Bones of the Barbary Coast (42 page)

VII
BRIGHT RAVEN

58

B
ERT SPENT MONDAY morning trapped in a second-floor courtroom at the Hall of Justice, waiting for his call to the stand. The prosecutor had expected to put him up around ten, but a series of defense motions had slowed things down. Bert was to testify against a forty-year-old investment counselor who had murdered the live-in nanny who took care of his two kids. The way Del Peterson, the Homicide lead, had put it together, he did it to prevent the nanny from telling his wife about the affair they'd been carrying on for two years. The nanny had been a pretty Mexican girl, with a big family who now sat silently in the gallery. Another sad and unnecessary mess. Bert's role in the investigation was small, but he'd done his bit and his testimony was part of the prosecution's case.

He didn't go up until eleven fifteen. Half an hour on the stand and then he was excused. He nodded to the impassive faces as he passed the prosecution table, trying to look self-assured, but his shoulders flinched when the gavel announced lunch recess. He joined the throng at the door, dying for a cigarette and determined to get out of the building before he had to make eye contact with anyone else from Homicide.

He got home at one. Six hours of sleep in three days, it was starting to tell on him. He wasn't thinking straight. Up the long stairs, into the familiar rooms. Too tired to even go through his little posttraumatic stress thing. The liquor bottles gleamed at the back of the kitchen, but he ignored them and went into the living room. He thought about playing a CD but didn't know which one could possibly do the job. Instead, he took off his jacket, tossed his gear onto one end of the couch and flung himself down at the other. He lay hugging one of the pillows to his chest, not able to get comfortable, then folded the jacket across his eyes and forehead. The tiny cocoon of darkness helped.

The sliding doors were dark when a strange sound awakened him. He opened his eyes and the shadowy angles of his living room seemed foreign to him for a moment, as if he'd been in a faraway dream. His watch said it was seven thirty. The sound happened again and he realized it was his cell phone, muffled because it had fallen between the couch cushions. He dug it out.

"Bert. It's Hank Chambers."

He was instantly wide awake. "Hank!"

"How are you doing?"

"Been better, been worse," Bert lied. He wondered if the question meant Hank had already heard something from the rumor mill or it was just a standard formulaic greeting. He tried not to sound breathless as he went on, "But you could easily improve my day."

Hank chuckled sourly. "Funny, your name came up today. I mentioned you to one of my DNA techs, we were talking about one of your old cases, the double from over near Seal Rock? You know what he told me?"

Bert felt a chill of fear, but ordered himself to stay in character. "No, but ten bucks says you're about to tell me."

"About Bertram—your name. Means 'raven,' and it's the name of Noah's raven, from the Bible. Did you know that? That's your namesake?"

Relief: It was just Hank pissing around. "First I heard about it. So what?"

"Noah had been on the ark for a long time and he wanted to find out if any dry land had emerged yet. So he sent out Bertram, the raven. Raven flies forever back and forth over the waves, never finds a place to alight, it was only later Noah sent out the dove that found the mountain. I was thinking, is that Bert Marchetti or what? Looking and looking, never finding the place to come down. What is it with you? Never satisfied. Never give yourself a break. Lot of guys, they do their bit and accept they can't fix everything, but not you. Never in, what—thirty-some years."

"Thanks for the words of wisdom. So now you gonna tell me something, or are you gonna yank my chain for another half hour?"

Hank laughed again, and Bert heard the rustle of papers. "You owe me a yank or two. I busted my hump for you today."

"And?"

"On the dogs, you're not gonna like it. No matches on the hairs or bite impressions. No obvious match on the breeds your guy has had over the years. The dog evidence on those cases is lousy anyway, it was all a long shot."

"How about the slice-and-dice?"

"Dog hairs at the scene don't tell me anything without hairs from your guy's dogs of that time. But the knife used on the vie was definitely not the knife in the photo you gave me. Same story with that facial slashing—definitely not the same weapon. Which means you came up dry, Bertie. None of the stuff you gave me connects to any of those cases. Nothin'."

Bert didn't say anything. He couldn't tell if he was relieved or crushed. Maybe he'd been all fucked up and crazy about Ray, maybe he could let it rest. But a big part of him yearned for a reason to hate Ray, an excuse to do something to him.

"But," Hank said. A grin in his voice.

"Hank, you piece of—!"

"But with all our new evidence analysis tech and digitalization, we've been opening our cold cases, right, getting great convictions? So with the old stuff on active status, the records are in good shape. I had a guy run your knife against older blade profiles. And it came up, Bert. Homicide in Palo Alto, nineteen years ago. Deep stab wounds, clear blade profile, even the tearing from the nick in the edge. Got another match from a nonfatal knife assault from like eighteen years ago, vie never named the assailant. So there you go. Looks like you're onto something after all. I'll send you back your pics and the records on those two. And whatever you do then, guess what? It isn't going to involve me. I never heard anything about this."

Bert's heart was struggling to catch up with the flush of raw adrenaline that pulsed through him. After he closed the connection he had to sit, sucking air and gathering his thoughts.

The first thing was to call Cree, get her the hell away from Ray. If it wasn't too late.

Going on eight o'clock Monday night. He called her cell, got no answer, called the motel, no answrer there. Maybe working with Horace? He called the lab phone and got Horace's voice mail. Then he called Horace's home phone, got Patrick: No, Horace wasn't at the lab tonight, he had a speaking engagement in Sacramento.

She could be anywhere. She could be dead. She could've gone to a movie or something and had turned off her phone. Maybe she was doing research somewhere, she seemed like the worker type, a real bulldog on a case. But where, at this time of night? Most likely she was at Ray's and wasn't choosing to answer her phone. Or wasn't able to.

Bert retrieved his gun, put it on, found his keys and wallet. A few hours of sleep and Hank's call, one solid thing on Ray at last, it had charged him up completely. When he left the house, he trotted down the stairs, never touching the rail, like he was thirty again. He jumped into the truck and fired up the big engine. First stop, Ray's place. Play it by ear. Take it as it fell out. For the first time in weeks, he felt wonderfully free and unfettered.

59

I
T'S GOT TO be right, Cree. What other scenario works?" Ray gestured around him at the dark, fog-cloaked terrace as if it provided corroboration.

Cree turned away, going through it again, hugging herself against the chill. Nothing had changed. The house loomed dark above them, all the empty windows. Down here, the flagstones glistened with condensation and the garden leaves were trimmed with droplets. Another night of foghorns.

Ray's excitement was a little frightening, but she couldn't blame him. Finding the Mission Council's report had thrilled them both. They were getting so close. And yet it had posed as many questions as it had answered. They figured that Lydia must have disobeyed the church patriarchy, had rescued the wolfman, had made a home for him here. But then what? Could he talk? Could he tell his story? Did Lydia make an effort to find out where he came from, who his parents were, how he had lived? Did she write down his story, or keep a diary about their life with him? Did they take him to a doctor—might there be medical records?

And was he confined to the basement chamber? It didn't seem likely that Lydia had rescued him only to imprison him forever in an underground crypt. Unless it was his preference—maybe Ray was right and he was cripplingly light-aversive, or agoraphobic, or terrified of human contact. Or maybe he proved so behaviorally defective, violent, and unpredictable, that they had no choice. Or maybe he roamed the house freely; maybe it was just chance that he got caught in the collapse of the Jackson house, and Hans had built the brick chamber after the quake, sealing away forever the secret resident of their household.

It all came down to what kind of creature or person he was. How he lived, what he felt. How human he was. That was the question at the bottom of everything, the one that had eluded everyone, Skobold and Ray and Cree, the patrons of The Red Man, the mission council. Maybe it was that question as much as compassion that had compelled Lydia and Hans to rescue him. And it couldn't be answered by bones or by the most realistic reconstruction even Skobold could accomplish.

She was moved by the mystery, but Ray really was far gone. The wolfman had captured his imagination from the start, as if he saw a crucial parallel to his own life, as if all the secrets of the world were contained within that strange skull.

The tease of the council report had fueled an afternoon of frenzied work as they tore through the records. Rev. Michaelson brought them tea, but they didn't even break for lunch. They continued to find occasional reference to Lydia, always a devoted worker on behalf of the good cause. They found more Mission Council decrees and reports on one project or another, one battle against sin or another. They found an accounting of donations that included substantial contributions from Hans and Lydia. They even found a later portrait of both Schweitzers, posed with another couple. Their first glimpse of Hans showed him to be a truly imposing figure, with huge, rugged hands that rested possessively on the back of his wife's chair, a stern face gentled by wire-rimmed spectacles.

But by five o'clock, when they finished the last of the 1906 files, they had found no clues to Hans Schweitzer's fate, no name of a family doctor or lawyer, no hint of relatives or disposition of family effects. And not one more word about the wolfman.

Starved and disappointed, they'd gone out for dinner, talked it over, fitted the pieces together this way and that. After a while it began to seem like a few did fit, which had brought them back here to the house. Just to think it through one more time. She had toured Ray through the first floor and the basement room, where Ray had inspected the walls and ceiling closely. Then he'd wanted to come out here to look at the place from the perspective of the old Jackson house.

Ray paced with her around the central planting island, enumerating the suggestive facts.

"They rented out the Jackson house for three years after they were married. But then in 1890 it's vacated and left that way for sixteen years. Water records show no water service, so no one lived in it—officially. Why would they do that unless they put the wolfman up in it, Cree? Lydia was hell bent on helping him, but my bet is she was also a dutiful servant of her church, didn't want to openly disobey the Council. So she kept him secret. Kept the whole thing secret from them—we
know
she did, because the church records don't mention him again. Maybe Hans went along with the rescue but didn't totally approve, was afraid of scandal or shame, didn't want to be associated with anything unsavory that could jeopardize his business or his social standing. Neither of them would have wanted attention from oddballs and opportunists, for the wolfman's sake as much as their own. So they made a secret home for him."

"Why build the chamber in the basement? Lydia wouldn't have rescued him just to put him in a dungeon."

"She didn't! I think that's how they got into the Jackson house. Didn't want to be seen going over there several times a day with food, water, and so on. I think Hans built it down there as an entry chamber. I think there was a door in it originally, that Hans bricked up after the quake. Either he was so good there was no sign of variation in the bricks, or Hernandez is right, he and his guys broke through right there and wrecked any indications of a door. Maybe that's where they kept his larder and his chamber pot, made it more convenient to bring him things and dispose of things. It was only one end of the tunnel between the houses. Maybe the opening weakened the Jackson foundation, that would explain why the worst collapse happened right there. Hans no doubt built it well, he just didn't anticipate the worst earthquake in American history."

"Ray, that's a lot of supposition. I think you want a solution, you want answers. But you're guessing."

"No! Listen. They set him up in the Jackson house basement. Maybe he wanted it that way, or maybe he made noise. Or people would see him at the windows, or he wasn't really . . . safe. So Hans builds a basement suite for him. Out of view, masonry walls, safe containment if needed. Maybe Hans had some other reason to keep it secret, but it must have been important to him. Why else would he put those deed restrictions on the property when he sold the place? He wanted to make sure the lot was never developed. Make sure nobody ever dug in there and found the wolfman's suite. And the wolfman himself. And Lydia."

Cree stopped pacing. "Oh, now wait a minute—"

"Think about it! Her body was never found—"

"Lydia and hundreds of others!"

"Right. But where would she have been at five thirteen in the morning? She sure wasn't out shopping. I don't see her as the type to be out with some clandestine lover. She was
in there,
Cree—she was up and seeing to their . . . guest. Their . . . pet. Their surrogate son. Whatever he was to them."

Cree looked down at the expanse of paving stones and decorative walkways, the patterns just visible in the blue dark. Yes, such good craftsmanship—such
old-world
craftsmanship. Lydia's bones could be beneath her feet at this moment.

"It's not possible. What, Hans single-handedly took down the ruins, disposed of tons of rubble, covered over the basement, and built all this? One man?"

"No. He had crews available. He used his most trusted men. Maybe he swore them to secrecy. Maybe he did the most sensitive parts himself. Think of that photo—the guy was a giant, physically powerful, and a superbly skilled mason. He rebuilt the hole he'd made in the foundation wall so you couldn't tell. He filled in the door in the chamber. He built the terrace."

"Why didn't he retrieve Lydia's body? Give her a religious funeral?"

"I don't know. Some kind of personal monument?" Ray bit his lips, shook his head, stumped. "The mysteries of the heart, Cree. The mysteries of human nature." She could just make out his quick grin in the dark.

Cree blew out a breath, a plume of steam within the fog. "Anyway, what can we do about it? Not much. And I am freezing. I'm going inside."

Ray's grin widened. "I was just going to suggest that," he said.

* * *

He went straight through the kitchen to the back hallway and the basement door, pounding down the stairs so quickly that she didn't catch up with him until he'd made it to the back room. He turned on some lights and went to the collection of tools leaning in the corner, then selected a sledgehammer and hefted it experimentally.

Cree's jaw dropped. "Whoa—wait, Ray—"

He was already in the wolfman's chamber, legs spread wide, hammer behind him.

"Ray!"

The first blow made a dull
chunk
and sent up a puff of brick dust.

"Ray, stop! You'll only make trouble! There's nothing in there!"

"Only one way to find out." He grunted as he put his whole weight behind into another swing. Another ground-shaking
thunk,
dust, a falling chip of brick.

"Even if you're right, if there had been a suite, it's got to be filled with rubble, right? You'd need a backhoe or—"

"Maybe. But bricks in a brick house are on the outside walls, the middle would have been just wood frame like this one. And the outer wall fell this way. So maybe not."
Chunk.

"Ray, we'll find out some other way. This is
not
our house! We—"

"You go. Stay out of it. If I get caught, I'll say I broke in."

She couldn't move. Three more swings and Ray stopped to take off his jacket, roll his sleeves, inspect the fist-size crater he'd made. Cree started toward him, but he gave her a warding look and quick shake of his head. He picked up the hammer again and blasted another spray of chips into the little room.

Cree was swearing to herself. She could fling herself at him, but she doubted she'd be able to dissuade him. She could threaten to call the police, but she knew it wouldn't stop him: Ray was a person with absolutely nothing to lose and a yearning to
know
fierce as the flame of an acetylene torch.

And maybe it
was
just one of those situations where even a good citizen could justify breaking the rules a little. Maybe there
was
something important to find through there.

Ray fell into a rhythm, pounding like a machine, the muscles of his forearms standing out like cables. Several bricks fell away, revealing another course behind them. The clatter scared her again and nothing felt right about this.

"You're not the wolfman," she rasped. "You won't solve Ray by solving him."

That made him pause. He panted as he looked at her with an expression suddenly sad and doubtful. "No. You're right. There is no solution."

For just an instant she thought she'd succeeded. But then his face broke into a wide smile that even with the scars looked gleeful and irresistible. "But, oh man, I'll be goddamned if I'll get this close and not go for it!"

He attacked the wall joyously, ferociously. Cree stood, half scared to death and half struck by him, the power of his body in its utmost effort, the desire embodied in his force. Chunks of bricks began to fall as cracks radiated from the hole.

She watched for a few more minutes, sneezing in the dust. Then she rigged one of the extension cords and plugged in another lamp. She positioned it in the doorway to the wolfman's chamber so that Ray's growing crater was bathed in light.

Complicit,
she thought.
Accessory. Whatever.