C Is for Corpse

  I shrugged noncommittally "I don't know what he's done."

  The drinks arrived and Derek took a sip from his as though he tasted martinis for a living. He nodded judiciously and set the glass down with care in the center of his cocktail napkin. He touched a knuckle to the corners of his mouth. His movements were becoming liquid and his eyes were beginning to slide around in their sockets like marbles in oil. Kitty had apparently gotten crocked in exactly the same way, only on downers instead of gin.

  The bartender took a couple of beers out of the cooler and moved down to the other end of the bar to serve a customer.

  Derek's voice dropped. "This is just between you and me and the lamppost," he said. "But the kid's been cited twice on drunk-driving raps and he got some little gal knocked up over a year ago. Glen wants to treat it like youthful hijinks – boys will be boys and all that sort of crap – but let Kitty cross the line once and all hell breaks loose."

  I was beginning to see why Bobby thought their marriage wouldn't last. We were playing hardball here, parent vs. parent in the semifinals. Derek tried on a smile that was meant to charm, shifting over to neutral ground.

  "So where do you start on a thing like this?" he asked.

  "I don't know yet. Usually I nose around, do a background check, uncover a thread, and follow where it leads." I looked at him, watching while he nodded as though I'd actually said something significant.

  "Well, I wish you luck. Bobby's a good kid, but there's a lot going on. More to that kid than meets the eye," he said with a knowing look. His speech wasn't slurred, but the consonants were getting soft. The winsome smile flickered back with its sly message. His whole manner implied that he could have said plenty, but discretion held him back. I didn't take him seriously. He was doing some kind of maneuvering, apparently unaware of how transparent he was. I took a sip of wine, wondering if there was anything else I might learn from him.

  Derek glanced at his watch. "I better get home. Face the music." He tossed the rest of his martini back and eased himself off the barstool. He pulled out his wallet and sorted through several layers of bills until he found a five and a ten, which he placed on the bar.

  "Will Glen be mad?"

  He smiled to himself as if he were considering a number of replies. "Glen is always mad these days. It's been a hell of a birthday, I can tell you that."

  "Maybe next year will be better. Thanks for the drinks."

  "Thanks for coming down here. I appreciate your concern. If I can do anything to help you, you just let me know."

  We walked the half-block to my car and then parted company. I watched him in my rearview mirror as he ambled toward the visitors' parking lot on the far side of the hospital. I suspected he was pretending more motor control than he actually had. We'd only been in the Plantacion for thirty minutes and I'd watched him down two martinis. I started my car and did a U-turn, pulling up next to him. I leaned across the seat and opened the door on the passenger side. "Why don't I give you a lift?"

  "Oh no, I'm fine," he said. He stood for a moment, his body swaying slightly. I could see the message being relayed through his central nervous system. He cocked his head, frowning, and then he got into my car and pulled the door shut. "I got problems enough, right?"

  "Right," I said.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  By the time I got into the office the next morning at nine, Bobby's attorney had forwarded copies of the initial accident report, along with notes from the follow-up investigation and numerous eight-by-ten color photographs that showed in glossy detail just how thoroughly demolished Bobby's car had been and just how dead Rick Bergen had become as a result. His body had been found, crushed and mangled, halfway down the slope. I recoiled from the sight as though a bright light had been flashed in my face, a shock of revulsion running down my frame. I had to steel myself to look again so that I could study the details dispassionately. There was something about the way the police photographer's lights had been rigged against the harsh dark of night that made the death seem garish, like a low-budget horror move that was real short on plot. I shuffled through the series until I found photographs of the accident scene itself.

  Bobbys Porsche had taken out a big section of guardrail, had sheared off a scrub oak at its base, scarred boulders, and dug a long trench through the underbrush, apparently flipping over five or six times before it came to rest at the bottom of the ravine in a crumpled mass of twisted metal and shattered glass. There were several views of the car, front and rear, showing its position relative to various landmarks in the terrain and then the close-ups of Bobby before the ambulance crew had removed him from the wreckage. "Oh shit," I breathed. I put the whole stack down for a moment and put a hand across my eyes. I hadn't even had my coffee yet and there I was looking at human bodies turned inside out on impact.

  I opened the French doors and went out on the balcony and sucked in some fresh air. Below me, State Street was orderly and quiet. Traffic was light and pedestrians obeyed the signals as if they were appearing in an educational film instructing grade-school kids how to conduct themselves on city streets. I watched all the healthy people walk up and down with their limbs intact and the flesh still covering their bones. The sun was shining and the palm trees weren't even stirred by a breeze. Everything looked so ordinary, but only for the moment and only as far as I could see. Death could pop up anytime, a jarring jack-in-the-box with a fixed, bloody grin.

  I went back inside and made a pot of coffee and then sat down at my desk, going through the photographs again and taking time now to study the police reports. A copy of the postmortem examination on Rick Bergen had been included and I noticed that it had been conducted by Jim Fraker, whose responsibilities at St. Terry's apparently extended to such services. Santa Teresa is too small a town to pay for its own police morgue and its own medical examiner, so the work is contracted out.

  The report Dr. Fraker had dictated effectively reduced Rick's death to observations about the craniocerebral trauma he'd sustained, with a catalogue of abrasions, contusions, small-intestine avulsions, mesenteric lacerations, and sufficient skeletal damage to certify Ricks crossing of the River Styx.

  I hauled out my typewriter and opened a file for Bobby Callahan, feeling soothed and comforted as I translated all the unsettling facts into a terse account of events to date. I logged in his check, made a note of the receipt number, and filed the copy of the contract he'd signed. I typed in the names and addresses of Rick Bergens parents and Bobby's ex-girlfriend, along with a list of those present at Glen Callahan's house the night before. I didn't speculate. I didn't editorialize. I just typed it all out and used my two-hole punch at the top of the paper, which I then clamped into a folder and placed in my file cabinet.

  That done, I glanced at my watch. Ten-twenty. Bobby's physical-therapy regimen was parceled out into daily stints, while mine was set up for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was possible he was still at the gym. I closed up the office and went down the back steps to the lot, where I keep my car parked. I headed toward Santa Teresa Fitness, gassing up on the way, and caught Bobby just as he was coming out of the building. His hair was still damp from the shower and the scent of Coast soap radiated from his skin. Despite the facial paralysis, the crippled left arm, and the limp, something of the original Bobby Callahan shone through, young and strong, with the blond good looks of a California surfer. I'd seen pictures of him broken, and by comparison, he now seemed miraculously whole, even with the scars still etched on his face like tattoos done by an amateur. When he saw me, he smiled crookedly, dabbing automatically at his chin. "I didn't expect to see you here this morning," he said.

  "How was your workout?"

  He tilted from side to side, indicating so-so. I tucked my arm through his.

  "I have a request, but you don't have to agree," I said.

  "What's that?"

  I hesitated for a moment. "I want you to go up the pass with me and show me where the car went off."

/>   The smile faded. He glanced away from me and launched into motion again, moving toward his car with that lilting gait. "All right, but I want to stop by and see Kitty first."

  "Is she allowed to have visitors?"

  "I can talk my way in," he said. "People don't like to deal with cripples, so I can usually get anything I want."

  "Spoiled," I said.

  "Take any advantage you can," he replied sheepishly.

  "You want to drive?"

  He shook his head. "Lets drop my car off at the house and take yours."

  I parked in the visitor's lot at St. Terry's and waited in the car while he went in to see Kitty. I imagined she'd be back on her feet by now, still pissed off, and raising hell on the ward. Not anything I wanted to face. I hope to talk to her again in a couple of days, but I preferred to give her time to settle down. I flipped on the car radio, tapping on the steering wheel in time to the music. Two nurses passed through the parking lot in white uniforms, white shoes and hose, with dark blue capes that looked like something left over from World War I. In due course, Bobby emerged from the building and hobbled across the parking lot, his expression preoccupied. He got into the car. I flipped the radio off and started the engine, backing out of the slot.

  "Everything okay?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  He was quiet as I headed across town and turned left onto the secondary road that cuts along the back side of Santa Teresa at the base of the foothills. The sky was a flat blue and cloudless, looking like semigloss paint that had been applied with a roller. It was hot, and the hills were brown and dry, laid out like a pile of kindling. The long grasses near the road had bleached out to a pale gold, and once in a while, I caught sight of lizards perched up on big rocks, looking as gray and still as twigs.

  The road twisted, two lanes of blacktop angling back and forth up the side of the mountain. I downshifted twice and my little VW still complained of the climb.

  "I thought I remembered something," Bobby said after a while. "But I can't seem to pin it down. That's why I had to see Kitty."

  "What kind of thing?"

  "I had an address book. One of those small leather-bound types about the size of a playing card. Cheap. Red. I gave it to someone for safekeeping and now I have no idea who." He paused, shaking his head with puzzlement.

  "You don't remember why it was important?"

  "No. I remember feeling anxious about it, thinking I better not have it in my possession because it was dangerous to me, so I passed it on. At the time – and I remember this part clearly – I figured I could retrieve it later." He shrugged, snorting derisively. "So much for that."

  "Was this before the accident or afterwards?"

  "Don't know. I just remember giving it to someone."

  "Wouldn't it be dangerous to whoever you gave it to?"

  "I don't think so. God." He slid down on his spine so he could rest his head on the back of the seat. He peered through the windshield, following the line of gray hills up to the left where the pass cuts through at the crest. "I hate this feeling. I hate knowing I once knew something and having no access to it. It's just an image with nothing attached to it. There aren't any memory cues so I have no way to place it in time. It's like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with a whole hunk knocked off on the floor."

  "But how does it work when you forget like that? Is there any retrieving the information or is it just gone?"

  "Oh, sometimes it'll come back, but usually it's blank... like a hole in the bottom of a box. Whatever used to be there has spilled out along the way."

  "What made you think of it in the first place?"

  "I don't know. I was looking through a desk drawer and came across the red leather memo pad that was part of the same set. Suddenly, I got this flash." He fell silent. I glanced over at him and realized how tense he was. He was massaging his bad hand, milking the fingers as if they were long rubber teats.

  "Kitty didn't know anything about it?"

  He shook his head.

  "How's she doing?"

  "She's up and around. I guess Derek's going over to see her later on... ." He paused. We were reaching the crest of the hill and a muscle near his left eye had started to jump.

  "Are you going to be all right with this?" I asked.

  He was staring intently at the side of the road. "Just up here. Slow down and pull over if you can."

  I checked my rearview mirror. There were three cars behind me, but the road was narrowing from three lanes to two. I eased over to the right and found a gravel shoulder where I could park. The bridge, with its low concrete guardrails, was about ten yards ahead. Bobby sat there, staring to his right.

  Where the road descends from the summit, the whole valley opens out, hills sweeping back as far as the eye can see to a range of lavender mountains pasted against the rim of the sky. The August heat shimmered in silence. The land seemed vast and primitive, looking as it must have looked for thousands of years. In the distance, live oaks dotted the landscape, as snaggy and dark and hunched as buffalo.

  There'd been no rain for months and the vista seemed chalky and pale, the color washed out.

  Closer to us, the roadside dropped away into the treacherous canyon that had nearly marked Bobby's death nine months ago. A length of metal railing had been replaced, but where the bridge began, there was still a chunk of concrete missing.

  "The other car started ramming us from behind just as we came over the rim of the hill," he said. I thought he meant to continue, so I waited.

  He walked forward a few feet, gravel crunching under his shoes. He was clearly uneasy as he peered down the rocky slope. I looked back over my shoulder at the few cars passing. No one paid the slightest attention to us.

  I studied the scene, picking out one of the scarred boulders I'd seen in the photograph, and farther down, the raw, jagged stump where a scrub oak had been snapped off at the base. I knew the Santa Teresa police had swept the area clean of debris from the accident, so there was no need to whip out a magnifying glass or creep around picking fibers from the underbrush.

  Bobby turned to me. "Have you ever been close to death?"

  "Yes."

  "I remember thinking, This is it. I'm gone.' I disconnected, I felt like a plant ripped up by the roots. Airborne." He stopped. "And then I was cold and everything hurt and people were talking to me and I couldn't understand a word they said. That was in the hospital and two weeks had passed. I've wondered since then if that's how newborn babies feel. Bewildered like that and disoriented. Helpless. It was such a struggle to stay in touch with the world. Sending down new roots. I knew I could choose. I was barely attached, barely tethered, and I could feel how easy it'd be just to let go like a balloon and sail away."

  "But you hung on."

  "Hey, my mother willed it. Every time I opened my eyes, I saw her face. And when I closed my eyes, I heard her voice. She'd say, 'We're going to make it, Bobby. We're going to do this, you and I."

  He was silent again. I thought, Jesus, what must it be like to have a mother who could love you that way? My parents had died when I was five, in a freak car accident. We'd been on a Sunday outing, driving up to Lompoc, when a huge boulder tumbled down the mountain and smashed through the windshield. My father had died instantly and we'd crashed. I'd been in the backseat, thrust down against the floorboards on impact, wedged in by the crushed frame. My mother had lingered, moaning and crying, sinking into a silence finally that I sensed was ominous and forever. It had taken them hours to extract me from the wreckage, trapped there with the dead whom I loved who had left me for all time. After that, I was raised by a no-nonsense aunt who had done her best, who had loved me deeply, but with a matter-of-factness that had failed to nourish some part of me.

  Bobby had been infused with a love of such magnitude that it had brought him back from the grave. It was odd, when he was so broken, that I experienced an envy that made tears well up in my eyes. I felt a laugh burble and he turned a puzzled glance on me.

  I
took out a Kleenex and blew my nose. "I just realized how much I envy you," I said.

  He smiled ruefully. "That's a first."

  We got back in the car. There'd been no blinding recall, no sudden recollection of forgotten facts, but I'd seen the miry pit into which he had been flung and I'd felt the bond between us strengthened.

  "Have you been up here since the accident?"

  "No. I never had the nerve and no one ever suggested it. Made me sweat."

  I started the car. "How about a beer?"

  "How about a bourbon on the rocks?"

  We went to the Stage Coach Tavern, just off the main road, and talked for the rest of the afternoon.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  When I dropped him off at his house at five, he hesitated as he got out of the car, pausing as he'd done before with his hand on the door, peering back in at me.

  "Know what I like about you?" he said.

  "What," I said.

  "When I'm with you, I don't feel self-conscious or like I'm crippled or ugly. I don't know how you do that, but it's nice."

  I looked at him for a moment, feeling oddly self-conscious myself "I'll tell you. You remind me of a birthday present somebody's sent through the mail. The papers torn and the box is damaged, but there's still something terrific in there. I enjoy your company."

  A half-smile formed and disappeared. He glanced over at the house and then back to me. He had something else on his mind, but he seemed embarrassed to admit to it.

  "What," I coaxed.

  He tilted his head and the look in his eyes was one I knew. "If I were O.K. ... if I'd been whole, would you have thought about having a relationship with me? I mean, boy-girl type?"