“Yes?”
“Yes?”
If I trusted Korematsu and he screwed me and John and Gary and Matt, maybe Matt . . .
“Who’s this?”
“I’m having a hard time deciding if I can trust you.”
“You called me in the middle of the night to tell me that?”
“I guess so. Reassure me. About Broder arriving at North Beach. After you called the station.”
“Broder! Do you know what an idiot I look like to him? After you disappeared—if it hadn’t been for the print tech, Broder’d have thought I made you up.”
My chest went cold. “So you did call and tell him I was there.”
“Of course.”
“Of course?”
“Broder’s looking for you. Your fingerprints are all over that apartment. You’re up to your neck in this. Your only fallback is to work with us.”
“Us, being you and Broder?”
“Us, being SFPD. Broder’s no fool; he’s never going to believe you’ll give up John. But if he thinks you’re helping us, he’ll leave you on a long leash.”
“Very kind.”
“As opposed to a choke collar.” His words seemed to bang off the cold tiles in this cold room. “He can pull you in any time. If he wants he’ll have LVPD at your door in five minutes.”
He knows I’m in Vegas!
It was so much worse than I thought.
Beside me, Matt Widley was snoring, his body twitching as life invaded sleep. Had he killed Karen? She’d thought she’d seen him in San Francisco. He was there. Munson was there. I could turn him in. Broder’d love to nail him. He’d let John off the hook.
But if he was just the innocent husband Karen had cared about—
Karen, who’d betrayed John. I didn’t owe her—
“And you, Korematsu, where do your loyalties lie?”
“I stuck my neck out for you, and for your brother. No one’s going to be thanking me for that.”
You smiled at Broder when he walked into the North Beach flat.
I couldn’t accuse him of smiling, ferchrissakes. “Are you still sticking out that neck for me?”
“You mean, after you made me look like a fool with Broder.”
“Which you wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t called him.”
“Look, I know the department.”
“I know what trust is.”
“So?”
“I just don’t know about you.”
“You were at Cass Cassidy’s school. LVPD is
not
on her doorstep.”
Maybe. The room was suddenly icy; Matt’s snores thunderous; my hammering heart about to break my rib cage. I needed to trust Korematsu, but he was a by-the-rules guy and I was skirt-the-rules all the way. Did “fair” even mean the same thing to him? “Okay”—although I was not okay with this—“I’m here with Karen Johnson’s husband. I told him she was dead—”
“You told him? You compromised an investigation?”
“Hey, I found you the husband. After I gave you
her
identity. And gave you a house with her fingerprints. Don’t posture around with me. You got a lot in return for that short neck of yours.”
He didn’t argue.
“I didn’t make free with any details, just said ‘died.’”
“Don’t, okay?”
“He’s a wreck. Tied one on after I told him. He’s sleeping it off now. How soon can you get here?”
“First flight. I’ll send a local unit out now.”
I gave him the address and hung up.
Then I shook Widley awake. “Matt, why were you in San Francisco this week?”
“Couldn’t stand it—her gone. Went looking for Alison,” he said, more asleep than awake.
“On the spur of the moment?”
“Umm.”
“Did you find her?”
He shook his head. Every part of him—mind, body, burst of dreadful memory—dragged him back toward the comfort of sleep. I jerked him just far enough back so he could focus on my questions, where answering them was the path of least resistance.
“Why was Munson there?”
“To help me.”
“And?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Kids . . . the kids.”
“In San Francisco?”
“He called . . . woman . . . soccer tour.” His eyelids drooped.
“Matt, wake up! This is important! It’s for Alison!”
“Alison! I was dreaming she died.” He looked over at me, his face knotted up and then he was sobbing, bracing his big head in his hands. “Love her . . . She can’t be dead. Not gone.” For a moment I thought he was going to howl again as he had earlier, but the sound he made was closer to a child’s wail. He looked like an enormous little boy, and I could imagine Karen being drawn to take care of him. I could imagine her trying against all logic to make the hundred-foot drop safe.
I felt so bad for him. I wanted to—but LVPD would be here any minute. “Matt, listen! Tell me this: What did you do in San Francisco?”
“Bought a phone.”
“Didn’t you have one?”
“Left it here. Had to get one of those pay-ahead ones. Called Alison. Kept calling her till the time ran out. No answer. Never! Drove me crazy that she was there; I was so close, but couldn’t get to her.”
“Did you call from the airport?”
“Airport, rental car, standing outside—” He slumped forward again.
“Outside what?” I was almost yelling.
“House.”
“Why were you there?”
“Graham was inside dealing with the Asian bitch.”
Omigod! “The house, Matt, what did the house look like?”
“Old. One of those houses like in the pictures of San Francisco . . .”
“A Victorian?”
“Yeah. Gingerbread. You know.”
“Was Graham talking to the Asian woman about girls’ soccer?”
“Um. Tour to Thailand.”
“Did you see Alison?”
“No. I told you, no! I never saw her at all! I thought if I was there . . . but that’d be like spotting someone in the crowd at the far end of the field. It was stupid. I sat there in the car thinking how stupid it was—me sitting in San Francisco with my dead phone—how she could be calling home right then and I wasn’t there to pick up the phone. While I’m standing there, worried out of my mind, a car crashes into another one like feet away, brakes squealing, metal banging, horns and all. Car spins, almost hits me. I think: this whole trip is nuts. So I walked up to that big main street, threw my useless piece of junk cell phone in the trash, got a cab, and flew home.”
The crash outside Guerrero.
“Did you see the driver?”
“The two guys who got hit, yeah. They were steaming. That’s part of why I left.”
“The other driver, the one who hit them?”
“Nah. By the time I turned around, it was heading off.”
“And Graham?”
“Left him a note.”
“You flew to San Francisco and only left your rental car, when you got out to find a cab, is that it?”
He nodded.
“Then you came home and checked you messages?”
“I called her back. Hit redial til the battery ran out.”
“And then?”
“I drank.”
I picked up his cell phone, the one he’d left behind and eyed his list of saved messages and scrolled back to Tuesday. It took me a moment to find the one from Alison:
Matt, pick up! Matt? Matt? Damn it, honey, this is important. Get out of San Francisco now! Now! Just do it! Now!
I shut the phone off, put it on the coffee table, and was out the door, into the van, and far enough away the police car I could see in my rearview mirror as it pulled up in front.
I trusted Korematsu, but not enough to fly back to San Francisco.
27
SATURDAY
CASS DROPPED ME at the airport at 5:00 A.M., but, oddly, my mind was in San Francisco. At the zendo.
I didn’t normally have
dokusan
—interview with the teacher—on Saturdays. That was the time for his other students. Certainly I never had it this early, since he was barely up. He’d be brewing coffee, sitting there on the second floor landing taking his first sip. I wanted to call him, but what were the chances of my phone
not
being tapped?
With a nod to Matt Widley, I bought a Virgin cell and dialed the zendo.
“Leo, sorry to disturb you.”
“But it’s important?” I pictured his gray eyes crinkled, his grin wide.
It was important; it also wasn’t the first time. “Yeah. But don’t ask me anything you can’t repeat.”
“My nasty habit of answering truthfully?” He’d be sitting on the landing, his feet on the steps, his back propped a bit awkwardly against the corner. It would have been more awkward had I been there. The little second-floor hallway begged for cozy discussions, but we hadn’t quite found our spots there yet.
“Leo, who are you?”
“Coffee cup in hand, itch on the back of my neck.”
“Who were you before?”
“Sleeping.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Memory.”
“Nothing else?”
“Karma.”
“In the sense that . . . ?”
“Things happening cause other things to happen. I knock over my cup; it causes the coffee to splash down the stairs. You jump off a third-story porch in North Beach; it causes Korematsu to come by here three times.”
“I’m sorry.”
Leo laughed. “That makes five times this week; even my students don’t come that much. It’s going to cause him to start pondering Buddhism. Not all bad.”
Hmm.
“But your question: What makes a woman change from what you thought she was?” He paused, giving me time to protest. I could have tackled the ‘you thought she was,’ but now I wanted to know what he saw as my basic question.
“You’re thinking of life like a pearl necklace—pearls strung on a thread. Wrong. Life is”—he rapped the receiver—“this moment”—rap—“this moment”—rap—“this moment. Nothing more. Only pearls. No thread. Moment, moment, moment, nothing between.”
“And yet—”
He’d hung up!
Only pearls, no thread. I knew it, intellectually, but still I couldn’t stop believing I was the thread. That Karen was a thread. And what was driving me crazy was how one end of the thread became the other.
I understood why she’d gone to San Francisco and had a good idea why she’d stolen the police car. But I was no closer to knowing who killed her. I just hoped that what she’d done in Alaska, those pearls between the Star Pine pearls and the Las Vegas pearls would hold the answer.
SFPD’d find out about my flight, but—with luck on my side—not till I was heading out of Anchorage toward the Kenai Peninsula. The plane was scheduled to make a single stop in Seattle. I could have started worrying, but once it lifted off I was asleep.
The plane bumped down in Anchorage just after 12:30. With no luggage and eager to run, even if it was only to the rental counter, I scored a compact, and thus within a half hour was on the lookout for a fish joint so I could make up for the breakfast and lunch I’d slept through.
Any other time I’d have stopped at every scenic overlook on the drive along Turnagain Arm and down the Seward Highway through Moose Pass to Seward itself. The mountains, the inlet, the vastness of the place; it’s hard not to slow down to stare.
I made it there in a bit over three hours. It was just about 5:00 P.M., but between my binge and bust sleeping habits and the endless July sunlight, it looked like noon. Sun sparkled off the waters of Resurrection Bay and the fishing boats eased back to the docks. Pickups crowded nearby and clutches of men, women, and dogs waited, ready to select their dinner. The briny smell sent a flicker of homesickness through me. How long ago was it that I drove Duffy to the beach in Gary’s car, his paws on the dash?
But, no time for that. I headed up to the edge of town. Wind whipped my hair and crackled my windbreaker as I walked to the rocky edge of the cliff, stood for a moment looking out across Resurrection Bay at the sharp snow-strewn mountains, hollowed out as if the gods had run their dessert spoons up the sides. It was the perfect place for a woman on the run to
reincarnate as just another immigrant who’d left an unsatisfactory life in the lower forty-eight for a fresh start in a town looking toward tomorrow.
Still, she’d been twenty years old, hiding out, and beginning to understand that she’d never again be able to see her family, her friends, anyone she cared about. She’d have trudged up the hillside, the smell of dead fish filling her nostrils, slime coating her skin, realizing that she could never become the lawyer she’d probably intended to be, never get a passport, never hold a job long enough for an employer to discover the social security number she had was fake. She’d have shifted the load knowing there’d be no better jobs for her, no decent salaries. After work, if she stopped in a bar, she dared not drink enough to chance a wrong word. Later, she’d go to bed, reminding herself as she drifted off to sleep that she could never, ever let down her guard, never relax, never be honest with anyone.
The drop was way over a hundred feet and straight down. How often had she considered that, standing here after she’d dumped her load? Had the cliff beckoned? Had she wondered if stepping over was the sensible end to a life on the lam?
Having worked long days myself, just as Sonora had, I knew where to go for gossip.
It took me just ten minutes in the Yukon Bar to find it. Didn’t even cost me a beer. Burt and Rikki Jessup already had dark ales. The couple had that look of years together—wearing the same kind of plaid shirts, and the same brown fleece vests over the back of their chairs, his gray hair sparse, hers long. They’d settled at a corner table away from the microphone. It was too early for music, but the place was already packed. Plates rattled, glasses clinked, voices bounced off the wooden walls.
I pulled out Matt Widley’s picture of his wife. “The bartender said you were folks who might know my friend. Does she look at all familiar? She was heavier when she lived here.” She may not have been dressed the same
here. She may not have
looked
the same except for her eyes and some ineffable something, her stance, the angle of her head, the way she held her hands behind her back.