Reilly 12 - Show No Fear (21 page)

“
H
ERE WE GO, RIGHT INTO A LOW-RENT
E
NGLISH
TV sci-fi show,
Dr. Wu
,” Armano said as Paul and he climbed the steps to the acupuncturist’s home, which turned out to be a Spanish-style mansion, spanking new, with a red-tiled roof, bowed extrusions, and pristine landscaping, located up a private road on a hillside in Carmel. “A show made with two sets max and special effects like on the old
Star Trek
shows.”

Today, Monday, made a week since Virginia Reilly had died, and eleven days since Richard Filsen’s murder. They had little to go on besides the motives and suspects, which were ubiquitous. Forensics in both cases had yielded almost nothing—the killer or killers had either been professional or entirely lucky.

Albert Wu greeted them at the door, escorting them into an atrium drooping with tropical foliage. No visible heating system explained why it was at least fifteen degrees warmer there than outdoors. The two detectives sat gingerly on wicker chairs.

“Here we are again,” Wu said.

“And here you are again, popping up in a second murder investigation,” Paul answered.

Wu crossed his legs, hooking his fingers around his knee, looking as prosperous and well kept as his surroundings.

He wore a suede jacket over suit pants, the knot of a blue tie peeking out. He shook his head and said the whole thing was shocking.

Paul took him back to the Virginia Reilly malpractice claim, as Wu picked a few yellowing leaves off the old dwarf lemon tree beside him. “As I told you before, she had no proof of any wrongdoing on my part. I did nothing incorrect. From the very beginning, this whole matter was merely a nuisance. Mr. Filsen was adamant that we not offer any settlement, however, not even a nuisance settlement. I would have gone all the way to a trial if necessary. It has been quite distressing.” Wu crumbled his cache of leaves into a brass urn.

“Aw,” Armano said. “But now there will be no trial. There is no more nuisance.”

“Once again, these insinuations,” Wu said without rancor, apparently having risen above them into serenity and peace again, not a problem in the world.

“So was she just trying to make a buck, do you think?” Paul asked.

“Perhaps. But sick people often have serious underlying psychological problems. They think, ‘Why did this injury, this illness, happen to me?’ They build a theory to explain logically what can never be explained. They look for someone to blame. We have already talked about this, when I came to see you regarding Mr. Filsen.”

Wu continued in his reassuring voice, “I understand, since I haven’t read of any arrests in this case, that you must consider if I might be the perpetrator, as I had some involvement with both Mrs. Reilly and Mr. Filsen. I consulted my appointment book before you came, and while I was alone in the early morning of the day Mr. Filsen was killed, I was seeing patients at the time Mrs. Reilly was—passed away. Here.” Wu handed Armano several copies from some sort of log.

“We’ll take the originals, please,” Armano said, waving away the copies. The acupuncturist went out and returned with a black leather planner. He went to the middle and, consulting his copies, tore out a few pages and handed these to Armano.

“We’d like to see the whole book,” Paul said. “Put things in context.”

“Sorry. Patient confidentiality. Those are the only references to Mrs. Reilly and to my activities at the time of her death. I have added the phone numbers of the two patients I was helping at that time. I have spoken to each of them and they are willing to talk to you.”

“And we should just take your word that there are no other references to Mrs. Reilly?”

“Or serve a subpoena
duces tecum.
”

“Well, listen to you. You sure have that lawyer lingo down. We might do just that,” Armano said.

“I will be here.” Wu gave Armano a benign look. Armano glowered back. Wu lowered his eyes to his watch, the face of which twinkled with tiny diamonds. He sighed. “I am cooperating. I am sorry about all this. I am sorry these two people couldn’t prepare for their deaths properly, prepare their families, consider what comes next. The last moments of life are most precious of all. That is when we truly begin to understand our situation.”

Paul ignored this. “Have you given us all records of your conversations with Mr. Filsen in these papers?”

“I did not keep notes of such conversations.”

“How about appointments with him?”

“I did not record my appointments with him. I only met with him twice. The last occasion was unfortunately the day before he died. He came to my office during lunch and told me that he was informally working with the lady attorney on the other side to conclude the matter without any financial outlay on my part other than his attorneys’ fees.”

“How long did the conversation last?” Paul continued.

Wu got up. “About as long as this one. Look, I have proved I could not have harmed Mrs. Reilly. My receptionist will confirm that for you. I had no dealings with Mrs. Reilly directly. And now, sorry, I must return to my office. My patients await.”

“Not for long,” Paul grunted.

The acupuncturist stared at the two detectives. Then he sat back down.

Armano said, “Nice certificates on the wall in your office. We checked ’em out. You’re not a certified acupuncturist or a certified anything. My information is that you will be shut down tomorrow,” he continued, oblivious to Paul. “DA’s office always has a little lag time. Fair warning. Oh, and, Doc?”

Wu turned reptilian eyes on Armano.

“We’ll be back with that subpoena tomorrow.”

Nina took off her sweater and turned the key in the ignition, alternately cursing and praying as she tried to get the MG going. She cranked the motor three or four times until the weak chugging convinced her the car would not rally. Bob, sitting in back in the car seat, threw toys to amuse himself while she cursed silently. Just about when she gave up, he hit her on the side of the head with his tiny, green metal Porsche.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, Mommy.”

“Are you mad? Did you hit me on purpose?”

“Your head was there.” Bob blinked innocent eyes her way into the rearview mirror.

Getting out of the car, she called a law school study-group friend, who came to pick Bob up. “In Vermont, we’d heat the spark plugs in the oven, and everything worked just fine.”

“They didn’t explode?”

“Nah. But that won’t work here.”

Nina called a garage and waited for a truck for forty-five minutes. While she waited, she found herself remembering how her mom made pancakes on Sunday, oatmeal on Monday, and how she, Nina, liked the oatmeal with brown sugar and Matt loved the pancakes smothered in maple syrup. After the jump start, it was all she could manage just to park and go up the stairs to the Pohlmann firm offices.

Klaus saw her first. He bustled around making sure she got fresh coffee. “Do you need time off? You have it.”

“No. I have school and I have this job. I need both.” And I need to know who killed my mother, she added silently.

“Good, because we need you here.” Klaus clasped her hand warmly, departing only after she took her first sip. She sat down at her desk and began to sort through the mail.

Remy had been at the office for hours already. She had a weeklong trial starting this morning. Nina reread deposition transcripts, hurrying to get through all of them before Remy had to go, making notes to prepare her. Several cups of coffee made her stomach cramp.

She brought her notes in to Remy.

“You okay?” Remy asked, eyes glued to a doctor’s deposition. She was in full trial regalia, black wool suit and white blouse, pearls and four-inch black pumps with some sort of intricate texturing. Nina looked at the shoes with envy. Remy got up and gave Nina a brief hug. “Are you sure you ought to be here? And I say that even though we need you badly.”

“I’d rather be here than sitting on the couch at home. We’ve got ten depos in this case, right?”

“If you don’t count Harrison. The architect.”

“Oh, yeah. Useless number eleven.”

Remy dug around on her desk and found one thick file. She loaded files into her rolling briefcase. “I hate carrying all this garbage,” she mumbled, almost to herself, and started to dig around in a credenza behind her desk. “Where is it!”

“Let me help you. What are you missing?”

“My notes on Judge Rios,” Remy replied, turning smoothly in her chair, attacking a file-cabinet drawer.

“He’s the judge?”

“You know him?”

“I only know that Jack says he’s a pussycat. He gets along fine with him.”

“Jack,” said Remy, “gets along fine with everybody, doesn’t he?”

“Well, I—anyway, I’ll help you find—”

“Never mind. I’ll call Jack. He has a copy.” Remy picked up her phone and began to punch in the numbers. She waved Nina out. Nina left the office, thinking that while Remy was finally beginning to show the occasional sign of wear, she would never change. Unless
she was looking right at you, you didn’t exist, and yet she was the best advocate you could get to fight your legal battles. But then Remy had another attribute of a good lawyer: she was careful only to pursue cases that were strong in the first place.

Nina stood at a machine running copies, wishing she had talked some more to Remy about her mother’s lawsuit while she had Remy’s attention. Not that Remy would have had much to say in the minutes before a trial, and not that Remy would ever admit that she had decided based on things other than the merits of the case.

Maybe there would be a closing memo in her mother’s case file that would explain things, and she wouldn’t have to bother Remy. Seemed like a good place to start her own private investigation.

Remy was sitting in a chair by the front door in the outer office, flipping through files in her briefcase, checking for something else at the last minute. Lou and Griffin, the temp, stood beside her. Nina knew from the looks on their faces they would not welcome an interruption, so she asked Astrid, who was at the front desk, where to find her mother’s file.

“Everything’s in order,” Astrid huffed with unusual vehemence. Remy must have been on her case about something. Everybody’s case, it looked like.

Nina poked through Astrid’s file cabinet. Finding nothing, she went back to her office, but veered into Remy’s office and took a look around the credenza full of current cases behind Remy’s desk, looking for her mother’s name. Again, she found nothing. What chaos. How did Remy find anything? she wondered, sliding doors over the mess. Out of time, she went back to the distraction of work.

J
ACK INVITED
N
INA TO LUNCH.
S
HE CALLED
B
OB’S PRESCHOOL
and told them to go ahead and let him nap there after eating. She had class tonight, a law school teacher who counted off failure to dot
i
’s on the blue books among other things. “We’re not
doctors
here, you know,” she would say. “Somebody somewhere is going to have to read what you write. Be precise, people.” With laptops starting to appear in the classroom, that teacher would soon have to find something new to criticize.

Nina had problems in the class that went way beyond neat handwriting. For the first two months her eyes glazed and she began to think about all the places she hadn’t yet visited in the world every time she picked up her Advanced Civil Procedure text. Plodding through the pages of each chapter with grim determination, she operated at half speed and about one-quarter comprehension. But nuts-and-bolts subjects such as this made for good law practice. She had to learn this stuff. She had joined a new study group recently, and some of the other students were excited enough to pique her interest in the subject, so it looked as if she was going to be able to stave off the escapism until next term, when she would have a new subject: Corporations. Bylaws, articles of incorporation, directorships, stockholders’ suits, mergers and acquisitions,
ratification—had she really told Paul she might become a corporate lawyer?

Jack met her at the Hog’s Breath Inn. Close by, not always quick on service, it was always lively. She and Jack ordered sandwiches. Nina bit into hers with approving noises. Jack tried his and smiled. “It’s nice to eat with a woman who enjoys her food. How are you?”

“Can’t remember when I last ate. I’m starving. Thanks for getting me over here. I probably would have skipped another meal, gotten crankier and crankier, gone to class tonight and told off Professor Meacham.”

“With precision, I hope.”

“You know her? She’s so stiff, you could use her to prop up a wall.”

“I dated her.”

“Sorry,” Nina said, wondering, did he ever prop up a wall with her? To her horror, she began to cry noisily.

“Me, too.” He wiped her face with his handkerchief. “But not half as sorry as you seem to be.”

She laughed through her tears, took a long gulp of iced tea, and told Jack about Matt. “Our dad’s paying for rehab. It’s expensive, and since Dad’s embarking on a new family, I’m guessing he’ll resent it.”

“How does Matt get along with him?”

“I hope he and Dad can make peace someday.” At Jack’s look, she said, “Our mother’s illness affected Matt. He leaned on her a lot, and when she got sick, he started going downhill, too. It’s weird. I don’t quite understand what has happened to my family.”

Jack put money on the table and stood up. They walked out the front door together and stood on the sidewalk, jostled by strollers. “Come with me?”

Nina began to protest, but he had her arm and was pulling her briskly along. They walked downhill toward the beach. He sat her down on a rock and didn’t say a word for several minutes.

“You did invite me to lunch,” Nina said. “It has just struck me that this might not be all about me and my family.”

“I just wanted to talk and I thought of you.”

“Here I am.”

“It seems unfair of me to lay my troubles on you—you’ve suffered a huge loss.”

“Come on. You’re good to me. Let me reciprocate for a change. Now, tell me what’s up.”

“I’m thinking of quitting law.”

“No!”

“True.” He held up a hand. “I don’t know if I like practicing law anymore, it’s been so long since I did anything that really meant something to me. There’s something about the sheer amount of human misery that I deal with every day that makes me feel like I’m back in school playing football. Playing to win. I used to practice every day, dumb things like running in and out of tires.”

He moved closer to her on the rock, but didn’t touch her. “I was an awkward kid and not naturally graceful, but I loved the game so I got good through sheer hard work. The rest of the world is pretty lazy. You can excel if you work just a little harder. Anyway, I played for four years in high school. Then I quit.

“I quit because I didn’t have fun anymore. I’d seen most of my teammates injured, legs broken, herniated disks, dislocated shoulders. I threw my shoulder out and continued to play loaded on painkillers. Coach didn’t care.” Jack sounded dreamy. “Coach just wanted to win.” He turned toward her. “It’s just like that here. Like I’m loaded on painkillers. It’s natural to turn off your normal reaction to all the misery you see and experience, because then you work better.

“Our fearless leader, Klaus? Well, he’s got Coach beat by a mile. He’s a thousand times more subtle. He’s got us out there twisting our ankles on tires, and we do it for him so he’ll pat us on the back. Klaus backs winners, like Remy.” He turned to face Nina. “I really want to help you and Matt, if I can, okay? Beyond that, I need a life, and I’m not sure it’s possible in this profession. Maybe I’ll just hang out around the ocean at Big Sur, hike, scratch my poison-oak rash, and forget this whole thing.”

“You’ve lost heart,” Nina said. “Did you just lose a case, by any chance?”

“Yes, but—”

“I saw you like this after the Vasconcellos appeal was dismissed.”

“This isn’t about a case.” He turned abruptly and started walking up the hill.

She caught up with him, took his arm. “Things aren’t going well with Remy?”

“I wouldn’t throw away a career because of a bad love affair. That would be beyond stupid.”

Nina bit her tongue. All she could think in the spasm of selfish joy that followed was, Jack’s free. His drawn face showed the extent of his suffering, and she cautioned herself. He needed a kind listener, not a friend with an agenda.

“You’ve lost heart,” Nina repeated. The words seemed to strike Jack this time. He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Okay. I’ve lost heart in every damn thing.”

“Good time not to make career changes.”

“Can I crash my car then?” They walked back up the hill, and Jack let it out, and Nina listened.

Nina spent another night lying on her back looking at the shadows her night-light cast on the walls. In the next room, Bob, wearing footie pajamas, snored the way kids do, softly. Her brain moved into a new gear, as if the initial shock of her mother’s death had worn off and she could think again. She thought, how had this happened to her mother and why? Who could have done this to her mother? What could be more cruel than a life obliterated at the bottom of a cliff? Ginny had been so frail, so ill! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Nina sat up in bed. She pulled a pad of paper and a Sharpie into her lap and made notes. “Think like a lawyer!” Professor Meacham seemed to say loudly, interrupting the turmoil in her mind.

First of all, admit her mother, like Nina, had an obdurate streak. Work from there.

Years ago, they had plans to go to Hawaii for Christmas. Harlan had objected. He had too much work. Ginny peacefully acquiesced
to his arguments, bought tickets, packed his bag, and put him on the plane with the family before he had a chance to say boo. As a teenager, Nina had run into that sweet deceit more than once. Her mother didn’t argue. She won battles, sometimes in an underhanded way. Yet, she had lost this final war and she was dead. Who was her enemy?

Paul had let Nina read Dr. Wu’s statement in the police reports. At lunch Jack had told her Wu was unlicensed, about to be shut down, and likely, prosecuted. Wu talked about the Buddha, and at the same time he hurt people who came to him, trusting and sick. He did it all for money.

Could the acupuncturist have done this over money? She didn’t know enough yet. But she knew he had a motive.

She wanted it to be Wu because he was guilty of terrible things. He was a vicious man who preyed on weak people, a liar, a man who would go to great lengths to avoid damage to his reputation. Richard had been his lawyer. Her mother wanted to sue him. The case had to be the connection between the two deaths.

She doodled a cross and a Buddha figure. Made a connecting line and thought some more.

Then she thought of her father, Harlan. She recalled dramatic scenes between her parents, memorable, awful moments that were an indelible part of every childhood. Her father had loved her mother once. But he was like another man now, one he called “new” in the old sense of the word, not necessarily improved. And violence had been there. And money was a real issue there. He cared too much about money. She knew it was wrong to hold it against him; he was no hypocrite and this was something to admire in him. The thought that her father might be involved in some way shook her. Even though she would never forgive Harlan for hurting her mother, she couldn’t help loving him.

And what about Richard? Was anyone sad for him? Bob no longer had a father. The results of the paternity tests had still not come in, and she couldn’t help feeling relieved that Richard was dead, out of the picture. If he had lived, could he have taken Bob? His death—ah, might as well admit it—had been a relief.

No, she couldn’t let herself think that about Bob’s father.

She decided to call Richard’s associate, Perry Tompkins, in the morning. Time to get the custody case dismissed.

She went to the kitchen with its awful overhead light. Two in the morning, when all insights became suspect. She popped a diet orange drink, turned off the light, and walked to her room.

Jack believed people were capable of anything. Could he possibly suspect she was involved? Was there any possibility for Eros in this Thanatos-ridden spinning globe that housed them all briefly?

Two a.m. thoughts for sure.

Paul thought she knew something. She had sensed it immediately in the way he had maintained a clinical distance since the deaths.

Did she know something? Every once in a while she had the feeling if she could just close her eyes and for once see nothing, just darkness, an answer would leap at her. Let a thought come, don’t force it. She thought about how Paul had talked, how he had regarded her, and the picture of him merged with the confusion in her mind, ending with an image of herself in the stormy waves off Asilomar Point, swimming furiously, heading straight out to sea, toward a blurry figure on the horizon, dry, serene, gloating.