Motion to Suppress (24 page)

"Too bad."

"We have to file a writ of mandate in the Court of Appeals in Sacramento, right away."

"Can we go home and get some dinner first?"

"We’ll start on it tomorrow," Nina said.

When the dark came, the Reillys splashed through the streets to Pizza Hut.

Contrary to her intention, Nina unloaded her day. Matt and Andrea listened in dismal silence. Sharon Otis’s death had frightened them. Matt had spent the day installing better locks at the house. Brianna and Troy, adopting their mood, occupied their parents in disputes over crayons, napkins, and each other’s ugly face.

Just as the waiter set their hot pizzas on the table, the lights of the restaurant went out.

"It was a dark and stormy night," Matt said. They waited for light, drumming on the table. "Remember what Dad used to sing when he wanted to cheer us up, Nina? About Brian O’Linn?"

"You mean when he had a snort too many," Nina said, but was drowned out by the kids shouting, "Sing! Sing!" The waiter lit candles in red glass holders covered with netting and went back to the kitchen, where the cook could faintly be heard banging pots and pans and cursing in Spanish.

Matt sang:

"Brian O’Linn was a gentleman born,
His hair it was long and his beard unshorn,
His teeth were out and his eyes far in—
’I’m a wonderful beauty,’ says Brian O’Linn!

"Aye, and he always made the best of things," Matt said in his best brogue.

Nina sang:

"Brian O’Linn had no watch for to wear,
He bought a fine turnip and scooped it out fair,
He slipped a live cricket right under the skin—
’They’ll think it is ticking,’ says Brian O’Linn!"

Troy and Brianna giggled and threw pepperoni slices. Andrea smiled into her glass of burgundy. Matt and Nina went on together:

"Brian O’Linn was hard up for a coat,
He borrowed the skin of a neighboring goat,
He buckled the horns right under his chin,
’They’ll answer for pistols,’ says Brian O’Linn!

"Brian O’Linn and his wife and wife’s mother,
They all crossed over the bridge together,
The bridge broke down and they all tumbled in—
’We’ll go home by water,’ says Brian O’Linn!"

Their fellow patrons clapped; the lights blazed; Matt and Nina bowed.

The doorway greeted them with a torrent.

"Tonight it’s ’by water,’ " said Nina Reilly.

21

AUGUST, THE HEIGHT of summer, passed, bringing still, hot air and swimming in the lake. Even more people poured in from all over the world, heading for the yellow beaches to bake under the high-altitude vault of blue sky. In the crowded grocery store Nina heard as much French and Japanese as English. The casinos hummed day and night.

Hikers jammed the trails, sending the prudent coyotes, jackrabbits, and mountain lions up toward the windswept granite pinnacles, up higher to where the pika played outside their rocky dens. Close to the ground, yellow cinquefoil, yarrow and wild onion, and red Indian paintbrush blew in the warm winds. Aspen leaves fluttered among the lodgepoles and red fir.

Nina worked. As the weeks passed without a recurrence of violence, she had stopped looking over her shoulder all the time, though she and Matt and Andrea stayed on guard. She had begun seeing a tall, very big, dark young man now and then as she went in and out of the office. "That’s my son, Willis," Sandy said when she mentioned it. "We call him Wish. He’s watching."

"It’s nice of him, Sandy. It’s nice of you."

Sandy ducked her head behind her computer. In a gruff voice she said, "Jobs are hard to find," but Nina was getting to know her now. She knew what Sandy meant.

Now and then at night, looking out her bedroom window, Nina would see a patrol car glide by noiselessly. Collier was being true to his promise.

She filed her writ of mandate in the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento in mid-August. She knew the arguments could go either way. If the judges agreed Bruno’s hypnosis had been converted to a therapeutic session, Judge Milne’s decision would stand. She began a period of worry and waiting.

Riesner wouldn’t be sitting at his desk biting the skin where his fingernails used to be. He’d take Collier to lunch, badger him, complain a lot, and then tell his client it was too risky to go to trial, and Michelle would be whisked off to Santa Rita on a second-degree murder conviction quicker than you could say "Cocktails?"

In the first week of September, on a hot Tuesday morning, Nina called Michelle in Fresno. Michelle talked about how the baby kicked sometimes. She couldn’t sit at a desk filling out forms for her dad with her "whale belly." The mind-bendingly hot weather in the Central Valley reminded her every day about how much she liked Tahoe. Nina asked her to run through Anthony’s last few days one more time, and Michelle obliged, speckling her commentary with complaints.

"What’s this for?" she asked again.

"You know something about what happened, Michelle. I’m just going to dig until I do too." Nina told Michelle they should be hearing soon on the writ.

"I’ve been thinking," Michelle said. "I want to know who the baby’s father is, just for my own sake. I can pay for DNA tests."

"I’m relieved, Michelle. You should know. The information could be useful to you, your baby, even our case. I wish going into this trial all mysteries could be put to rest. At least this one will be."

"I should get a blood test."

"I can help you with that. There’s a lab in Sacramento."

"Can you get Tom and Steve to give a sample?"

"I don’t think Steve’s a problem. We’ll handle Tom for you. And I’ll have a sample of Anthony’s blood analyzed. The police have samples," Nina said.

"Poor kid," Michelle said, and hung up.

Nina buzzed Sandy. "Sandy, what are you working on?"

"Your responsive declaration on the Airleigh divorce."

"When’s it due?"

"Tomorrow."

"Good. All the time in the world. Call Sacramento information for a lab called, I think, Cytograph. I used them once before. Ask them to set up a DNA analysis for a paternity case. The mom’s sample will be coming in from Fresno. Find out what they need from Tom Clarke and Steve Rossmoor. Then call those two and ask them to give a sample. If Clarke says no, tell me right away."

"Oh, he’ll love this," Sandy said.

"Now, here’s the hard part. Tell Cytograph we have some tissue coming in from a man who is deceased, and find out if any special arrangements are needed. Then call the morgue in Placerville. Ask for a Dr. Clauson. Find out where he sent a cancerous tumor from the body of Anthony Patterson. You need to get a sample from it."

Silence at the other end of the line. Nina thought, this is too hard for her, I should do this myself.

"Ten bucks an hour, starting today," Sandy said over the com line.

Nina thought. She should have done it long ago.

"Okay, on one condition. Fax your Aunt Alice. Find out if she’s dead. If she isn’t, make her get what we need."

"Done," Sandy said.

After lunch, Nina went down the hall and put on her new blue maillot bathing suit under a robe.

She had been wondering for a long time how, on the night of April twenty-six or, to be more accurate, in the early morning of the twenty-seventh, her client dragged Anthony’s body onto Rick Eich’s sailboat, chugged out half a mile, dumped the body, and then jumped out of the boat and swam back.

The killer abandoned the boat for the simple reason that the gas ran out, but there was a limit as to how far anyone could swim in icy-cold water without a wet suit. Half a mile was close to that limit.

How — now, this was the question—how had the killer survived the swim in the freezing cold? Maximum survival time at the water temperature on the night of April twenty-sixth through the twenty-seventh, Paul had checked with the Coast Guard and told her, was thirty-five to forty-five minutes. Nina had seen Michelle and Tom Clarke a few days later in her office, looking relatively healthy.

How long would it take to swim the distance today?

Nina rented a motorboat and persuaded, with a twenty-dollar bill, one of the boys hanging around the dock to come out with her. They headed directly out to the wide expanse of Lake Tahoe. Dotted with sailboats and picnic cruisers, as beautiful as the ocean Nina loved, the lake looked as pristine and impressive from here as it had when Mark Twain saw it. At half a mile on the odometer she cut the engine and sat there, looking back toward the shore a very long way away.

"Out here, the lake’s cold," the kid said. He pulled off his baseball cap and wiped sweat off his forehead. "It’s not like near the beach, where the sun warms it up. I hope you’re a good swimmer." A lantern jaw and prominent Adam’s apple were all she could see under the Giants baseball cap. He seemed to be staring through her bathing suit.

"I’m good," Nina said. "You just follow along behind me about a hundred feet. If I get in any trouble, just toss me that life preserver and haul me in."

"Okay," he said.

The sun picked this moment to disappear behind a large cloud. The temperature dropped palpably. Nina debated one last time whether to allow herself her goggles, and decided in favor of them. The killer hadn’t had goggles, but there were limits. She stood up a little shakily and said, "What time is it exactly?"

"Two thirty-three," he said. "Don’t drown or anything."

"Bottoms up!" She dove in.

Two seconds later she popped up. She began swimming in a slow crawl toward the distant shore.

It took a few minutes to find her rhythm. The water, swooping into crests, was not as smooth as it looked from the boat. Turning her head and opening her mouth to breathe challenged her, as unexpected small waves slapped her in the face. Nina, who loved swimming in the ocean, found Lake Tahoe similar. She matched the cold vigor of the water with her own energy.

Somewhere near this spot Anthony had sunk, slowly, and sat upon the sandy bottom. This late in the season, in summer’s shallower water, she caught glimpses of the bottom. What a strange place to try to hide a body permanently. Farther out made more sense, because most of the last decade had been so dry the water was invariably shallow close to the Keys. Now, had the murderer headed straight out, instead of to the right like this, he or she would have hit very deep water more quickly. So, the killer showed lack of foresight at the very least. If this was premeditated, someone didn’t think too clearly.

What if Anthony had just disappeared into the lake? Who would have cared? Michelle would have continued crashing through her life, wondering for a short while what had happened, but forgetting as new men and adventures intervened. No one else would care except maybe his sister in Philadelphia. But Anthony had not cooperated. That was not his style.

She lifted her head to have a look. The shoreline appeared no closer. She swam steadily on. There would have been lights, far away, that the killer swam toward that night, indistinct in the snow flurry.

The cold was an old enemy. Back in Monterey she had taken a freezing ocean swim one night, a dangerous swim. She had not gone in the ocean since, five—or was it six? — years later. Her mind flowed back to that other time, and she remembered how it felt to be drowning.... She took a huge gasp of air and stopped, treading water.

"Doin’ okay?" she heard from behind her. She raised her hand and began stroking through the water again.

She had expected silence, but she had forgotten about the boat motor. Its low drone blocked out all other sound. The killer would have heard only the sliding water of the lake and hard breathing.

Paul had collected some swimming histories for her. Michelle, to make things difficult, had won medals on her high school swim team. Tom Clarke took swimming lessons for eight summers as a child. Steve Rossmoor could do anything physical. Al swore he couldn’t swim. Sharon? Hard to imagine that hair ever wet.

For a long time she stopped thinking. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe. She paused again. She couldn’t feel her chin and her toes ached. She tried swimming harder to generate heat.

Toward the end, she called up all her endurance. The water was too cold. She started to suck it in now and then, coughed, and lost her rhythm. She fought her way back. Without waiting to touch bottom as she finally came to the shore, she let her boatman come up alongside and pull her, breathless, into the boat.

"What time?" she said, spitting out water and huddling under a blanket.

"Three-fifteen," the kid said. Forty-two minutes. The swimmer in April must have been near drowning or death from hypothermia. What a miraculous performance.

How could Michelle have done such a thing? How could anybody, with the possible exception of Carl Tengstedt?

22

RICK EICH MET her at his house, next door to Michelle’s former residence, the next day. The Patterson house was rented to a couple with several children. A silver tricycle and red skates littered the driveway. Dad wasn’t going to be happy about that.

"Come on out back," Eich said. He wore nothing but a pair of red trunks that said LAKE TAHOE RESCUE TEAM in small white letters on the side, a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and sandals. He had a neat beard and well-cut hair in a dark shade of brown.

Behind his house a small dock extended out over the water, the white Catalina moored securely at the end, its sails furled.

"It’s a good-looking boat," Nina said. A breeze over the lake ruffled her hair and eased the heat.

"Take a look." They climbed onto the deck, then down narrow steps to a small cabin with a booth and table. Eich sat across from her, their knees almost touching. Through the porthole Nina could see the deck and the slope of grass to his house. The boat didn’t rock; it jerked from trough to trough with the slap of the water.

"What else is down here?"

He showed her. An enclosed cubicle held the toilet. Behind it, on a shelf with high sides, the bed rested. A tiny galley with stove, sink, and fridge built into the wall by the booth completed the picture of a compact human habitat.

"Shipshape. I’ve taken her all the way to Hawaii and back."

Nina looked at the fresh red upholstery in the booth. "Had that redone," Eich said. "The police cut out the bloodstains." He indicated the side on which she was sitting.

"Were there any on the bed?" Nina asked.

"No. Just here and up on deck."

Why hadn’t Anthony’s body been kept up on deck? It would be very difficult to get him down the narrow stairs and prop him in a booth. He must have regained consciousness at some point. These events just got more mysterious, layering infinitely.

"Did you notice anything broken?"

"Not a thing. Of course, everything’s tied down or bolted down on deck. With nothing loose lying around, it might be hard to tell."

"I’d appreciate it if you would show mellow to start up the motor," Nina said. They went on deck to the steerage and Eich showed her how very simple it was; insert the key and turn it, start up, and start steering.

"Where did you keep the key?"

"I left it with Misty and Anthony while I was gone," he said. "I remember handing it to Misty. She set it on the kitchen counter." Nina examined this key. On the key ring dangled a transparent plastic boat. Anyone who looked around Anthony’s house would have found it and known what it was.

"This is your original key?"

"Found in the boat motor."

"Did Michelle know how to take the boat out?"

"In a way. She loved to sit there and make like a captain. Steering is half the fun. Of course, at night, with visibility down, you have to keep a sharp eye out until you get to the open water."

"Does she know how to sail?" That would have done her dubious good in the dead calm of that night anyway. Nina didn’t suspect Eich was involved, for the simple reason that this smitten boat owner would know better than to head out on a night without wind in a sailboat without carrying extra gas. She waited for his answer.

"That’s much more complicated," he said. "They helped me with the sails a few times. Anthony might have been able to, but Misty’s not into boats. She just came out to keep us company." He took a rag from under a minisink and swiped at the counters. "Say, Nina, I’d like you to give Misty my best. Whatever happened between them, I don’t hold it against her."

"How well did you know them?"

"Just neighbor stuff. They went out a few times with me and my girlfriend. The summer before, Anthony and I sat out on his deck a few times and drank beer. He was a beer aficionado. He always had something different for me to try — Sam Adams, Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale...." Eich was far away, in beer land. Nina had seen that happen with Jack now and then.

"Did you like him?" she asked.

"Sure. He liked football, baseball, any kind of spectator sport. He liked to throw darts. He played golf. We were gonna have a game. When I saw him, he was hangin’ around his house on a Saturday, puttering around in flip-flops."

It was hard to incorporate this picture of Anthony.

"What about Michelle? How did you get along with her?"

"She’s a nice girl, Nina. But ... she’s a teaser. She used to wear this bikini out on the boat ..."

"Did she seem interested in you?"

"Not really," Eich said. "Not with her husband there. She’d try to drive me crazy, though, the way she sat, touching me accidentally. I had a hard time keeping my hands off her, to tell you the truth."

"What about the two of them?"

"She stayed quiet around him. He kept his hand on her all the time, like he was afraid she was going to get away. He didn’t like her to go out alone. It must have been hard, living with a woman like that."

Nina sat on the railing. It was about eighteen inches higher than the deck, about ten inches wide. Lifting an unconscious man that far would have been easy for just about anybody.

After a nap at home, Nina felt recovered enough to dispatch herself to the grocery store for swordfish steaks and salad fixings. She picked up hot dogs for the kids and a large bottle of champagne, which she put in the refrigerator immediately. The day’s heat lingered in the kitchen.

Matt arrived home first, disgusted with one of his parasailing customers. "This guy just couldn’t get off the ground, because he was scared to death to lift off in the harness. Ever heard of a deadweight? Lead, this guy. He took a couple of dunkings when the boat couldn’t stop in time and ran him right off the beach into the water. We finally got him flying and he had a good ride up there. Then it was time to come down and land in the lake and he started twisting and turning as he came down. The harness wrapped around his legs and we had to hustle over in the boat before he swallowed too much water." Matt popped a beer.

"He doesn’t sound like someone who would go parasailing in the first place."

"He told me it was a gift from a customer. An unsatisfied one, I’ll bet. He said he’s going to talk to his lawyer about negligent infliction of mental distress."

"At least your insurance company will have to handle it, not you," Nina said, plopping the swordfish into a big bowl of marinade.

"What insurance company?" Matt said. "For a parasailing business? The premiums would leave me with a net loss. Should have let the sucker drown." He went outside and she heard his ax splintering wood. He must be sweating.

Andrea came in with her arms full of groceries. "Oh," she said. "I never dreamed you’d make it to the store."

"Special feast tonight. Paul’s driving up with Bobby. He stopped in San Francisco and picked him up."

"Do I detect a certain enthusiasm that goes beyond the return of the prodigal son?"

"Go read a magazine." Nina pulled out the lettuce to shred.

"Matt said," Andrea began, "you told him once you were afraid of Paul van Wagoner. That he was out of control."

"Matt has a long memory!" Nina said, showing her exasperation. "But for Matt’s information, I’m five years older now. So’s Paul. We have graduate degrees in controlling our antisocial impulses."

Andrea sat herself on a stool and tidied lettuce leaves from the counter. "Do you think that his being one of Jack’s friends has anything to do with your ... hiring him?"

Nina, aware of the real concern behind Andrea’s words, relented. "Nothing more than a sneaking thought that I might be able to get through to Jack via Paul. He disabused me of that notion right quick. Refused to act the intermediary. And now he’s turning out to be a fantastic help to me on this case. Believe me, we have very little else in common. He’s a womanizer and a hard ex-cop, and that makes him mud in my book."

"But you like him," Andrea said.

Nina laughed. "Yes, I do."

By the time Paul pulled up in his van she was out on the front lawn in her shorts basting swordfish with marinade.

Bobby ran to her, his hair flying. Then she was holding him to her, smelling the familiar smell of her son. She clung to him for a long time, feeling whole again.

Within five minutes he took off to play with his cousins, showing them a handheld video game Jack had bought him.

Two hours later the adults sprawled out on the lawn, watching the sun’s shadows grow long. The kids had gone in to watch TV. Lying on the warm grass with the last of the champagne, Nina could hardly believe in a few months the whole place would be under six feet of snow. She found herself talking about the case again.

"I talked to Al Otis yesterday, Paul," she said. "He really loved that woman, his wife. Called me yesterday to grieve and carry on, saying how she was the best."

"The best what?" Matt asked, dangling a marshmallow over the coals.

"The best motorcycle mama in Reno," Nina said. "What she saw at the Keys that night may never be known. I believe she could have cleared Michelle."

Matt gathered up plates.

"Let’s take the last tram up to the restaurant at Heavenly," Paul said. "We can just make the sunset."

"Not me, thanks," Andrea said. "Time to put the small ones in bed." Matt shook his head, carrying empty platters into the house.

Paul looked inquiringly at Nina. "Let me get a jacket," she said.

They stood in a short tram line, whispering about their fellow passengers. Paul bought the tickets. They climbed into the lurching car, rising rapidly from the lake level along the Gunbarrel, a black-diamond run at Heavenly. At this time of year the steep slope showed only beaten-down dirt, flanked by the dark forest. Stepping out onto the platform several thousand feet up the mountain, they walked to the deck of the Top of the Tram, which maintained a year-round bar on top of the world for tourists seeking memorable photographs. Chairs and tables with Cinzano umbrellas oriented themselves toward the edge of the deck, which dropped off precipitously. They put elbows on the railing, admiring the last glow of sun on the lake, Nina acutely sensitive to Paul’s hulking presence beside her.

"Now this ... this feels like a date," Paul said. He put his arm lightly around her. "About time we went on a date, don’t you agree?"

"I never liked dating. That’s something you have to go through with people you don’t know."

He studied her. "And you think you know me?"

She shrugged, remaining silent, enjoying the feel of his arm around her.

After a moment, he said, "Say something."

"There’s so much I know and so much I don’t know about you. Jack envied you, I think, and that colors my feelings, you could say."

Paul shook his head.

"Secretly, he did. Life was fairly easy for him. He saw you struggling and fighting against your nature and the status quo all the time. That’s what he expected, even wanted to do all his life, but his kind of WASP always flies through a golden field."

"If Jack envied me, it was only in the way everyone has a yen to be something they aren’t once in a while. Didn’t you ever want to be a ballerina? Or a king?" He grinned.

"You’re getting to know me, at least!"

"I’d like you to know me, too, Nina."

"You know what I need, Paul? I need to keep things clean. I need to focus on the Patterson case. I don’t want to get ... swept up. You’re my friend now, and a colleague. That can last. Anything beyond that right now I can’t face."

"Commitment, Reilly style?"

"Anything, anybody that relates to work, that I can get serious about."

"Sexy."

Nina found she was not ready to let it rest quite yet. "Paul? I’m not your usual type. Is Marilyn?"

"I wanted to talk to you about that, Nina." They started walking.

"You’re living with her?"

"I was. Not anymore."

"Since when?"

"Since yesterday. A showdown that ended with her throwing all my stuff out the window. Defenestration, I believe it’s called." He didn’t laugh. "She was ready to settle down."

"And you’re not?"

"Not with her." He removed the arm from around her that had been a warm link to him. Facing her, without touching her, he said, "Don’t believe everything about me you heard from Jack."

"Which part shouldn’t I believe?"

"Anything at all unflattering." They both laughed.

"You saw Jack today. How is he?"

"You sure you want to know?"

"I do."

"He seems okay. He’s living with Evanelle Cherry, light-haired, too skinny, tall. Late thirties."

The words made her shiver. "Like someone we knew once." The woman Jack had loved before Nina looked like that.

"I prefer a woman who dances and spills wine on her clothes, myself," Paul said, smiling.

"I miss him terribly. I ..." Now she was ready to bawl on his shoulder.

"Jack’s an idiot. And I told him so."

"Oh, Paul. Thanks." The sun faded behind the mountain, a still, orange landscape.

"Did you ever wonder, how much who you are had to do with who Jack wanted you to be?"

"Every day," said Nina. "Every single day."