Where Echoes Live (10 page)

He asked, “Got a piece with you?”

“No, it's at home. I used to keep one in the glovebox of my car, but when it was broken into and the gun stolen, I decided that was too risky.”

We reached the Morgan. Hy leaned against it, arms folded, face concerned in the glow from the lodge's security lights. “I'd loan you one of mine, but by the time I got it and brought it back—”

“Don't bother. I'm also a mean hand with a fireplace poker.”

His lips twitched, but he sobered quickly. “I don't know, maybe I'm overreacting. But old habits die hard. You do me a favor—keep that poker next to your bed tonight.”

“I will.”

He made no move to get into the car. I shifted from foot to foot—not really cold or impatient, but suddenly ill at ease.

Hy said, “Come here, McCone. Give me a hug.”

Without hesitating, I went to him. He held me tightly, his breath warm against my forehead. The closeness seemed as natural as when we'd danced at Zelda's. After a few seconds he released me, a melancholy smile on his lips.

“See you later on today,” he said, and folded his long body into the Morgan.

I didn't sleep restfully or long, and by seven I was up and dressed. A quick glance into Anne-Marie's room showed that she'd burrowed deep and pulled the pillows over her head as defense against the sound of the shower. The fact that she'd already been in bed when I'd returned to the cabin after walking Hy up the hill told me how tired she must have been; I'd seldom known her to restrain her curiosity about anything so provocative as why I'd allowed Ripinsky to talk me into dancing at Zelda's.

I made myself a mug of instant coffee, pulled on my jacket, and stepped onto the porch. The gray outlines of the willows framed the pink-streaked lake. Waterfowl glided across its surface, pausing occasionally to turn tails-up to feed; gulls and plovers made touch-and-go landings on the gnarled tufa islands.

My gaze rested on the nearby dock, where a figure sat facing lakeward, one knee drawn up. Apparently Ned Sanderman couldn't sleep either. At first I almost went back inside, but finally I descended the steps and carried my coffee over there. He glanced back as my footsteps set the boards vibrating.

“Good morning,” I said. “It looks as if it'll be a pretty day.”

He nodded curtly.

“Mind if I join you?”

“If you like.”

Good Lord, I thought, he can't still be pouting! I asked, “Were you able to get more sleep?”

“No. I kept thinking about … Actually, I'm glad you're up early so we can talk privately. There's something I have to tell you.”

I sat next to him and offered him a sip of coffee.

He shook his head. “I never touch the stuff, or tea, either. Caffeine's a killer.”

I ignored the implied criticism. “So what is it you want to talk about?”

“The murdered man. I think I know him.”

“How?”

“Well … I don't know that he's the same Michael Erickson. The name's a common one, but the address at Barbary Park … Can you describe him?”

I told him what I'd observed of the dead man's appearance. As I spoke, Sanderman's already pale skin went pasty and his eyes—red from lack of sleep—clouded.

After a moment he said, “That's the man. And Michael Erickson is his real name. Mick, for short.”

“How do you know him?”

“From my former firm in Silicon Valley. Techworks, it's called. I was a computer engineer developing … well, that's irrelevant. Mick was on the marketing side, mainly servicing our Pacific Rim accounts, but he had a technical background, too—a degree from Colorado School of Mines.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Not really. The technical and marketing staffs didn't mix all that much, although it was a small company, friendly. After I left, I didn't see him for a few years, never even thought of him. But two years ago I ran into him at Union Square in San Francisco, it was Christmastime. We were both trying to finish our shopping and pretty tired, so we went and had a couple of drinks.”

Sanderman seemed to have run out of steam, so I prodded him. “What did you talk about?”

“The old company, people we knew there, what they were doing. Mick had left a couple of years after I did and formed his own consulting firm. But he didn't talk much about that; what he was interested in was my work with the Coalition. I told him about how we'd cooperated with the Friends in their efforts to stop the water diversions from Tufa Lake, and of our concern about the gold-mining potential in the Tufa area. He seemed fascinated.”

“Did you see him after that?”

“Twice. A few months later he turned up in Sacramento at the Coalition headquarters. Said he'd had business in the area and just dropped in on impulse. He invited me to have drinks again after work, asked me to bring along some of the Coalition literature and position papers on the situation here in Mono County. I was happy to; we're always short on funds, and Mick seemed well off. I was hoping for a donation.”

“Did you get one?”

“Yes. Two or three weeks later he showed up again. This time he took me to dinner. He asked a lot of questions about Tufa Lake and Stone Valley. Before he left he gave me a thousand dollars for the Coalition.”

“And then?”

“That's the last I saw of him.”

I thought for a moment about what he'd told me. “Tell me more about Mick Erickson. What was he like?”

“Like?” Sanderman stared off at the lake, where the tufa islands were taking on sharper definition as the rising sun gilded them. “An attractive guy. Well dressed, drove a Jaguar. Not handsome in the classical sense, but there was something about him that made women sit up and take notice. Very smooth, with a good sense of humor. He wasn't the sort to tell jokes, though; they were more like amusing stories, anecdotes. Not your stereotypical marketing type—much more sophisticated.”

“You know anything about his personal life?”

“I think he was married. At least, when I ran into him that Christmastime, he complained about how difficult it was to choose perfume for his wife.”

“Anything else?”

He shook his head.

“What about the consulting firm he'd set up?”

“I can't even recall its name.”

“Okay, now let me ask you this: You must have suspected the dead man and Mick Erickson were the same person when we all talked last night. Why didn't you mention it then?”

He wet his lips, compressed them.

“Ned?”

“I just …I didn't want to say anything in front of Ripinsky, not until I'd thought it over.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the way it looks to me—and I'm sure it will to him—is that I inadvertently gave Mick an idea that he later exploited.”

“About the gold-mining potential here.”

“Yes.”

“Hy could scarcely blame you for that. As far as you knew, Erickson was interested in the Coalition's work. He
did
give you a sizable donation.”

“You and I see it that way, but Ripinsky will manage to turn it around. He's like a lot of the old-style environmentalists—a zealot who resents the new breed.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Ripinsky's in love with Mother Nature. Every tree, every rock, every bird, must be preserved at whatever the cost.” Sanderman's lips twisted scornfully. “He doesn't see the realities of what we're up against. Doesn't see the need to compromise, make accommodation. And he doesn't understand just how bad our need for money is. We can't exist on the dribs and drabs that trickle in from our members and private foundations. We need big money, and we have to learn how to tap into the sources for it.”

“Did you think you could do that through Mick Erickson?”

“… Well, he certainly seemed like a man who could provide a good entree to the big-money interests. But try telling that to Ripinsky. He'd accuse me of selling out the entire Tufa Lake area. And the devil of it is that if anyone else—Anne-Marie or one of the Friends, for instance—had made the same error in judgment, he'd have understood how it could happen. But because it was me …Ripinsky's out to get me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged and looked away.

“I don't think he's out to get you, Ned. The two of you just don't get along because of the difference in your personal styles.”

Sanderman still did not meet my eyes. He seemed to want to tell me something, but was unable to broach the subject. Finally he said, “Maybe you're right. This kind of conflict isn't new to me. All my life …I don't relate well, and people don't relate to me.”

I hadn't suspected he possessed such self-knowledge. “In what way don't you relate?”

“Basically I find other people uninteresting. Compared to ideas, they seem pretty trivial. Their concerns, their lives— when you examine them, you've got to admit they're frivolous. I'm happiest when I'm alone: working out theoretical problems, catching up on my technical reading, creating crossword puzzles or acrostics. But I'm socially aware enough that I realize I
should
relate, so I compensate by talking too much. People find me boring.” He fell silent, putting a hand to his lips as if trying to force back the pain that underlay his words. I sensed that this was the first real confidence he'd shared with anyone in a good long time.

It struck me that I had the reverse of Sanderman's problem: all my life I've related—perhaps too well. People tell me things, frequently things they've never told another living soul. Maybe it's because I have an open manner; maybe it's because I ask the right questions; maybe I simply behave like someone who will respect and guard a confidence. Often it's gotten me into trouble when someone later regrets having been too frank, but occasionally it's formed the basis for solid friendships—to say nothing of having been extremely useful in my work.

I asked, “Do you care that people find you boring?”

“Of course I do! I have feelings, you know. Just because I don't spread them out for everyone to see … You remember the other night when I said I had my mid-life crisis at thirty-nine?”

I nodded.

“Well, what brought it on was my wife leaving me. I know that doesn't sound particularly unusual. In Silicon Valley, people are always divorcing. Men leave their wives for their secretaries; women leave their husbands for their co-workers or bosses. Hell, two of my wife's women friends left their husbands for each other. But you know one of the reasons why my wife claimed she left me?”

“Why?”

“Because I was so boring that every morning she had to remind herself that I existed.” His pain was clearly apparent now. “How do you like that? To my own wife I was a nonentity!”

Had I heard his story secondhand—had he, for instance, been one of Hank's clients, who as a group have endured some of the most hilarious divorces on record—I would have been amused. But his outrage was such a transparent mask for hurt that I found no humor in the tale. I said, “Your wife doesn't have much depth or compassion, does she?”

It was the right response; Sanderman's tense face relaxed. “No, she doesn't. But she's right about one thing—I
am
boring.”

I smiled. “Boring and proud of it—that's the spirit. But, Ned, to get back to Erickson, you should call the sheriff's department and tell either Kristen Lark or Dwight Gifford what you know.”

“I plan to. What about …”

“Don't worry about Anne-Marie and Hy. We'll just say that you didn't make the connection between the dead man and your Mick Erickson until we spoke this morning.”

“Thanks.”

I stood up. “No problem.”

“And thanks for listening. I've talked
at
you a lot since you've been here, but it was better talking
with
you.”

“Any time you want to talk some more, I'm here. And, Ned, if I ever take up needlepoint, my first project will be a pillow for you saying—”

“I know: ‘Boring and Proud of It.' ”

Two hours later, just as I returned from a long walk along the shoreline, Nickles tottered down the hill looking like death warmed over. She cringed at my offer of breakfast, but agreed to help me locate the other prospectors in the valley. On the way into town to retrieve her Jeep, I asked her how it had gone with Rose Wittington, but she didn't want to talk about that. All she would say was, “The woman's fuckin' crazy.”

Because of the early hour, Stone Valley still held the chill of night, but by the time Nickles, with the unerring sense of a born tracker, ferreted out the two prospectors I hadn't been able to find, the temperature was on the rise. Neither man was able to tell me anything about Michael Erickson, under either his own or the Tarbeaux name; neither had seen Earl Hopwood in at least two weeks. As we approached the hillside encampment of the man with the shotgun, I began to wonder if all this running around in the heat was really worth it.

The man's abode was merely a shack of wood, tar paper, and sheet metal, with a battered and faded psychedelically painted VW van parked next to it. Nickles stopped several yards away and called out. He emerged, shotgun cradled in his arms. He was big but running to flab, clad only in shabby jeans and an open leather vest; his full beard hung nearly to his belt, and his matted curls were restrained by a blue bandanna. A cross between a desert rat and one of the area's leftover hippies, I thought. When he saw us, he planted his feet wide but didn't raise the gun.

“Hey, Bayard,” Nickles said, “I got a friend here, needs to ask you some questions.”

Bayard just stood there.

Nickles motioned to me, and we went closer. Now I saw that his eyes were dull and burned out. I also could smell him, the shock waves of body odor almost palpable in the hot, still air. Definitely leftover hippie.