River's End

by Nora Roberts

  He’d taken a day to read through his files on the MacBride murder, to study, refresh his memory, to consider. He knew the man he would meet as well as anyone from the outside was able to, he imagined.

  At least he knew the man Tanner had been.

  A hardworking, talented actor with an impressive string of successful movies under his belt by the time he’d met Julie MacBride, his co-star in Summer Thunder. He’d also, by all accounts, had an impressive string of females associated with his name before he’d married. It had been a first marriage for both of them, though he’d been seriously involved with Lydia Loring, a very hot property during the seventies. The gossip columns had had a field day with their stormy and very public breakup once he’d set his sights on Julie.

  He’d enjoyed his fame, his money and his women. And had continued to enjoy the first two after his marriage. There’d been no other women after Julie. Or, Noah mused, he’d been very, very discreet.

  Insiders called him difficult, temperamental, then had begun to use terms like “explosive temper,” “unreasonable demands” when his two films after Summer Thunder had tanked at the box office.

  He’d begun to show up late and unprepared for shooting, had fired his personal assistant, then his agent.

  It became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets that he was using, and using heavy.

  So he’d become obsessive about his wife, delusional about the people around him, focused on Lucas Manning as his nemesis and, in the end, violent.

  In 1975, he’d been the top box-office actor in the country. By 1980, he’d become an inmate in San Quentin. It was a long way to fall in a short amount of time.

  The careless spread of staggering wealth and fame, the easy access to the most beautiful women in the world, the scrambling of maître d’s to provide the best tables, the A-list for parties, the cheers of fans. How would it feel to have that sliding through your fingers? Noah wondered. Add arrogance, ego, mix it with cocaine, a little freebasing, jealousy over an up-and-coming box-office rival and a shattered marriage, and you had a perfect formula for disaster.

  It would be interesting to see what the last twenty years had added, or taken away, from Sam Tanner.

  He was back in his rental car when the ferry docked, and anxious to get on with it. Though he hoped to be done with the initial interview in time to get back to the airport and catch the evening flight home, he’d tossed a few things in a bag just in case he decided to stay over.

  He hadn’t mentioned the trip to anyone.

  As he waited his turn, he drummed his fingers on the wheel to the Spice Girls and inexplicably thought of Olivia MacBride.

  Oddly, the image that came to his mind was of a tall, gangly girl with pale hair and tanned arms. Of sad eyes as they’d sat on a riverbank watching beavers splash. He had done his research, but had found nothing public on her since her childhood. A few speculations now and then in the press, a recap story, the reprint of that stunning photo of her grief when she’d been four—that was all the mass media could manage.

  Her family had pulled the walls up, he thought, and she’d stayed behind them. Just as her father had stayed behind the thick sand-colored walls of his prison. It was an angle he intended to pursue.

  When the time came, he’d do whatever it took to convince her to speak with him again, to cooperate with the book. He could only hope that after six years her bitterness toward him would have lost its edge. That the sensible—and wonderfully sweet—science student he’d spent such a lovely few days with would see the value and the purpose of what he meant to do.

  Beyond that, he couldn’t think of what it would be like to see her again. So he tucked her away in his mind and concentrated on today.

  He drove his rental car down the road toward the prison, passed an old pier and a pumping station. He caught a glimpse of a paved trail which he assumed led down to the water, and what might have been a little park, though he wondered why anyone would want to loiter or picnic in the shadow of those forbidding walls.

  The visitors’ parking lot skirted a small, attractive beach, with the waters a dull iron gray beyond. He’d considered a tape recorder, or at least a notebook, but had decided to go in cold. Just impressions, this time. He didn’t want to give Tanner the idea he was making a commitment.

  The visitors’ entrance was a long hall with a side door halfway down. The single window was covered with notices, preventing views from either side. There was a sign on the door that had a chill sliding down his spine even as his lips quirked in wry amusement:

  PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK. WE KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE. WE WILL GET TO YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

  So he stood, alone in the empty hallway with the wind whistling stridently, waiting for those who knew he was there to get to him.

  When they did, he relayed his business, gave his ID, filled out the required forms. There was no small talk, no polite smiles.

  He’d been the route before—in New York, in Florida. He’d been on death row and felt the ice slick through his gut at the sound of doors sliding shut and footsteps echoing. He’d spoken to lifers, the condemned and already damned.

  He’d smelled the hate, the fear and the calculation, as much a stink in the air as sweat and piss and hand-rolled cigarettes.

  He was taken down a hallway, bypassing the main visitors’ area, and shown into a small, cheerless room with a table and two chairs. The door was thick with a single window of reinforced glass.

  And there, Noah had his first look at what had become of Sam Tanner.

  Gone was the pampered screen idol with the million-dollar smile. This was a hard man, body and face. Noah wondered how much his mind had toughened as well. He sat, one hand chained, the bright orange prison jumpsuit baggy and stark. His hair was cut brutally short and had gone a nearly uniform ash gray.

  The lines dug deep into his face gave him the look of a man well beyond his age of fifty-eight. And Noah remembered another inmate once telling him prison years were long dog years. Every one behind bars was the equal of seven out in the world.

  The eyes were a sharp and cold blue that took their time studying Noah, barely flicked toward the guard when they were told they had thirty minutes.

  “Glad you could make it, Mr. Brady.”

  That hadn’t changed, Noah realized. The voice was as smooth and rich and potent as it had been in his last movie. Noah sat as the door closed and the locked snicked into place at his back.

  “How did you get my home address, Mr. Tanner?”

  A ghost of a smile played around his mouth. “I still have some connections. How’s your father?”

  Noah kept his eyes level and ignored the jolt in his gut. “My father’s fine. I can’t say he sends his best.”

  Sam’s teeth bared in a fleeting grin. “A straight-up cop, Frank Brady. I see him and Jamie . . . now and again. She’s still a pretty woman, my former sister-in-law. I wonder just how close her and your old man are.”

  “Did you get me all the way up here to annoy me, Tanner, with speculations on my father’s personal life?”

  The smile came back, small and sly. “I haven’t had much interesting conversation lately. Got any reals?”

  Noah lifted a brow. He knew most of the basic prison terms. “No, sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Fucking California.” With his free hand, Sam reached inside his jumpsuit, carefully removed the tape that affixed a single hand-rolled cigarette and wooden match to his chest. “Making prisons nonsmoking facilities. Where do they come up with this shit?”

  He lighted the match with his thumbnail, then puffed the cigarette to life. “Used to be I had the resources for a full brick a day. A couple packs of reals is decent currency inside. Now I’m lucky to get a carton a month.”

  “It’s lousy the way they treat murderers these days.”

  Those hard blue eyes only glimmered—amusement or disdain, Noah couldn’t be sure. “Are you interested in crime and punishment, Brady, or are you interested in the story?”<
br />
  “One goes with the other.”

  “Does it?” Sam blew out a stream of ugly-smelling smoke. “I’ve had a long time to think about that. You know, I can’t remember the taste of good scotch, or the smell of a beautiful woman. You can deal with the sex. There are plenty inside who’ll bend over for you if that’s what you want. Otherwise you’ve always got your hand. But sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night just aching for the smell of a woman.”

  He jerked a shoulder. “There ain’t no substitute. Me, I read a lot to get through those times. I used to stick to novels, pick a part in one and imagine playing it when I got out. I loved acting.” He said it with the same cold look in his eyes. “I loved everything about it. It took me a long time to accept that part of my life was over, too.”

  Noah angled his head. “Is it? What role are you playing here, Tanner?”

  Abruptly, Sam leaned forward, and for the first time life sprang into his eyes, hot and real. “This is all I’ve got. You think because you come in here and talk to cons you understand what it’s like? You can get up and walk out anytime. You’ll never understand.”

  “There’s not much stopping me from getting up and walking out now,” Noah said evenly. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell it, to put it all down. To say how it was then, how it is now. To say why things happened and why they didn’t. Why two people who had everything lost it all.”

  “And you’re going to tell me all that?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to tell you all of it.” Sam leaned back, drawing out the last stingy sliver of his smoke. “And you’re going to find out the rest.”

  “Why? Why me, why now?”

  “Why you?” Sam dropped the smoldering bit of paper and tobacco on the floor, absently crushed it out. “I liked your book,” he said simply. “And I couldn’t resist the irony of the connection. Seemed almost like a sign. I’m not one of the pitiful who found God in here. God has nothing to do with places like this, and He doesn’t come here. But there’s fate, and there’s timing.”

  “You want to consider me fate, okay. What’s the timing?”

  “I’m dying.”

  Noah skimmed his gaze coolly over Sam’s face. “You look healthy enough to me.”

  “Brain tumor.” Sam tapped a finger on his head. “Inoperable. The doctors say maybe a year, if I’m lucky—and if I’m lucky, I’ll die in the world and not inside. We’re working on that. It looks like the system’s going to be satisfied with my twenty now that I’m dead anyway.”

  He seemed to find that amusing and chuckled over it. It wasn’t a sound that encouraged the listener to join in. “You could say I’ve got a new sentence, short stretch with no possibility of parole. So, if you’re interested, you’ll have to work fast.”

  “You’ve got something new to add to everything that’s been said, printed, filmed over the last couple of decades?”

  “Do you want to find out?”

  Noah tapped a finger on the table. “I’ll think about it.” He rose. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Brady,” Sam said as Noah moved to the door. “You didn’t ask if I killed my wife.”

  Noah glanced back, met his eyes dead on. “Why would I?” he said and signaled for the guard.

  Sam smiled a little. He thought the first meeting had gone well and never doubted Frank Brady’s son would come back.

  Noah sat in Prison Supervisor Diterman’s office, surprised and a little flattered that his request for a meeting had been so quickly granted. Hollywood would never have cast George Diterman in the role of head of one of the country’s most active prisons. With his thinning patch of hair, small build and round black-framed glasses, he looked like a man very low on the feeding chain of a midlevel accounting firm.

  He greeted Noah with a brisk handshake and a surprisingly charming smile. “I enjoyed your first book,” he began as he took his place behind his desk. “And I’m already enjoying the second.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And should I assume you’re here gathering information to write another?”

  “I’ve just spoken with Sam Tanner.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.” Diterman folded his small, neat hands on the edge of his desk. “I cleared the request.”

  “Because you admire my work or because of Tanner?”

  “A little of both. I’ve been in this position in this facility for five years. During that period Tanner has been what you’d call a model prisoner. He stays out of trouble, he does his work in the prison library well. He follows the rules.”

  “Rehabilitated?” Noah asked with just enough cynicism in his tone to make Diterman smile again.

  “That depends on which definition you choose. Society’s, the law’s, this house’s. But I can say that at some point, he decided to do his time clean.”

  Diterman unlaced his fingers, pressed them together, laced them tidily again. “Tanner’s authorized me to give you access to his records and to speak to you frankly about him.”

  He works fast, Noah mused. Fine. He’d been waiting a long time to begin this book, and he intended to work fast himself. “Then why don’t you, Supervisor, speak frankly to me about Inmate Tanner.”

  “According to reports, he had a difficult time adjusting when he first came here. There were a number of incidents—altercations between him and the guards, between him and other prisoners. Inmate Tanner spent a large portion of 1980 in the infirmary being treated for a number of injuries.”

  “He got into fights.”

  “Consistently. He was violent and invited violence. He was transfered to solitary several times during his first five years. He also had an addiction to cocaine and found sources within the prison to feed that addiction. During the fall of 1982 he was treated for an overdose.”

  “Deliberate or accidental?”

  “That remains unclear, though the therapist leaned toward accidental. He’s an actor, a good one.” Diterman’s eyes remained bland, but Noah read sharp intelligence in them. “My predecessor noted several times that Tanner was a difficult man to read. He played whatever role suited him.”

  “Past tense.”

  “I can only tell you that for the past several years he’s settled in. His work in the library appears to satisfy him. He keeps to himself as much as it’s possible to do so. He avoids confrontations.”

  “He told me he has an inoperable brain tumor. Terminal.”

  “Around the first of the year he complained of severe, recurring headaches, double vision. The tumor was discovered. Tests were run, and the consensus is he has perhaps a year. Most likely less than that.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “Better than I think I would. There are details of his file and his counseling and treatment I can’t share with you, as I’ll require not only his permission, but other clearance.”

  “If I decide to pursue this, to interview him, to listen, I’ll need your cooperation as well as his. I’ll need names, dates, events. Even opinions. Are you willing to give me those things?”

  “I’ll cooperate as much as I’m able. To be frank, Mr. Brady, I’d like to hear the entire story myself. I had a tremendous crush on Julie MacBride.”

  “Who didn’t?” Noah murmured.

  He decided to stay the night in San Francisco, and after settling into a room with a view overlooking the bay, he ordered up a meal and set up his laptop. Once he’d plugged into the Internet, he did a search on Sam Tanner.

  For a man who’d spent two decades behind bars without granting a single interview, there was a wealth of hits. A number of them dealt with movies, his roles, summaries and critiques. Those could wait.

  He found references to a number of books on the case, including unauthorized biographies of both Sam and Julie. Noah had a number of them in his library and made a note to himself to read through them again. There were articles on the trial, mostly rehashes.

  He found nothing particularly fresh.

  When
his meal arrived, Noah ate his burger and typed one-handed, bookmarking any areas he might want to explore again.

  He’d seen the photographs that popped before. The one of Sam, impossibly handsome, and a luminous Julie, both beaming beautifully into the camera. Another of Sam, shackled, being led out of the courthouse during the trial and looking ill and dazed.

  And both of those men, Noah thought, were inside the cooleyed and calculating inmate. How many others would he find before his book was done?

  That, Noah admitted, was the irresistible pull. Who lived behind those eyes? What was it that gripped a man and drove him to butcher the woman he claimed to love, the mother of his child? To destroy everything he swore mattered to him?

  Drugs? Not enough, in Noah’s opinion. And not in the court’s opinion either, he recalled. The defense had fallen back on drugs during the sentencing phase, attempting to get the sentence reduced due to mitigating circumstances. It hadn’t swayed the results.