E Is for Evidence

24

We sat in her room near French doors that opened onto a balcony facing the sea. Sheer curtains were pulled across the doorway, billowing lazily in a wind that smelled of salt. The bedroom suite was dark and old, a clumsy assortment of pieces she and Woody must have salvaged from their early married years: a dresser with chipped veneer, matching misshapen lamps with dark-red silk shades. I was reminded of thrift-store windows filled with other people's junk. Nothing in the room would qualify as "collectible," much less antique.

She sat in a rocker upholstered in horsehair, frayed and shiny, picking at the fabric on the arms of the chair. She looked awful. The skin on her face had been blanched by Olive's death and her cheeks were mottled with liver spots and threaded with visible capillaries. She looked as though she'd lost weight in the last few days, the flesh hanging in pleats along her upper arms, her bones rising to the surface like a living lesson in anatomy. Even her gums had shrunk away from her teeth, the aging process sud-denly as visible as in time-lapse photography. She seemed weighed down with some as yet unidentified emotion that left her eyes red-rimmed and lusterless. I didn't think she'd survive it, whatever it was.

She had clumped her way back to her room with the aid of her walker, which she kept close to her, holding on to it with one trembling hand.

I sat in a hard-backed chair near hers, my voice low. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I said.

"I think so. I should have spoken up sooner, but I so hoped my suspicions were groundless. I thought we'd bur-ied the past. I thought we'd moved on, but we haven't. There's so much shame in the world as it is. Why add to it?" Her voice quavered and her lips trembled as she spoke. She paused, struggling with some inner admonition. "I promised Woody I wouldn't speak of it again."

"You have to, Helen. People are dying."

For a moment, her dark eyes sparked to life. "I know that," she snapped. The energy was short-lived, a match flaring out. "You do the best you can," she went on. "You try to do what's right. Things happen and you salvage what's left."

"Nobody's blaming you."

"I blame myself. It's my fault. I should have said some-thing the minute things began to go wrong. I knew the connection, but I didn't want to believe it, fool that I am."

"Is this related to Woody?"

She shook her head.

"Who then?"

"Lance," she whispered. "It started with him."

"Lance?" I said, disconcerted. It was the last name I expected to hear.

"You'd think the past could be diffused… that it wouldn't have the power to affect us so long after the fact."

"How far back does this go?"

"Seventeen years, almost to the day." She clamped her mouth shut, then shook her head again. "Lance was a hellion in his teens, rebellious and secretive. He and Woody clashed incessantly, but boys do that. Lance was at an age when of course he had to assert himself."

"Ash says he had a couple of scrapes with the law back then."

She stirred impatiently. "He was constantly in trouble. 'Acting out' they call it now, but I didn't think he was a bad boy. I still don't. He had a troubled adolescence…"She broke off, taking a deep breath. "I don't mean to belabor the point. What's done is done. Woody finally sent him off to military school, and after that he went into the army. We hardly saw him until he came home that Christmas on leave. He seemed fine by then. Grown up. Mature. Calm and pleasant and civil to us both. He became interested in the company. He talked about settling down and learning the business. Woody was thrilled." She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief, which she pressed to her lips, blotting the film of perspiration that had formed like dew.

So far she wasn't telling me a thing I didn't already know. "What happened?"

"That year… when Lance came home and things were going so well… that year… it was New Year's Day. I remember how happy I was things were off to such a good start. Then Bass came to us with the most preposter-ous tale. Somehow, in my heart, I suppose I've always blamed him. He spoiled everything. I've never really for-given him, though it was hardly his fault. Bass was thirteen then. Sly. He knew about wickedness even at that age and he enjoyed it all so very much."

Still does, I thought. "What did he tell you?"

"He said he'd walked in on Lance. He came straight to us with that sneaky look in his eyes, pretending to be so upset when he knew exactly what he was about. At first, Woody didn't believe a word of it."

"He walked in on Lance doing what?"

There was a silence and then she pushed on, her voice dropping so low I was forced to lean closer. "With Olive," she whispered. "Lance and Olive. In her room on the bed. She was sixteen and so beautiful. I thought I'd die of the shame and embarrassment, the loathing at what was going on. Woody was crazed. He was in a towering rage. Lance swore it was innocent, that Bass misunderstood, but that was nonsense. Absurd to think we'd believe any such thing. Woody beat Lance to within an inch of his life. A fearful beating. I thought he'd kill him. Lance swore it only happened once. He swore he'd never lay another hand on her and he honored that. I know he did."

"That's when Olive was sent away to boarding school," I said.

Helen nodded.

"Who else knew about the incident?"

"No one. Just the five of us. Lance and Olive, Bass and Woody and me. Ebony was off in Europe. Ash knew some-thing dreadful had happened, but she never knew what it was."

There was a silence. Helen smoothed the frayed fabric on the arm of the rocker where she'd picked strands loose. She glanced at me. Her expression seemed tinged with guilt, like an old dog that's piddled somewhere you haven't discovered yet. There was more, something she didn't want to own up to.

"What's the rest?" I asked. "What else?"

She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink in patches.

"Just tell me, Helen. It can't matter now."

"Yes, it does," she whispered. She'd begun to weep. I could see her clamp down, forcing her feelings back into the box she'd kept them in all these years.

I waited so long that I didn't think she meant to finish. Her hands began to shake in a separate dance of their own, a jitterbug of anxiety.

Finally she spoke. "Lance was lying about the two of them. It had gone on for years. Woody never knew, but I suspected as much."

"You suspected Lance was abusing her and you never interfered?"

"What could I say? I had no proof. I kept them away from each other whenever I could. He'd go off to summer camp. She'd stay with friends of ours in Maine. I never left them alone in the house. I hoped it was a phase, something that would disappear of its own accord. I thought if I called attention to it… I don't know what I thought. It was so unspeakable. A mother doesn't sit a boy down and discuss such things. I didn't want to pry, and Olive denied the slightest suggestion that anything was amiss. If she'd come to me, I'd have stepped in. Of course I would, but she never said a word. She might have been the one who initiated the contact for all I knew."

"How long did this go on?" I was having a hard time keeping the judgment out of my voice, afraid if she sensed the full range of my outrage, she'd clam up.

"Lance was obsessed with her almost from infancy. He was five when she was born and I was so relieved, you see, that he didn't resent her. It was just him and Ebony until Olive came along. He'd been the baby so I was de-lighted he seemed taken with her. It must have started as childish curiosity and advanced to something else. It did end once they were discovered. They could hardly toler-ate each other's company these past few years, but by then the damage had been done. She had terrible problems."

"Sexual problems, I'd assume."

Helen nodded, cheeks coloring. "She also suffered deep depressions that would go on for months. All she did was run, run, run. Anything to escape the feelings. Play and spend. Spend and play. That's how she lived."

Rapidly I sorted through all the things I'd been told, processing the trivia I'd picked up in passing. "Olive said she and Bass had a falling-out when he was home for Thanksgiving. What was that about?"

"Something silly. I don't even remember now what the subject matter was. One of those ridiculous spats peo-ple get into when they've drunk too much. Bass was furi-ous and wanted to get back at her, but it wasn't about anything. Petty temper, that's all."

I watched her carefully, making my mind a blank, trying to let the sense of this filter in. It had started with Lance, with Wood/Warren, talk of a takeover, evidence of insurance fraud. Someone had set Lance up and I'd been caught in the same trap. When Olive died, I'd assumed it was business-related, an accident. It was meant to look like that, but it wasn't. I felt the answer leap at me, so obvious once I knew what had gone on. "Oh shit," I said. "Bass told Terry, didn't he?"

"I think so," she said, almost inaudibly. "I don't think Terry's like the rest of us. He's not a well man. He doesn't seem right to me. Even when they met, he seemed 'off' somehow, but he was crazy about Olive…"

" 'Obsessed' is the word I've heard applied," I broke in. "That he worshiped the ground she walked on."

"Oh, he adored her, there's no doubt of that. It was just what she needed and I thought it would all work out. She had such a low opinion of herself all her life. She couldn't seem to sustain a relationship until Terry came along. I thought she deserved a little happiness."

"You mean because she was 'damaged goods,' don't you? Tainted by what Lance had done."

"Well, she was tainted. Who knows what bestial appe-tites Lance had wakened in her?"

"That was hardly her fault."

"Of course not, but what nice boy was ever going to look at her if the truth came out? Terry seemed like a godsend."

"So the two of you decided not to say anything to him."

"We never spoke of it between us," she said tartly, "so we could hardly speak of it to him. Why stir up trouble when everything was going so well?"

I got up abruptly and went to the phone, dialing Lieu-tenant Dolan's number at the Santa Teresa PD. The clerk said she'd put me through and I waited for Dolan's line to ring. Helen was right. What was done was done. There wasn't any point in blaming Bass. If anything, the blame lay with Helen and Woody. Olive died because Helen was too bloody polite to deal with the truth.

"Where's Terry now?" I said to Helen over my shoul-der.

She was weeping openly. It seemed a little late for tears, but I didn't say so. "He was here a short while ago. He's on his way home."

When Dolan answered, I identified myself and laid it out for him, chapter and verse.

"I'll have him picked up for questioning," Dolan said. "We'll get a warrant so we can search the premises. He put that bomb together somewhere."

"He might have assembled it at work."

"We'll check that," he said. "Hang on." He put his hand across the mouth of the receiver and I could hear him issue an order to someone else in the room. He came back on the line. "Let me tell you what we have on this end. We got a match on the prints we lifted from the rental car Lyda Case was found in. They belong to a fellow named Chris Emms, who was charged with the murder of his foster mother twenty years ago. Blew her up with a pack-age bomb he sent through the mail. The jury brought in a verdict of temporary insanity."

"Oh geez, I get it. No prison for him."

"Right. He was committed to the state hospital at Camarillo and escaped after eighteen months."

"And he was never picked up?"

"He's been free as a bird. I just talked to one of the staff docs and they're hunting up the old records to see what else they have on him."

"Was he really nuts or faking it?"

"Anybody who does what he did is nuts."

"Will you let the family know as soon as he's in cus-tody?"

"Will do. I'll send somebody over in the meantime just in case he decides to come back."

"You better beef up security at Wood/Warren, too. He may make a try for Lance."

"Right," Dolan said. He broke off the connection.

I left Helen huddled in the rocker. I went downstairs, looking for Ebony, and told her what was going on. When I let myself out, she was on her way upstairs to see her mother. I couldn't imagine what they'd talk about. I had a flash of Olive sailing through the air, flying to oblivion. I just couldn't shake the image. I drove home feeling low, my perpetual state these days. I get tired of digging around in other people's dirty laundry. I'm sick of knowing more about them than I should. The past is never nice. The secrets never have to do with acts of benevolence or good deeds suddenly coming to light. Nothing's ever resolved with a handshake or a heart-to-heart talk. So often, human-kind just seems tacky to me, and I don't know what the rest of us are supposed to do in response.

Under the bandages, my burns were chafed and fiery hot, throbbing dully. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. With my hair singed across the front and my eye-brows gone, I looked startled somehow, as if unprepared for the sudden conclusion to the case at this point. Quite true. I hadn't had time to process events. I thought about Daniel and Bass. Mentally I had to close the door on them, but it felt like unfinished business, and I didn't like that. I wanted closure, surcease. I wanted peace of mind again.

I pushed through the gate, pulling mail out of the box as I passed. I let myself into my place, and slung my hand-bag on the couch. I felt a desperate need to take a bath, symbolic as it was. It was only 4:00 in the afternoon, but I was going to scrub up and then go pound on Rosie's door. It was Tuesday and she was bound to be back in business by now. My neighborhood tavern usually opens at 5:00, but maybe I could sweet-talk her into letting me in early. I needed a heavy Hungarian dinner, a glass of white wine, and someone to fuss at me like a mother.

I paused at my desk and checked my answering ma-chine. There were no messages. The mail was dull. Belat-edly, I registered the fact that my bathroom door was closed. I hadn't left it that way. I never do. My apartment is small and the light from the bathroom window helps illu-minate the place. I turned my head and I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. The knob rotated and the door swung open. That portion of the room was in shadow at that hour of day, but I could see him standing there. My spinal column turned to ice, the chill radiating outward to my limbs, which I couldn't will to move. Terry emerged from the bathroom and circled the couch. In his right hand he had a gun pointed right at my gut. I felt my hands rise automatically, palms up, the classic posture of submission guns seem to inspire.

Terry said, "Oops, you caught me. I expected to be gone by the time you got home."

"What are you doing here?"

"I brought you a present." He made a gesture toward the kitchenette.

Trancelike, I turned to see what he was pointing to. On the counter was a shoe box wrapped in Christmas paper, white HO HO HO's emblazoned on a dark-green background with a cartoon Santa swinging from each O. A preformed red satin bow was stuck to the lid. Surprise, surprise. Terry Kohler wanted me to have a box of death.

"Nice," I managed, though my mouth was dry.

"Aren't you going to open it?"

I shook my head. "I think I'll just leave it where it is. I'd hate to give it a bump."

"This one's on a timer."

I managed to loosen my jaw, but I couldn't form any words. Where had I put my gun? My mind was washed absolutely blank. I reached for the edge of my desk, supporting myself with my fingertips. Bombs are loud. The end is quick. I cleared my throat. "Sorry to interrupt you," I said. "Don't stick around on my account."

"I can stay for a minute. We could have a little chat."

"Why kill me?"

"It seemed like a good idea," he said mildly. "I thought you might like to go out with a bang, as opposed to a you-know-what."

"I'm surprised you didn't try for Lance."

"I have a package just like it in the car for him."

Probably in the bottom of my handbag, I thought. I'd meant to take it to the gun shop. Had I stuck it in the briefcase in the back seat of my car? If so, it was still out there and my ass was grass. "Do you mind if I sit?"

He did a quick survey of the area, making sure there weren't any rifles, bullwhips, or butcher knives within range. "Go ahead."

I moved to the couch and sank down without taking my eyes off him. He pulled my desk chair closer and sat down, crossing his legs. He was a nice-looking man, dark and lean, on the slight side. There was nothing in his man-ner to indicate how nuts he was. How nuts is he? I thought. How far gone? How amenable to reasoning? Would I trade my life for bizarre sexual favors if he asked? Oh sure, why not?

I was having trouble appraising the situation. I was home where I should have been safe. It wasn't even dark out. I really needed to pee, but it sounded like a ploy. And honest to god, I was embarrassed to make the request. It seemed advisable to try opening a dialogue, one of those conversations designed to ingratiate. "What's the timeta-ble here?"

He glanced at his watch. "Ten minutes, more or less. The bomb should go off at four-thirty. I was worried you wouldn't get home in time," he said. "I can reset it, but I don't want to mess the wrapping paper up."

"I can understand that," I said. I checked the clock on my desk. 4:22. I could feel my adrenal gland squirt some juice into my veins. Terry didn't seem concerned. "You seem calm enough," I remarked.

He smiled. "I'm not going to be around when the damn thing goes off. They're dangerous."

"How can you keep me here? You'll have to shoot me first."

"I'll tie you up. I have some rope." I could see then that he had a coil of clothesline he'd tossed on the kitchen floor.

"You think of everything," I said. I wanted him to talk. I didn't want him to tie me up because then I'd be dead for sure. There wasn't going to be any way to hump and thump my way out. No broken glass by which I could saw through my ropes. No knives, no tricks, no miracles. "What if it goes off prematurely?"

"Too bad," he said with mockery, "but you know what Dylan Thomas said. 'After the first death, there is no other.'"

"How does Hugh Case fit in? Do you mind if I ask? I just want to know for the sake of it."

"I don't mind. We don't have anything else to talk about. Hugh was made the security officer after Woody bid on a government contract. We were all going to have to have clearances, but the guy went overboard. Forms, in-terviews, all these questions. He really took himself seri-ously. At first I thought it was all a game, but gradually I realized he was coming up with too many penetrating questions. He knew. Of course, he wanted my fingerprints. I stalled as long as possible, but I couldn't refuse. I had to kill him before he told Woody all the sordid details."

"About your mother."

"Foster mother," he corrected.

"Wouldn't somebody else have come up with the same information?"

"I'd figured a way around it, but I needed him out of the way for it to work."

"But you don't know that he was actually onto you."

"Oh, but I do and he was. I destroyed the file he kept at work, but he had a duplicate at home. Talk about a breach of security," he said. "That came to light just re-cently."

"Lyda found it."

"Now that was your fault. After you flew to Texas, she went through the papers she'd packed up and came across all the data on Chris Emms. She had no idea who he was, but she figured it was someone at the plant. She called me from Dallas and said she had some information Hugh had unearthed. I told her I'd be happy to take a look at it and help her figure out what to do with it. She made me prom-ise not to mention it to Lance since she was so suspicious of him anyway."

"Nice," I said. "And the threat from her… you just made that up?"

"Yep."

"And the day we waited at the bird refuge, she was already dead out in front?"

"Righty-o," he said.

"How'd you kill Hugh?"

Terry shrugged indifferently. "Chloral hydrate. Then I strolled in and stole his blood and urine samples so it couldn't be traced."

"Takes nerve," I said.

"It had to be done and I knew I was right. I couldn't have him upsetting my life. What made me so mad after-wards, of course, is it was all for nothing. Olive had a past just as bad as mine. I didn't need to protect myself at all. I could have traded her, tit for tat, if she'd leveled with me."

"You must feel better now that she's gone. She's been paid in full, hasn't she?"

His face clouded. "I should have killed Lance and left her alive. I could have made her life miserable."

"I thought you'd already done that."

"Well, yes, but she didn't suffer nearly enough. And now she's off the hook."

"She did love you," I said.

"So what?"

"So nothing. I guess love doesn't count for much with you." I felt my eyes stray to the clock. 4:25.

"Not when it's based on lies and deceit," he said pi-ously. "She should have told me the truth. She never shared the facts. She let me go right on believing our sex life was all my fault. She made me think I was inadequate when all the time it was her. Sometimes I think about him with his mouth all over her, feeding like a leech, sucking at her everywhere. Disgusting," he said.

"That was a long time ago."

"Not long enough."

"What about Andy Motycka? How'd you persuade him to help?"

"Money and threats. The carrot and the stick. Janice was hosing him for every cent he had. I paid him ten grand. Every time he got nervous, I reminded him that I'd be happy to tell Janice about Lorraine if he tried to back out."

"How'd you find out about her?"

"We've all known each other for years. The four of us went to UCST together before he and Janice got married. This was after I conjured up my new identity, of course. Once I settled on the frame-up, it didn't take much to figure out he was in the perfect position to assist me."

"Did you kill him too?"

"I wish I had. He ducked out on me, but I'll find a way to lure him back. He's not very smart."

Even with the tinnitus I suffer, I could have sworn I could hear the package bomb ticking merrily. I wet my lips. "Is there really a clock in there? Is that how it works?"

He glanced over at the kitchen counter. "It's not a complicated device. The one for Olive was more elabo-rate, but I had to make sure it would detonate on impact."

"It's amazing I wasn't killed then."

"Might have simplified things," he said.

I remembered then how he'd bent to recoil the hose lying on the walk. Any excuse to hang back out of range. I was beginning to feel strangely free. The time left was brief, but it was beginning to stretch and sag like a long strand of chewing gum. It seemed absurd to think I'd spend the last minutes of my life discussing trivial points with the man who was going to do me in. Oh hell, why not, you know? I flashed again to my brief flight off the front of Olive's porch while she soared beyond me like a bird. A death like that barely registers. What scared me was sur-viving, maimed and burned, living long enough to feel the loss of self. Time to make a move, I thought, regardless of the consequences. Once your life is threatened, what else do you have to lose?

I reached for my handbag. "I've got some tranqs in my bag. Do you mind?"

He seemed startled, waving his gun at me. "Leave it where it is."

"I'm a wreck, Terry. I really need a Valium. Then you can tie me up."

"No," he said peevishly. "Don't touch it. I mean it!"

"Come on. Indulge me. It's a small request."

I pulled the bag over and unzipped the top, rooting through the contents until I located the crosshatched ivory handle of my beloved.32 and eased the safety off. He couldn't believe I'd disobey him, but he couldn't seem to think what to do.

As he rose to his feet, I fired through the bottom of the handbag at a range of ten feet without any visible effect. He did jump as if I'd tossed hot gravy on his pants, but I didn't see blood and he didn't topple to the floor as I'd sincerely prayed he would. Instead, he roared to life, com-ing at me like a mad dog. I pulled the gun out of my purse to fire again, but he was on me, taking me with him to the floor. I saw his fist come at me, and I jerked to the right. The blow landed on my left ear, which rang with pain. I scrambled up, grabbing at the couch for support. I had no idea where my gun had gone, but he was aiming his at me. I snatched up my handbag and swung it. I caught him in the head. The momentum knocked him sideways.

He was blocking my passage to the front door, so I veered the other way, and raced into the bathroom. I slammed the door after me, turned the lock, and hit the floor. He fired twice, bullets zinging through the door like bees. There was no way out. The bathroom window was right in the line of fire and I couldn't see anything to defend myself with. He started kicking at the door, savage blows that splintered the wood on impact. I saw his foot come through the panel and he kicked again. His hand shot through the hole and he fumbled for the lock. I jerked the lid off the toilet tank and cracked him a blow. I heard him yelp and he snatched his hand back through the hole. He fired again, screaming obscenities. Suddenly his face appeared in the gap, eyes roving wildly as he searched for my location. The nose of the gun peered at me. All I could think to do was to protect myself with the tank lid, holding it in front of me like a shield. The bullet slammed into it with a clang, the impact fierce enough to jolt the lid right out of my hands, breaking it in two. Terry started kicking at the door again, but the blows were losing force.

On the other side, I heard him fall heavily. I froze, astonished, gasping for breath. There wasn't time to wait to see if he was faking it. I flipped the lock, shoving at the door, which I couldn't budge. I dropped to my knees and peered at him through the panel. He was flat on his back, his shirt front drenched in red. Apparently I'd wounded him the first time I fired, but it had taken him this long to go down. Blood seeped from him like a slow leak from a worn tire. His chest was still heaving. Above his stertorous breathing I could hear the package ticking like a grandfa-ther clock.

"Get out of the doorway! Terry, move!"

He was unresponsive. The clock on my desk said 4:29.

I shoved as hard as I could, but there was no budging him. I had to get out of there. Frantically I glanced around the room and then grabbed up one half of the broken toilet tank. I smashed at the window. Glass showered out into the front yard, leaving fangs of glass in the frame. I grabbed a towel and wedged it over the glass-ragged sill as I boosted myself up.

The boom from the explosion propelled me through the window, like Superman in full flight. I landed on the grass with a whunk that knocked the wind right out of me. For a moment, I felt the panic of paralysis, wondering if I'd ever breathe again. Debris was raining down around me. I saw a hunk of the roof hover briefly above me, like a UFO. Then it began to tumble and bounce down through the intervening branches of a tree. A cloud of white smoke drifted into view and began to disperse. I angled my gaze up to the wall behind me, which seemed to be intact. My sofa bed was sitting in the driveway with the cushions askew. Perched on the arm was my perky green air fern looking like it had hopped up there by itself. I knew the whole front wall of my apartment would be gone, the interior a shambles, all my possessions destroyed. Lucky I don't have much in this world, I thought.

I was temporarily deaf again, but I was getting used to it. Eventually, with effort, I roused myself and went back inside to see if there was anything of Terry left.