Reilly 02 - Invasion of Privacy (29 page)

30

"YOU ALMOST BROKE KURT’S NOSE," NINA SAID, SETTLING herself beside Paul’s hospital bed the next afternoon. Paul looked fine except for the bandage in the back of his head, which he was showing her now.

"You almost bashed my brains in," Paul said. "But you missed. I’ll be released this afternoon."

"There are brains in there?" Nina said. "I hadn’t noticed."

Paul saw the expression on her face, and adopted a less jaunty tone. "Look at it from my point of view. He escaped from jail. Flight tends to make people think you’re guilty. The police were after him. Fugitives, and the people they’re with, tend to get shot. He put you in danger. You didn’t wait for me. I saw him grabbing you, and—"

"You didn’t have to jump him. You had your gun. You wanted to beat him up. You were angry, so you taught him a lesson. He’s your employer. What’s the matter with you?"

"If it comes to that, you’re my employer. Has he started paying any of the bills yet?"

"I don’t want you hovering over me, jumping my clients, acting like a gorilla! I hired you to investigate the case!"

"Come on, Nina! I love you! I’m trying to take care of you!"

"Love," Nina said. "You jerk. You’re both jerks." She reached out and smoothed his forehead.

"You have this ... bad habit ... of being the eye of the cyclone," Paul said, wincing in pain as he tried to get up on his elbow.

"What do you want? Shall I call the nurse?"

"I want you to bend down here and kiss me and say ’my hero.’ Please." His eyes fastened on hers with a little-boy expression that was laughably incongruent with his big hairy male body. She bent down to give him a chaste peck on the cheek, but he turned his head fast and his lips found hers, startling, warm, and full of wanting.

"Mmm," he said. "Cavewoman hit man on head, take him into lair, do nasty things to him."

"Shut up, Paul. You really are a caveman. You go too far."

"Okay, okay. I’m sorry I got carried away. Maybe I should have let him run," Paul said. "That’s one way to finish up a case, except that you’d probably be in jail as an accessory to his escape."

"I wish I’d never gone up there. I didn’t have time to think it through."

"Not to change the subject, but what now? Am I fired?"

"I need you even more now. But I suppose you’re going to quit if you don’t get fired."

"I’ll stick around if you want me to, now that he’s back where he belongs, until all this gets sorted out. Someone has to watch out for you, and I’m the best. What does he say?"

"He’s leaving it up to me."

"He asked for it," Paul said. Nina thought to herself, they don’t have to like each other. She needed Paul. Kurt needed Paul. She didn’t push it.

She said, "He’s in bad shape psychologically, Paul. He’s in maximum security now down in Placerville. It’s as if he had to find Tamara, to see if his worst fear would be realized. And it was. He doesn’t seem to care what happens to him anymore. I’m very worried about him."

"I told you before, and I’ll say it again," Paul said. "You’re much too close to this case. Don’t tie your emotional well-being to this joker."

"I’m trying to stay cool. I have to."

"Are they going to charge Scott with Tamara Sweet’s murder?"

"Well, I called the D.A.’s office this morning and talked to Collier Hallowell. It’s too early to say, but I don’t think Hallowell has enough evidence to charge him at this point. It’s a twelve-year-old murder. I talked to him this morning. If I guess right, he’s not going to seek an indictment and file formal charges against Kurt for Tamara Sweet’s murder."

"That’s good, right? So why do you look so gloomy?" Paul said.

"Because I think he’s going to pull a legal maneuver that’s much smarter. He’s going to get the evidence in that implicates Kurt in Tamara’s murder indirectly."

"I thought you couldn’t do that. I mean, show the guy might have murdered somebody before, so he’s a bad guy who probably did the current murder."

"That’s generally true. You can’t bring in evidence of a prior crime to show bad character or a predisposition to commit another crime. But that general rule is riddled with exceptions. One of the exceptions is that you can bring in evidence of a previous crime to show the motive for a subsequent crime."

"So?"

"The prosecution theory now seems to be that Kurt killed Tamara. Terry made a film that delved too deeply, and he killed her to stop the film from being released. So Tamara’s murder would be the motive for Terry’s murder."

"But the film doesn’t nail Scott as the killer!"

"It’s probably suggestive enough, with the talk about the mystery boyfriend, to get the Tamara Sweet evidence in. By the way, Hallowell says Doc Clauson, the medical examiner, did a quick autopsy. He says the remains are consistent with death occurring years ago, though he can’t date the time of death precisely. He says Tamara was shot twice in the pelvis right there, near the rock. They even found a .30-06 rifle casing."

"Don’t tell me," Paul said. "Remington?"

"Yes. Which could point to Terry as well as Kurt. The problem is, I can’t let Collier talk to Kurt. He has to be thinking that only the killer could have marched up there and dug up the remains. Anyway, he’d never believe Kurt went up there to the ridge just because a rock in the film looked similar."

"Do you believe it?"

"I watched the film again last night. It did look like the same turn in the trail, the same square white rock. I couldn’t have made the connection, but Kurt—a forest to him is like a city. The rock was like a traffic light at the corner of a road."

"Which would bring us back to Terry London," Paul said. "And nobody knows where she was the night Tamara Sweet died. I’ve checked. She wasn’t even questioned. She only knew Tamara because it’s a small town if you’re a local, and they both liked to go to poetry readings and that artsy-fartsy stuff. They didn’t go around together, and no one would think she would know anything."

"Of course, we know from Kurt that Terry made her move on him not long after Tamara disappeared. The police are at a disadvantage. Twelve years have gone by, and the only one of the three of them still alive isn’t talking to them."

"The good old Fifth Amendment," Paul said. "The defendant zips his mouth, and nobody can hold it against him."

"Don’t be knocking the Constitution," Nina said. "The good old Fifth Amendment is an important protection against the state."

"And sometimes the guilty go free."

"You still think like a cop, Paul."

"Yes. That’s why I’m so good as a defense investigator," Paul said. "Speaking of being good, my old friends the cops arrived this morning to take a statement about the events of yesterday. I carefully explained how you had this wild idea about where he might be and didn’t want to bother them with it, and how you just happened to be in the neighborhood and took a look-see, and how you were trying everything in your power to persuade Kurt to come back in, and how you left a message for me to come armed, just in case, et cetera et cetera. You’re off the hook. I even gave Kurt a break, said I didn’t realize he’d agreed to turn himself in. I taped the statement. It’s right here under the covers."

"Thanks," Nina said absently.

"Aren’t you going to reach under the covers and find it?" Paul said in a silky voice, pulling the covers down to his waist.

"Give me the doggone tape. I have to go."

"Well. There will be plenty of time to explore under the covers later."

"Paul."

He gave her the tape. "Don’t fret so much. If Scott is innocent, we’ll find a way to raise the ol’ reasonable doubt. Justice tends to be done."

"I’ve heard that unwritten rule. I’m ... uh, sorry I hit you, Paul."

"I forgive you. I’m sorry I beat up on your boyfriend."

"I don’t appreciate that statement."

"You were kissing him back."

She had no answer for that one. Paul’s tone was joking, but he was hurt, and he was letting her know it.

Paul pushed up on his arm to watch her go. She had already stepped toward the open door when a uniformed cop blocked her way, papers in his hand, saying, "Excuse me, ma’am! Excuse me!" So she waited irritably, thinking, like Dorothy Parker, what fresh hell is this? He brandished a paper, and when she didn’t take it immediately, pushed it into her unwilling hand. "You’ve been served, ma’am," he said swiftly. "Contact Collier Hallowell if you have any questions. Witness in the Scott trial."

Paul laughed at the look on her face. The cop smiled too, passing Nina and walking up to his bedside. "Mr. van Wagoner, I presume," he said, offering a second page, which Paul, still laughing, took.

"Hey!" said Paul.

"You folks have a delightful day," said the officer.

After leaving the hospital, Nina drove Bob and his cousins down to the beach at Ski Run Boulevard, where Matt ran his parasailing business during the summer months.

Daylight savings meant no sunset until eight. Four tourists from Japan were receiving instructions from him on how to wear the harness hooked to the parachute and a long boat line. One by one, they ran down the beach while Matt took off in the boat, to be borne aloft, several hundred feet above Lake Tahoe, flying into the orange sunset.

While Matt huddled with his tourists, Nina waded out into the cold, calm water and had her first swim of the summer, gliding through ripples of pink and orange light until she was tired, then rolling onto her back and looking back at the beach. She was the only swimmer. From this far out, the people on the beach became silhouettes. A trick of the sunset erased the line between lake and sky, so she seemed to be floating in air. For a few minutes she forgot her worries and rested quietly in the arms of the water.

Then the sun slipped below the mountains, and the lake turned indigo. She swam quickly back, wrapped up in a thick towel, and stretched out on the sandy blanket. She and the kids ate their sandwiches, enjoying the warm summery evening. Bob seemed back to normal, and she hoped he was over the latest troubling news.

Relaxed, she watched Matt check the harness of the only young woman in the group, then get into the boat. The boat moved out into the lake, and the woman half-ran, half-dragged toward the water, hanging on to the harness with all her might. With a whoosh, the parachute lifted behind her. Just at the edge of the water her feet left the ground as if by magic, and the tricolored chute rose gracefully into the air, the legs of the little figure underneath still chugging energetically. Matt looked back as he steered the boat to make sure she was all right.

Good old younger brother, Nina thought, remembering how he had taken her in the year before and given Bob a father figure and both of them a home. He had done a lot with a little. Matt had never made it to college and never had a cent handed to him. He made his way by combining an inventive mind with hard work. His fierce love for his wife and children had put an end to the aimlessness and negativity that afflicted him in his early twenties, before he moved to Tahoe.

They watched the boat with its flyer tethered overhead, the parachute high enough to again pick up bright rays from the invisible sun. Then the boat turned and came back toward shore. Slowly, slowly, as Matt carefully slowed the motor, the parasailor fell from the sky into the sea, and Matt pulled her into the boat and brought her back. He started folding the parachutes in the deepening twilight, and Nina gathered up the kids’ stuff and helped them pack up the trash. Her rest was over. She was on duty. Matt would finish up and pick Andrea up at the shelter. He and Andrea had planned a late dinner out together.

Later, wandering around the warm house in her old silk robe, she closed the windows and curtains, locking up tight. Her uneasiness was returning little by little. She had the feeling of something prowling outside, though when she looked out she saw only the stars and the black outlines of trees.

When everything was as physically secure as she could make it, she walked down the hall toward the kids’ bedrooms. Checking on the boys, she saw in the orange illumination of the Flintstone night-light that Bob was still awake, talking softly to his seal. Troy snoozed in the other bed.

"Night, honey," she said, about to close the door.

"Mom? I got a problem," he whispered. "It’s about your case."

She started to tell him to go to sleep. It was late, she had too much on her mind already....

"Could we talk about my father?"

So gently he asked.... "Okay," she said.

"When can I see him?"

Nina said slowly, "Not right now. Maybe after the trial. We’ll see."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No."

Troy turned over and kicked his sheets off, smacking his lips in his sleep.

"That’s good. Are we gonna win?"

"I don’t know, honey."

"I don’t understand about that Terry lady. How did she get killed, Mom?"

Letting him lead, she answered his questions. As she told him about the neighbor saying he saw Kurt the night Terry was shot, Bob interrupted, "She came to the school, Mom. The week before that. She had this big black dog. I think she came especially to talk to me, and she asked a bunch of questions about when I went looking for my father."

"She did? You talked to her at school? You’re not supposed to talk to—"

"But she wasn’t a stranger! I met her at your office, and she said she was your friend.’’ Before Nina could launch into a battery of questions about this event, Bob reached his hand up and put it over her mouth. He had never done anything like that before. The motion had its intended effect—she was speechless.

"Wait, Mom. I have to know exactly what night she was ... you know ..." He took his hand away to let her answer, his expression tormented.

"It was on March thirtieth. Not long after Paul found you and I brought you back from Carmel."

Bobby wailed, "Oh, no."

"What? What is it, Bobby?"

"The phone rang that night after dinner, remember? I answered it and told you it was nobody."

"She called the house?" She could not keep a little of the alarm she felt out of her voice. "Why didn’t you tell me?"