We Know

Chapter 43

One more name on the rumpled piece of paper. Tris Landreth, the witness to the dumping of the bodies. The most recent address Steve had found under her name, from a cell-phone account, belonged to a run-down house in Van Nuys. The bell was broken, so I knocked, and a moment later a heavyset woman in a plush bathrobe tugged the screen open.

I said, "Tris Landreth?"

She scowled, waved a hand at me dismissively. "I look like some Tris to you, son?"

"I'm sorry. I'm just-"

"She cleared out the guesthouse six months back in the middla the night. Give us no notice. And it ain't like she paid no security deposit we could cash in on neither."

"Six months ago."

"Yeah. And now everything 'Tris Tris Tris' again alia sudden. She a quiet lady. Why all these folks be up in here after her?"

My pulse quickened. "Other people were asking for her?"

"The Five-0 is who, son. Shit, worse. The secret-handshake guys. You know the ones."

"When?"

"Last week. Dunno. Wednesday, Thursday. Shit, I ain't no calendar."

I struggled to keep my head clear. "Did she pack up her stuff? When she left?"

"What little she had, yeah. She was here almost a year, but she never really moved in, know what I'm sayin'? Had a suitcase for a dresser. Like she was just waitin' to pick up and go again." A gruff voice called out from the back of the house, and she yelled back, "I be there in a minute, baby," and trudged off.

I stood at the door a few minutes before realizing she wasn't coming back.

I crossed the dead lawn and sat on the curb for a while, watching the kids play soccer in the street and the low-riders cruise by, vibrating with bass. Whatever Tris Landreth knew, I needed to know, too. Just waitin' to pick up and go. She'd been living a life I was all too familiar with. I thought about how isolated I'd felt up in Ketchikan, that soul-numbing loneliness that came from being cut off from those I loved, the semiannual cards I used to send through the remailing service to Callie, the freezing sleepless nights I spent waiting to hear if those cards had bounced back, if my mom had moved or gotten sick or died. I wondered, given that Tris Landreth had been too nervous to unpack her bags for a year, what had been keeping her in the area.

The liquor store at the corner had a pay phone in the back. I called the cell I'd given Induma, and it rang and rang before she picked up. I'd left early this morning to avoid awkwardness, and with her voice came a pang of embarrassment. And something heavier. Longing.

I said, "Sorry about last night."

"You've got nothing to apologize for."

"Then I can impose on you for another favor?"

"That's what friends are for."

"Rub it in."

She laughed.

I said, "Tris Landreth. The witness? She split."

"And you want me to use the databases to locate her."

"Steve already checked the databases. I need you to find out if she has any sick kids or elderly parents in the area."

When we got off, I bought a Coke, went outside, and sat on the curb for another while. A young Hispanic couple was leaning against a truck in the parking lot and making out. Dark bands of eye shadow stood out on her closed lids, and his hands were at her face. Effortless. I thought about how cold those floorboards had felt beneath my bare feet last night when Induma had told me that life doesn't wait.

The pay phone inside rang.

The shopkeeper gave me an odd look as I jogged back.

Induma said, "No sick kids and no elderly parents, but looks like Landreth was raised by an aunt who's not doing too hot. The aunt lives in Northridge."

I had a pen at the ready. "You got an address?"

I entered the well-kept complex and knocked on the appropriate door. After a lengthy wait and prolonged shuffling, an ancient woman answered. The apartment smelled of talcum powder and cats.

"Hi," I said. "I'm looking for Harriet Landreth. It's about her niece, Tris."

"Tris," she repeated, with impressive derision. She was severely hunched and had to crane her head to look up at me.

"Are you Harriet?"

"No, I'm Glenda, her older sister. I'm taking care of her."

"Has Tris visited lately?"

"Tris? Visited lately?"

I might as well have asked if Peter O'Toole had swung by for a gimlet.

She regarded me warily. "What is this?"

"I'm trying to find her. It's really important."

"Well, Tris hasn't bothered coming around here. Harriet raised that girl like a daughter. When no one else wanted to, I might add. And now my sister's sick, and do you think Tris bothers to come around? Not in months. And barely once a year before that."

"Maybe there's an explanation for why she can't come."

"If there is, Tris'11 have it ready. It's always something. Always someone after her. Bill collector. Some ex."

"You never know people's reasons for doing stuff, I guess," I said. "Maybe she's scared of something." I didn't know why I felt so vehement about defending her, and then of course I did.

"It doesn't matter," Glenda was saying.

"Everyone's got reasons for everything. She left us. She left us holding the bag. I'm not interested in how she'll justify it this time around."

I pictured Callie's face, hard with resentment: You haven't shown up for a damn thing in seventeen years. "You're right," I said. "It must feel pretty crappy from your end."

Glenda's face seemed to draw into itself, the wrinkles moving but not really moving at all.

"Maybe I could talk to Harriet?" I asked. "Just for a minute?"

"I'll see how she's feeling."

The door closed in my face.

A moment later the door opened again. Glenda was already shuffling back in. America s Funniest Home Videos played softly on the TV. A cat was leaping around a ball of yarn, accompanied by wacky circus music. The apartment smelled worse inside, something lingering under all that talcum powder. She headed down a shag-carpeted hall, calling over her shoulder, "I just gave her artificial tears, so she should be okay to look at you."

I asked quietly, "Artificial tears?"

She pressed through a door into the master bedroom. An emaciated female form indented the poufy sheets of the enormous canopied bed. Her skin was yellowed, like parchment, and the muscles under her face had atrophied. Medical equipment all around-poles and IVs and monitors. Her left arm dangled off the edge of the mattress. A nightstand held endless pill bottles. Harriet Landreth's eyes pulled over to us, but she couldn't turn her head. Her mouth tensed in a faint smile.

It was stronger in here, that scent, the one that draws vultures across desert miles.

Glenda crossed and picked up Harriet's right hand-dead weight-and set it on a tray holding a computer mouse with a tiny protruding bud. She guided her younger sister's finger to the bud until Harriet blinked twice.

"Hungry, love?" Glenda asked.

Harriet's eyes rolled to a computer screen, and her finger made some minuscule movements. A speaker emitted a loud, synthesized voice, startling me. I CAN'T EAT ANY MORE OF THAT SOUP YOU USE TOO MUCH SALT.

Glenda waved off her sister. "Then I'll bring you plain chicken broth, and you can quit nagging at me with that horrible voice." She shook her head at me, morbidly amused.

The slow, electronic words issued again from her sister's synthesizer. WILL YOU PUT MY LEFT ARM BACK ON THE MATTRESS IT IS BOTHERING ME.

"You can't feel anything, love."

PHANTOM PAIN PINS AND NEEDLES I CAN NOT STAND IT.

Glenda circled the bed, picked up the dangling arm, and set it on the sheets next to Harriet's side. As Glenda moved around, picking up dirty cups and plates, I stood in the bustle, overwhelmed and trying not to act it. A cord snaked from the computer monitor, leading to a digital telephone on the nightstand.

"You should have seen this cat on the TV. It jumped and jumped over a ball of yarn, and then the Jewish comedian said it was raining cats and cats." Glenda chuckled. "Cats and cats."

THAT SHOW WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME HA HA BAD ENOUGH TO WATCH BUT TO HEAR IT DESCRIBED HAVE MERCY IT IS NOT AS

THOUGH I CAN RUN OUT OF HERE.

Glenda waved a hand our way, dismissing us both from consideration, and withdrew, leaving me alone with Harriet.

Those dark pupils tracked over from the computer screen, finding me. Sentient, intelligent eyes, beautiful blue.

YOU ARE A FRIEND OF TRIS.

I assumed it was a question. Looking at her, I couldn't bring myself to lie. "Not a friend, exactly. I'm trying to find her. My name's Nick."

WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO FIND HER.

I sensed she was angry, but, unable to read tone, I felt unmoored. "My stepfather was killed seventeen years ago. I think she may know something about it."

I HAVEN'T SEEN TRIS IN YEARS.

A lie, based on what Glenda had told me at the door. It occurred to me that Harriet had agreed to see me only so she could find out what I was up to and notify Tris.

I cleared my throat. "Do you know where she is? I'd really like to talk to her."

Her muscles moved in fleeting twitches just beneath the papery skin. WE ARE NOT IN TOUCH.

"It's not only for me," I said. "I need to warn her about something." Those blank eyes stared back at me. "I think she might want to talk to me, too."

A long wait as that finger pulsed against the bud. And then, YOU COULD NOT UNDERSTAND THE FIRST THING ABOUT HER.

"I understand more than you realize."

Harriet's blinks were getting longer. She was having trouble holding her eyes open.

"Can I leave you my phone number to give her if she does contact you?"

Beyond her dry lips, her tongue worked, her jaw clicking with agitation. A spider thread of drool reached down and touched her shirt. YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE.

Her eyes closed and didn't open. Her hand slipped from the keyboard and she shifted slightly, her other arm sliding from the mattress again so the hand and forearm dangled over the edge. I couldn't tell if one of the tubes snaking through the sheets was feeding her air, but the rise and fall of her chest seemed to grow more regular. For a time I studied that cord running from her computer to the digital telephone, my heart pounding. Then I eased to her bedside.

The computer of course had a massively simplified interface. I touched the tiny bud, nudging the cursor over to the address book icon. Scrolling down, I looked under the L's. A few Landreth names I didn't recognize. I was disgusted with myself, breathing hard and trying to be quiet. I was terrified that Harriet would rouse and stare up at me with accusing eyes, and I would have not a single thing to say for myself. I searched farther down and found a single initial, T. And a phone number. Pulling a pen from the nightstand, I jotted it down on the back of my hand. Using a reverse directory, Induma could generate an address in seconds.

Harriet's breathing took on a slight wheeze. I started for the door but stopped after a few steps. I walked around to the other side of the bed and lifted her dangling arm. It was unbelievably light, like the wing of a seagull. I laid it gently by her side and tucked the sheet around it.

In the front room, Glenda sat dwarfed in an armchair, watching a dog with its head stuck in a red plastic bucket.

"She doesn't have long now." Glenda kept her eyes on the TV.

"Maybe Tris'll make it back to see her."

She scoffed.

Outside, the breeze was hot and smelled sharply of vegetation. I paused on the manicured front lawn, grateful for the openness, the shoved-down horizons, the bobbing palm trees. My chest felt tight and full, like I couldn't get enough air into it.

I stood there a few minutes, just breathing.