, each bearing a deep cut in the leather. Her cello stool lay below the huge TV, which was now spiderwebbed with cracks. Gone was her laptop and the new computer. Gone, too, were Hayley’s notebooks and papers.

  She swore and then did a limping inventory through the rest of the house. Nothing else had been taken.

  She debated calling the police, who would tell her how stupid it was to chase a home-invasion suspect (it was) and then they would file a report, which would alert Detective Quinn and bring him knocking on her door.

  No, this case was hers.

  The only bright spot in the mess was Aloa’s habit of handwriting her notes instead of using her laptop. And her Moleskine was still in her backpack.

  She dead-bolted her front door, locked the back door, and wedged a chair against it. After, she washed her hands and face, changed her clothes, and set about putting her house back in order.

  CHAPTER 33

  Aloa knew she would eventually have to call Michael and report his fancy equipment stolen and/or destroyed, but right now she had work to do. She put her notebook, phone, and water bottle in her pack, locked the front door, and set off. She wore jeans, her Timberlands, and a field jacket over a black T-shirt. Her stomach still ached from where the intruder’s punch had landed, a reminder of the toll this story had taken on her body. It wasn’t the worst she had suffered in the name of journalism. That would be the time she’d gone on a drug raid with an LAPD narcotics team and been clubbed over the head with a beer bottle by one of the suspects who, climbing out a side window, had mistaken her for a cop. She’d landed in the ER with a concussion, and the narcotics guys had awarded her a hard hat that read PRESS in big yellow letters. This was nothing.

  Aloa’s first stop was Café Trieste, where she ordered a scone and a large Americano. The loss of Hayley’s things along with her laptop and her French press had added insult to the injury of someone violating the sanctity of her home. This was personal now.

  She blinked and felt grit beneath her eyelids. After she’d secured the doors last night, she’d duct-taped the slashes on the couch cushions, dragged the broken TV to the back door to be put in the garbage can, and cut away the liner that hung in shreds from the rosé chair. Then she’d gotten a damp rag and her grandmother’s wood oil, knelt on the old oak floor, and cleaned it board by board.

  It had taken until 4:00 a.m. for her mind to stop working and the floor to shine. Afterward, she’d taken a shower, swallowed two ibuprofen, and curled up in her bed, where she slept for three hours.

  She made a mental note to buy a bottle of Visine at some point that day.

  Aloa found a table near the café window, downing the coffee in almost desperate gulps and picking at the scone. She debated whether to shell out $200 for another Aldo Rossi or settle for a cheaper brand and lousy coffee. Perhaps she could expense the coffee maker as a necessary part of her investigation. She stared into her empty cup, got up, and ordered an espresso.

  The café was full: residents arriving for coffee before work, tourists trying to grab a piece of North Beach experience, regulars in their usual places with cups of black coffee in front of them. She made a list of chores in her notebook, located a FedEx store where she could rent computer time, and headed out the door.

  The handsome barista lifted his chin in acknowledgment as she left.

  Seated before a well-used computer at the FedEx store, Aloa answered her emails, turned down a freelance assignment for an art and wine festival, and looked up Tremblay’s donation of a solar-power system to a hospital in Africa. Sure enough, she found an article that described how his generous contribution had provided lights and refrigeration to a hospital where emergency surgeries had often been performed by candlelight. And yet, the same man had allowed eight men to become human lab rats for a dangerous product.

  The shop was busy now. Fax machines beeped, copiers hummed and spit. A man in a camouflage jacket ordered a ten-foot banner that proclaimed WELCOME HOME, SON.

  Aloa located a number for Edie Brightwood, Ethan’s New York agent, and dialed. After talking her way past an assistant, Aloa got confirmation that Edie had been Ethan’s literary agent. His death, said Edie, had been a real shame, because the book he was proposing about the African tribe would have been huge. She pronounced it “yuge.” She also said that Hayley had, indeed, called her after Ethan died and said he had started another book while he was in Africa, some memoir-slash-exposé about corporations stealing your soul. “She wanted a big advance. I told her a book like that wouldn’t sell even if you tucked a five-dollar bill in every copy,” Edie said. “Nobody reads that stuff, and besides, the girl couldn’t write. She sent me a synopsis. Like scrambled eggs. I couldn’t understand a word of it.”

  Aloa asked if she still had the synopsis, but Edie said she’d trashed it. Aloa thanked her and hung up.

  Next, she typed in a search for “suicide San Francisco gym” and found a short article about an unidentified shooting victim being discovered in front of a downtown workout studio a few months after the supplement experiment had been stopped. The police were quoted as saying the gunshot wound appeared self-inflicted. A later article on the newspaper website gave the suicide victim’s name as Dashon Carter. Aloa located an address on Russian Hill and set off.

  She did not notice the man across the street who pushed himself away from the wall and began to follow her.

  CHAPTER 34

  He racked the weights and wiped his face with a towel. The reporter was getting closer.

  Lester had delivered the stolen computers late last night and he’d spent four hours going through them. He saw the searches she’d done, the information she’d gathered. He thought about the call from that other reporter and his assertion that Snow believed Hayley had been murdered. He added that to her questions to the dead girl’s mother about a bad RedHawk product.

  He went into the apartment’s gleaming kitchen, got a cold bottle of water from the fridge, and drained it in a single gulp.

  He thought of Detective Quinn and what might happen if Snow met with an unfortunate accident. He thought of the mission and the money that was at stake. Killin
g her was still an option, but he would wait. Dead bodies had their own complications.

  He hadn’t yet told the clients about the reporter or the detective. It was a delicate balance when it came to them. Speak too soon and they doubted your competence. Speak too late and they wondered about your loyalty.

  Maybe matches and gasoline were in order. A message that couldn’t be missed.

  He pulled another bottle of water from the refrigerator and hummed a few bars from “Burning Down the House.” God, he loved the Talking Heads.

  He drained the second bottle of water, tossed the containers in the trash, and went back to the weight room. He loaded 225 pounds onto the bar, lay back on the bench, and lifted.

  CHAPTER 35

  Dashon Carter’s widow, Susan, was a stunning woman. She was tall and slender with cocoa-colored skin and close-cropped hair that showed off a beautifully shaped head and almond eyes. But the puffiness under those eyes and the sad set of her lips let Aloa know that the death of her husband was still a raw wound.

  Aloa had identified herself as a researcher from Novo who was looking into the supplement industry, and the woman had blanched. She said she didn’t want to talk, but she didn’t immediately slam the door shut and so Aloa had pressed. She told the widow how the supplement industry was basically unregulated and that there were plenty of cases where people were harmed by products they thought were safe. She said the only way for this to stop was for victims to speak out. When Susan still hesitated, Aloa said she would only use Susan’s first name and leave out identifying information in any story she wrote.

  “I don’t know,” the widow had said.

  “How about we just talk on background?” Aloa had suggested.

  Now they sat on a white sofa in a bright living room with views of downtown. It was a modest apartment with hardwood floors, and yet Aloa knew it probably rented for at least $4,000 a month. The furnishings were spare and tasteful: the couch, a red butterfly chair, a colorful print that hung on one wall, a five-foot-tall sculpture of a dancing woman that dominated the room. Next to Aloa was a lacquered end table with a wedding photo of Susan and Dashon. From what Aloa could see, Dashon was as unremarkable as his wife was beautiful. He wore glasses, had a slight paunch, and his ears stood out from his head. But his eyes were kind, and the way he put his arm around his wife let Aloa know that not only did he adore Susan, he also wondered at the good fortune that had made her say yes to him.