The Color of Light

Chapter 10

“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Max huffed as he ran his hand over the bullet hole in the truck’s right side panel. “I can’t let you out of my sight, can I?”

“Stuff happens,” I said.

“To you, it does.”

He was shaken. Jean-Paul and I’d had a couple of hours to get over the worst of the effects of the attack, but we were still edgy, scared. Somehow, needing to reassure my uncle that we were all right helped to settle me down. I gave him a hug and kissed his cheek, passed him a barely used tissue I found in my pocket to dab his eyes. He pulled in a couple of deep breaths and took another look at the bullet hole before he wandered over to listen in on the account of the incident that Jean-Paul was giving to a Highway Patrolman.

We didn’t need Max to play lawyer, but he couldn’t help himself. I had only asked my dear uncle to come and fetch us home from the Highway Patrol impound lot in Oakland, but I realized that maybe it was a good idea that a lawyer was there. The Oakland police had come by earlier, taken a look at the truck and our identification. When they saw Jean-Paul’s diplomatic credentials there was a moment of alarm until he assured them that he was certain there were no international implications. The patrolmen were only too happy to declare that we were innocents caught in local gang crossfire, have us sign their brief written report, and to leave. The Highway Patrol was being far more thorough; the shooting had shut down their freeway in both directions for over an hour, so there were questions that must be posed.

I was taking our belongings out of the truck and transferring them to Max’s car, waiting for a tow truck to show up to take the truck for repairs, when a Berkeley PD black-and-white pulled into the lot and Kevin climbed out.

“Thanks for calling,” he said, giving my back a pat as he looked at the truck’s broken back window. “What happened?”

I told him what I had seen, which wasn’t much.

“It’s downtown Oakland,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

“That’s what Oakland PD said.”

“So who’s this Thai Van guy you said I should check out?”

I gave him the short version of the story of Thai Van and Mrs. Bartolini, and Duc Khanh and Toshio Sato.

“And while you’re checking on people,” I said, “you might want to have a little chat with our old friend Larry Nordquist. Late last night we found him lying in wait for us when we got home. He suggested he knew something about the day Mrs. B died, but he said he would only tell me about it if we were alone.”

“I saw the report on the break-in at your place,” Kevin scolded. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

“And have you on my doorstep two nights in a row? The neighbors are already talking.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Who?”

“George and Karen Loper.”

“Fucking busybodies.”

Max, who had noticed Kevin when he pulled in, decided that it was time to amble over to see who this newcomer was.

“Uncle Max,” I said, “you remember Kevin Halloran.”

Max raised his eyebrows, studying Kevin as he offered his hand. Recognition suddenly dawned.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, if it isn’t little Kevin,” Max said, holding Kevin’s big hand in both of his; Kevin towered over Max. Seeing the grin on my uncle’s face, I dreaded what was coming next. “Or, as my brother Al called you, that damn bundle of hormones.”

Poor Kevin turned several shades of crimson; I probably did, too. I nudged Max. “That’s Detective Halloran, to you, buddy.”

“Nice to see you again, sir,” Kevin said, his voice changing register a couple of times, the way it would when he was fifteen, about the age he was when first confronted with my doting uncle.

“So, Detective Halloran,” Max said, finally releasing Kevin’s hand. “What brings you all the way from Berkeley?”

Kevin canted his head toward me. “Nancy Drew here called me. After someone took a couple of shots at her, she finally decided it was time to let me know where she’s been poking her nose.”

“It’s a nice nose, though, isn’t it?” Max said, grabbing me around the shoulders and pulling me close so he could pick glass shards out of my hair. “She paid a lot for it.”

“No comment,” Kevin said, grinning, his normal color returning. He asked me to walk him through my version of the shooting. With Max listening attentively, I told him the sequence of events as we walked a circuit around the truck. Kevin took pictures of the bullet hole in the right side panel before he climbed up into the truck bed for a closer look into the cab through the gaping window. As he plucked a fragment of broken glass from the frame, he asked, “Truck registered to the boyfriend?”

“No,” I said. “It’s mine.”

He snapped his head around, checked to see if I was kidding him.

“It’s my truck, Kevin,” I said. “Sometimes itty-bitty girls have big trucks, too.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he demurred.

“You didn’t have to. If it helps, the truck belonged to my late husband.”

That he could accept. “Where are you having it towed?”

“The insurance agent recommended the body shop at the Ford dealership on MLK, Jr. in Berkeley.”

“They do good work.”

The tow truck, a big flatbed, arrived to haul the pickup for repairs. Kevin exchanged cards with the driver and with the Highway Patrol investigator, oversaw the process of securing my pickup. As the driver signed paperwork proffered by the investigator, Kevin dialed a number he read off the card the driver had given him. After some automated switchboard folderol, he was put through to the service manager, to whom he gave sharp instructions for the truck to be locked in a secure area of the body shop over the weekend, and not to be touched until he arrived Monday morning.

“What was that about?” I asked when he put his phone away.

“The slug didn’t pierce the truckbed liner, so it’s probably still lodged inside the side panel,” he said. “Looks like the second slug is embedded in the dash. I want to be on hand when the panel comes off, see if I can find it. Ditto for the dash.”

I cringed. I had hoped the repairs would entail no more than replacing the window and slapping a patch on the side panel so that I could get the truck back right away; I needed it. But now it sounded like a rental truck was in the offing. And a big bill.

Max, damn him, introduced Kevin to Jean-Paul as my first big flame. That bit of slang did not need explanation. Jean-Paul offered his hand and a few gracious words while the two men, though they stayed in place, circled each other visually, like bantam cocks in the henhouse. I slipped my hand through Jean-Paul’s arm, leaned my head against his shoulder and asked, “Can we go home now?”

“Yes.” He covered my hand with his. “If there are further questions, the authorities will call us.”

“I’m sure they will.” I felt something scratchy under my collar, gave my shirt a good shake and half-a-dozen more bits of glass fell to the pavement. Jean-Paul had a row of tiny cuts across the side of his face that showed the trajectory of the window’s explosion. He had turned his head to check on me just as the second shot went through the back window and been hit by fragments of glass as they flew past; thank God he was wearing sunglasses.

We left Kevin speaking with the Highway Patrol investigator when we climbed into Uncle Max’s rented red Cadillac, and drove out.

I sat in the backseat and listened to the two men discuss the incident.

“I believe it was a Toyota, maybe a Honda,” Jean-Paul told Max. “Silver-gray. Perhaps a Camry or an Accord. Several years old. Because of the angle of the sun, I could not see the driver, but my impression is he was alone.”

“Tall, short, dark, fair?” Max asked.

Jean-Paul shook his head. “Qui sait? I concentrated on getting out of his way, not seeing who he was.”

Max looked over his shoulder at me. “Maggie?”

I also shook my head. “I ducked. All I saw was something silver bobbing and weaving through traffic, trying to stay with us.”

Jean-Paul reached between the seats and took my hand. “I keep thinking about what that neighbor said this morning, about wishing he had a twelve-bore. So help me, this afternoon, I never wished for anything more than I did a great big gun to stop that lunatic.”

“Good thing we didn’t have one,” I said. “Who knows who you would have taken out.”

Max caught my eye in his rearview mirror. “Maggot, where is your dad’s Colt?”

“His what?”

“Gun.”

“Dad never owned a gun,” I said.

“Actually, honey, he did.”

I shrugged. “Ask Mom.”

“He certainly never told Betsy about it,” Max said. “She wouldn’t have a gun in the house.”

That I knew. I needed just a few minutes with Dad; he’d left me with so many unanswered questions.

“But he went ahead and bought one,” I said. “Why?”

“Isabelle,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“Just how crazy was she?”

“From day to day?” Max said. “Hard to say. But whenever she showed up here it was because she was off her meds and in a manic stage. Impossible to predict what she might do. Your dad caught her inside the house one night, in your bedroom, watching you sleep.”

“So he bought a gun?”

“He didn’t buy it,” Max said. “The neighbor acquired it somehow and gave it to him.”

“Which neighbor, George Loper or Jake Jakobsen?”

“It wouldn’t be Jake, now, would it?”

“No,” I said. “Jake is far too sane. But George Loper…”

“Your dad had asked the neighbors to keep an eye out for Isabelle, told them she was a former student who’d gone off the rails, which was only ten degrees off true,” Max said. “Loper came over one day and handed your dad a new, unregistered, unfired Colt Commander. Told Al that if he wanted to try it out, he should go way out into the desert and make sure he was never seen so that if he ever needed to use the damn thing he could ditch it afterward and there would be no way to trace it back to him.”

“Except George knew,” I said.

Jean-Paul had listened with rapt attention. He asked, “This George, is he in law enforcement or perhaps the military?”

“He’s a rocket scientist,” I said. “Rumor is, he’s brilliant.”

He laughed. “Bien sûr. The mad scientist next door.”

“You laugh,” I said. “But if he gave Dad an unregistered gun, you know he has one himself.”