"So the car was white?" he said.
"Maybe. Light-colored. I told Collier that." She tried to cover the painting again.
Paul held her hand gently. "And what about this— these triangular shapes on the left. What are they?"
"I don’t know," she said. "Now, please. Let me cover this ugly thing. It makes me sad."
"Can I borrow it?"
"I knew you were going to ask me that."
"That’s good. You’re getting to know me."
"If you really want to, you can borrow it. But I want this one back. I want to decide what happens to this painting." She pulled the drape back over the painting, tucking it behind for safe measure, and handing the wrapped bundle to Paul. "You didn’t really trip, did you?" she asked.
"No."
"You don’t like people having secrets from you."
"That’s right."
He turned to go, but she said suddenly, "We could eat here."
"I could build a fire in that stone fireplace you’ve got back there," said Paul, trying not to appear as eager as he felt.
"I could marinate some steaks."
"Would seven be a good time?"
"It would."
"See you then." He opened the gate and like magic was transported back into the forest of Tahoe.
Paul’s Private Eye Rule #1: Always check the scene yourself. He drove his van back along the highway through the casino district. As he crossed the state line back into California the casinos and glitz ended abruptly and the quieter facades took over. He turned left again a block or so farther on, into the parking lot of the shopping center where Anna Meade had died. A line of clothing and kitsch stores surrounded the lot, anchored by the Raley’s supermarket at the far end.
He started in front of the Raley’s and cruised around the lot. The last lane before the street that ran in front of the center ran parallel to the Raley’s. Locating the accident site from his pictures and photos, he parked a few feet away, then got out and leaned against the car, taking it all in.
One thing he had learned through hard experience: You can’t expect to take in a scene from somebody else’s description of it. Even photo locations and angles were chosen by somebody else for somebody else’s eyes. The actuality was fresh to him, different from what he had already been led to expect.
For one thing, the pavement at this far edge of the lot was cracked and worn. Chances were the surface had not been re-covered since the accident.
For another, nobody else parked this far out. Why had Anna Meade, going in for a bag of groceries, done so? Had she met someone secretly? But there was no cover; they would have been exposed to the street. And the explanation could be as simple as Collier’s suggestion that she had wanted to keep the car cool by parking under a tree.
What if she had been meeting someone she didn’t want to meet in a hidden place? The location was ideal, open and public.
A client, Paul thought, who had something to say that couldn’t be said at her office. Could be, although Collier had said she wanted to talk when she got home. Maybe she had planned to talk quickly. Maybe that was why, once she was at the door, she decided to go in spite of his belated invitation to stay and talk. And the client was late, so, being a sensible, efficient type, she had run into the store to get her shopping over with first.
He reached into the back of the van and got out his hand-held vacuum. Clicking open the top of the vacuum, he dumped the vacuum bag into the thickly stuffed trash bag he kept in the front seat and put on a clean one, whistling "Bernadette" by the Four Tops.
Then, Dustbuster in one hand and a racquetball bag full of his favorite tools in the other, he walked over to the spot where, by all accounts, the car had hit the girl. Grass grew from cracks in the rough paving. A plastic cup lay crunched in the middle of the lane. Not surprisingly, three years after the accident, no special signs of blood or anything else significant leapt out of the aging asphalt. The lone pine still cast its shade over some of the spaces. Picking the largest crack, Paul lay down on the warm asphalt and peered into it.
The sun shone at a good, sharp angle. A small blackish spider crawled up and out, its legs making tiny acrobatic movements like a synchronized swimming team. He used a Swiss Army knife to delve amid the pine needles and other detritus. About an inch down he saw old asphalt from a previous paving job. He dug some of that up and put it in a small plastic bag, along with all the loose bits. Then he vacuumed what was left into the clean bag. He did the same for all the other cracks in the six-foot-square area he had chosen.
Private Eye Rule #2: There’s always physical evidence. It might not be on a scale convenient to the human eye, that was all. Certainly, if the police did the kind of thorough investigation Hallowell seemed to think they had, this little exercise would net him a dirty bag full of junk and a bent knife. But what if they’d missed something? You never knew.
When he had tidied and dug to his satisfaction and had returned his kit to the van, he retraced Anna’s steps that August day, walking from the Raley’s door straight out through the parking lot until he came to the car lane. He stood at the spot, imagining a car bearing down on him from the left. She was left-handed, carrying the sack of groceries on the left side. Her view would have been obscured by the sack, or she would have had plenty of room to jump away.
Not a professional hit, he thought. The driver got lucky with the groceries. Or not a hit at all, just some clod not paying attention, driving too fast for a parking lot, headed ... where? According to Kim, the driver had exited out the driveway that led to the Stateline Movie Theater across the street to the right. Maybe he had just taken a short cut.
He drove back to Caesars, letting the valet take care of the parking chore. Back at the table in his room, he gently pushed his computer aside and carefully emptied out the plastic bags he had collected in the parking lot. Holding his magnifying glass over each piece and his flashlight ready, he hunched over the table and began looking for something wrong.
An hour later, he had examined every particle from the bags, and found spider eggs, pine needles, basic dirt, and pieces of an ancient, unbiodegraded plastic cup, looking fresh as the day it left the factory. He also found traces of dried brownish liquid, which his testing kit showed was blood. He wasn’t surprised—there had been plenty of blood seeping down and no way to clean it all up.
He leaned back, putting his hands on top of his head, and stretched his shoulders and neck. Then he opened the plastic bag where he had dumped the vacuum’s contents, depositing his gleanings on the last clear area of laminate, and gave them the same treatment, trying not to breathe and blow the stuff away.
Some tiny speck hit the light just the right way. It shone out like a lighthouse for bacteria. He picked up the lamp and ran it across the collection of particles.
Lots of shining. Glass.
Funny thing about glass. Even when the particles were too small to permit a matching of fracture surfaces, it still might be possible to show a similarity of their physical properties to the glass from a suspected car. Values like specific gravity, refractive index, and dispersion could still be determined.
A cracked windshield? It didn’t seem likely the glass would break into such small pieces.
He checked the list of the contents of Anna Meade’s grocery bag.
No glass containers.
Could her belt buckle have dinged a headlight?
It wasn’t much, but maybe it was better than nothing. Paul carefully pushed the dustlike particles into a plastic bag and made a call to a lab in Sacramento.
7
THE OLD MAN PUSHED OPEN THE DOOR TO THE second-floor courtroom where Nina was just finishing her hearing and sat down in the last aisle. Out of habit Nina looked over her shoulder at him. He was staring at her.
She had been afflicted with the compulsion to look behind her every time someone entered the courtroom ever since an ill-fated murder trial soon after her arrival in Tahoe. She didn’t like having to sit at th
e counsel table facing the judge, with her back exposed. If she couldn’t control that, at least she could take note of the audience sitting on the benches behind her.
Today there had been no audience, until now. The husband and wife trying to settle some of the financial issues that had wrecked their marriage hadn’t wanted company. Other than Nina, opposing counsel, the clients, and the court personnel, the courtroom had been empty.
Judge Milne read the details of the settlement they had finally agreed on in chambers, putting it on the record. As he recited the lengthy list of debts and who would get stuck with what, she stole another glance back.
The man stared at her, a half-smile fixed on his deeply creased face, his head dipped a little, his eyes unblinking under bushy white brows. He had a lavish head of white hair that must have been his pride and joy, and a robust look under the brown tweed sport coat. She had never seen him before, and she found his steady regard unsettling. She turned her attention back to the case and tried to forget him.
When Milne had adjourned the hearing and the little group of litigants and lawyers made for the doors, he was waiting right outside in the hall. "Mrs. Reilly? I’m Quentin de Beers," he said, falling into step beside her.
"Yes?" She was holding several files in one arm, her briefcase in the other, and her purse strap in her teeth as they started down the stairs.
"Can’t I take that for you?" he said, indicating the briefcase.
"I wish you could," Nina said. "But it’s hard-wired to me." She finally got the strap back onto her shoulder.
"I’d like to talk to you."
"What about?"
"I’d like to retain your services."
At the foot of the stairway Nina stopped and said, "I’d be happy to talk to you, sir. Here’s my card. Please call and set up an appointment. Unfortunately, I have to—"
"You saw my son die," Quentin de Beers said. He spoke without any heat. "Least you can do is make some time for me in your busy schedule."
"Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’m just so busy, I wasn’t thinking. You’re Ray de Beers’s father."
"Ray was my only child."
"I see." She did see the son in the father, the same vitality, the same mouth with its thin smile and the same fixed stare. Quentin de Beers must be nearly seventy, but he looked younger. "Is there some legal matter you want to consult me about, or did you want to ask me about—"
"Both." He held the outer door for her and they went out onto the patio in front of the court building. As soon as they were outside, he put on a tweed hat with a brown hat band. "I would like to know what you saw. And there is an urgent legal problem, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken time out of my own busy day to hunt you down at the courthouse, now, would I?"
"Well," Nina said, stalling. She had planned to leave the office early, to take advantage of her precious time without Bob to do a little previewing of properties with a realtor named Mrs. Wendover who Sandy had found for her. She wanted to tell him to see her the following day, but she saw his hands were trembling. He was either nervous or ill. His son was dead. "Okay," she said. "Can you follow me back? I can free up a half hour in my office."
"Thank you. I will." His Mercedes was parked not far from her dusty Bronco. Nina drove, watching the sleek new car from her rearview mirror.
At the Starlake Building, de Beers followed her inside. In the outer office, Nina said, "Sandy, this is Mr. de Beers." De Beers appeared bemused at having the secretary introduced to him, but nodded politely. "We’ll dispense with the usual forms for this initial consultation, Mr. de Beers," Nina said for Sandy’s benefit. She led him into her office and pushed the door shut.
He paid no attention to the surroundings and attempted no small talk. "Sarah and the kids told me their story," he said. "But I can’t help noticing how damn fast she had my boy in the ground and buried. I was in Singapore, getting over a bout of flu. Couldn’t get back until the day after the funeral. I’m not satisfied with how this whole thing has been handled. I called the DA’s office and got nowhere. Jeremy Stamp usually handles my legal work, but he’s in L.A. at the moment. I hear you know how to get things done, and, of course, you were there when Ray died. I came looking for you."
"What do you want to know, Mr. de Beers?" So this was the father-in-law Sarah had talked about at the casino, moving in to take care of the family and its fortunes now that Ray was gone.
"For starters, why was Ray alone when he died?" de Beers said. "He hiked up with four other people."
"My understanding is that the rest of the group became separated from your son."
"So they say."
"Do you think they are lying?"
Ignoring her question, de Beers said, "And why didn’t he take shelter? Ray could have taught mountaineering. He climbed in the Cascades, the Alps. He climbed Kilimanjaro last year. No way a hill like Tallac, which any kid in tennis shoes can go up, could catch him like that."
"I think I can help there," Nina said. "The storm blew up very quickly and caught everyone up there off guard."
De Beers shook his head. "If your son had died on that mountain, wouldn’t you demand a better explanation than ’a storm blew up’? I’m not getting the full picture." He had the same flat delivery his son had. "Maybe you don’t know this. Leo Tarrant, a partner in the business, was up on that mountain with them. Leo’s infatuated with Sarah. Not only that, Ray and Leo have been on the outs for years because of it and some other things." He leaned closer. "Why did Leo go up there? For the fresh air?"
"I’m sorry for your loss. But lightning killed your son," Nina said. "I was there. I saw it. Sarah told the coroner that she and Leo waited out the storm below the summit—"
"Sarah’s Leo’s alibi? I’ll get the truth out of her— I’ve been in business for many years. I know a fish story when I hear it. This one’s rank. I wish I’d listened to Ray and gotten rid of Leo a long time ago, no matter how good he was at the business end. Leo won’t get away with it."
"You know your son’s body was examined by the coroner? There was nothing suspicious—"
"He rubber-stamped my son’s death and Sarah had Ray in the ground before I was even informed. I want an autopsy."
"But it’s too late for that!" He had provoked her into raising her voice.
"I want you to do whatever you have to do to exhume his body," de Beers said. "To come to the point."
Stunned, Nina sat back in her chair. Sandy knocked and came in with coffee, and Nina took advantage of the time she was in the room to gather her thoughts. When Sandy had gone, she sampled her coffee and said, "What exactly do you think happened up there?"
"Obviously, I don’t know," he said. "I’m just full of natural curiosity about why an experienced climber like my son was cut down in the prime of life by a so-called ’accident’ that sounds entirely avoidable. So I want an autopsy. I want to have Ray’s body fully examined. I want to see him myself. I don’t think that’s out of line. The coroner can do that, can’t he?"
"Not without good reason. There is something in the, uh, Government Code about the coroner’s duties." As she spoke, Nina dialed in to her Internet server on the computer. When the connection had been established, she used a bookmark to go straight to the California Codes, typing the word autopsy in the search box. "Just a minute," she said, displaying the Code sections on her desktop.
De Beers sat in front of her, his hat in his lap. I do whatever it takes to win, his jutting jaw and polished shoes said. He had the same combative and vigilant look as his son, as if the world were a shooting gallery where problems continually flew up in the air to be shot down one by one.
" ’For the purpose of inquiry, the coroner shall have the right to exhume the body of a deceased person when necessary to discharge the responsibilities set forth in this section,’ " she read out loud. "The Code is vague. The responsibilities referred to are the general duties of the coroner in connection with determining the cause of death. Dr. Clauson already made an inquiry and close
d the file on your son’s death. He won’t disinter the body without a strong showing of necessity."
"In other words, he won’t do it just because we say do it. "
Nina nodded. "And that’s only the first problem of many."
"Keep going."
"He would probably require the permission of Mrs. de Beers."
"Leave that to me. What else?"
"You’ll have to get another lawyer," Nina said. "I won’t handle this for you. I saw the lightning. I saw your son falling through the air an instant later. I’ve read the coroner’s report and I’m satisfied he died after being struck by lightning. In my opinion, trying to disinter your son’s body is a waste of your time and money, to say nothing about the distress this is sure to cause the family."
"Don’t forget, I’m part of the family too. What about my wishes? Don’t my wishes mean anything?"
Nina was ready to give up on this conversation. De Beers was a grieving relative. Family members had come to her before, convinced there was foul play in perfectly natural deaths.
Many relatives now demanded an explanation for the inexplicable from their doctors, or told their lawyers to find somebody to blame. Nina sometimes wondered if the idea of accidental death was going to disappear from law altogether. An elderly person who slipped on the pavement, a man who set his bed on fire while smoking, a hiker who fell down a cliff — these accidents were often transmuted in American law into wrongful deaths attributable to somebody else’s negligence.
The lawsuits that followed accidents and illnesses weren’t about money in many cases. Americans who had lost the comfort of religious faith had to have some way of dealing with the mystery of death.
"If the coroner had seen any evidence of that, he would have performed a full autopsy," Nina said as considerately as she could. "It was an act of God, Mr. de Beers."
De Beers spread his hands on her desk, leaning in to her again, and she got a glimpse of the anger in his red face and red-veined eyes, hints as to how hard he was exerting himself to maintain control. "How could he find any evidence?" he shouted. "He didn’t do the goddamn autopsy!"
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