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“You thinking up a better answer?”

“No.” I had to project calm. “As I said, I’m the one who most wants to find Guthrie’s killer. You say he grew up here, so now I’m wondering: who were his friends, what did they say about him? Who’ve you—”

“We don’t reveal evidence.”

You mean, we don’t have any.
“What were the autopsy findings?”

“It’s not scheduled till—”

“He’s been dead for two days and you people haven’t taken him out of the drawer?”

She just stared. She didn’t have to tell me a damned thing and we both knew it.

I tried another tack. “The sister, she must have identified his body.”

“Of course.”

“So? She must’ve said something about him.”

She didn’t bother to respond at all.

I could have smacked her.

But I didn’t have that luxury, not even the comfort of rolling my eyes. I had to make one last effort to create cooperation. Mustering every bit of control, I said, “This is San Francisco.” I chose my words carefully. “When I was a kid my brother was already on patrol, and there were kids who called me piglet. I know—”

“We’re not buddies, you and I.” She was almost sneering. “This is a police investigation—”

The hell with it!
“I’m done here. You need me, call my lawyer.”

“I repeat—”

“Repeat till they give you a cracker. I’m going to talk to Guthrie’s sister and I am going to find out about him. What matters to me won’t be what you want to know.”

“Do not—” She looked like she was going to bite me
.
“You’ve already got a reputation at headquarters. You’re not special. Cross the line this time and your brother won’t be able to save you.”

I laughed.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” John demanded.

“Higgins got word to you this quick?” I’d barely gotten back upstairs to my room above the zendo before he called.

“Did you go out of your way to piss her off?”

“No, it was a straight shot. The woman’s an ass—”

“A well-connected ass. Don’t let her looks deceive you—”

“She looks incompetent, and like she’s happy to screw John Lott and family.”

“Incompetence is a dangerous quality in an adversary, particularly a well-connected one.”

I snorted.

“Listen, Darcy. I’m the department straight arrow now. Have to be. Everyone’s eyeing me—guys who care about the department look up to me, guys with grudges watch for me to cross the line—any line. It’s not my case and I can’t barge in.”

“Fine! Forget it. I’ll find out what I need to.”

“Going to see the sister?”

“Right. I told Higgins.”

“She warned you off, right?”

“So?”

“Exactly. Don’t you hear me? You’ve got a reputation going. She knows you’ll barge ahead. That warning—she’s just baiting you. When you get to that door, she’ll be watching. When you walk out, she’ll be waiting. And you’ll be sitting in a soundproof room downtown till dawn.”

“I’m sure you—”

“Haven’t you heard me? I can’t. Even for you. Especially for you. I . . . cannot . . . bend . . . the rules.”

“Fine. Forget it!”

“Don’t be a patsy. At least take a lookout.”

I laughed. “What? With tin cans and string?”

“I’m serious. Take . . .”

“Right. Not Gary—too well-known. Gracie? Spare me. Mom? Think I should take our mother to help me impede a police investigation?”

“Or Janice, now that’d improve your chances. She’d be so wowed by the Palace she’d forget all about you.”

I’d had enough of him and his straighter-than-thou-ness. “Give her a break! No wonder she moved away.”

“She’s my sister; I’m certainly not—”

“Yeah, right. Forget it. If you don’t hear from me, I’ll be in jail.” I clicked off.

I eyed the brown silk slacks I’d been planning to wear. Maybe I’d better go with something sturdier now. Black chinos, black jacket, black T-shirt, pale green scarf. Shoes that could leave Higgins in the dust.

I opened my door and found Leo in the hallway between our rooms.

“Coffee?” he said, extending a paper cup and sitting down on the top step. There was no way to refuse to join him short of leaping down three stairs. For an instant I thought he’d overheard my snapfest with John. But that wasn’t what he was waiting to discuss. “I was truthful with the inspector.”

Truthful meant responding honestly, but not blurting out everything you knew or suspected. “So, what else?”

“I gave her all I knew.”

Uh-oh
. “Did you? How’d Guthrie seem when he talked about returning the item? Nervous? Relieved?” Hard as it was for me to picture, I added, “Scared?”

“Curious.”

I smiled. “I can believe that. I first met Guthrie doing a car gag adapted from Yakima Canutt’s classic one in
Stagecoach
, where he’s trying to stop the horses, runs out over their backs, appears to fall down between the first team and then works his way back underneath all three teams and the stagecoach, climbs up and over, and saves the day.”

“Live at full speed?”

“Oh, yeah.
Stagecoach
was 1939. Now there’d be parts they could blue screen and a lot of animation they could slip in. But even for animation, there has to be some template to draw from. They need to know what the real stunt should look like. And Guthrie, when they wanted a similar gag in a car chase in a Duesenberg, he made it work.”

“Surely cars are more reliable than horses.”

“Also lower to the ground. He had to figure out how to jimmy the Dues’s suspension without screwing up the handling and wrecking the car. The guy who tried before him ended the day in traction. Guthrie told me later he starts with the idea that it’s going to work; he’s just got to figure out how.”

“Hmm.”

I shot him a glance. One of the very appealing things about my teacher is that he always gives you his full attention. It’s his practice. But he sure wasn’t focused on me now. “Leo?”

“This is how Guthrie was,” he said, as if we’d been discussing “this” all along, “like Seijo coming back into her father’s house. She already knew she wasn’t going to get bawled out. The way had been prepared for her.
She walked in not knowing what would happen but having been given the feeling it would be surprising in a good way.”

“Because for Seijo meeting her father was incidental on the way to seeing her other self?”

“Exactly.”

“Because,” I mused, “what Guthrie had to do was an event already concluded in his mind on the way to the important one.”

“And that was?”

“Talking to John, I assume. He wanted to see his sister, give her some warning that he was going to go to the police about what he’d done. Maybe he wanted her to get him a lawyer. Maybe he just wanted to say goodbye because he was”—my breath caught—“going to jail. Maybe he wanted to give her some family heirloom he had with him before he turned himself in. Ah . . . return it. That makes sense.”

He just shook his head.

“But here’s the thing, Leo, the state that Seijo was in as she ran past her father to the thing that she cared about—her other self—that state was lovely for her, but it must’ve infuriated her father. Even if he was stunned for the moment, pretty soon he’d have been offended about her leaving her comatose self for him to care for all that time. Plus, if there’d been talk about calling the police, no one in Seijo’s family would have been happy.”

“All you know is that he wanted to return something and seemed calm. Don’t create delusion.”

“You mean extra delusion?”

“Right. At least stay within the realm of the default state.”

I reached for my coffee and realized it was empty. “The thing is, my whole relationship with Guthrie may be a delusion.”

Leo nodded. He meant that since we all see people through our own eyes, how could it be otherwise? He was talking absolute.

I was thinking relative. “Guthrie works in illusion within illusion. In the fiction of movies and within the illusion of stunts. But it’s not just that; stuntmen have their own schticks. Mr. Tough, Mr. Ready, Mr. Don’t-Feel-Pain. So even what guys on the set see isn’t reality. If Higgins goes stomping in there, she’s not going to get anything. And she will, as cops say, contaminate the scene. Guthrie lives in a truck—”

“When you see him.”

That stopped me. “Right, when I see him.” I stood up.

“You’re leaving?”

“I may not be back till tomorrow.”

“Should I ask where you’re going?”

“Not hardly.”

THE HOUSE WAS two tall stories with a peaked tile roof and decorative masonry around the edging. The paint hadn’t peeled but rather faded into a paleness that forced me to look twice to imagine its original pink color. It had the look of a place let go as much as possible without arousing the neighbors.

I’d found the exact address online and had walked from the zendo, assuming I’d come up with a plan of action on the way. But au contraire. It was nearly noon. The fog was thinning, promising it would lift within the hour. People were staring up at the Greco-Roman temple, shooting pictures, strolling toward the lagoon, tramping over the spot where Guthrie died as if it was just mere grass. The whole thing undid me more than I could have imagined.

I pushed the bell but couldn’t hear it ring inside. Then I banged on the door like a bill collector. And, finally, when a woman opened it, I said the worst possible thing: “
You’re
Guthrie’s sister?” It was virtually an accusation.

“And who are you?”

“His friend. A close friend.” I waited for her reaction. She really was nothing like him. She was short, thin to emaciation. Everything about her just looked dried out—skin, eyes, long dark hair.

“I’m Gabriella,” she muttered.

What was I doing? I could feel my face flush. “Listen, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. I’m just, just—I’m so undone by all this, Guthrie dying, here, like he did.”

Her tiny body stiffened; she looked even more unnerved.

I put a hand on the doorjamb. “I was his friend! Tell me about him.”

“I told the police. I identified his body. What more do you want?” Her hand tightened on the door. She’d only opened it a third of the way and she looked like it was fifty-fifty whether she’d slam it without realizing my hand was still there.

“I want—I need—to know who he was. I mean, as close as we were, I figured there’d be years to ask the unimportant questions, like rocky road or pistachio? But then, all of a sudden, he’s dead and . . . Please!”
How could he end up dead here?
Edgy as she already was, I needed to start with something easier. “What was he like growing up?”

Her expression didn’t change.

Too broad a question? “What sports did he play in school?”

“Sports?”

“Football, baseball? Did he run track? Race cars, motorcycles?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. He was older; I was a kid. I don’t know what he did; he was just gone.”

“He’s your older brother?” Looking at her, I sure wouldn’t have guessed it. Over her shoulder I could see a pile of newspapers, magazines, mail interspersed with clothing. She hadn’t even left the house to take out the recycling. I eased to the side, trying to see farther into the house. Was this the single spot of clutter, or was the whole place crammed with papers ceiling to floor? Was that why Guthrie never mentioned her? “What kind of kid was he? Was he a brat? Did he—”

“He was just an older brother!” Her hand tightened on the door. “Look, I haven’t seen him since before the earthquake.”

“The Loma Prieta? You haven’t seen Guthrie since 1989?” I could barely believe it.

“No. No calls, no letters. I would have thought he’d been killed in the earthquake—I would have been worried to death—if it hadn’t been for the Highway Patrol. Pulled him over for speeding in Marin the day after. You want to know how I know? Because he didn’t bother to pay the ticket. I was so furious. He was lucky he didn’t come back then.”

“Kids do that kind of thing.”

She shook her head. “Damon was twenty-eight. A speeding ticket’s hundreds of dollars, and he just blew it off. So, yeah, I hadn’t seen him till . . . till the morgue.”

“Till he came here the day before, you mean. He was coming to give you something. He told me that.”

She looked up suspiciously. “Give me what?”

“Return something, that’s what he said—return.”

“Return something to me? I can’t imagine that. Returning things wasn’t Damon’s strong suit.”

“Huh? No wait, don’t shut the door. I’m asking because, listen, I know him. He’s been gone and you haven’t seen him, but I have. Don’t you care what happened to him in all that time?”

She pulled back. She didn’t look curious, but instead afraid to find out what he’d done. Finally, she said, “It doesn’t matter because he never came here.”