Hungry Ghosts (27 page)

He'd given me next to nothing. I didn't have much time. I stepped in front of him and stopped. “Did John make you an offer, or did you just figure John would be very grateful, or very indebted, if you found proof his brother was caught up in the dare group?”

He didn't bother answering but shifted and blocked any escape.

“You broke into Gary's house so you could blackmail John, right?”

To my right, dark mounds of sea lions shifted on slips. Ten feet behind me the walkway ended, and the railing was broken. There was nothing to keep me from backing right into the Bay. Webb moved toward me.

I stayed where I was and braced my legs. “Where's Jeffrey?”

“What?”

“Jeffrey. Where is he?”

“I don't know. I told you before, I don't know. Last I saw him Tia was slamming out of his car and he was just sitting there looking empty. Get off my case.” He moved closer.

I inched back. “What about the drug? The stuff Jeffrey got for Tia? Where is it?”

“What drug? I warned you: get off my case.” He was so close I could see his brow wadded in tension, or anger, or fear.

I kept moving back. I was so close to the edge I could see the warning signpost out of the corner of my eye. If he pushed me into the drink, no one would hear me. I shifted forward; I was in his face. “Looking empty? Why was Jeffrey—”

For an instant I thought the roar came from the sea lions. Mouth open, red-faced, Webb leaned back, came at me with the full force of his weight, and shoved me off the pier.

I caught the signpost. He sailed by me into the Bay. I heard his scream, but I didn't have time to worry about him finding the ladder. I knew why Jeffrey had looked desolate the afternoon Tia was killed. And now I had a good idea where the drug was.

C
HAPTER
26

“T
HE DRUG
Jeffrey had. It's in the tunnel,” I said, as soon as I found Korematsu on the edge of the melee halfway down the pier.

“The thing is, Detective, Tia Dru didn't take something out of the tunnel. I thought that was why she wanted to go down there—to get something. Wrong! She put something in there, hid it. Hid her purse,” I said, as we double-timed it toward the street. “Tia never leaned on her cane if she could help it. But at the reception, she used it once, when she walked over to Jeffrey, put her arm through his. I thought she was comforting him. A minute later she put her hand in his pocket. She was wearing a shawl. It covered her hand when she moved it. She lifted the drug out of Jeffrey's pocket. There was only one place to slip it—her own purse.”

“So?”

“She was the one who was so eager to get into the tunnel. She ran so fast into the pitch black that she smacked into the far wall. But when she climbed back out, she didn't have that purse. She put the purse, the drug, in the one place Jeffrey wouldn't be able to get it, because he's afraid to go down there.”

“She hid her purse in the tunnel?”

“It sounds crazy, but listen, the purse was small—easy to push into a corner. It was a mud brown that'd blend in. The tunnel—it was dead dark down there. It's not like it's a popular spot.”

Korematsu hesitated only briefly, then unlocked the car, and in a minute we shot into traffic. He drove with one hand, phone in the other, calling for a crime scene team.

“Lights!” I said. “Tell them we'll need major lighting, like they use for a night shoot!”

“What?”

“On a movie set. Filming after dark.”

“Oh. That kind of shoot. I thought—”

“Of course, you would.”

As the traffic light turned from yellow to red, he hung a left.

“We're going to need a key to the grate. We should call—”

“No need. City's got masters.”

“To grates leading to private property?”

“Grates in or near public sidewalks. When there's an emergency we can't be running around after every property owner asking him to hunt up his key. We've got grates all over town.” He cut right onto Pacific and whipped down the few blocks to the zendo.

Brakes screeched. The red flashers from the light bar turned the macadam bloody. Patrol cars. The crime scene van. Techs and investigators poured out. I raced into the courtyard and pointed to a potted tree and the metal cover underneath it. “Entrance is there.”

The tunnel would be warmer than out here, but I shivered at the prospect of climbing back into it. Tia was one daring woman, to descend and run so confidently into the dark to hide that purse. Then to look like she was about to collapse back at the ladder and force us all to help her up the ladder and out. You had to hand it to her.

Korematsu pulled open the grate. A tech moved in beside him and shot a spotlight down into the hole. The tunnel, with its mud-over-stone walls, sucked the variations out of the light, so that what we saw, as before, was undifferentiated muck.

An African American guy with a miner's cap moved in closer. The tech called for another light. Someone leaned over the entrance and began clicking pictures. The metal ladder attached to the wall was barely visible, but I remembered its location and was over the top, down the five rungs, and onto the gummy ground before Korematsu started shouting.

“Lower me a flashlight!” I grew up with a cop; I should have remembered it's a waste of time giving them orders. Korematsu yelled something about staying still. The tunnel's mud walls slurped up as much sound as light. Voices called out, but words were sucked away.

Tia had dropped to the soft floor in here, then run so fast she hit the far wall. People lumped us together, but she and I were opposites. She lived for danger met head-on; I choreographed it so I'd never be taken by surprise. Now I stepped into her world, out of the circle of light into total black. I blinked, but my eyes did not adjust. Normal life fell away. I put my fingers on the damp mud wall and forced myself to step forward. The ground squished under my feet. The smell of rot filled the air. I tried not to think of the young girls entombed in rooms like this a century ago. I failed.

Behind me metal clanked. Someone else climbing down the ladder. “Smells awful!” a man yelled.

I moved faster, guided by the wall and the slope of the ground as Tia had. I needed to be close enough to the wall to get a clear look before Korematsu ordered me back and the crime scene crew blocked everything off. With every step the air became thicker, more putrid. I wished I had a scarf to cover my nose and mouth. How had Tia . . . ?

“. . . lights down!” the man yelled.

I ran. My foot caught. I fell.

On something soft. Gases whooshed. The smell was shocking, overwhelming, sickening. My face was in the mud. My breath wouldn't come.

“What's going on there?” the man yelled.

“Get me light!” I forced out. I pushed up with my hands and feet, forming an inverted V. Flies buzzed my face.

“Don't touch anything! We have to preserve the scene. You've got no business being down there. What's going on?” the voice kept yelling.

Lights burst on. The mud glistened. I looked down on legs. Legs splayed to the sides. Legs in brown pants. I squeezed my eyes shut a couple of times to clear them. Then I screamed.

The body was Jeffrey Hagstrom. He was lying on his back, arms flopped to his sides.

“It's Jeffrey; he's dead!”

The ladder clanked.

His eyes were open, brown eyes, but they were sunk deep in the sockets. His mouth hung open, too, like he was merely surprised, not dead.

“Don't move!”

“Don't throw up! We have to protect the scene!”

“Get her out of there.”

His skin was both dry and glistening, and white like the underside of a fish. He looked like Jeffrey and not like him, like a much older version with sinking skin.

Blowflies circled his chest.

Bile shot up my throat. I was going to retch. I couldn't retch, not here. I swallowed hard, bent my knees, and pushed with my arms. It took all my strength to thrust myself up to standing. That's when I saw the knife protruding from his chest, from the hole the blowflies had zeroed in on. It was the other zendo knife, the duplicate of the one that had killed Tia.

“Darcy. Get out of the scene!”

I jolted up and half staggered, not toward the voice but to the dark corner of the tunnel where Tia had gone. In my memory this end of the tunnel was like the end of a mud-walled boxcar with sharp corners. In reality
it was an uneven mass of rock covered in mud. It looked like a giant fist had smashed into it. The corners were not sharp, the wall was not flat, and the bottom edge was not tight. The light was dim down here. The purse had to be there, pushed into the corner, hidden by the shadows.

But it wasn't. Nothing was there but rock and mud.

I peered down at the empty corner. That position, here in this spot, was familiar. I felt it with body memory. When had I stood like this? Why?

I glanced from the corner to the dark hole beside it. I remembered when I'd shown the tunnel to Robin Sparto that something down here had jarred loose. I'd taken it for a big clod of mud, or a rat. But it could have been a small purse. It had slid slowly down that chute.

The purse, and whatever was in it, had to be that dark chute.

If Tia hadn't acted on impulse, if she'd had time to plan, she could have chosen a better spot. But she didn't. She was Tia.

I took a breath and slid my hand into the hole.

“Darcy!”

I felt something. Leather? Or muddy rock?

“Darcy!”

Rock.

“She's in shock. Come on, we have to get her out of there before she fucks up the whole scene.”

“I'm okay.” With an enormous rush of relief, I pulled my hand out of the slimy hole. The police could get the purse. They had equipment. That's what police were for. I stood a moment, looking down at that hole where I would not have to go. I'd been in worse places than this, but none had so viscerally upset me. Desperate as I was to see the purse, to be positive it was here, I was relieved beyond reason to get out of here and let the police go down that wretched hole.

“Keep to the edge. You'll destroy as little evidence as possible that way.”

“If there's any she hasn't already trampled,” I heard someone mutter.

I moved slowly along. Korematsu would be occupied with the murder, so I'd be able to wait till things were under control and then point out the hole. I'd have plenty of time to think while I waited. Plenty of time to remember that only two days ago Jeffrey'd been regaling half the guests at the reception with tales of this very tunnel, with Tia tossing him easy questions. And now they were both dead. Both stabbed to death.

At the ladder, I turned for a last look at Jeffrey. What I saw was not him but Leo's knife. I grasped the ladder and started up. The air cooled with each step. The sounds changed from the techs' back-and-forth instructions in the tunnel to sirens and brakes and Korematsu saying words I couldn't make out.

This time, Korematsu couldn't suspect Leo. Leo was in jail.

The top of my head was level with the street. Cold fog-laden air played with my hair. I took another step.

Leo was in jail
now
. Unfortunately, Jeffrey had been dead long enough to have blowflies around him. Long enough to have been stabbed before Leo was in custody. Korematsu could suspect Leo. When he discovered the murder weapon was Leo's knife, he damned well would.

Korematsu extended his hands and pulled me out of the tunnel, landing me in front of a gray-haired white man in civvies that hung as if they were his uniform. He stood, feet apart, gaze surveying the area and me, as if he owned the scene, as if he owned me and Korematsu.

“Acting Chief of Detectives Broder,” Korematsu said.

“You're Lott's sister,” he said, in a tone that suggested he'd heard a lot about me or about John, none of it good. Listening to my theories was going to be the last thing on his mind. But I had to make them get that purse before they saw the knife and locked in on Leo.

“Tia Dru hid her purse in that tunnel, at the far corner, by a chute, and it got dislodged and slid down.”

“What would she do that for?” Broder demanded.

“To hide a highly toxic painkiller she got from Jeffrey Hagstrom at the reception.”

“In the tunnel?”

It did sound crazy.

“In the one place Jeffrey wouldn't go. He was claustrophobic.”

“He gave her a painkiller, and an hour later she's hiding it from him? What makes you think—?”

“I saw her run so fast to the dark end of that tunnel that she hit the wall. Later I saw something slide down that hole!”

“How deep is this hole of yours?”

“It's a hole!” My breath was coming fast, my shoulders were tight, and I squeezed my hands into fists against the urge to strangle him. “Maybe it's a small hole; maybe it's a chute. Maybe there's a bottom, maybe it empties into the sewer, and if you don't get that purse soon it will be spit out into the Pacific and you'll have to go call the Tokyo police.”