Looking for Yesterday (3 page)

“Yet now she wants that acquittal affirmed.”

“You said it’s a true-crime account she’s hired you to gather background for?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, there you have it. Money. Money’s been a primary motivation for Caro her whole life. The Warricks lived well, but not well enough for her. Her parents are still active and in good health, and besides, any inheritance from them would have had to split three ways. But Caro had big dreams. That was why she was so upset over losing Jake Green to Amelia; his family has multimillions, and he was about to come into a substantial trust fund.”

“What were these big dreams?”

“Luxury homes and cars and yachts and travel. Expensive clothing and jewelry. Never having to work. You know, the usual.”

I thought of Caro’s dingy studio apartment, her boring little job. If she had a car, it was most likely old and badly used. No yacht, and she probably hadn’t left the city since her trial. Such dreams die hard, but very few people kill for them.

Very few—but was Caro one of them?

4:15 p.m.

Back at my office, I returned a message from Rae. She said, “Jamie’s been in touch. Mick tracked her down and made her phone us.”

“Where is she?”

“Berkeley, with Cash Only. They’re doing a gig at some place called the Damp Cellar tonight, and she asked me to be there. Mick and Alison are going too. You want to go with?”

“What time does it start?”

“Eight.”

I considered. If I sent out for a sandwich and worked on my summary of the day’s activities on the Warrick case, I could spare a few hours to watch my niece perform. “Why not?” I said. Besides, I might be able to get my blue blanket back from her.

1:30 a.m.

T
he concert was a big success, even though the drummer later passed out in the band’s van from too much beer and the bass player fell asleep at the table while we were celebrating.

“They do that all the time,” Jamie told me as she—under the drinking age and thus the sober designated driver—steered her rental car over the Bay Bridge toward the city.

Mick said, “You need to get a better band.”

“Believe me, I’m working on it.”

I was the last to be dropped off. I hugged Jamie and started to get out of the car, but she twisted around and pulled a tote bag from the backseat.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Your blanket. You didn’t think I’d steal it, did you?”

We both laughed, and I hugged her again before I got out and started up the front steps. The porch light had burned out a couple of days before, and I hadn’t gotten around to replacing it, but Michelle Curley, my cat- and house-sitter, had left the hallway light on for me. Still, it was dark and I stumbled over something large and unyielding close to the door.

A person. On my front porch. One of the homeless street people?

Warily I reached over the person and unlocked the door, disarmed the security system, and looked down.

My God! Caro Warrick.

Her entire face was bloody, and there was a gash above her hairline that leaked.

She was bleeding, so still alive. I felt for a pulse anyway: barely there, no time to waste, not wise to move her.

I pulled my phone out and dialed 911, questions crowding my mind: Who had attacked her? Why? And why had she come to my house?

The night around me seemed colder, blacker. As I made my report to the dispatcher my gaze moved over the quiet street: few lights showed in the windows, and nothing moved. A shiver traveled along my spine. Whoever had attacked Caro could be watching from a short distance away, girding himself to also attack me.…

I waited, vigilant. Traffic thrummed on the far-off freeways. A television flickered and mumbled in the house across the way. A car’s brakes squealed on the cross street. My nerves tingled. Never again would I be immune to the fear of assaults in dark places.

After a few frozen moments I remembered the blue blanket Jamie had returned to me, took it from the tote bag, and spread it over Caro’s still form. Checked her pulse again. Weaker.

Damn the slow emergency response time in this town!

I held Caro’s hand tightly, spoke to her: “You’ll be okay, the paramedics are on the way. Everything’s going to be all right.”

The empty but comforting words we offer up to the sick and injured, even though, in our ignorance, we can’t possibly know what the outcome will be.

While I held Caro’s hand, I looked around for a weapon. I didn’t see one, but there was a scattering of papers over the steps below. Also a badly torn eight-by-ten envelope with my name on it. The items Caro had said she’d search for in her storage locker? They looked as if her assailant had gone through them, maybe removed something. I gathered them up and put them in my bag; she’d intended them for me, and I wanted a look at what was left. If anything pertinent to this attack remained I’d turn it over to the investigating officers.

2:11 a.m.

Caro had been struck with a blunt instrument, an EMT told me; she had a concussion but that her condition didn’t seem to be critical, though head wounds always bleed profusely. As she was being transferred to the ambulance, one of the cops found the blunt instrument, a hammer, on the ground beside my front steps. I wanted to ride along with Caro to the trauma unit at SF General, but a plainclothesman stopped me and asked me the same questions I’d already asked myself. I didn’t have many answers for him either.

When the police finally left, I called the hospital and was told Caro’s condition was stable. Then I sat down and read through the contents of the envelope I’d found. They were Xeroxes of newspaper clippings, and I couldn’t find anything in them that I didn’t already know. Maybe Caro’s assailant had taken something incriminating to him or her. Or maybe I was just too damn tired to see what Caro had wanted me to.

I took a quick shower, set the coffeepot for six a.m., and went to bed.

5:32 a.m.

Someone was in the house.

I came awake quickly, heard steps approaching down the upper hallway—familiar steps. I relaxed, smiled, and closed my eyes. Let Hy surprise me.

He paused at the top of the spiral staircase that led down into our bedroom suite. His shoes clunked onto the floor. If he was trying not to bother me, he was doing a poor job of it. He came downstairs, and his clothing rustled as he took it off and dropped it onto one of the chairs by the small gas-log fireplace. When he slipped into bed beside me, I felt the heat of his body. Sighed and turned, pressing against him.

“You’re early,” I said.

“No, I’m late. Late getting here to be with you.” He kissed me, long and deeply, then buried his face between my breasts.

Ah, homecomings…

7:15 a.m.

“You seem tense,” Hy said, smoothing my hair and looking down into my eyes.

“I am. Something happened here last night.” I told him about finding Caro’s still body on the front steps.

His ruggedly handsome face and hazel eyes showed concern. “Why didn’t you tell me when I got here?”

“I needed normalcy. Just us, and nothing ugly between us.”

“Understand.” He put his arms around me and we lay for a while in the kind of peace we both craved.

After a while I said, “I need your help.”

“You’ve got it.”

“What d’you know about gun control?”

“A fair amount, but first I need some coffee.”

“I set the pot on the timer last night. It’s ready.”

“I’ll fetch it.” He got out of bed, stretched, and went up the spiral staircase. I smiled, admiring the lines of his lean body.

A minute later he returned with two mugs, set them on the bedside tables, and crawled back in next to me, propping himself on his pillows.

“Okay—gun control,” he said. “It’s a difficult issue. You know I wouldn’t willingly part company with my guns because of the kind of work I do, and also because I’ve had firearms since I was old enough to shoot. I enjoy and respect them. There’ve been times in my life when a gun made a difference. That ambush in the jungle clearing with the Cambodians. Crossing the Mexican border—if you hadn’t shot that coyote who was after me, I’d be dead.”

“But…?”

“Firearms aren’t for everybody. Some people are careless with them, or just don’t understand how to use them. Assault rifles are particularly dangerous. Who needs that kind of firepower outside a battle zone?”

“But how do you legally decide who should own a weapon and who shouldn’t?”

“Congress has been debating that since 1934, when the first gun control measure was enacted. Constitutionality of withholding guns from what they call ‘high-risk’ individuals—mainly juveniles and convicted criminals—is another question. Then there’s the problem of how to keep guns off the black market.”

“Big problem,” I said, thinking of a couple of pawnbrokers I knew who, for the right price, would procure and sell any kind of weapon to any individual who had ready cash. “The ATF can’t seem to figure that one out. Neither can anybody else, for that matter.”

“Right. Political divisiveness and the huge power of the NRA have pretty much created a stalemate. It all goes back to guns being made so damn attractive to the general public, especially to the young and impressionable. I blame TV and the movies for that. There’s so much violence depicted that somehow it doesn’t seem real. But you face down a fellow human being with a gun in your hand, it’s as real as it gets. Well, I don’t have to tell you that, McCone. It’s a complicated world, and I’ve long ago given up on finding the answers.”

I considered that for a moment. I’d given up on finding the answers to the big questions too. But the small ones—well, that was another story.

10:30 a.m.

I’d called the trauma center at SF General and been told by the nurse who answered—Amanda Lui, one of those who had attended me when I was in a locked-in state—that Caro had been put into a medically induced coma. She would rest peacefully until her concussion and head wounds could heal. Had her family been notified? I asked. She and others had tried, the nurse said, but no relative was available. I hung up and checked the phone book: Caro’s brother, Rob Warrick, was listed at an address on Potrero Hill, not all that far from the hospital.

Rob’s answering machine had one of those terse, slightly snotty messages: “You know what to do.” I waited for the tone, but a man’s voice came on. He sounded out of breath.

As it turned out, he didn’t know what had happened to Caro, so I explained.

For someone estranged from his sister, he became extremely agitated. “Oh shit! Nobody told me. My fault: I’ve been in and out and just got back from running. I haven’t even checked my messages. You say she’s in a coma?”

“Medically induced.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s to make her rest until her injuries begin healing.”

“How serious are they?”

“Pretty serious. But I think you should go over there, talk with her doctor.”

“Of course. Right away. Oh, Caro… Is she going to die?”

“I don’t know. How about you and I get together for coffee afterward?” I asked. “I know a good place in the neighborhood.”

11:25 a.m.

Mary Lou’s Grounds for Divorce had been a Potrero Hill hangout for as long as I could remember, patronized by both medical personnel and local residents. It was said that Mary Lou Gould, a big, flamboyant redhead, had bought the place with the large cash settlement from her cheating doctor husband, but when asked about it she’d merely smile and put her finger to her lips. It was a small place with tables on the sidewalk, and I was lucky to snag one, this being one of those rare fine, warm January days that we sometimes enjoy in the city.

Rob Warrick—tall, blond, with the muscular definition of an athlete—was wearing shorts and a maroon T-shirt with blue stripes down the arms. His handsome face was pulled taut by worry lines as he sat down at my table and ordered a latte.

“I’ve just been to the hospital,” he said. “They let me look in on Caro. God, she’s so pale and still.”

“Well, they did induce a coma—”

“Don’t sugarcoat the situation. You know it’s grim for her, and so do I. I talked with both the nurse and the doctor.” He ran his hand through his longish hair. “Jesus, who would do a thing like that to her?”

“I thought you might have some idea.”

“No. Oh, there are a lot of people who don’t like her, because of her gun control stance or because they think her acquittal of Amelia’s murder was a miscarriage of justice. But I doubt any of them are violent.”

“You’re in touch with Caro, then?”

“Of course. We’re not close—Caro doesn’t get close to anyone any more—but we see each other every few weeks.”

“What about your other sister?”

“Patty? They got together occasionally. Why do you ask?”

“Caro told me she was estranged from her entire family.”

Rob frowned. “Not from Patty and me. Our parents, yes. But neither of us sees them either.” Something in his tone warned me against asking about the breakdown of relationships.

“
Are there any rules?
” Caro had asked when she hired me.

“Only one: you tell me the truth at all times. If I find out you’ve lied to me, I’ll terminate the investigation—and you’ll forfeit the unused portion of the retainer.”

“Agreed.”

My client had lied to me about being estranged from her family, as well as her alleged seizures. Should I allow her one more chance?

I asked Rob, “Do you know about the book on her case that Caro’s coauthoring?”

“Yeah. I advised her against it. Bury the past, I said. But this Greta Goldstein got her really hyped up about setting the record straight in print. I wasn’t at all surprised when Jill Starkey tried to beat them to the punch.”

“You know Starkey?”

“I met her when she was covering Caro’s trial. A real bitch, but I don’t think she’d physically harm anyone. Caro didn’t get that hit off of her, either, and she hasn’t mentioned her since.”

“What do you remember about Amelia Bettencourt’s death?” I asked Rob.

“Very little. I was living in Manhattan then; my parents sent me east for prep school and then college and business school at Columbia.” He added bitterly, “Getting me away from the scene of my crime.”

“The accident with your little sister.”

“That’s a tactful way of phrasing it. I shot and killed Marissa. I was fooling around with my dad’s gun and I pointed it at her, thinking it wasn’t loaded. It went off—hair-trigger mechanism. I remember it every day, watching the life drain out of her. I tried to stop the blood with my shirt, but it was too late. I was such a fool.”

“You were only a kid.”

“But I knew enough about guns to check to see if it was loaded.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

“Someone has to be. My parents acted as if it had never happened at all. They shipped the reminder of her—me—off to school and never mentioned her again.”

“And Caro?”

“She turned her anger against our dad. And got heavily into gun control.”

“What’s your stance on the issue?”

“After what I did, I think guns should be wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen.”

“What about Patty?”

“Patty? She’s just sad. Sadder now that Caro’s in the hospital. Patty’s the saddest person I know. It’s clinical depression, going back to childhood. I’ve tried to help her, persuaded her to get meds, but half the time she forgets to take them.”

“Any chance she’d speak with me?”

“I can check and see.”

Rob phoned Patty, who lived in the Rock Ridge district of Oakland. After a couple of minutes during which he kept saying, “Patty, don’t cry,” she told him she’d see me. She’d be in the garden; I could come over anytime.

2:10 p.m.

I’d recently read a magazine article about edible front yards—meaning you turned them into vegetable gardens, rather than planting a lawn or flowers. Patty Warrick apparently subscribed to the theory. Behind a low redwood fence, her yard was upturned in furrows, waiting to be planted. A few winter vegetables—brussels sprouts, chard, kale—thrived.