The Fallen

24

Higher Grounds was crowded and a little loud. I looked at the people who worked there and wondered who had served the driver of the Dream Wheels Hummer the night of the murder. I was looking forward to walking in with Kathy Iles’s sketch and finding someone who had seen our man.

We got coffees to go and walked down Fourth. Stella had traded her funeral dress for jeans, a long sweater with big pockets, and a red baseball cap. She looked pale and hollow, much as you would expect of a woman who had just buried her husband. I felt the same way myself.

I told her that I’d gotten an interesting tape recording in the mail.

“I want to hear it.”

“My car’s right there.”

I played the tape once, then again.

She stared straight ahead through the windshield.

“You told me about that conversation once,” I said. “Now tell me again.”

“March eighth,” she said. “Around four-thirty. I was at home and Garrett was at his desk. It was... just exactly what it sounds like. Two people trying to lay the past to rest and create a new future.”

I rewound the tape. I thought that if someone had monitored the Asplundhs’ four-thirty conversation, he would realize that Garrett would soon be alone and vulnerable under a bridge in the dark. Figuring that driving his own vehicle there might be too risky, the killer had taken a taxi down to Dream Wheels and rented the Hummer at five-fifteen.

But the name of the bridge had never been mentioned. It would have to be someone who knew their story and their attachment to the Cabrillo Bridge.

She looked at me. “How would they know which bridge?”

“You told your friends about the bridge because it was romantic. Assume that Garrett did the same. Friends tell friends, stories get repeated. Enemies hear things. Enemies collect things. Years pass. Anybody could know, Stella.”

She closed her eyes and let her head roll back against the rest. “Okay. Say that’s what happened. Someone knew the story and the bridge. Someone used that conversation to kill Garrett. Why would they send a tape of it to you?”

“They’re either trying to confuse me or trying to help,” I lied.

I saw the red squares hovering in the space between us. I didn’t want to lie to Stella, but I had Arliss Buntz to consider.

Stella opened her eyes. “This tape doesn’t really surprise me. For the last few months, I’ve felt watched and listened to. It’s been very strange.”

“Where?”

“On the street. In my car. Even in my home. Crazy? Maybe. Maybe some of Garrett’s paranoia rubbed off on me.”

“Have you ever seen anyone watching or following you?”

“No,” she said. “But I’ve felt as if I’ve made him turn his face away, like he knows I’m feeling watched and he stops. Like I’ve just missed seeing him. Garrett and my landlord are the only people I even told about it. The landlord lives on the ground floor of the building. I figured he could, you know, keep an eye out.”

“Is this watcher a man?”

“I think so.”

“You should have told me a lot sooner.”

She gave me an odd look, part strength and part surrender. “I didn’t want you to think I was losing it. Now I don’t care if you think I’m losing it.”

I ejected the tape from the player.

“Come up to my apartment,” she said. “There’s no reason we have to sit in a cold car.”

Stella put the tape in a player. She tossed her baseball cap on a chair and we sat at opposite ends of the big purple couch with the gold piping. There was only a corner lamp on, and one distant light from the kitchen, and it was strange to sit in the near darkness and listen to Stella Asplundh talk to her dead husband.

She played the tape again.

Then again.

I thought of “The Life and Death of Samantha” and how I had watched it over and over, unable to pull myself away but not sure why.

“You know what is most difficult right now?” she asked. “Garrett was my own husband, and I’ve got no idea why someone would kill him. Do you know how confusing that is? To not even know why? I wish there was one logical killer. One clear reason. One understandable event.”

“Garrett had videodiscs made by prostitutes,” I said. “They showed city leaders and cops and businessmen with the girls.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Some of the men are influential. Even powerful. I thought at first that Garrett had probably stepped on the wrong toes. Like you said, he had plenty of enemies.”

“But now?”

“I’m not so sure. You said he didn’t tell you much about his work.”

“Few specifics,” said Stella. “He told me, for instance, that there was a prostitution problem in the city that nobody was acknowledging. I knew he was involved in some aspect of that.”

The telephone rang again and Stella excused herself to answer it.

Stella came back and sat on the couch.

“I want to ask you about people that Garrett may have mentioned. How about Jordan Sheehan?”

“No,” said Stella.

“Chupa Junior?”

“No.”

“Carrie Ann Martier?”

Stella shook her head.

“Abel Sarvonola and Trey Vinson?”

“I know of Sarvonola, of course. But not Vinson.”

“Chet Fellowes?”

“Not much anymore,” said Stella. “We used to be friends with Chet and his wife, but the four of us drifted apart after Samantha.”

“Ron Mincher?”

“No.”

“Did Garrett ever talk about someone he’d really love to take down? Someone he just couldn’t stand?”

Stella thought about this for a while. “No. But he didn’t fully trust his own director. He thought that Kaven was too tight with Sarvonola and the mayor and the supervisors, that Kaven would let them... well, stretch their ethics a little too far for Garrett’s taste. Apparently Kaven wasn’t overwhelmed with the idea of hiring Garrett. He thought Garrett was better off staying a cop. John Van Flyke was the one who brought him aboard. Garrett and John saw themselves as the good guys lined up against the corrupt legions. I mean, they’d joke about it, but I know they saw themselves as fighting the good fight. And they always put up a united front for the Ethics Authority. Garrett would never have dissed Kaven behind his back.”

“Like the soldiers who see the action while the generals stay above it all.”

“That was my take.”

“But you and Garrett thought enough of Kaven to invite him to your home.”

She thought for a moment. “We had a wonderful social life. Even though everyone thought he was tough and uncompromising, Garrett loved his friends. He was ferociously loyal. And oddly trusting, too, for a man with a job like his. We had a wide variety of friends — people from the PD, people from the school district where I was a counselor. I had old college friends from swimming, and Garrett had boyhood friends who were still very close. He made friends all the time. He became friends with the guy who serviced his car — he was at the memorial today. One summer Garrett came back from Montana with a young fishing guide who was having some problems. The kid stayed with us for a month and Garrett got him a job on one of the charter boats out of Point Loma. He was there today, too.”

It’s always interesting to see a side of someone you never knew was there. I thought about Garrett Asplundh’s odd mix of suspicion and generosity, morality and forgiveness, humility and superiority.

“Did you know about Garrett’s National City apartment?”

“He told me about it. But not exactly where it was.”

“Did you know that a young woman named April Holly has been living there since late January?”

“No,” said Stella. “I did not. Someone named April came to the funeral.”

I told her the story about April’s scrape with prostitution and Garrett’s entry on the white horse. I told her that April said there had never been any sexual contact.

She listened without interrupting and was quiet for a long while.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’m not surprised at that, really. Before Samantha he was trusting and generous with people. We let one of his nephews live with us for a year because he was having trouble at home. We took in a neighbor boy once because his parents were separating and his home life was in a shambles. I mean, Garrett brought home stray animals. After Samantha, though, all that trust reversed itself. I’m glad to know that some of it came back, with this April girl.”

“Explain.”

“He’d always been a drinker, but then he began drinking very heavily,” said Stella. “He became worried that something was going to happen to him. He became obsessive about locks and alarms. About varying his travel routes and schedule. About phones and bugs and tape recorders. About my safety. He would worry about every single thing that I did. He got worse and worse. I couldn’t live with him like that. It was like being strangled. I took this place in September, barely eight weeks after Samantha. He got the apartment in Hillcrest and a month later the one in National City.”

“Was this about the time you began to feel watched and listened to?”

She looked at me. “I began to sense it in August, not long after Sam died. And I know what you’re thinking. But it wasn’t Garrett, stalking or spying on me. I knew what it felt like to be watched by him. It was different. It was someone else.”

I thought about that, wondering if she could really tell her husband’s invisible gaze from someone else’s. I wondered about Garrett’s fears becoming hers. I remembered reading of a mental disorder in which one person’s delusions came to be “shared” by another.

“So the Seabreeze was his antidote to his paranoia?” I asked.

“Yes, he said so himself. And it seemed to work. He was visibly relieved when he rented it. It made him feel safe. If the girl has been there since late January, it makes some kind of odd sense. Garrett had just begun to heal by then. He was trying to get back to being the man he’d once been. The old Garrett would have taken her in.”

I told her that according to April, Garrett had been at the National City apartment between seven-thirty and eight that night — he had left it less than one hour before Sanji Moussaraf had seen the flash. According to April, Garrett had come down to National City to “check up on her.”

“She said he’d come by almost every day, or at least every other day, just to make sure she was okay,” I said.

We sat in the dim room for a while without talking. I wondered how many hours of the last week Stella Asplundh had spent doing exactly this.

The phone rang again. She let the caller start to leave a message, then picked up.

She listened for a long while without saying anything. Then she told Sam she loved him, too, and that she would call him in the morning.

When she came back I asked her if she’d ever noticed a woman wearing gold earrings in the shape of a crescent moon with a small sapphire resting inside the curve.

“Never. Why?”

I explained what we had found in the Explorer and that it looked like it could have been ripped off in a struggle.

“It’s hard enough to imagine a man doing that to another human being,” said Stella. “Let alone a woman.”

“Did Garrett have a lover?” I asked.

Stella shook her head. “I would be very surprised. I’d think you would have uncovered her by now. No, Garrett was devoted to me. I say that with pride in him, not ownership or arrogance.”

“How did you meet, you and Garrett?”

She looked at me and smiled very slightly. I was struck again by her unusual beauty, compromised though it was by tragedy, murder, and grief.

“I met Sam Asplundh in a restaurant bar in Los Angeles. I was finishing up my master’s, student-teaching at the time. We dated twice, and then he made the mistake of arranging a double with his brother. I was in Garrett’s pocket by the end of the night, though I had the good sense and manners not to show it to anyone, including Garrett.”

I thought of my own headlong fall for Gina.

“Sam have hard feelings?” I asked.

“Just a little, maybe. He married and divorced.”

“The woman from the Fourth of July party?”

She nodded, remembering.

“Was Garrett’s light blue necktie special to you?” I asked.

“He wore it on our wedding day. Was he... when he...?”

“Yes.”

“God,” Stella said softly. I believe that she shuddered though I couldn’t see much more than her profile, backlit by the kitchen light.

She went to the tape player, rewound, and hit “play.” Their scratchy, poorly recorded voices issued through the apartment like the soundtrack to an old TV show. I could almost picture them as they talked that day, four-thirty in the afternoon and the dark clouds gathering outside for the night’s rain.

“Who’s Mr. Highwayman?” I asked.

Stella came back and sat. “He’s a dashing robber who’s in love with Bess, the landlord’s black-haired daughter. He’s got lace at his chin, and a coat of claret velvet, and his rapier and pistol butts twinkle in the starlight. And he rides off to rob the travelers and swears that if the cops really press him, he’ll hide out and come back to her the next night by moonlight, though hell should bar the way. It was Garrett’s favorite poem when he was a boy. He memorized it as a child and he’d recite it to me. It’s beautiful. It’s quite long. Listen:

I heard her voice evaporate into the sound of the traffic on the street below.

“Does he make it back with the loot?” I asked.

“They’re betrayed by a jealous hostler. It costs them their lives.”

“It sounds good,” I said.

“It’s romantic and tragic.”

I said nothing but I could tell she was looking at me.

“You’ve had your share of tragic,” she said.

“Everyone does if they live long enough.”

“Do you talk about what happened?” she asked.

“I don’t enjoy it.”

“I understand that. I watched the fall on TV. I knew that you had lived, or I wouldn’t have been able to watch it. I can’t really describe how it made me feel. Terrible. Then relieved. Then very hopeful. It made me see that not everything ends in death and tragedy.”

“I’m glad you felt hope,” I said. “It cuts through the darkness better than anything, doesn’t it?”

I heard tires squeal down on the street. I thought of being trapped down in the bottom of that floor safe where Gina’s jewelry used to be.

“Do you mind talking about Samantha?” I asked.

“I don’t enjoy it either,” said Stella.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment.

“What was it like?” she asked. “The fall?”

The image of Vic Malic’s grimace as he held me close came to my mind’s eye. I didn’t want it, but there was nothing I could do to get rid of it. I also smelled the gin on his breath and saw the flames lapping at the window as he spun me around and around. I felt the first thrilling terror of being alone in the air, high up and attached to nothing.

“It seemed to take a long time,” I said. “I thought about a lot of things. At first I tried to will myself to stay up, but that didn’t work. Then all these things raced by in a kind of code that ran much faster than memory or thought. It was as if my total experience on earth were being condensed and played back for me. I wasn’t really worried about dying. I was more worried about... well, more practical things. Like exactly when would I hit, and which bones would break, and how long it would be before I saw Gina again. That’s the most I’ve ever told anyone about it, except for Gina.”

“She’s your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Are you two happy?”

“I can’t tell you how much.”

I went to the window and looked down through the blinds. I’m always somewhat relieved when I look out a window and see that I’m up less than six stories. A group of young women was crossing just then and I thought of Gina trying to jaywalk in front of the Rock Bottom nightclub. I marveled at how large a part chance played in life: the chance that brought Gina and me together on the same street at the same time, the chance that Samantha’s doll would float into the middle of the pool and she would climb a fence without being seen.

“Have you ever watched the film that Garrett made about Samantha?”

“No,” said Stella. “Garrett told me he was making it. And I sat down with him once but could only watch just a few seconds. He mailed me a copy but I never played it.”

“I’ve seen it. It’s difficult. She was perfect.”

“I don’t think I could watch it,” she said. “See, Garrett... Garrett and I had very different reactions to what happened. Garrett wanted to preserve and possess — images, clothes, belongings, her room intact, exactly as it was. For almost six months, I did too. I collected and organized and preserved. Then I saw a white fire. The fire told me to let go. To give up trying to keep my daughter. It told me to forgive and remember, but not to dwell. It told me that if I buried myself with the objects of her life I would never be able to believe in her death. So I let go of most of her things. I allowed only a... reasonable number of her photographs in my home. I unburied myself. And the strangest transformation took place. When I was able to surrender Samantha’s life, I found a measurable quantity of peace. Garrett went deeper the other way. Later, coming from the opposite direction, he found the same peace that I had found.”

From the window I saw the women on the street go into an Italian restaurant. I wondered what it would be like to be single, with friends, and going out for eleven-fifteen drinks in the Gaslamp.

“I guess you’ve seen the video of your fall many times,” Stella said.

“I’ve never watched it.”

“Why not?”

“I think it might scare the piss out of me. Sorry for the language.”

“Your language is fine.”

Through the window I saw another jet heading down to Lindbergh Field. I thought of the lights in Las Vegas again and wondered where she was.

“That’s interesting we’ve both got videos we won’t watch,” said Stella. “Videos of the most important things in our lives, and we don’t want to see them.”

“I think ignoring certain things is good,” I said. “I don’t think people need to know everything.”

Her telephone rang again, startlingly loud in the high-ceilinged old room. It was a relief from having to talk about the Las Palmas. I still felt Malic close to me. I could still smell his breath.

Stella went into the kitchen. I could see her in the faint light as she picked up the phone. I heard without listening.

Stella set the phone in its cradle and came back to the couch.

“Sorry. That was Van Flyke,” she said. “I left my memorial pamphlet at the grave site. He’s been a big help, but sometimes I think he’s taken this worse than I have.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He calls almost every day to make sure I’m okay, but he’s a wreck himself. I think he’s developing a crush on me. Under all that bossy cool, John’s got a good heart. He thought the world of Garrett. He treated Garrett like a big brother, even though John’s a few years older. I thought all that came across in the eulogy today.”

“I did, too.”

“So many people have offered help, gone out of their way for me,” she said. “Mom and Dad have been here for me. Samuel’s willing to do what he can, though he’s hurting, too. Abel Sarvonola’s trying to expedite the pension. The chief wants to create a memorial in Garrett’s honor. Sutherland and even Chet Fellowes have offered to take care of any financial or even household things that might need seeing to.”

“It’s nice when people surprise you.”

“Some surprises aren’t so nice. I understand why Garrett disliked Erik Kaven. He didn’t say one word to me until today. No call. No letter of condolence. No flowers sent to the chapel. He said nothing to the media about Garrett’s murder. Today he spoke to me just before he left. He looked at me as if I’d killed him myself and he said, ‘We must all look within ourselves at times like this.’ That’s all. End of statement. Like, if I looked far enough inside myself I’d find the murderer.”

I wondered how Kaven had risen to the directorship of the Ethics Authority on such a meager spirit. I thought of his shameless stare and his disheveled appearance. I wondered if underneath it — as underneath the dismissive arrogance of John Van Flyke — there was actually a decent guy with no idea how to express himself. I was not convinced there was. In my twenty-nine years of experience, I have found that most often people are exactly what they appear to be.

In the near dark I watched her move across the room to the stereo again. The tape quickly rewound then whined to a stop. I stood and went to the door.

“You can keep the tape,” I said. “I made it for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll get this guy.”

“I know you will.”

I looked at the two dead bolt locks and the chain lock on Stella’s door, then closed it and took the stairs down. The east breeze had turned warm and I could feel spring advancing. I slung my jacket over my shoulder and walked through the Gaslamp to Salon Sultra and wondered when I would get it through my head that she didn’t work there anymore. I sat on a bus-stop bench opposite the salon and watched the occasional car roll by. I wondered when Vince Brancini would call.

I drove back to Normal Heights wondering if making Stella Asplundh a copy of that tape was the right thing to do. I put myself in her shoes and asked myself if I would want a tape of my last conversation with Gina. Yes, certainly. Then I asked myself if I would listen to it.

I wasn’t certain of that at all.