Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (5 page)

I sat on her new futon, she took the rocking chair.

“We need to start writing out a plan of attack, Rosie. The funeral’s in two days in Minneapolis— his hometown. Can you go?”

She shook her head. “No. I won’t be finished with this job by then.”

“Okay. I’ll plan on going. It should be a pretty useful trip. With any luck, the other candidates will be there and I’ll be able to take a look at them. And family. Pam says there is a wife. Maybe while I’m gone, you can get to some of the local people, if you have the time.”

She nodded. “I’ve already started that.” We laid plans for about an hour, then I wandered back to the house.

There was a message on my machine from Hal. He had some information and why didn’t I call him back?

He was still in his office. He picked up the phone himself.

“Hi, Hal. What did you get?”

“Oh, hi. Yeah. Well, on the Richmond thing, the guy hanged himself. He definitely died by hanging, by asphyxiation. I got some notes here… ‘Postmortem lividity in the head, the arms and the lower legs.’ The head because of the rope, the legs and arms because of gravity. Petechial hemorrhages in the lining of the eyes and eyelids’— that’s these little spotty hemorrhages from asphyxiation. Then there was a deep groove from the rope on the guy’s neck, and inside that groove there were black-and-blue marks— that means the blood vessels were ruptured by the hanging, which means that he was alive when he was hanged. Nobody killed him first. He’d been dead no more than a couple of hours. Pretty classic, the man told me.”

“Maybe. Was there a note? I haven’t seen anything about a suicide note in the papers.”

“He said there wasn’t.”

“So what else do they have that makes them call it a suicide? There was nothing wrong with the man’s state of mind, no indication he was going to kill himself.”

“Well, Jake, I’ll tell you, they don’t seem to think a whole lot of his state of mind, generally speaking. I mean the guy was running for governor as an independent, for Christ’s sake. Spending all that money and time and energy. And I guess they did a quick check on his private life. Doesn’t sound like he had the best marriage in the world. Maybe there was more, maybe the man had some trouble in his past or something. If there was more, I didn’t hear about it. That’s all I got. Hope it helps.”

“It does. Thanks.”

We said goodbye.

It didn’t help. Not really. I still didn’t know why someone had killed Joe Richmond, and I especially didn’t know how they had done it.

LEE and I were sitting in one of our favorite restaurants in Petaluma, which is one of my favorite towns, but things weren’t going very well.

I’d been through Lee’s moods before and we’d worked around them okay. They were usually connected with work. But this time was different. She didn’t complain about a judge or the work-load distribution at her law firm. She said she was fine and work was fine. She insisted that I tell her all about the case I was working on. I told her.

“How do you feel about the party?” she asked quietly.

I hesitated. “They seem like a good bunch of people. Dedicated.”

“How do you feel about their dedication?”

What was she after, anyway? I looked at her, trying to figure it out, but she wasn’t looking at me, so I couldn’t pick anything up.

“It’s a good cause. I think their dedication is admirable.” The waiter appeared to take our order. We both went with the Pacific red snapper.

“So you think their dedication is admirable,” she said, picking up where we’d left off.

“Yeah. What do you want me to say?” I was trying not to get annoyed. “That I’m upset by what’s happening to the world? Of course I am.”

“Do you know,” she said deliberately, “that one refinery dumps millions of gallons of chemical poison into San Francisco Bay every day?”

“Well, yes,” I said, slugging down half a bottle of beer. “As a matter of fact, I do know that. And do you know that they monitor that shit by means of some kind of fish that could live in a tank of Lysol? Because when they use other kinds of fish they get something like 95 percent dead ones? I read that in the paper or something. Maybe it was on TV. It was one of those what-the-hell’s-going-on-here stories you never hear anything about again. You want me to say I can’t believe these disgusting things are really going on? I can’t. Okay?”

“What are you doing about it?”

I finished my beer, glaring at her. “I send money to every environmental group that sends me a letter. And I don’t use poison on my property.” She looked at me for a long time. The fish arrived. We began to eat. Fish had not turned out to be a good choice.

Lee had recently joined a group that was trying to protect the Russian River, a source of recreation and drinking water in Sonoma County, from sewage-dumping by the city of Santa Rosa. Her involvement in this admittedly good cause had made it even harder to get together. I understood that what she was doing was important. What I had not understood was that it was going to make her smug.

“That’s good,” she said finally. “But what are you doing about it?”

I pushed some fish around my plate. She continued to eat. “I don’t join groups, Lee. I don’t get personally involved in causes. I don’t mess with politics. What I do is I solve murders. Murder-solving takes a lot out of me. And I give what I can.”

“I suppose you do,” she said.

I ordered another beer. I didn’t feel like eating. Lee finished her dinner.

Back in the Chevy, before I had a chance to turn the key in the ignition, she put her hand on my shoulder.

“Jake? I’m sorry. I just don’t think I’m in the mood to be with anyone tonight. I need to do some thinking. Okay?”

“Sure. I’ll take you home.” I was disappointed, pissed off, and relieved that we weren’t going to try to stretch this misery over a whole evening. I knew we should be trying to talk. About something. But she didn’t seem inclined to, and I thought it might be best just to let things slide for a few days.

I walked her up to her door, kissed her on the cheek, and told her I’d call her around the end of the week if that was okay. She gave me a quick kiss on the lips and said that would be fine.

I drove out of Petaluma, down 101 to Marin and the San Rafael-Richmond bridge that would take me across to the East Bay, trying not to think. I didn’t succeed. I was thinking about dedication. Chicago, 1968, the Democratic Convention. Politics on both sides. The mayor a petty dictator with more power than he knew how to handle. The cops, corrupt, vicious, and spoiling for a fight. The police department, that is. Not all the cops were like that, although enough of them were so that when the mayor said it was okay to bust heads a lot of heads got busted. I was just a kid, a young cop, horrified by the mob scenes, the tear gas, the hate stirred up on both sides. Young enough to be angry because someone was stupid enough or political enough to risk stirring up my fellow cops, to risk massive violence, to toss a lot of idealistic kids into the pot and let it boil. I was scared, too, decked out in my riot gear, waiting for the shit to hit. And when a young kid came at me with a baseball bat, yelling “Pig!” I bashed him with my stick. He went down. I saw a lot of blood. Someone carried him off but I didn’t see that part too clearly because I was crying.

I didn’t like what political passion could do.

I drove onto the bridge, still trying not to think. I had told Lee the truth. I give a lot of money to ecological and animal welfare causes. What I didn’t tell her was that I never read the stuff they send me. I can’t. One look at a baby seal getting bashed or a wolf in a trap or a cat in a lab cage, one word about trees and fish and birds dying in a polluted wildlife sanctuary, one paragraph about the loss of ozone or food irradiation or factory farming, and I can’t think about anything else for days. And here I was, driving the wrong way on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. East. Away from the pretty hills of Marin County, into Richmond, where the hillsides are pimpled with the squat pastel cylinders of refineries. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say tumored. I knew perfectly well that we were heading for shorter living through chemistry, that I might even be one of those people who died an early death.

People who actually get involved in these causes must be made differently from me. They must be able to deal with horror, and with the inevitable frustration. Because I just don’t think they can win against the money and the power. As for me, as I told Lee, I do what I can. But doing what I can does not include spending my life getting my head and my heart bashed in. There’s a reason why people in the throes of a cause radiate an almost sexual heat. The reason is, politics and love are the same damned thing.

I didn’t sleep too well that night; anger always gets in the way of sleep for me. Did I need this shit? No, I did not.

I crawled out of bed around nine, fed the cats, and decided to blow some bucks on a nice breakfast at a café on College Avenue. It was just a few blocks, so I walked, trying to work out some of the tension kinks left over from the night before.

The home fries, soft scrambled eggs, sausage and toast had me feeling better, and I was ready for a day of foundation-laying work. Rosie and I were going to Pam’s that night to work out our agreement and do some talking. I like to go to meetings with new clients with a little something tucked away in my notes. Sometimes I make lists.

When I got home there was a message on my machine from Lee.

“Jake? I suppose I should wait to tell you this in person. I wasn’t sure last night. Now I am. And I don’t feel like waiting. I want to say it now. I’ve decided to get pregnant. What do you think about that? You won’t be able to reach me today, but I’ll be home later this evening, after eight o’clock. Why don’t you call me?”

I rewound the message and ran it again. She had decided. I erased the message and I was still standing there, staring at the machine, when the phone rang. I was not ready to talk to Lee. When the ringing stopped I turned up the volume, listened to my own message, and, after the beep, Pam’s first few words.

“Hi, Jake. I was just calling to firm up a time for tonight—” I got a grip on myself and turned off the machine.

“Pam? Good to hear from you. When did you want us to come over?”

“I thought eight would be good.”

“Sounds perfect to me. See you then. Oh, listen, you want to give me the phone numbers of some of Richmond’s family in Minneapolis?”

“I’ve got his wife’s family and his mother. Hold on.” She was back in just a minute with two phone numbers. I wrote them down and we said good-bye.

If I didn’t get home too late from Pam’s, I figured, I would call Lee back and find out what the hell she was talking about.

ROSIE and I arrived at Pam’s exactly at eight. The evening was chilly, and smoke was coming from her chimney, drifting over the top of the avocado tree in the front yard. Pam came to the door in navy blue sweats. She had a wineglass in her hand and offered us a drink.

I accepted a mineral water, Rosie a beer. There were pretzels, crackers, and cheese on the coffee table.

She sat us down on the tan couch facing the fireplace and took the matching chair set at right angles to it. She turned her head away and looked at the fire.

“We’ve only talked a little about the work you two have done in the past,” she said. “But you said you’ve solved a murder or two, isn’t that right?”

“Four,” Rosie said. “Four murders.”

“Good.” She turned back to us. The firelight gave her face the color it was lacking, made her look less tired and drawn. Richmond’s death was having a powerful effect on her.

“Pam,” I began. “You seem very sure that someone killed him. I can understand that. No matter how much I tell myself that the law says it was suicide and the law has reasons to say so, I can’t quite believe it, can’t quite feel that he would. But you’re sure he didn’t. Maybe you’d better tell us why.”

“I’ll tell you,” she said, turning her head away again, “if you keep it in strictest confidence.”

“We can’t necessarily promise that,” Rosie said. “When it’s over, when the story comes out, we may not have perfect control over what becomes public.”

Pam grasped her wineglass and brought it halfway to her mouth, looking down into the last few drops of pale yellow liquid. “You have to promise that you’ll do everything you can.”

“Sure,” I said. “So what’s the big secret?”

“It’s not that it’s such a big secret, really,” she said, stalling. “It’s just that we had decided. When the election was over, he was going to leave her. Leave his wife. We had just decided that, the night before, on the way to the benefit, and he was happy.”

I was remembering that Pam had needed a ride home because she had gone into the city with someone who was staying on that side of the bay. I also remembered the “friendly” hug I’d seen them exchange. “How long had you been seeing each other?”

“About six months.” She sighed. “His marriage wasn’t good.” Then, almost defiantly, “But we would have been happy.”

“And of course you didn’t tell the police any of that,” Rosie said gently.

“No. Vivo doesn’t need that kind of publicity now.”

I blew up. “I’m tired of your bullshit, Pam. You call me when you find your lover dead in your house, call me for advice and help, and you don’t tell me the truth about why he’s there! And you don’t tell the police he was happy and wouldn’t have killed himself because a love-nest scandal would hurt the party? Come on! People didn’t blame the Democrats when Gary Hart got caught with his pants down. They blamed him. It could have hurt Richmond, but he’s dead. He can’t run anyway.”

She started to say something but I was too pissed off to stop. “So you let the cops think it was a suicide, instead of telling the truth, but you don’t really want to leave it that way, right? Now you’re hiring us to dig up the dirt and prove that the man was murdered. What are you leaving out, Pam? When are you going to make sense?”

Rosie nodded energetically. “Yeah. Seems to me that a suicide verdict is the least offensive outcome, politically.”

I glanced at her, but she didn’t meet my eye. Was this my Rosie, this cold political pragmatist? You never know a woman until you’re in politics with her.