Acts of Malice (4 page)

‘‘Maybe you should think about it. If she’s a nice girl, maybe you should . . .’’

‘‘She likes Hanson. But she can skateboard.’’

‘‘Hmm. Tell you what. Let’s sleep on it, okay? This needs some thought.’’

‘‘You’re’’—a big yawn—‘‘avoiding the question.’’

‘‘So I am.’’

She closed the door halfway, the way he liked it. After brushing her teeth, she climbed into bed with a couple of important files for the next day, but her eyes were closing. She would get up early and work.

As she sank into the mattress, her back and shoulders de-tensed in a way that was so pleasurable it hurt. She thought about the stunning thing Bob had said. He’d been asked out by a girl. He was going to go to a dance.

He was going to fall in love, take up cigar smoking, vote Republican, and leave her, and it would all be over in an eyeblink.

Jim Strong skied into her dreams. He schussed right into her living room, knocking over her wine, looking frantically for Heidi. He opened the cabinet door under the bathroom sink and disappeared into the secret house which could only be accessed by the trapdoor there.

She felt lonely after he left, but then she remembered she was marrying Carlos Botelho, who appeared with his guitar and sang to her under the coconut palms. He sang so tenderly to her, and she responded with all her heart. She waited to see his wonderful face. She knew it would be wonderful, even though she couldn’t see it yet.

3

‘‘YOU’LL HAVE TO talk to the D.A.’s office,’’ the cop on duty at the desk of the South Lake Tahoe police station told Nina. ‘‘We wouldn’t hand out a witness statement to a lawyer without an okay from them.’’

‘‘Then let me talk to the officer who interviewed Mr. Strong last week.’’

The woman, who had the usual cop look, bored and vigilant at the same time, said, ‘‘He’s off duty until Friday.’’

‘‘Then let me talk to his supervisor.’’

‘‘Out on a case. Leave a message.’’

At eight-thirty in the morning there was a blizzard outside, and a puddle of meltwater on the linoleum floor in front of the window where the cop was blowing her off. Nina filled out a message slip, marked it urgent, and went over to the county offices, which luckily were right across the courtyard.

Tahoe’s permanent population of thirty thousand or so would be well served by the low redwood buildings clustered off Johnson Boulevard, which included the jail, police station, courthouse, and most county offices, if millions of tourists didn’t also visit each year. During the off-season the county returned calls and conducted business with impressive efficiency. During the two tourist spells, ski season and summer fun-in-the-sun, you could hardly fight your way into the buildings.

The ski resorts did not usually open until Thanksgiving each year but even though it was still early in the season, Alpine Meadows, Sierra-at-Tahoe, Heavenly, and Paradise were already welcoming skiers. The tourists were clogging the main road through town in their four-wheel-drive vehicles, feasting on pizza and steaks in the restaurants, sliding into seats at the blackjack tables. The business owners were joyfully preparing for a long, nasty winter.

Nina usually felt the same anticipation at the coming of the fresh white stuff. She loved the holiday season. But this Thanksgiving, Bob wouldn’t be with her. He would be in Germany visiting his father. Or going on dates.

Why can’t he stay a kid a little longer? she said to herself as she shook snow off her hair and unbuttoned her coat in the hall of the county offices. Bob had become her companion as well as her kid since they had moved to Tahoe, and she knew it wasn’t healthy for either of them to spend all their time together. She shouldn’t be feeling this triste-French-movie kind of stuff just because he was taking a trip for a couple of weeks! Sternly, she told herself to get a grip.

The truth was, she had been happy wrapped in the cocoon of their house in the woods, but it all depended on Bob not changing. And he couldn’t help doing that.

She knocked on the window of the Office of the District Attorney. ‘‘I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge of the investigation of the death of Alex Strong.’’

Looking even tougher than the cop, the receptionist was a foo dog who guarded the entrance to a place of power. She examined Nina’s State Bar card, looked her up and down as though she’d never seen her before, and finally said, ‘‘Just a minute.’’ The bulletproof window closed, leaving Nina in her usual mode of outsider.

As soon as she sat down in the hard metal chair against the wall, the door flew open. ‘‘You’re up early,’’ Collier Hallowell said. He seemed to move toward her as if to embrace her, but he stopped himself and held out a hand.

Gone were the rumpled suit and haggard eyes she remembered. Collier looked ten years younger. The haunted, insomniac look was gone too. He had grown a neat dark beard that went well with his tall build and the serious gray eyes. He dropped into the chair beside her, smiling.

Nina had known him as a man obsessed by the death of his wife, unable to move beyond it. He had left the D.A.’s office, where he was one of the most experienced and resourceful senior deputies, and dropped out of the race for county district attorney the year before, after making a serious mistake that had almost turned tragic.

Finally, he had just left town. His office called it a leave of absence, but no one had expected him back. Attorneys who run away and hide don’t often return. To the town or even the profession. They open restaurants or become drunks. None of the ex-lawyers Nina had known had ever gone back to the pressure that had crushed them.

Collier, almost alone of all the lawyers in town, had tried to welcome her and befriend her when she had opened up her solo practice in the Starlake Building two years before. She had admired him. She had thought to herself, I can help him get over his wife. And she had been half in love with him. She had invited herself over to his apartment, but Collier hadn’t been in any shape to do anything about her. She’d made a fool out of herself, going after a man who was incapable of caring. It still stung.

‘‘How are you?’’ Nina said, also smiling, but wary.

‘‘Same old shit.’’ He always said that, but he didn’t seem to mean the cynical phrase. ‘‘Been back for a week and a half. I was going to look you up. How have you been?’’

‘‘Hanging in there.’’

‘‘Still haven’t been able to get away from the criminal cases, I see, or you wouldn’t be here.’’

‘‘I gave up trying. You can’t practice law in a small town and not do criminal work.’’ She was talking to him in her brisk business voice as if he were a stranger. He did seem like a stranger. She realized that she had written him off in self-protection, because she’d never expected to see him again. ‘‘You look good,’’ she said slowly. ‘‘Better.’’

‘‘I can’t take the credit,’’ Collier said. ‘‘Time and nature did a job on me.’’

‘‘No one seemed to know where you were.’’

‘‘No one did. We’ll talk about it sometime.’’

‘‘Mr. Hallowell, line three.’’ The receptionist was hovering in her window like a helicopter waiting for landing instructions.

‘‘Put ’em on hold for a minute,’’ Collier answered without looking back. He tucked his hands in his pockets and lounged with one arm on the back of her chair as if he had loads of time and no demands, and only Nina to consider.

‘‘So,’’ Nina said when the silence became uncomfortable.

‘‘I thought about you a lot,’’ he said. ‘‘But I didn’t think I had any right to contact you.’’

This disturbed her. It sounded phony. She knew she hadn’t meant anything to him, so why would he think about her? She said in a businesslike tone, ‘‘You didn’t.’’

He looked down at his hands. She saw that he no longer wore the gold band that had linked him to his dead wife. His hand looked bare, vulnerable, without it.

‘‘She’s just a memory now,’’ he said. ‘‘Just a memory of a memory. I realized I might as well be dead, too, the way I was living. I started to recover when I realized that. And I realized I’d thrown my life away. Then I had something to work for, and I’m good at that.’’

‘‘Something to work for?’’

‘‘To get it back,’’ Collier said. ‘‘You can go home again. Here I am, living proof. I have a new place with a view of the lake. And the county gave me my job back.’’

‘‘Another chance.’’

‘‘Shocked the hell out of me, actually. I didn’t deserve it, after what I did.’’

‘‘They probably danced a jig when they heard from you. You were the best lawyer in the D.A.’s office.’’

He smiled again. ‘‘Let’s see what I do with it.’’

‘‘It’s Judge Flaherty’s clerk,’’ the receptionist said, holding up the receiver. ‘‘What am I supposed to do?’’ They had both forgotten about the woman at the window.

‘‘I’m in conference,’’ Collier said. Then the eyes were on her again. ‘‘You wanted to see me, but I forget what for. Oh, right, the Alex Strong investigation. I’m looking into that death at the moment. I guess we’d better get to it. Who’s your client?’’

She turned her mind back to business. ‘‘His brother. Jim Strong.’’

‘‘Oh ho. So he’s gone and got himself a lawyer.’’ Just like that, they were strangers again, opponents even. Collier removed his arm from the back of her chair.

‘‘He’s frantic to find his wife and to know why there seems to be this cloud of suspicion gathering around him. His brother’s death seems like an obvious accident—’’

‘‘They sometimes do. At first.’’

‘‘They?’’

‘‘Doc Clauson sent over an amended coroner’s report yesterday. I’ll have Roxanne make you a copy if you can wait a few minutes. Read it. Then we can talk some more tomorrow, if you want to.’’

‘‘Thanks.’’ He could hold her up for a few days on this, but Collier had never been that kind of lawyer. He had never guarded himself, never postured, never taken on that hard-bitten look. Sometimes, in the days before he had left, she had wished he protected himself better.

‘‘Sorry. I’m going to have to go back in,’’ he said. ‘‘Anything else?’’

‘‘I’d also like to see the statement Heidi Strong made. I understand your office knows where she is. She’s apparently accused Jim of killing Alex. He’s trying to find her, to talk to her.’’

‘‘I can’t give you her current address. She’s afraid of him. She asked that her location be kept confidential. He ought to cool it or he may make it worse.’’

‘‘Have you talked to her personally?’’

‘‘Not yet,’’ Collier said. ‘‘I’m jumping through hoops as fast as I can, but we’re really just getting started on this thing.’’

Nina didn’t like the sound of that. For whatever reason, Alex Strong’s death was getting urgent attention.

‘‘Well, I need a copy of her statement right away,’’ she said again, dogged.

‘‘Mr. Hallowell?’’ the receptionist called. ‘‘Miss Banning is looking for you. The officers are waiting in your office.’’

‘‘Tell you what, ’’ Collier said, glancing at the clock on the wall and getting up. ‘‘I have court in five minutes, but afterwards I’ll have a look through the statement, black out anything that might indicate where the wife is, and . . . why don’t you bring your client here tomorrow, about eleven. I’d like to ask him a few questions when I turn over the statement. I won’t keep him long. Just looking into a few things.’’

‘‘You mean, before we even get a chance to see the statement?’’

‘‘I’ll produce it when we get together. Fair enough?’’

Nina thought about it. He meant to question Jim about the statement before Jim had time to prepare any answers. She could prevent that. She’d read it first, and then she’d demand a couple of minutes outside and take ten, just to make sure Jim wasn’t sideswiped. Exposing him to a surprise was risky, but Collier could hold up Heidi’s statement for quite a while if they didn’t offer something in trade.

Despite the eyes of the receptionist boring into his back, he waited patiently for Nina’s answer, stroking his new beard, watching her.

‘‘I’ll mention it to him, see if he wants to,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll call this afternoon.’’

‘‘Right, then.’’ Still he watched her, his eyes lighting on her in a warm way she didn’t remember.

She thought she could feel the stream of his energy pushing outward into the world again. His eyes, his posture, his manner, told her that he was finding the sight of her interesting.

She found herself smiling back at him. Standing up, she shouldered her briefcase. ‘‘I hope you’ll forgive me saying this,’’ she said. ‘‘But I’m almost sorry you came back. I always thought you were too good to be a D.A. I mean, I didn’t think the work was good for you.’’

The receptionist sighed, gave up, and turned back to her complaining telephone.

Collier raised his eyebrows.

‘‘It’s none of my business,’’ Nina said hastily.

‘‘I’ll take that as a compliment. The work isn’t good for anybody, but it’s our work.’’

She didn’t know what to make of that statement, so she looked at her watch.

‘‘How’s Paul? You still work with him?’’ he asked.

‘‘He’s in Washington. He worked for a while with a private agency. Now he’s involved in a temporary security job at the Senate building that keeps getting extended.’’

‘‘Is that so? I never thought he’d put that kind of space between the two of you.’’

‘‘Things didn’t work out for us,’’ she said.

‘‘Too bad.’’

‘‘Well, it’s good to see you,’’ she said. ‘‘You seem resurrected.’’

‘‘Mis-ter Hallowell,’’ said the voice from the window. ‘‘Miss Banning just called again.’’

‘‘Be right there.’’ He turned back to Nina. ‘‘Resurrected,’’ he said. ‘‘I like that. The mummy walks again. Maybe a sorceress has called me back.’’

She drove through the white landscape to the Horizon Hotel and Casino for her breakfast, bringing the autopsy report into the restaurant with her. Hustling past the clang of the slots and the empty, shrouded blackjack tables, she picked a quiet spot in the great-smelling coffee shop that served breakfast skillets that would hold you all day for $1.99. Most diners spent quite a bit more than that as they walked through the casino on their way to eat, so breakfast was a loss leader.

A full-bearded prospector with a sunburned bald spot and a backpack beside him sat in one corner, sipping a mimosa. At the counter, a cowboy and his woman, coming off a night of partying, drooped over their coffee cups, skinny from smoking and glazed of eye, like Degas’s absinthe drinkers.

Between mouthfuls of scrambled egg, she read over the report. Alexander Bradford Strong, age twenty-seven and three months and two days—his clock had stopped forever.

Alex Strong’s body had lost its human significance. He had become a legal tool, transformed into words by an autopsy report. Now, she would autopsy the autopsy, dissect the words, look for things that were not right.

As she went through the dry medicalese, outrage boiled up inside her, energy she would need to beat Doc Clauson and the overpowering system behind him.

The report had been written, then amended two days later, the amendment consisting of a single page stapled at the end. She flipped to the back, and found things were far worse than she had expected.

She went back to the beginning and ran her eyes down the pages, forcing herself to review it all from start to finish.

A well-nourished male, five feet ten and 168 pounds, muscular, fair-skinned, inclined to freckle. Alex Strong’s eyes had been blue, his hair brown, the same as his brother Jim’s, she remembered. His two front teeth were false, probably from a prior skiing accident.