Rogue Wave (32 page)

“I didn’t kill her!” She held out the rifle. “Smell it.”

Kiernan leaned against the doorway. From where she stood she could see the kitchen, dining room, and living room. The rooms were in shadow, but her eyes had adjusted enough for her to be able to make out the tables, chairs, and sofa. She wouldn’t miss a person moving through. “Okay, Maureen, if you didn’t kill her, what happened? Tell me.”

She clutched the rifle. “I heard her drive up, about half an hour after you left. I was right by the front window. She was pretty noisy when she went around back—must have rustled every leaf, bumped into every branch that would snap. I was at the back window when she reached the house. I could have shot her. I had the rifle. I’m a good shot. But I let her go into the studio. I had to …”

“You had to see …”

She nodded.

“They argued. No,
she
argued. Garrett just looked confused. The fog blurred everything, but I could tell from the way he was standing that he didn’t really understand what was going on. I kept watching that lighted square, waiting for the right moment to stalk out there and … and … I was watching, waiting. I was
there
at the window when someone shot her.” She shifted the rifle. “You have to believe me.”

“Someone?”

“I
heard
the shot.”

Kiernan sighed, then pulled Maureen away from the window and into the dining room. “Tell me
exactly
what you saw out there.”

Maureen was holding the rifle across her body like a shield. Her voice was tight as she said, “She was yelling at Garrett. I was looking out this window at the studio window. He was standing in front of it. The door opened. I caught that out of the corner of my eye. By the time I glanced over, whoever it was had gone in. It’s all so vague. I couldn’t say who it was.” She stared at Kiernan. There was desperation in her face. “I’ve tried to see it again in my mind, but it’s no use. I heard the shots, three or four of them. Robin spun around. Then she fell. When she hit Garrett’s canvas, it went flying. I ran to the intercom. It’s on the living-room wall, so I couldn’t see the studio from there. I screamed through it, ‘Get away! Get away from him. He’s harmless. He’ll never remember!’ Or something like that. I was so worried about Garrett. I was terrified he’d been killed, I didn’t care
who
had killed Robin. I ran for the back door, yanked it open. By then, the person had gone.” Maureen grabbed Kiernan’s arm. “My screams, they saved him, didn’t they? He would have been shot just like Robin, wouldn’t he?” Her hand was sweaty, her breathing rough and choked. “I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t.”

“Okay.” Kiernan put a hand over Maureen’s. Maureen’s breathing slowed. Her grip eased.

Kiernan grabbed the rifle from her hand.

Maureen cringed against the wall. “Kiernan! I thought you believed me!”

“You
didn’t
run up to the studio door and shoot her. No one killed her from the doorway. Robin was shot by someone standing next to the canvas.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, Maureen, there was powder residue on the painting. Dark-gray powder that ballooned out of the cylinder of that revolver as the bullet passed down it. The Ruger is a big gun, an old gun. There’s a good deal of space between the cylinder and the barrel, and in the few seconds the barrel is blocked by the bullet, there’s no other place for the gases to go but out through the spaces around the cylinder. They blew past the left hand that was steadying the gun and outlined the V between Garrett’s thumb and forefinger.”

Maureen took a deep breath. Her voice shook. “The V between
somebody’s
thumb and forefinger. You can’t prove it was Garrett’s.”

“The residues of barium and antimony will be on his hands and the cuff of his shirt. And Maureen, the cylinder of a revolver spins fast when you shoot. Garrett was using his left hand to steady it. He’s got metal burns on his left hand, doesn’t he?”

Maureen gasped. She leaned back against the wall. Then, she reached over and flicked on the light. Her face was pale and damp, her blond hair matted. She took a breath and her face hardened. “He was defending himself. It was self-defense. The sheriff won’t charge him. Even if he were normal, they wouldn’t charge him.” There was a thread of hysteria in her voice. “That woman came into his studio. She had his gun. He had to grab it from her.”

“How?”

Maureen hesitated.

“Searching for another lie?” Kiernan demanded. “It was the intercom, wasn’t it? You called, it distracted her just long enough?”

Maureen nodded. “I did save him. It didn’t occur to me till then that Garrett might be killed.”

Kiernan walked over and leaned against the couch. “No, Maureen, that’s one lie I’m not going to buy. You knew he could be killed. It was a chance you decided to take. You set up that investigation to bring Robin here where you could kill her with impunity. You put the revolver out in Garrett’s studio.”

“He had to protect himself!”

“From what? He wasn’t in danger. As far as Robin knew, he could lead her to the memo. She wasn’t going to kill the only person who could get her what she wanted. Right?”

When Maureen didn’t respond, Kiernan went on, “You left the revolver in the studio to up the ante. You knew Garrett wouldn’t talk about the memo. You’d asked him often enough yourself. You knew he’d drive her into a rage. They’d argue, and one of them would grab the gun and shoot. And your plan worked perfectly. Garrett shot Robin. But it could easily have happened the other way around. He could have threatened her with the gun. They could have fought. She could have shot him in fury or in fear. Then what would you have done, Maureen? Would you have picked up your rifle and killed
her
in self-defense?”

A draft carried the smell of long-cold ash across the room. Maureen walked to the other end of the sofa and sat on the arm. “It’s justice.” She smiled.

Kiernan laughed. “I kept hearing how obsessed Robin was. I began to worry that I was too much like her. But it wasn’t me, Maureen, it was you. You haven’t just killed Robin, you’ve become her.”

I
T WAS DAWN BEFORE
the sheriff was ready to take Garrett and Maureen into town. Garrett’s neurologist would meet them there.

Kiernan wandered through the dark, paneled rooms. She had spoken to Maureen only long enough to convince her that the sheriff would want Dwyer Cummings’s memo. After an hour’s search, Maureen had pulled it from a terra-cotta vase and handed it to Kiernan. Then she’d walked into the bedroom, crouched on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, and watched Garrett sleep.

Kiernan unfolded the sheet of AlaskOil stationery.

Re: Blow-Out Preventers Platform Nina

The blow-out preventers (BOPs) for Platform Nina are due for delivery next month. At that time, we will be ready for production from the oil reservoir 2000 ft. below the surface as originally designed. Note the cost of the BOPs for the 15 wells was 2.6MM$.

When we deplete the 2000 ft. reservoir, we plan to deepen the wells and produce from the 10,000 ft. reservoir discovered last month. The BOPs to be delivered will not give 100% assurance that we can prevent a blow-out and subsequent chance of a severe oil spill when we produce from the deeper reservoir.

The cost to retrofit our BOPs for higher pressure will cost an estimated 3MM$. In addition, retrofitting will delay production by at least 30 days. Production revenues from Platform Nina are expected to be at least 0.6MM$s/day (180MM$s/month).

Our present financial state does not allow us to incur such costs. Therefore, we will not be retrofitting the BOPs.

Dwyer Cummings

Amazed, Kiernan sat back on the couch and took a deep breath. Then she ran out to the Jeep. The sky was still dark, the scent of the redwoods so strong and clear that it stopped her in her tracks. She was about to call Jessica Leporek. But that would be Tchernak’s reward. He could astound Leporek with the tale of how her yearned-for memo had been sitting in a dusty vase on the top shelf of a cupboard for three years without Maureen even knowing it was there. It was only when Kiernan had brought up the subject that Maureen had searched the spots in which Garrett might have hidden it.

She settled in the Jeep and copied the memo.

Tchernak arrived just before sunset. Not giving him a chance to get out of his wolfhound-sized rented car, Kiernan climbed in, handed him the copy of the memo, and watched the broad grin spread across his endearingly ugly face. “Jesus Fucking H. Christ! They would have taken the chance of a major oil spill because they were too cheap to shut down for a month and install the proper equipment. Prop. Thirty-Seven is a shoo-in!” He was yelling. Ezra was licking Kiernan’s face.

“So,” he said, “what now? Do we have to go back to San Francisco?”

“No.”

Tchernak smiled. “What about Olsen? Aren’t we leaving him open to the threats of his enemies? I mean, after they snatched him off the wharf—”

“That wasn’t the cops. It was the same guys who followed me to Delaney’s. Ex-dockhands Robin had paid off. Cops wouldn’t have left visible bruises on Olsen’s body. They wouldn’t have known where to cut the wharf lights. And they wouldn’t have taken the chance of being caught on the Crab Cage roof with a kidnap victim. That’s careless stuff, just the type of thing Robin’s deckhands would do.”

“What about your parking tickets? Deckhands didn’t do that.”

Kiernan laughed. “Marc Rosten? I was right about him, that he’d get me for invading his office. I’m only thankful I got off as cheaply as that. In medical school, practical jokes had been a whole lot more pointed.” Rather than feeling annoyed at the ticket episode, she found it comforting to discover that traces of the young, passionate Marc Rosten had survived despite a job he regretted. Neither he nor she had the job they’d dreamed of. The evolution had been good for her; maybe it was more suitable for him than he was willing to admit.

“Where is this Platform Nina?”

“Up in Alaska. But that doesn’t matter. Policy is policy. And once the California voters see this memo, they won’t allow these guys to get anywhere near our state.”

Kiernan leaned back against the car door. “Can you imagine what the oil companies would pay for this? No wonder Robin Matucci was so hot for it.”

Tchernak laughed. “God, I can hardly wait to see Jessica’s face. Piles of paper will go flying around her office. She’ll be talking ten miles a minute, racing out to Baker Beach and having the biggest press conference of her life.” Tchernak’s mouth was actually quivering. He dove across the seat and hugged Kiernan. “She’ll stand there on the beach and sift the sand through her fingers and know that that sand will never be covered with oil.”

Kiernan tugged on Tchernak’s beard to pull him closer, gave him a blowsy kiss, and said, “I just hope this memo won’t make you such big stuff in the environmental world that you’ll never make me another mahimahi-and-arugula salad.”

Ezra shoved his way into the front seat and pointedly nudged the car door. Kiernan opened it and followed the big dog onto the grass. The early morning sun was streaking through the redwoods. Tchernak walked up the bluff and stood, his arms braced against a redwood bole, stretching his thigh muscles. Then he sprawled under a tree and tossed a stick for Ezra who, for once, disdained it. The wolfhound circled behind Kiernan, pushed between her and Tchernak, and flopped down, flinging one enormous paw across her knee.

The red front door of the house opened, and the sheriff’s deputies escorted Maureen and Garrett outside. In the clear light, Maureen looked exhausted. Garrett, however, appeared rested, neat in a fresh plaid shirt and chinos. His stride was long and steady, that of a man on a normal, everyday errand. The deputies merely looked tired.

Garrett veered toward the pool. He walked to the edge and looked down at the broken pieces of cement. Was he seeing the pool as it had been when he was a child, or was he looking at the empty, useless space that would grow more dangerous, more irretrievable with each new season?

Maureen followed and paused beside him on the edge, then stiffened and moved a few feet away.

One of the deputies called Garrett. Garrett started toward him. Kiernan was still looking at the abandoned pool, but she could hear Garrett’s voice.

“Now where is it we know each other from?”

Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of crime writing.

Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.

One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book,
Karma
(1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.

After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published
Pious Deception
, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.

Dunlap concluded the Smith series with
Cop Out
(1997). In 2006 she published
A Single Eye
, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is
No Footprints
(2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.

In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.