Obstruction of Justice (5 page)

"He had a list of her appointments, but that’s next to useless. Anna wanted to help these people, and she tried to be accessible whenever possible. If someone came in before they were due, she always accommodated them, so some people she saw on that day might not show up on that list."

"Anyone else in the office who might know exactly who came in that day?"

"It’s a busy place and each officer operates fairly independently. They had very heavy loads. I doubt anyone else was keeping track of Anna’s clients other than Anna and her boss, but even he could only give her half an eye."

"Who was Anna supervising at that time?"

"She had sixty-two felons, mostly women but a few men, on her case list."

Paul whistled.

"Most of them were nonviolent, drugs and white-collar stuff. They checked in, they gave her the forms from whatever detox program or counseling thing they were in. She called the workplaces to make sure they were still there on the job and helped ’em when she could. You know the routine. She did what she had to do, but she tried to be compassionate."

"Still," Paul said.

"Still," Hallowell agreed. "It could be one of them."

"It’s been three years," Paul said.

"For a long time, I expected the guy would come out of the woodwork if I was just patient," Hallowell said. "Somebody would get picked up on an unrelated charge and have some information to trade, or a wife would find out and have a crisis of conscience, I don’t know. But it never happened."

"So why start this whole thing up again?"

"Because ... I haven’t been able to move on. It’s affecting my work, my attempts to have a life outside work. I went for a hike a week ago—you may have heard about it from Nina. The damnedest thing happened. A terrific storm came up. Another hiker who had come up just behind us was struck by lightning and died. I had been thinking about Anna the whole way up the trail, about one time when we hiked that same trail. I don’t know if it was the storm, exposure, the shock.... I didn’t handle it very well. In fact, I had a little breakdown or something. I thought this dead guy I was giving CPR to was Anna. I realized I—I’m not much good for ... anyone else. I have to know. Who killed her? Why did she die?"

"You were hiking with Nina, huh?" Paul said.

"Right."

Paul got up and went to his window, looking down at the Hog’s Breath Inn’s outdoor courtyard, where the happy-hour crowd was sitting around in their casual California togs mellowing out on merlot or chardonnay from the little local vineyard where they’d gone wine-tasting that afternoon. In a little while they would meander down Ocean Boulevard to the main beach to watch the sunset, pleasantly fuzzy, just the way he intended to be in half an hour.

So Hallowell was the reason for his recent demotion by Nina to best buddy.

"I don’t want revenge," Hallowell was saying. "I just want some peace...."

"I oughta take her over my knee and spank her," Paul said to the heedless happy people.

"What?"

"Never mind," Paul said, turning back to face Hallowell. "I’m expensive."

"I haven’t had much to spend my money on. This seems like a good buy."

"I’m based here. You’d have to cover my expenses at Tahoe."

"Fine," Hallowell said. "You’d have a free hand."

Paul thought, This might be a good time to go up there.

"Is there a problem?"

"Just going over my schedule mentally," Paul said. "I could get up there on Monday."

"Great."

"You staying over tonight?"

"I’m driving back in the morning."

"You like sushi?"

"My daddy was a samurai."

"Good, because I know a Japanese joint called the Robata with eel and squid and all that good squishy stuff. Let’s go get a bite to eat, talk some more about your case. And mutual friends."

"Mutual friends? You mean Nina?" Hallowell said.

"Why, yes. I do mean Nina," said Paul.

5

IT’S YOUR OWN HOME, NOT TOO BIG TO HANDLE, with a fence and a gate, on a plot of land, your land. It’s your fireplace in winter, in which you build fires from the woodpile outside, and your garden in summer, bursting with vegetables. Through tall windows what feels like your own sunlight pours in. Soft rugs caress your hardwood floors, a thick comforter protects your bed, oranges on the table welcome you home from the fray....

Nina was dreaming. Her dream was so peaceful, so nice. She lived in a chalet under the pines, and no one knew her address....

Someone was pounding on the door. She stuck her arm out from under the covers and looked groggily at her watch. Nine-fifteen. Saturday morning. Correction, someone was not pounding. Matt’s new dog, a large slobbering hound named Hitchcock with a checkered past she didn’t care to think about, wanted in. He liked Nina. He loved her. She rued the day Matt had taken in this mangy cur.

His scratching at the door was like fingernails on a blackboard. She knew what he wanted. He wanted a walk. Well, by God, somebody else could take him, this was her day off, and ...

Hitchcock left her alone for a minute, then commenced a kind of keening, like a black, furry banshee. "No!" she commanded. Peace descended, and she felt the snoozes taking her down into that soft, delicious place.... The keening resumed, gaining in intensity, punctuated by occasional nerve-shattering scrapes on the door.

Cursing, she sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Bob was still off in San Francisco visiting his father, and she could really use some time to herself, but she wasn’t going to get it in Matt’s household, with his two kids bouncing off the hallway walls and Hitchcock whining and Matt drilling in the garage.

She had been living with Matt and Andrea in Matt’s house on Pony Express for almost two years, ever since her move to Tahoe from San Francisco and her divorce from Jack McIntyre. They had been as good as gold to her, helping with Bob, giving them both a warm and well-run household to live in. But the arrangement was supposed to be temporary.

Sometimes her work caused trouble for the family. Although Matt understood how much she loved her work, he hated what she did. He considered her legal work, as mundane as it usually was, riddled with potential violence. In those rare moments when things got out of hand, he had been too involved not to notice. Matt and Andrea must feel crowded at times, as crowded as she felt this morning.

A deep, loud bark came from the door.

"I’m going to get you, you dirty dog," Nina said, hobbling over to him, wrapping her robe around her.

When Nina finally made it to the kitchen for coffee, Andrea was already tossing dirty cereal bowls into a sinkful of suds, her red hair looking almost toned down above her brick-red shirt. "There’s our big filthy beast," Andrea crooned, waving a bowl at the dog. "Ready for your kibble, boy?" Hitchcock perked up his floppy ears, trotting eagerly toward his food bowl, drool hanging from one flap of his jaws. While Andrea tenderly mashed canned dog food into the kibble, Nina made herself a bowl of Rice Krispies and a cup of coffee. She said, "I had to put him on a leash at the bottom of the hill. He was chasing the cars."

"He’s not very bright," Andrea said. "But he does have a way about him." She smoothed his coat while Hitchcock crunched through an enormous bowl of kibble.

Matt slammed through the open back door, grabbed a cup from the shelf, poured himself coffee, and sat down, shooting a spray of fine sawdust in all directions.

"Has anyone else ever noticed that everything men do is noisy?" asked Nina. She didn’t see much of Matt these days. He spent most of his spare time lately in the garage.

"And grungy," Andrea added, giving him a careful kiss on the forehead. She put a hand up to push back his hair. "You have to hunt for a clean spot."

"Good morning to you, too, ladies," said Matt, bending down to pet Hitchcock, who had appeared at his side and cocked his head at just the right height for an arm hanging at loose ends.

Matt had a frizzle of ash color over his ears these days. A dirty cap disguised the rest of his hair, but couldn’t hide his mood. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind, a lot to do, as disturbed and lacking in peace as Nina was. The hand he rested on one knee jittered to the rhythm of his private thoughts.

"Matt, I’ve been thinking ..." started Nina.

Matt stood up abruptly, holding tight to his cup, screeching the wooden legs of his chair over the floor and heading briskly for the back door. "Man, this morning’s flying by. Well, I’ll leave you ladies to your chat...."

"Matt, sit down. This will only take a minute," said Nina firmly, "and it concerns you, too."

He sighed, and sat down.

"I’ve been thinking. You guys have been so great to us. Bob and me. You’ve put up with a lot."

"True," said Matt.

Andrea swatted at him with her hand.

"But when we came here, we only meant to stay until I knew what I would be doing. Now I’m settled here. I really want to know whether you guys are still happy with the arrangement. I mean, we could find a place of our own now. Bob’s old enough to bike a few blocks to see his cousins, and I’ve been making some money. Maybe everyone’s ready for that?"

Andrea came over and sat down by her at the table. She had a redhead’s milky skin and freckles, and a no-nonsense way about her. A part-time director of the Tahoe Women’s Shelter, she carried responsibility as if it weighed nothing. She cooked, she cleaned, she raised kids and held a responsible job. She was an affront to working women like Nina who could barely cope with half that.

"You could find a place close by," Matt said.

"Matt does have a use for the space," Andrea said at the same time.

So she had guessed right. It was time to move.

After Matt descended down the stairs into the cave of his garage workshop, Nina pushed back her chair, fending off Hitchcock, and said, "Well, no time like today. I’m going to start looking around."

"You know, Nina, we love you guys. You don’t have to rush."

Nina was grimacing. She and Bob had overstayed their welcome. Sheer laziness and her own self-absorption had prevented her from recognizing what had clearly become an issue for Matt and Andrea.

Andrea said apologetically, "They’re forecasting an early winter, with lots of snow. I know he’s worrying about getting things in order. He’s got two tow trucks now, and three more he wants to buy. It’s turning into a good winter business. I hate to tell you this, but I have a feeling he’s got his eye on your room for an office. "

"Oh, it’ll be fun," Nina said. "We’ll buy a castle on the lake. You and Troy and Bree can come visit and zip around in our Boston Whaler without Matt until I find it in me to forgive him for throwing me out."

Andrea showed the dimple she usually kept sequestered in her right cheek. "We’ll miss all the excitement," she said. "The break-ins, the kidnappings, the shootings ... Find a place close by, okay? One with good security."

Before leaving the house, Nina called Bob in San Francisco.

She missed him. A week away from him, even in this bustling household, made her aware how much she depended on him for company. An eleven-year-old boy said and did a number of unexpected things, she was finding out, and she’d only recently realized how much she enjoyed his spontaneity.

She had never married Bob’s father, Kurt Scott, and the relationship had ended before Bob’s birth. Bob was just getting to know Kurt, who lived in Germany but had been in the States for a long visit. Kurt had asked her to let him take Bob to San Francisco before he went back to Wiesbaden, and Nina had let Bob go with him, but she had been more lonely than she expected without Bob.

"How are you, honey?" she said when she heard Bob’s voice.

"Great!" said Bob. "Yesterday we went to the Exploratorium. They have this exhibit there, where you stand in front of a blank wall, only you don’t stand, you pose or something. So I jumped, and this light goes off, and guess what, Mom?"

"What?"

"Your shadow stays behind, frozen in a jump! Cool, huh?"

Frozen in a jump. Kind of how she felt, at the moment—suspended, transient, needing to land somewhere ... "How’s it going with your dad?"

"Does he have to go, Mom? Why can’t he stay?"

"You’ll have to talk to him about that, honey." She felt the familiar stab of guilt. Bob wasn’t fated to have a pair of parents around the house. She just couldn’t seem to get it right, unlike Andrea.

She went to see Mr. Muntz in his office a few blocks from her own. "What would be your financing options? " the dapper silver-haired realtor said twice before she heard him. Startled, she closed the multiple listing book with its pictures of homes all over Tahoe.

He handed her a long form full of financial minutiae. "Why don’t you go ahead and fill this in?" he said. "It’ll help me pick out some good properties for us to look at."

"I’d prefer to look first. Then, if I get interested in a house, we’ll talk about that," Nina said.

Mr. Muntz remained outwardly cheerful, although she could sense that he had revised his initial good impression of her. At her request they went out to his car, a yellow Cadillac, a few years old, its waxed finish satiny. He said he would take her for a tour of the town, the "grand tour," he called it. She felt as if she were cruising on an ocean liner as she sat in the front seat flipping through the listings, fascinated as Mr. Muntz Berlitzed her through a whole new language. Where else would she learn that AEK meant "all-electric kitchen" or that charm was real-estate lingo for minuscule? Or that fixer was short for run for your life and secure stood for rotten, crime-ridden neighborhood?

They started down near the lake, in a neighborhood of crowded cottages, all alike in a rustic simplicity, and yet obviously put together by a hundred different people with a hundred different ideas about what constituted a home.

"This is the Bijou," he said. "A lot of rentals in this neighborhood." He turned his head slightly to observe her reaction. She didn’t say anything, so he went on: "The prices are good, though. It’s an excellent entry-level neighborhood, close to the casinos, if that’s your style." Again he swung an eye her way.

"Small lots," she commented.

"You’re looking for something large?" Almost imperceptibly, the edges of his mouth tipped up.

"Is there such a thing as property bordering on national forest or something? So that you have some privacy, but don’t have to buy acres and acres of land?"

"Occasionally. Naturally, that adds to the price." The words rolled familiarly off his tongue. He navigated the big car around a corner, his tie flapping in the wind from the open window. The only thing lacking was a yachting cap.

"What I’d really love is lakefront," Nina went on.

"Wouldn’t we all?"

"I don’t suppose there are any fixer-uppers with their own little beach?"

"People who own lakefront property usually maintain it. But, of course, there’s the Tahoe Keys," he said. "Most of the houses there have private docks. You’re not on a beach, but it’s water. Hop in your motorboat and let ’er rip."

He drove slowly through the Keys, which looked like a suburban neighborhood anywhere, with orderly dead-end streets lined with stucco-sided ranch houses on small lots with double garages. Grass huddled in scanty clumps as if waiting for the snow to come. Behind the houses, narrow man-made canals flowed out to the lake. The view toward the surrounding mountains was unobstructed.

The canals and view would be nice, but she would feel exposed out here, in the lake practically. She wanted sun, but filtered through tall trees. "Something more woodsy?" she said.

"Ah. Woodsy it is."

They drove through another neighborhood, close to the city offices and court buildings, and past rustic cabins in an area called Tahoe Paradise, continuing from there along Pioneer Trail, stopping at a few vacant properties. Nina thought she liked Tahoe Paradise best, a heavily wooded area of A-frames and chalets, not too highfalutin. There were places nearby to walk and hike and the neighborhood was close enough to Matt’s house that Bobby could ride his bike there....

"Your price range?" Mr. Muntz was saying delicately but insistently, determined if possible to reduce her murmurs of approval to paperwork.

"I don’t know much about real estate up here. It’s hard to say."

That made him clutch his hands together tightly on the leather-wrapped wheel, the better to avoid rubbing them together with glee.

As they turned right on Highway 89 to head back up to the Y, Nina said, "Mr. Muntz, do you ... did you know Ray de Beers?"

"De Beers Construction. They build houses. Oh, yes, I knew Ray. Why do you ask about him? You thinking about buying a lot and building yourself? That’s one thing they do, build spec houses."

"No. But I recently ... met Mr. de Beers. Right before his death."

"He stood up there on that mountain and he said one too many times ’May God strike me dead if I’m lying,’ and God took him up on it," Mr. Muntz said with a malicious chuckle. "You heard he got killed by a lightning bolt?"

"I take it you didn’t like him."

"You take it right, honey. I used to sell Ray’s houses. His father, Quentin, had spent years building the business, but about ten years ago Ray moved in and started building the houses. And the houses were trashy junk. Ray worked his miracles with one-coat paint. I wouldn’t even show you one of his places, everybody’s so lawsuit-happy these days."

"Have you met his family?"

"His wife, once. Case in point: Ray took her out to one of his projects one fine day a few years back, and the damn thing fell down. Not really, just one of the joists came down because he wasn’t using the right-size nails. Broke both her legs. Poetic justice.’’

"Poetic justice would be if it broke both his legs, wouldn’t you say?" Nina said. Once again she was back on the mountain, hearing Ray say, Making sure I don’t get to forget it even for one lousy minute. So that was what he had meant.

They drove past the Y on 89, then turned left onto a wooded hill. "This is Gardner Mountain," Mr. Muntz said. "Some cozy places up here I think you might like. You say three bedrooms would do you. How big is your family?"