Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (34 page)

Greg sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Okay," I said. "I'm sorry. But
he can be such a pain in the—"

"If I may be heard," McFate said.
"I withheld that information for two reasons. First, I do not feel
required to share the details of my investigations with civilians. And
second, the identities and records of undercover agents are classified
information. I was not provided with full details of Grant's
activities, so I could
hardly be expected to connect it with the other persons named in
Hilderly's will."

Greg said, "He has a point,
Sharon."

"Half a point. I mentioned the
probable connection with Hilderly to him—and more than once. If he had
followed up on that, shared what he knew with me . . . Just yesterday
didn't you say it's making the collar that counts—not who makes it?"

Greg nodded.

"Then as a corollary, I'd say
it's utilizing the available information that counts, not whether the
information was uncovered by a civilian or a member of the department."

McFate said, "I still could not
have been expected to make the connection—"

"I think you could have, given
the other information you got from the Intelligence Division—but
conveniently neglected to put in your reports."

McFate stiffened slightly. Greg
leaned forward, interested.

I said to Greg, "Yesterday you
also told me you were annoyed at how Leo kept disappearing."

"That's right."

"On at least one of those
occasions—and I'm willing to bet quite a few others—he was over at his
old detail."

"So?"

I glanced
at
McFate. He
was sitting very still now.

"I suspect what he was doing
there was going through back files on radicals they spied on in the
sixties, looking for information on Hilderly and his other heirs—just
in case the lead I'd given him was valid after all. One of the things
he discovered was the circumstance that twenty years later caused
Hilderly to change his will—which in turn triggered Grant's murder."

"Why
did
Hilderly change
his will?"

"Hilderly was never a part of
that collective, at least not in the sense its members thought he was.
He was close to the people, and they assumed he was
using his job as a reporter to further their propaganda efforts. What
he was really doing was gathering information for a story, perhaps
something along the lines of 'Inside a Weather Collective.' But when
they began to formulate plans to bomb Port Chicago—plans that were
certain to result in the deaths of innocent people—he became
disillusioned and concerned."

McFate said, "Why would he? He
was a radical. None of them cared—"

"Hilderly cared. He valued human
life above anything. Even above his loyalty to his closest friends. I
think he went to the ID—their activities were well known even in those
days—and warned them about the bombing plans. He knew he'd done the
right thing, but his guilt over the betrayal more or less soured the
rest of his life. Then last May he ran into Tom Grant, who handed him
an untrue story about
his
ruined life, and Hilderly decided to
atone for what he'd done—by leaving money to three of the people he'd
harmed, plus to the only living heir of the other."

Greg looked at McFate. "Is it
true that Hilderly went to the ID, Leo?"

It was a moment before he
replied. "Yes. I don't know about the business with the will; I don't
know how she can surmise all that. But Hilderly did talk with the ID.
They, in turn, contacted the FBI. When the Bureau got back to them,
they said they already had the situation covered and that arrests would
be forthcoming. Hilderly needn't have felt guilty about anything; he
didn't even try to turn them in to the agency with jurisdiction."

McFate spoke as if what had
happened was amusing—a joke that Hilderly had led a guilt-ridden life
and then attempted to atone for something he hadn't actually done. I
frowned at his callousness, saw Greg was frowning, too.

"How did you, put all that
together?" Greg asked.

"I'll explain later." I was
not
going to tell him in front of McFate about my dream of the previous
morning—the sly visual pun on the word
"intelligence," in which a gilt suit of armor stood for "guilt" and a
gnawed diploma indicated its possessor had "ratted on" someone.

"All right," Greg said. Then to
McFate, "Why wasn't I apprised of any of this, Leo?"

"I didn't find it relevant—"

"Bullshit! The reason you didn't
report it to me is that you were protecting your pals at the ID."

"Lieutenant, twenty years ago it
was acceptable for the division to maintain surveillance on groups who
could be deemed—"

"Yes. But it hasn't been
acceptable since nineteen seventy-five, when the commission adopted
rules against such activity. And recently the ID has taken a lot of
heat for having ignored those rules. They like to maintain a low
profile over there these days; I'm sure your pals made it clear they'd
appreciate being kept out of something like the Grant case—even though
their involvement was a long way back and very peripheral."

"I ... well, I ..."

"Funny thing about this, McFate:
Sharon—this civilian-shared most of the details of her investigation
with me. I knew a lot of the facts you didn't deem 'relevant.' If you'd
reported properly, I would probably have worked out the solution to
your case, and Taylor would still be alive." Greg was as angry as I'd
ever seen him.

"Lieutenant, I—"

"Oh, get the hell out of here.
We'll discuss it tomorrow."

McFate left the cubicle without
looking at either of us.

"You know," Greg said when he was
gone, "I'm pleased that one of my last official acts on Homicide will
be making sure he's reprimanded for this. I damned well want it to go
in his file."

"The captaincy came through,
then?"

"They're announcing it Monday."

I felt an odd tug of sadness.
"Congratulations."

"Jesus, you make it sound as if
I'd just told you I had a fatal disease."

"Oh, Greg." I stood and moved
toward the door, suddenly needing to be out of there. "It's only that
it'll seem strange for you not to be here, where you've been ever since
I've known you."

"Wherever I am, I'll always be
there for you."

"I know, but . . . everything's
changing." I actually felt as if I might cry.

As soon as I closed my front door
behind me, I realized how weary I was—and that I was also coming down
with a cold. I took a handful of vitamin C with a big glass of red
wine, then showered and washed my hair and bundled up in my white
terry-cloth bathrobe.

And thought, My God, I haven't
checked on Hank in nearly ten hours!

I hurried to the phone, but
before I could dial the hospital I saw the red light was on on my
answering machine. Quickly I reached for the rewind button—five calls.

My mother: "Are you there? I read
in the paper about Hank getting shot and you chasing after that sniper
like a lunatic. Oh, Shari, why can't you get a decent job where you
won't always be—"

I thought, Oh, Ma, I love you,
too. And fast-forwarded through the rest of the message.

Luke Widdows: "I heard about the
shooting. Are you okay? Call me anytime."

Jim Addison: "You didn't return
my last call, but don't bother. I've been reading about you in the
papers. You know, I always thought you were a gentle person like me,
but this thing with the sniper . . . what you did was like police
brutality. Sharon, you're just too violent for me. Violent women are
unnatural—" The beep cut him off with a satisfying finality.
 

I smiled, remembering how I'd
worried about Jim's potential for violence. Now
he
was put off
by
mine!

The fourth call was the one I'd
been hoping for, Anne-Marie: "Well, God, he's okay. Surgery went fine.
I think that on Sunday he'll be able to have a certain visitor he's
already asking for. I'm going home to sleep now, so check with me
sometime after noon tomorrow."

I stopped the tape, replayed the
message. Hank was all right; soon I could visit him. I'd take him a
stack of magazines, a care package from that bakery on Twenty-fourth
Street whose blueberry muffins he so loved . . .

I'd almost forgotten that there
was one more message. I switched the tape on. It was from George
Kostakos.

I played it all the way through.
Reversed the tape, listened to it again. His wife was fully recovered
from her breakdown, and they'd begun divorce proceedings. She'd taken
the Palo Alto house, and he'd moved to a condominium on Russian Hill.
He still cared for me. If I felt the same, he'd love to see me. His
new phone number was . . .

At first I felt a stubborn
resistance. All those months he'd been silent, left me wondering where
we stood, and now he thought he could simply walk back into my life.
But then I felt a softening: it couldn't have been easy for him,
either. Besides, on some level I'd always known where we stood, known
he'd eventually return.

I pictured George: his rough-hewn
face, his changeable hazel eyes, his gray-frosted black hair, his tall,
lean body. I put my hand to my lips, imagining how it would be to see
him after all this time. Imagining how we would be together.

The pain and anger and
disillusionment of the past week fell away from me. Their vestiges
would return, I knew. Bad memories would recur—probably for the rest of
my life. But I would take comfort in moments like this, when I felt
temporarily safe, warm, insulated. I stretched, yawned. What an
embarrassment of riches I'd come home to!

Restlessly I moved about the
silent house, testing the doors and windows, even though I
knew they were all locked. I prowled through the parlor, straightening
a book on the shelf, dusting a cobweb from the mantelpiece. In the
kitchen I checked to see if the pilot light on the stove was lit.
Snooped at the ice cubes in the freezer, felt the bread for freshness,
looked to see if there were enough eggs for breakfast. But finally
weariness drove me to the bedroom, where I dropped my robe to the floor
and crawled naked between the sheets.

As I hugged my pillow and closed
my eyes, I resolved to wake by noon and return four of the five phone
calls. I would reassure my mother. Thank Luke Widdows for the
information that had aided me in my investigation. Ask Anne-Marie if I
couldn't visit Hank sooner than Sunday. And tell George yes, I felt the
same, wanted to see him.

And after that I would initiate a
call of my own. I couldn't go on fooling myself: it was high time I
told Ted to drop Ralph and Alice off at their new home.

On summer mornings San Francisco
is often shrouded by a heavy fog. It billows through the Golden Gate
and moves insidiously about the city, transforming familiar places and
ordinary objects into things of beauty, mystery, or—in certain
cases—evil. It hangs thick outside windows, slips under doors, and
permeates the consciousness of those on the raw edge of waking. An
untroubled rest will then degenerate into tossing and turning; pleasant
dreams grow nightmarish. When the fog's victims open their eyes, they
are already aware of a curious deadening of spirit, even before they
face the gray day.

I was one of those victims on a
Saturday morning in July. Long before my alarm was due to go off at the
unholy hour of seven I woke and lay contemplating the shadows that
gathered in the corners of my bedroom. Finally I reached for the rod
that controlled the mini-blinds on the window above my head and turned
it. The light that entered was murky; I sat up, saw mist decorating the
branches of my backyard pine trees like angel's hair.

I sighed, turned off the alarm
before it could ring, and,flopped back against the
pillows. The flat, dull feeling I'd awakened with deepened. There had
been a dream ... of what? I couldn't remember, but its aura persisted—
distinctive, depressing.

I focused on the day ahead, but
its prospects weren't too cheerful, either. Hank Zahn, senior partner
at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am staff investigator, had
asked a favor: that I help him clear out the flat of a client who had
been killed in one of a recent rash of random street shootings.
Although it was not the way I cared to spend my Saturday, I'd agreed
because I sensed that Hank—one of my oldest and closest friends—needed
my presence. And there
was
one bright spot: he'd bribed me
with the promise of lunch; that plus Hank's good company was a winning
combination.

Lord knew I could use some good
company. This morning's low-grade depression might be mostly
fog-induced, but the last month had been lonely and bleak, the five
before it not much better. I had to find some way out of these
emotional doldrums— The doorbell rang.

Uneasiness stole over me, the way
it does when doorbells or phones ring at times when they're typically
not supposed to. I got up, grabbed my robe, belted it securely as I
went down the hall. When I got to the door, I peered through its
peephole.