Hungry Ghosts (24 page)

“Right. A homeless man who fell over the banister on the floor below.”

“The one who lay on the ground floor till rigor set in?” The case that had so outraged John.

“Yeah, that's what they thought at first. It's why it sank to the bottom of the stack. That and the fact it was Saturday night, when we do a big business.”

“So, what made it rise again?”

“Turns out the corpse hadn't been dead for hours at all. Guy went stiff before he died. Not the same as rigor. Guy died because he went stiff. The neighbors were being straight all along. A kid saw the guy fall over the railing ‘like a chopstick,' that's what he said.”

I cringed. Jeffrey's apartment, where Georgia said he was keeping the drug for Tia—and a stranger goes stiff and dies in the same building? I inhaled slowly. “Cause?”

“Some kind of neurotoxin; coroner's still trying to pin it down. That's why there're all these officers here. Guy's so stiff he falls over a railing and we just have no clue about what caused it. Whatever it is, it's not a substance we want in our city.”

But I
did
know. If Jeffrey'd heard about the guy he'd have known, and—oh shit—Tia knew because she'd heard about the case. She'd heard it from me. That was why—

“Your turn. How'd you know about the phone call?”

Korematsu had upheld his half of the deal; I owed him. But I had to think about this—me innocently repeating the story to Tia, her grasping the connection, and how that death threatened any chance she had to get the toxin.

I'd already answered Korematsu too fast once today, when he sprang the question about the zendo knife. I wasn't about to do it again. I needed to see the choreography of what had happened, to play it in my mind like I did before a gag. But I needed to get away from Korematsu to do that.

According to Georgia, Jeffrey rented this apartment to keep the drug safe. “I know about the phone call because Tia had invited me for lunch. She went to the garage to get something and never came back.”

“What?”

It was a moment before I realized he was reacting not to the oddity of her vanishing on me, but was asking about the item. “A diary.” The image banged down between us. I had to give him some explanation. “We were in high school together, remember? She'd kept a diary one year and we were going to reminisce.”

“About?”

“School, friends,” I said, all the while puzzling about Jeffrey.
Jeffrey rented this apartment to keep the drug safe, not
for
Tia, but
from
her! So he could dole it out to her and keep control of her
.

Outside an ambulance hit its crescendo and squealed down. “A diary? Not a picture album or a yearbook. A diary is thought to be a rather personal item.”

I nodded. Damn, why hadn't I said
yearbook
? Yearbook would have been perfect.

“Were you close friends back then?”

This was headed in a bad direction. I had to divert him. “Close in a competitive way. Close enough for me to know who she was and to have kept up with her. And here's the thing: she was the golden girl, the one who charmed everyone. I assumed she'd be the chancellor at some university now, or own a fabulous restaurant, or a startup—no, too ordinary.
Something spectacular. But the truth is I don't know what she did after high school.”

“Tried to heal.”

I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. I could see Tia trying to swing herself out of her chair, trying not to let on how hard, how painful it was. I felt that same helplessness as I had watching, torn between easing her pain and saving her pride, choosing the latter and looking away in that eternity before she maneuvered up onto her unsteady legs. Making conversation to cover the awkwardness. Telling her—omigod!—about the homeless man falling over the railing stiff.

Jeffrey rented this apartment to keep the drug safe from Tia, so he could dole it out to her and keep control of her. The homeless guy fell off the landing after being poisoned with an unknown neurotoxin.

Korematsu leaned forward, glaring. “I guess you don't know how bad the injury was.”

“I do know. Tia fell under a cable car.”

“Right. Trying to leap across like you had done.”

My body went taut. He knew that much? What else did he know? How much was he playing me? I willed myself not to move, and I waited.

“I'm sure, with the kind of business you're in, you're aware that some injuries don't heal. Some people are lucky, like you; they break bones, tear muscles, and end up good as new. But others, like Tia Dru, don't heal. No one knows why.”

He knew a whole lot more about Tia Dru than I would have guessed. How much? He'd been the cop on the scene at her accident. Was he a little bit in love with her, too, like Renzo and Gary and Jeffrey? Had he kept tabs on her ever since, so that now this case was personal? To get his reaction, I offered the view I had had of her two days ago: “She always appeared so accepting and moving on, so not with her head in the past, you know?”

“That was her persona. But you ask your sister, the doctor. I'll bet she knows about the failed surgeries, the unaccountable relapses, the things that didn't heal, and those that healed wrong.”

Grace was exactly the person I wanted to ask, about this, about Jeffrey's father, about bioweapons research, and how easily Jeffrey's father could have walked off with some weapons-grade substance that could send a man so stiff he fell over a railing and died.

Korematsu was staring, as if he could see me thinking, not revealing.

“Grace never said—” I began, then stopped.

“She probably didn't want to make you feel bad. You ask her.” He leaned forward so he was almost touching me. “Ask her.”

“Is that what this is all about, me asking Grace?” I waited until he looked directly at me. “Or is it something more personal with Tia?”

He started to reach toward me but caught himself. “Listen. Your family is in this neck deep. I'm not saying you Lotts are responsible for her murder, but your family has been involved with her since her accident. Gary, Grace, John. Gary spent years on her lawsuit and I have to give him this, he got her a settlement no one else could have. They settled to be rid of him.”

“Insurers don't—”

“They knew he'd never give up. He hired an investigator to dig up every unsettled claim against the Municipal Railway. He was ready to hunt down plaintiffs, resurrect their claims, do class actions, whatever it took. He wore them down.

“Your sister, the doctor, got Tia experimental surgeries twice, got her into a very exclusive and very expensive pain clinic, and who knows what other protocols.”

“Really?”

“You didn't know any of this?”

“I've been away. But surely you knew that, too.”

He nodded.

“And John?” I asked hesitantly. John, who had insisted Tia was a liar.

“Nada. Strange, considering the family.”

I didn't like the familiar way he was fingering my family. “You're very sure of that.”

“I've checked. Trust me.”

“Listen, I know you and John are not friends. But much as you don't like my brother, he has standards. Just because Gary and Grace are involved with Tia doesn't mean the whole family is. I have other sisters. You're not talking about them, right? So why bring John into this? Because of your vendetta?”

“Because there's something he's not telling me. Something you're not either, even though you have to know the truth.”

“Which is?”

He hesitated momentarily, then leaned forward in a way that announced this was the point he had been aiming at. “Tia Dru said when she was hit by the cable car she was running from a man. Where did he go? John turned up at the accident scene before the closest beat officer. How did he just happen to be there? Coincidence, as your brothers and sisters insist, as they go to extremes to help this woman?”

“I—”

“None of them put themselves out to help her before the accident. Then, suddenly, your brother devotes years of his life to a one-in-a-million-shot lawsuit, and your sister puts her career at risk to get this near-stranger into medical trials. But John, he does nothing except be first at the scene of the accident.”

I forced myself to maintain my gaze, to cover my shock and the realization that I had suspected it all along, what I had shoved back from consciousness, what I couldn't face. John, who told me Tia had lied to him.

“You Lotts closed ranks. But Tia's dead, and Darcy, now you are going to help me expose the truth.”

I took a deep breath and made myself listen to the sound of it as I exhaled, to the grinding of the traffic. I made myself be aware of the hard, smooth, slightly sticky surface of the narrow wooden chair arm my hand was clenching. I looked straight across at Korematsu. “No, I am not. You want to go after my brother for your vendetta; you won't be using me.”

He raised his fingers in the air in a parody of ease. He said, “You will help me.”

“Why would I?”

“Because—and this is what I went out of my way to try to tell you this morning when you were playing hide-and-seek with me—the main suspect in Tia Dru's murder is the owner of the knife used to kill her in his own room.”

“Leo! You think Leo—”

“The evidence points to him.”

“The knife? That's just circumstantial.”

“Circumstantial evidence is evidence,” he said. “Does he wear flip-flops?”

“
Shower shoes?
Of course. I'll bet everyone in California has them. Why?”

He shrugged.

None of this made sense. “Leo didn't even know Tia!”

“Is that what you think? Ask him.”

“You can believe I will. This is crazy! How can you even think Leo would kill someone? I saw him put his life on the line for a student once. This is crazy. Yeah, I'll ask him. I'll ask him right now. You can drop me at the zendo!”

“Better yet, I'll take you to the station. Visiting hours are over, but I'll get you an exception.”

C
HAPTER
24

“L
EO
! How long have you been here? I just assumed . . .”

Korematsu had dumped me on the desk sergeant, who'd passed me off to a rookie, who'd plunked me in a tiny, airtight interview room. I sat on one of those plastic chairs made to be as uncomfortable as metal and assessed Korematsu's accusation. My brother, John, had been sure Tia was hiding some clue about Mike's disappearance. He would have been furious and desperate but also righteously irate at her failure to cooperate with a police officer, a newly minted one. It took no leap of imagination to see him chasing her down the street, and her thinking she could handle the leap I'd made look easy. As for Grace and Gary, it was easy to see how they'd gotten hooked. The question I was left with was why John had let them shoulder his guilt all these years. Why was he still doing it?

If only I'd been able to call Grace or Gary or even John. But, of course I couldn't—not in Korematsu's car, not in the cop shop.

If only I'd been able to ask Grace to find out what bioweapons material Jeffrey Hagstrom's father had access to. But, of course, I couldn't. Where had Jeffrey gone with that substance? Obviously, the police didn't know. Maybe Leo, who'd been there in the zendo, across the street from Jeffrey, for days before I arrived had some clue. Maybe. My head was swimming,
washed by the odor of stale smoke and sweat and the Clorox that failed to cover them.

No one would have smoked here for years, but the chairs, plastic table, and the walls were infused with the smell. The glass was one-way, and I didn't even see Leo's outline until the guard opened the door and let him in. His orange jumpsuit was almost ridiculously too big; he had the pants rolled so they made pouchy cuffs, and the short sleeves hung like grocery bags over his bare white arms. He sat and let out a sigh. I had the feeling there was plenty he wanted to say, but that he was concentrating very hard on his breathing. Finally, he said, “They only give you one call, you know.”

“Did you call me? I didn't get any message. Did you leave a message?”

He inhaled slowly and spoke very slowly. “Yes, I left a message.”

I pulled out my phone.

“I called the zendo.”

“The zendo! Oh, Leo, I haven't been there except for morning zazen. I slept at Mom's. I had a four
A.M
. call this morning. I just made it to the morning sitting. I never thought to check your phone there.”

He laughed. He could have been watching
Revenge of the Pink Panther
, chuckling at the miscalculations of Inspector Clouseau. Whatever he had been holding back was gone. “It hasn't been bad here. Being an abbot gives a prisoner a certain cachet. I'm leading a zazen group tomorrow. By the time I'm out we may have a few new members.”