Vanishing Point

Tuesday

After the sun-browned terrain of California, south-central Oregon looked lush and green. Klamath Falls, a small city of around twenty thousand, was nestled at the tip of Upper Klamath Lake and spread out over the surrounding, softly sculpted hills. My flight arrived at Kingsley Field on time, to clear skies and balmy weather in the high sixties. Before going to baggage claim, I hurried through the terminal to do the paperwork and collect the keys to the rental car Ted had reserved for me. Normally on a trip like this I wouldn’t have checked my bag, but the firearms regulations made that a necessity. The bag came off quickly, however, and after taking it to the car and removing and reassembling my Magnum, I was on my way, the MapQuest directions to Laurel/Josie’s house on the seat beside me.

The route took me through downtown, along a main street with a pleasant old-fashioned feel and lined by interesting-looking shops. Then I found myself in an area of shabby motels, fast-food restaurants, and strip malls. A right turn, and a mile or so from there I entered an older subdivision where the homes were of the same style, differing only in size and color, and set closely together on small lots. It was clearly an area in decline, and probably had been for some time: many of the houses were in poor repair and in need of painting; lawns were untrimmed, flowerbeds unweeded; some of the yards were surrounded by chain-link fences and posted with Beware of Dog signs. The houses mostly had one-car garages, but their owners had multiple vehicles; cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, campers, and trailers laden with jet skis and boats hugged the curbs. When I got to the 100 block of May Street I wedged my rental car between two pickups and walked down to number 113.

It was one of the smaller houses, a single story, of blue aluminum siding; the main part was set back and formed an L with the garage, which protruded toward the street. While the yard was tidy and the lawn mowed, there were no plantings in the flowerbeds, no other attempts at adornment. The single picture window next to the front door was covered with closed blinds.

I studied it for a moment, thinking of the pretty house in Paso Robles that Laurel Greenwood had abandoned twenty-two years ago. Thinking of how it would feel to come face-to-face with her, after prying into the most intimate aspects of her life for over two weeks now. Wondering how she would react when she realized she’d been found out.

Then I went up the walk and rang the bell.

No one answered.

I rang again. Waited.

No response.

There was a mailbox attached to the wall next to the door. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me, then tipped its lid up and looked inside. A couple of days’ accumulation of what looked to be junk mail.

Not home, then. How could I find out how long she’d be gone, and to where?

I went back down the walk, turned, and looked at the house again. Much like the others in this tract, it had an untended feel. But with the others I sensed that the owners were either too poor to keep them up, or too busy with their boats and jet skis and RVs to bother-or maybe they were simply leading disordered lives. Here I felt something different: it was as if outward appearances didn’t matter because the life being lived inside didn’t matter either.

I looked up and down the block. No signs of life on the opposite side, but two doors down to my right, at one of the better-kept houses, a woman was digging in a flowerbed. She knelt on the grass, wearing shorts, a tank top, and a sunhat. I moved along the sidewalk toward her and stopped by the low white fence that surrounded the yard. “Excuse me.”

She rocked back on her heels abruptly. “Oh! You startled me.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d heard me coming.”

“I was zoning out, I guess.” Her face was a wrinkled and weathered brown, her eyes a clear, bright blue, as if exposure to the elements had worked the opposite effect on them. “It happens when I weed. Often I think that killing things shouldn’t be such a pleasurable activity. But, then, it enables other things, such as this fuchsia, to thrive.” She gestured at a healthy, purple-flowered plant.

“It’s a pretty one.”

“Yes. Thrives on moisture. Of which we have plenty.”

“So I hear from my Aunt Josie. Josie Smith. She lives two doors down.” I motioned toward number 113.

The woman took off her gardening gloves, noticed that in spite of them her fingers were grimy, and wiped them on her shorts. “Josie never mentioned having any family.”

“Well, we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but I had to come here from San Francisco on business, and I thought I’d look her up. It seems she’s not at home.”

“Never is, this week in August. Her vacation from the convalescent hospital.”

“Oh, she’s working in nursing again?”

The woman frowned. “She’s not a nurse, just works at Hillside, assisting with the patients. Grunt work, she calls it. Personally, I think it helps her pass the time. There isn’t much in her life since her husband died, besides the nursing home and her volunteer work for the hospice.”

Husband? “Yes, his death was a shame.”

“That terrible accident, those bad burns, and then some nurse at the hospital where he was taken gave him the wrong IV and he went into cardiac arrest.” She shook her head. “A tragedy like that is what tests a woman’s mettle. Made Josie want to care for others. And she does.”

“I’m having a memory lapse. Where was it her husband died?”

“Someplace in northern California. It’s why she came up here, she said. To escape the past.”

“It sounds as if you’re good friends.”

“Not really. She keeps to herself. Stays in that house of hers, unless she’s at work or volunteering. The way I know her is that I volunteer for hospice myself. One night I gave her a ride home because her van was in the shop, and asked her in for a glass of wine. I’m nosy, so I pried into the details of her life. I think she regretted what she told me, because she’s kind of avoided me ever since.”

“When did she move to this neighborhood? I had to ask another relative for her current address, because the one I had-from Christmas of ninety-four-wasn’t good.”

“Spring of ninety-five, I think. Yes, it was the year my first grandchild was born.”

“And you say she’s on vacation now?”

“That’s right. Every year, the last week in August, without fail. She has a standing reservation at the Crater Lake Lodge. Calls it her ‘mental health week.’ Says it’s the only thing that keeps her sane, after all the illness and death she sees at work.”

Mental health week.

Mental health day.

In spite of all that had come to pass, one thing hadn’t changed for Laurel Greenwood.

Crater Lake, less than fifty miles northeast of Klamath Falls, was formed by a massive volcanic eruption that has been carbon-dated at having occurred some four thousand years BC; the blast caused the shell of then twelve-thousand-foot Mount Mazama to collapse inward, lopping off four thousand feet and creating a vast crater. I once read that no streams flow into the lake; its water is derived entirely from rain and snow, and its intense blue color is due to the water’s purity reacting with the sunlight.

A few years ago Hy and I had flown over the lake at dawn. We crested the pines on the eastern side, and suddenly it spread below us-huge, ringed by stark volcanic outcroppings. The first rays of the sun moved across its glassy, still surface like a golden stain. Hy pulled back on power and, as we glided closer and closer to the water, a silence so great that it rivaled the whine and throb of the engine rose to greet us. This was the world as it had been in ancient times; this was eternity.

It was an experience that made me aware in a profound yet comforting way of my own insignificance and mortality. Comforting, because I realized I was part of a magnificent creation. I’m not particularly religious, but you don’t have to be to partake of the feeling; you simply have to relinquish control and exist in the moment.

Today as I drove north from Klamath Falls, I suspected that this upcoming experience of the lake would be very different from my previous one.

The lodge was an imposing building composed of several wings, stone on the lower story, dark brown wood above, with a steeply sloping green roof punctuated by two rows of dormer windows. Sturdy stone chimneys towered above it, and pine-covered hills loomed even higher. I left my rental some distance away because the parking lot was crowded and hurried toward the main wing. Although it was warm outside, the interior was cool and dark. I paused for a moment to get my bearings.

The space was wide and long, with highly polished hardwood floors dotted with area rugs and rustic wooden furnishings, the chairs with wide arms and bright woven cushions. People in tourist garb wandered through, exclaiming at the huge fireplace and beamed ceilings. I located reception, crossed to it, and asked if Josie Smith was registered.

The clerk, a slender man with large hair and a small ring in his left ear, said, “Yes, she is, but she’s not in her room. I saw her go by an hour ago with her book; you’ll find her on the veranda. She’s always there this time of day.”

“My friend is a creature of habit, isn’t she?”

He smiled. “You could say that. One of the long-term employees says she’s been coming here this same week every year since nineteen ninety-five, when the lodge reopened after it was reconstructed. She reads on the veranda every day from four o’clock till sunset, then has dinner in the dining room.”

“Is she always alone?”

“She sometimes converses with the other guests but, yes, she pretty much keeps to herself.”

“Well, I’d better go find her.”

The veranda was wide, concrete-floored, with a low stone wall topped by a wrought-iron safety fence. Rocking chairs of natural bark logs with caned backs and seats were arranged along the railing. Several groups of people sat there, their feet propped on the wall, sipping wine and talking. Farther down I spotted a lone woman in jeans and a T-shirt, her legs tucked up under her; she had a hardcover book spread open on her lap, but her head was raised, her eyes on the lake.

Laurel Greenwood.

I remained where I was, taking in what she saw: the tops of the nearby tall pines and the brilliantly blue water beyond. An island, with more pines clinging to volcanic rock, sat midway between the shore and the stark outcroppings on the far side-remnants of the mountaintop that had been blown away by the ancient eruption. The lodge faced west, and already pink traces of the sunset were streaking the sky.

Laurel sat unmoving. A light breeze caught her hair and ruffled it around her shoulders; it was straighter than it had been at the time of her disappearance, but just as long, and silver-gray streaks caught the light. She had once been beautiful, but she was not anymore. And it wasn’t just the result of aging.

I watched her for a moment, but she seemed unaware of anyone else, barely aware of her surroundings. As I approached her, she seemed not to hear my footfalls.

I stopped two feet away from her. Put my hand on the.357 in the outer pocket of my bag, in spite of the unlikelihood that I’d need to show it. Said, “Laurel?”

Slowly she disengaged her gaze from the lake and looked toward me. I was reminded of the expression in her daughter Jennifer’s eyes when I’d approached her at the overlook north of Cayucos: remote, dazed. The same expression Jacob Ziff had described on Laurel’s face when he’d encountered her there.

As if she were waking up from a dream, or maybe as if I were pulling her back from some other world she’d been inhabiting.

Well, by now Laurel had been inhabiting that other world for a long time. Too long.

She stared blankly at me, and when she didn’t respond I said, “Laurel Greenwood?”

Suddenly her eyes came alive, displaying a rapid succession of emotions: bewilderment, disbelief, fear, and-finally-resignation. I waited out her silence.

“Who are you?” she finally said.

I took my hand off my gun and pulled up a nearby rocking chair; sat and handed her my card. At the same time I switched on the voice-activated tape recorder I’d earlier placed in the pocket of my light jacket.

I said, “Your daughter Jennifer Aldin hired me to find you.”

“I don’t have to talk with you,” Laurel said after studying the card I’d handed her.

“That’s true. I have no official capacity.”

“Good.” She started to rise from her chair.

I put my hand on her arm, looked her in the eyes. “Do you really want to turn your back on your daughter a second time? She still remembers you with love.”

After minor resistance, she settled down. “How much do you know about me?”

“Nearly everything.”

“Then what do you want?”

“To fill in the gaps so Jennifer will finally have peace of mind.”

“If I agree, will you go away and not bother me again?”

It troubled me that she hadn’t asked a single question about Jennifer or Terry. There was a coldness in the woman, an almost robotic quality, perhaps the product of living a reclusive life or-worse-of her basic nature.

I said, “No, I won’t bother you again.”

Emphasis on the first-person singular. Throughout most of my investigation I’d tried to understand why Laurel Greenwood had caused such ruin to the people she supposedly loved, and I’d hoped for Jennifer and Terry’s sake that my search would have a happy ending. Even before I’d come face-to-face with Laurel, I knew there would be no such ending, and that I would be legally bound to turn over everything I knew about her wrongdoings to the proper authorities. Seeing her in the flesh cemented that resolve.

“All right,” she said after a moment. “I’ll tell you my story from the beginning. And then you’ll go away and let me be.”

Laurel and I talked for more than two hours, and I recorded it all. She was alternately defensive, petulant, angry, and defiant. But eventually she confirmed most of what I’d already surmised. Reinforced my initial negative reaction to her as well.

“Josie was in the terminal stages of her illness, and at times she barely knew who she was. But at others, she was lucid, and completely herself. I’d always known she could be cruel; I’d seen her nastiness directed at others plenty of times. But until that afternoon, she’d never directed it at me.”

“She taunted you about her affair with your husband?”

“Yes.”

“And you shoved her down the stairs?”

“No! I would never have done that. I made a move as if to slap her. She ducked, and fell. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, she was dead.”

“But you didn’t call for the police or an ambulance right away. Why not?”

“What a question! I was in shock. And, I admit, afraid for my own skin. Wouldn’t you be?”

“After Josie died, I couldn’t stand to be around Roy. Didn’t want him to touch me. And I couldn’t deal with Sally, because I knew she probably suspected what had happened. And my little girls… I never wanted to be a mother. Roy forced that on me.”

“You didn’t love them at all?”

“God, don’t look at me like that! I loved them in my way. I was a good mother. A good mother. That’s why, after the accident with Josie, I was afraid I’d somehow contaminate them. I decided everyone would be better off without me.”

“So you planned your disappearance for a long time?”

“Yes. And it was a solid plan; it worked like a charm. With the money from Josie’s estate I bought a van, stored it at a facility in Morro Bay. I wore a red wig so if they asked for my identification I could pass for Josie. Later I had my own picture put on her driver’s license. And then, after a trip to Cayucos to paint one last canvas, I took off.”

“Do you still paint?”

“No. I gave it up that day. I’d read about how to disappear. If I was to make a new life, I had to give up everything from the old. I left my VW bus with the canvas and all my painting supplies in a public parking lot in Morro Bay, put on the wig in the restroom, so the people at the self-storage place wouldn’t think a stranger was taking the van. Then I walked up the hill, and drove away from there.”

“And never looked back.”

“Oh, I’ve looked back. Believe me, I have.”

“Santa Rosa was just a temporary stopping point. It looked like a nice place, the hospital was hiring, and it was far enough away that I didn’t think I’d run into anyone who might recognize me. But I didn’t like the summer heat there-too much like Paso Robles-and then I heard that Sutter Coast Hospital in Crescent City was opening its new facility and hiring. I loved Crescent City. Cool and gray a lot of the time, like the coastal areas down south. And I wasn’t so lonely. I made a friend there.”

“Debra Jansen.”

“You talked with her?”

“She told me you were in Klamath Falls.”

“How…? Oh, the Christmas card I sent her. A stupid, sentimental gesture. Probably the last I ever made. And since that’s how you found me, the worst. Trouble was, it was the Christmas season, and I was depressed. I had good reason to be.”

“Because of what happened a year before to Bruce Collingsworth?”

“… You have done your homework, damn you.”

“Debra Jansen says his death was an honest mistake. That during the confusion in the ER you started an IV with the wrong bag of solution.”

“That’s the truth. I grabbed a bag out of the wrong cabinet.”

“But it wasn’t the usual ER confusion that rattled you.”

“Have you ever worked on an ER? Even a good nurse like I was-”

“Come on, Laurel. You couldn’t have helped but recognize Collingsworth. What really happened?”

“A mistake! That’s all-a mistake! Bruce was in terrible pain, but conscious. We were stabilizing him, and he looked up and recognized me. He said, ‘Laurel, you’re alive.’ That’s what threw me.”

“And you’re sure giving him dextrose instead of saline was an accident?”

“Of course it was! I’m… I was a nurse. I would never deliberately kill anyone. Never!… No, don’t you give me that look. Bruce Collingsworth’s death was an accident!”

“I decided to settle in Klamath Falls because my van broke down here, and I’d run out of the energy to keep going. The first year I lived in a cheap apartment, hoping I’d get it together and move on. Then I realized I wasn’t going anyplace, so I bought a house. For the past ten years I’ve worked in a nursing home. Just grunt work-changing beds, wheeling the patients outside to get some air, cleaning up after them. I don’t mind it. I like helping people. And I volunteer for our hospice. Easing the last days of the terminally ill, it’s rewarding. And, I suppose, something of an atonement for the things I’ve done-to Josie, to my family, to Bruce Collingsworth. I live very quietly. One of my neighbors has been kind to me, and tried to forge a friendship, but I find I’ve lost the ability to function socially. I’m only good with the dying.”

“All right-I’m sorry I haven’t asked about Roy or the girls. How are they?”

“Roy died seven months ago. Of pancreatic cancer. Terry’s married and teaches at a cooking school in Davis. Jennifer is a textile designer; she was living in Atherton, but now is separated from her husband and temporarily staying with Terry.”

No reaction to that news. “You said it was Jennifer who hired you to find me?”

“Yes.”

“That makes sense. She was always the inquisitive one.”

“And she loved her mother.”

“Did she? I wouldn’t know. Children are such voracious creatures. What we think of as love is often pure need. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with satisfying a child’s need. Someone has to fill it.”

Until it becomes inconvenient or difficult, and then you just walk away.

“So now are you satisfied? You’ll go away and leave me alone?”

“Yes, but I’m required to report any evidence of wrongdoing that I find in the course of an investigation to the authorities.”

“You promised-!”

“I said I wouldn’t bother you again. I can’t speak for the police in San Francisco or Crescent City. Or the state board of nursing.”

“You lied! You’re going to turn me in to them, even though I’ve told you everything.”

“It’s the law, and if I don’t comply, I’ll lose my license. Even if you can convince them that your version of what happened is true, there will be consequences. You’ve committed fraud, practiced nursing under another person’s credentials.”

“I’ll lose my livelihood. The nursing home will fire me. The hospice will turn me away.”

“As I said, consequences.”

“But my work is my whole life. I have nothing except helping dying people.”

“You have something else, Laurel, or have you forgotten why I’m here?”

“What? Oh, my daughters.”

“Yes, your daughters.”

“… Do they want to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you talk with them? Ask? At least do that for me before you go to the authorities.”

“All right, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want. When will you do it?”

“I’ll make a verbal report to Jennifer tomorrow. If they agree to a meeting, probably my office in San Francisco would be the best place.”

She considered. “No. Not down there. Please. Ask them to come to Klamath Falls, to my house.”

“Why?”

“Because maybe a visit there will explain a few things to them. Maybe it will be a new beginning for the three of us.”

“You’d better not be using this as a delaying tactic so you can run again. Because I guarantee I’ll find you.”

Her eyes grew bleak and she looked away at the lake. “Run? How could I? I have no place left to go.”

After I’d promised again-against my better instincts-to ask Jennifer and Terry to meet with their mother, Laurel went inside to her room. I remained on the veranda, staring out across the lake at the fiery sunset.

Given her character as I understood it, Laurel’s demeanor had seemed natural throughout our talk. None of it had been scripted; it couldn’t have been, given the circumstances.

But I wondered.

Her involvement in the death of Josie Smith. Her alleged mistake that had cost Bruce Collingsworth his life. Her desertion of her daughters.

I was the one who had had to prompt her to ask about those now grown children, and suddenly she wanted to see them.

I feared for Jennifer and Terry, should they decide to reconnect, but they were adults, and it was their prerogative to say yes or no to a meeting with their mother.

Momentarily I banished the investigation from my mind. Accepted the glass of wine I’d ordered from a passing waiter. Above the towering outcroppings on the far side of the lake, the sky blossomed with the last violent protests of the dying sun; purple clouds outlined in pink and gold billowed above them.

The end of a day for me.

The end of a reconstructed life for Laurel Greenwood.