Act of Deceit

Chapter 34

“T rudy fell in love with Artie and bought the guns they used to kill Tsukamata,” Sonny said, as he drove them from the property that night.

“Why’d they kill him?”

“He suspected that Artie and Robert weren’t who they claimed to be and they were afraid he’d eventually figure it out. Artie got Tsukamata to pull him over for speeding and Robert was already set up on a rooftop with a rifle. The police came knocking on Trudy’s door a week after the murder. They just couldn’t prove she knew what the guns were for when she bought them, otherwise they would’ve charged her as an accessory.”

Donnally was lying in the back of the wagon, his head once again covered with the ski mask. But this time, instead of holding his gun, he held his cell phone, pressing “send” to call his home number, then disconnecting after his voice mail picked up in order to create a cell site trail back to the area of Trudy’s house.

“So she fled up here so she couldn’t be used as a witness against them?” Donnally asked.

“That’s what she thinks. But it’s no more real than her symptoms.”

“You mean they’re all psychosomatic?”

“Of course. You saw all the craft stuff she’s made. She’s like everybody else in the world. People do what they want to do. While most people rationalize when they don’t want to face something, Trudy paralyzes herself physically.”

“Why don’t you all confront her instead of coddling her?”

“It’s not my problem, it’s Bear’s. But he ain’t gonna do it either. She pretends he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress from the Vietnam War and he pretends she really is sick. It’s a perfect marriage of neuroses.”

“Where was he last night?”

“On guard duty.”

“Against who?”

“Everybody.” Sonny chuckled. “Real and imaginary.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Donnally asked, “What’s upstairs?”

“Which upstairs? Anna’s?”

Donnally laughed. “You know I’m not asking about Anna’s.”

“Let’s just call it their workshop.”

Donnally rolled from his side to his back on the hard wagon bed and waited for Sonny to explain what he meant.

“You want to drag this out or just tell me?” Donnally finally said.

“You’ll never find the place again, so why not? They make most of their money sorting and cleaning marijuana for the growers up here.”

“I figured it was something like that, but I assumed they were the growers. I saw the tanker and generator.”

“Not for twenty years or so. Now they rent the equipment out to others. I think they’re nuts to keep doing what they’re doing. A lot of people would kill to find out where this place is so they could bust in when they’re sorting and steal the crop. It would be the quickest hundred grand anybody ever made.”

“Would kill or did kill?”

“You’re quick,” Sonny said. “That was one of the theories in the days after Anna was murdered. Some people thought that R2T2 did it. Trudy had made a run up to supervise a harvest. People were thinking that R2T2 were trying to get Anna to give up where the grow was so they could rip it off. Life on the run costs a lot of money, and it wasn’t like they could hold day jobs. But Rover getting busted put that theory to rest.”

“Did Anna even know what was going on up here?”

“Sure. She didn’t like her mother doing it, but couldn’t stop her. Anna grasped what Trudy had refused to. Peace and love were dead and marijuana had become a business no different than heroin and speed. By the early 1980s even the Hare Krishnas were into the drug trade and had left a trail of bodies from Twin Peaks in San Francisco to the New York harbor.”

“Somehow I don’t see Trudy being capable of marijuana growing. It’s tough work. Hiking the hills, planting and harvesting.”

“She wasn’t always that way.”

“You mean she didn’t have these symptoms when Anna was growing up?”

“They kicked in later.”

“When?”

Sonny laughed and accelerated down the dirt road. “I’ll let you answer that one yourself.”

It wasn’t until Donnally once again heard the popping gravel that he got it: Trudy hadn’t gone into hiding after the police knocked on her door to question her about Tsukamata, but only after her daughter’s murder in 1986. And her guilt revealed itself, to everyone but herself, in the form of her psychosomatic symptoms.

“You mean it really was R2T2 who killed Anna, trying to find out where the marijuana operation was?” Donnally asked. “And Trudy had once protected the guys who later came back and killed her daughter?”

The question died in the rumbling of tires and grinding of gears, and Sonny answered with his silence.

Donnally was glad that Mauricio’s cowardice had kept him from looking for Anna himself. It had saved him from the truth, and from the tragedy that he’d delivered his sister up to an equally cowardly woman that Anna had sacrificed her life to protect.

He remembered a line spoken by a janitor, leaning on his broom in an army hospital hallway during one of his father’s movies: A hypochondriac is just a sociopath without courage.

That was Trudy Keenan.

And in that moment, Donnally felt sadder for Anna than at any time since he first read her name in Mauricio’s letter.