Time and Trouble (42 page)

Emma had seen it in time and was braking.
“
Accident.
”
She exhaled dramatically, loudly, out of exasperation with the delay, or sympathy for the unlucky driver who hadn
’
t seen the next curve.

The other stuck drivers had turned off their ignitions and were milling around the scene, dark shadows in the fog.
“
Ghouls,
”
Emma said. Then she leaned closer to the windshield and tilted her head, squinting.
“
I know that guy.
”
She gestured to where three highway patrolmen stood.
“
Excuse me a sec.
”

So much for ghoulishness, Billie thought. The scene through the windshield was like a surrealistic silent film. Everything in motion and nothing clear-edged through the veil of fog. Drivers, hugging themselves in the chill, relieved it wasn
’
t them this time. A tow truck raising an oversized crane, its back aimed toward rescue in the brush. An ambulance, motor idling, exhaust rising and joining the gauzy air. A fire truck. The Highway Patrol
’
s motorcycles. And all lit by overbright lamps braced against trees and on car hoods, their light bouncing back from the wild dark beyond the slender paved ribbon.

This could last forever, Billie thought, wondering if they should attempt a U-turn on the narrow and congested mountain road, then backtrack to Sir Francis Drake. Couldn
’
t stop at Miriam
’
s, then, but who cared? Miriam
’
s fears were imaginary. Billie
’
s were real. Penny Redmond was still missing. Crazy Yvonne was still hellbent on proving something awful.

The fruitless search was exhausting Billie
’
s small fund of optimism. Even when and if they found Penny, nothing would be improved, given that her mother didn
’
t want her back. What was the point of all this? If, in fact, the girl was safer away from home, then her runaway instincts were correct and self preserving. Why beat the bushes for her?

And how could her mother jeopardize both her children
—
give Penny up and remain in an environment that endangered her skinny-necked little boy?

It was chilly in the car and she wasn
’
t dressed for it. Out at the side of the road, near the chrome-yellow tow truck, which huffed and heaved as it tried to raise the fallen car, Emma talked to a tall, potbellied man, showing more animation than Billie had ever seen from her. Hands pointing toward the tow truck, nods, head-shakes and finally, after what seemed an eternity, a handshake and return to the car. She looked straight ahead, through the windshield and her voice was tight.
“
Very bad news.
”

“
The driver
’
s dead?
”
It was and wasn
’
t a question. If they had recovered the body and there was any sign of life at all, there would be paramedics working frantically and the ambulance would not be idling.
“
I didn
’
t realize they had reached the car yet.
”

“
It
’
s just off the road. Didn
’
t fall far at all. Climbers were able to get down to it, to the body.
”

Billie swallowed hard and shook her head. What was there to say of the waste of life? It happened too often and too easily
—
too many drinks, too much velocity, too little belief in the laws of physics. Stupid and sad.

The tow truck inched forward. Billie couldn
’
t imagine how, with the limited space in front of it, it could haul up an entire car.

Emma cleared her throat and turned so that she was almost looking at Billie, as if she
’
d intended to, but couldn
’
t at the last moment.
“
The driver was murdered.
”

Billie stared at her in the dark. The pupils of her eyes caught some of the white of the lights outside, made Emma look feral. But also very sad. Very human.

“
Beaten around the head with something hard, like a baseball bat. The killer obviously expected the car to fall all the way down, maybe to burn, and in either case, the head wounds would be written off to the crash. But a gigantic tree stopped the fall, caught and held the car. It
’
s immediately off the road, nose-down.
”
She grew silent, but Billie knew it was only a pause.

She didn
’
t want to hear the rest. She already felt it aching in her marrow. No need for the finality of words, the confirmation. He was so vividly alive in her mind.

The yellow truck heaved and grunted and exhaled steam and the back of the fallen car slowly rose until it was visible over the road
’
s edge. It looked like no normal car. There was no softly curved bulge of trunk under a rear window.

A hearse the color of sunshine. A horribly apt choice for Stephen Tassio
’
s last ride.

Twenty-Five

They sat in silence for what felt a long time, watching the continued efforts of men and vehicles to rescue the car and restore the road, even if they could perform neither service for the driver.

Emma sat lost in thoughts of the sudden curves from life to death. She never thought about any young man
’
s death without putting her own son
’
s face on the victim. The habit was a ridiculous form of self-important hysteria. But she was never without a sore awareness in her solar plexus of her son
’
s vulnerability. Maybe every mother was. She
’
d never asked anybody else. She glanced over at Billie, then decided against starting now, and thought instead about Stephen Tassio.

Who was he that someone should waylay him, as seemed the case, murder him and disappear? It had to have been done within seconds. The road wasn
’
t busy this evening, but it was nonetheless one of only a handful of arteries from the ocean side of Marin, and never deserted for long. Precisely how long before she and Billie arrived at the bar had he left? Were the two phone calls related to this?

They
’
d had the right impulse, she and Billie, but their good intentions had only paved the road to hell. They hadn
’
t found or stopped Yvonne, and now Stephen Tassio was dead and she couldn
’
t help but wonder whether that was cause-and-effect.

Who had Stephen Tassio been besides a ticket away from home for Penny Redmond?

And, most of all,
what was the point?
It was a question she asked more and more often, and she was still waiting for the smallest whisper of an answer. It wasn
’
t as if she confronted senseless death on any regular basis. Aside from half of Nathaniel
’
s world in the plague years. But what was the point of any of it, of the sweat and time and brainpower to supposedly
“
solve
”
things? The effort put food on Emma
’
s table, but what good did it ultimately do? What had she or the lawyers she worked with, or the police or anybody ever truly
“
solved
”
?

The scene outside the car was alien and disorienting. Shadows cast by the white-hot lights were misplaced, as if a small sun had fallen to earth, textures unnaturally combined
—
misty swirls and fronds and bark against the chromed and lacquered surfaces of equipment, the deep silence of the mountain broken by low voices and the metal-on-metal cries of the machinery.

She heard her own jagged sigh with surprise. As did Billie, obviously. The girl, whose profile had been still as sculpture, turned sharply, her mouth slightly open.

She is surprised that I have human feelings.
The thought produced a bristling pang at the base of Emma
’
s skull. Neither the sensation, the resultant pain, nor the accusation behind it was new. It had been cultivated and maintained by Caroline
’
s nonstop insistence that she was Emma
’
s victim, the daughter of a woman lacking normal emotions.

And all because Emma was not the hugging, kissing, pat-on-the-back kind. She was the pay the bills and put-shoes-on-the-feet kind, but that didn
’
t suffice, and just because she didn
’
t constantly announce to the world the inner workings of her psyche
…

She realized how far into the muck of self-pity she
’
d sunk.
“
Up to my neck in dreck,
”
her friend Janine used to say, and although it wasn
’
t Emma
’
s lingo, she
’
d understood it immediately.

Emma yanked her attention and thoughts back to present reality. Billie was beside her, not Caroline. Billie was the one who
’
d been surprised that Emma had feelings, or, at least, had the same she herself had. Annoying, but not impossible to understand.

Emma had to get it through her skull that Billie also had a set of feelings. She had to see her without the lens of baseless resentment
—
because she was young, because she was beautiful, because she merely had to exist in order to produce smiles of welcome, because she was not nearly as tired as Emma was.

And she had probably never before had a close encounter with violent death.

She moved her hand six inches to the right so that it covered, softly, Billie
’
s. The younger woman
’
s mouth half opened again, but she didn
’
t pull her hand back.

“
It
’
s rough. Every time.
”
Emma patted Billie
’
s perfect, unlined and un-sunspotted, patrician hand. She would work at getting over those flares of rage at nature.

“
He
…”
Billie breathed in and out, shook her head.

Goddamn, she
’
s going to want to talk about it, Emma thought. Why do people say that actions speak louder than words if they then go on to insist on tons and tons of words. Inside other people, unsaid words apparently piled up, festered and inflicted pain. But why dump them on decent people?

Outside, the yellow tow truck moved into reverse with steel screams and warning beeps and the hearse, looking like a wounded behemoth, heaved back on the roadbed. People applauded and two drivers honked their horns either in a salute to the skilled rescue efforts or in impatience to get on with their commutes.

Billie sat still, her mouth tense. Damn. Emma knew how to get people to talk, pull out their feelings. She just didn
’
t like to use the techniques outside of billable hours.
“
Poor guy,
”
Emma said, and that pretty much covered it.

Unless you were Billie.
“
Nobody had a bad word to say about him,
”
she began.
“
He sounded generous, kind. Almost as if the person I made up for the ILM receptionist was who he really was. She wasn
’
t surprised that he
’
d have given me money and a place to sleep. Maybe in person I
’
d think he was nerdy. All that computer stuff, I don
’
t know. But I bet he was interesting. So young, too. And his fantasy life, that other world he was a part of. A nice Middle Ages, a world with codes of honor.
”

Eulogy for a stranger, Emma thought, but this wasn
’
t information she wanted. She didn
’
t want to know who Stephen Tassio had been, didn
’
t want to hear how Billie
’
s pain would shape her description and her tone. Didn
’
t want Stephen, who was irretrievably dead, becoming three-dimensional now.

“
The only negative words were his mother
’
s, about the quality of his associates. He didn
’
t check Dun and Bradstreet before he showed affection. Played at being a falconer, loved the world that almost was, the ideal world of six hundred years ago. The people who should have sheltered him, loved him unconditionally, or even conditionally
…
It doesn
’
t seem surprising that he was attracted to a dream world of sorts, to a new family of other dreamers. People entirely unlike those
…
his
…
.
”
She shook her head again, tendrils of hair like blonde fog in the light of the distant lamps.
“
I don
’
t get it, how people treat their children.
…
I wonder what his mother will feel when the police come to her house. Grief? Irreparable loss? Or
—
since she
’
d written him off as an embarrassment already
—
relief?
”

Again there was silence, but this silence was soft-edged, wrapped around them, not sitting between them.

“
And who would have
—
could have
—
done that to him? How? Didn
’
t anybody see the attack?
”

“
It wouldn
’
t take long,
”
Emma said.
“
If he was the kind of person you said, he
’
d have stopped if somebody seemed in trouble. And then what? A minute?
—
two? He
’
d be taken completely by surprise.
”
She sighed.
“
Yvonne,
”
she said softly.