Sudden Exposure (16 page)

We topped the stairs and started up Tamalpais. It was one of those crystal-clear, almost still Berkeley nights when the cold of the heavens floats unimpeded down on us. Those nights take me in every time. The mornings after, I wake up expecting thick yellow sunbeams to be striping my comforter—not the quilt of fog that has stolen in after I’ve gone to bed. When I moved west it never occurred to me that “sunny California” would be not a reality but a hope.

The scene—Bryn’s driveway—was quiet. The patrol cars on the street were dark; Raksen had finished photographing and was now hands-and-knees-ing it toward Bryn’s car. Not much of a show. The crowd was gone entirely, and the only sworn officers in sight were Grayson and Leonard, the finder of record, waiting to claim whatever Raksen came up with.

When Murakawa had driven off with Estler, I walked the five feet to Grayson and lowered my voice. “Anything of value from the neighbors?”

“Two of them saw the Volvo here about five thirty. Could have been here earlier, that’s just when they got home.”

I nodded. “And from Acosta at the hospital?”

“DOA.”

I felt as if my elevator car had dropped ten stories. I’d seen her face; I knew the odds. I hadn’t even really liked the woman. And yet I felt stunned and bereft, deserted by life and meaning. I wanted to close my eyes, or walk over to the little redwood grove and stand in the dark middle surrounded by those trees that would be here centuries after we, and maybe Berkeley itself, were forgotten.

Even Grayson had a little of that look—eyes wide, skin almost sagged in a sort of pervading disillusionment. Not grief for the victim, per se, but distress because one who had become ours had died. I put a hand on his arm momentarily and he didn’t pull away.

Behind me footsteps slapped the night silence. Heling, I hoped, ready to report she had looked through all of Bryn Wiley’s windows and found nothing amiss inside. I turned and looked at the woman loping toward me. It wasn’t Heling. It was Bryn Wiley.

B
RYN
W
ILEY!
I
WAS SO
stunned I couldn’t move. She was glaring at me, and Leonard, and Grayson, but I didn’t care. She was alive!

I finally smiled as she demanded, “What the hell’s going on here?” And as she turned her indignation on Grayson. “Now what’s happened to my car? Oh, shit, it’s the window again.
Again.
Can’t you cops do anything to protect property in this city? I can’t even park in my own driveway!” I was still feeling the warmth of her prodigal return as she raged on: “I’m not asking much. The goddamn culprit lives right next door. How easy do you people need it to be? I’m not dealing with beat cops anymore. I demand a detective.”

It was only then that I registered that Grayson wasn’t taking charge in the face of her tirade, that he looked every bit as bewildered as she—because he had no idea who she was and therefore why she was carrying on. “Bryn Wiley,” I said to him. And to her: “Bryn, there’s been a shooting.”

“What? Who?”

Who was shot?
The answer broadsided me. I found myself staring at Bryn’s living room window, wordlessly pleading with it to show me Ellen standing inside. My eyes clouded and I blinked futilely trying to clear them. And when Bryn’s chestnut hair came into my muddied vision, for an instant I thought my plea had been answered. Then the horror hit harder, striking the already bruised spot. There was something so unutterably sad about Ellen being dead; something so unfinished. My voice sounded far away and wooden as I forced out, “Not on the street. Inside. Can we go inside?”

“Tell me what the hell—”

“Bryn, a woman was shot. She was sitting in your car.”

“In
my
car?” She was shouting. “I can’t believe—”

“
Inside!
” My voice caught. I had to swallow, and when I spoke again, the words sounded like they were coming from a different person. “Come on. Come inside.”

She hesitated, then shrugged and started for her stoop. I glanced by Grayson, ignoring his silent
What the hell is going on here?
His mustache twitched—he was on the verge of telling me I couldn’t just trod over him—but something stopped him. I don’t know quite why he backed off—it wasn’t like Grayson—but I nodded a thanks and said, “Let me have Pereira or Leonard to take notes as soon as one of them is free.”

Bryn had already turned on the interior lights when I walked into the living room. She stood looking from one white sofa to the other and ended up staring at the confessional bench and the lusting Shiva. I would have expected her to settle on the couch as she had the other times, but she picked up the Shiva by his head and moved the statue to the central section of the bench. Then she sat on the right and pulled her legs up under her.

Just like Ellen had.

“Ellen?” she asked in a voice so small I almost missed it.

The stool Ellen had brought in for me when I was here before was next to the smaller sofa. I carried it across from Bryn and sat close to her. “We can’t be sure. We know that a woman was shot in the driver’s seat of your car. The only identification she had was your purse, your driver’s license. She was about your size and had hair like yours. But Ellen didn’t drive, she told me that, and you told me. And this woman was in the driver’s seat.”

The color washed from her face. “Omigod, Ellen! Why Ellen? Who would want … ? Ellen? God, she didn’t even know anyone, she’d barely moved in. How could anyone have … ? Why Ellen?”

I shook my head, shaking off that last feeble hope. Of course it was Ellen. Of course she
could
drive, even if she didn’t often choose to. Almost anyone
can
drive. “Why did you tell me Ellen didn’t drive?”

“She had no license. She never drove, not until tonight. She didn’t want to. But I couldn’t leave my car there at People’s Park, could I? She had to take it home.” Bryn’s voice was squeaky, her scrunched forehead and eyes pleading. “I gave her my license in case she got stopped, so she’d be safe,” she added desperately.

“Yeah, it saved me from thinking it was she who’d been shot. And if she needed blood, Bryn, maybe they gave her your blood type. Your gift could have killed her.”

Bryn just stared.

I should have felt guilt. But I felt nothing but the cold of the room. The smell of that bitter tea hung in the air like long dead leaves in the rain. My eyes clouded. It could have been Ellen sitting there. If only … I pushed the thought away. Ellen would have been pale, too, but at least she would have been sobbing out her horror and her sorrow. I would have reached out to comfort her, told her we’d pull out all stops to find the person who had done this to her cousin.

Bryn’s arms pressed hard against her side but she sat dead still. She looked like she had been abandoned in the most desolate place on earth. She sat that way for a full minute, her feet under her, bare ankles pressed against the hard wood penitent’s seat. When she spoke, her voice was barely controlled. “It’s not a question of who would kill Ellen, is it? My car, the car only I drive. Ellen didn’t drive; that’s what we told people. That’s what he’d have believed.” She paused, eyeing me for agreement. “He shot her because he thought she was me! He’s trying to kill me!”

“Who?”

“That bastard Johnson!” Color was creeping back onto her face, and the quaver in her voice was from anger. “I expected him to sabotage my press conference. But this … I never thought he’d do anything like this.” Her fists tightened into balls. “But damn it, I won’t let him get away with it. You’ve got evidence now, don’t you? I saw that cop crawling around by the car. You’ve got bullet casings and footprints. You must have footprints; the ground’s soggy as a pond. You don’t need to worry about me pressing charges; I’ll sign whatever you need. Damn it, I will not allow this.”

“The lab tech will find any evidence on the ground. What can you tell me that definitely ties Johnson to this scene, here, tonight? Give me facts.”

“Facts? Search his house, find his gun!”

“If he killed someone, he wouldn’t leave the murder weapon over the mantel”—I’d have Leonard or Murakawa check on that—“and there’s no way we can track down all the places he could stash a gun. We can’t even search his house without probable cause. So, tell me about tonight.”

“How should I know what went on here?”

“Okay, so you weren’t here. Where have you been all evening?”

Her face tightened and eased warily. “Trying to salvage that shambles of a press conference. I spent half the night running down reporters and giving them the text of my talk and the corroborating information. For all the good it’ll do. They don’t care about facts like Sam Johnson ripping off his clients and ripping off the poor. All they want is pictures of naked butts. If you’d seen the eleven o’clock news you’d know that.” She leaned closer to me, blue eyes narrowed, head forward like a hawk’s. “It’s set me back … I don’t know. I’ll never get another press conference. At least not without them leading in with tales of the bare-assed runner. The whole thing’s been turned into a yuppie joke. That bastard Johnson—”

“How did you round up the reporters without your car?” I was amazed at how focused she was in her anger, how righteous she seemed. Had she already forgotten Ellen?

It took her a moment to shift gears. “Oh that. I had a colleague drive me.”

“A colleague who was at the rally?”

“No.”

“Her name?”

“Why do you want to—Oh shit. Herman Ott.”

“Herman Ott?” The words were out of my mouth before I could catch them. Herman Ott, seedy Avenue private eye, living relic of the sixties, was a spiritual brother of Sam Johnson. Herman Ott would disdain The Girls’ Team as a socially irresponsible yuppie indulgence. In Bryn Wiley’s book, I would have guessed, the best that might be said of the sallow, paunchy, carelessly dressed Ott was that he was not asking for spare change. “What on earth could make Herman Ott drive you around to distribute flyers for a fitness center?”

“He concurs on my point,” Bryn said matter-of-factly, as if there was no irony to be considered. “He knows Johnson is deceiving his club members and abusing the poor.”

It was then that I thought of the old building where Ott worked. Above the shops on the ground floor, offices from the postwar era (post-World War One) had been converted into housing. The conversion had been informal—and illegal—for years. But now that it had the blessing of the city, the tenants who remained were too poor to afford better than two tiny rooms with plumbing down the hall. The Heat Exchange perched on top of that building.

Conviction makes strange bedfellows.

So that’s what those messages from Herman Ott were about. Those messages I’d tossed. They might have told me something that would have kept me from standing here now.

And Ellen Waller might not be lying dead.

I swallowed hard and shut my eyes against the picture of her being carried into the ambulance. It just wasn’t
right
that she had been erased so easily. It was like her life meant nothing.

I turned back to Bryn. “This is going to be a big, complex investigation. Let’s start at the beginning and get everything clear.” I pulled out my pad.

Bryn’s response was instantaneous. “Oh no! I’m not dealing with a beat cop on this. I told you: You get a Homicide investigator in here.”

“You got one. I’ve worked Homicide for four years. Maybe later, your case will be transferred to one of the men in Homicide. But for the moment it’s you and me on this.”

“I don’t—”

I held out the flat of my hand. “Bryn, even you don’t pick your investigator. But let me tell you, I am going to find Ellen’s killer, not because you’re kicking up a fuss, but because it’s my job. If this person aimed to kill you, then I’ll find your assailant, but not for you. For Ellen.”

I stood up, took a breath, and said, “You can help or you can get out of my way. Your choice.”

It was a moment before she said, “Okay, okay. But don’t think I don’t know you’re manipulating me.”

If she’d been Ellen, she would have said it with a grin.

I caught her eye and nodded. “Where was Ellen going when she left you this afternoon?”

“Joy riding, that’s what she said. She thought it was funny.” Her mouth quivered.

“So you don’t know where she went?”

“I’m sure she drove straight home. She didn’t want to drive. I had to insist …” Bryn swallowed, then hurried on. “She wouldn’t have driven a block more than she had to. Look, common sense—”

“Common sense says you don’t get shot.”

It was a moment before she admitted, “Okay, I don’t know.”

I nodded. “That was four thirty or so. Witnesses remember the car here at five thirty. Another witness heard shots about eight thirty. Why would she be in the car then?”

“I don’t know. Look, there was a reason Ellen didn’t drive. No, don’t look so vulturous; I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just that she was such a wretched driver. God knows, I wouldn’t be behind the wheel if I was as jumpy as she was.”

“And yet at eight thirty, four hours after she left you, she was sitting in the car, presumably coming back from somewhere or headed out.”

She stared at me, only for a moment, but long enough for me to see the flicker of desperation in her eyes. It was the same look Ellen had had, the one that had made their physical similarity so pronounced. Seeing it in Bryn shocked me—I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. When I checked her face again, there was nothing but anger. “What difference does it make whether Ellen was coming or going or just sitting in the driveway? The point is she never drove.
I
drove the car. Johnson saw it in the driveway, and of course, he assumed it was me driving. He shot to kill
me.
That’s what you need to concentrate on.”

The door rattled; Pereira walked in. I explained the procedure to Bryn and went over her statement, asking again for other suspects, she, insisting again that no one in the Bay Area but Sam Johnson had reason to kill her.

“You won’t be in any shape to do this tonight, but as soon as you are, I want you to think about everyone you’ve met in the last ten years. No, don’t protest. People go away and resurface; you forget about them but they’re still obsessing about you or some supposed wrong you did. Start from the present and think back. Think,” I said, “like your life depends on it.”