“We don’t—”
“There’re two suspects in Guthrie’s murder driving north on 99 near Bakersfield. In a big white truck. No markings. California plates. They’ve got a van load of stolen goods, including a vintage Mustang. They say they know where Ryan Hammond is—in San Francisco.” Before she could reply, I hung up.
At that moment all I wanted was just to sit down and melt into the ground. My head throbbed, my shoulders ached, my eyes were puffy and so dry it hurt to blink. I’d assumed this trip would show me the man I loved between the times I’d loved him. But all I knew for sure was that I didn’t know anything for sure. Everything I’d discovered about Guthrie was something I didn’t want to know.
If I was counting on Higgins, I was really grasping at straws.
I needed to find Hammond myself.
Maybe my sister Janice had come up with something on the Internet about him.
If I was reduced to counting on Janice, I was beyond grasping at straws.
Wan stalks of dead weeds poked up hopelessly from the hardened ground I’d just crossed. I was somewhere around Bakersfield, and for the first time it struck me how aptly named that town was in August. It had to be over 80 degrees and it wasn’t even time for breakfast. Between the
dust and the heat, it was a struggle even to breathe. Or maybe I needed to check my ribs for cracks.
Getting a cab was one possibility. I could have him drive me to the airport, but Bakersfield is a two-flight-a-day town. I was tired, sweaty, bruised, and sinking into immaturity. Without a second thought, I did what I’d done in adolescent crises. I called Janice.
27
“I’M SURPRISED YOU called me,” Janice said a couple of hours later when I got into her car.
In a way, I was, too. “It just seemed right.”
She handed me a bottle of water.
She wanted to ask why, I could tell, but instead she kept her mouth shut and just pulled into traffic. I flipped open her phone, reconsidered, and snapped it shut.
“Mind if I check myself in the rearview mirror?”
“Go ahead.”
It wasn’t an attractive picture. My clothes looked like a diary of my last three days, smeared with dust from Guthrie’s garage two days ago and coated with dirt from Zahra’s yesterday and blood from my fall. I glanced over at my sister and regretted every exasperated thought I’d had about her. “Janice, you were the one person who’d come and wouldn’t ask questions, force advice, make demands. I’m wiped; I’ve got to think. But I just want you to know I’m so grateful to you.” Janice, the odd sister out. “I know you hate being called ‘the nice one.’ You talk about how successful the rest of us are, but kindness—paying enough attention to know what kindness will entail—it’s not nothing.”
“Maybe.”
“And keeping your mouth shut, that’s really not nothing.”
I didn’t have to explain that one, not in our family. She laughed, then turned toward me. “Thanks.”
In that moment she seemed like the big sister I remembered from childhood, the calm one amid all the bigger personalities. She was twelve years older than me. When I was starting grade school, she was a college fresh-man. Yet she’d stopped and listened when I babbled about finger painting or soccer practice. Not quite one of the “black Irish” of our family, she’d never stood out like Gary and Gracie with their chiseled features and startling blue eyes.
But now, her not-quite-black hair had gone gray and she’d pulled it back off her face in a way that classified it as a nuisance rather than an enhancement. Her bare and slightly fleshy arms had a tan line a couple of inches below the shoulder that said gardening was as close to exercise as she came. Her pale blue eyes seemed watery.
Pay no attention to me!
her whole being said. I drank some of the water she’d brought me. It would have been so easy to picture her in a house in the Berkeley hills, with a husband who appreciated her and a bunch of kids. But we all knew too well that the Lott family wasn’t good at marriage, at least not since Mike disappeared. I didn’t want to think about that. “Hey, what did you come up with on Ryan Hammond?”
“Nothing at all, really. Nothing useful.”
I sighed.
She glanced over at me. “Sorry. I couldn’t find anything else. I wasn’t expecting a website or Facebook page, but if I Googled
your
name, I would at least get your political contributions.”
“Let me tell you how surprised I’d be to find Ryan Hammond had sent a hundred bucks to the DNC.” I’d had one iffy lead to the guy, via one of the most unreliable people on earth, and now even that was gone. Even if
he was in the city, I’d never find him. I didn’t even know what he looked like. I sighed. “What about Mike, any new word?”
“No. Well, nothing good. John’s found a body that could be a match—”
“No!”
“It doesn’t mean it is. He’s somewhere south of the border. In the kind of place where they don’t have their own forensic team. It’s probably nothing, but . . .”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I forced out, and my words hung there with neither of us believing them. I couldn’t deal with this possibility at all. Instead I focused my attention back on Guthrie and Hammond and their friend Kilmurray whom I’d been so desperate to get ahold of a couple days ago. Now I couldn’t bear to call him. I forced myself to say, “I’ve got a possible lead to Hammond in Thailand; guy’s a friend of his and Guthrie’s. He’s my last hope for some insight into Guthrie. I’m going to call—”
“Too early.”
I looked at my sister gratefully.
She intuited what I was thinking. “I know the family thinks I’m not good for anything but digging in loam and sitting on soft chairs. But I can tell time.”
“And you’re the one who checks the missing persons’ sites.” I swallowed, remembering the pictures of unclaimed dead and the descriptions of how they’d died. I’d looked once and never been able to make myself go back lest without warning I discover what I couldn’t bear to find. “That’s sure not nothing, either. Do you check out ones all over the world?”
“This is going to sound strange. But it’s like they’re friends now, the dead. I’m rooting for them. If I go to one of the coroners’ sites and a body’s been claimed, I’m happy for them.”
“And their family, huh?”
“Of course. But anyway,” she said awkwardly, “I got to know time zones and you don’t want to call yet. Do it from my house; I’ve got a serious phone. Not a satellite, but serious.”
I could hardly believe this was the infuriating babbler I’d all but hung up on yesterday. How many sides did my sister have? Family legend portrayed her as being so endlessly accommodating and so overwhelmed that she’d ended up hiding behind the washing machine, and when Gary found her she’d come at him with a knife. Now I wondered how much that particular tale had gotten inflated with years of retelling.
I didn’t call Thailand till we got to Janice’s place. Meanwhile, I slept.
It was a bit after nine by then, which meant seven in the morning there. I punched in the number.
A woman answered but didn’t sound like the one I’d spoken to before. She seemed annoyed at being disturbed, and less than eager to go and haul Kilmurray out of wherever he was. I kept Janice’s phone by my ear as if his voice might come on any second, but minutes passed with only odd clicks. My own breathing sounded thunderous. But Janice, I noted, seemed unperturbed.
“It was about the same time Mike disappeared,” I said softly, as if the woman in Thailand who was nowhere near the phone might be listening. “Kilmurray was involved with Guthrie, Ryan Hammond, and Tancarro right before the earthquake. It’s not as if he’s connected to Mike. Just stuff happened . . . back then.” Suddenly, I was thinking of Mike and the body in Mexico and I was choking back tears. “Sorry, sorry. After all these years you’d think . . .” But Janice had turned away. She extracted a couple of tissues from a box and held out one to me without ever turning back.
“Hello?”
“Luke Kilmurray?”
“Who’s that? Who’m I talking to?”
“Darcy Lott. I’m calling from San Francisco, about Damon Guthrie.”
The line crackled.
“I’m calling about Guthrie!” I said, louder.
There was no response. I hesitated, then added, “I’m Guthrie’s girlfriend.”
Still Kilmurray said nothing. I could hear background noises, but if the line was this clear on his end, his silence made no sense.
“Guthrie!” I said, “He’s dead!”
“It wasn’t my fault. I kept telling myself that. Not my fault.”
Of course it wasn’t his fault. He was thousands of miles away.
“But I always knew,” he went on. “The monks, they know what fault is. In the
wats
they talk about the wheel of dharma. You set it in motion, it turns and turns, and there’s no stopping it. And whatever you pretend, here’s the truth: your hand was on the wheel.”
“Karma,” I said. Actions have consequences.
“Yeah . . . karma. But . . . why now? Why’d you call me now?”
“Because Guthrie’s dead and I need to know about him when you knew him. You were buddies with him before the earthquake, right?”
“Who are you? Why should I talk to you?” He sounded so not-American-any-more. Like he’d put my question in a pipe to see what the smoke told him.
“Karma,” I said. “There isn’t only one turn of the wheel. You turn the wheel every day, every moment, with everything you do. You can turn the wheel again—now—and send it in a different direction.” When he didn’t answer, I said, “Chances come. Not taking them is turning the wheel, too. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, right?” I added. Then I waited. I could hear his breathing, thick, as if he was hauling in each individual breath. I thought he repeated “karma” as if mulling the possibilities, but I couldn’t be sure.
Finally, I said, “You and Pernell Tancarro—”
“That jerk.”
Whew!
“Why do you say—”
“He was such a wuss. ‘You go first. You take the risk.’ Couldn’t decide if he was going to be a judge and needed to keep his ass clean or if he was a goddamned poet and needed to sulk in iambic pentameter.”
“What risk, specifically?”
The line went fuzzy and I couldn’t tell whether he’d changed position or if it was static.“Huh?” Kilmurray was sounding more like the line itself.
I’d worry about Tancarro later. “You remember Ryan Hammond?”
“Oh yeah. Opposite of that ass Tancarro. Ryan was a bundle of enthusiasm, like a big puppy. Try anything.”
“He was Guthrie’s friend?”
“Dunno. Met him in a bar. Think Guthrie met him there, too. Ryan was so perfect. That’s what Guthrie saw. Went right up to him. He was just what he needed.”
“Needed for the burglaries?”
“Yeah, the roof job. Not like Tancarro was going up there first, you can believe that. But Ryan, boy, that kid was strong. S’not easy climbing a yew tree. You gotta be strong to press those flimsy branches in before they break. I know. I tried. No way.”
Climbing a yew tree? Was this guy delusional? Only squirrels climb yews. Maybe not even squirrels.
Tancarro had said Guthrie’d picked Ryan for the burglaries, so at least Kilmurray was good with that. “So it was Hammond who climbed up?”
“He went first, up the tree. Fuckin’ amazing. Him not hanging on but pressing in with his arms, and all the time he’s got the rope looped around his neck. He was like Tarzan. Guthrie couldn’t wait to get up after him. He was high.” Kilmurray giggled. “High on the ground, you know.”
“High-before-he-climbed high?”
“Yeah. Well, I was, too.”
Big surprise. “And Ryan?”
“No. He was all business, like he had to prove himself. He and Guthrie’d been carrying on about stunts in the movies that night in the bar, what a cool job, and on and on and on. He’d had some kind of problem that was keeping him out of the business. So, for him, this was a great job. Guthrie’d paid him enough. He was a monkey, flying up that tree, bending the top of it over, leaping onto the roof. Me, I waited too long, had too long to think. I went, but I’ll tell you I was shaking. I can still see the two of them up there. They looked like demons around a fire.”
“This was a burglary—”
“I still see them, still see Guthrie on the roof,” he said in the voice of somebody recounting a dream. I had to wonder if that’s what it was.
“But, Luke, you were committing a robbery, right? Why the roof?”
Oh, shit! The chimney! Guthrie’s chimneys!
“Were you going down the chimney? Did you go down?”
“No. Like I said, Guthrie and I were high. We made a lot of noise. He was talking about Santa and how some uncle or something of his had done the chimney bit there when he was a kid. Bag and all. Like a backpack, he said. He kept saying Hammond would have no problem going down because he wasn’t as fat as Santa. We were high; I guess I told you that, huh? Anyway, suddenly there were sirens all over. We could see the red lights coming. Ryan freaked; I think he had something on his record already. Guthrie grabbed him and dragged him to the chimney. He kept yelling, ‘Go! Just go!’ He meant the chimney. But Ryan was freaked and shook him off and, man, he was gone. I slid down the rope so fast both my hands were bleeding.”
“And then?”
“I ran. It was every idiot for himself.”
“You just ran?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, we were talking felony. It was Guthrie’s family house where he grew up, but his sister was the one who’d inherited it—that’s why he was so pissed, so hot to get in there and steal some bonds or something. They didn’t get along. She’d have pressed charges, no question. We could’ve gotten real time. Tancarro kept telling us that.”
“Tancarro? Where was he?”
“Him? Keeping away from the edge. Taking care of number one. But yelling at Guthrie, ‘Just fucking do it! This is what you were so hot to do; just do it!’”
“What did Guthrie do?”
“He went down the chimney. It was crazy, but he was so furious at Ryan and at his sister and all. He just went for it, you know, like the uncle he kept on about.”