Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (46 page)

I'd saved a stack of Ben Gallagher's scribbled notes for last, and I
went through them quickly, dismissing most as unimportant. There was
one sheet that interested me, however: jottings on a phone inquiry to
the DMV. Tracy had apparently received a citation for reckless driving
(left turn across oncoming traffic) at a location in Napa County two
days before her disappearance.

What had she been doing up there? I wondered. And in whose car,
since she didn't have one of her own? I studied the notes more
carefully, trying to decipher the crabbed writing, then remembered the
envelope from my friend at the DMV, that I'd stuffed in my bag when
leaving All Souls the night before. I pulled it out, found it contained
a computer printout of Tracy's driving record. But on it, the date of
the final entry was different.

Gallagher's scribblings showed the citation as having been issued at
two-ten in the morning on February eleventh. The printout said the
thirteenth. If the printout was correct, Tracy had been in Napa County
a good four hours after she was last seen outside Café Comedie
quarreling with Bobby Foster. And around fifteen minutes after Foster
returned to the club, according to the testimony of his fellow parking
attendants.

I held up Gallagher's notes and studied the date. That wavery "1"
could easily have been intended to be a "3." The significance of the
date might not have registered when Ben wrote it down; he might have
been interrupted and not gotten back to the notes for some time. And by
then, he would merely have read the number as "11," two days too early
to have any bearing on the disappearance.

The location of the violation was given as Cuttings Wharf Road at
Highway 121 in Napa County. I had no notion where that was, but it had
to be at least an hour away from the city.

The car Tracy had been driving was a Volvo, license plate number—

I looked back at the information I'd copied down about the stolen
car belonging to Atlas Development Corporation. The license plate
number was the same.

There was no written confirmation of Gallagher's inquiry from the
DMV, but that didn't surprise me. It might never have been sent, or it
might merely have been another piece of paper that got lost in the
shuffle.

One piece of paper that would have invalidated Bobby Foster's
confession. A piece of paper whose absence had condemned him to death.

I stared at Gallagher's notes for a moment. Although I told myself
not to get too excited yet, feelings of elation spread through me. It
was the first break—and a major one—in a case I'd initially thought
unsolvable. I checked the date and time of the citation once more, then
got up and went to the door of Greg's cubicle. "Would you come here a
minute?" I said.

Since it was New Year's and the next day was also a legal holiday,
there wasn't much Greg could do to check out the discrepancy. He would
request verification of the date, time, and vehicle license plate
number from the DMV when their office opened on Tuesday, as well as
contact the highway patrol, to see if the issuing officer remembered
anything about the incident. But, as he cautioned me, that was
unlikely; officers give so many tickets that they're not apt to
remember one from that long ago—unless there had been something
exceedingly unusual about the circumstances. My spirits refused to be
deflated by that, though.

When I left the hall and climbed into my MG, I took the packet of
maps from the side pocket and found one for Napa County. Cuttings Wharf
Road ran south from Highway 121, just beyond where it split off from
Highway 29, the main arterial into the city of Napa and the
wine-producing valley to its
north. The smaller road seemed to be an accessway to the Napa River. To
get there, I would take the Bay Bridge…

There was an entrance ramp to the I-80 freeway and the bridge less
than a block from the hall. I drove down to Fifth Street and joined the
light flow of eastbound traffic.

On the other side of the bay, the freeway took me past Berkeley,
where I had lived for four years but now seldom visited. Beyond
Richmond, the land became gentle, rolling hills; as I approached the
Carquinez Strait, the hills were dotted with pastel-colored oil storage
tanks, and I could see smoke-belching refineries spread out on the
shores of San Pablo Bay. Another bridge took me across the strait, and
at Vallejo—a bland town whose only distinctions are the Mare Island
Naval Shipyard and Marine World/Africa U.S.A.—I cut over to Highway 29.
The traffic was even sparser there; the businesses that fronted the
road were closed for the holiday. After about ten miles, Highway 121
curved off to the northeast, toward Lake Berryessa. I stayed on the
main route, crossing a high-arching bridge over the river, then took
the other branch of 121 toward Sonoma.

Cuttings Wharf Road appeared in less than a mile; a sign indicated
it was the way to the Napa River resorts. There was a turn lane, the
one from which Tracy would have made the dangerous left across traffic
that had attracted the attention of the highway patrol. The officer
would have followed her onto Cuttings Wharf Road and stopped her
immediately, I thought, perhaps here in front of these small houses or
next to that high-tension tower.

A good deal of the land was planted in grapes here, black knotty
vines devoid of leaves. Windbreaks of eucalyptus edged the road. I
drove slowly, looking at names on mailboxes, searching for some clue as
to what Tracy might have been doing here in the dead early hours of a
February morning. When the road branched, I hesitated, then took the
arm that
went toward the public fishing access.

There were more vineyards and a Christmas tree farm down there, as
well as a number of cottages that looked to be closed up for the
winter. A large boat-and RV-storage yard spread out on the right, its
signs advertising groceries, bait, and beer. Beyond it was a mostly
deserted parking area.

I drove to the edge of the water, stopped, and got out of the car.
The river was perhaps a hundred yards wide at that point, edged on both
sides with rocks and tall grass. A couple of lonely-looking fishermen
wearing heavy parkas hunched over their poles on the wharf; neither
bothered to glance my way. I stood there for a few minutes, listening
to the ripple of the current. Black rain clouds massed over the distant
hills; closer in I saw the towering superstructure of a drawbridge, its
steel gray a darker complement to the gray of the sky. Finally I turned
back to the car. There was nothing here for me, no one to question.
Even the bait-and-tackle shop at the water's edge—called, so help me,
The Happy Hooker—was closed for the holiday.

I drove back the way I'd come and took the other fork—& winding
road that led through more vineyard and past small farms. The land was
flatter here, the cloud-shrouded hills many miles away. I met with no
other cars, and the only signs of human habitation were vehicles parked
in driveways and occasional wisps of smoke from the farmhouses'
chimneys.

The road took a sharp turn in the direction of the drawbridge I'd
glimpsed earlier. Now it was built up on only the left side: a solid
row of houses set close to the pavement on narrow lots that backed up
to the river. To my right was a flat plain that signs announced as
belonging to a salt company; a railroad spur cut across it and the road
to the drawbridge. I bumped over the right-of-way, nearly in the shadow
of the great clockwork structure.

More houses hugged the river's edge, some of them large, others mere
cottages. Now I spotted a few people in the small yards,
encountered a couple of joggers loping along the pavement. I slowed,
continued to study mailboxes, looking for… what? I wasn't sure.

After about a mile, the houses were more widely spaced. The road
narrowed, became potholed. Then there were several vacant lots, covered
in scrub vegetation and iceplant, which rose to a levee beside the
river. Beyond them I saw three more cottages set far apart from one
another, and a turnaround where the road ended. I slowed in front of
the first of these, a house that was screened from sight by a tall
wooden fence overgrown by vines. A weathered sign attached to the
sagging gate said HARBOUR.

My breath caught and I jammed on the MG's brakes, almost killing the
engine. That was not your typical spelling of the name, I thought. Not
likely to be mere coincidence.

I left the MG next to the fence and went up to the gate. It was
secured by a hasp and padlock, but its hinges had given way on one
side, providing enough of an opening for me to wriggle through. Inside,
a rutted driveway led through a thicket of pyracantha bushes. I
followed it, batting their berry-laden branches aside.

The cottage was weathered shingle, with a sagging front porch and an
equally sagging roofline. All its windows were shuttered. To the left
was a dilapidated garage, its double doors also secured by a padlock.
An ancient apple tree spread its branches over the porch's roof; as I
walked toward the cottage, I breathed the sour odor of many seasons'
windfall fruit.

The wooden steps groaned as I mounted them. In the shadows of the
porch lurked a motley collection of wicker furniture and a rusted
old-fashioned glider swing. I was certain no one had sat on any of them
in years. I tried the door, found it locked, then checked the shutters
and found them secure. Next I went down the steps and over to the
garage.

The padlock held its doors firmly, but there was a side window that
hadn't been shuttered. I went up to it, rubbed off some of the
accumulated grime, and looked inside. Nothing but a potting shelf with
a rusted metal watering can on it, and a jumbled assortment of garden
tools.

I circled the house, hoping to find a similarly unshuttered window,
but met with no success. Behind the building was a stand of pepper
trees that blocked the view of the river. I made my way through them
and climbed the levee. Beyond it, the land dropped off to a dilapidated
dock; a derelict fishing boat was beached on its side perhaps twenty
yards from the shoreline. The boat lay under the drooping limbs of a
willow; a flat-armed cactus had grown up over its gunwales. Once the
gunwales had been trimmed with blue, the rest of the boat white, but
now it was all speckled with rust and faded. The sides of its tall
cockpit had caved in.

The river was wider here than at the public fishing access; its gray
waters rippled and gleamed dully. To my left I could see the docks of
the houses I'd passed earlier, and the power-and sailboats tied up at
many of them, even at this time of year. To my right the river
stretched toward San Pablo Bay; the bridge I'd crossed earlier spanned
it, soaring and graceful. Several powerboats moved in the channel.

The wind blew cold and steadily here. I shivered, stuffed my hands
in my pockets, and moved toward the shelter of the willow tree. There I
leaned against the splintered bow of the boat, turned my collar up, and
thought, Why?

I felt reasonably certain that this deserted cottage had been
Tracy's destination on that winter night. The Barbours who owned this
place had to be connected with her roommate Amy; it would be too much
of a coincidence otherwise. Also too much of a coincidence that she'd
received a traffic citation at the beginning of a road that dead-ended
here. A citation in a stolen car, the report on which hadn't yet been
entered into the computerized network when the highway patrol stopped
her. A car that had been stolen off the lot at Café Comedie, where she
worked and had access to keys.

But why steal a car? Why not just borrow one? Or rent one? And what
had someone with Tracy's dislike of driving—a dislike so strong she
refused to own a car—been doing journeying over dark country roads in
the middle of a rainy night? Why come here at all?

And where had she gone next?

The wind blew stronger. The storm clouds had moved down from the
hills and over the bay. I glanced at my watch. Only two-fifty. It
seemed later because of the impending storm. There was nothing else to
see here; I'd do well to go back to my car—

But there was something more to see. Over to one side, in my
peripheral vision. A motion, something wafting about in the wind.

It was a long strand of yarn. No, a piece of cloth that looked to
have been torn from something. Wool. Once red, perhaps, now faded to
pink.

I scrambled up onto the boat and reached for the strand. It was wool
all right, held firm between the jagged edges of one of the cracked
boards of the pilot house. I fingered it, looking down into the sharply
canting cockpit. My flesh rippled unpleasantly. I felt in my bag for my
flashlight, shone it through the opening.

Nothing but warped planking. And a hatch cover that shouldn't have
been there…

I lowered myself into the cramped space and shoved at the hatch
cover. It moved only a few inches. I set the flashlight down and
tugged. It came up with unexpected ease, throwing me off balance. I let
it crash backward and regained my equilibrium. Then I grabbed the
flashlight and shined it through a large hole in the floorboards.

What I saw first were the exposed ribs of the boat. The air in there
was dank and musty. I moved the flash down, to where the ribs formed a
V at the keel.

She was there. What was left of her.

Nothing but bones now, and those appeared to have been disarranged
by small animals. The llama's-wool cape and jeans were largely eaten
away, but most of the red rubber rain boots remained, faded and pitted
like Swiss cheese. I drew back, grasped the hatch cover for support,
shut my eyes against the sight.

Even in the blackness behind my lids I could still see her pitiful
skeleton.

Poor funny lady—all that talent and ability to bring forth laughter
reduced to bone fragments and a few scraps of cloth. Somehow degrading
that the red rubber boots could outlast the human being.