Rogue Wave (3 page)

But he’d been such a damned coward. He’d made a mistake, and he’d flagellated himself year after year for it. But there was no sense in going over it again and again. After all, he’d picked up the pieces, stuck to forensic pathology, and here he was: acting coroner. Not bad for a guy who’d regretted his choice the moment he’d applied for the residency.

He was a good administrator. That had surprised him. It had surprised everyone. Marc Rosten, the guy who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, who couldn’t slow down enough to plan, who trusted his smarts and played his hunches, who spent the last quarter of his internship in bed with a knockout brunette when the other guys could barely muster enough energy to get
out
of bed after a thirty-six-hour shift. … Who would have pegged him for an administrator? And if he proved himself as acting coroner this month, he’d be getting offers from all over the country. He’d be in a position to negotiate, to sign on with the people who were committed and willing to come up with the money to make their departments tops. He wouldn’t have to spend his time fighting to stay within budget in some small county, making do with outmoded equipment, missing subtle indicators of death because there wasn’t enough staff or equipment, thanks to a board of supervisors who knew they wouldn’t get votes by allocating money to the dead. This time next year he’d be running his own first-class coroner’s department.

If
he kept things going smoothly here. He’d already had a call about this drowning. But there was nothing unusual about it. Nothing but the eyes, and however abnormal they might be, they hadn’t killed the poor bugger. No, it was asphyxia due to drowning that had done this guy in. The blood chloride levels in the chambers of the heart weren’t the same, so Delaney hadn’t been dead when he entered the water; he had indeed drowned.

He took a final look at the body and rolled the gurney back into the freezer. Besides, this ex-cop who’d called about Delaney was off the force for a reason. And it wasn’t because of a better offer. He’d called the department to check on the guy. He hadn’t gotten the whole story, but he’d heard enough to know that Olsen was not going to be a problem, not if Olsen was relying on cops to help him out. Olsen didn’t matter. The postmortem was fine. Everything was under control. And would be for another two weeks.

Rosten stepped into the changing room, stripped off the scrub pants and stood thinking. If he’d done this well here, what could he have done as a diagnostician? He could have helped these people before they ever reached the slab. He did save lives; he knew that. The data he collected from the corpses, the conclusions he drew, the recommendations he made to Public Health, they all fended off future epidemics, aided future treatments. But he didn’t save
these
lives. He had made one wrong decision and for the rest of his life, no matter how intelligent, how dedicated he was, he would always be too late.

“T
HERE’S NO GOOD HOUR
to drive through Los Angeles; the last one was before 1975,” Kiernan muttered, standing by the new cherry-red Jeep Cherokee wagon in the driveway. Tchernak squeegeed the residue of sea-brine off the windshield. “No one told you to leave La Jolla at four in the morning.
You
could fly to Monterey, rent a car, save yourself hours.”

“And leave you the Jeep, huh? That would take the sting out of my absence?” She opened the door. Ezra aimed himself at the driver’s seat. Flinging an arm around his furry neck, she yanked him out and slammed the door. “Down, Ezra! I appreciate your concern for my comfort, Tchernak, but I have to remind you that investigators train themselves to spot the underlying truth.”

Tchernak grinned. “You told me you bought the Cherokee for Ezra. He’s already bigger than the Triumph. It’s only fair to leave it here with him.” Backlit by the streetlight, Brad Tchernak’s face looked craggier, his grin more wicked; with his four-
A.M.
uncombed spikes of hair catching the light, he resembled a grizzly coming out of hibernation.

“You and Ezra can make do for a day or two.”

“We could come with you,” he said hopefully.

His offer was not new, and not one she wanted to encourage. Wondering what Tchernak was up to and worrying about Ezra were the last things she needed when she was on a case. “What about the Initiative Campaign? Aren’t you scheduled to speak at some rally today?”

“Do I catch a note of jealousy?”

She laughed. “Employer’s pique.”

“You can make light of it now,” he said, suddenly serious. “But if Prop. Thirty-Seven fails, don’t be surprised when your ocean view is splattered with oil-drilling platforms.
Seventy
new platforms off the California coast, that’s the prediction. According to the Central Coast Regional Studies Program, the probability of a large spill off our coast as a result of drilling is ninety-nine percent. It’s going to happen! And everyone: the coast guard, the scientists, even the oilmen themselves agree that there is no way to clean up a big spill.”

She held up a hand. “Tchernak, you’re preaching to the converted. I know the state can’t prevent drilling beyond the three-mile limit. I know that Prop. Thirty-Seven instructs them to create every impediment legally possible to that drilling: no new roads, no zoning changes, no sewer hookups for the onshore support. How’s that for four in the morning!” She reached up and patted his muscular shoulder. “Besides, I ordered background searches from BakDat.”

“Don’t exactly trust Olsen in San Francisco, do you?”

“Not hardly. If this case doesn’t pan out I’ll have to eat the cost, but that’s better than going in cold.”

Slightly mollified at the prospect of computer play, Tchernak gave up. “Okay, but show a little restraint this time. Don’t go into homes where you’re not invited.”

She climbed into the Jeep and backed out before he could go on about the seductive lure of housebreaking. It was a topic she was sorry she’d ever mentioned to him.

She headed up the empty street and caught the freeway north. Her underlying agenda, basically the same as Tchernak’s (use of the newest vehicle), was rewarded. The Jeep handled firmly, responded quickly, and the fun of sitting up high looking down at the other cars hadn’t paled yet.

When she reached Santa Barbara, Kiernan opened the basket Tchernak had packed—a thermos of coffee, a blueberry corn muffin and a still-warm container of braised tofu, tomato, and killer-chili pepper scramble. As she ate, she looked across the white, palm-guarded expanse of the Santa Barbara beach at the lapping blue water of the Pacific and out on the oil-drilling platforms beyond. She would really miss Tchernak if he left, she thought.

As Tchernak had smugly pointed out, the coast road was much better suited to the Triumph. The narrow road wound in and out sharply, hugging the mountains. On the ocean side there was no railing, just a drop of fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet. By late morning the sun had cleaned the sky. It sparkled off the macadam, the rock, the leaves of oak and eucalyptus, and the azure blue water of the Pacific. On the few straightaways, cars like her Triumph pulled around the Jeep. And though she knew it was ridiculous, she felt humiliated, like a sheep nipped by a border collie. She had to fight the urge to step on the gas and see just how well the Jeep could corner. “Two-hundred-foot drop!” she reminded herself.

South of the town of Big Sur she pulled into the parking lot beside Barrow’s Grocery and called Tchernak. Using the car phone still gave her a thrill of pleasure. Tchernak picked up the receiver on the sixth ring. “Brad Tchernak here.”

“You’re surviving, then?”

“I am. But Ez took out his anguish on your phone cord.”

“Shit!”

Tchernak laughed. “I’ve already gotten another one. That’s what you have servants for. And now the news from BakDat. Maureen Brant, thirty-one, has a driver’s license, but they can’t get the address yet.”

“Motor vehicles won’t release addresses any more. Go on.”

“Most recent work history was with the Department of Social Services in San Francisco. Ended three years ago. No activity on the social security number since.”

“What about Garrett Brant?”

“John Garrett Brant, thirty-one, last driver’s license was five years ago, in California. But his last Social Security card activity was in Alaska. Two years of sporadic entries from the Flamingo Bar, Janit-temp, and Ready Cab. And then one big entry from Arts of the Land Foundation.”

“What about Robin Matucci?”

“Ah. Now this is interesting. Robin Matucci, twenty-eight, coast guard licensed navigator, Social Security activity in San Francisco for two and a half years—she paid as an employer with
Early Bird.
And she owns a house in the Marina district of San Francisco.”

Kiernan whistled. “The fishing must have been very good indeed. Even after the earthquake, houses in the Marina still go for half a million. Anything else?”

“Nothing at all on Delaney.”

“Haven’t they run him?” The fax came when ready; there would have been no explanation on what was still missing.

Tchernak laughed. “I knew you’d ask. I called. They ran him, but there’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a thing. They thought it was odd, too.”

“Damned odd. His Social Security payments from the last month or so would be too recent for them to pick up,” she mused. “But what was he doing before that?”

“Don’t deckhands work for tips?”

“Do they?” Kiernan asked, aware of a hollow sensation in her chest: apprehension. Justified apprehension, when she was facing a case that could pivot on something she knew nothing about. “I’ll call you between two and two-thirty, okay?” She hung up and headed inside the grocery, a small building, with dry weathered planks, and the musty smell of a place that sits under fog too much of the time.

“Can I help you?” A plump woman with gray-streaked brown hair sat in an old overstuffed armchair behind the counter.

“I’m Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. I need directions to Garrett Brant’s place.”

For an instant the woman looked puzzled, then she said, “Oh, you mean Maureen’s. I forgot her husband’s name. Nice woman, Maureen.”

“You don’t know Garrett?” Kiernan asked, as the woman reached under the counter and extricated an envelope.

“Never seen him. Most times I forget Maureen has a husband. Or I would if she didn’t buy so much food. He’s not social, that’s what Maureen says. She says that if she’s pressed. Otherwise, she don’t say nothing at all about him.”

Reclusive artist? That didn’t seem out of character for the man who painted “Alaskan Mud Flats.” Kiernan took the envelope, bought a Coke, stopped in the restroom, and headed back to the Jeep. It was then that she noticed the envelope was sealed.

“Looks like Maureen Brant isn’t any too social either,” she muttered as she tore it open. Not so odd in a woman who was anxious to spend her last penny on revenge.

She started the engine and turned south, then east at the second turnoff, a narrow, windy road with the type of broken pavement that reminded her she was in earthquake country. The macadam ended a mile inland, but the dirt road continued four more miles, twisting like an old telephone cord. Jeep country! The piny aroma of the redwoods lent a coolness to the warm October noon. Kiernan slowed the Jeep and looked up, a hundred yards into the sky, to the tops of these trees that might have been fullgrown years before Columbus learned to sail. The priests at St. Brendan’s, the church of her childhood in Baltimore, had urged the catechism class to be in awe of God. She’d scorned the idea as much as she had the priests and the Church, but the sense of oneness with unmoving time had struck her the first time she’d seen a redwood.

This would be reason enough to explain why Garrett Brant never ventured out to the highway.

The Brants’ cabin, Maureen’s instructions said, would be behind a cluster of redwoods on a bluff off to the left.

When she saw it, she stopped dead.

Cabin
was hardly the word for it. It was a two-story house clearly by Bernard Maybeck, the architect who’d designed the most striking buildings in the San Francisco area at the turn of the century. She hadn’t realized Maybeck had accepted commissions this far south of the city.

As Kiernan climbed the dirt-and-plank steps from the road to the bluff, she wondered what wealthy recluse had commissioned Maybeck to build this small chalet miles from a paved road. Back when it was built it would have been much more inaccessible than it was now. And the “cabin” had a swimming pool, cracked and empty, a depository for leaves.

The whole place had the look of neglect. The woman who opened the door could have been a personification of it. Maureen Brant’s dark-blond hair was streaked with gray, grown out of what must once have been a fashionable layered cut. Her skin was pale and puffy from alcohol, or middle age, or both. Her shoulders drooped, and her pale flowered shirt and yellow shorts seemed faded, but her eyes—hazel, flecked with brown—were intense and angry.

When Maureen Brant spoke, none of that anger was evident in her voice. “Come in. My husband’s in his studio out back. We can talk in the living room.” She led the way into a dark, paneled room with an enormous tiled fireplace, pre-Deco radiator covers intended more for beauty than transmission of heat, and faded, green-and-pink-flowered overstuffed sofas. Magazines had been straightened into piles on a rug that showed intermittent lines of vacuuming. The vacuum cleaner stood against one wall, still plugged in.

Maureen Brant sat down on the nearest couch, perching so close to the edge that the sofa cushion tilted precariously. Kiernan could picture her collecting the magazines, nervously tapping the edges into a pile, then, distracted by a piece of lint or the feathered leaf of a redwood on the rug, rushing out for the vacuum and taking symbolic swipes at the long-uncleaned carpet. Now she sat unmoving but for a thumb that rubbed back and forth across the reddened skin of her first finger.

Kiernan sat next to her. She was about to ask for a glass of water when Maureen blurted, “Robin Matucci killed her deckhand. It’s been less than two weeks. You can find evidence. And you can find her.”