I sat a little straighter. "Edward's mother?"
She slowly lowered herself onto a folding chair. "My only child."
"I'm so sorry; you have my sympathy."
"Honey" —she blew on the hot coffee— "it was the best thing for all of us. I only wish I'd never brought him into the world is all." She waited for my reaction. When it was obvious I didn't know what to say, she asked, "Ain't that a terrible thing for a mother to say?"
"A few years ago I would have said it was. But not now. Being related to someone doesn't mean you automatically love them."
"Amen!" She smiled at me, and I could see she didn't have any teeth. "Now, Miss Stanton, tell me what it is you came all this way to find out."
"Well, I understand your son fathered several children with various partners."
She cackled at my civility. "You're bein' very polite, but there ain't no need. Eddie was a pig. He poked anything and anybody. I know what they says about him havin' all these children, but the only one I ever seen was Skye. She was a beautiful baby… a real Kewpie doll."
"You saw her? I was under the impression your son never met his daughter."
"Far as I know, he never did."
"Mrs. Blevins, the reason Skye hired me was to find out if Edward Blevins was in fact her real father."
"Oh, he surely was."
"You're absolutely positive?" I asked.
"It took some convincin'. Even after I got a letter from Helena— that bitch. Thought she was just stirrin' up the shit like she always done. She said she wanted money for the baby and didn't care if it come from the family or some stranger in the gutter. She was gonna sell the poor little thing. There was a picture stuck inside the envelope. 'Course, I had to be sure if it was true or not. Called me a lawyer, the one in them TV commercials. He said he'd check it out."
"And you never told your son?"
The old woman seemed weary at the memory. "I tried. Brought the letter for him to see. I was livin' up at the house back then, it's 'bout a mile from here. That way he never got wind of my mail, liked to keep my private affairs away from him. But when I told Eddie, he didn't wanna hear nothin' 'bout no kid. He just laughed, went on how I should be proud that the ladies loved him so much. That kinda talk always made me sick."
"So what did the lawyer find out?"
"Took 'bout ten days, but they said it was all true. My grandbaby was livin' in back of some bar in El Paso. Said that the place was a real hole and I should try to get her outta there. But I was too old to care for a baby myself. An' I certainly did fear for her if Eddie got wind of the situation.
"So I cleaned out my savin's. All twenty thousand of it. Mr. Blevins left me a little and there was government checks. It took everything I had."
"What happened to Skye?"
"The lawyer gave Helena the money and arranged for the poor child to be adopted."
"Did you have any idea where she was living?"
Beatrice Blevins looked at me for a long moment, studied my brown boots, then the hems of my jeans. "I knew all along. I fixed it so the pastor and his wife down at the Methodist church who had just moved to California got her. What better people for parents than those God-fearin' Cahills? They was such a sweet couple."
"Did they turn out to be the perfect parents you thought they'd be?" I wondered out loud, not expecting an answer.
"I figured they was till some woman called me one day— oh, it must have been 'bout five years ago. She told me Skye was in danger and asked me to help."
"What kind of danger?" I asked.
"That's what I wanted to know. But she just kept goin' on, like she was a doctor or somethin'— real quiet and listin' off how she had been beat up an' hurt."
I did the math. "Five years ago Skye would have been twenty."
Beatrice scrunched up her face while she did her own calculations. "She was married by then. To some important guy in the movies. Not anyone famous, some big cheese that did all the dealin'. I thought for sure she struck it rich."
"Apparently not." I could hear Skye's own words replaying as she told her father about her unhappy marriage. That poor kid never had a chance, and I wondered how much worse off she would have been if Beatrice hadn't tried so hard to save her. "Did you help?"
"There wasn't nothin' I could do. She was an adult, with her own life to live, and I was stone broke. Had to sell the house an' move down here. Eddie was long gone, but even if he was still around, he wouldn't of done nothin'."
"You did your best." I leaned across and patted her hand.
"Don't stop me from feelin' bad. But now ya say Skye come to see you? How did she look?"
I remembered those turquoise eyes. "Beautiful," I told her.
I stood to leave. Beatrice walked me out to my car and asked that I give her granddaughter her regards.
I was buckling myself into the front seat when something made me ask, "Do you happen to remember the name of the woman who called you about Skye?"
"Sure. Have a hard time with faces, but names stick in there pretty good." She tapped her right temple. "It was Ann. Never did give me a last name."
* * *
Dr. Paige wouldn't give me Skye's home address, and since there was no message from her when I returned home, I was forced to plant myself in his waiting room.
"The doctor only sees patients with appointments," his pretentious receptionist told me. "And he
never
sees investigators. If you have a legal matter, we advise you to take it up with the police. In turn, we will be more than happy to cooperate with them."
After that speech I went out to get a hamburger, bringing it back to eat, loudly and slowly, while I waited. I was slurping at the bottom of the ice in my plastic cup when the doctor came out.
"Five minutes," Dr. Paige said as I slid into the chair across from his desk. "Please remember I'm seeing you only out of respect for Miss Cahill."
I checked my watch before asking, "When you called me the other evening, you said you've been seeing Skye for two years."
The jerk just stared at me and nodded.
"I assume that means she lives here, in Omaha?"
"Elkhorn."
Now it made sense why she'd sent me out there. Maybe seeing the street name had triggered off a repressed memory. "According to her grandmother, Skye was raised in Los Angeles?"
"Yes."
"Would it be breaking any great ethical code to tell me the last address you have for her in California?"
He rolled his eyes in such a way that made me want to harm him. "Miss Stanton…"
"Look, you can either cooperate with me now or later. Now will only take up" —I checked my watch again— "four minutes and thirty seconds. Later could take days. I'm a bullheaded German with free hours to spend haunting your office."
He pounded his fist down on the date book in front of him. "Yes! Of course I know her address!" He swiveled his chair angrily around and started punching numbers into his computer. When the screen was lit up with Skye Cahill's history, he read the address: "Three-twenty-nine Oak Street. She lived there with her husband for three and a half years." Then he closed the file and defiantly turned toward me. "What else?"
"Three minutes left for you to listen to a theory of mine."
He sat back nodding, at first bored and then stunned to hear that I suspected Skye Cahill of murdering her father, Edward Blevins, when she was sixteen years old.
"Miss Cahill is incapable of such a violent act."
"What about Ann?"
The doctor's ears perked up then. "Now, that's an interesting thought." I must have struck a nerve; all of a sudden he wanted to talk. I leaned back and listened.
"The personality of Ann is the idealized mother figure. She protects and loves Skye, unconditionally. I would suspect she is capable of doing whatever it takes to keep Skye safe. But if that was the case, why hadn't she struck out sooner, try to harm the unstable parent or abusive husband?"
"When was Ann… born?"
"As far back as Skye can remember," he said.
"Then wouldn't it make sense that the mother would blame the father for putting the child in danger?"
"Very good, Miss Stanton."
"How long did Skye know she was adopted?"
"As far back as she could remember. Yes, it all makes sense."
I picked up my purse and pulled out a copy of the original cassette Skye had given me. I started to stand, and the doctor looked disappointed. "You're not going so soon? Look, I apologize for my bad manners."
I tossed the tape at him. "Listen to this and see if you agree with me that Skye was confessing to protect Ann, the personality who actually pulled the trigger."
He was excited now. "Sit, we can listen together."
I started for the door. "Dr. Paige, I'm really not interested in helping you make a name for yourself by exploiting this young woman. The chief of police from Ardmore, Oklahoma, has also received a copy of that tape and will be contacting you, as will the detective who booked Skye here, in Omaha. I have no interest in the outcome of this case. That will be left to the three of you."
I hurried out of the door before he could say anything else. When the elevator doors opened, I thought I was home free until I saw those frightened eyes.
"Miss Stanton." Skye grabbed my arm and nudged me to a corner in the hall. "I've been waiting outside your apartment for hours. Where have you been?"
"Working on your case," I told her gently.
"So? What did you find out? Was that man my father?"
"Yes, Skye, he was." I watched her expression and it never changed. I wasn't sure if I was talking to Skye or Ann. I felt so sorry for her.
"I need to see Dr. Paige," she said, and walked away as if I had suddenly gone invisible.
"And I need to make a call," I said to myself, dialing the police.
* * *
Someone once told me that the second most important thing about doing a job is knowing when you are finished. As I forced myself back into my car, I kept telling myself I'd done only what Skye Cahill had hired me to do. My job was done. What happened to her as a result of my investigation was of no concern to me.
But still I felt guilty.
Jürgen Ehlers
Golden Gate Bridge— A View from Below
JÜRGEN EHLERS
is one of the rising stars of the German literary scene. With the trials and tribulations the German mystery publishing field is going through right now (see the World Mystery Report for Germany), one can only hope that this will not diminish this terrifically talented author's output. Only time will tell, but for now, enjoy this suspenseful tale of people loving, living, and dying in San Francisco. "Golden Gate Bridge— A View from Below," was first published in the anthology
Crime Scenes
.
Golden Gate Bridge— A View from Below
Jürgen Ehlers
H
ow nice to see you again!" Thus the reunion with my brother began with a lie. I had not been looking forward to seeing him for the first time in fifteen years. His telephone call the day before, and instantly it was all there again, everything I had tried to push out of my mind ever since. He had been giving a lecture at Hamburg University and wanted to call briefly before flying back. "You look fine," I said. And that was not a lie. He did not look his age, forty-seven. I wondered if he had dyed his hair.
He looked about my room. Of course, he spotted the photo at once. The only souvenir of my trip to California fifteen years ago. The photo that still kept its place in my study was a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. No ordinary picture, though. None of those you can buy at any souvenir shop in San Francisco. It just showed part of the steel construction of one of the piers. My brother had taken it. "Just give me your camera!" he had demanded and then held it obliquely downward into the gap between footwalk and driveway, and pushed the button. "Farewell to California, I would call the shot," he had suggested. This being the ultimate view of the sun-kissed state for the several hundred suicides who had jumped off the bridge so far. That was typical of my brother. Always good for some bizarre action, clever, fast, unpredictable. The years spent together had never been sufficient for me to grasp more than half of his mind. In the meantime I had stopped trying to understand him.
"You should have thrown it away," he said. He took the picture off the wall and tore it to pieces. As if that could make any difference.
Many people assume it would be a great advantage to have a big, strong brother. That is only half true. Certainly, I used to admire and envy him not only for being ten years my senior but also for his intelligence. He had his diploma in economics when I had just passed my O-levels. But at times I had also hated him, especially when he had said things like "You would not understand that!" in such an arrogant manner that only big brothers are capable of. Naturally he had got that job in California, picked out of a crowd of over two hundred applicants, whereas I had to be glad to find any job at all.