The Nomination (12 page)

She knelt beside him to search him thoroughly.

She fished his wallet out of his hip pocket. The name on his driver's license was Leonard P. Lesneski, from Richmond, Virginia. She didn't bother counting his money. A couple hundred dollars, it looked like.

Stuck in with the bills was a plastic magnetized key card. For his hotel room, Jessie assumed.

She put the wallet, with all its contents, back into the man's hip pocket.

Then she went through his other pockets. His cell phone was in one pants pocket. Jessie left it there. In the other pants pocket was a ring of keys and, separate from the key ring, another key with a plastic tag attached to it. This would be for the rental car. Jessie kept the car key and put all the other stuff back into his pocket.

She finally found what she was looking for tucked in his shirt pocket. She didn't know exactly what it would be—an old photograph, perhaps, or a printout of descriptions and directions, or at least an index card with her address on it.

It turned out to be a photocopy of that damn newspaper clipping with the picture of her at the clinic.

Finding the photo in his pocket assured Jessie that she had killed the right man. She wouldn't have lost too much sleep if he hadn't had her picture in his pocket. The .22 automatic was good enough. But it was better this way.

She sat on the ground beside the man and thought it through.

They'd find Leonard Lesneski—his damaged or dead body—eventually, of course. Maybe this morning, maybe not for a few days. A middle-aged man, not in the best of shape. They'd ID him by what they found in his wallet. He'd been climbing a steep side trail when the clot smashed into his brain. He'd staggered and stumbled off the path and crashed into the bushes.

Poor guy. Bad luck to have his stroke all alone in a remote corner of Muir Woods National Monument on a pretty Saturday morning in May.

They'd link the rented blue Camry to him without too much trouble—it would be the only car left in the lot after closing time that evening.

She doubted if they'd figure out that poor Mr. Lesneski's stroke had not been spontaneous. But if they did, if some sharp-eyed coroner noticed bruising on the sides of the anonymous man's neck, and if the autopsy report speculated that he had been assaulted by somebody proficient in the deadly arts, the case would frustrate the investigators and soon find its way to the bottom of the pile. No suspects, no clues, no witnesses, no crime-scene evidence. Jessie had made certain of all that.

If life were a television show, they'd relentlessly track her down.

But this was the real world. Jessie Church knew how things worked in the real world.

Whether the man lived or died—either way was okay with Jessie—it would take a while for the information to filter back to Howie Cohen in his cell in F.C.I. Cumberland.

Cohen, of course, would understand exactly what had happened to Leonard P. Lesneski. Howie Cohen knew what Jessie Church was capable of.

She'd bought herself some time. That was all.

She stood up, peeled off her gloves and stuffed them into her daypack, put on her sunglasses and green baseball cap, and hunched the pack onto her shoulders. She paused to survey the area with her cop's eye. There were no anomalies. Whoever eventually spotted the man in the bushes would trample the path and the grass and the bushes and destroy any trace of Jessie Church before the police decided to consider it a crime scene, if they ever did.

Jessie turned and headed back through the silent woods to the parking lot. She passed a few hikers along the way, exchanged smiles, said, “Nice day for it.” Just another Saturday hiker.

As she'd expected, the parking lot was packed with vehicles when she got back to it. On a perfect California Saturday in May, Muir Woods National Monument, just fourteen miles north of San Francisco, was always mobbed.

The lot was full of cars but empty of people. Those who had arrived early enough to park here were already hiking in the woods. It was still too early in the morning for them to begin returning to their cars.

Those who arrived after this lot was full would have to park in one of the satellite lots.

So there was nobody around to see the young woman with the sunglasses and the cap pulled low over her face and the daypack on her shoulders unlock the blue Camry, look into the front and back and under the seats, then pop the trunk and remove the small carry-on-sized suitcase, the leather briefcase, the laptop computer, and the camera case. There was nobody to notice that she left the key in the ignition before she shut the doors, or to see her carry the suitcase and the briefcase and the laptop and the camera case to the undistinguished gray Honda Civic on the other side of the lot.

Jessie Church had no illusions. As far as the police were concerned, she figured she'd gotten away with murder.

But Howie Cohen would know.

S
imone sat in her wheelchair watching the evening shadows spread over the meadow and seep into the valley outside the porch windows. Her hands wrestled with each other in her lap. The tremors were bad today.

Jill was standing behind her, brushing Simone's long hair in soothing, rhythmic strokes, and one of Jill's soft, tinkling New Age CDs was playing over the speakers. Jill was humming along with the music.

Dr. Mattes had not tried to soothe her. Simone had made it clear to him long ago that she had powerful intuitions and that she would always know if he dissembled or equivocated or tried to hide or distort any speck of truth from her.

So he told her the truth.

“Your disease is progressing, Simone,” he said after he'd finished examining her a few hours earlier. “Pretty much as we've expected. The spasticity in your legs and arms. The tremors. The sensitivity to heat. The sudden dark moods. The moments of confusion. They're getting intense, and more frequent and more frightening, aren't they?”

Simone had nodded.

“I'll leave some prescriptions with Jill,” he said. “They will help with your symptoms. But . . .” And then the dear man had shrugged and smiled and left the thought unspoken.

Simone knew the rest of it without being told. She would become increasingly confused. She'd begin to lose her memories. Gradually but inexorably her body would betray her and she'd descend into a nightmare of dark, disconnected thoughts and wild random images.

Soon she'd become too much for Jill to care for, and inevitably . . .

Well, that was her fate.

Eleven years ago, when the double vision had started, Dr. Mattes had delivered his awful diagnosis. Primary progressive multiple sclerosis. The disease would develop steadily, he told her, with few remissions. There was no way to predict how rapidly it would consume her body, but there was no cure, no miracle, no escaping her fate.

The onset of this particularly acute form of the disease, he'd told her, typically first appeared in people over forty. Simone believed that she'd not yet had her fortieth birthday back then eleven years ago. But maybe she was older than she thought. Maybe fate had sent this disease as a clue that might help her piece together her childhood, to trace her life back to her birth.

Impossible. She couldn't be that old. That didn't match her memory. Besides, her skin was still smooth, her face unwrinkled. There was not a single strand of gray in her glossy black hair. She knew without ego or narcissism that she was still the beautiful, mysterious, fascinating Simone who made the movies and became the cult star and then suddenly retreated into permanent reclusion.

Simone reached a hand up to her shoulder. Jill stopped brushing and gripped it.

“Are you all right?” said Simone.

“You know I'm sad,” said Jill.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes. I'm sorry. Please don't try to give me courage.”

“I wish I had extra courage to give,” said Simone.

As she had requested candor from Dr. Mattes, so also had Simone demanded of Jill that she always be truthful and straightforward.

When Jill had first come to live here in their retreat in the Catskills, the young nurse had been a passionate lover. As Simone's disease had progressed, their love had deepened, but their lovemaking had diminished, until now all that was left were gentle kisses, soft caresses, heartfelt conversations, and comfortable silences.

Sometimes Simone wanted to ask Jill why she didn't find a more satisfying lover. She was young and fiery. How could she be satisfied with bathing and cooking for an invalid?

But Simone knew the answer. Jill loved her. She didn't have any choice. That was her fate.

“I have decided it is time to call Ted Austin,” said Simone.

Without letting go of Simone's hand, Jill moved around to the front of the wheelchair. She knelt beside it, took Simone's other hand and held them both in hers. She looked up into Simone's eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said.

Simone felt her eyes brimming again. It was happening with increasing frequency lately. Sudden, uncontrollable, unprovoked weeping, of course, was a symptom of her disease's progression, as Dr. Mattes had explained.

“I had hoped,” said Simone, “that I would hear from May. I had hoped to persuade her to come here and spend time with us so I could tell her our story, face to face. That would have fulfilled my obligation.” She paused. “It has been a month. If she was going to respond to my note, she would have done it by now.”

“Maybe Carol Ann Chang isn't your May,” said Jill.

“She is,” said Simone. “I am certain of it.”

“Making a book of your life will be painful for you.”

“Yes,” said Simone. “But it is my legacy. I must do it now, or it will be too late.”

ON HER WAY home from Muir Woods, Jessie took the exit to Sausalito. She drove to the houseboat village, parked her car, and retrieved Leonard P. Lesneski's .22 automatic from her daypack. She quickly disassembled it, shoved the parts into her pockets, then got out of her car and began to saunter casually around the piers and boardwalks.

Here and there she slipped a part of the gun from a pocket and dropped it into the water.

Then she drove to Oakland, stopped at a Salvation Army deposit bin, and threw all the clothes from Lesneski's suitcase into it.

She opened his briefcase. The notebook she'd seen him writing in was there. There were some names and phone numbers that might be worth checking. Jessie stuck the notebook into her glove compartment. She emptied the rest of the briefcase into a Dumpster behind a seafood restaurant.

The empty briefcase went into another Dumpster. The suitcase into a different one.

She decided to hang onto the camera—it was a Nikon, a really nice camera—and the Apple laptop, at least for now. She wanted to see what information she could get from them, and anyway, she could always use good equipment.

JESSIE WAS BACK outside Anthony Moreno's bungalow at seven the next morning with her long-lensed Canon and her video camera and her notebook on the seat beside her.

It was another long day under a hot sun, but Jessie was grateful for the boring routine. It gave her time to refine her plan.

When she got home that evening, she made herself a gin-andtonic, opened up her laptop, took out her notebook, and wrote up her weekly surveillance report.

Then she took the envelope from her desk drawer where she'd stuck it when she'd received it a few weeks earlier. At the time, she hadn't given it much thought. After the disaster at the clinic and all the ensuing publicity, Jessie had received dozens of letters, mostly from men who claimed to be handsome and wealthy, swearing they wanted to marry her.

Well, this note was a little different. It was handwritten in green ink. The penmanship was unquestionably feminine, elegant but slightly tremorous, as if it had been written by an old woman. The postmark was from Beaverkill, New York.

Jessie slid the note from the envelope and read it again.

“My Dear Ms. Chang,” it said. “I have reason to believe that you are my daughter by birth, and that your real name is Jessie Church. I would like to verify this. I beseech you to respond. I enclose my address and telephone number. I anxiously await your reply. Sincerely yours, S. Bonet.”

Well, nothing personal, but Jessie really didn't care. She'd always known she was adopted. She'd never had any interest in tracking down her birth parents. In fact, given the choice of knowing who they were or not knowing, she'd opt for not knowing. She'd done fine so far, not knowing. Anyway, her life was too complicated as it was.

On the other hand, she'd checked this S. Bonet's address in her Atlas and found that Beaverkill, New York, was a tiny town in a lightly populated mountainous area north of New York City.

A long way from San Francisco, and maybe far enough from Howie Cohen.

SHE GAVE DEL her weekly report at their regular Monday morning meeting.

He read it, then looked up at her. “So you think this Moreno's legit, huh?”

“I'm sure he didn't make me,” said Jessie, “if that's what you're asking. He behaves exactly like a man with a serious back problem who's having a lot of discomfort and should not be driving a bus.”

“They signed us up for two weeks.”

She shrugged. “Get somebody else. I've had it.”

“Give it one more week,” he said. “Come on.”

Jessie shook her head. “I need a break, Del. I'm going to take some vacation time. Anybody can do a stakeout.”

“If I refused, you'd threaten to quit, right?”

She grinned. “Absolutely. And if you still said no, I
would
quit.”

“Well,” said Del, “fine. Whatever. I guess you've earned it. Got any plans?”

Jessie shook her head. “Probably just turn off the telephone, hang around the house, sleep late, lay out on the beach, a day at a spa, maybe drive down to L.A. or San Diego, visit some friends. I just need to relax.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don't know.”

“You better come back, Jessie,” he said. “I need you.”

“Sure,” she said. “I'll be back.”

She hated lying to Del. But what he didn't know he couldn't tell anybody else.

After leaving the office, Jessie made the rounds of her banks. She had spread her money among several modest-sized accounts, all in different banks scattered around the city, all in the name of Carol Ann Chang. It was a precaution from her undercover days when it was quite literally a matter of life and death that mysterious deposits and withdrawals should not call attention to themselves.

When she was finished, she'd withdrawn a little over eighteen thousand dollars in cash from five different checking and savings accounts, leaving enough in the checking accounts to pay her bills, and enough in all of them to keep the accounts open.

Back home, she wrote checks for all of her bills, including the rent, even though it wasn't due for another three weeks, and she paid the entire balances of her two credit cards.

She figured that would give her at least two months before some computer flashed a red flag on her telephone or electricity account, or her landlord tried to get hold of her, or debt-collectors started checking and figured out that Carol Ann Chang was no longer living at 4175 24th Street in Noe Valley in San Francisco.