Nocturnal (5 page)

Despite the danger, I felt a powerful urge to confront him. The main light switch was just around the corner, on the wall to my left. If I moved quickly enough, I could turn on the light and surprise him. It was better than feeling like a sitting duck….

I lunged forward, but before I could grope for the light switch, my foot landed on something hard a lumpy, rolling my ankle and throwing me off balance. I cried out as I crashed to the floor, losing my grip on the baseball bat as I reached out to break my fall. Straight away I flipped onto my back and began kicking and punching the darkness, hoping to land a lucky blow on my attacker. But I was fighting thin air, and by the time I’d finished thrashing about, I realized the apartment was just as quiet as before.

Scrambling to my feet, I flicked on the wall switch. The living room furniture emerged in the dimmed light. One of CC’s black stilettos lay at my feet, the cause of my stumble in the dark. But there were no phantoms in the shadows. I was alone.

I walked around the apartment, taking a quick inventory. My gun was safely hidden in the back of the hallway closet. My key ring and wallet were still sitting on the kitchen bench. Everything seemed to be present and accounted for. I sniffed the air again, frowning. Maybe I’d imagined the strange odor
.
And the click of the front door could’ve carried over from a dream.

Then I saw something shift in the corner of my eye. As I turned towards my aquarium, my heart seized. A huge brown fish stared back at me from one protruding black eye. It looked like a grotesque cross between a trout and a puffer fish. Whatever the species, it had no fucking business being in my aquarium.

I approached the tank and peered into the dark water. I was hoping for a glimmer of orange in the rushes, but instead, my eyes honed in on a translucent white matter floating on the surface. At first I thought it was some kind of fish excrement, but on closer inspection, I recognized the filmy substance as cartilage. They were two tiny goldfish skeletons, tangled together.             

“You fucker,” I hissed, directing my anger at both Ralph T. Emerson and his cannibalistic fish.

I turned away from the tank, balling my fists in frustration. What message was Ralph trying to convey now? What the hell did killing my poor goldfish achieve?

Despite my incredulity, deep down I knew exactly what Ralph was doing. It was simple, really. He was boasting that he could get to me anytime, anywhere – on the phone, in my office, even in my own home.

He had a plan for me that wouldn’t end well. And in the meantime, he was enjoying making me squirm.

6. “He watches me all the time”

Lucy’s rejection at the coffee shop fucked me up, big time. In the space of a few days, I was reduced to a mumbling husk of a man: skipping work, holing up in my tiny studio apartment, and replaying our two brief encounters until my head throbbed.

How could I have misread the situation so badly? I’d been certain she was interested, especially when she’d subtly mentioned her husband’s advanced age, and the fact she didn’t care for her stepchildren. There’d been no need to reveal such personal details up front, and I’d presumed Lucy was letting me know she was available, or at least not unavailable. But that wasn’t the case at all.

In many ways I hated her – the way she strutted around, oblivious to her charms, assigning pity to the poor fools who fell under her spell. Or maybe she was acutely aware of the effect she had on men, taking pleasure in reeling them in before ruthlessly shattering their egos, like a suburban siren.

Where the hell did she get off?

But the surges of anger were fleeting. For the most part, I was stuck on miserable. Miserable and utterly humiliated.

After my third successive sick day, Izzy came to check on me. I knew it was Izzy from the way he held his finger on the buzzer. He’d been calling my cell non-stop, leaving messages I didn’t want to hear – like my editor was losing patience with me, and the other cub reporters could smell blood. I reluctantly buzzed him in, realizing it was the only way to shut him up.    

“Fuck me,” Izzy said when I opened the door. “Has Charlie Sheen been crashing with you?”

I glanced behind me. Pizza boxes, fried rice cartons and crushed beer cans covered the carpet. I started kicking a path to the sofa. “Drink?” I offered.

“No thanks,” Izzy said, following me in. He swept the sofa clear of crumbs before sitting down. I went to the fridge to grab another beer.

“What the fuck’s going on, Pete?” Izzy said. “You call in sick three days running, you don’t answer your phone, and now it looks like you’ve turned your place into a crack den. It’s that woman, isn’t it? The one on your computer.”

I snorted. “Nah, she’s history”

“Oh yeah? You sure about that?”

“Positive,” I said, popping the tab on my beer. I took a long gulp before setting the can on the kitchen bench. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing fine, really.” I caught Izzy’s expression of disbelief. “Okay, maybe not dancing on the ceiling fine. She fucked me over, and I’m taking a few days to wallow in self pity. But it’s a temporary thing. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

I realized how I must’ve looked to Izzy. I hadn’t showered in three days, and I’d been drinking so much it was starting to feel like a permanent state. I asked, “You want to stay for dinner? I’ve got some leftover pizza.”

“You’re joking,” Izzy laughed. “It’s not fit to serve food in here. Even breathing the air feels like a health risk. I’m taking a shower as soon as I get home.”

“So why’d you come over?”

“To check you hadn’t stuck your head in the oven.”

“Well, you can see I’m alright.”

“You’re still breathing, but you’re a long way from alright. C’mon Pete, this is crazy. You’re losing the plot over a woman you only met a few days ago. At a chili cook-off, for fuck’s sake.” 

My eyes narrowed. I may have been drunk, but where
she
was concerned, I was still on red alert. “How do you know we met at a chili cook-off?”

“You must’ve told me,” Izzy shrugged, scratching his nose.

I moved around the kitchen bench. “No, I didn’t. I
definitely
fucking didn’t.”

Izzy stood up, showing his palms in defense. “Okay Pete, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I was in two minds whether to pass it on. I knew she was the reason you went underground.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She rang this afternoon, looking for you. She wouldn’t leave a name, but she said you’d met at a chili-cook-off, and you’d know who she was. Obviously I couldn’t give out your contact details, so I took a message. And can I just add, even from her voice I could tell that…”

“–Just give me the message, Izzy.”

“Yeah, I’m getting to it. She wants to see you, okay? She says she’s sorry, and she’ll be in touch soon.”

“She doesn’t want me to call?”

“No, she was adamant about that. Wait for her to contact you. Don’t call her at home.”

I nodded, and then stepped around Izzy to open the front door. He expelled a deep, disapproving breath. “You’re going to call her, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“You’re making a big mistake,” he said.

“Thanks for your concern. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

As soon as Izzy was out the door, I picked up the phone and dialed Lucy’s home number. An English-accented housekeeper answered the call. She informed me that the Pipers were at their lake house and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. When she asked for my contact details, I cut the line, worried that the message would end up in the wrong hands.

The next day, I dragged myself into the office – partly because I’d promised Izzy, but mostly because Lucy had my work number. She called me in the afternoon, and she wasn’t happy. “Was that you last night?” she hissed. “I told you not to call the house.”

“Then give me your cell,” I said.

“I’m not allowed one.” She sighed. “It’s complicated, okay?”

“Fine. I’ll give you mine.”

I waited while she rustled around for a pen and paper. “I’m sorry it has to be like this,” she said after taking down my number. “He watches me all the time.”

“Can you blame him?”

She laughed. “Probably not. God, it’s so nice to hear your voice, Johnny. I’ve been thinking about you all week.”

A grin stretched across my face. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

“Really? I was afraid you’d hate me after what I said at the coffee shop. You know I didn’t mean a word of it. I was in denial, I suppose.”     

“Yeah? Well, you had me fooled.”

“I’m sorry. You must’ve thought I was the biggest cock tease in Sacramento.”

“Nah, I’ve met worse. Actually wait…she was from Reno.”

Lucy’s soft laughter tickled my ear, but it died prematurely. “Oh shit, he’s back,” she whispered. “I have to go.”

“But when can I see you?”

“Tomorrow, at the coffee shop. I’ll be there at noon.”

The line went dead, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to drive out the disturbing image of Lucy’s husband walking in the door, smiling a brown-toothed smile, and putting his wrinkly hands all over her gorgeous curves. Instead, I imagined her naked body folding into mine, her long legs wrapped around my waist, staring up at me with those dark blue eyes as I fucked and fucked and fucked her.

7. “Mr Emerson was just thirty-nine”

I was greased in sweat when my alarm sounded at 5.50pm, waking me from a formless nightmare. I’d barely had time to close my eyes, having spent the afternoon disposing of Ralph’s giant fish, scrubbing out my fish tank, and contacting the super to arrange an urgent change of locks. The front door showed no signs of forced entry, so I had to assume Ralph was in possession of a duplicate key. It was also possible that last night wasn’t the first time he’d entered my apartment. The thought made me shudder.

I trudged into the living room and threw open the blackout shades. I’d had the floor-to-ceiling windows coated in a special light-absorbing film, and as long as I didn’t take on the mid-morning glare, I could gaze over the city without my head splitting in two.

With a dusty orange sunset as my backdrop, I carried on as normal: putting down fifty push-ups and a hundred sit-ups, showering quickly, and eating my cornflakes in front of the six o’clock news. But while my body was operating on autopilot, my mind was working furiously behind the scenes. Before I’d drained my first mug of coffee, I’d arrived at a plan.

I would stay at the office a few hours later than usual, until the following morning when Ralph T Emerson started his working day. I had to confront him, sooner rather than later. What other choice did I have?

From the pointed nature of the threats, I assumed Ralph was in the early stages of an elaborate blackmail plot. That’s why he was slowly cranking up the pressure, resisting the urge to play his full hand. He wanted me nervous and cowering, ready to cede to his final demands.

But while Ralph might’ve stumbled upon a few secrets of my past, the fact he was even attempting blackmail suggested there were some gaps in his research.

Firstly, I was broke, or at least illiquid. My mortgage soaked up most of my spare cash, and although I’d built up a reasonable slab of equity in my apartment, from what I’d heard, banks weren’t too keen on lending against property anymore, especially not to self-employed script editors with diminishing cash flows. I’d be lucky to pull out fifty grand, which hardly seemed worth the trouble.

More importantly, I had a history of responding aggressively to bullies. Anyone who knew about my final days in Sacramento would’ve thought twice before pushing me into a corner.

I’d already decided to pack my 9mm. I didn’t particularly like guns, but when dealing with intruders and blackmailers, I reasoned it was better to be armed than not. Ralph didn’t look like the sort of guy who’d rely on his fists.

My thoughts were drifting into the city haze when my head snapped around. I stared at the television in disbelief. The blonde newsreader had just uttered Ralph’s name – muffled but immense, like an underwater explosion.

Ralph Emerson
.

I’d missed the first part of the story, but my eyes zeroed in on the headline at the bottom of the screen:
Bay Area Lawyer Murdered.

“…shortly before nine o’clock this morning at his Palo Alto home,” the newsreader continued gravely. “His wife is understood to have discovered the body after dropping their two young children off at school. Mr Emerson was just thirty-nine. No other details have been released, but we will keep you updated on this tragic story throughout the evening.” 

I grabbed the remote and switched off the television. My head was spinning. I went to the sofa and sat down, taking a minute to gather my thoughts.

Ralph T Emerson was dead
.

Not just dead.
Murdered.

In all likelihood, I wasn’t the only person he’d tried to fuck with. A scumbag like that always ran the risk of pushing the wrong guy too far. But instead of relief, a clammy new fear crept over me.

He was more trouble to me dead than alive.

The cops would soon discover where Ralph worked. They were probably there already, gathering information. But I couldn’t simply avoid the office. My name and address were on the lease.

“
Fuck it!
” I cursed, slamming my fist into my palm.

Although it went against my gut instinct, my best option was to show up at work like nothing had happened – to bend over backwards to co-operate with the cops, and hopefully eliminate myself from the investigation before they dug into my past. After all, if Ralph was killed at nine o’clock, I had a pretty solid alibi. My swipe card would prove I was at the office until five a.m., and then CC was at my apartment from six until her early morning bank appointment. Even if she left right after I went to sleep, at around eight-thirty, there wasn’t enough time for me to get to Palo Alto by nine o’clock. Not by a long shot.

I stood up and went to the window, breathing a little easier as I watched dusk settle over the city, the sky slowly draining of color. My thoughts turned to Ralph T Emerson, the man whose plump-cheeked mug had decorated my office for the past six months. Despite his untimely death, I couldn’t feel any sympathy toward him. Not after the delight he’d taken in tormenting me. I was no angel, but I drew the line at killing innocent pets.

It was only then that the gaping hole in the timeline occurred to me.

If Ralph T Emerson had been killed in his home at nine a.m., how the fuck had he managed to break into my apartment a few hours later?

I’d expected a swarm of patrol cars and media vans to confront me as I approached my office building, but the streets were even quieter than a regular Wednesday night. I swiped my key-card at the garage and drove down to the basement level. As usual, only a couple of vehicles were still in the lot.

It was rare to find anyone in my office building after 7pm. My fellow tenants were a motley assortment of freelance designers, cold-calling financial advisers, and serial tech entrepreneurs. Nobody was doing particularly well. The only reason a business moved into our damp, roach-infested building was to have a downtown address in its letterhead, suggesting a degree of legitimacy. However, anyone who stepped inside could see that we were all just a month’s rent away from extinction.

I stepped out of my car and walked to the elevator, ears pricked, ready to look surprised at the first sign of a police ambush. But the basement was silent except for the high-pitched buzz of old fluorescent bulbs.

I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. When the doors rattled open, I poked my head out into the corridor, looking along the line of closed doors. The air was stagnant, and I could hear the honking traffic outside. Satisfied the coast was clear, I walked briskly towards my suite at the end of the corridor.

The surprise came when I opened my office door and flipped the light switch. Ralph’s desk had been stripped bare. His computer, family photos, and piles of work papers were gone. Even the crappy artwork on the wall had disappeared. Only his desk and high-backed chair remained.

I took off my shades and stared at Ralph’s bare desk, struggling to make sense of it all. I guessed he must’ve moved out just hours before his death. If he’d caught wind that someone was after him, he might’ve been in a hurry to pack up and leave town. As it turned out, he hadn’t hurried quickly enough.

On one hand, I was relieved. Ralph was dead, his office has been cleaned out, and there were no signs the cops were coming. My past could stay buried for another day. But there was still plenty to worry about. Someone had been in my apartment while Ralph was supposedly lying dead in Palo Alto. Could Ralph have been working with a partner?

I sat at my desk and fired up my computer, scanning the local news sites for more details on Ralph’s murder. The TV networks were still waiting on video footage, but
The Chronicle
promised more meat to the story. Under the headline “Prominent Bay Area Attorney Slain” there was a photograph of Ralph and his beautiful wife in formal attire, attending some kind of charity function. 

It was definitely the same Ralph T Emerson, yet something wasn’t adding up. I frowned at the beaming couple, a picture of wealth and privilege, and then glanced back at the headline.

Prominent
Bay Area Attorney? That didn’t sound like the same guy who needed to split the lease on a D-grade office suite. I clicked on the link to Ralph’s story.

(10-12) 19:50 PALO ALTO – A high-flying Palo Alto attorney was murdered in his swimming pool early this morning while his wife was dropping off their two children at preschool.

Ralph Emerson, 39, was taking his regular morning swim when he was bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant and left floating at the bottom of his pool. His body was discovered by his wife less than an hour after the bloody attack. There were no signs of the house being broken into.

The murder weapon has not been confirmed but we understand an iron golf club was found at the scene. Paramedics report the wounds to Mr Emerson’s head were between ten and twelve in number.

Mr Emerson was a founding partner at Simpson White Emerson, a law firm specializing in intellectual property and copyright law. He was well known in the Silicon Valley legal community and had recently presented at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society.

Neighbors describe Mr Emerson as a kind, personable man who worked hard and lived for his family.

“This is just an appalling event,” said neighbor Lisa Brewer. “I can’t believe it’s happened here, in our street. There’s never been any trouble here before.”

Palo Alto police would not discuss details of the case except to say that four detectives had already been assigned to the investigation. They would like to hear from anybody who was in the Cowper Street vicinity between the hours of 8am and 10am this morning.  

Being an ex-journalist, I was able to read between the lines.

The trite comments from neighbors – claiming Ralph worked hard and lived for his family – had clearly originated from the reporter’s mouth. Nobody actually said things like that. The neighbors were probably embarrassed by their lack of insight, so when the reporter offered suggestions – “would you say he was a hard worker? Someone who lived for his family?” – they would’ve nodded dumbly in agreement. Except Lisa Brewer, who seemed more concerned about the impact on local property values.

As to the killer, the cops were clueless at this point. That’s why they’d been tight-lipped with the media and had already put four men on the case. But there were a number of clues in the story. The planned nature of the killing, capitalizing on Ralph’s daily routine, along with the absence of theft, suggested this wasn’t a wrong place at the wrong time situation. It was pre-meditated murder, with feeling.

But the grisly nature of the crime wasn’t the most surprising element of the article. The real shock was the description of Ralph’s professional life.

A founding partner at a Silicon Valley law firm?

In his conversations with me, Ralph claimed to be a civil litigation attorney, code for an ambulance chaser, and his shared office in one of San Francisco’s cheapest buildings implied he wasn’t a particularly successful one, at that. It was possible he could’ve been holding down two jobs, living a double life, but that was a massive stretch. Particularly for someone well known in the legal fraternity.

A light flickered in my brain. I looked again at
The Chronicle
article. There was no middle initial in Ralph’s name. When I thought about it, the newsreader hadn’t pronounced a ‘T’ either.

I Googled Ralph’s name again, this time omitting his middle initial. A very different page of hits came up. Apart from the murder references, there were links to law papers, local news articles, and the firm of Simpson White Emerson. I went into the law firm’s website and found a short biography for Ralph.

Mr Emerson specializes in intellectual property and licensing, with particular expertise in internet law, digital media licensing and e-commerce.

He holds a J.D. from the Santa Clara School of Law (1997) and was admitted to practice law in California in 1998. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems from California State College, Northridge in 1992. Mr Emerson is a member of the American Bar Association and the Bar Association of San Francisco.

Prior to co-founding Simpson White Emerson in 2005, Mr Emerson was a senior associate with Rogerson, Bremner, Lintz and Yeo in Sacramento, California.

I zeroed in on the last line. Yet another link to Sacramento. Ralph had lived and worked there, probably at the same time as me. It couldn’t be just another coincidence. Somehow, our histories were linked.

I remembered the photographs on Ralph’s desk: his soft, pampered features, the gorgeous wife with the three-carat engagement ring, the designer-clad kids. It was beginning to make sense….

There was no Ralph ‘T’ Emerson. The
T
was designed to throw me off, making me think I was sharing my office with a low-rent ambulance chaser rather than a high-flying corporate lawyer.

But the real Ralph Emerson wasn’t my office buddy, either. He’d been forty miles away, enjoying his country club lifestyle in Palo fucking Alto. Ralph’s personal effects might’ve decorated my office, but they were just props. The man himself had never set foot in the building.             

Yet
someone
had been coming into the office every day. There were always empty Coke cans in the trash, not to mention the unpleasant scent that hit me when I walked in the door. I never found the office exactly as I’d left it.