‘And became a friend of yours.’
‘Easy there, Ben, and I wasn’t any different than anyone else. I did get to know him and I did like him and the more I looked at the case the more confident I became he wasn’t who we were looking for. Also, his book thing was legit. Those interviews with us showed up in his book. If I remember correctly you’ve got a copy on your shelf.’
‘When is the last time you saw Albert Lash?’
‘I don’t remember exactly when; several years ago, I guess, before he sold the house, before he got sick. I couldn’t tell you where he is today. But why don’t we just call it like it was? He figured out fairly fast that I had a drinking problem and he fed that so he could get what he needed from me. He never got any information about the investigation from me but that was the game, trying to get it. Or that was the tease. He kept trying and as long as he asked I stayed curious about him.
‘That’s part of why I accepted his invitations. Good food and free booze and in the back of my head the Coryell case. He used me until he didn’t need me for his research anymore and he asked the occasional question about the investigation to keep my interest.’
‘What sort of questions did he ask?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘So give us the date you last saw him.’
‘I can’t remember when.’
‘What year?’
‘I don’t know. When did his book come out? A year before that, I think, but I could be wrong. I went by his house about once a week for awhile, but so did a lot of cops.’
‘So when was the last time you saw him? Was it one year after the investigation ended or later?’
‘Is there some reason you’re asking? I feel like this is a fishing expedition on a boat without a skipper. Who cares when I last saw Albert Lash? When did
you
last see him?’
‘We’ll interview Lash soon and I want to know before I ask him. I want some hard facts on our last contacts with him, since he knew about the bomb shelter and even if he didn’t know about the skulls he knew about the cot. He kept that secret safe and now we’re going to have another run at him. I believe you were his last police contact. That’s why I’m asking. You say he used you. I want to know how long he used you and who else was there at the poker games and the barbecues and all of it.’
That was Raveneau starting to light up and Hugh stared hard at him deciding how he wanted to deal with that.
‘The answer is after his book came out the invitations stopped. So I guess it was the year after the book came out.’
‘The book came out in 2008.’
‘There you go, 2009, and if that’s different than what I told you a minute ago, then go with 2009, and that’s it, Ben. I’m done here.’
Neilley stood and his chair scraped the floor behind him. He waited to see if they’d stop him and no one said anything until he was halfway to the door. He knew he was overreacting but he didn’t like the tone and couldn’t stand being in the homicide office. All of his best days on the force were here. Now he was just pushing paper and marking time. He thought about his long friendship with Raveneau. Well, that could go too. Raveneau had better figure that out and fast. He’d never had that thought before, but it was true. If Raveneau kept this up, he was done with him. I’ll call him later today and tell him that, he thought. I’m not revisiting those times or all that led up to his getting kicked off the Detail. It all ended with the Coryell case and not Raveneau, not anyone was going to drag him back through that again.
R
aveneau stepped on to the porch and knocked lightly on Marion Coryell’s door. The cedar-shingled walls of the house were stained the same dark brown, the wisteria wrapping a corner porch post with a trunk now as thick as his forearm. He heard her footsteps and when the door opened he was looking into eyes a piercing black, the planes of her cheekbones more gaunt and flint-like a decade later, though her long black hair was now streaked with gray. Blue jay feathers were tied in the last few inches of her hair. She caught Raveneau looking at those.
‘I haven’t lost my mind, Inspector. I’m just remembering things I left behind a long time ago. Come in, and I have to tell you I’m not surprised it’s you.’
The immediate feeling he got was that Ann Coryell’s mother wasn’t any more at peace now than then. She led him to her living room and after they sat she removed the bird feathers as if they now embarrassed her or Raveneau judged her for wearing them.
Raveneau had jeans, shoes, and a watch he wanted her to look at. Nothing said they were Ann’s, but they were in the shelter. High on the left front pocket of the jeans was an octagonal embroidery design. The shoes were plain flats and a nondescript faded dark blue color and the watch had a light chain link of some alloy and a distinct face she might recognize. He took a breath and then explained finding the bomb shelter though not everything in it. He didn’t say anything about the stained mattress but the media had the story now of the skulls. She would learn about those soon enough just from watching TV.
‘Are you saying it was always there that close to the cottage where Ann was?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please, no, please don’t say she was there.’
‘We don’t know yet.’
Her fingers freed the last feather and she rocked back and forth very slowly, almost imperceptibly in her chair. For a minute or more he wasn’t sure she was aware of his presence.
‘Didn’t I say it was him? It was him after all, wasn’t it? The one inspector was a drunk and the other let himself be told what to do. I grew up around alcoholism. It’s what part of my family became. I have Oglala Sioux blood and the Oglala went to the reservations. The reservation system destroyed the tribe. The reservation system was a trick to destroy all of the tribes. And I’m not saying that as a Sioux. I don’t have enough blood to do that. It’s just the truth.
‘Down the street one of our neighbors built a bomb shelter and warned all the neighbors to do the same. He built it himself with the help of his sons. He was certain nuclear war was inevitable but the Vietnam War came instead and both of his boys died there. He didn’t live but another few years himself. How does a group of police officers searching miss a bomb shelter?’
‘We’ve been asking ourselves that.’
‘I think it’s a lack of competence. Please forgive me, Inspector, I just seem to say what I think now. Where are the things you brought?’
‘In my car, and they’re in clear plastic bags so we don’t contaminate them with our DNA. They’ll get tested but I’d like you to look at them first, though you don’t have to.’
‘You hope to find who killed her so you feel better about yourself.’
‘That’s certainly there, Marion.’
‘Forgive me if I am becoming old and bitter. There were so many lies I believed when I was younger and I don’t believe in any of them now, any more than I believe in the lie that knowing who killed her will free my heart.’
Marion Coryell was originally from North Platte, Nebraska, and met her husband after moving to California. He remembered Hugh telling him what she told the inspectors, that becoming pregnant with Ann was a miracle that happened the year she turned forty. Her husband was dead; his photo and a watercolor portrait of Ann were on either end of the fireplace mantel. The room held the same furniture, older but not more used. The lamp by the armchair, the book and magazines, her place seemed to be the same as when he was last here.
‘Promises were made before and nothing came of them. Things were said to me that did not come true. I always knew that it was him. I told the police then. I told them and they said they were looking closely at him, but they did nothing. I’m not sure any good will come of what you are doing now, but I will help you if I can. I don’t believe what you’re doing will change anything, but I will help you.’
She lifted her right hand and pointed for a moment toward a hallway.
‘In her bedroom are all the things she left behind. Sometimes they make me sad and sometimes they help. In the first year I slept in that room. It was what I had to do, and someday I will let go of all of her things. If these clothes you’ve found are hers what will it prove other than like those things in her room they are things she left behind? Does he know you’ve found these bones?’
‘Albert Lash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not yet, but he will soon. He’s in an assisted living facility now, Marion. He has ALS and is unable to move his limbs. He isn’t going anywhere and we’ll question him there.’
‘I’m glad he is sick. I know that’s not accepted, but that’s how I feel and I hope the emptiness ahead is frightening to him. I’ll look at the things you brought now. I’ll do what I can to help you.’
Raveneau returned in a few minutes. She lifted each bag and held it as if the weight of it told her something. When she put the jeans down she said, ‘Ann was at college and had been for awhile. She bought her own clothes and I just don’t remember whether I’ve seen these or not.’
After studying the watch, she shook her head. She picked up the bag with the shoes and turned the shoes over so she could study their soles.
‘I do not remember these shoes but this is the way that her shoes wore down. Do you see this here on the heel?’ She picked up the watch again. ‘This was hers. Yes, this was hers.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes.’
Raveneau watched the fierceness die from her eyes after she recognized the watch. She told him the story of where it came from and rose slowly to her feet afterwards. She reached for a cane, explaining that she had fallen nine months ago and broken a hip that bothered her still.
‘I’ll walk out with you,’ she said, and Raveneau read that as a signal she couldn’t take this any farther today. But as they got out to her porch she surprised him, asking him to sit with her on the porch bench a few minutes.
‘Ann had a problem when she was fourteen which at first we thought was adolescence and the changes, but her doctor said no. He advised a psychological evaluation because she said she was hearing voices and told the doctor that dead people were talking to her. They wanted to diagnose her as schizophrenic and to stop that we pulled her out of public school and put her in a private school. She wouldn’t have had any chance in life if she’d been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. But then she wouldn’t have gone to college and met Professor Lash.
‘Every day I am so sad. I still think about her all the time. She found a way to get around her problems and she would have done so many things. I am so sorry he took that from her. He seduced her and when she refused to sleep with him anymore he became aggressive. I told her to move out but she was complicated and proud to have this famous professor mentoring her. She found me pessimistic and negative, but I could see him for what he was. When he offered her that guest cottage she called me and was so excited and I ruined it for her by arguing with her, telling her she shouldn’t move there. Think of what he did. The mentoring was all a game for him.’
‘Marion, there’s something else I want to talk with you about. I’m wondering about people who may have approached you about Ann. I’m particularly interested in anyone who has repeatedly contacted you about Ann’s life or writings.’
‘Many have.’
‘Has anyone come here? Have any come to visit you?’
‘Over the years several have.’
‘Anything you can remember about anyone who has visited about Ann, I’d like to know about. Will you call me if someone comes to mind?’
‘I’m a good judge of character, Inspector, and I haven’t talked with anyone who disturbed me.’
‘Can you give me any names of anyone who has visited you more than once?’
‘I’d rather not, right now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ann is gone and her ideas are carried by some small group of people and maybe in time they will give those ideas to others and her ideas will spread. The people who carry her ideas are like seeds that may grow into trees and if so her ideas will live. That is how I see it now.’
Raveneau thought she had someone in mind but she shook her head and took his card saying she would think it over. He felt her watching him walk to his car and then heard the front door close just as he got in.
R
ather than catch the 101 southbound and return to San Francisco he drove through San Anselmo and on up to Fairfax and the road that ran out through watershed and skirted the shoreline of Alpine Lake before climbing steeply through trees to the spine of Mount Tamalpais. From there you could go left and follow the ridge to the summit or over and down to Highway 1 and the coast. Raveneau did neither. He eased off the road and parked between two redwoods near the start of a trailhead sign.
Both Marin detectives were dead, one of a heart attack, the other drowning in rough surf on a long-awaited vacation to Antigua. That left Hugh Neilley and Ray Alcott. Alcott was happy to talk about the RV he was restoring and equipping with rooftop solar panels. He and his wife planned an extensive tour of the national parks next spring and summer, starting with the desert parks, Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, places where the summer heat would be too much for his wife later. Raveneau learned about the new tires going on the RV, but nothing about the Coryell investigation, and Alcott’s explicit message was that he was retired.
Raveneau started south on the trail and was soon on the open flank of the mountain where the rye grass was pale brown, knee high and rustled as he walked across and down. At the horizon a thin fog colored gold as the sun lowered. He found the offshoot trail he was looking for and soon was well down the slope, hesitating now, stopping as he looked for the Y-shaped oak he remembered.
He spotted the oak, the crooked Y a third of the way up, the tree taller and fuller. When he reached the tree he reoriented himself again with two steep ravines, and then worked his way down to where the clearing had been and where brush grew now. Last night he watched the video made of the kill site and knew he was in the right spot now. He also reviewed tape of an Albert Lash interview done in the old homicide office. Lash’s left hand had a faint tremor and he wondered if that was nervousness, as it was read as then, or whether it was a precursor of the disease that left him crippled now.