Blood of Others (5 page)

Reed’s mother-in-law
lived in Berkeley, in a
two-story house with a wrap-around porch. Good thing she was home to take Zach.
After calling her, Reed figured he had time to leave the scene and return. He
had no choice. He couldn’t keep Zach with him on this story.

“Ann could be back tonight. We’ll call.”

“It’s not a problem, Tom.”

Reed thanked her and headed back
to the Bay Bridge, reflecting on this murder. Victim in a wedding gown posed in
a display window. He had no name on her. No success reaching the owner, or any
staff. The
Star’
s fashion writers were supposed to call with contacts.
Reed didn’t know who in homicide had caught this case. Some of the old humps in
the detail hated him and would shut him out. With others he had a mutual
respect, forged from battles they had endured together.

Reed’s phone rang while he was
leaving the bridge.

“It’s Brader. Where are you?”

“On the job.”

“Tell me what you’ve got. I’m
heading into the first story meeting.”

“A Jane Doe, murdered. Found in a
wedding gown in the display of a bridal shop.”

“That’s it? TV’s got that. Who is
she?”

“Don’t know.”

“Why was she displayed like
that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Motive? Any suspects, yet?”

“I think it’s a little early.”

“A good reporter would know this
stuff, Reed. You’ve got to do better. Show me something, big shot.”

Reed tossed his phone onto the
passenger seat of his car and cursed at San Francisco’s skyline.

After returning to Forever &
Ever, he learned nothing new. He buttonholed a grizzled tight-lipped homicide
veteran, who was canvassing the area.

“No, it’s not my case, Reed.
Sydowski’s the lead on this. Just went back to the detail.”

Reed left the scene for the Hall
of Justice on Bryant.

In the polished stone lobby,
waiting to pass through the metal detector, he spotted a uniformed female
officer heading to the elevator with two civilian women. The older one was
dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Reed overheard parts of their conversation.

“…they better cover it, Julie, it
was a six-thousand-dollar gown.”

“I don’t know if our insurance
covers it.”

The doors opened. They stepped
into the car.

“Is that all you can think about
right now, Veronica? That poor woman. This is monstrous.”

The elevator doors closed.

Julie. Veronica. Reed went to the
water fountain. Those women
had
to be from the bridal shop. A fashion
editor had called Reed at the scene, telling him Forever & Ever was an
exclusive boutique owned by Julie Zegler and Veronica Chan. His elevator
stopped at the fourth floor. He had to catch them here before they left, but if
he was going to get a jump on this story, he really needed Sydowski.

The doors opened and there he
was, calling to Turgeon down the hall, “Give me a minute. I’m just grabbing a
sandwich from downstairs.” Then Sydowski stepped into Reed’s elevator and
grimaced.

“Just when my day was going so
well.”

“Hello, Walt.”

The doors closed. They were alone

“Go away, Reed. Please.”

“Come on, it could be like old
times.”

“Whenever you get on my case, bad
things happen.”

“I heard it was brutal.”

Sydowski turned to Reed,
assessing him. Mid-thirties, about six feet, a firm build that had softened a
bit since the last time he saw him; disheveled short brown hair, wire-rimmed
glasses, bloodshot blue eyes.

“You look like crap, Reed.
Stressed out like maybe things aren’t going so good. You need a break and you
want me to help you?”

“Sort of like that.”

“Exactly like that.” Sydowski
shook his head. “I’ve got nothing on my mind but your concern.”

“Forget it, Walt.”

“Listen. Trouble with you is you
get so much wrong and it gets printed in your paper because you fail to heed my
advice.”

“I don’t get it wrong. Facts
change on the way to the truth.”

“That’s clever.”

“It eats you up when I get close.
Admit it, Walt.”

“You get too close and you know
what I’m talking about. You damned near cost us one case in particular. And it
damned near cost you everything.”

Reed swallowed hard. Sydowski was
right about that. Sometimes he wondered if Ann could truly forgive him for the
hell he’d put Zach through because he had pursued a story so hard, it turned on
him and swallowed his family.

The elevator stopped, they
stepped out. Sydowski tapped his forefinger on Reed’s chest.

“Here’s my advice. Shave before
you go out in public. It makes a better impression. Now, go away.”

“That’s the son of a barber
talking.”

They entered the cafeteria,
grabbing the last of the packaged sandwiches. Sydowski took chicken salad on
whole wheat, leaving Reed ham and cheese on white. Then Sydowski selected an
orange, which informed Reed that his old friend had few leads on the case. When
Sydowski was confident about a case, he ate pie. When he had nothing, he peeled
oranges. It helped him think.

“You’ve got nothing on this,
right, Walt?” Reed bit into his sandwich on the way back to the elevator.
“Nothing.”

Sydowski arrived at the doors and
a decision.

“If I tell you one thing, will
you leave me alone right now?”

Reed nodded. Chewing.

“Stay with this one, Tom. It’s a
bad one.”

“How bad? I mean you got to give
me more.”

Reed’s cell phone rang just as
the doors opened. Turgeon rushed out clutching a sheet of paper, not even
seeing Reed who had turned his back and stepped away to take the call.

“Walt, we’ve got to go, traffic
located an abandoned Ford Focus near Stern Grove. Seems good for our victim.”

Reed lost what Turgeon was saying
as his caller bleated into his ear. Turgeon was telling Sydowski something
about a parking sticker, a woman not reporting to work, living alone in the
Western Addition.

“I called,” Turgeon said. “Just
got her machine.”

Shoulder pressing his cell phone
to his ear, Reed struggled to jot details of what Turgeon was telling Sydowski;
then Brader shouted on the phone.

“Reed! I said have you got
anything new?”

Reed disconnected the call.

In keeping
with Mrs. Caselli’s wish, Olivia
closed the gift shop an hour early, then found herself near Union Square at the
bridal shop. Alone on the sidewalk, sirens echoing in the city around her,
standing transfixed in front of Forever & Ever.

In the aftermath, the crowds and
TV crews were finishing “live-from-the-scene reports” and packing up. A couple
of patrol cars were guarding the storefront. The officers keeping a vigil
chatted quietly at the yellow police tape; the tarpaulin still enshrouded the
display window, like a bandage covering a wound. Olivia had come with a single
white rose. She reached down, placing it near the door of the bridal shop.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you know
anything about this case?” The officer was in his mid-forties. Nice smile.
Polite.

“No. Nothing.”

“You work around here?”

“Caselli’s Gift Shop on Maiden. I
pass by here every day and, well, this is such a pretty boutique.”

“I see.”

“Officer, do you know who she is,
or why somebody would --”

He was shaking his head. “Sorry,
they don’t tell us anything.” The crackle of his portable police radio
interrupted. “Ma’am, maybe you should just go home.”

Olivia did not go home. She took
a Powell Street cable car, its bell tolling as it climbed into Nob Hill. Olivia
continued on through Russian Hill, bound for Ghirardelli Square where she
walked along the waterfront amid the cry of gulls and the smells of Fisherman’s
Wharf, alone among the tourists, stopping to take in San Francisco Bay and the
magnificent Golden Gate Bridge, bathed in the light of the setting sun.

She was hungry and found a
restaurant with a small line. Olivia had come here before and enjoyed it. It
would do, she thought.

“Is someone joining you?” the
hostess asked through her professional smile.

“No. I’m alone.”

Olivia followed the hostess to
her table, not hearing her remarks on the way, asking her to repeat them.

“I was saying, quality time alone
is a nice thing, when you can get it,” the hostess said.

Olivia’s table was in a quiet
darkened corner from where she could see other diners, couples, laughing,
sharing stories, toasting.

She picked at her meal, a chicken
pasta entrée, studying the flickering flame of her candle as it liquefied the
wax. Over the soft music, restaurant conversations and clink of cutlery, her
waiter was pouring her wine, mentioning something about a fine Napa white. She
didn’t hear him, peering through her glass at her struggling candle.

At one point she began a letter,
but aborted the idea. Who would care? She was so tired. Tired of hoping. Tired
of wishing for something that was never going to happen.

It was time to pay the bill

“Could you get a taxi for me out
front, please?” she asked her waiter after signing her credit card slip, then
changing her mind. “I’ll pay with cash.”

She had come to a decision.

Her driver had a toothpick
sticking from his mouth and a book of T.S. Eliot’s poems opened on the seat
beside him.

“Where to, miss?”

“Golden Gate Bridge.” Olivia got
into the cab.

Curls of snow-white hair peeked
from the driver’s leather cap. He looked eastern European, late fifties, with
kind eyes that found hers in the rear-view mirror. They drove much of the way
in silence, Olivia gazing into the twilight.

“Your first time in San
Francisco?”

“I live here.”

He nodded. “A glorious evening.
Make you feel like an after-dinner walk by yourself on the bridge, miss?”

Curious, how he put it. Olivia
pulled herself from the scenery rolling by her window to meet his concern in
the mirror. “Something like that.”

After paying the fare at the
bridge, Olivia began walking, choosing the sidewalk on the east side, traffic
humming by in both directions.

By the time the taxi driver had
reached the Palace of Fine Arts, worry forced him to turn his cab around and
return to the Golden Gate. He had a bad feeling about the woman he had dropped
off at the bridge. He had to act on it. Hoping he wasn’t too late, he pulled up
at the first clear lane, tires screeching to a stop at a booth, the toll taker
frowning from the window.

“I want to alert you to a fare, a
woman I dropped off here about fifteen minutes ago. She looked very despondent
for sure. Walked off alone on the east side.”

The driver described Olivia.

Picking up his phone to reach a
public safety patrolman, the toll taker said, “Patrol shift ends about now.” He
raised his voice to the driver over the traffic. “But I thought I just saw the
scooter start its last patrol.”

A cool wind kicked up from the
bay as Olivia passed the South Tower, asking herself if this was the only
answer.

Yes.

San Francisco’s skyline glittered
like a distant dream that did not include her. Below, the black waters of the
bay beckoned her to escape the prison of a lonely heart, enticing her to
unshackle herself now. For she would never be free from the pain. It would only
get worse.

Would it? How could she be sure?

Hadn’t she tried everything to
overcome it, to conquer her low self-esteem, her fear of rejection, her
shyness? Yes. And hadn’t she failed? Oh, how she admired, envied, the single
women who did not need a partner, who had friends, children, careers, social
networks, lives to share, something connecting them.

They mattered.

She mattered to no one.

No friends. No family. No one,
except a sick aunt in Chicago, who had come to her mother’s funeral years ago.
Olivia had sat with her alone in the funeral home chapel near her mother’s oak
casket for over an hour. They were strangers and hardly spoke.

Olivia had reached the middle of
the bridge.

How had she come to this?

Was it because her birthday was
near? Was it the young couple with their baby on the bus enjoying a life she
ached for? Was it the bridal shop murder, turning even her fairy-tale dreams to
dust? Was it the reality of a dead flower pressed in a romance novel next to
her bed in an empty house no one visited, where she adjusted paintings no one
saw, arranged furniture no one sat in, cooked meals that were eaten in solitude
to the ticking of a grandfather clock?

Am I living in vain?

Then is this the answer? Had she
tried everything?

Her hands gripped the cold metal
railing.

She was uncertain, feeling the
bridge’s vibrations in her hands. It was two hundred and forty feet to the
water. The drop took four seconds. Four seconds and it was over.

Do you want to end the pain,
or end it all?

In her heart she knew she had so
much to give, so much to share, if she could only find the right person.

There had to be someone for her
out there. There just had to be somebody.

She lifted her head, breathing
deeply. The night sky was so beautiful.
Tell me what to do,
she pleaded
with the stars, hands fixed to the railing.
Please tell me what I should do.

Her answer came in her memory of
Mr. Caselli’s advice to her before he died.

“You should jump into life.
Don’t be so shy all the time. Don’t be afraid of a heartbreak or two,
Olivia.  That is how you know you are alive.”

Don’t be afraid.

At that moment, it was as if his
gentle hand took hers as a breeze lifted her hair from her eyes.

This is not the answer,
Olivia. Don’t be afraid. Take a chance.

It was time for her to take
control. She
did
have a life and it was worth living. Olivia relaxed her
grip on the railing.

“Everything okay, miss?”

Olivia didn’t notice the scooter,
nor its lights as she met the friendly face of a large public safety patrolman,
standing next to her.

“Is there anything I can do for
you, miss?”

Olivia was no longer alone.

She looked to the stars, the
lights of San Francisco, feeling her ice-cold isolation melting in the warmth
of a human connection.

“Thank you. Yes. I think I’d like
to get a taxi to take me home.”

The patrolman was expert at
reading people who came alone to the Golden Gate Bridge. He had witnessed some
tragic events at this very spot.

“I think you’ve made a good
decision.”

Olivia’s driver was the same one
who had dropped her off. During the trip home, he shared a joke his four-year-old
grandson told him repeatedly on Sunday visits. “Know what the doctor said to
the sick banana? Are you ‘peeling’ okay?” It made Olivia laugh, blink back her
tears. Upon arriving at her house, he opened the taxi door for her.

“Thank you.”

“You take care of yourself,
miss.”

He drove off and Olivia entered
her home, shutting the door, sliding against it to the floor, pulling her knees
tight to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and holding on.

She sat that way, listening to
the grandfather clock and thinking. Thinking how close she had come on the
bridge to succumbing, to giving in to something so dark. So final. Something
she vowed never ever to consider again. Tightening her hands into fists, she
pounded her knees softly.

Never again. That was stupid,
Olivia. Dangerously stupid. Get a hold of yourself.

Olivia was at a crossroads. The
time had come to stop wallowing in self-pity, to get over this adolescent
shyness crap, to put Mr. Caselli’s advice into action and get busy living. Talk
to people. She
would
take control and she would start now.
Right now.
Olivia stepped outside of the house, something she never did at this hour, and
stood before it, as if seeing it for the first time.

It was a pretty three-story
wood-frame Edwardian home, situated on a hidden serpentine lane between the
Upper Market and Twin Peaks. Its mature trees stood like sentinels offering
privacy on a neatly landscaped lot bordered by ornate wrought-iron fencing. Her
father, an accountant who had died in a car accident when she was a teen, had
purchased it decades ago. Her mother left it to her, and with her meager salary
from Caselli’s, Olivia managed to pay for its taxes, insurance, and upkeep.

Reaffirming her love for her
home, her sanctuary, she picked a few roses from the front garden. Every day
she arranged flowers for other people, now it was time to do it for herself.
She carried them into the house, walking along the glistening hardwood floors,
opening the sliding glass parlor doors leading to her living room with its
crown moldings, its fireplace, then passed through the formal dining room with
its elegant chandelier, to the kitchen, opening a cherry-wood cabinet for a
vase. She filled it halfway with warm water, then placed the flowers inside,
inhaling their wonderful fragrance before climbing the staircase.

Now that she had the perspective
of age, it was clear to Olivia that her parents had chosen to live restrained
lives. They had bequeathed her their legacy but with some regret. For she never
forgot her mother’s final words before the cancer finally took her.

“Do not let strangers live in
our home, Olivia. Keep it. Fill it with life. Fill it with love.”

Olivia took each step, determined
now more than ever to honor her mother’s dying wish, for it was her wish too. She
drew a hot bath, lit a scented candle, soaked and wept as if purging her soul
of a festering poison.
You are going to be all right. You will have many
tomorrows, each one a new chance.

After wrapping herself in her
robe, Olivia was not ready for sleep, or another romance novel, or a movie. But
she was restless and her attention went to a women’s magazine she’d left on the
seat of the master bedroom’s bay window. It contained a long article about a
shy couple who got married after meeting on the Internet. He was from New York,
she was from Portland. They had agreed to meet in Chicago. They dated, then got
married, now she was pregnant. Olivia had read it a couple of weeks ago.

Her interest rekindled, she made
some raspberry tea and reread the story, remembering how it had inspired her to
check out a few sites, casual chat groups for singles.

That was a few weeks ago. Now
Olivia went to her computer. She had initially just monitored some groups
before joining a few. She never revealed much of herself. A small generic bio.
No one seemed interested. She had forgotten about it.

But that was then.

Olivia’s keyboard clicked. She
bypassed Caselli’s Web site, which was her homepage. She didn’t mind doing some
work at home for Mrs. Caselli during the busy periods. Now it was all coming
back to her. Olivia thought maybe the chat sites would teach her how to play
the field, how to talk to guys from a safe distance, a place to prepare herself
to pursue dating.
Let’s see.
She had been very careful not to offer her
real name or specific personal details. Playing on Olivia, she chose
liv
and came up with the name
livinsf,
for Liv in San Francisco. She felt
comfortable with that. Her computer whirred and one of the sites popped up on
her monitor. A few keystrokes and she found her introductory bio.