Reilly 11 - Case of Lies (23 page)

Cheney spread his hands. Nina said, “Do what you can.”

“I’ll do that.”

“You’ll let me know how it goes?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

He opened the door to the reception area for her. “Thanks for the break,” he said. “I appreciate it. How’s my friend Paul?”

“Fine. He has plenty of business down in Carmel.”

“Give him my best.”

It was three-thirty when Nina left the police station on Johnson Boulevard. She would remember that later, that and everything else, with the same crisp clarity the day displayed as she drove down the boulevard. The deep blue of high altitude reflecting off the enormous hidden body of water close by shaded the mountains. Few people were about. They were watching football, hiking, gambling, picnicking by the water, anything except driving through town.

The trees that stood everywhere, even right here in the heart of town, seemed to float in this blue air, scented with resin.

She would remember the trees, too.

Chelsi’s tiny studio, sandwiched between a closed watch-repair store and a beauty parlor called Hair ’n Now in the strip mall just before Al Tahoe Boulevard, had an open door with a sign that read Therapeutic Massage Only above it. Nina knocked at the entry and entered the front room with its enthusiastic ferns and posters of acupuncture points and scoliotic backs.

“Hey, Nina.” Chelsi wore red running shorts and running shoes. She was in amazing shape. She had a rolltop desk tucked in the corner, where she was writing out bills. Her fine blond hair had been pulled into one of those negligent buns that manage to look both efficient and chic on the right person.

“Hi.”

“I’m not going to talk about Aunt Sarah today, I just wanted you to know that, because this is your time, you know? Except, I just wanted to say, sorry about Uncle Dave and my dad. They get into it sometimes. I hope you got the information you needed.”

“No worries,” Nina said. “We are making progress. I’ll be updating your uncle in a day or two.” She went into the massage room and took off her clothes and lay down on the table with her towel.

“Ready?” Chelsi called from the other room. She came in and the soft music began drifting through the room as she rubbed oil onto her hands. “I’m generating energy,” she said. “Have you had more headaches?”

“A couple.” The hands began making long movements up and down her back.

“What were you doing just before it started?” She had asked that question before.

“I’ve been thinking about that. One of the headaches was definitely caused by fatigue and stress. The other one-you know, they often come right when I’m ready to go to sleep. You know what I do before I sleep?”

“Make love?” Chelsi giggled.

“I read.”

“We’re zeroing in on it now,” Chelsi said. “You mentioned reading a few times. I’m ready to make my diagnosis now. This move here, you might hear or feel some cracking. Just ride with it.”

Deep within the skeleton, some ancient sorrow protested, then disentangled itself reluctantly from Nina’s spine and dissolved forever. “You haven’t been swimming this week,” Chelsi said.

“Is that the reason for my headaches?”

“No. But if you don’t swim, your back will start going out from all the sitting.”

“I’ll swim. But what’s the diagnosis?”

“Maybe you need glasses.”

“Hmm. But my vision is perfect.”

“Maybe just reading glasses.”

“I have those.”

“But you said your vision is perfect.”

“You know. Reading glasses don’t count.”

“Maybe you need stronger ones. Don’t buy them from the drugstore.”

“Those are for old people, not me!” Nina wailed.

“That’s what they all say.” Chelsi giggled once more.

“Okay. I’ll get my eyes checked out. There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to, Chelsi. That feels really good, right there.”

Chelsi didn’t have any difficulty following this massage-table train of thought. “Like who?”

“A young man. My investigator. His name is Wish.”

“You mean, like a blind date? Because I don’t do things like that. This muscle between your shoulder and neck is called the trapezius.”

“He’s such a nice guy,” Nina said. “I know you’d have fun. I just-I see the two of you meeting.”

“Yeah, you’re an old lady of thirty-six, better start matchmaking for other people,” Chelsi said. “What about you?”

“I’m open,” Nina said. “Even in my advanced state of decrepitude.”

“Interesting that you should talk about this Wish boy. I’ve been thinking about guys I know, wondering who I could fix
you
up with.”

“No need. I’m doing fine through the Internet,” Nina said, and they both laughed. Chelsi massaged her legs thoroughly, using the light oil that she had warmed as she rubbed her hands. Nina turned over and Chelsi began on her jaw, which did not want to unclench. Eventually the jaw fell open obediently, though, and hung down toward her chest, doofus-style. The eye muscles said thank you and surrendered. Nina reached the Zen zone.

“That darn buzzer,” Chelsi said. She gave Nina a final set of kneading strokes on her shoulders and polished them off with a pat on the hand. “See you outside,” she said.

Nina didn’t get up right away. She let herself float in this state of well-being, not thinking, not planning, not even feeling guilty about doing nothing.

Finally she opened her eyes to that peculiar luminousness coming through the open window, got off the table, and went to the hook where her jeans and polo shirt hung. Her underwear was on the chair and she stepped into her underpants, noting how supple she felt, how easily her back bent, swearing to herself to exercise more and maybe take up yoga.

She remembered later that she saw a movement from the corner of her eye. Her senses were very acute at that moment, and she noted that the movement came from the screened open window. With an intuition born of this unusual acuity she dove under the massage table, hearing the two knocks at the door that announced Chelsi was coming in at the same time.

A movement. Under the table. Knock knock. It went like that.

Chelsi opened the inner door and came in in her red shorts. Nina was facing her, wearing nothing but lace panties from Victoria ’s Secret, crouched on the linoleum floor under the table like some half-naked precursor of a human, and their eyes locked. Chelsi’s eyebrows began to draw together in puzzlement and her lips parted.

There was a bang, sharp, enormous. A large red hole appeared in Chelsi’s right cheek and her expression began to turn from bewilderment to agony. Another bang. Chelsi fell backward against the door, a red stain on her blue shirt, her eyes still open and still puzzled. She looked down at her shirt, tried to raise her hand to her face, but the hand lifted only briefly.

She slid to the ground.

Nina let out a shriek of horror and pain. It echoed around her brain and she thought, Now he’ll come in and finish me off too. She saw Chelsi on the floor a few feet away, watching her, her eyes so surprised, so disbelieving, shaking her head slightly even as the blood ran down her face, down her shirt.

Nothing happened during the ensuing longest minute of Nina’s life. Just maybe, she heard some slight noise in the parking lot that she translated as the shooter leaving.

Nina crawled the few feet across the floor and grabbed Chelsi by the arm. She dragged her under the table. One eye open now, not two. Chelsi wasn’t conscious anymore. She was gasping, leaking blood too fast to survive.

Nina weighed her chances. It seemed to her that if the shooter wanted her enough, he’d come and get her and there was little she could do.

Or he was already gone. Meantime, Chelsi fluttered one eyelid and lay on the floor, legs akimbo.

Nina scooted through the door, duckwalking. Slammed it, leaving poor Chelsi in there. Ran to the front door, slammed it shut, locked it. Ran to the phone. 9-1-1. She had hoped never to dial this number again. She was crying, blubbering, looking around frantically as the dispatcher asked the questions.

She would always remember the tears sending scalding trails down her cheeks, her jaw clenched tight again, where she would always keep it from now on.

18

CHELSI’S FUNERAL WAS HELD AT THE Bible Baptist Church just outside Placerville on Mother Lode Drive three days later, in the morning.

The death of a young person defeats some important plan. Babies are thrown into the world with every possibility ahead of them, and gradually their world narrows as they grow and experience and begin to express and produce. Someone very old may die, and it is sad, but the thought comes, They had their time. They had their chance. We saw, they saw, what they became.

But for a young girl to die shockingly, without her chance, without anyone knowing what she might have become, is an injustice as well as a tragedy.

Nina was still fresh and hurting from the assault at Chelsi’s office. Throughout the long police questioning that had followed, the reporters’ questions, the phone constantly ringing at the house, and the awful talk with Chelsi’s father, she kept a grim calm. She accepted Wish’s offer to move in for a few days and sleep on the couch at the cabin. He and Bob talked in undertones while she made sandwiches, lay down on her bed, sat on the deck in the backyard, and watched the trees.

Half the town came to Chelsi’s funeral. She had been popular in high school, a basketball player, a star in her drama classes. Many of her friends spoke about her life. Her mother came from Arizona and stood with her father, looking so much like her that Nina could hardly talk to her. Dave Hanna came, sober, shaved, head hanging.

Sergeant Cheney said, “There’s some thinking around here that you might have been the intended victim. Placerville PD isn’t turning up a scintilla of a motive to kill the young lady. She was very well-liked. Not even a boyfriend for us to take apart.”

Nina had just returned to the office. Somehow, Sandy had kept order during her absence, though the pileup of court appearances the following week would be a problem. She had never felt so angry, so grim. These feelings left little room for personal fear.

“I’m protected,” she said. “My son is protected.”

“It’s odd, though. He probably-”

“He or she.”

“He or she probably saw you through the window before you dove under the table. If he knew what you looked like, he would have seen that the girl was younger with a different hair color. So maybe he didn’t know what you looked like.”

“Or maybe he was an amateur, and let off a shot when I took a dive out of panic. If he knew Chelsi wasn’t me, why didn’t he come in and shoot me?”

Cheney shrugged. “You tell me.”

“He must have followed me to the massage place,” Nina said. “He must have known what I looked like.”

“You say she and her father were the prime movers on the Hanna wrongful-death action. They pushed the hardest, provided the funding. That’s my thinking right now.”

“Mine, too,” Nina said. “The shooter is keeping track of this case. He waited for it to be dismissed, but then I came in at Chelsi’s urging and the case started to open up. He’s watching. Here’s a list of all the ways he might be watching.” She handed Cheney the list he had stopped by to pick up. “Maybe he checked on the file at the clerk’s office. Maybe he was in court the day of the dismissal. Maybe James Bova is sharing everything with some murderous significant other. Maybe it’s one of the witnesses.”

“Why would you think that?” Cheney said. He had one of those heavy-lidded gazes, mostly caused by the way he slumped in her chair and kept his hands folded on his stomach, that gives the false impression of somnolence. Behind him, Sandy leaned against the door.

“They didn’t want to be involved.”

“But they were victims, too. You think one of those Boston kids would care that much about having to come back here and do some talking?” Then he nodded slowly. “Okay. The robbery wasn’t simple, that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You know how often the robber knows the victim in some way, or there’s a hassle between them. I’m thinking it’s at least possible that one or more of those kids has some idea why they were being ripped off, and you have to talk to them. I already gave you the third witness’s address. The one named Wakefield, who lives in Washington State.”

“It’s getting complicated,” Cheney said.

“What do you mean, complicated?”

“The Boston kids’ lawyer went to the Boston PD and offered to make a statement there. They’re not willing to come to California. Sorry.”

“Are you going there?”

“Someone is,” Cheney said. “This has to be coordinated with Placerville PD.” The door to the outer office opened and Sandy disappeared, checking on whoever had come in.

“They’re material witnesses! Why can’t you have them arrested and-”

“We don’t have enough to do that,” Cheney said softly. “We don’t have any real idea if they know anything at all. According to your tape, they don’t. And you taped them without their knowledge anyway.”

“They do,” Nina said, her jaw set. “They have a lot more to say. This is how I see it, Sergeant. Either Chelsi was killed so that the case would go away, or the attempt was made on my life for the same reason. It’s about the Hanna case, it has to be.”

“What does your client want to do? He’s the girl’s uncle, right?”

“I don’t know what my client wants to do.”

“You haven’t-”

“He was arrested for his third DUI on the road last night, after the funeral. He had gone to a bar and got drunk. He’s in the Placerville jail. He’s an alcoholic. He’s going to have a public defender on that charge, and in the meantime he doesn’t call me and I’m not going to call him. Because he hasn’t got the guts to fight.”

“Better hurry up with your case, then.”

“What about your case?” Nina said. “What forensic evidence has turned up in Chelsi’s death? Even on a drive-by, somebody must have seen something.”

“We’re working on it.”

“No sign of the gun?”

“All we have are the two bullets,” Cheney said. “Because the killer couldn’t go in and dig them out of that poor little girl’s body. And they’re valuable bullets. Preliminary tests on them show they are not from the same gun that killed Sarah Hanna.”