Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (2 page)

It was just before dawn, but the fog was so thick it might as well have been midnight; a cop would have to have X-ray vision to catch me in the act. I went behind a clump of bushes, dropped my drawers, and found myself quite unable to answer nature’s call. I’ve been camping all my life, but the art of urination alfresco is something I’ve never quite mastered. Normally, I scoffed at the patriarchal notion of penis envy, but at times like this I thought the good Viennese doctor may have had a point. I breathed deeply and tried to relax the relevant muscle group. And then there was a crash followed by a loud “Oof.” Rob was out of the van in about half a second. “Rebecca? Rebecca!”

“I’m over here. Peeing.” Lying, actually. By then I was standing up and tugging on my zipper; my bikini briefs were caught in it. No time to straighten it out then; I pulled my sweater down as far as it would go and nipped out in the open. Rob was already running up the hill. I caught up with him and we kept running. There was more noise up ahead, some sort of scrapings, so we figured we were headed in the right direction. We could see about two inches in front of us.

We ran for about a week and a half—why, I’m not sure. The “oof,” I guess. Perhaps someone was being attacked under the giant cross at the top of the mountain. On the other hand, running, even uphill, just before dawn in an eerie fog, with the smell of eucalyptus pungent in our nostrils, wasn’t the worst way to spend Easter morning. But I was getting tired. Rob was one curve ahead of me. “My God!” he said as he rounded it.

At first I couldn’t see what had startled him. I could see the cross, and it was very impressive indeed. I hadn’t realized it had a carved Jesus on it. The fog swirled then and I caught a glimpse of color—green spattered with red. “Jesus!” I said. But I was lying again. It wasn’t Jesus, or an artist’s depiction of Jesus, or even a prank. There was a man nailed to the cross—a man with white hair, wearing jeans and a green cowboy shirt, satin, I thought, with blood all over it.

The ladder was lying at the base of the cross, along with a rope. Somewhere quite near, a large animal scuffled in the brush and began to run, off to our left. Rob’s head swiveled toward the noise, then back to the cross. “He might not be dead,” I said, meaning the man on the cross. But his chin was on his chest and his eyes were staring open. And the running animal was, by now, clearly a two-footed one—no dog or deer ever crashed through brush quite so clumsily. Rob followed the noise, leaving me staring at a corpse.

But how could I be sure it really was a corpse? To my regret, I had some experience in these matters, but no expertise. If he wasn’t dead, I couldn’t just let him hang there. That was my first thought, I guess, but it was more or less subconscious. Consciously, all I could think of was how mad I was at Rob for leaving me alone.

The fog had lifted suddenly and I felt very naked. Maybe the person Rob was chasing wasn’t the killer. Maybe it was just some derelict, or even a solid citizen who’d come early for the sunrise service, like us. Maybe the real murderer was lurking about, and now I was all alone. I was terrified.

It was all I could do not to turn around and go running right back down the hill, but I still wasn’t sure the man was dead. I had to do something; or so my pathetic excuse for reasoning went. With quite a lot of effort, I lifted the ladder and leaned it against the cross. Then I started climbing up, about as distasteful an activity as I’ve ever undertaken. Not only was I frightened of any long-legged beast that might be in the neighborhood, I wasn’t too keen on ladders at the best of times. I took it slow and easy, breathing deeply on each rung, not courting hysteria by looking down. “Hold it right there!” said a female voice. I slipped off the ladder, knocking it over as I fell.

“Oof!” I said as I landed and rolled to the right, so as not to end up under the ladder. I realized as I did it that what I’d surely heard a few minutes ago was someone making precisely the same sort of wrong move.

I raised my hands over my head, outlaw fashion, and turned, sitting up, to see who’d captured me. I was expecting a police officer, maybe; I hadn’t really thought about it. But my nemesis was a scrawny woman in her thirties with straggly brown hair and no makeup. If she’d paid $2.50 for her outfit at the local Goodwill, she’d been robbed. One hand was in the pocket of a tattered ski jacket, and there was a bulge in the pocket large enough to be a gun. Or a beer bottle. I was betting on the latter. She took a step closer. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head, too stunned to speak.

“Stand up.”

I did, and took a step toward her, still holding my hands up. She moved back, but not before I caught the reek of alcohol. “That’s not really a gun, is it?”

“Stand back!”

I moved forward again. “If that’s a gun, let me see it.” I can’t really explain why I wasn’t terrified, except that the woman seemed so frail. Even if she had a gun, she didn’t look as if she’d have enough strength in her trigger finger to use it. Or maybe I could smell fear, like an animal. They say you revert to a primitive state under extreme stress. And this was extreme stress. I’d just discovered a body on a quiet Easter morning, been deserted by my own true love, fallen off a ladder, and was now being threatened by a ragamuffin who was either drunk or had recently been drunk. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I was in very real danger of wetting my pants. I was not about to brook any nonsense.

“This is a citizen’s arrest,” said the ragamuffin. Only it came out something like, “Thish ish a shitizens arresht.”

I giggled. Disrespectful, perhaps, in the presence of a corpse, but I couldn’t help it. Thish was ridiculous.

The woman waggled the thing in her pocket. Somewhere not far away, I heard a car start up.

“Come on,” I said, and put my hands down by my side. “Let’s talk it over.” I reached out my right hand, palm up, like cops do on TV when they’ve cowed the bad guy and he’s ready to release his hostages. The woman should have put her beer bottle or gun or whatever it was peacefully in my paw, but instead she whapped my hand with her weighted pocket. Maybe it really was a gun. It certainly hurt enough.

Without thinking, I drew back the injured member and used it to bash her. It
is
true about those primitive instincts. I bashed her and then I got her in a sort of half bear hug with the other arm. And then I found out how frail she was. She grabbed me with her free hand, kneed me in the stomach, and jerked me down to the ground.

I pulled her hair. That gave her the idea of pulling mine. My face was very close to hers and she positively stank of booze. If I didn’t wet my pants, I was certainly going to throw up. And that made me mad.

I started kicking, not really aiming, just flailing out. She started kicking, too, and we were banging up each other’s shins pretty well. My right arm was under her body, which felt a lot heavier than it looked. I tugged, trying to get it out, thinking I could use it to push her away. But she wasn’t budging. All of a sudden her grubby hand slammed down over my face, grinding hard.

“Ladies! Ladies, please!” said a gentle, rather cultured male voice. Through the ragamuffin’s fingers, I saw another hand cover hers, a black one, and suddenly she was off me, standing up, writhing to get away, but firmly held by an elderly gent in a cream-colored suit.

“Thanks,” I said, and sat up, getting my breath back.

“Easy. Easy now,” said the black man, and the woman relaxed. I didn’t blame her. He was a very reassuring sort of chap.

“Her pocket,” I gasped. “She may have a gun.”

“I don’t have no gun.” The woman’s voice was sulky. She pulled out a beer can. (I’d been partly right, anyhow.)

Heavy steps pounded toward us. “Rebecca—what’s going on?” yelled Rob. I got up and fell into his arms.

“Did you catch him?”

He shook his head. “He had a car. I heard him leave, but didn’t get a glimpse of him or the car.”

“People, people, will someone help me get to that poor man?”

The well-dressed black man, apparently undaunted at coming upon three maniacs and a probable corpse, was trying to jockey the ladder back into place. The minute his back was turned, the ragamuffin started to run. I tripped her. Not a civilized act, but I was still in my primitive state. She hit the ground cursing. I tried to help her up, but she flailed out at me.

“Rebecca!” Rob was shocked.

“She claimed she had a gun—”

I stopped in mid-explanation, the sound of sirens drowning me out. I looked up again at the man on the cross. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the fog had lifted enough so that the corpse must now be visible—perhaps some newspaper carrier or other early riser had called the police.

“Young woman,” said the black man, “your fly is open.”

“Who are you?” asked Rob, as I pulled my sweater back down.

“I am the Reverend Ovid Robinson of the Third Baptist Church. I am to give the sermon this morning. Who might you be, sir?” He didn’t extend his hand and I didn’t blame him.

But the opening was all Rob needed. He took over immediately, suddenly the reporter on a story, the self-appointed authority in charge. Quickly, he introduced himself and me, explained our presence, ran down the discovery of what was almost certainly a body, and was about to turn to the ragamuffin when the Reverend Mr. Robinson interrupted. “Very well, Mr. Burns. Now will you please help me do something for that poor man?” He pointed up at the cross. He practically had to yell to be heard above the approaching sirens.

“He’s dead,” said the ragamuffin. “Look at him.”

The sirens stopped suddenly and we could hear running. Mr. Robinson must have realized the belated rescue was better left to the cops. He stepped away, relinquishing authority to the resident newshawk.

“What’s your name?” Rob asked the ragamuffin.

“Miranda.”

“Miranda what?”

“Miranda Warning.” She cackled as if she’d just delivered the punch line of a knock-knock joke.

Rob let it go. I knew what he was thinking. He could get her name from the cops, but maybe not her story. He had to work fast. He went for shock tactics, nodding, hard-boiled fashion, toward the cross: “Did you kill him?”

“Hell, no. I hid in the car; on the floor in the back seat. You know where that two-timing sucker went? The Yellow Parrot. You know it?”

Rob nodded. “Gay bar.”

“The sucker was a faggot, all this time. I should have known, the way he treated me.”

“He went to the Yellow Parrot and then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?” She shrugged. “I fell asleep. I brought a six-pack along just in case. I drank it up, waiting for him, and then got another one. When I woke up, I was still in the car, parked down the hill. I heard a noise and came up here. I thought she killed him”—pointing at me—“so I tried to make a citizen’s arrest.”

“What’s his name?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come on, the cops are going to know in a few minutes, anyway.”

He was being too hard on her, I thought. I put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off. He walked down the path a little way, trying to get a glimpse of the first cops, hoping to figure out how much time he had, I guess, and then he walked back toward us. “Miss Warning. Why not tell us his name?” He was staring straight at her, trying to fix her with what passed for a steely gaze, but was really sort of a cobalt one, and he was paying no attention to where he was going. Which was how he came to twist his ankle and fall flat on his face.

I took a step to help him, but caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Miranda was off—off to the side, crashing through the brush. I forgot about Rob and went after her.

She was better at it than I was and seemed to know a few paths hidden in the bushes. But I was aided by a fall on my tuchus that resulted in a prolonged slide of twenty feet or more. Back on my feet, I dusted myself off and went after her again. I could just see her now. I was definitely gaining.

“Freeze!” The voice came over a megaphone. “Police! Freeze or we’ll blow your head off!”

Heads. They should have said heads, I thought. Or could they see only me? Miranda didn’t freeze and neither did I.

And then there was an awful noise. A noise like a hundred-cannon volley.

I hit the dirt so fast I got a mouthful of it.

I heard Rob yelling, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot—it’s Rebecca! Martinez, you jackass—that’s Rebecca down there!” Martinez. Oh, no. My least favorite cop. And now Rob had called him a jackass. Martinez would probably take him in for assaulting an officer—good thing he had his lawyer with him.

“If you’re down there, Miss Schwartz, stand up and put your hands over your head.”

Put my hands over my head! Martinez
was
a jackass. Why did he have to treat someone he knew to be an officer of the court like a common criminal? But this was no time to give him a lesson in manners. I stood up and put my hands over my head.

“Now walk back up the hill.”

He was doing it just to be a jerk. He could plainly see who I was and now he was making me walk back up the hill with my hands over my head. I wasn’t going to do it, that was all. I lowered my hands.

“Hands
up
, dammit!”

It’s a national disgrace that our criminal justice system can’t attract a better class of public servant. I take that back—it does, of course—I have every idea there are literally thousands of fine, dedicated, very intelligent police officers abroad in this great country of ours. I don’t know why I have the bad luck to keep running into Martinez and his lackluster sidekick, Inspector Curry. I put my hands back up and shouted, “She’s getting away!”

“Who, Miss Schwartz?” Martinez yelled in a tired voice. “Exactly who is getting away?”

What was I going to say? Miranda Warning? Did I want the entire San Francisco Police Department laughing in my face? I kept my mouth shut and marched; at least I did for about ten steps and, as I marched, a meditative state came over me.

That and something else. And then a third thing—a really foolproof idea for getting the best of Martinez.