Illusions

19

There were half a dozen cars parked at Silver Creek Cellars this afternoon, a knot of visitors in front of the tasting room entrance, even a young couple having a fair-weather picnic at a bench under one of the old live oaks. I envied them. The weekend in Mendocino seemed long past now, a memory that was already starting to blur at the edges.

Uphill beyond the warehouse was the vineyard road Sondra Nelson had told me to take; I drove that way, leaving the good and easy life behind. The road was in decent repair, hardpan overlain with gravel, but it ran an irregular route over and around rises and down through little swales and I couldn’t make much time. The rows of grapevines were tall, their leaves a chlorophyll green color that had a fresh-scrubbed shine in the sunlight. I passed a trio of laborers working among the rows; they stopped to watch curiously as I clattered by. At three-tenths of a mile by the odometer, the road hooked right and blended into another, slightly wider one that climbed into low hills. Old farm road, this one. The shallow, brush-banked creek that paralleled it on the south was probably the same one that ran behind the winery buildings.

The road took me up a moderately steep hillside, at the top of which the vast acreage of vineyards ended, and then dropped me down into a shallow bowllike valley. The three or four acres of flatland looked as though they had once been cultivated — hay, alfalfa, maybe hops — but that had been many years ago; now they were coated in grass and weeds and an encroaching section of wild mustard. Ahead, as I descended, I could see an old wooden bridge spanning the creek, and close beyond that, along the bank and partially screened by willows and aspens, the remains of the farm buildings.

I turned onto the bridge, thumped over its warped boards. The farmhouse was a tumbledown stone shell so overgrown with grass, bushes, wild berry vines, and climbing primroses that it seemed to be sinking inexorably into the earth. To one side, at the rear, was a huge jumble of weathered boards and one leaning wall, all that remained of a barn. A dark blue Lexus was drawn up between the house and the former barn, in what had once been a garden of some sort. I couldn’t see the front half of it from my angle of approach, but Sondra Nelson was probably waiting inside. The only outward sign of life on the property were a couple of birds having a mating argument on what was left of the house’s roof.

I pulled up just across the bridge. And the first thing I noticed then was the line of the creek coming out of the trees to the west, the willows and aspens stark against the sky. It was this scene that had been the inspiration and model for Sondra Nelson’s Silver Creek Cellars label.

The view held my attention for a bit. When I turned my head again I had company: Sondra Nelson was coming my way from the Lexus, and she wasn’t alone. She’d brought Gail Kendall along for backup.

It didn’t have to mean anything one way or another, but when you’re meeting somebody in an out-of-the-way place like this and the prearrangements turn out to be altered, it makes you wary. A touch paranoid, too. I leaned over and flipped the spring catch that holds the .38 Colt Bodyguard I keep under the dash; slipped the weapon from its hooks and slid it inside my belt on the right side, under my jacket where it wouldn’t show. Better to give in to a little paranoia than to get caught unprotected.

The birds were still making a racket as I exited the car, lunging and screeching at each other in a flurry of wings. Rough sex in the animal kingdom. Nelson and Kendall slowed as I moved toward them, so that when the three of us met it was in front of the broken and half-hidden farmhouse porch. Nelson wore a lined windbreaker over an ankle-length skirt, the jacket zipped to the throat and her hands in the pockets and her shoulders hunched as if she were cold. Kendall was in Levi’s and a plaid Pendleton. Tension was like an adhesive in both their faces, binding them into unnaturally stiff expressions. Anger burned in the older pair of eyes; the younger pair was bleak, caught halfway between resignation and desperation.

I said to Sondra Nelson, “I thought this was supposed to be a two-person meeting.”

“Coming along was my idea,” Kendall said. “I didn’t want Sandy seeing you alone.”

“Afraid she’d say something she shouldn’t?”

“No.”

“United front?”

“That’s right. How much do you want?”

“...What?”

“You heard me. How much to quit investigating us, leave us alone once and for all?”

“Are you trying to buy me off?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” she said, “why else would you be doing this? Let’s just get it out into the open.”

“I’m not the one who asked for this meeting—”

“You would have sooner or later. How much?”

“I’m not for sale, Ms. Kendall.”

“Everybody’s for sale at the right price.”

“Not everybody.” My name isn’t Eberhardt, I thought. You can’t buy my soul for five hundred pieces of silver and two bottles of Jack Daniel’s. “I never had any intention of blackmailing either of you.”

Nelson said plaintively, “Then why are you persecuting us?”

“Persecuting, Ms. Nelson?”

“Investigating on your own when the county sheriff... They’re satisfied, why aren’t you?”

“Don’t be so sure Lieutenant Battle is satisfied.”

“He hasn’t bothered us again,” Kendall said. “But you... is it because you worked for Erskine?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you sympathized with him. You think he had a right to come after Sandy, tear her life apart?”

“No. Nobody has that right.”

“Then why? What do you expect to get out of it?”

“How about a little justice?” I said.

“Justice! For a piece of shit like Ira Erskine?”

“He was a human being, no matter how miserable an excuse for one. And he was murdered in cold blood.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?”

“You don’t know anything.”

Sondra Nelson said, “If we could only make you understand—”

“Understand what?”

“What a monster he was. How frightened I was.”

“You ran away from him once, changed your name, started over. You could’ve done it again.”

“No. No, I couldn’t.”

“Of course she couldn’t,” Kendall said. “The man she loves, everything she ever wanted is right here in this valley. How long do you think a person can go on living in terror of her life?”

“You lived that way for a lot of years, didn’t you?”

Her gaze raked my face. “I was a fool.” she said. “Sandy and I were both fools. The only way to deal with vermin—”

“—is to exterminate them.”

“Well? You said it, I didn’t.”

“I said it, but the two of you did it. Whose idea, Ms. Kendall? Yours?”

“You don’t know a damn thing,” she said, but this time as if she were trying to convince herself.

“I know the two of you conspired to kill Ira Erskine. And I know how you did it — the double switch, the whole plan.”

Nelson moaned, “Oh, God...”

“Hush. Sandy, it’s all right. He can’t prove whatever he thinks he knows.” The hot eyes scorched me again. “There’s no proof we did anything, either of us.”

“But there is,” I said. “Enough to have both of you charged with at least second-degree homicide.”

“You’re so fucking smart. Go ahead, then, tell us. How’d we do it? What’s your proof?”

Laying it out in detail was about the only chance I had of convincing them to turn themselves in. I still felt sorry for both of them, despite Kendall’s combative attitude; and whether or not they believed it, I hated this as much as they did and I was suffering right along with them.

“All right,” I said. “Last Sunday in the Napa Valley — that’s when you planned it, the two of you alone somewhere. The problem was to get rid of Erskine quickly and in a way that left you both in the clear. Solution: a double switch to create two solid alibis. On Monday morning you traded cars and places. You drove down to Santa Rosa to take Ms. Nelson’s place on jury duty, she went to Healdsburg to shoot her ex-husband and then back to Geyserville to pretend to be you stranded at home.”

If I needed any further confirmation that I was right, Sondra Nelson’s anguished face gave it to me. But Kendall said scornfully, “That’s ridiculous. How could I possibly take Sandy’s place on jury duty?”

“Easily enough in Sonoma County. When you’re selected here you receive a computer-generated postcard that you take with you on the day you’re to serve. The card comes in two parts, perforated, both of which have your name and juror’s number on it. You tear off one part and put it in a box when you arrive, then go into the jury room and wait for your number to be called. Meanwhile, a clerk in the commissioner’s office checks the stubs against a master list to make sure the summoned person is present. That’s all — nobody checks individual ID at any time. No reason to; it’s almost unheard of for one person to take on someone else’s jury duty.”

“Sandy was called for a rape trial that morning. She was almost seated—”

“Her number was called. Everything is done by juror number — pool selection for a particular trial, individual selection for the jury. The judge or lawyers ask the called juror’s name and some general personal history, but you could answer those questions as easily as she could. And it wasn’t hard to talk yourself out of being seated. Plenty of ways to do that — claimed you were a rape victim yourself, or had a family member who was raped, or simply said you had a strong antirape bias and couldn’t be impartial. Once a juror is excused, that’s pretty much it unless the trial docket is heavy and the general jury pool thin for one reason or another, and those weren’t the cases on Monday. Out of the courtroom, out of the courthouse, and home free.

“And while you were handling things in Santa Rosa, Ms. Nelson drove your car to the Pinecrest Motel, talked her way into Erskine’s room, used her wiles to—”

Nelson: “No!”

“—to throw him off guard, got her hands on his gun, and shot him. She couldn’t go back out through the door because the shot had brought witnesses, so she wriggled out through the bathroom window, slipped around front to where your car was parked, and drove away. Somewhere between Healdsburg and Geyserville she stopped to call Triple A, using your name and card number and a public phone so the call couldn’t be traced. Straight to your house then, where she pulled another switch — the old corroded battery from the garage into the Ford in place of the good one. When the serviceman showed up and put in a charge in the old battery, she signed off as Gail Kendall and reswitched the batteries once he was gone. And then waited for you to return from Santa Rosa to reclaim her car.”

Neither woman spoke when I finished. The silence had a heavy, swollen quality; even the mating birds were still. Sondra Nelson was so pale I could see the fine tracery of veins in her cheeks; the bright-red lipstick she wore made her mouth look bloody. The older woman hated me with an unblinking intensity, as if by sheer force of will she might manage to make me keel over dead at their feet.

She ended the silence by saying, “You’re so goddamn smug, aren’t you?” in a choked voice.

“Smug, Ms. Kendall?”

“Smug and self-righteous. Sees all, knows all. Well, you’re not half as smart as you think you are.”

“Experienced and methodical, not smart. You’re mistaken if you think I’m enjoying this.”

“But that hasn’t stopped you, has it?”

“From doing my job? No.”

“Ruining people’s lives. That’s some job.”

“I didn’t conspire to kill Ira Erskine. The two of you did that.”

“You can’t prove it.”

“You keep saying that. But I don’t have to prove it. That’s up to Lieutenant Battle and the county prosecutor. And I wasn’t bluffing about there being enough evidence to have you both indicted.”

“What evidence?”

“The Triple-A driver can identify which of you was at your house that morning. And I found the other portion of the jury summons, the one you kept, buried in your garbage. There’re other things, too. And more to be found with a little digging.”

“You haven’t talked to Battle yet. Why not?”

“It’ll go easier on you if you confess. That’s why I agreed to come here — to give Ms. Nelson, and you, a chance to go to him first.”

“And if we don’t?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Doesn’t it matter to you why? Any of the reasons why? Don’t you have any compassion?”

“More than you might think.”

“But not enough. Even though you’re right about only part of it. The rest... you couldn’t be more wrong.”

“What part am I wrong about?”

“Tell him, Sandy. Tell him what really happened in that motel room.”

Sondra Nelson jerked a little, as if she’d been touched with a live, low-voltage wire. She said, “No, I can’t go through all that again. What’s the use? It won’t matter to him, he doesn’t care...”

“Tell him anyway. I want to see his face.”

There was another period of silence, more charged than before. A breeze had kicked up and was rustling the trees, bringing the smell of green things growing and the vagrant scent of apple blossoms even though no apple trees were visible in the vicinity.

“Suppose...” Nelson began, and stopped and cleared her throat, passed a hand over her eyes to clear them, too. “Suppose we did plan to kill Ira, just as you said. Planning something like that and actually going through with it... they’re not the same. Even if you know it’s the only way to save your life, he’s still someone you once loved, had a child with. It’s not easy... it’s not... you can’t...”

She was trembling by then. Her eyes, round and moist, were like those of a spotlighted deer.

“Suppose I did go to his motel to... end the fear. With my own gun, one I’ve had for years for protection, in my purse. And suppose I took it out once I was in the room and pointed it at him, and he stood there looking at me in that arrogant way of his and saying, ‘You can’t do it, Janice, you can’t shoot me.’ And he was right, I couldn’t... I tried, I wanted to, but I...” Pause, her throat working, her face paper-white except for red splotches spreading slowly, like patches of spilled blood, across her cheekbones. “And suppose he took my gun away from me, pulled it out of my hand and put it back in my purse and then he... suppose he... stepped up close, smiling the whole time, and hit me hit me hit me and threw me down on the bed and hit me and took my clothes off, not tore them off, took them off, oh he was very tender then, as if it was our wedding night, and tender when he raped me, all the while whispering how much he loved me and exactly how he would kill me if I didn’t go back to Santa Fe with him...”

Ragged breath, and then the rest of it in the past tense, without qualifiers, her eyes squeezed shut and her voice congealed: “Afterward he went into the bathroom and I crawled off the bed and managed to put on my clothes, and his gun was lying there on the table, and I picked it up, and he came out of the bathroom wearing his robe and smiled at me as if nothing terrible had happened, as if it was perfectly normal, and said ‘I love you, Janice,’ just like that, and went over and picked up his cigarettes from the nightstand and lighted one, and I walked around in front of him and I... he looked at me and saw the gun and he said, ‘Oh Christ, Janice, not this again’ and I... the gun... his head just seemed to... I couldn’t look at him lying on the floor, all the blood... outside there were voices and somebody pounding on the door... I couldn’t think, I ran into the bathroom...”

She sagged a little as the last of it dribbled out. Gail Kendall caught her arm, held her with a kind of fierce protectiveness.

Dry-mouthed, I asked, “If you were so distraught, why did you close the window after you were out? Make sure the catch was fastened?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember anything about that. I was in the bathroom and then I was outside and then I was in Gail’s car driving away. It’s all... fragmented. Unreal, as if it were happening to somebody else.”

I had nothing to say to that.

Kendall said, “You don’t believe her, do you?”

“Why should I? The story’s convincing, she’s convincing, but so was Erskine the day he poured out his lies to me. I swallowed that sob story, but I’m not swallowing any more without corroboration.”

“Corroboration,” Sondra Nelson said in a dull voice. “All right, if that’s what you want.”

She pushed away from the older woman, unzippered her windbreaker. And then in a series of swift movements she opened her skirt and let it fall, caught the waistband of a pair of white briefs and yanked them partway down, and with her other hand lifted the blouse to her breasts — exposing the entire middle of her body.

Healing scrapes and welts, bruises still purple-black and piss-yellow at the edges. From sternum to crotch, a madman’s abstract design hammered out on human flesh.

“Well?” Kendall said savagely. “Now do you believe her?”

I’d seen and heard enough, too much. All of a sudden there were too many conflicting emotions swirling around inside me. I turned away from the two of them. Walked toward my car, not fast and not slow. I could feel the .38 inside my belt, the barrel digging into my hipbone, the grip tight against the pad of fat above. It felt like a dirty hand — Ira Erskine’s hand.

Hard steps behind me, hurrying to catch up. Hard fingers gripping my arm to halt me before I reached the car. Gail Kendall in my face again. “Are you going to see Battle now?”

“...No. Not now.”

“But eventually. You’ll still turn us in.”

“I don’t know.”

“We’d never be convicted, you know we wouldn’t. No jury would ever convict two battered women in a case like this. I don’t care about myself, but Sandy... you’d be putting her through more hell for nothing. Nothing!”

I shook my head. It had a loose feel on the stem of my neck.

“Hasn’t she suffered enough? You heard her, she’s sick about what he made her do. She’ll never get over it. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“She killed a man,” I said, only this time it sounded hollow — a meaningless phrase in a legal brief, words blowing in the wind.

“Not a man,” Kendall said, “a rabid dog like the one I lived with for ten years. She killed a rabid dog to save her life, the same as the county SWAT team killed one to save mine.”

“You’ll hear from me. I won’t do anything without letting one of you know first.” I started moving again.

“When?” she said behind me. “When?”

I had no answer for her; I had no answer for myself. All I could do at this point, all I did, was to get into the car and drive the hell away from there.