The Color of Light (24 page)

“Margot, dear,” she repeated. “On your account, I have been on the receiving end of a two-pronged browbeating delivered independently by my oldest and dearest friend, Gracie, and your Uncle Max, whom I raised from the time he was a scruffy little nose-picker until he was a licensed attorney.”

“What have I done now?” I asked, making a note of the nose picking.

“Not you,” she said. “It's what I didn't do. They both have the idea that by not telling you about Isabelle as soon as you were old enough to handle the information, I actually put you—your very life—in jeopardy.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But there's no point beating yourself up about it now.”

“Except,” she said in stentorian tones. “They both have decided that if I don't tell you what you want to know about Trinh, I might be putting you in jeopardy again.”

“Dear God,” I said. “What do you know?”

“Where to begin?” She sighed heavily. “All right, yes, there was another man, but it wasn't what you think. Trinh learned from the Red Cross that her sister Quynh was missing. Then she was contacted by someone who had proof of some sort that Quynh was being held for special punishment because she had American relatives. This person told Trinh he could get Quynh out of Vietnam, but it would be expensive. Trinh persuaded Bart to take out a second mortgage on their house to get the money. After they paid, they were told that the price had gone up. Bart, who is no man's fool, understood they were being extorted and went to the police.”

“Did he go to Chuck?”

“More likely he went to the police chief,” she said. “There were always issues between the Rileys and the Bartolinis. Chuck was a Vietnam vet, and he brought a whole lot of ugly opinions home with him.”

“Did the police do anything?”

“I have no idea,” Mom said. “Whatever they did, if anything, it didn't stop anything. Trinh had no money of her own, and the extortionist kept after her, telling her horror stories. So she asked an old friend for help, but he turned her down, too.”

“Was the friend Thai Van?” I asked.

“Yes, it was. She didn't ask him for money; she was too proud for that. She wanted him to use whatever connections he had in Vietnam to find Quynh, to learn whether she was even alive. But Van said it was too dangerous to ask questions, meaning dangerous for Quynh, but I think it was too dangerous for his group as well. He and Trinh had a terrible argument about it; she was desperate.”

“And Trinh told you all this?”

“She didn't have anyone else to talk to, and she was really very frightened.”

“Father John is in the business of listening.”

“Father John told her to pray. And so far, that hadn't worked for either her or Quynh,” Mom said.

“Where does the other man come in?”

“She was told she could pay Quynh's ransom with something other than money.”

“With sex?”

“I'm afraid so. I told her she would be crazy to do that. We argued about it, and she stopped talking to me.”

Her voice broke and it took her a few moments to get control again. After a long breath, she said, “Maggie, I made a terrible mistake. Rather, your father and I did. When Trinh told me that she was being blackmailed for sex, your dad went straight to the FBI.”

“You probably should have done that in the beginning.”

“It was a mistake,” she said. “Trinh was dead within the week.”

Sometime deep in the night
I awakened, naked, a lovely ocean breeze blowing across my skin. Jean-Paul was sprawled on his back, snoring softly, one arm under my pillow and the other across his bare chest. I got up quietly and went to the bathroom.

The day had been warm. Our old house had no air-conditioning because it is so rarely necessary. In the evening, as is our habit in the summer, I had opened all the upstairs windows and bedroom doors to let the breeze off the Bay cool the upper floor so it would be comfortable for sleeping. But before we went to bed, I had closed them all again, or thought I had, except for the windows in our room and Max's.

On my way back to bed, more awake than before, I realized there was also a breeze coming from across the hall. I slipped into a shirt Jean-Paul had draped on a chair and went to the door to look out. We had left the door ajar to listen for Max. When he got home from his dinner with Father John we were already asleep. But he made enough noise that it registered with me that he was in and had locked both of the deadbolts on the front door.

The house was absolutely still. I could hear Max snoring in the room next to ours and Jean-Paul's steady breathing behind me, but nothing more except the wind in the trees in the yard below. The door to my old bedroom moved gently back and forth in rhythm with the wind. Out of habit, I thought, I must have left the windows open in there. The breeze was lovely and we were on the second floor, so I pushed the door further open to let the air flow through to our room. Because I was up, again out of habit, I walked on down the hall to take a look at the entry through the mirror in the stairwell. Everything appeared to be as it should be.

I went down the stairs to double-check on things. There was no need to do this. All the downstairs doors and windows had new locks that we carefully secured before we went up to bed, and I'd heard Max shoot both front door bolts. I think that, because it was to be my last night in the house where I grew up, I went down out of nostalgia more than anything, a last nighttime look at the old place, its familiar shapes and shadows.

When I got to Dad's den, I went inside and checked the window the burglar had gone out through on Thursday night—it was closed and locked—and stopped to look around. There were empty spaces where Dad's big chairs had been; his bookcases were dark hollows. But I could still feel his presence in the room, imagine that the susurrus of the wind outside was him rustling papers on his big desk. Satisfied that all was secure, I said good-bye to Dad again and turned to go back upstairs to bed, to curl into the contours of Jean-Paul's body and fall asleep again to the lullaby of his quiet breathing.

I never saw movement, never heard a sound. Strong arms grabbed me from behind and spun me off my feet. Before I could yell, a hand clamped over my mouth and pressed my head back against a broad, hard chest. The smell of scotch and sweat got stronger as I struggled to get free. I pulled at the arms confining me, bit and scratched and kicked, feeling impotent, panicked, trapped, as I was carried into the far dark end of the den. I couldn't scream, I could hardly breathe, but I could flail my bare feet, hoping to topple anything I could that might rouse Max and Jean-Paul. I sank my teeth into the fleshy palm over my mouth and felt my captor wince, but he would not loosen his grip.

We were pressed into the corner behind a door, his back against the wall, when he put his lips on my ear. I thought he was going to bite me back, but he whispered, “Shh. Maggie, stop fighting. Please. It's me, Kevin. Stay quiet, I beg you. Someone's in the house.”

When I stopped struggling, slowly, gently, he set my feet on the floor, uncoiled his arms, and turned me to face him. I moved my jaw back and forth—it was sore. I was still terrified; why was Kevin in the house? He mouthed,
Sorry
, and put his finger to his lips, a plea to be quiet, and then he kissed the top of my head as apology, the way he would when we were kids and he had been an ass. I held up my palms, asking what was happening, but he only shook his head.

Under the murmuring wind, I heard a floorboard creak and knew exactly where the intruder was: on the far side of the closed dining room doors. I also knew how he had gotten into the house without a key. In the dining room floor there was an access hatch for the gravity heater under the house. A determined intruder could get into the heater area by getting into the crawl space under the house. Once he reached the heater, he could come inside through the hatch.

I grabbed Kevin and started toward the door to warn Jean-Paul and Max, upstairs sleeping. He raised a hand in front of me, an order to stop, and waited until I nodded agreement that I would stay put before he began to move on stocking feet along the edges of the room, headed for the hall. By then, the intruder had already put his weight on the creaky floorboard at the base of the stairs: he was headed up. I panicked and bolted forward. Kevin turned and pointed at me. I saw the gun in his other hand and stayed where I was.

The intruder was on the third step, where the banister makes a sound like a bird peep when anyone steps on the riser, when Kevin went out the door.

“Police,” I heard him say as the hall lights blazed on. “Stay where you are. Put your hands where I can see them. Stay where you are, stay where you are. Drop the weapon.”

Gunfire cleaved the night quiet. I hit the floor and started crawling toward the telephone. Kevin's bulk suddenly blocked the light streaming in from the hall, but he didn't make it into the room before he fell to the floor. Lying on his side, facing me, with a bloody hand he pushed his weapon toward me before his eyes closed. Whoever was out there was now running up the stairs. I knew Max and Jean-Paul had heard the gunshot and would probably be on their way to investigate. I held the gun at combat-ready with one hand as I punched 911 with the other. I laid the phone down and tried to pull Kevin further into the den, to get him behind closed doors. When I heard the dispatcher connect, I yelled, “Officer down, officer down. This location. Officer down. Active shooter.”

“Bitch!” The shooter pounded back down the stairs headed toward us. “Shut the fuck up.”

He'd reached the door, a looming blackness backlit from the hall. I was ready to fire when a gun blast spun him. I heard him swear, saw him grab his arm, saw him turn and raise his weapon before a second shot dropped him on his back.

Lying in the middle of the entry hall, Khanh Duc met my eyes and managed to say, “Bitch,” before he lost consciousness.

I kicked Duc's gun into the den, well out of his reach, before I ventured to look into the hall. Jean-Paul, as naked as the day he was born, stood on the top step holding the smoking Colt.

“Merde,”
he said, coming down the stairs. “I didn't have an opportunity to zero in the sight. The gun pulls right. First shot only winged him. You okay,
chérie
?”

“Yes.” I turned on the den lights and knelt beside Kevin. There was a bloody mess on the right side of his chest and he was having trouble breathing. I ripped open his shirt and put pressure on the bleeding wound. He began to cough blood.

Still holding the Colt, Jean-Paul knelt beside Duc, felt for a pulse. After a moment he looked up at me and shook his head.
“Fini.”

Max called out from somewhere upstairs, “All clear?”

“Come,” Jean-Paul said, kneeling beside me. “Bring towels and a blanket. A lot of towels.”

Max came down at a rush carrying an armload of towels from the hall bathroom and dragging the duvet from his bed. When he saw that Jean-Paul was naked, he took off his bathrobe and threw it over Jean-Paul's shoulders.

To help Kevin breathe, Jean-Paul elevated his shoulders so that Max could place the rolled duvet under him. Kevin's eyes fluttered open, saw us, managed a wan smile, before they closed again.

The sound track to this entire enterprise was the 911 dispatcher trying to get someone's attention. Max picked up the phone and demanded to know where the hell the paramedics and police were.

“I don't give a great goddamn about a barricaded shooter in the Marina. I have an officer down here. Detective Kevin Halloran of the Berkeley PD has a sucking chest wound so you damn well better get someone here now. Do you hear me? Now?”

Again, Kevin managed a little smile. Max kept the connection open, but he set the phone on the floor beside him.

As we kept pressure on Kevin's wound, the bleeding seemed to be under control, at least externally. With his shoulders raised he breathed a little more easily, but he needed more help than we could give him and he needed it very soon. The three of us stayed on the floor beside him, taking turns applying pressure. Watching the clock, hoping for sirens.

Duc's black sweats were covered with dirt from under the house. It made sense that he knew where the outside access to the crawl space was because he had spent a lot of time in the backyard with Dad, and probably would have used the faucet that was right next to one of the grated openings. Kevin's clothes were a bit rumpled, but they were clean.

“Max, I heard you bolt the front door when you came home,” I said. “How did Kevin get in here?”

“I brought him home with me,” Max said.

“Home from where?” I asked. “I thought you were having dinner with Father John.”

“Father John invited Kevin along.”

“Why? I thought you were having scotch and confession.”

“Yeah, that was the agenda,” Max said.

The towel under my hands was saturated with blood. When Jean-Paul took over from me, he put a fresh towel on top of the other and pressed. I wiped my bloody hands on my shirt and turned to my uncle.

“So?”

“Father John is dying, Maggie,” Max said. “He has some unfinished business he wants to take care of before it's too late, but he's stuck behind the seal of the confessional so there isn't much he can do by himself. When you think of all the people who have unburdened themselves to John, the secrets that he carries around—how he can look some of his parishioners in the eye knowing what he knows about them is a mystery to me. The thing is, he's heard the confessions of your parents, the Bartolinis, Kevin's folks, the Rileys, Quynh, Larry Nordquist, and I don't know who all. He's a smart man, our Father John. He couldn't help but put some of it together. Other than advising his parishioners to do the right thing, his hands were tied.”

“Did he unburden himself to you and Kevin?” I asked.

“He couldn't, could he?” Max checked the clock on the wall; where were the paramedics? “When I showed up at the rectory, Kevin was already there. It didn't take long to figure out what was up. John used an old lawyer's ploy; I do it all the time when I'm at trial. If I can't get evidence in one way, I'll get it in another. And that's what John was doing. He got Kevin and me together, directed the conversation onto Trinh's murder, and except for some occasional nudging, he left the rest to us. We had dinner, and then Kevin and I went over to the PD to go through the murder book and the paltry evidence that exists. We put together what he knew, what I knew, and the information you came up with, and made a couple of phone calls.”

“Did you get anywhere?” I asked. Kevin's eyelids fluttered; I put my hand along his cheek and he grew still.

Max glanced over at Duc's corpse. “Looks like someone thinks we did.”

I picked up the phone; the dispatcher was breathing on the other end of the line. “Where the hell are you people? It's been ten minutes.”

“Responders are on the way,” she said.

“How long?”

“They are on the way.”

We did not hear sirens. Max said, “Maybe we should put him in the car and take him to Emergency.”

“Moving him could be dangerous,” Jean-Paul said. “It's a tough call.”

Max puffed out a long breath, glanced at the clock again; the hands had hardly moved. To be useful, I got up and unbolted the front door. On my way back, I spotted Duc's gun where I had kicked it. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk and used it to pick up the gun. It was a Colt Commander, identical to Dad's.

“Jean-Paul,” I said, taking the gun to show him.

“What's the serial number?” he asked, gesturing for Uncle Max to take over with Kevin. I turned the gun over and found the engraved numbers. As I read them off, Jean-Paul compared them to the numbers on Dad's Colt. When I finished, he held out his hand for the gun. “Both came from the same shipment by the manufacturer to the Armory.”

“How did Duc get that gun?” I asked, thinking aloud, not expecting an answer. Mr. Loper told us that Chuck Riley showed him four new Colts, still in their boxes. How many did he actually have? And who all had he given them to?

Sirens and flashing lights, at last, raced toward us, coming from both ends of the street.