A Woman’s Eye

“FULL CIRCLE” by Sue Grafton

SUE GRAFTON’s private eye Kinsey Millhone is, along with Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, one of three female investigators who revolutionized crime fiction in the 1980s. Her alphabetized book titles, beginning with “A” is for Alibi sad now extending through “G” is for Gumshoe, have proved enormously popular. Ms. Grafton lives in Santa Barbara, California, a community much like Kinsey’s “Santa Teresa.”

The accident seemed to happen in slow motion… one of those stop-action sequences that seem to go on forever though in truth no more than a few seconds have elapsed. It was Friday afternoon, rush hour, Santa Teresa traffic moving at a lively pace, my little VW holding its own despite the fact that it’s fifteen years out of date. I was feeling good. I’d just wrapped up a case and I had a check in my handbag for four thousand bucks, not bad considering that I’m a female private eye, self-employed, and subject to the feast-or-famine vagaries of any other free-lance work.

I glanced to my left as a young woman, driving a white compact, appeared in my side view mirror. A bright red Porsche was bearing down on her in the fast lane. I adjusted my speed, making room for her, sensing that she meant to cut in front of me. A navy-blue pickup truck was coming up on my right, each of us jockeying for position as the late afternoon sun washed down out of a cloudless California spring sky. I had glanced in my rearview mirror, checking traffic behind me, when I heard a loud popping noise. I snapped my attention back to the road in front of me. The white compact veered abruptly back into the fast lane, clipped the rear of the red Porsche, then hit the center divider and careened directly into my path. I slammed on my brakes, adrenaline shooting through me as I fought to control the VW’s fishtailing rear end.

Suddenly a dark green Mercedes appeared from out of nowhere and caught the girl’s car broadside, flipping the vehicle with all the expertise of a movie stunt. Brakes squealed all around me like a chorus of squawking birds and I could hear the successive thumps of colliding cars piling up behind me in a drumroll of destruction. It was over in an instant, a cloud of dust roiling up from the shoulder where the girl’s car had finally come to rest, right side up, half-buried in the shrubbery. She had sheared off one of the support posts for the exit sign that now leaned crazily across her car roof. The ensuing silence was profound.

I pulled over and was out of my car like a shot, the fellow from the navy-blue pickup truck right behind me. There must have been five of us running toward the wreckage, spurred by the possibility of exploding gasoline, which mercifully did not ignite. The white car was accordion-folded, the door on the driver’s side jammed shut. Steam billowed out from under the hood with an alarming hiss. The impact had rammed the girl head first into the windshield, which had cracked in a star-burst effect. She was unconscious, her face bathed in blood. I willed myself to move toward her though my instinct was to turn away in horror.

The guy from the pickup truck nearly wrenched the car door off its hinges in one of those emergency-generated bursts of strength that can’t be duplicated under ordinary circumstances. As he reached for her, I caught his arm.

“Don’t move her,” I said. “Let the paramedics handle this.”

He gave me a startled look but drew back as he was told. I shed my windbreaker and we used it to form a compress, stanching the flow of blood from the worst of her cuts. The guy was in his twenties, with dark curly hair and dark eyes filled with anxiety.

Over my shoulder, someone was asking me if I knew first aid, and I realized that others had been hurt in the accident as well. The driver from the green Mercedes was already using the roadside emergency phone, presumably calling police and ambulance. I looked back at the guy from the pickup truck, who was pressing the girl’s neck, looking for a pulse.

“Is she alive?” I asked.

“Looks like it.”

I jerked my head at the people on the berm behind me. “Let me see what I can do down there until the ambulance comes,” I said. “Holler if you need me.”

He nodded in reply.

I left him with the girl and moved along the shoulder toward a writhing man whose leg was visibly broken. A woman was sobbing hysterically somewhere close by and her cries added an eerie counterpoint to the moans of those in pain. The fellow from the red Porsche simply stood there numb, immobilized by shock.

Meanwhile, traffic had slowed to a crawl and commuters were rubbernecking as if freeway accidents were some sort of spectator sport and this was the main event. Sirens approached. The next hour was a blur of police and emergency vehicles. I spotted my friend John Birkett, a photographer from the local paper, who’d reached the scene moments behind the paramedics. I remember marveling at the speed with which news of the pileup had spread. I watched as the girl was loaded into the ambulance. While flashbulbs went off, several of us gave our accounts of the accident to the highway patrol officer, conferring with one another compulsively as if repetition might relieve us of tension and distress. I didn’t get home until nearly seven and my hands were still shaking. The jumble of images made sleep a torment of sudden awakenings, my foot jerking in a dream sequence as I slammed on my brakes again and again.

When I read in the morning paper that the girl had died, I felt sick with regret. The article was brief. Caroline Spurrier was twenty-two, a senior psychology major at the University of California, Santa Teresa. She was a native of Denver, Colorado, just two months short of graduation at the time of her death. The photograph showed shoulder-length blond hair, bright eyes, and an impish grin. According to the paper, six other people had suffered injuries, none fatal. The weight of the young woman’s death settled in my chest like a cold I couldn’t shake.

My office in town was being repainted, so I worked at home that next week, catching up on reports. On Thursday, when the knock came, I’d just broken for lunch. I opened the door. At first glance, I thought the dead girl was miraculously alive, restored to health, and standing on my doorstep with all the solemnity of a ghost. The illusion was dispelled. A close look showed a blond woman in her midforties, her face etched with weariness.

“I’m Michelle Spurrier,” she said. “I understand you were a witness to my daughter’s accident.”

I stepped back. “Please come in. I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Spurrier. That was terrible.”

She moved past me like a sleepwalker as I closed the door.

“Please sit down. Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head, looking around with bewilderment as if she couldn’t quite remember what had brought her here. She set her purse aside and sank down on my couch, placing her cupped hands across her nose and mouth like an oxygen mask.

I sat down beside her, watching as she breathed deeply, struggling to speak. “Take your time,” I said.

When the words came, her voice was so low I had to lean closely to hear her. “The police examined Caroline’s car at the impound lot and found a bullet hole in the window on the passenger side. My daughter was shot.” She burst into tears.

I sat beside her while she poured out a grief tinged with rage and frustration. I brought her a glass of water and a fistful of tissues, small comfort, but all I could think to do. “What are the police telling you?” I asked when she’d composed herself.

She blew her nose and then took another deep breath. “The case has been transferred from traffic detail to homicide. The officer I talked to this morning says it looks like a random freeway shooting, but I don’t believe it.”

“God knows they’ve had enough of those down in Los Angeles,” I remarked.

“Well, I can’t accept that. For one thing, what was she doing speeding down the highway at that hour of the day? She was supposed to be at work, but they tell me she left abruptly without a word to anyone.”

“Where was she employed?”

“A restaurant out in Colgate. She’d been waiting tables there for a year. The shift manager told me a man had been harassing her. He thinks she might have left to try to get away from him.”

“Did he know who the guy was?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t sure. Some fellow she’d been dating. Apparently, he kept stopping by the restaurant, calling her at all hours, making a terrible pest of himself. Lieutenant Dolan tells me you’re a private detective, which is why I’m here. I want you to find out who’s responsible for this.”

“Mrs. Spurrier, the police here are very competent. I’m sure they’re doing everything possible.”

“Skip the public relations message,” she said with bitterness, “I have to fly back to Denver. Caroline’s stepfather is very ill and I need to get home, but I can’t go unless I know someone here is looking into this. Please.”

I thought about it briefly, but it didn’t take much to persuade me. As a witness to the accident, I felt more than a professional interest in the case. “I’ll need the names of her friends,” I said.

I made a note of Mrs. Spurrier’s address and phone number, along with the name of Caroline’s roommate and the restaurant where she’d worked. I drew up a standard contract, waiving the advance. I’d bill her later for whatever time I put in. Ordinarily I bypass police business in an attempt to stay out of Lieutenant Dolan’s way. As the officer in charge of homicide, he’s not crazy about private eyes. Though he’s fairly tolerant of me, I couldn’t imagine what she’d had to threaten to warrant the referral.

As soon as she left, I grabbed a jacket and my handbag and drove over to the police station, where I paid six dollars for a copy of the police report. Lieutenant Dolan wasn’t in, but I spent a few minutes chatting with Emerald, the clerk in Identification and Records. She’s a heavy black woman in her fifties, usually wary of my questions but a sucker for gossip.

“I hear Jasper’s wife caught him with Rowena Hairston,” I said, throwing out some bait. Jasper Sax is one of Emerald’s interdepartmental foes.

“Why tell me?” she said. She was pretending disinterest, but I could tell the rumor cheered her. Jasper, from the crime lab, is forever lifting files from Emerald’s desk, which only gets her in trouble when Lieutenant Dolan comes around.

“I was hoping you’d fill me in on the Spurrier accident. I know you’ve memorized all the paperwork.”

She grumbled something about flattery that implied she felt flattered, so I pressed for specifics. “Anybody see where the shot was fired from?” I asked.

“No ma’am.”

I thought about the fellow in the red Porsche. He’d been in the lane to my left, just a few yards ahead of me when the accident occurred. The man in the pickup might be a help as well. “What about the other witnesses? There must have been half a dozen of us at the scene. Who’s been interviewed?”

Emerald gave me an indignant look. “What’s the matter with you? You know I’m not allowed to give out information like that!”

“Worth a try,” I said equably. “What about the girl’s professors from the university? Has Dolan talked to them?”

“Check it out yourself if you’re so interested,” she snapped.

“Come on, Emerald. Dolan knows I’m doing this. He was the one who told Mrs. Spurrier about me in the first place. I’ll make it easy for you. Just one name.”

She squinted at me suspiciously. “Which one’s that?”

I took a flier, describing the guy in the pickup, figuring she could identify him from the list by age. Grudgingly, she checked the list and her expression changed.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “I might know you’d zero in on this one. Fellow in the pickup gave a phony name and address. Benny Seco was the name, but he must have made that up. Telephone was a fake, too. Looks like he took off and nobody’s seen him since. Might have been a warrant out against him he was trying to duck.”

“How about the guy in the Porsche?”

I heard a voice behind me. “Well, well, well. Kinsey Mill-hone. Hard at work, I see.”

Emerald faded into the background with all the practice of a spy. I turned to find Lieutenant Dolan standing in the hallway in his habitual pose: hands shoved down in his pants pockets, rocking on his heels. He’d recently celebrated a birthday, his baggy face reflecting every one of his sixty years.

I folded the police report and tucked it in my bag. “Mrs. Spurrier got in touch with me and asked me to follow up on this business of her daughter’s death. I feel bad about the girl.”

His manner shifted. “I do, too,” he said.

“What’s the story on the missing witness?”

Dolan shrugged. “He must have had some reason to give out a phony name. Did you talk to him at the scene?”

“Just briefly, but I’d know him if I saw him again. Do you think he could be of help?”

Dolan ran a hand across his balding pate. “I’d sure like to hear what the fellow has to say. Nobody else was aware that the girl was shot. I gather he was close enough to have done it himself.”

“There’s gotta be a way to track him down, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” he said. “No one remembers much about the man except the truck he drove. Toyota, dark blue, maybe four or five years old from what they say.”

“Would you object if I checked back with the other witnesses? I might get more out of them since I was there.”

He studied me for a moment, then reached over to the file and removed the list of witnesses, which he handed to me without a word.

“Don’t you need this?” I said, surprised.

“I have a copy.”

“Thanks. This is great. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Dolan pointed a finger. “Keep in touch with the department. I don’t want you going off half-cocked.”

I drove out to the campus area to the restaurant where Caroline Spurrier had worked. The place had changed hands recently, the decor downgraded from real plants to fake as the nationality of the food changed from Mexican to Thai. The shift manager, David Cole, was just a kid himself, barely twenty-two, tall, skinny, with a nose that belonged on a much larger face.

I introduced myself and told him I was looking into Caroline’s death.

“Oh, yeah, that was awful. I talked to her mom.”

“She says you mentioned some guy who’d been bugging her. What else can you tell me?”

“That’s about all I know. I mean, I never saw the guy myself. She was working nights for the last couple months and just switched back to days to see if she could get away from him.”

“She ever mention his name?”

“Terry something, I think. She said he used to follow her around in this green van he drove. She really thought the dude was bent.”

“Bent?”

“You know… twisted.” He twiddled an index finger beside his head to indicate his craziness.

“Why’d she go out with him?”

“She said he seemed like a real nice guy at first, but then he got real possessive, all jealous and like that. In the and, I guess he was totally nuts. He must have showed up on Friday, which is why she took off.”

I quizzed him, but couldn’t glean much more from his account. I thanked him and drove over to the block of university housing where Caroline had lived. The apartment was typical of student digs; faintly shabby, furnished with mismatched items that had probably been languishing in someone’s garage. Her roommate was a young woman named Judy Layton, who chatted despondently as she emptied kitchen cabinets and packed assorted cardboard boxes. I kept the questions light at first, asking her about herself as she wrapped some dinner plates in newspaper, shoving each in a box. She was twenty-two, a senior English major with family living in town.

“How long did you know Caroline?”

“About a year,” she said. “I had another roommate, but Alice graduated last year. Caroline and I connected up through one of those roommate referral services.”

“How come you’re moving out?”

She shrugged. “Going back to my folks’. It’s too late in the school year to find someone else and I can’t afford this place on my own. My brother’s on his way over to help me move.”

According to her, Caroline was a “party-hearty” who somehow managed to keep her grades up and still have a good time.

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“She dated lots of guys.”

“But no one in particular?”

She shook her head, intent on her work.

I tried again. “She told her mom about some guy harassing her at work. Apparently she’d dated him and they’d just broken up. Do you have any idea who she might have been talking about?”

“Not really. I didn’t keep track of the guys in her life.”

“She must have mentioned this guy if he was causing such a fuss.”

“Look. She and I were not close. We were roommates and that was it. She went her way and I went mine. If some guy was bugging her, she didn’t say a word to me.”

“She wasn’t in any trouble that you knew about?”

“No.”

Her manner seemed sullen and it was getting on my nerves. I stared at her. “Judy, I could use a little help. People get murdered for a reason. It might seem stupid or insignificant to the rest of us, but there was something going on. What gives?”

“You don’t know it was murder. The policeman I talked to said it might have been some bozo in a passing car.”

“Her mother disagrees.”

“Well, I can’t help you. I already told you everything I know.”

I nailed her with a look and let a silence fall, hoping her discomfort would generate further comment. No such luck, If she knew more, she was determined to keep it to herself. I left a business card, asking her to phone me if she remembered anything.

I spent the next two days talking to Caroline Spurrier’s professors and friends. From the portrait that emerged, she seemed like a likable kid, funny, good-natured, popular, and sweet. She’d complained of the harassment to a couple of classmates without giving any indication who the fellow was. I went back to the list of witnesses at the scene of the accident, talking to each in turn. I was still tantalized by the guy in the pickup. What reason could he have to falsify his identity?

I’d clipped out the news account of Caroline Spurrier’s death, pinning her picture on the bulletin board above my desk. She looked down at me with a smile that seemed more enigmatic with the passing days. I couldn’t bear the idea of having to tell her mother my investigation was at an impasse, but I knew I owed her a report.

I was sitting at my typewriter when an idea came to me, quite literally, in a flash. I was staring at the newspaper picture of the wreckage when I spotted the photo credit. I suddenly remembered John Birkett at the scene, his flash going off as he shot pictures of the wreck. If he’d inadvertently snapped one of the guy in the pickup, at least I’d have something to show the cops. Maybe we could get a lead on the fellow that way. I gave Birkett a call. Twenty minutes later, I was in his cubbyhole at the Santa Teresa Dispatch our heads bent together while we scanned the contact sheets.

“No good,” John said, “This one’s not bad, but the focus is off. Damn. I never really got a clear shot of him.”

“What about the truck?”

John pulled out another contact sheet that showed various views of the wrecked compact, the pickup visible on the berm behind. “Well, you can see it in the background, if that’s any help.”

“Can we get an enlargement?”

“You looking for anything in particular?”

“The license plate,” I said.

The California plate bore a seven-place combination of numbers and letters that we finally discerned in the grainy haze of the two blowups. I should have called Lieutenant Dolan and had him run the license number, but I confess to an egotistical streak that sometimes overrides common sense. I didn’t want to give the lead back to him just yet. I called a pal of mine at the Department of Motor Vehicles and asked him to check it out instead.

The license plate was registered to a 1984 Toyota pickup, navy blue, the owner listed as Ron Cagle with an address on McClatchy Way.

The house was stucco, dark gray, with the trim done in white. My heart was pounding as I rang the bell. The fellow’s face was printed so indelibly in my memory that when the door was finally opened, I just stood there and stared. Wrong man. This guy was probably six foot seven, over two hundred pounds, with a strong chin, ruddy complexion, blue eyes, auburn hair, red moustache. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Ron Cagle.”

“I’m Ron Cagle.”

“You are?” My voice broke in astonishment like a kid reaching puberty. “You’re the owner of a navy-blue Toyota pickup?” I read off the number of the license plate.

He looked at me quizzically. “Yes. Is something wrong?”

“Well, I don’t know. Has someone else been driving it?”

“Not for the last six months.”

“Are you sure?”

He half laughed. “See for yourself. It’s sitting on the parking pad just behind the house.”

He pulled the door shut behind him, leading the way as the two of us moved off the porch and down the driveway to the rear. There sat the navy-blue Toyota pickup, without wheels, up on blocks. The hood was open and there was empty space where the engine should have been. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m about to ask you. This truck was at the scene of a recent accident where a girl was killed.”

“Not this one,” he said. “This has been right here.”

Without another word, I pulled out the photographs. “Isn’t that your license plate?”

He studied the photos with a frown. “Well, yes, but the truck isn’t mine. It couldn’t be.” He glanced back at his pickup, spotting the discrepancy. “There’s the problem…”He pointed to the license. The plate on the truck was an altogether different set of numbers.

It took me about thirty seconds before the light finally dawned. “Somebody must have lifted your plates and substituted these.”

“What would be the point?”

I shrugged. “Maybe someone stole a navy-blue Toyota truck and wanted plates that would clear a license check if he was stopped by the cops. Can I use your telephone?”

I called Lieutenant Dolan and told him what I’d found. He ran a check on the plates for the pickup sitting in the drive that turned out to match the numbers on a vehicle reported stolen two weeks before. An APB was issued for the truck with Cagle’s plates. Dolan’s guess was that the guy had left the state, or abandoned the pickup shortly after the accident. It was also possible that even if we found the guy, he might not have any real connection with the shooting death. Somehow I doubted it.

A week passed with no results. The silence was discouraging. I was right back where I started from with no appreciable progress. If a case is going to break, it usually happens fast, and the chances of cracking this one were diminishing with every passing day. Caroline Spurrier’s photograph was still pinned to the bulletin board above my desk, her smile nearly mocking as the days went by. In situations like this, all I know to do is go back to the beginning and start again.

Doggedly I went through the list of witnesses, calling everybody on the list. Most tried to be helpful, but there was really nothing new to add. I drove back to the campus to look for Caroline’s roommate. Judy Layton had to know something more than she’d told me at first. Maybe I could find a way to worm some information out of her.

The apartment was locked, and a quick peek in the front window showed that all the furniture was gone. I picked up her forwarding address from the manager on the premises and headed over to her parents’ house in Colgate, the little suburb to the north.

The house was pleasant, a story and a half of stucco and frame, an attached three-car garage visible at the right. I rang the bell and waited, idly scanning the neighborhood from my vantage point on the porch. It was a nice street, wide and treelined, with a grassy divider down the center planted with pink and white flowering shrubs. I rang the bell again. Apparently no one was home.

I went down the porch steps and paused in the driveway, intending to return to my car, which was parked at the curb. I hesitated where I stood. There are times in this business when a hunch is a hunch… when a little voice in your gut tells you something’s amiss. I turned with curiosity toward the three-car garage at the rear. I cupped my hands, shading my eyes so I could peer through the side window. In the shadowy interior, I saw a pickup, stripped of paint.

I tried the garage’s side entrance. The door was unlocked and I pushed my way in. The space smelled of dust, motor oil, and primer. The pickup’s license plates were gone. This had to be the same truck, though I couldn’t think why it hadn’t been dumped. Maybe it was too perilous to attempt at this point. Heart thumping, I did a quick search of the cab’s interior. Under the front seat, on the driver’s side, I saw a handgun, a.45.1 left it where it was, eased the cab door shut, and backed away from the truck. Clearly, someone in the Layton household had been at the murder scene.

I left the garage at a quick clip, trotting toward the street. I had to find a telephone and call the cops. I had just started my car, shoving it into gear, when I saw a dark green VW van pass on the far side of the divider and circle back in my direction, headed toward the Laytons’ drive. The fellow driving was the man I’d seen at the accident. Judy’s brother? The similarities were obvious, now that I thought of it No wonder she’d been unwilling to tell me what was going on! He slowed for the turn, and that’s when he spotted me.

If I’d had any doubts about his guilt, they vanished the minute he and I locked eyes. His surprise was replaced by panic, and he gunned his engine, taking off. I peeled after him, flooring it. At the corner he skidded sideways and recovered, speeding out of sight. I went after him, zigzagging crazily through a residential area that was laid out like a maze. I could almost chart his course ahead of me by the whine of his transmission. He was heading toward the freeway.

At the overpass, I caught a glimpse of him in the southbound lane. He wasn’t hard to track, the boxy shape of the van clearly visible as we tore toward town. The traffic began to slow, massing in one of those inexplicable logjams on the road. I couldn’t tell if the problem was a fender-bender in the northbound lane, or a bottleneck in ours, but it gave me the advantage I needed. I was catching him.

As I eased up on his left, I saw him lean on the accelerator, cutting to his right. He hit the shoulder of the road, his tires spewing out gravel as he widened the gap between us. He was bypassing stalled cars, hugging the shrubbery as he flew down the berm. I was right behind him, keeping as close to him as I dared. My car wasn’t very swift, but then neither was his van. I jammed my accelerator to the floor and pinned myself to his tail. He was watching me steadily in his rear-view mirror, our eyes meeting in a deadlock of determination and grit,

I spotted the maintenance crew just seconds before he did; guys in bright orange vests working with a crane that was parked squarely in his path. There was no way for him to slow in time and no place else to go. His van plowed into the rear of the crane with a crash that made my blood freeze as I slammed on my brakes. I was luckier than he. My VW came to a stop just a kiss away from death.

Like a nightmare, we repeated all the horror of the first wreck. Police and paramedics, the wailing of the ambulance. When I finally stopped shaking, I realized where I was. The road crew was replacing the big green highway sign sheared in half when Caroline Spurrier’s car had smashed into it. Terry Layton died at the very spot where he killed her.

Caroline’s smile has shifted back to impishness in the photograph above my desk. I keep it there as a reminder, but of what I couldn’t say. The brevity of life, perhaps, the finality of death… the irony of events that sometimes connect the two. We live in a world in which justice is skewed.