Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead (20 page)

“People are no damn good,” Paul said. “That’s my working theory.”

Cheney gave him a pensive look. “Any chance you might need a PI down in that lovely little seaside town you work out of?”

“You mean you?” Paul said, astonished. “You’d move to Carmel?”

“That’s what I mean. I’ve got twenty-five years in. I want to keep working, but not here. I’ve played this out, you know what I’m saying, Paul?”

“Yeah. Your wife okay with a move?”

“Yep. Loves the ocean.”

“You seriously looking for a job? I hired a new associate, a kid, but he graduated from the Police Academy and he’s got a talent I’m helping him develop. I don’t have anything for you myself, but I’ll make calls if you want.”

“Make it a quiet place with not too much action,” Cheney said. “Somewhere featuring wineries or surfboards.”

“Listen, take that lovely young lady of yours out of here for a couple weeks, pronto. Stay with me at my condo. Bring your golf clubs. We’ll play at Cypress Point. They’re clients, so I get a discount.”

“Maybe.” Cheney rubbed his nose. “Might do that, Paul.”

“On my advice, Michelle Rossmoor’s taking her kids to Hawaii for a few days.”

“She told me. I told her to do it.”

D
own the hill toward the lake from the massive redevelopment, Buck Tynan’s office flanked Heavenly, with a broad view of Lake Tahoe toward the north, with its whitecaps, no boats, and a cloud-scape reminiscent of a Florentine painter’s.

A sleek, shaved-bald African-American man, Tynan sat with his back to the window. That meant the afternoon glare from the lake landed on Nina’s face, half-blinding her. The marriage and family counselor wore well-designed clothing. Nina guessed Barneys, every item right down to the vest, tailored, tightly threaded, immaculate. He was no Californian, and as soon as he spoke, she heard the New York accent.

“Queens,” he said. “How’d you know?”

But she was too worried to chitchat further. She looked at her cell phone. “He said he’d be here.” A note flashed on her screen. She read it, swallowed.

“Oh. Something came up. He’s not coming.” Tears started up in her eyes.

Tynan nodded, as if he expected exactly that. “We can talk. Maybe I can help you clarify things.”

Nina stood up. “No need. Nothing could be clearer.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“I think I can help you.”

“I might as well get some work done, not waste any more time on this—on this.”

Tynan picked up a banana from his desk and gave it to her. “So you won’t starve. Here it is Saturday. You should be home, right?”

She took it. He was a kind man. But even kind men can’t work miracles.

O
n that same hard-clear, windy afternoon, Paul drove down the hill, as the locals put it, to see Ronnie Bee. Bee lived in a cabin in the Nevada ranching town of Minden near the 395 freeway to Reno, which lay about fifty miles due north across the high desert. The Sierra massif Paul had hurtled down hung like a bright white weather front all along the western border of Minden. The seasons themselves were different because of the lower elevation; it was the beginning of spring here at four thousand feet, the meadows bursting with birdsong, colts running in their corrals, calves lying near their grazing mothers, poppies lining the road. By summer it would all be desiccated, but right now, anybody would want to live in this low-population, big-sky ranch country.

A young woman appeared in cutoffs, saying she was a niece, then Ronnie came out, a silver ruff around his skull, blinking in the sunlight, unshaved and disheveled, about sixty. He looked Paul over and examined his ID before inviting him into the cabin.

They talked for a long time inside the darkened living room, drinking lemonade. Although suffering, Ronnie was nevertheless taken care of. A tidy kitchen and warming fire felt welcoming.

“It’s been strange days since Brenda died,” Ronnie told Paul. “Every morning I wake up and I’m drowsy from sleeping. I feel cold. I turn to reach for her, then there’s this moment when a void comes in and I sink into it.” Ronnie’s eyes turned inward. “I’m
alone but I can’t believe it. Where is she? It’s fresh agony every single morning, you know? I’m dreaming of her and wondering if she’s dreaming of me.”

Paul nodded.

“You can’t describe that kind of emptiness with words, you can only experience it. It’s black and invisible, like a poison settling over the room. I realize she’s gone. She is gone, not beside me. It’s me and my cold feet and cold fingers and bleedin’ heart.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Paul didn’t make the statement automatically. He made it feeling the clenching of his own heart. How tremendous and cataclysmic it would be, permanently losing the woman you loved.

“What I can’t understand is why there’s been no arrest. My wife died on a public street in broad daylight!”

“I have to tell you, Ronnie, a few days aren’t a long time when there’s no witness. The police here run a tight ship. They do their best. They’re more likely to find the killer than I am. But the Ross-moors have asked to see if I can do anything to speed the process along. They want to do right by Brenda.”

“Bastard had the knife on him, ready to take her down,” Ronnie said, absorbed by his own drama. “They must have been alone at the bus stop, so early. She worked so hard, so many hours. Sometimes she got to the motel by five a.m. I’m thinking he knew she’d be there, waiting, at that hour. Premeditated murder, that’s what it is. A planned execution by someone who never knew her, who didn’t give a damn about her worth in the world and how much she meant to other people. She must have been so scared.” He buried his face in his hands. “I dropped her off that morning, you know? I kissed her, and drove away. I left her there alone.”

“I’d like to help you, Ronnie.”

“I hope you can. I want to know who could ever do such a thing to a woman who never hurt anybody. Everybody loved her.”

“Except one person.”

“The guy who left a dead body in the bed at the hotel, that’s
right. I described him to the police like she described him to me. Baseball cap.” Ronnie teared up. “Maybe tall. That’s all we have. You know, she has—had terrible eyesight. She never could have identified him.”

“That does seem to be the motive from what I’ve gathered so far, that your wife was a witness.”

“He rented the room at Prize’s, right? He can’t be that hard to find!”

“Actually, the room had been vacated early that morning but not rented again. The murdered woman was an employee. She took the key and met him there.”

Ronnie sank back into his chair.

“How tall is tall?” Paul asked. “What exactly did your wife tell you?”

“She didn’t say anything specific. I’m five ten. Anything over that was tall to her. Here’s what keeps me awake. Why did he let her go that first time when she saw him, only to kill her the next morning?”

“Couldn’t get to her before that,” Paul said. “Circumstance. Maybe he’d killed that day for the first time and it didn’t occur to him right away that he might need to kill again.”

“I was watching out. I feel like shooting myself right now for letting her outta my sight. Okay. She told me he looked athletic, not like some loser. She was only fifty-five years old and she has—had her little boy in Virginia. Yesterday was the funeral. Hundreds of people came. Half the staff at Prize’s.” Tears dripped down Ronnie’s nose. He picked up a napkin and blew into it.

Paul touched Ronnie’s hairy forearm. Ronnie continued to weep, no force behind it, no storm, the weeping of somebody made of tears. His grief had incapacitated him for now. He had had no time to prepare emotionally. Death was devastating, and sudden, violent death was twice as destructive. Paul had seen it many times before. He usually looked first at the spouse when investigating a homicide, but Ronnie appeared to be experiencing
such uncomplicated grieving, Paul felt pretty sure he hadn’t had anything to do with it. “I’ve spoken to the police but I plan to stay in close touch in case they come up with anything. Meantime, I’ll talk to the hotel staff. Casinos like Prize’s rely heavily on security cameras. Unless this murderer is a ghost, they may have shots of your wife’s killer. However, there’s something you need to hear. You might not like it.”

Ronnie dropped the napkin and looked Paul in the eye.

Paul explained that Brenda might have been murdered at the bus stop in a random act of violence by a local purse-snatcher, junkie, or gambler in over his head. Certainly, the police would pursue that angle.

“Nobody took her money. You’re saying the police want to think she died for seventy bucks? That’s utter bullshit.”

“Oh, I agree,” Paul said. “But there’s a remote chance.”

“You’re suggesting that makes her suspect in some way, like she was involved in something dirty? You think she was conniving with drug dealers, or laundering money or something?” Ronnie asked, now red-faced with controlled tension.

“No.”

“A housekeeper’s lucky to clear twenty grand a year. Hey, I’m happy to provide you, the cops, and the media information on our taxes. Feel free to look at our checking account. It’s a pathetic picture, okay? She was in cahoots with nobody. She came home at night talking about what products worked best to clean a mirror, for God’s sake.”

“I know.”

Ronnie waved his hand. “Go nuts. But lemme tell you this. If my wife was murdered for no reason at all, I’m blowing up that place. I’ve got the means.”

“I’d think like that, too,” Paul said. “Maybe I’d do it.”

“It’s corrupt. Free money! Free drinks! Brenda and I, we never gambled.”

“I get that, buddy.”

“Her death better mean something, even if it’s a sick shit who thinks she saw him. I can’t stand the thought that she died for nothing. I loved her so much. I didn’t deserve her!” Ronnie approached Paul and grabbed him in a bear hug and sobbed on his shoulder. Paul patted him on the back.

“It’s bad, buddy. I’m sorry.”

P
aul rang Nina’s bell promptly at seven in the evening, sun long down, dark long descended, energized by his afternoon travails.

She answered, covered, as advised, head to toe in warm gear. Hitchcock stood beside her. Paul held out a hand and Hitchcock gave it a respectful sniff.

“Bob?”

“Doing homework. Hitchcock on patrol. Father and uncle notified in case.”

“There’s no danger, Nina. I wouldn’t put you in danger.”

She shrugged. “I’m a mother. I think about these things.”

Paul petted her dog. “He’s not supposed to bark, though, is he? Isn’t that the definition of a malamute?”

“Sometimes he barks. He’s not a purebred.” She eased the door shut behind her.

“We need a few things from your storage area before we go,” Paul said.

T
hey drove out to Pioneer Trail, turned left on 50, and left again onto 89 toward Sorensen’s Resort. Nina was decompressing, listening to the radio.

Paul wondered how long he would remain free. He was taking an enormous risk bringing her along. But she was in a torment about Jim Strong, all mixed up and didn’t know whether to believe Paul.

Nina’s eyes closed. He wondered if she actually had the gall to doze off but noticed her bare hand in a tight, quivering fist on her lap.

Opening the driver’s-side window, he inhaled the odors of the
forest. Traffic was light. Headlights intermittently blinded him, then passed by. Although the blizzard of the night before had passed and the snowplows and sun of day had done their duties, the road remained fairly compromised, icy in patches where it wasn’t slushy.

Driving uncharacteristically slowly, not for safety’s sake but for the sake of remaining invisible, he clicked off the radio. They would soon arrive and he wanted his head clear. Where was that turnout?

At the time, two years before, in a snowstorm, with a body wrapped up in the trunk of his Mustang, he hadn’t expected to come back to the place. His thoughts had gone like this: he needed to find some place remote, where the body could never be found. He had considered hacking the body into pieces, as he had once fancifully suggested to Bob, but practically speaking, that had been retrospective wish-fulfillment. That snowy night, he had needed to get rid of it fast, and he had needed to hide it in a place nobody would be likely to stumble upon.

South Lake Tahoe hosted 3 million visitors every year, but every year at least twenty of them didn’t gamble or drink themselves silly or go to shows or break an ankle ice-skating. No, at least twenty every year, the intrepid types, went out in all kinds of weather, climbing up frozen falls, hiking into remote, unwelcoming places they thought nobody else might have hiked before. And they found secrets of all kinds in the woods.

So on that night two years before, Paul had considered several locations, mentally tossing a coin between Christmas Valley and the road toward Sorensen’s Resort. After ruling out the first area as too well traveled, he had driven toward the resort.

How difficult, tonight, to return to this place he had visited only in his bad dreams, watching anxiously for the broken-down bridge on the left and the ruins of old buildings that had marked the spot where he had turned off.

He glanced at Nina, whose eyes remained closed. He looked at the eyelashes sweeping across her cheek and listened to her regular
breathing. Asleep or not, she trusted him. Whatever he showed her tonight, she wanted to see.

Paul had buried Jim Strong’s body under snow and fallen logs and litter. Man, he had strained to make that sucker disappear forever.

He swallowed and took a deep breath. He had spotted the road that led over the remains of the bridge, past decrepit foundations of cabins that had once sat there. By now, Nina’s brown eyes had opened to the wilderness. She said nothing, just watched him fumbling with the car. He found the powdery path that led upward and followed it until the road dipped near a stream. Then he stopped the car and turned off the engine.

It was one of those moments in life when you weren’t sure of yourself or the world in any way. You rode with it.