A Sudden Silence (7 page)

"I don't blame you. You didn't see anything on the back of the car after it passed? Some round things maybe? White? On the bumper or rear window?" I was struggling for words, for that memory again, but nothing more would come.

"I
did
look back over my shoulder. That car was going up the hill still on the wrong side. If another car had been coming..." She paused. "I hope I didn't simply muddy the waters telling you this. That's what Gabby said we'd do. And besides..."

"Besides what?" I prompted.

"It couldn't be the same car that killed poor Bry, could it, Jesse?"

"I don't know." There was nothing to say a car couldn't go south, make a turn around, and come back north. What were the odds against two cars, within a half hour of each other, on the same highway, both with drivers so drunk that they were out of control? I tried to be realistic. On a Saturday night, with parties and summer starting and weekenders and vacationers? Come on, Jesse. There could have been a dozen drunk drivers passing Del Mar. But in a medium-sized, dark car? Yes, in a medium-sized, dark car.

"Oh, and Jesse, it was sort of rounded. I mean, not squared off at the back." Her hand made a curve.

I nodded. "Yes."

I could add another fact to my memory now. The car that hit Bry had been rounded at the back, too.

I
WENT SURFING
just after dawn next morning. And it was a little better than the last time, when I'd given up and crossed over the highway and found the shoe. "It's supposed to get easier," Officer Valle had said. Probably. But it would never be easy.

I'd walked the beach before I'd headed for the water, looking for Sowbug, but he wasn't there. He'd be back. Even though Sowbug does sometimes disappear, he always comes back.

It was a pretty morning, without our usual overcast. I rode a few waves, letting the beauty and the loneliness comfort me a little, and then I sat between the pearliness of sea and sky and tried to think. If a car came toward Laguna at 11:10 or 11:15, spent five or ten minutes somewhere, came back at 11:30, where could it have gone? What was within that distance and time radius? All-night markets, liquor stores, gas stations. Friends who lived in the area. Maybe just a stop to have one more for the road. To drink another beer, do another line of coke, turn, blaze back along Coast Highway, and smash and kill.

A swell was coming and I let myself slide off my board into the cold clean sting of it, going under, coming up. Did it matter if the car came that way first? I didn't know.

I paddled for shore, stashed my board, and walked the highway again, on the beach side, facing the traffic. This was where the Strathdee sisters had seen the car rounding the curve. "It went up on the grass, almost off the cliff," Miss Ernestine had said.

Cars aren't allowed to park here on the bend. Farther on, there's a break and an area that used to be an old riding stable and horse trail where you can pull over. But here the traffic breezes by, not daring to stop. Cars breezed past me already, even this early.

I stopped partway around the curve. Up on the soft edge, dangerously close to the drop, was a tire track with a deep indented pattern. I stared at it, knowing it might be a match for the ones the police had found where Bry was killed, thinking it might be important. I wished there was some way to rope it off, but there wasn't. Nothing to do but get my board and haul it and me home as fast as I could.

My parents were up. I heard my father in the shower and the small sounds of my mother in their room. She always tidies up and makes the bed before she comes out to fix breakfast. Chloe's room would drive her nuts.

It wasn't seven yet but I dialed the police station and left a message for Officer Valle to call me. She did later, while Mom was driving Dad to work, and I told her about my conversation with Miss Ernestine and about the tire marks.

"Maybe it isn't major," I finished. "But I thought you should know."

On the phone I could hear the babble of voices, other phones ringing, a clicking that might have been typewriter keys. I imagined the station house the way it is on TV, with prisoners being brought in and sleepy cops going on and off duty.

"Everything's major, Jesse," Officer Valle said. "We'll get someone from the lab out there right away."

"Let me know," I said.

She called me back on it early the next week. The tracks were the same. "I should tell you we found more in the sand at Clambake Point. It seems logical to suppose the car came south, cut in at Sapphire Cove Road, turned at the Point, and came back, heading north again. And the only people who know you can get to the Point along that road are the locals, right?"

"Right," I said. "And the surfers. And kids from school who go there to make out or do drugs or booze."

I pressed the cool earpiece of the phone against my forehead, figuring out the time. It fitted. Too bad he hadn't driven himself off the edge instead.

"Is it logical to suppose he was stinking drunk?" I asked.

"We don't know that, but it's certainly a possibility."

"It's certainly a possibility," I mouthed soundlessly back at the phone. These cops were so full of it!

"Jesse?" Her voice was tiny and tinny through the phone. "We're keeping at it, Jesse. We'll find him."

"Sure." But when? And how?

It was a terrible week. We had phone calls on the reward and on our posters, and I found out that people can be greedy and cruel and ghoulish and that they lie a lot. I found out, too, that people can be caring, and sad for you, and kind. We had cards sent to us, and religious poetry. Strangers told us we were in their hearts and prayers, that masses were being said for Bry, that candles were being lit. A businessman in Newport added another five thousand dollars to Dad's reward money. A scout troop collected eighty-three dollars, and a psychic whose name was Madame Zara told the police she saw the car plainly and it was a hearse with pale curtains and a casket inside.

Officer McMeeken said, "At least she didn't say it was being pulled by six black horses," and then he coughed and looked uncomfortable.

Alexander invited me to come to Pasadena for a while, but I told him I had too much to do. I spent a lot of time at Clambake Point or up in the gazebo or drifting aimlessly on my surfboard. I made endless lists of what I knew and what I didn't. Three or four times I convinced myself that I should call Chloe and tell her what kind of response we'd had to the posters. I even got out the phone book to look up her number. It wasn't hard to find. On the E-for-Eichler page one name was underlined in yellow Day-Glo pen. I didn't call her and I didn't write the number down, but it kept repeating itself over and over inside my stupid head. How could something as unimportant as a phone number stick, and those missing details about the car drop into nothingness?

On Thursday Crocker Brothers told us Bry's headstone was ready and they'd be erecting it, so we went out to the graveyard that evening and stood in the long red rays of the sun and read the simple words that told who lay there, under the earth. Mom had brought honey-suckle from the hedge by our trailer and when she put it in the vase of water a ladybug flew out from the tangle of yellow. A Del Mar ladybug. I wished it would stay there, with Bry.

Friday afternoon, because I had to do something, I took the bus into Costa Mesa. The fireworks stands for tomorrow were doing a rush last-minute business on the edge of town. Little kids and their parents crowded the counters, getting their sparklers and spinning jennys. One of the best things about living at the beach is being able to shoot your Fourth of July firecrackers into the ocean. It's illegal now, but the kids still do it anyway. Bry always liked the cherry bombs best, even though he couldn't hear them.

"It's fun to see peoples faces when those suckers explode," he'd say.

Not this year, Bry. No Fourth of July for you. "No sun, no moon, no morn, no noon." Miss Sharps English literature class. Great memory, Jesse. Selective.

I got off the bus in the middle of town and walked around the car dealers, looking at what they had in their lots, and then going inside to pick up their advertising. Once in a while a hotshot salesman would come over. Probably thought I was some kid with mega-rich parents who were about to buy me a postgraduation gift. Or a birthday gift. I flashed onto Chloe and her little Mustang.

"Did you and Bry go driving a lot?" I'd asked.

Mom wasn't home when I got back with my plastic bag full of junk. The evening paper still lay on the path to the trailer door, and when I picked it up I saw that the reward notice about Bry was in again, upped to fifteen thousand dollars now. I wanted to hide it so Mom wouldn't have to look at it when she got home, or Dad either. But there was no place to hide from any of this.

I sorted through the leaflets I'd picked up, dumped those that had the big luxury cars or the small economy models, and spread the rest on the table. Camaros, Thunderbirds, Buicks. I was looking for a rounded back, even white circles. There were too many damned cars. Soon I couldn't tell one from another. Soon I knew I wasn't going to find what I was looking for.

Tomorrow was the surfing competition finals at White Sands. My mind kept slipping to that. Chloe would be there. Thousands of people would be there. Maybe the guy in the black Windbreaker. Maybe the death car.

I got up and went into Bry's room. Neither Mom nor Dad had touched anything yet. When would they be able to? Maybe never. The pieces of the paper clock were still neatly stacked the way Grandpa had left them. I picked up one and put it down again but I didn't slide across the closet door to look at Chloe's picture.

"I think I'm going to the White Sands competition tomorrow," I said abruptly, after dinner.

Dad pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Good idea. You should get away a bit, Jesse. We won't need the car, Mother, will we? You can take it, Jesse."

"Thanks. I thought I'd just ask around, see if anybody saw something or heard something, you know." There was definitely this need in me to make an excuse. What right had I to be going to a blast of a surf competition when just two weeks ago my brother had been killed? What right had I to be hoping to see his girl?

W
HEN
I
GOT TO
White Sands at eight next morning, the parking area was full. I found a space way at the back, locked everything up tight, and zigzagged across the lot, up one line of cars and down the next. Every make in the world seemed to be here. I checked bumper stickers, parking permits, logos. There were rainbow decals, dice that hung in rear windows, religious emblems. It's ridiculous what people hang and stick on their cars. It was ridiculous that I couldn't remember what was hung or stuck on that one. I gave up and headed for the beach.

No stadium could be as perfect as the one for a surf contest. I looked across the sloping silver sand of the bleachers, at the grandstand that was the pier. Already they were filled with bodies, huddled under sweats and blankets, waiting for the action to start and the day to heat up.

I moved to the far end of the crowd, inspecting each row, each cluster of spectators, but if he was there I didn't see him. Then I pushed through to the steps leading to the pier and walked behind the mob, all the way to the bait shop and the fast food stand on the end. I didn't see him. I didn't see Chloe, either. But of course I wasn't looking for her.

There was a space on the pier in the second row and I squeezed myself in. Big, official-looking White Sands Pro banners had been tacked up at intervals, and spectators had made their own posters for their favorite competitors.

I was wishing I'd brought binocs so I could see the faces of the people sitting on the beach, when I spotted Chloe. I'm not sure how I recognized her. She was on the sand, about a hundred yards down from the pier, sitting in a folding chair. Maybe it was her red, hooded sweat shirt that made her stand out. Maybe it was the yellow towel she'd tucked around her legs. Probably got shorts on under there, I thought. Probably cold. I'd never have seen her if it hadn't been for that red-and-yellow combination. Or maybe I'd have seen her anyway.

OK, Harmon. Now you know where she is. Now forget her.

"Jesse?"

I turned.

It was Debbie Green, who'd been at high school with me. Junior high, too, for that matter. "Hi, Deb."

She flung her arms around me in a giant hug. "God, I was sorry to hear about your brother." Her face was squeezed against mine and I could smell something good, perfume or soap. "He was such a nice guy."

We held each other at arm's length, smiling shakily, and then she said, "Well, you're here and that's major. Anybody got the pew in front of you?"

"It's yours." I wedged her in.

Debbie is blond with cute frizzy hair and the kind of skin that looks polished. She's tall and I had to peer around her head instead of over it. She and I have never dated, but I think we might have last year if we hadn't both been seeing somebody else at the time.

After a minute she turned around. "I saw one of your posters. Betsy Forgreave and I were in the mall and it was in the Sports Hut window."

"Oh, good." We hadn't taken one to the Sports Hut. Chloe must have made more. This time she'd left me out of it.

"Betsy said she'd seen a couple of others and we both caught the notice in the papers. Any luck?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

"I hope you get some good leads, Jess."

"Yeah. Me, too."

The sun appeared and on the beach and along the pier sweat shirts and T-shirts were peeling off. I glanced casually toward the bright flag of the yellow towel and panicked when I didn't see it. I'd lost her now, lost her in the crowd. But then I saw the red sweat shirt, saw her bend over as if talking to someone on the sand beside her. Who was it? Was it a guy?

Out on the water things were beginning to happen.

"First heats!" Debbie threw me back a smile and at that minute the announcer's voice came loud and clear through the speakers, welcoming us, and a roar went up from the crowd.