Trophies And Dead Things

Twenty-Four

Goodhue was so relieved and elated at what I explained to her that she wanted to contact the police and set things straight immediately. I cautioned her against doing so until she consulted an attorney.

"The inspector in charge of the case is a real… well, asshole. He'd see charging someone as well known as you with obstruction as a major coup. Talk with Harry Sullivan. And in the meantime, I'll keep at it, try to wrap the investigation up quickly."

"You think you can do that?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who killed my… Tom Grant?"

"No," I lied, in the interests of saving time, "not yet. But I think I will soon."

Goodhue turned on the lights around the mirror and began repairing her makeup. I was impatient to make some calls, so I went downstairs to the newsroom and used the same phone as I had Monday afternoon. As then, I put in a credit-card call to the Fleming residence in Blackhawk.

Judy Fleming answered. I identified myself, asked for Kurt. She said she'd call him to the phone. Then she asked, "Does this have to do with why Perry changed his will?"

"Yes. I'm still working on it."

That seemed to satisfy her. She went away, and half a minute later Kurt came on the line,

I said, "I need to double-check a few things about your discussion with Perry the last time you saw him."

"Sure. Go ahead."

"When he talked about making decisions, what did he say about them coming back to haunt you?"

Pause. "That even if the decision was the right one, it could do that."

"And he said you shouldn't take it out on yourself because you can't control the consequences of your actions?"

"Right."

"Will you go over what he said about ideals again?"

"Well, that was after his third margarita, so… All that really made sense to me is that sometimes you have to dump some of your ideals in favor of upholding the most important one. After that he rambled on about guilt and atonement and symbolic acts. I wasn't raised religious, so it didn't really mean much to me."

I had been raised religious, but in view of Perry's atheism, it didn't mean much to me, either. Unless I could find a context in which to place it… "Thanks, Kurt."

"Uh, sure. Anytime." His tone was somewhat bewildered, as if he'd been expecting some sort of explanation for my questions.

Next I called Rae at All Souls. "Any word on Hank?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"If you hear, will you call my house, leave a message on the machine?"

"Okay. Where are you?"

"Out in the field," I said vaguely. "I need your help for a couple of minutes. You know that stack of back issues of the papers in Hank's office? Would you go in there and get yesterday's Chron-the one with the story on Tom Grant's murder?"

"Hang on."

As I waited for her to come back, I glanced across the newsroom at Goodhue's cubicle. The anchorwoman was already there-freshly made up and dressed in dry clothes. She picked up the phone receiver, consulted the yellow sheet on the desk in front of her, and began to dial. Rae's voice said, "Shar? I've got it. What do you need?"

"First, Grant's date of graduation from the University of Colorado. I presume it will be in the obituary."

"The obit… here it is-they ran it as a sidebar to the story. Class of fifty-nine."

"Okay. Now University of Illinois Law School."

"Sixty-two."

"Bastard lied all over the place. Any mention of what he did immediately after law school?"

"Uh… no, it just talks about his 'rather unique law practice.' But it doesn't say when he first hung out his shingle."

I'd suspected as much. "Shar, what's this-"

"I'll tell you later. Thanks." I cut off her protesting "Hey!" by replacing the receiver.

As I crossed the newsroom, Goodhue motioned to me. I went into the cubicle.

"I reached Harry Sullivan's service and convinced them it was an emergency," she said. "He's supposed to call me."

"Good. When you talk with him, ask him to check with me before speaking with the police. There may be a way I can keep you out of this entirely. And give me your home number in case I need to get in touch."

She wrote it on a card. "Why are you doing this for me?"

"I like people with guts. You've overcome a great deal in your life and shouldn't have to suffer for one mistake. Besides, I'm doing it for myself, as well-my need to get at the truth."

"Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. But I sure didn't act as if I had guts tonight. Hurling myself into the bay, like Anna Karenina under the train. Whimpering and sniveling and probably causing us both to get bad colds."

"We all do some whimpering and sniveling," I said. "Just be glad you got yours over with early in life."

"You know, I think I'm going to put my past behind me now and get on with that life. My mother killed herself, and my father wouldn't acknowledge me. Their problems had nothing to do with me as a person. My mother's family didn't want me, either. Fuck 'em-it's their loss."

I gave her a thumbs-up sign and left the studio.

On the drive to West Marin I thought about various scraps of seemingly unrelated information that I'd collected over the past five days. Some pertained to Tom Grant: the things Cal Hurley had told me; Grant's fabrications about his past; Luke Widdows's insights into certain aspects of the sixties. Others had to do with Perry Hilderly: the things he'd told Kurt; what I thought his "most important" ideal was; a police inspector who normally went by the book but now seemed to be covering up something.

And I thought about dreams, and how they sometimes can take the form of clever visual puns, prompting the dreamer to become aware of things she already knows…

By the time I reached Inverness it was after ten. The hamlet was shut down, except for the Czech restaurant. I continued along the shoreline, past dark cottages, then wound up through the conifer forest. Fog drifted from pockets between the hills; the night was moonless. On the barren headland the mist thickened, coated my windshield. When I put on the wipers, the glass smeared. Beyond it the headlight beams looked to be reflected off a solid white wall. All I could make out were the fence posts along the road.

The wind blew strong, pushing at the little car until its tires strained to hold the pavement. I slowed to twenty, opened my window to help the feeble defroster. As I rounded the sharp curve above Moon Ridge Stables, I saw that the fog was lighter on that side of the headland- blowing back out to sea. Abbotts Lagoon was a black stain on the landscape; beyond the beach, a white line of surf moved restlessly.

I couldn't make out any of the ranch buildings down in the cypress-ringed hollow, but there was a pair of lights moving across the cattle graze. I turned into the rutted access road, rumbled down the hillside. The lights came my way, moving fast. I crossed a cattle guard beyond which the land dropped off on either side, and suddenly the other vehicle rounded the curve some twenty yards ahead.

I slammed on my brakes, stalling the MG; yanked on the wheel, fighting a skid. The other vehicle-a Jeep-slewed sideways. For an instant it hung on the edge of the road, then lurched nose-downward into the ditch. Its motor stalled, and the night became very quiet.

I jumped out of my car and ran toward the Jeep. Its driver's door opened and a tall, rangy figure got out. Libby Ross.

"Goddamn it!" her husky voice shouted. "What the hell're you doing running me off the road like that?"

"Are you all right?" I called.

Ross stopped halfway up the incline, recognizing me. "I thought I told you to stay the hell away from here. Now you've gone and made me wreck my Jeep."

"Doesn't look wrecked," I said. "You've got four-wheel drive, should be able to get it out of there easily."

"No way. I hit a rock-one of the tires is going flat." Ross kicked the Jeep's bumper. "Shit! Not my day. Or week. Or year." She kicked the Jeep again, then looked back at me. "What're you doing here?"

"I need to talk with you."

"Can't. I've got to get over to Taylor's. Some trouble with D.A."

She glanced speculatively at my car. I said, "Climb in, I'll take you."

Ross came the rest of the way up the incline and strode to the car, folding her rangy body into the cramped passenger seat.

I backed up and turned around on the other side of the cattle guard. "What kind of trouble?" I asked.

"Don't know. Mia was practically incoherent when she called. Panicky. She'd walked down the highway to the phone booth outside of Nick's Cove."

"How long ago?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes. Something about D.A. and that island. Nobody's there at the restaurant but her, so she called me."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. When I turned onto the main road, I put on speed in spite of the limited visibility.

Ross glanced at me. "What're you thinking?"

"The same thing you are."

She bit her lip, turned her face toward the side window.

"It's time you leveled with me," I said. "You pretended you had no ongoing relationship with D.A., that Mia's jealousy was unfounded. But not long after that I saw the two of you kissing down on the beach."

"Where were you when this supposedly happened?"

"At the stables."

"I thought I told you to leave when I rode off."

"I stayed to look around your tack room."

"You had no right-"

"I found the photograph of you, D.A., Perry, and Jenny. Who took it-Andy Wrightman?"

"… Yeah."

"Why'd you keep it?"

She sighed. "You wouldn't understand. You probably think I wouldn't want a reminder of those days, not after the way things turned out. That was what Glen-my husband- thought. It was him that didn't want to be reminded of my past, so I always kept the picture out in the tack room. I didn't mind remembering. Those were the best days of my life, back when we were young and going to change the world. Since then, nothing's been… anything."

"When did you first figure out Wrightman and Grant were one and the same?"

"I'd never even heard of Grant until you came here the first time."

"But when I described him, you suspected who he was."

No reply.

"D.A. did, too."

More silence.

I said, "Why did you lie about your relationship with D.A.?"

"Because it's too damn hard to explain a relationship like that. What little we have isn't taking anything away from Mia. It's just our way of keeping the past alive."

"D.A. did come to see you Wednesday afternoon, then. He'd been brooding about Andy Wrightman, hadn't he?"

She shifted in the cramped seat, shoved her hands between her bent knees.

"Did you tell him where to find Tom Grant?"

"In a way I guess I did. I told him what you'd said about where he lived, that he'd done well for himself after-"

"After what?"

Ross stared out the window at the buildings of Inverness. The lights of the Czech restaurant briefly washed over her dark blond curls.

"What you started to say was after Andy Wrightman went back to his true identity. Tom Grant was the man's actual name. Wrightman was just an alias he used."

Ross glanced at me. Her eyes glittered in the headlight beams from a passing car.

"Grant graduated from the University of Illinois Law School in nineteen sixty-two," I went on. "It's my guess that he was recruited by the FBI; many law graduates are. He adopted the Wrightman name when he was sent to Berkeley to infiltrate radical student organizations. There were a lot of undercover agents on the campuses during those days. A man I know says most of them weren't very successful: they either didn't fit in and weren't trusted with any real information, or they fit in too well, became unreliable. Grant was effective for a while, but by fathering Jenny's child, in a sense he also joined forces with the people the Bureau perceived as the enemy."

I stopped at the intersection with Highway One. There were no cars coming from either direction. I eased the clutch out and turned north, over the bridge and into Point Reyes Station. It was livelier than Iverness: lights shone in most of the houses, and a group of people congregated on the sidewalk in front of one of the bars. Ross was silent until after we came out on the other side of the little town.

"Do you have proof of all this?"

"No, but there's a San Francisco homicide inspector who probably does, whether he knows it or not. And I think you and D.A. realized it a long time ago."

"Yeah, we always suspected Andy informed on us, D.A. and I. Why else would the feds have let him just walk away from Port Chicago? I saw that at the time. He just jammed his gun into D.A.'s hand and melted into the scenery. And why was his girlfriend the one they made the deal with, rather than either of us? If they wanted to make an example of somebody, the daughter of a rich family would have been a better choice. Except they didn't want that; it would have blown Andy's cover. And Andy probably urged it; he must have been scared to death that the depth of his involvement with her would come out and screw up his career."

"You and D.A. never said anything about him to the authorities?"

She shook her head. "It seems incredible now, but at the time we didn't know. Or maybe it was that we didn't want to believe what he was. Our rationale was, what if we were wrong? We'd have been informing on one of our own."

"Andy left Berkeley when Jenny told him she was pregnant, didn't he?"

"Uh-huh."

"He probably requested assignment to another campus. If it came out that he'd fathered a child by her, the Bureau would have terminated him. But he couldn't stay away from her-maybe he did care for her on some level, maybe he was curious about his child. He came back a few years later, and when you all started planning the bombing, he saw an opportunity to make some real career points."

We were passing through Marshall now. The boarded-up oyster restaurant was a dark monolith. Tendrils of fog curled around the small cottages and drifted across the wet road.

I asked, "When he came to see you Wednesday afternoon, did D.A. say he wanted to confront Grant?"

"… He wasn't making sense. D.A. rarely does."

"When you told him where Grant lived, you must have known he'd go there."

"I never thought he would."

I wondered about that, but I let it go for now. "What about the next afternoon on the beach-did he mention Grant?"

"No. He was in bad shape, had been doing booze and pills. I tried to slow him down, but when D.A. goes off on a jag…" She shrugged. After a while she asked, "How come you're so sure D.A. was there at Grant's house?"

"That night, D.A. supposedly took Jake's truck and went barhopping. Mia told me he'd been in a fight, lost his jacket. A witness saw a truck like Jake's outside Grant's house just before he was killed. There would have been a lot of blood on the jacket if D.A. beat Grant to death-enough that he'd want to get rid of it."

"God, then it's true."

"You suspected all along. You should have told me."

"I know, but my protective instincts kicked in. I've been trying to save D.A. for so long now that it's automatic."

"You ought to know by now that it's a lost cause. The man doesn't want to be saved."

"No, but here we both are, trying to save him one last time."

We neared Nick's Cove in a few minutes. I asked, "Is Mia still there, or did she walk back home?"

"Said she'd meet me at Taylor's."

I accelerated up the hill.

Ross said, "Thing that bothers me about Grant-there was nothing in the paper about him having been with the FBI."

"I thought you said you didn't take a paper."

"I saw the headline when I was shopping in Point Reyes yesterday, so I bought it. Picture didn't look much like Andy, but I recognized the name Grant from your visit."

As I recalled, the story and picture had appeared on an inside page-a place Ross wouldn't have been able to see from a casual glance at a newspaper rack. I decided to let it go for a moment, however.

She added, "Why all the secrecy about him being with the FBI? Given the political climate in this country today, you'd think he'd have written a book about his experiences, gone on talk shows. Man could have been a hero."

"I think the FBI has restrictions on that sort of thing. Undercover agents' activities are classified information. But even if they weren't, I don't think Grant would have gone public with the story. He had reasons for not wanting his past too closely scrutinized."

"You mean because of Jenny's baby?"

"That, and other things." But I couldn't go into them at the moment because ahead I saw the outlines of Taylor's sign, and the entrance to the crushed-shell driveway. I turned the MG and coasted down into the parking lot.

My headlights washed over Mia Taylor. She stood in front of the restaurant, backlit by its beer signs, wearing a blue sweater that was many sizes too big for her. Before I brought the car to a stop she ran toward it.

"What're you doing here?" she exclaimed, her startled face appearing at the side window. Then she looked across me, saw Ross. "Oh."

I shut off the engine and we got out. "Where's D.A.?" I asked.

"Gone. To the island. He took my babies with him." I felt a sudden chill.

Ross came around the car. "He's got little Mia and Davey?"

She closed her eyes and nodded. "Why? Why would he take them out there?"

"I don't know."

I asked, "Have you called the sheriff?"

Her eyes flew open in panic. "I can't! Like I told you, there's been lots of trouble with D.A. I'm afraid after this Salcido business, they'll shoot first, kill him, maybe the kids, too."

She had a point. Ramon Salcido, a Sonoma Valley winery worker, had gone on a drug-and-alcohol-induced rampage the previous spring, leaving seven people dead, including his wife and two of his three young daughters. Area sheriffs' departments were now understandably more nervous than usual when it came to hostage situations involving children. And the situation with Taylor-a known substance abuser- was entirely too reminiscent of the Salcido case. "Is D.A. armed?" I asked.

"The twenty-two we keep behind the bar is gone."

Ross was looking around. "Where is everybody? What happened to Jake and Harley?"

Mia said, "They're over to Occidental-big dinner for this lodge they belong to. Just as well-there's nothing they'd like more than to blow D.A.'s head off."

I glanced at Ross. She shrugged. I asked Mia, "Is there a boat we can use?"

"Outboard tied up to the dock. D.A. took one of the rowboats. Does that sometimes, the damn fool, rowing around in the dark. I heard him cast off, went out to see what was going on. Then I heard my babies crying."

"And you're sure he went to the island?"

"He had a Coleman lantern. I could see it until he got there and then it disappeared into the trees."

I asked Ross, "Can you pilot a boat?"

"Of course."

"Good. Once I get those kids away from D.A. I'll want you to bring them back to shore, while I try to convince him to give himself up." Quickly I glanced at Mia, regretting the way I'd phrased it. But she was staring off at the bay, probably searching for light from D.A.'s lantern. When I touched her arm, she started.

"We'll need some things," I told her. "Flashlights-the most powerful you've got. Blankets. A first-aid kit, if you have one."

She nodded and set off for her cabin at a run.

Ross moved closer to me, said in a low voice, "What do you think our chances are?"

I looked out at the dock, where a pair of lights shone fuzzily through the fog. Imagined the expanse of water beyond them, and the uncharted terrain of Hog Island. And wished for my gun, which I'd locked away that morning-hoping never to need it again after last night's shooting.

I said, "Not real good, but we've got to risk it."