Invasion of Privacy (24 page)

"No, Bobby, you cannot get in there," Nina told Bobby ten minutes later, out on the dusty track.

Ralph Kettrick stood next to Satan’s Hoof, about as tall as the tires, fingering a rabbit’s foot that dangled off his belt and talking to a mechanic who was down on his hands and knees looking for something.

"Hey! How did you like the way ol’ Satan wiped out the competition today, l’il fan?" he said to Bobby. He shook hands with Paul and Nina, then said, "You’re the lady in the fake mink collar, right? Glad you could come." His cropped blond hair, wet from sweating under the helmet, was a true blond, not the white albino hair of his father. He wore a soiled fire-retardant jumpsuit that emphasized his short, stocky body and big, vacant grin.

"It was so rad," Bobby said. "Who won the contest?"

"You mean, to sit in the truck? We’re just checkin’ her over, and then some kid from Elko gets to sit up there with me and have his picture taken. How’s it look, Pete?"

The mechanic said from underneath somewhere, "Used two quarts of oil on that last run. I’m filling it up again."

"All right. Little oil leak, no big thing," Kettrick said.

The mechanic got to his feet, put his knuckles at his waist, and stretched backward. "It’s full up. Get somebody to reweld the pump before you race again."

"Thanks, man," Kettrick said. "So, bud, you want to hop up there?"

"Not today, thanks," Nina said quickly.

"I was talking to the l’il fan," Kettrick said. He didn’t seem quite as amiable.

Paul said, "Wondered if we could ask you a few questions about Terry London."

"Oh, yeah. That’s who you are. I almost forgot. The lawyer for the guy that did it to Terry. You really going to do a trial? Am I gonna have to, like, show up in court?"

"I believe my client is innocent," Nina said.

"Well, you ain’t gonna prove it by me. I was sound asleep when my dad looked out the window and saw the guy take off."

"The shots didn’t wake you?"

"Didn’t hear a thing. My dad snores so loud, I sleep with a pillow over my head. I sleep hard too."

"I was wondering why your dad didn’t call the police, after hearing shots and seeing someone running," Paul said.

"He probably thought Terry had a late visitor and ran him off her property by shooting a couple into the air," Kettrick said. "See, he didn’t want to mess with her. They didn’t get along."

"Your dad said you used to do some work for her."

"Ever since I was fifteen. Handyman stuff. Only way I had to make some money until I started driving when I was eighteen."

"Did you get to be friends?" Nina said. Bobby had walked around to the other side of the huge truck, and seemed to be climbing inside one of the wheel wells. "Bobby, come away from there!" she added sharply. Paul walked around to corral the kid. He could see and hear Kettrick perfectly well through the steel struts.

Kettrick was nodding. "She talked to me," he said. "She was lonely, didn’t have no friends. She’d tell me stories, teach me things."

"Like what?"

"Just things," he said vaguely. "She said someday she would make a movie about me. She was interested in my welfare, that’s what she said. My dad, though, he wanted me to stay away from her. She scared him, but she was nice to me, sometimes."

"Terry had a rifle, didn’t she?"

"Old hunting rifle, a Remington," Kettrick said.

"Where did she keep it?"

"I don’t know, around. But she waved it at my dad once, scared the shit out of him."

"When did you see her last?"

"About a week before. I went over and swept the needles off her roof. But we didn’t really talk."

"Did she ever say she was afraid of anyone? Did she seem nervous recently?"

"You must not’ve known her very well. Nervous was not her style. She got mad, and then she got even."

"Did she ever mention a Doreen Benitez? or Ordway? Or Jess Sweet, Jonathan Sweet, Michael Ordway?"

"No, I never heard those names."

"How about Kurt Scott? Did she ever talk about him?"

"Wait, let me think. Sounds familiar. That’s it! Her ex-old man."

"What exactly did she say about him?" Nina asked him.

"Nothing good. Nothing that’s going to help your case. Kurt Scott, that’s your client, right? She told me once, she was looking for him. And when she found him, she was gonna hang him upside down and flay him alive." Kettrick smiled widely, waited for the next question.

"Did she say why she wanted to do that?" Nina said.

"No. But she licked her lips like it was a sex thing."

"Was she your girlfriend?" Paul asked him from behind the truck, and for some reason Kettrick started to laugh. "She was an old lady, man!" he said. "She told me she thought the sex act was disgusting. She got off other ways, I guess."

"Like how?"

"Like I say, she was my friend, man. I mean, leave the lady her secrets." His smile and the big guileless blue eyes never varied.

"So what were you doing at her house the day I came by?" Nina said.

"Huh?" Paul was now standing so that he could see Ralph’s face. A mask, Paul decided. All this cooperative pleasantry was really stressing him out. What was he hiding?

"You said to Terry, ’You promised.’ What had she promised?"

"Oh, yeah. I forget." It was a big, smirking, patent lie. Paul had already decided to do an in-depth report on Ralph too.

Bobby said, from the other side of the truck, "I don’t see why I can’t just sit in the seat, Mom. Please, just for a minute."

Nina said, "Hush, Bobby. I already said no."

"Like I say, I wouldn’t mind lettin’ him up there to sit with me a minute," Kettrick said. He crawled rapidly up into the cockpit, patted the padded dashboard, leaned down, and held out his hand. "Here we go."

Bobby reached up and Paul moved to intervene, but Nina was faster. She grasped Bobby’s shoulder firmly and said, "No. We don’t go. But thanks for the offer."

"Party-poopin’ lawyer lady," Ralph said, and now there was definitely something ugly in his voice. He started up the engine so that they all jumped back from the clouds of exhaust. "Wimpy!" he yelled, guffawing, and took off like a mountain on wheels down the track.

"God, Mom," Bobby said, brushing dust off his pants. "I may never have that chance again."

Watching Ralph Kettrick, helmetless, careen around the empty field, Paul said to Nina, "There goes one heckuva happy fella. Let’s get off the track before he flattens us."

24

THE DRIVE BACK FROM RENO TOOK LONGER THAN usual, due to the Saturday night revelers journeying into Tahoe to make or drop some fun money at the casinos. By the time they had dinner and dropped Bobby off at home with Andrea it was nine o’clock, though the light of a long day lingered. Nina unlocked her empty office building, and, once in her office, put a pot of coffee on while Paul located the remote control for the VCR, and moved furniture around in the conference area, transforming the room into a theater for two. He didn’t bother to close the blinds on the night outside, so the beams from passing cars strobed intermittently through the room.

First they watched the silent arrest video. The date and time flashed up on the screen. The camera, mounted on the police car, rode behind Kurt’s rented car as he slowed and pulled over, and showed Officer Joyce approaching the car and, after a minute, motioning to Kurt to get out. The officer pressed Kurt against the side of the car and frisked him from behind. Kurt’s face was turned to the camera and he was talking.

"Kurt’s got blood dripping off his arm," Paul said, "and he just left the scene of a shooting. I can see why they arrested him. Best place for him was the pokey. And what happened to the sound?"

"The sound didn’t record for some reason—the arresting officer said the equipment was new and he didn’t know what he was doing. He must have pushed the wrong button or it was malfunctioning. Anyway, I disagree with you. They had nothing on him. All they really have is pictures of a wounded man being arrested. Everything else is open to interpretation."

"And the testimony of the arresting officer." Paul began reading from the police report. " ’I asked him, what is that? Suspect answered it was blood. I then asked if suspect was hurt and he nodded his head in the affirmative. I then asked if suspect had been in a fight. Suspect answered, she’s been shot.’ "

"Kurt’s very clear that Terry shot at him and he ran out the door on the first shot. So he wouldn’t have said that," Nina said. "The cop’s lying, or mistaken. I believe Kurt."

"Maybe. I’ll check out Officer Joyce. He’s a rookie, so maybe he got rattled and didn’t hear right. Unfortunately, it’s down on paper now and he’s going to be positive that’s what Kurt said. If I were you, I wouldn’t drink all that coffee this time of night."

"Doesn’t bother me."

"I’ll just have a glass of this delicious chlorinated tap water," Paul said. "So. What next?"

"Our feature presentation. Where Is Tamara Sweet?" Nina was already loading the tape into the VCR. She sat down next to Paul in a straightbacked conference chair and he put his arm around her. Paul clicked off the lights, saying, "Nothing like a quiet night at home watching the tube."

Nina pushed the START button.

A rainy dark road, headlights reflecting on the pavement as a pickup truck skidded into the street, turned left and drove some distance. The camera picked up the driver’s point of view. Visual bumps, headlights swerving back and forth as if seen through intoxicated eyes, a country song playing mournfully from the tape deck, up a dark road lined with cabins, up a jouncy dirt road, then a swift cut to a highway turnoff ; the yellow car beams illuminating dripping trees ... WHERE IS TAMARA SWEET? superimposed on the scene, and the credits rolling ...

"I heard the skid and looked out the window. Tamara turned left and split." A bartender smacked a mug of beer onto a bar counter, sloshing a little over the wooden surface. Behind him, bottles of colored liquid glittered and beckoned on glass shelves fronting a wall-size mirror. Small eyes peered out from his wide, friendly face. "I recognized her because her mother used to come in here all the time. Tam was only slightly whacked, not so drunk we’d be calling a cab. I remember that night because the cops came later to arrest me for serving to minors." The camera, held high so it seemed to be floating, moved backward, out the door, focusing on a yellow neon sign: MANNY’S.

"Why did she go that way? Manny’s is the last business on Highway 50 heading west out of Tahoe. Tamara didn’t know anyone at the private houses around the lake in that direction. It was after eleven, and she had school the next day." A robust, middle-aged woman with brilliant blue eyes traversed a ski hill, beginning in the distance, and moving in soft dips toward the camera, getting larger in the frame. Against the snow-white hill by a ski lift she stopped abruptly, her skis flinging up snow in a whoosh. She cut a fine silhouette against the harsh background, her graying hair caught in a girlish headband. A computer clicked out letters, and the screen raised them in an old typewriter typeface, one by one: J-e-s-s-i-c-a S-w-e-e-t, M-o-t-h-e-r.

The next scene, the exterior of a large cedar home, led into a living room crammed with antiques, shining hardwood floors, and to a wheelchair with a man slumped in it. "Jonathan Sweet, Father," typed the invisible computer. In a whiny voice Sweet said, "She was always asking for money that we didn’t have. She wouldn’t get an afterschool job, even though she didn’t care about her schoolwork either. She stopped talking to us about six months before she left. We didn’t approve of her lifestyle. She was supposed to be living at home, but she spent nights away. She was eighteen, a beautiful girl. I guess she had lots of boyfriends. We never met any."

A long slow fade from his complaining face merged and smoothed over into the face of a long-legged, girlish young woman squinting outside a horse corral in blinding sun, wearing a halter and shorts. "Doreen Benitez Ordway, Best Friend" typed itself onto the screen.

"We met at lunch period right after the science test. Tamara thought she had flunked it. She said she was finished with school anyway, that it had nothing to do with real life. She was laughing, and I was, like, Tamara, you better go talk to your teacher, you have to graduate from high school or you’ll never get a job. But she said she didn’t care. She kept talking about real life, saying real life was much more interesting."

"She came home after school," Jessica Sweet said as two skiers jumped off the lift and disappeared to the right of the frame, "and locked herself in her room, listening to that depressing stuff young people call music these days. I could smell the smoke and I yelled at her to quit. I wasn’t drinking, no matter what anyone says. I just can’t stand smoking. That’s probably why she left that night. She wouldn’t eat dinner, said she was going out with friends. I didn’t know she was flunking most of her subjects."

A new face came into view, a man of about thirty, springy as a boy, touching two hands briefly to a low wooden fence and catapulting himself into focus. Though he wore rough work clothes, his face under the tan and five o’clock shadow had delicate features. Behind him a flat gray sky merged into a field dotted with low scrub. A couple of cows browsed in straw-colored grass. The bottom of the screen typed out, "Michael Ordway, First Boyfriend." He spoke in what had been an upper-class British accent, which, after years of Americanizing, retained only vestiges of its original polite air. "About six months before she went, we sneaked into the Hyatt to play some slots. A security guard kicked us out. We were drunk on the free drinks, and broke. She had a snit fit, said I bored her stiff. I was too young for her. That kind of thing. She hitched a ride home.

"I kept trying to see her again, but she avoided me. The night she disappeared, I was having pizza with Doreen at Manny’s. By then Doreen and I were together, but I was still interested in Tamara. It was a freezing cold night in the middle of winter. We were getting ready to leave. Sure, we were sloshed. We both drank all the time in those days. Then Tamara walked in at the last minute.

"So we sat back down and had another one. She was in a strange mood. She didn’t want to talk about school, except to say it was boring. She said she had a late date in a little while and I asked why she was being so mysterious about it. I asked who he was. She said to stop spying on her and to stay out of her business. She threw a beer in my face so I’d get the message better. I was wiping it off when she left."

The film cut back to Doreen Ordway on horseback, her hands reining in a frisky horse. She was broad-shouldered for a woman, with the angular build that fills up fashion magazines. Her cropped top showed off a flat stomach and stretched revealingly tight over full breasts. She subdued her horse, jumped down with the grace of a dancer, and tied him to a post. Appearing coy, posing a bit, she looked directly into the camera, pushing sunglasses back on her nose.

"I said, ’Tamara, you really are going home, aren’t you?’ She smiled like she had a big secret. She said, ’And miss all the fun?’ She made a short call at the pay phone. And she went out the door and got in her pickup. Michael was throwing up in the corner."

"That was twelve years ago. She never came home," Tamara’s mother, Jessica Sweet, said, removing ski gloves to reveal chafed hands. She blew out a little cloud over them. "She never wrote, or called. I contacted the South Lake Tahoe police the next morning, and they listed her as a missing person."

Her strong tan face cut to the deeply lined face of a uniformed police sergeant, African American, old enough to retire. "Sergeant Fletcher Cheney," the typing at the bottom of the screen read. He sat at a beat-up oak desk, rustling papers. Cheney said, "The pickup, registered to her parents, had been left about a mile and a half down the highway, pulled off at a turnout. We found it the day after she disappeared. There was no sign of violence. The truck was neatly parked, locked up, no mechanical problems, with nothing inside except music tapes and some old fast-food wrappers and dog toys behind the seats. No one reported seeing the pickup or the girl after she left Manny’s."

The screen blacked. Then, accompanying the voice of Jessica Sweet, lurid red letters sliced across the screen: SHE DISAPPEARED ...

Doreen Ordway spoke, as more red letters appeared: THAT NIGHT ...

TWELVE YEARS AGO. The voice of Jonathan Sweet finished the sentence.

Paul said, from the darkness next to Nina, "She must be dead. Twelve years ... no word. She’s dead."

A shadowy echo to his words, the soundtrack softly repeated, "She’s dead, I suppose." The wide brown eyes of Doreen came back onscreen, minus her sunglasses. Silver filigree earrings twinkled in the sun as gentle breezes spun them. In the background Nina heard the unmistakable sounds of several horses whinnying, and the sound of hooves on hard-packed earth. A landscape came into view as the camera moved past Doreen to follow a horse running against the backdrop of a forest. "All her roots were here," Doreen’s voice went on. "She was a local. She wouldn’t just take off without a word. She wouldn’t have stayed away so long. "

"Until she turned eighteen, she used to go out into the backyard after school and jump around for hours on our trampoline. She never got hurt, even though she could be some daredevil. She sewed some of her own clothes. She still slept with her old doll, Melissa, every night. She was a normal, happy little girl ..." said Tam’s father. A doll with shiny chestnut tresses and pink cheeks sat on a shelf in a deserted bedroom. Her father reached over to the doll, placing it on his lap. Then: old photographs of the Sweet family, Tamara as a little girl at Disneyland, smiling gap-toothed at the camera, wearing a Mousketeer hat ...

Morphing out of that little face, an older face from a high school yearbook; a young girl with black-rooted, bleached blond hair parted in the middle, her face sullen, her eyes rimmed with black eyeliner, and the voice of Cheney, the policeman: "She got around."

"She treated Michael like dirt," Doreen said while the camera lingered on Tamara’s face. "He’s a sensitive person. His parents brought him to Tahoe from England when he was fourteen, and he had trouble adjusting at school. He really loved Tamara, and she hurt him so much.’’

"Funny how things turn out. Doreen and I went off to the same college, UC Davis, and got engaged. We have two little girls, twins, to keep us busy ..." Michael Ordway said. "Tam’s father was sick, you know, and he worried all the time. He was unemployed for two years and he spent the whole time hassling her. He drove her away. She told me one time he really hurt her. She showed me the scar. Of course, there was also her mother, the great overachiever who arrived on time for every appointment, who did everything faster and better than everyone else, a real control freak and secret binge boozer. She drove Tam nuts. She had to get good grades. She had to go to college. She had to keep her weight down.... I think Tam ran off with the guy she was seeing. Her parents didn’t love her. They thought they owned her."

A jerky home video, everything in it tinged slightly blue, opened with a long pan over obscene piles of presents under a Christmas tree. Then came the close-ups of individual packages, decorated with ribbons, leaves sprayed gold, fruit sprayed gold, sleighs sprayed gold, covered in every variety of paper, from Jolly Old Saint Nick to Jesus Christ. Following several long, boring minutes of this underedited effort, Tamara Sweet herself showed up on the floor by the tree, dressed in blue velvet pants and a velvet vest, her blunt-cut hair pouring immaculately over her shoulders, about sixteen years old. She opened a present, ice skates, and proudly displayed them to the camera. "Thanks, Mom and Dad," she said in a high, feathery voice. "I love ’em to death!"

The camera had moved with Jessica Sweet into what had to be Tamara’s bedroom, roaming the walls, from the doll on the ruffled bed to the violently colored punk rock posters on the walls. "I did find some marijuana in her desk, there," she said, her fingers digging through a drawer. "I told the police about it, but they didn’t seem to care. I have always wondered if she smoked some of it in the truck, added to what she had been drinking, then got out and—and maybe was hit on the highway, and the driver took her ... body and dumped it somewhere. Or maybe she stumbled out into the dark and fell into a ditch. It’s wilderness here. Maybe no one could find her where she fell."

Sergeant Cheney came onto the screen, consulting a thin file. "The case remains open. I mean, you don’t close a case like this even after twelve years. When a human being disappears into thin air, you don’t forget. You look for evidence, because I guarantee, if a crime’s been committed, there is evidence. It’s just a matter of finding it. In this case, we have nothing much to go on. But girls go missing. We’ve had at least three other girls disappear up here since Tamara Sweet disappeared. No leads at this time. No, we don’t know if they’re dead or alive. Gone without warning, without a trace. Poof." A pause followed. Then, as if responding to a question, Cheney said, "Where is Tamara Sweet? I personally think she got into a car with a transient. That got her into trouble. We check on a regular basis on unidentified bodies found statewide."