Howtown (24 page)

“Sure, I have to go to Oakland anyway.”

“No one has to go to Oakland,” he replied. “Let me see what I can do and I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I threw back the covers and got out of bed, wandering through the room, waking myself. When my head cleared I ordered up a pot of coffee and prepared myself for the task of going to see Paul.

Mark had already been by, but even before then Paul had known about Sara’s death. One of the cops at the scene had called the jail. Paul had been awakened at three and told that his old lady had killed herself. It was evident from the way he looked that he hadn’t slept after that. He sat across the table from me, unshaven and disheveled. His eyes were manic but he spoke without affect. In his exhaustion I saw, for the first time, the family resemblance to Mark.

“You don’t know it was suicide,” I said, for the third or fourth time, but he remained unpersuaded. “It could have been an accident.” I wasn’t really convinced of this myself, but it was dangerous to fuel either his guilt or his paranoia.

“How do you know, you weren’t there when it happened.”

“Paul, I talked to her last week. She seemed fine.”

“You don’t understand what I put her through, what I took away from her. She didn’t have any friends. She didn’t have any life. Just the booze.”

I shook my head. “Will you stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

He bristled, but said nothing.

“You’re not God, Paul,” I continued. “You don’t control other people. You don’t give them reasons to live or reasons to die. Sara was tough, she’d survived a lot, you know that better than I do. Don’t take that away from her.”

Raggedly, he began to cry. His hand strained across the table for mine and clutched my wrist. “You don’t know.”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“She hated me,” he said, looking up red-eyed. “She wanted to hurt me.”

I pulled my hand away. “Don’t you ever think about anyone else, Paul?”

He wiped his face on his sleeve. “You don’t understand me.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Your wife’s dead and you’re crying for yourself. I don’t understand.”

“I’ve suffered,” he said, bitterly. “You don’t know what it was like when I was a kid.”

“I’ve heard it from Mark,” I replied. “It was rough. I sympathize but you’re thirty-two years old, Paul. You’re too old to be blaming Mom and Dad.”

“Fuck you. What do you know about my parents?”

“Mark said—”

“I fucked her, Henry,” he yelled. “She made me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She was a drunken slut. I was so happy when she died. I thought she took the feelings with her, but then I met Ruth.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“My mother,” he whispered. “My mother.”

P
AUL SAID, “I’D JUST COME
in from the pool and I heard her banging around the house, drunk as usual. No one else was home, maybe the maid was there, I don’t know. I heard her talking to herself outside my room and then she came in, carrying a can of my dad’s talc.” For a moment he talked about his father, but circled back and continued. “I was standing there in my bathing suit and she started shaking the powder all over me. In my eyes. I couldn’t see. Saying crazy stuff. ‘My baby,’ that’s what she said. My baby.”

He interrupted himself again. “I never told anyone this. Well, Sara. I told Sara.” He started crying again. “I pushed her away but she kept on coming. Then I was on the bed and she was rubbing me. She was laying on top of me. She stank. Her hair, her skin. She didn’t clean herself when she was drinking. Jesus, Henry, say something.”

“I’m sorry, Paul. I’m sorry that it happened.”

“She got her hand down into my bathing suit. Squeezing my balls until I wanted to scream.” He rubbed the side of his neck, inflaming the skin. “She started jerking me off. She stuck her tongue in my mouth, it tasted like gin. That was her drink.” He paused in his rubbing. “Sara liked gin, too. Just like Mom. ‘Get me G and T while you’re up, Herb.’ That was Mom’s motto.”

“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I said.

“I want to! She was kissing me, she was jerking me off. Look, I was thirteen, you know. I walked around with a hard-on.” His breathing was quick and nervous. “It began to feel pretty good. I pulled down my bathing suit.” He glanced at me and then looked away. “Make it easier for her.”

“You must have been terrified.”

He nodded. “I flashed between that and, well, the physical sensation. How the hell else was I supposed to react with someone jerking me off?”

“I understand, Paul.”

“Do you?” he asked bitterly. “She lifted her dress up and she … I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like being swallowed. And then I came. She didn’t come. Not that time.”

“It happened again?”

He calmed himself. “Off and on, until I went to college. She was always drunk. In blackouts.”

“Always?”

He shrugged. “Well, we never talked about it.”

“Have you ever thought of getting help?”

“When it was over, it was over,” he said.

“What about Ruth?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve read the goddamned literature, Henry. I know all about pedophiles. I know all about how it works. Well, believe me, it’s not that simple. I wasn’t passing on what my mother taught me. My feelings for Ruth were real.”

“But you must know there’s a connection.”

“What am I supposed to do, just say no?” He got up. “Hate myself? Kill myself? Fuck that.”

“Get help,” I replied.

“Thanks,” he said, moving toward the door. “Thanks a lot.”

Back at the hotel there was a message from Kevin.

“What’s going on?” I asked when I’d been put through to him.

There was a moment’s pause. “You sound worse than you did this morning, pal.”

“It’s been a long day.”

“We’re on the one-thirty calendar at Judge Flynn’s court tomorrow,” he said. “On your motion to unseal the records. I put one together pretty fast. What I said was that it might reveal evidence material to the case you’re on now. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah.” Outside, dusk gathered in the sky. The thought of another night in Los Robles was unbearable. “Listen, if I drive down to the city tonight can you and Terry put me up?”

“Sure. What time will you be in?”

“If I leave right away I should be there by eight.”

“Sounds good. You sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

I hung up, stared at the phone for a minute, and then dialed my number in LA. It rang twice and then Josh picked it up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi, I was thinking about calling you.”

It felt awkward to be talking to him, having so much going on without any coherent way of saying it. “Sara Windsor was killed last night.”

“What happened?”

“Cops think she got drunk and fell into the pool.”

“You don’t.”

Wearily I said, “I don’t know what I think. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Henry.” His voice was low with worry. “Are you okay?”

“I miss you.”

“I think I should come up there.”

“In a couple of days, maybe. I have to go to San Francisco tonight. And to Oakland. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Do you always have to carry everything by yourself?”

“I’m trying not to. That’s why I called.”

“Call me tomorrow, okay?”

“I promise.”

I pulled into the driveway at Terry’s house on Noe and parked. I’d no sooner gotten my bag out of the trunk than I heard the door opened and looked up to see Kevin at the top of the stairs, wineglass in hand, still in his suit, but barefoot.

“Howdy, you need a hand?”

I made my way up the stairs, shaking my head. “You just get home?”

“Yep. Terry’s meeting us at the restaurant.” He moved aside to let me pass. I put my bag down in the hall. “You want a Coke or something?”

“Coffee?”

“There’s some left from this morning. Come on up.”

I followed him into the kitchen. A French door led outside to a deck that overlooked China Basin.

“Our reservation’s not till nine,” he explained, pouring me a mug of coffee. “Come outside.”

I followed him out to the patio and watched him roll a joint on the railing. He lit it and inhaled.

“Too bad you’ve given up intoxicants,” he wheezed. “I brought this back from Maui.”

“Does Terry …”

He exhaled. “Nope. She leaves the room when I light up.” He shrugged. “You look like you had a hard day, Henry.”

“I heard a pretty scary story this morning.”

He took another hit and nodded. “Yeah? I like scary stories.”

“My client was raped by his mother.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s what I like about this business. If you stick around long enough, you’ll hear everything.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe what people do to each other.”

“Believe it,” he said. “There’s nothing that hasn’t been done by someone to someone. People settling scores is what keeps us in business.”

I nodded. “Maybe that’s why the cops have fabricated evidence against my client.”

“That only happens on
L.A. Law
,” he replied, and took another toke from the joint.

“Come on, Kev, it happens every day. You get a cop on the stand in a suppression motion after your client’s just finished telling you they broke down the door and held him at gunpoint and you ask, ‘Now Officer Jones, isn’t it true that you broke down the door’ and what’s he going to do, admit it? No, he’ll say ‘We knocked and the defendant let us in.’ They know who the judge is going to believe.”

“That’s different from making up evidence. Isn’t that what you mean by fabricating?”

“It’s only different in degree.” I watched a brightly lit ship make its way up the bay. “It’s just a matter of what they think they can get away with. In a small town like Los Robles where everyone’s tight, they can get away with a lot.”

“Why did they do it?”

“A few years ago my client was charged with child molest. The case was dismissed because the victim wouldn’t testify. The same cop and the same DA on that case are on the murder case. Maybe they’re trying to administer some rough justice.”

He put out the joint and tossed the roach into the tangled garden below the deck. “I hope you have a fallback position.”

“That’s why I want a look at that file tomorrow.”

“Terry says the case is fifteen years old,” Kevin replied. “What do you expect to find?”

“I don’t know.”

“Good luck, compadre. We better get going.”

We walked down to the restaurant on Twenty-Fourth Street, an Italian place that you could smell a block away. Terry was already at the table, briskly examining a menu when we came in.

“Ten minutes late,” she said, without looking up.

“You know how long it takes guys to get ready to go out,” Kevin said, kissing her cheek.

She said, “I ran down the arresting agency on Thurmond’s rap sheet, Henry.”

“What did you find?”

She dug around in her purse and came up with a computer printout. “There’s four possibilities.”

I took the paper and examined it. West Covina Sheriff’s Office. Westminister Sheriff’s Office. West Valley Sheriff’s Office. All these agencies were in the LA area, but then I saw the final entry—Woodlin County Sheriff’s Office.

“This one,” I said, pointing at it. “Definitely.”

Kevin glanced down. “Where’s Woodlin County?”

“Right next door to Los Robles County,” I replied.

The next morning I drove to my sister’s house. Coming up the winding road, I saw that it had changed since I’d last been there two months earlier. The leaves were turning colors, and the road was dustier. Only a few roses remained along the road, stray petals hanging tenuously from the buds. I crossed the small bridge to Elena’s yard and was surprised to find her car parked there. I’d assumed she’d be teaching.

I went to the door, pushed the bell, listening to the rainy chime within, and waited. After a moment, the door opened and Elena frowned, seeing who it was.

“I have to talk to Ruth,” I said.

“She isn’t here.”

“She is here, Elena,” I replied, wedging my foot in the door. “This is important.”

She looked down at my foot disdainfully. “Don’t make a scene. Just go.”

I played my trump card. “Sara Windsor is dead.”

She jerked her head up. “That’s a vicious thing to say.”

“It’s the truth.”

She looked at me for a long time. Slowly, she opened the door. “Come in.”

I followed her inside. The cool, austere living room was flooded with morning light. On the floor, near the coffee table, were toy trucks. On the couch was an open book, facedown. I glanced at the title,
Selected Poems
by Elizabeth Bishop. Next to it was a yellow legal tablet, the top sheet filled with small, precise script, and a black enameled pen.

“Sit down,” she said. In the hard light her face was puckered with deep lines and the gray in her hair seemed white. “What happened?”

“I need to talk to Ruth.”

She drew her lips into a line of contempt. “Don’t bargain with me.”

“I don’t see that I have any choice.”

“She’s out, with Joanne. They should be back soon. You can talk to her then. Now tell me about Sara.”

“Two nights ago she drowned in her swimming pool. The police think she was drunk and fell in.” I paused to let her take it in.

“Go on.” Her face was unreadable.

“That’s it,” I said.

“That’s it? What about a funeral?”

“I suppose Mark’s seeing to that, or does she still have family?”

“It’s like you not to know,” she said, sourly, “or to care. Yes, she has family. Her mother, some brothers. My God,” she said, abruptly.

“I’m sorry, Elena. I know she was a friend.”

“Why didn’t you call me before?”

“I left messages.”

“You didn’t say anything about Sara.”

“It’s not the kind of message you leave on an answering machine.”

Grudgingly, she nodded. After a moment, she said, “What do you want with Ruth?”

“I want to know why she came here.”

“To get away from you,” she said. “To keep you from making her relive something that she’s trying to put behind her.”