Rogue Wave (6 page)

“You didn’t know him as he was before. He has no idea who you are, of course. And he won’t remember ever having met you—you can walk into that studio a hundred times today, two hundred times, and he’d greet you the same way each time: ‘Now where is it we know each other from?’”

She jumped up and began pacing. “I hate it here in this gloomy house, but it’s the only place we can live, the place we were—the day before Garrett lost his memory. I couldn’t stand to have him in Anchorage or San Francisco, disoriented the whole time, wondering how he got where he was, why there’s oil on the beaches he used to visit south of Anchorage, why the buildings he remembers in San Francisco before the earthquake aren’t there any longer.” The mechanical pacing, back and forth, up and down, continued. “When I go to the store, I have to lock Garrett in so he doesn’t decide to go for a walk. If he got lost, he’d never find his way home again. I leave him a note: ‘Door may be stuck. Relax. I’m going for locksmith.’ Same note whenever I go out. He probably reads it anew fifty times when I’m gone.” She looked down at Kiernan, the anger in her eyes cutting through the mist of despair. “If Robin Matucci had killed him, I would have forgiven her. Garrett, the man I knew and loved, is dead. A fading photograph of himself. For me, the moment of his death comes a thousand times a day. And it will as long as we both live.

“Will you take this case?”

Kiernan’s own hands were clenched into fists. She could feel Maureen’s need, the power of her thwarted passion. She wished she were the kind of person who could wrap her arms around Maureen and let her sob. But she knew that to help meant to think clearly, to provide the logic Maureen had lost.

“All right. I’ll go to San Francisco, look at the deckhand’s body, and if there’s anything about it that doesn’t fit in with a simple drowning, then I’ll investigate.”

Maureen crumpled onto the sofa. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d—”

“Don’t be too relieved. There are a couple more stipulations. One is a contract.”

“Fine.”

“And the other is that you answer my questions with complete honesty.”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”

Kiernan shook her head. “No one wants to trust a stranger with their secrets. We all withhold bits and pieces of things. I’m asking you to try to be more honest with me than you’ve been with yourself.” Kiernan had given this little lecture before and seen clients nod in agreement. But she never really expected that kind of openness from them, never believed in its possibility. A compromise between honesty and self-protection were all she could really count on. “First, what do you know about Robin Matucci?”

Maureen rested her elbows on her knees. “Besides her hitting Garrett, you mean? Only that she’s captain of a charter boat called
Early Bird.
It’s docked at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“How did you hear about Delaney?”

She leaned forward. “Skip Olsen called. He was the cop who handled Garrett’s accident. He’s been a brick.”

“Have you been in touch with anyone else?”

Maureen shook her head.

Was there a moment’s hesitation before that denial?

“Are you sure? Think.”

“Nobody except Garrett’s doctors and the rehab people. We had friends in San Francisco, but Garrett didn’t want to see them when he came down from Alaska. Which was odd, because normally he’d have been off to some gallery before he’d even unpacked.” She shrugged. “But this time he seemed nervous from the minute he arrived. He insisted I tell no one he was back. He said it was so we could spend some time alone together without all his friends descending on us.”

“What do
you
think the real reason was?”

“I just don’t know. Maybe he was avoiding someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. He’d been in Alaska for four months. Possibly someone from the bar where he was bartending. Or some guy on the AlaskOil maintenance crew.”

“Were any of his fellow workers from either of those places in San Francisco?”

“I did ask him that. He said no.”

The cooling breeze chilled the sweat on Kiernan’s shoulders and made her aware of how tense she’d become. “I know this is hard for you, Maureen, but every insight you can give me will make it that much more likely I can help. Please think calmly about what I’m going to ask. Garrett said he wanted to spend time with you. But he went to the city alone. Why?”

“He said he had a meeting.”

“What kind?”

“With a representative of a gallery.”

“Why didn’t he take you?”

“The representative was a woman. Garrett believed, and he was right, that there’s always a sexual element in any negotiations between men and women, and that this woman would do better by him if he dealt with her alone.”

“Could he have been having an affair with her?”

The color vanished from Maureen’s face. “No!”

Kiernan waited a moment. Maureen Brant’s denial wasn’t a statement but a protest. “But you’ve considered it, haven’t you?”

Slowly the color returned, but irregularly, blotching her face. “Of course. I doubt there’s any possibility I haven’t thought about. If he hadn’t insisted on going to San Francisco, alone, our lives wouldn’t be over. What was so important? I have no more idea than I did three years ago.”

“Who was the woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“Of course I did—before he left, when he was in the hospital, when he came back here. I asked him this morning before you arrived. He wouldn’t tell me before. He won’t tell me now. Maybe he doesn’t even remember her name. A lot of things have faded for him. It’s like his mind is disappearing from the edges in.”

“He still thinks like he did three years ago, right? So if he felt that he had reason to keep this woman’s name from you then, he would still have that mind-set now?”

“I don’t know his rationale. The point is he’s not going to reveal her name.”

“Maybe he’ll tell me.”

Maureen stiffened. “It’s possible. But there was some reason he was keeping that secret, so to get him to reveal it you’d have to know the right questions, the right tack to take. A straight-out query wouldn’t do it.”

“What do you know about the gallery or the area it was in, or anything about it?”

“Nothing. Garrett was careful not to reveal anything.”

Kiernan let her gaze rest on Maureen Brant for a long moment. What had that drained face expressed three years ago?

“How long was Garrett in Alaska without you?”

“Almost two years.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“There was no way I could have survived in that cold. Besides, I had a career of my own—I couldn’t just leave whenever it suited me. Anyway, Garrett would call me every couple of days—or, more accurately, nights. One of his self-appointed perks was making free calls from some of the empty offices—his way of getting even for such a drudge of a job: he was on a maintenance crew there. And the last time he called me he was really excited about coming here. I thought it was because he missed me. But I’ll never know, will I?”

Kiernan took a deep breath and watched the branches of the redwoods sway in the growing breeze. Slowly she said, “I’m going to go and make a couple of calls from my Jeep. While I’m gone, I want you to consider very carefully about hiring me to find Robin Matucci. Finding her will mean discovering why Garrett went to San Francisco. Are you quite sure you want to know?”

Maureen started to speak, but Kiernan held up her hand.

“No, don’t answer yet. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

K
IEMAN LEANED AGAINST THE
Jeep, hoping that the deep cool and the fragrant aroma of the redwoods would scour away the grief and fear and demand that filled the Brant house. The presence of the millennia-old trees had always been able to calm her before, but today they might as well not have existed. She was still edgy when she climbed into the Jeep and grabbed the phone, ready to speak to Marc Rosten after twelve years. Should she be calm or angry? She laughed at herself. What difference would it make? She recalled only too well the year after Marc’s departure, when
any
thought of him turned to fury. But she hadn’t phoned him then.

She drove the Jeep back to where the road crested a hill and punched the number for the coroner’s office. Marc Rosten wasn’t in. She didn’t leave a message. No point in giving him extra time to think. He’d had twelve years in which to explain himself. And he’d used the element of surprise last. Now it would be her turn.

She called Tchernak. “This is Brad Tchernak,” his recording began. “What can I do for you? Leave your mess—”

“Hello?” Tchernak was panting.

“Hi. Been out running?”

“Ezra hates it when you’re gone. He’s been moping all day. I thought a long run would take his mind off you, or at least tire him out enough so he’d leave me alone. When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. I have to go to San Francisco and see if there’s anything that merits my taking the case. If there isn’t, I’ll be home the next day. Right now, I need you to find the insurers for Robin Matucci’s boat.”

“Are you planning to hook up with them?”

“Just covering bases. Insurance, you might say.” She grinned. Her facial muscles felt strained, and she realized how tense she had become during her visit with the Brants. “I’ve got an acquaintance in the San Francisco coroner’s office. I should be able to get into the morgue on the Q.T., but if I have to go to court with anything, I’m going to need a legitimate excuse, like a connection with the insurer, in order to see the body again.”

“If your friend let you in once, why wouldn’t he let you in again.’

It didn’t do to tell Tchernak too much; Kiernan had learned that the hard way. “Rosten and I were interns together. We didn’t part on good terms. Odds are fifty-fifty he might not let me in at all.”

“Kiernan, it’s been ten, twelve years since then. No normal person holds a grudge that long.”

“Pathologists are rarely classified as normal.”

“Even so,” he said, “what could you have done that was so terrible he’d still have you on his blacklist all this time? Wait a minute. You threw him over, right? And then it dawned on him that he was missing something. No wonder he’s still pissed.”

She laughed. ‘Tchernak, if you had to sweep up all the blarney you throw out, you’d be behind the vacuum twenty hours a day.”

“About this guy Rosten?” Tchernak insisted.

Kiernan sighed. ‘Truth is, I don’t know what happened with Marc Rosten. I only know he was angry when we finished our internship. Angry enough to pull strings at the last moment and get a residency in the East. It was four years before he came back to San Francisco. I didn’t see him then or later. But after I was fired from my own county coroner’s office, I heard, third hand, that he was the only forensic pathologist in the Bay Area unwilling to sign a statement supporting me.”

“What?”

She could picture Tchernak’s tanned face knotting into a scowl. Before he could verbally slam Rosten into the turf, she said, “I’m sure you’re right. Twelve years is a long time. He’s probably forgotten whatever it was that set him off. Besides, I have to make this call. And Marc Rosten really does owe me one. Talk to you later.”

She drove back to the house and walked past the abandoned pool to the Brants’ open door. Maureen was staring at her husband’s paintings of the Alaskan mud flats. At the sound of Kiernan’s footsteps, she spun around stiffly. Her hand was streaked with blood. She had rubbed at the raw spot till the skin was gone.

“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” she asked in a tight voice.

Kiernan shook her head. “I’ll go up to San Francisco and see if I can get into the morgue. I’ll check with Olsen.”

“Will you call me after you see the deckhand’s body?”

“It’ll be too late by then.”

“Call me tomorrow, in the morning. We don’t have a phone here, but I’ll be at the grocery at eight.”

“Make it ten. In the meantime, I’ll need some background information on you and Garrett. The questions are on the form: full names, where you grew up—”

“But why on us? I want you to investigate—”

Kiernan rested a hand on the mantle. “This investigation is about Garrett. Any facts I have on him make it that much easier for me to judge what someone else tells me about him, which means I can also judge the validity of everything else they’re saying.”

“But
I’m
not the focus. Why do you want—”

“Look, at this point I’ve got virtually nothing to go on. I’ve no idea which bit of information is going to be important and which isn’t, so I need everything I can get.”

“Still, I—”

Kiernan stood up. “My way or not at all! This is a very iffy business. Just to get the ball rolling I’ll have to call in a favor someone won’t want to give. A favor erasing a big debt. And I’m not willing to waste that favor on a case full of holes, one on which I have to ask myself why my own client is hesitant to give me the name of the town she grew up in.”

“No, wait. I’m sorry. I’ll give you what you need.”

Kiernan sat on the arm of the sofa, watching Maureen complete the form, read the contract and sign it. Had she caved in too quickly? Kiernan couldn’t be sure. Never leave a question untended: that was one of the first rules of investigating; questions could be postponed, or withheld to ponder, but never merely passed over. When Maureen looked up, she said, “What else are you not telling me?”

Maureen’s eyes closed and the muscles of her face tightened. The sunlight had moved eastward, leaving Maureen in the shade. Goosebumps formed on her bare legs. She opened her eyes. “I don’t think this is connected. Or maybe I do and don’t want to believe it. But I’m sure someone has been here, in the house.”

“A burglar?” Kiernan asked skeptically. Five miles off the main road was a long way to come to rip off a television or stereo.

“He didn’t take anything.”

“How do you know he was here, then?”

“Things were out of place, just a bit.” She looked up. “Garrett noticed. He’s fanatical about things being in place now. Keeping things exactly where they belong, where he can find them, gives him stability. If either of us leaves something in a different place, he has no clue where it might be.”