Unfit to Practice (22 page)

“Not exactly. Although you have been very frank and helpful.”

She nodded and said, “Anything I can do.”

“What I need to know is how you ended up getting subpoenaed.”

“I explained that to Kevin when he called. And incidentally, tell him not to call again. I'm with somebody else.”

And I bet that somebody else writes beautiful love letters in Cyrillic script, Paul thought. “Explain it to me one more time.”

“Simple. The phone rang last Friday morning about seven. My parents talked to this lawyer named Riesner, Lisa's lawyer. He told them he'd heard Kevin and I had been involved in a serious sexual relationship. They didn't believe it at first. It shocked them quite a bit when I admitted it. I hated it coming out that way. I felt bad that I hadn't told them before on my own, so that wasn't fun. There was some shouting, you know how it is. Then a little later someone came to the door, a grungy-looking man wearing a wrinkled flowered shirt looking lost. At that point, my parents weren't in any shape to answer, so I did. He said, ‘Ali Peck?' I said, ‘How'd you know my name?' He handed me some papers and I said, ‘Listen, pal, I'm sorry, I already go to the Lutheran church,' and he said, ‘It's a subpoena, dollface. Read it and weep.'

“My parents read it and they called their lawyer. He said I was a witness in Kevin's hearing that same day and he could get the hearing continued if I wanted but eventually I'd have to tell the truth because now Lisa knew. I said I might as well get it over with even though I was plenty nervous. Then I needed to talk with my parents for a long time, explain everything until they understood. After that discussion, my parents said they respected my need to live my own life.”

So sixties, thought Paul.

“So our lawyer talked to Lisa's lawyer and gave me advice on how to testify and what they were going to ask me. The whole experience was pretty gross. Very embarrassing, but the worst thing was knowing I was hurting Kevin. But I couldn't lie about the big stuff. That would be perjury.”

Paul made some notes, looked at the healthy radiant girl in blue jeans with the bright future, and said, “Just wondering. Why didn't you call Kevin before the hearing? A little advance warning. That sort of thing.”

“I had a
lot
going on! My parents upset. A trig test I might miss. Kevin would have cried, too. He wouldn't have even thought about
my
feelings. About how I, an innocent party, got sucked into this ugly custody hearing.” She picked up the ax and ran her finger along the edge.

“This subpoena came as a complete shock to you.”

“Yes. Kevin said Lisa's lawyer sort of implied that I called him and told him about us. That's a complete lie.”

Paul closed his notebook. “Just one more little thing I need to go back to, Ali. You said that Lisa Cruz never knew about the affair until the time you were subpoenaed.”

“No one knew. Kevin would never have told her.”

“You're a woman of the world,” Paul said. “Obviously you're no fool. Don't you think Lisa might have figured it out? Maybe from Kevin's attitude, or his lack of interest in her—”

“She kicked him out of her bed and for some reason expected him to stick by her. She drove him crazy, starting up one manic lifestyle racket after another, then, when it didn't fix her life or make her happy, she turned off like a run-down battery toy. I really think he tried to make her happy for a long time, but she's one of those people who's so self-absorbed, she barely registered him.”

Paul nodded. He stood up just as a Ford Explorer rolled into the driveway. Paul passed the man and woman inside on his way to the Mustang out front. “It's okay, Mom,” Ali called.

Like their daughter, the Pecks practically vibrated good health, but they looked nervous. He would be, too, if he had Ali for a daughter.

After his visit with Ali, Paul stopped in at the South Lake Tahoe police station to check out the Bronco theft investigation. As soon as he walked into the building, old, familiar sensations assaulted him, which quickly overrode his well-being.

He hadn't fit into the San Francisco Police Department from the beginning. Following a beer or two, when he felt insightful, he sometimes reflected that the cause of his unease there was not only a generalized problem with granting any idiot authority over him. His problem was also with
specific
idiots, the officious ones that seemed to have an almost military need to break his spirit and create the right kind of soldier. He irked them. They irked him. And one day, after a series of incidents, rather than granting him yet another promotion in Homicide, he was fired for insubordination.

Now, just over forty, entering what should be his maturity, he still got riled at the signs ordering this and that, the stone-faced officer on duty, the vigilant questions, the general militaristic smell of the place. But he disguised his prejudices, gave a pleasant smile to the cop at the desk, and asked to see one of the officers who had responded to the theft of Nina's Bronco.

After turning his ID this way and that, as if to make better sense of it from a different angle, the cop said, looking closely at Paul, “Officer Scholl's on duty,” buzzing the inner sanctum. Officer Scholl came out and asked him to walk her over to her car. She was going off duty now, and was dressed in a red turtleneck sweater over slacks and ankle boots, civilian clothing that flattered her stocky body.

They walked out together into the damp mountain world, where breezes whispered softly, and plump, new, green acorns on a huckleberry oak shrub made the ugliness of human behavior in a place like this so much more difficult to stomach than in any given urban slum.

“There's nothing to report,” Scholl told him with a frown after he explained his mission.

“Any progress on the missing files?”

“Nope.”

The speed in her step made him rush to keep up. “Things have been happening in these cases that suggest—a possibility that someone is using information from the files.”

She stopped, turned to face him, and put her hands on her hips. “What things?”

“Sorry. I can't discuss the specifics.”

“Huh. You people.” She took off again. They reached her car, a midsized family sedan. She pushed a button on a keyring remote to click the lock open. “Doesn't matter that we can't do our job, doesn't matter if people may get hurt, must keep the lying client's secrets.”

Frustration overrode all other feelings. “Officer, we need those files back.”

“You're a real one-note samba.”

“I know you don't have the best opinion of Nina Reilly. But she appreciates your getting her vehicle back, and says you've been very professional in your dealings with her.”

“My personal feelings don't interfere with my job.”

“Exactly what I'm saying. I'm glad you were able to put your differences aside and find her Bronco.”

“You have new information I can use?”

Paul was silent.

“Of course you don't. We got the vehicle back, that saved her a bundle, but now some backseat litter's missing, which no one will describe. Well, that's just tough, isn't it? Tough for us, tough for her.” She opened the car door. “Mr. van Wagoner, I'm off duty. I've got better things to do than to listen to you grumble about this problem not getting priority over the dozens of other cases we're handling.”

“Listen, I'm aware you have bigger trouble in this town than a defense attorney's missing papers. I was a cop.”

“I know,” she broke in. Seeing his surprise, she said, “You think in a little town like this when a city type like you comes nosing around we aren't interested? You run an investigative agency in Carmel, which has business when it wants it. You've been coming up here for a couple of years now, working mostly for Nina Reilly and only occasionally for other private clients. You were fired from the SFPD years ago. You went to work for the Monterey Police Department and that didn't work out either. You have a buddy on the force here, Sergeant Fred Cheney. He speaks well of you or I wouldn't be standing here.”

“How is he?”

“Working too hard.”

“So what you're saying is—”

“Don't give me any more shit about Nina Reilly's petty problems, 'kay? It's my investigation and it's open. I do my job whether I like the vic or not. Anything else?” She got in her car and stomped on the accelerator, swinging out of her parking space with a cop's practiced skill.

Hands in his pockets, Paul watched her drive away. Scholl hadn't liked talking to him but she had done it. Was she looking for the files at all or had she back-burnered them? He couldn't say. He didn't like the way she said Nina's name. He didn't like her tone, civil in the middle and hostile around the edges. He could use police help on this—hell, he could use any help at all on this. He couldn't think of another case where leads had vaporized into smoke so fast.

He walked beyond the courthouse to the city jail. Cody Stinson had not been moved to Placerville as yet, which was convenient. At the jail, Paul submitted to the usual rigmarole before being admitted to a visiting area. Stinson came in shortly after.

“You!” he said. As slight in build as Mario Lopez was built-up, Stinson was spending his time in jail creatively, sculpting a new goatee. “You're the one who tackled me. They ought to arrest you, not me. I wasn't doing anything illegal at that shelter. I even knocked. What in hell was that woman doing with a gun, anyway? I didn't do nothing!”

Paul explained his purpose. “We just want to know who tipped you off about the two women you met at the beach.”

“Why should I help you?”

“I'm trying to get to the bottom of all this. If I do, and if you are innocent, that's got to help you, Cody.” This was sticky strategy. If Cody was innocent, well, he might jump. If he was guilty he still might jump, because people in jail leap for any old broken rings if they think there might be some advantage. “If we find another bad guy in all this, you'll get out of jail.”

Cody thought for a while, scratching his chin with a stubby finger. He had bad skin, which the overhead lights exaggerated. “I got a call.”

“From?”

“I don't know. Somebody. Probably a guy, but it sounded like the voice might have been changed. Synthesized or something.”

“What did this person say?”

“Told me some names and where these people lived. Told me that these women were running around telling the cops and the D.A. and anybody who would listen that I strangled Phoebe that night. That they saw me at the camp later that night.”

“When did the call come? What day of the week?”

“I don't know. Last weekend. Saturday, I think.”

“To your house?”

“Yeah.”

“You listed?”

“Yeah.”

“So you decided to talk to the witnesses, straighten them out.”

“That's right. Like I told you, I'm an innocent man. They've got no business running all over town wrecking my good name.”

“So how'd you find them?”

“I called around. Called Brandy Taylor's house in Palo Alto. Their machine message gave her cell number out. I called the number a couple of times. When I finally reached her, she asked did I know where Bruce was? So I, uh, played along you might say. Told her he wanted to meet her, that his cell phone was broke so he couldn't call her himself. Can you believe she bought that? People ought to be more careful. She must have been desperate to see the guy.”

“You met her at the beach just to talk?”

“That's right. But those two ladies, they're loons. Before I could even introduce myself, they started screaming and jumping around. I tried to settle them down, and the one got knocked over. Things went from bad to seriously bad. Then, you know, I holed up at the Hilltop in Truckee. Laid low.”

“While you waited for some money to come in.”

“That's right. Mario tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“He has a share coming, if I ever contact that guy that owes us, which doesn't look too likely with me stuck here.”

“Mario would be delighted to hear that.”

“Yeah, he probably thinks I'm planning to stiff him. Maybe I will. Least I can do for Phoebe.”

“You mean because if you didn't kill Phoebe, odds are, he did.”

“Yeah. Bastard,” Cody said. “How could he do that? You think you know someone. Oh, I'll never get over her. I can't believe she's gone. You ever see a picture of her?”

Paul nodded.

“Then you know she was drop-dead hot. But she was somebody, you know? A real nice person, warm. Homey. She also had this completely lousy singing voice.” He sang a few notes in a grinding, off-key falsetto. “Like that. Bad enough to bend a spoon. She knew she sounded terrible, but she didn't give a damn, sang all the time anyway, loud.” He sighed. “She'd tickle my face with that silky black hair of hers to wake me up. . . . We were just starting to talk kids when Mario showed up.” He shook his head, sounding forlorn. “Jealousy's a mean, unpredictable son of a bitch.”

“While you were at the Hilltop, you got another call? I mean, how did you know those two women were staying at the women's shelter?”

“I called Carol—a family friend—and we got to talking. We were guessing where two ladies who wanted to feel safe might hide. She told me about the shelter. Before her divorce she escaped from her former old man there once.”

Paul remembered that name. “Carol Ames is the woman who gave you the alibi for that night.”

“She wasn't lying. She never even knew I left. She sleeps hard. It was easy to sneak out.”

“Who is she?”

“Just Carol. She's always around.”

“A girlfriend?”

“No, man, I was with Phoebe and Carol was clear on that. Carol's from way back. After I had the run-in with Phoebe and Mario at the campground, I went over to her apartment. She's a good lady and she opened the door and said I could stay. I was blasted. She could see I didn't want to be alone. I sat down at her kitchen table, thinking about going back. She tried to talk sense into me, but you can't talk sense to a jackass, which is what I am. So we went to bed. She fell asleep but I was tortured, man, thinking about Phoebe. So I snuck out. Look where it landed me.”

“What happened at the campground that night, Cody?”