Obstruction of Justice (4 page)

"You heard a bang? A rock split, maybe," Clauson said. "He wasn’t shot; he was electrocuted. Considerable trauma, naturally, from the fall, but he was dead already."

"I never thought of a shot," said Nina. "You can’t imagine how wild it was out there. Maybe a tree cracked and fell in the wind."

"We were above the tree line," Collier said.

"What about the humming you mentioned?" asked Clauson.

Nina tried to shape the amorphous thought. "I felt humming more than heard humming. Like tension rising in the air or pressure building up. You know how you tingle just before you touch a live wire, like something invisible connects your finger to the wire before you ever touch it? That’s how it felt. Static? Foreboding? I don’t know anything about lightning—maybe I felt something other people have felt before a strike."

"Ominous," said Collier, abandoning his aloofness long enough to agree with her description.

"How many feet you reckon you were below the summit?" Clauson asked.

"Only about a hundred feet," Collier said, rubbing his forehead. "We were trying to make it to the nearest group of trees another hundred feet down."

"What made you think de Beers fell from the summit?"

"The angle and the direction of the ... body," said Collier.

"Exactly," Nina added. "He was dropping, but also seemed to be blowing sideways. He came from the summit."

"He made the top," Sarah de Beers said. "He had time and he would never quit until he did."

"Okay, let’s hear from the rest of you," Clauson said. "Mr. Tarrant. Were you with the rest of this group?"

"Oh, yes. We went up together. I’m ... I was ... a business partner of Ray’s. Mrs. de Beers invited me to join them."

Nina remembered the way the group had re-formed as they stepped aside for her and Collier, dropping unconsciously into natural emotional alliances, Sarah with Leo, Molly with Jason, and Ray, all alone. Leo had kept an attentive eye on Sarah throughout the meeting. She seemed oblivious of his interest. Well, that was their business, not hers.

"After meeting up with Ms. Reilly and Mr. Hallowell we got separated," Leo Tarrant went on. "Or, to be more honest, we all were on the tired side, so we decided to split up."

How had Ray taken that decision? Or had Leo and Sarah simply dropped behind after agreeing to follow him?

"Ray went on alone—he was by far the best hiker," Tarrant continued. "I stayed behind to help Mrs. de Beers, who was feeling the effects of the elevation, and Molly and Jason continued up, but more slowly."

"How far below the summit are we talking here?" Clauson asked. The secretary took no notes but frequently checked a recorder running on the credenza next to her chair.

"Mmm, less than four hundred feet. We all wanted to try to finish at that point. We were so close. Dumb decision; I see that now. Anyway, Mrs. de Beers and I continued up to a little copse of fir trees. She couldn’t go further and then the storm broke. We spent the worst of the downpour huddling under the trees. When things eased up, we looked for the others."

"How long before you found them?" Clauson asked.

"About half an hour. We found the kids and started wondering if Ray had been caught at the top. We were almost to the top, coming from the other side of the mountain, when I saw a clump of people down a slope of loose rocks. I called to Mrs. de Beers and the kids to stay put and I climbed down to see what was happening."

"So you never made it to the summit," Clauson said.

"No," Mrs. de Beers said. "Nobody made it to the top except Ray. We were evacuated—me, Ray, and Ms. Reilly and Mr. Hallowell. You met us at Boulder Hospital. You know the rest."

"The kids and I came down in a second helicopter," Tarrant said. "I didn’t realize I would be billed for the rescue. Anything we can do about that?"

"You can pay it in installments." Clauson took the non sequitur in stride.

"But it’s a fortune!"

"Leo, don’t worry about it," said Sarah. "I’ll take care of it. You shouldn’t have to pay. This was our fault. "

"It wasn’t our fault!" Molly said. "It was meant to be or it never would have happened." Sarah patted her on the arm, but Molly moved away, as if the touch stung. The experience had been traumatic for Molly, Nina thought. But she didn’t seem grief-stricken, either, just nervous and moody. People handled such things so differently.

"Any of you see anybody else on the mountain near the summit?"

"We saw hikers at the lower elevations," Nina said. "Nobody else near the top. I guess they had more sense.

"We didn’t see anybody else," Jason said. "Molly and I stuck together. We were trying to get up the other side, but I doubt if we got within two or three hundred feet of the summit before the storm broke."

"Okay," Clauson said. "I’m going to use the discretion vested in me to certify this case as an accidental death due to a direct lightning strike. Statements you made today will be kept on file in case you get any hassles from insurance companies, ma’am. Many policies pay double if the death is accidental. Your husband have that kind of insurance?"

"I haven’t looked into that," Sarah de Beers said.

"I’ll expect a call from a claims adjuster, then. The deceased is hereby released into your custody. You picked a funeral home?"

"Chapel of Memories. Mr. Mooney."

"Nice fella," Clauson said. "Anything else?" He got up briskly, gathering his papers, his mind apparently already moving on to other matters, this one being such a no-brainer. "Okay, meeting’s adjourned."

Out in the parking lot, Jason and Molly took off in a copper-colored, sparkle-painted Jeep, looking like movie stars in their sunglasses. Sarah de Beers and Leo Tarrant climbed into a cherry-red Nissan Pathfinder, with Tarrant driving.

By the time Nina caught up with Collier he was unlocking his own car, a nondescript beige model. "Will you just wait a minute?" she said. "I need to talk to you."

"Sorry. I need to get back to the office." He opened the door and got in, but at least he didn’t slam it in her face.

"Are you embarrassed that you had a bad moment up there on the mountain in front of me? Is that it? Because I hope you know me better than that," Nina said. "Jesus, Collier, you were suffering from exposure, exhaustion. You’d been blowing air down a dead man’s throat for half an hour!"

He didn’t answer. He sat in his car, looking down, hands slack on his thighs.

"Come on. Let’s get a cup of coffee," Nina said.

"I can’t."

"Then talk to me."

"What do you want to know, Nina?"

His tone came too close to sounding hounded, even hostile. He was breaking off with her before they’d even started. She didn’t want things to fall apart because he’d had a moment of ordinary human weakness.

"I want to know that we’ll keep on seeing each other," she said, trying so hard to keep the pleading out of her words that they sounded almost businesslike.

"I don’t know."

"Why? Because of the mountain?"

"Because of Anna," Collier said, looking straight ahead instead of at her. "Maybe I’ll never be ready."

"You know," she said, her voice catching a little, "Jewish people have a ceremony I’ve always admired, the kaddish. One year after someone dies, the kaddish signifies the end of official mourning. I don’t mean to sound hard, but life is too short to put on hold forever, Collier."

"She wanted to talk with me that night, but I was too busy," Collier repeated to himself as if he’d said it a thousand times already. "I let her go."

"How did it happen?" Nina asked. She didn’t really want to know, but he obviously wanted to tell her.

"She went to the grocery store to buy bread and milk. Someone ran her down at Raley’s and left her to bleed to death."

"You know I’m sorry. But—"

"Three years since she died," Collier said. "Three years following a cold trail. While her killer eats steak at the next table, stands in line in front of me at the post office ... she lies in her grave. I’m a fucking prosecutor with all the right connections, and even I can’t find the driver. Sometimes the rage, the feeling of loss, gets unbearable. I look at the defendants in court and think, this one might have done it.... No, no, it was that one ... I dream about her several times a week. "

"I didn’t know," said Nina. "I thought ... Whatever I thought, you can’t keep on like this. It’s not healthy. You need to see someone who can help you."

He laughed without humor. "A shrink? Now, there’s a standard California solution. That won’t help. Whether I accept her death or not doesn’t matter. I can’t let go until her killer pays for what he did to her. I owe her that, and that’s who I am. That’s what I’m all about."

Nina thought, then said, "Have you tried hiring a private investigator?"

"What for? Believe me, this investigation went beyond exhaustive before anyone would give up. Everyone here got involved, from the chief on down."

"Some people won’t talk to the police."

"Little Miss Fix-It," Collier said, but he seemed to be thinking about what she had said.

"Remember Paul van Wagoner, the Carmel PI? He is a wonderful investigator."

"I remember you think he’s wonderful."

"He’s helped me on several cases. He used to work the homicide division in San Francisco and Monterey before he went out on his own. Can’t hurt to give him a call, can it?"

"God, I am so sleepy," Collier said, covering a yawn with his hand. "Okay, since you insist. Give me his number."

"And go to bed early."

"I’m finishing up a three-defendant murder trial tomorrow against Jeff Riesner. I have to prepare my final rebuttal tonight and give it tomorrow. When it’s finally over, I’ll have to start some real electioneering. A speech at the Elks, then there’s the League of Women Voters...."

Nina said, "Well, bye, then," feeling forlorn. His words reminded her that she had a divorce trial that afternoon herself, opposite the bellicose Riesner, the most unpleasant lawyer she had met at Tahoe, and clients waiting back at the office.

"Look, I’ll call you," Collier said. And she had to be content with that.

4

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, IN LIGHT RAIN, RAYMOND de Beers went into the ground. The Tahoe Mirror carried a late obituary on Thursday morning, which Nina read with interest while waiting for her personal injury case to come up on the Law and Motion docket at court.

Nina always read the obituaries. These condensations of people’s lives, showing how they ended up, were revealing reports on the human condition. From the obituaries you could tell whether the person had been happy or unhappy, loved or unloved, deep in the sea of life or beached and isolated. She found herself paying closest attention to the women in their seventies and eighties who had been lifelong members of their churches, kept house, and raised a slew of children who had gone on to have more children who had more children, in exponential progression. From her death-bed such a woman would see her personality and physical characteristics extending down through the generations, and know that in one sense, at least, she had become immortal.

Nina sometimes wondered what her own obituary might say. "Retired attorney Nina Reilly died today at the ripe old age of 99. In the eighties she attended the Monterey College of Law and in later years practiced law in San Francisco and Tahoe. She leaves behind a son, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild." Even embellished with nonexistent generations of descendants, it was pretty plain. Someone would read between the lines and decide she had done her best, she hoped.

According to the newspaper, Raymond de Beers, age 48, a partner in De Beers Construction, had died in an accident during a storm while hiking on Mount Tallac. A civil engineer, he had built a number of homes in the area and handled the renovation of Prize’s casino two years before. His funeral had been nondenominational and he had been interred in Tahoe’s main cemetery. No church or other affiliation was mentioned.

He was survived by Sarah de Beers, his wife; his two children, Molly and Jason; his father and partner in the business, Quentin de Beers, and his other partner, Leo Tarrant.

De Beers Construction sounded like a company that was doing reasonably well. Nina had heard of Quentin de Beers. Who in Tahoe hadn’t? A heavy contributor to politicians’ campaigns, a former city councilman, a member of every service club you could name, Quentin de Beers was one of those upstanding citizens everybody loved to put on a committee. But Ray de Beers must have been a nonjoiner. The service clubs and professional organizations left unmentioned in the obituary would have welcomed Quentin de Beers’s son.

She approved of the simple explanation given for de Beers’s death. To say a man died after being struck by lightning diminished his life by playing up the sensational cause of his death. She could hear Molly’s sardonic tone at the coroner’s office again. "Choking back the tears," she had said.

Deputy Kimura opened the doors to the Superior Court courtroom, and she followed the crowd inside, holding the image of Ray de Beers’s burned body splayed over gray granite, her mood somber. Even though he had revealed himself as a nasty character that day on the mountain it bothered her that no one in the family seemed to mourn de Beers’s death. Like Willy Loman, he shouldn’t fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention should be paid, but by the family, not by some stranger passing.

In the quaint and wildly prosperous little town of Carmel, some two hundred and fifty miles away on Monterey Bay, Paul van Wagoner invited Collier Hallowell to sit down. It was Thursday at six. Hallowell had made an appointment the day before and Paul had made room for him, because Nina had referred him and because Paul was curious as to why a deputy DA, with cops raring to jump through hoops for him, wanted a private investigator.

Hallowell had changed since Paul had last seen him. He was grayer, his square Irish face pale under a thin flush of sun. Tall, with dramatic black eyebrows over perpetually droopy eyes that were a sharp contrast to the fading, peppered hair, he clutched a thick folder on his lap. The Case, Paul thought, his pulse racing as it always did at the start of each new game. He leaned back in his three-thousand-dollar ergonomic chair, assuming an expression of polite inquiry.

"Good to see you again, Paul," Hallowell was saying.

"Out of the courtroom and not on opposite sides for once," Paul agreed. "Are you on vacation? Playing some golf down here? Del Monte’s at its best in early autumn. "

"Actually, I took a few days off because I wanted to come and see you. Maybe I can get a game in. You look like you’re doing well."

"I work hard for the money," Paul said. "And as good as I am, I know that there are plenty of other hungry PI’s between Carmel and Tahoe. So what brings you all this way to see me?"

"I wanted somebody from out of town. I want this kept very quiet. And I know you. Your work with Nina has given me one headache after another. That’s a good recommendation in itself, but I also couldn’t help noticing you have a way of charming information out of people who don’t have much to say to the law."

"I have better luck now than I had as a cop, definitely," Paul said. "People were afraid of me. Half the world’s running afoul of some law or another. Old traffic warrants, back child support, under-the-counter jobs, no green card, unsmogged cars—man, it’s tough to stay straight in this society."

"You have another advantage over law enforcement. You don’t have to go strictly by the book. The matter that I want to talk to you about has already been fully explored by the South Lake Tahoe police," Hallowell said. "In spite of an intensive, lengthy investigation, they got nowhere, but you and I both know there’s always something or someone. An overlooked piece of evidence, a jilted girlfriend, a drinking buddy; there’s someone out there who knows something and will talk to the right person."

Paul nodded. "Speaking of drinking buddies, want a beer? I laid in some Pilsner Urquells from Trader Joe’s yesterday."

When he saw Hallowell’s reaction, he said, "Hey, perk of being your own boss." He wouldn’t have pulled one out back in the old days at the station house, true. Now he could while away his time dead drunk if he wanted to—not that he did. He just liked the feeling that he had the option.

"Sounds good," Hallowell answered.

Paul popped a couple of cold ones from his mini-fridge. Waiting until Hallowell had finished a good long pull, he said, "Let’s hear it."

Hallowell set his bottle on the desk. "I want you to look into my wife’s death."

"How did she die?"

"Hit and run, three years ago this month. August eighteenth."

"Go on."

"You’d think by now that would be easier to talk about. It’s not."

"Take your time. I’ve got four more beers here, and there’s plenty down below if we need longer."

With this encouragement, Hallowell picked up his bottle again and drank, nodded once, and said, "We met eight years ago, when I was just starting out in the DA’s office. She was new too, had just graduated from UC Berkeley in criminology. She wanted to go into law enforcement and she ended up in the Tahoe probation department working as a case officer. We saw each other in court because I was handling probation revocation hearings back then. We were married about a year and a half later. She kept her maiden name, Anna Louise Meade."

He drew the name out, enjoying the words on his tongue, obviously relishing the opportunity to talk about a woman that still lived in his heart while others had moved on and forgotten her.

"Do you have a picture?"

Hallowell pulled out a three-by-five glossy, handing it over to Paul. The picture, taken outdoors in sunlight, showed a woman’s face. A tanned young woman with neat dark brown hair smiled, but not too generously, holding back some. Small, even teeth gleamed in a full-lipped mouth. Because of the sun, half of her face was shaded, and the strong, straight nose cast a shadow over one glowing cheek. Dark eyes, intelligent-looking, brown probably, crinkled up in the light. She had been a pretty girl who wanted to be taken seriously, Paul guessed.

"That picture was taken three weeks before she died," Hallowell said.

"Bad luck," Paul said. "Makes you wonder whether there’s any justice in the world. Criminology was my field too. Any kids?"

"She had a miscarriage the year before, and we were trying again." He paused. "So, no."

"Other than her work, what did she like to do?"

"She loved to ride, ski, hike, skate, bike, camp. Anything outdoors. She loved to get out." As Hallowell talked about his wife, the restraint that had been part of him for as long as Paul had known him fell away, the features on his face softening and looking more human. "And although she had a solemn side, she could be funny as hell."

"Excuse me for saying so, and granted, I only see you between four walls, but you’ve never struck me as an outdoorsy type yourself. Your job doesn’t lend itself to abundant free time."

"She got me out, when she could. She taught me about nature. I still hike whenever I get a chance."

"You brought the police reports?" Paul asked.

"Everything. Here." He passed over the file with a relieved sigh.

"Tell me what happened."

"I always think how normal it was, how comfortable it was that day when she got home. I was at my desk in the living room. I’d come home early to finish some work. I don’t even remember what case I was working on. I did work at home sometimes, although she played a game about it with me. She would ’kidnap’ me, take me to dinner or a movie. You think you have to do the work right then, that you can never make it up, but somehow the work always gets done. It’s the rest of life that stays unfinished....

"So that night, I was preoccupied. She told me she wanted to talk to me about something." His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap. "She liked to talk, so I didn’t think much about it. But this time ..." Hallowell stopped dead.

"Yes?" Paul prompted after a long moment.

"I figured whatever it was she wanted to talk about could wait for half an hour. I knew she planned to go to the grocery store that afternoon before dinner. I had been counting on that time to finish my work, so I told her to go on to the store and that we’d go for a walk after dinner and talk. She loved walking outside after dark, especially during the summer. She knew all the constellations and would point them out to me. What’s that old Irish expression? ’May the seven summer stars shine on you, may heaven’s brightest angels bless you’.... She was an angel, Paul...."

As Hallowell continued, his expression alternately nostalgic and agitated, Paul saw that he was reliving those last moments, every word that had passed between them, every chance he had passed up to change his wife’s destiny.

"I walked her to the door. She had this bright orange-colored dress on under her suit jacket; pretty, like a sunset. I pulled the jacket off her and hung it in the closet, telling her she wouldn’t need it, it was so warm. At the door, we didn’t kiss, just hugged. She had a way of collapsing in my arms when I held her, like it was the only place she could really relax, but in retrospect I realize that this time she didn’t relax. There was something on her mind. And I’ll never know what it was. Something small and silly? Or something that led to her death?"

"She was tense?" Paul asked, bringing him back.

"Yes. When I realized how upset she was, I said, okay, the food can wait; let’s talk. But she was halfway out the door. She said she would hurry, but now she wanted to go and get it done.

"So I let her go." Hallowell’s voice broke. He looked down at the floor. Paul could imagine how many sleepless nights that instant had cost him.

"She took the car down to Raley’s at the state line. The air-conditioning was broken, so she must have parked at the far edge of the lot under the trees to keep the car cool.

"After shopping, she headed back to the car. About fifty feet before she reached it, after she had already opened the locks with the remote on her key chain, a large light-colored car came across the lot and hit her from the left. She hit the windshield and fell off."

"Died immediately?"

"Massive brain damage, but she lived for two days."

"And the car?"

"No skid marks. Never slowed down."

"Terrible. But that’s a busy corner. The lot must have been full of shoppers. Couldn’t anyone describe the car better than that?"

"Nobody else had parked that far out. There was only one witness, a woman. She ran after the car to get the license plate number but she hurt her ankle and had to stop."

"You’ve talked to her yourself?"

"Of course. Kim Voss. Her statement is in the file. She’ll talk to you."

"No trace of the car?"

"Permanently disappeared in somebody’s garage, or driven to Mexico and parted out, but not repaired over a two-hundred-mile radius, I guarantee you that." Hallowell’s jaw clenched, and Paul got a glimpse of the steely resolve that would not let him give up or let go.

"Sometimes the car leaves ... traces on the victim," Paul said, choosing his words with care.

"She hit the bumper, then the windshield," Hallowell said. "No paint chips. The autopsy and lab reports are in the file." He polished off the beer, his head leaning back, his throat working as he swallowed it. Paul had another one open and waiting for him, which Hallowell took without comment, setting it neatly next to the empty.

"Even though they never found the car or the driver, her death was ultimately ruled an accident, of course," Hallowell went on. "There was no evidence of premeditation."

"And she gave you no hint at all about what she wanted to discuss?"

"No. Later I talked with her boss, Marvin Gates. He couldn’t think of anything unusual."

"None of her clients had threatened her? That happens to probation officers. Somebody goes back inside because she gives him a bad report. A relative blames her for not doing her job, or for doing it too well."

"There were no threats I had heard or that Gates knew about. He had nothing but praise for Anna. He said she had a rare rapport with offenders. Said her clients liked her, in fact."

"Did he know who she saw that day?"