Obstruction of Justice (7 page)

He drank out of politeness, to test his memory about how closely gin resembled battery acid.

"Don’t the cacti die in the winter?" he asked after two sips. He didn’t ask what the vermouth did to them in summer. If that prickly pear was any example, he already knew. Actually, the martini had a pleasant flavor, piquant almost, or was he merely seduced by the arrant sexuality of her little exhibition? He had some more of the drink.

"Most of these are imported from the low deserts of New Mexico, where I grew up. See the barrel cactus there? The Indians used those curved spines as fish-hooks. And near the back, I keep the jumping cholla," she said, pointing to a thorny, many-branched bush resembling a sea anemone. "It has a bad reputation for jumping people, but really only has weak branches that break off and cling to people and animals passing by. I haven’t had much luck with the saguaro, or giant cactus, but there are a few out front that are surviving. Oh, and inside, later maybe, I’ll show you the old man cactus."

"I saw it as we walked through," Paul said. "I even touched it; that white shaggy fur cover looked so soft. Fortunately, it didn’t get me."

"It’s thornless, that’s why it works so well inside. Anyway, the winters are cold and snowy in New Mexico, although drier. The sun is strong here, and the summers are hot and dry, just like in the desert. This patio has a winter cover, and I remove some of the plants to a greenhouse out back to keep them warm through the worst of the winter."

Paul’s glass was empty. She poured him another from the stainless steel, praising the shaker’s convenience and apologizing for its aesthetic failures. "I’ve read your statements from the accident," he said finally, promising himself not to drink another lick. He had work to do.

"I must have told the story a dozen times. Collier talked to me personally three times. I think he felt I was his last link to his wife. I felt so bad for him."

"He’s not over it," Paul said.

"Maybe he never will be," she said, slipping an olive into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. "Which would be very sad. Some people love only once. If you lose the one you love, you lose everything, your future as well as your present. You don’t recover."

"Just bear with me. Try to remember what you can."

She nodded. "Too bad I was the witness. I have no interest in cars. I can’t tell a Chevy from a Toyota. I don’t notice most people, either. All I knew was that there was only one shadow in there. I was about two hundred feet away, and I couldn’t pick up any details."

"You were shopping at the Raley’s?"

"Yes. I picked up a few things. I guess I came out just after she did. The parking lot is huge—well, you’ve probably seen it, it’s really for the whole shopping center. I spotted her heading for the far end of the lot, almost at the street. Nobody else was parked that far out."

"But her car was parked there?"

"I found out later it was her car parked under a tree in the last lane before the street. I saw it at the time, but it hardly registered. All I really noticed was her."

"You told Collier you noticed her because of her dress."

"Yes. The wind had come up a little and it was getting cooler, but she was wearing just a silk dress, a tangerine color, clingy, very full in the skirt, old-fashioned. A shirtwaist, I think it’s called. The color caught my eye, so I watched her. Color is my thing."

"How close was she to her car when she was hit?"

"Very close. She was carrying a grocery bag in her left arm. Maybe that made it hard for her to see the car coming at her."

"When did you first see the car?"

"I don’t know. All of a sudden, there was this car coming down the lane from the left." Kim pushed her chair back and rested her eyes on her cactus garden. "I heard a muffled thump. I saw it hit her at the same time. I saw her from the back, the car approaching from her left. She went up and over the hood. She hit the windshield. She never made a sound. The car had slowed down to a stop by then. She began to slide, and she slid off the car onto the ground just to the side of the car, while I stood rooted there like a tree. Then I heard the engine rev up. And the asshole took off straight ahead, curled out of the lot at the first exit to the right, and took off into the traffic past the movie theater. "

"So you saw the whole thing."

"Apparently I’m the only one who saw anything. Anyway, I ran after the car, yelling, but in my hurry, I twisted my ankle and I had to stop. Then I limped over to the girl to see if she was still alive. It was horrible. She was bleeding a lot. I suppose she was dying. Her dress was torn and spattered. I got down there and held her head. I had so much blood on me by the time the ambulance came they thought I was hit too."

"Did she say anything?"

"No, no. She didn’t really seem to be there, as though her soul had fled at the impact."

Paul said, "Her death seems to have had a lasting effect on you."

"Oh yes, it did. To see another human being so hurt and not be able to help is ... indelible. I don’t take the newspaper, Paul. I don’t watch TV. The suffering out there is too overwhelming. I try to stay in balance. I suppose you could call me an avoider. I stay home and paint my pictures."

He was touched by her earnestness and her obvious emotional reaction to the story she told. As the shade drifted across the patio, and the martinis did their work, he felt his attraction to her growing. Her lack of makeup could have made her plain, but clear tanned skin and intelligent eyes made a harmonious balance, full of character and liveliness. She was licking the rim of her glass, not caring that he was watching, the tongue flicking around it, her eyelids half lowered so the lashes shaded her cheeks, her expression still thoughtful.

He envied artists. He suspected they tapped in to tantalizing mysteries beyond his ken, mysteries he could only imagine in a special state of mind, such as right after drinking straight gin over vermouth vapor. She was getting up. His time was over, but he wanted to stay.

"I wish I could have helped. Tell Collier I hope you catch the bastard."

"You live alone?" Paul asked as they walked back through her studio.

"Yes. And you?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it?" she said. They were at the door now, and outside the sandscape was blinding under the sky, as if he had suddenly been transported to Taos.

"Not much," Paul said.

"I do. I love it. My work means everything to me. I feel like I’m rushing toward a great future." She blushed slightly.

"You were married?"

"No. Just a long relationship."

"Your paintings. You’ve sold a lot?"

"Almost everything I’ve painted over the past four years. Several Asian collectors pay very good prices for almost everything I can bring myself to part with." She smiled. The thought of her success seemed to amuse her.

"I’d like to have dinner with you," Paul said. "Tonight."

"I don’t date."

"Okay." He started toward the door, and then, his eye caught by the drape on the painting he had seen when he first entered, he stumbled, knocking the drape off the picture.

Strong emotion had been layered onto it in the wide, thick brush strokes. "Sorry," he said. "Hmm. This is different from your other work." He stooped down to read Kim’s signature. Above it, in italics, was the word Anna.

"It’s the accident," Kim said. "I painted it after she died. I don’t show it to strangers. It’s hideous, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it."

The bending curve of orange on the right looked like a woman to him now, vulnerable, surprised by death in the middle of life. The car, white except for a hyphen of green in front, formless over the black streak of asphalt, surged across the canvas from left to right like a nightmare locomotive. The far left side of the picture broke into two red triangles, like a pair of following sharks.

"So the car was white?" he said.

"Maybe. Light-colored. I told Collier that." She tried to cover the painting again.

Paul held her hand gently. "And what about this— these triangular shapes on the left. What are they?"

"I don’t know," she said. "Now, please. Let me cover this ugly thing. It makes me sad."

"Can I borrow it?"

"I knew you were going to ask me that."

"That’s good. You’re getting to know me."

"If you really want to, you can borrow it. But I want this one back. I want to decide what happens to this painting." She pulled the drape back over the painting, tucking it behind for safe measure, and handing the wrapped bundle to Paul. "You didn’t really trip, did you?" she asked.

"No."

"You don’t like people having secrets from you."

"That’s right."

He turned to go, but she said suddenly, "We could eat here."

"I could build a fire in that stone fireplace you’ve got back there," said Paul, trying not to appear as eager as he felt.

"I could marinate some steaks."

"Would seven be a good time?"

"It would."

"See you then." He opened the gate and like magic was transported back into the forest of Tahoe.

Paul’s Private Eye Rule #1: Always check the scene yourself. He drove his van back along the highway through the casino district. As he crossed the state line back into California the casinos and glitz ended abruptly and the quieter facades took over. He turned left again a block or so farther on, into the parking lot of the shopping center where Anna Meade had died. A line of clothing and kitsch stores surrounded the lot, anchored by the Raley’s supermarket at the far end.

He started in front of the Raley’s and cruised around the lot. The last lane before the street that ran in front of the center ran parallel to the Raley’s. Locating the accident site from his pictures and photos, he parked a few feet away, then got out and leaned against the car, taking it all in.

One thing he had learned through hard experience: You can’t expect to take in a scene from somebody else’s description of it. Even photo locations and angles were chosen by somebody else for somebody else’s eyes. The actuality was fresh to him, different from what he had already been led to expect.

For one thing, the pavement at this far edge of the lot was cracked and worn. Chances were the surface had not been re-covered since the accident.

For another, nobody else parked this far out. Why had Anna Meade, going in for a bag of groceries, done so? Had she met someone secretly? But there was no cover; they would have been exposed to the street. And the explanation could be as simple as Collier’s suggestion that she had wanted to keep the car cool by parking under a tree.

What if she had been meeting someone she didn’t want to meet in a hidden place? The location was ideal, open and public.

A client, Paul thought, who had something to say that couldn’t be said at her office. Could be, although Collier had said she wanted to talk when she got home. Maybe she had planned to talk quickly. Maybe that was why, once she was at the door, she decided to go in spite of his belated invitation to stay and talk. And the client was late, so, being a sensible, efficient type, she had run into the store to get her shopping over with first.

He reached into the back of the van and got out his hand-held vacuum. Clicking open the top of the vacuum, he dumped the vacuum bag into the thickly stuffed trash bag he kept in the front seat and put on a clean one, whistling "Bernadette" by the Four Tops.

Then, Dustbuster in one hand and a racquetball bag full of his favorite tools in the other, he walked over to the spot where, by all accounts, the car had hit the girl. Grass grew from cracks in the rough paving. A plastic cup lay crunched in the middle of the lane. Not surprisingly, three years after the accident, no special signs of blood or anything else significant leapt out of the aging asphalt. The lone pine still cast its shade over some of the spaces. Picking the largest crack, Paul lay down on the warm asphalt and peered into it.

The sun shone at a good, sharp angle. A small blackish spider crawled up and out, its legs making tiny acrobatic movements like a synchronized swimming team. He used a Swiss Army knife to delve amid the pine needles and other detritus. About an inch down he saw old asphalt from a previous paving job. He dug some of that up and put it in a small plastic bag, along with all the loose bits. Then he vacuumed what was left into the clean bag. He did the same for all the other cracks in the six-foot-square area he had chosen.

Private Eye Rule #2: There’s always physical evidence. It might not be on a scale convenient to the human eye, that was all. Certainly, if the police did the kind of thorough investigation Hallowell seemed to think they had, this little exercise would net him a dirty bag full of junk and a bent knife. But what if they’d missed something? You never knew.

When he had tidied and dug to his satisfaction and had returned his kit to the van, he retraced Anna’s steps that August day, walking from the Raley’s door straight out through the parking lot until he came to the car lane. He stood at the spot, imagining a car bearing down on him from the left. She was left-handed, carrying the sack of groceries on the left side. Her view would have been obscured by the sack, or she would have had plenty of room to jump away.

Not a professional hit, he thought. The driver got lucky with the groceries. Or not a hit at all, just some clod not paying attention, driving too fast for a parking lot, headed ... where? According to Kim, the driver had exited out the driveway that led to the Stateline Movie Theater across the street to the right. Maybe he had just taken a short cut.