Too Close to the Edge Page 15

  I pulled out my shield. “Detective Smith. I’m investigating a murder. Let’s talk inside?”

  His hesitation was long enough for me to describe it as acquiescence, should the question arise. I walked past him into a dark foyer. Through an archway, I could see the living room. Its oak paneling seemed to shrink back against the studs, as if humiliated by the cast-off Danish modern sofa and chairs scattered before it. It was one of those Berkeley houses coveted for its dark wood and charm, a house in which you were never warm enough to take off your sweater. It smelled of dust and stale chili. “You live here, Mr….”

  “Yeah. That a crime?”

  “Impeding an officer is a crime. Your name?”

  “Blaine Horton Morris. One four five, eight six, three …”

  “Fine.” I put the bag on a table and pulled out my pad for effect. “Now I’m going to tell you about the aspect of the crime I’m working on now. Have you heard about running shoes being stolen?” I glanced down at his feet. They were wide and long, like the feet of a six-foot duck. They were encased in the largest pair of grey and maroon-striped running shoes I had ever seen.

  He followed my gaze. “Hey, you aren’t accusing me …”

  “Not now, Blaine. But someone has been making the drops here, and—”

  “Here? Passing the hot shoes here?” He laughed. His teeth were too big for his mouth. They overwhelmed his otherwise nondescript face. “The thief is coming here? I’d like to see that.”

  “Fine. The buyer is coming. You can see him in a few minutes. Stand back there.” I motioned toward the hallway that led back to the kitchen.

  “That’d be a kick to see the guy come up hot for his racers and get busted. But you need my permission, right?”

  “You’re in a very dicey position here, in a house where someone’s passing stolen goods. If you’re not involved, you can show it now.”

  He drew those big incisors up over his lower lip. “Well, I don’t think so. Maybe they need the money. The guys they steal from can afford it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, sure. No one’s panhandling in new Nikes.”

  Dusty Wilson would be ringing the bell any moment. I took a breath. “I’m not here to argue sociological theory. Theft is theft. It’s your duty to cooperate with the police.”

  He laughed. “Lady, my only duty is to me.”

  “Well, then, look at it this way. Do you have classes you have to go to, papers you have to write, quizzes you have to take?”

  “So?”

  “Questioning about a case like this isn’t over in one day You can spend a lot of time coming down to the station and going over your story. And when you come, Blaine, it isn’t at your convenience, it’s at ours. If you happen to miss a quiz, well …” I shrugged.

  “Hey, are you threatening me? My father—”

  “Your father would expect you to cooperate. Your father wouldn’t be amused to find his son involved in ring of thieves. You’re an adult now. We’re not talking about your being suspended from school for a couple days. We’re talking felony. Jail.”

  The blood drained from his face. He was thinking. I reached in my pocket for the note, ready to answer Dusty Wilson’s ring.

  I motioned him back into the hallway.

  He started to move, then stopped.

  On the deck I could hear steps.

  I glared at Blaine.

  “No,” he snapped.

  The bell rang.

  I pulled open the door. “Dusty?”

  A tall sandy-haired man in shorts and a T-shirt nodded.

  I stepped out, pulling a shoe from the bag.

  He reached into his pants pocket.

  “Hey man,” Blaine yelled. “She’s a cop.”

  Wilson spun, covered the deck in three steps, flung himself over the rail, scrambled to his feet, and headed full-out for Telegraph. Pereira was twenty yards behind.

  To Blaine I said, “Stay put or you’re in bigger trouble.” I ran down the steps, up the driveway, and through the tangle of discarded deck furniture to the hedge in the rear. Catching the top, I leapt, thrust my foot up to hook it on the far edge. It fell to the ground with a thud. It hadn’t even come close. I’d done plenty more than that in training. I tried again. No go. I had no reserve left. Shoving my arms forward in diving position, I threaded through the hedge, the branches scratching my arms, the bitter-smelling sap sticking to my skin. The yard on the other side looked like an upscale parking lot. I ran around the clutch of Triumph sports cars and BMW’s to the driveway. At the front edge of the building I stopped and glanced right, onto the sidewalk. Pereira had planned to herd Wilson up here. But there was no one on the sidewalk but four women students lugging books. I sighed. Chasing is not shepherding. If Wilson was not here, he could be mingling in the crowds on Telegraph or hiding in the bushes on campus.

  Walking toward Telegraph, I restrained myself from kicking the sidewalk as Pereira had done yesterday.

  I turned the corner.

  Dusty Wilson was lying spread-eagled on the sidewalk. Connie Pereira was smiling.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE STATION IS OLD, the paint none too recent. Dusk mutes what colors there are. The institution-beige walls of the bullpen seem to press inward. The walls of my own office look scummy gray. But the holding cells are the worst, with their army drab walls, with the stench of urine that no amount of ammonia ever removes, and with the very public openness that makes a prisoner feel naked even under four layers of shirts and sweaters. The interrogation rooms are a little better, but after a couple hours in a cell, few prisoners appreciate the improvement.

  Dusty Wilson was Pereira’s collar. She got first go at him. Coleman, the Avenue beat officer whose case this was, had rousted himself from his sick bed when he got the word. He was on his way to take charge. The Day Watch beat officers were waiting for the other tenants of the Channing house to come home. But Blaine Morris was mine.

  Morris bore scant resemblance to the cocky kid who had stood in the doorway, deciding he wouldn’t deign to help me. Now he fidgeted in the plastic chair, nervously running his long fingers through his hair, oblivious to the fact that the combing was thrusting clumps up from his skull.

  I sat on the other side of the scarred green table. Between us were the symbols of officialdom—the pen and pad and the tape recorder. “You’re entitled to a lawyer, Blaine,” I said, making a great effort to keep any hint of triumph from my voice.

  He nodded.

  “You don’t have to have one, but it’s your right.”

  “I know that,” he snapped defiantly, then slumped back down. “I don’t want a lawyer.”

  “If you had one, he’d tell you that you are in a lot of trouble. This isn’t a school prank. You’re not a minor any more. This is grand theft.”

  His mouth stiffened.

  “It’s not something your parents can get you out of now. You’re on your own. What your lawyer would tell you is that your best chance, your only chance, is to cooperate with us.”

  His breath caught.

  “Your house was the center of a theft ring,” I said, stretching the truth. “We’re going to bring in everyone who lives there. We’re going to start off assuming that all the tenants were equally involved in this ring. Of course, you’ve already refused to cooperate once …”

  “Hey, you can’t convict me because of that!”

  I let a moment pass before saying, “I’m not judging you. I’m just telling you the lay of the land. Now, anyone can choose to be the one who tells us about the theft ring. We’ll remember that help. But we only need one to tell us. We’ll talk to whoever decides first. Only one of you can help himself.”

  “And rat on his friends!”

  “This isn’t junior high, Blaine. We’re not talking about who threw a spitball across the room. We’re talking jail. If you’d rather read about your friends’ graduation from a cell, then you keep quiet. It doesn’t matter to me who gets the benef
it of cooperating. I’m only dealing with you because you’re here. When your friends get home, I’ll see them.”

  He ran his big teeth over his chin, catching them at the edge of his lip and pulling the soft flesh in.

  I doodled—a goose on a platter, though an uninformed observer might have taken it for a pigeon or an anteater. “There are what, four, five of you living there? I can tell you from experience that one of you will decide to help. It may not be you.” I leaned back. “Actually, I’m hoping it won’t be. You caused me a lot of trouble this afternoon. We could have blown the whole operation because of you. You’re not my favorite person. I’d really hate to see a smart-aleck rich kid like you get the advantage of cooperating.”

  Again he pulled his teeth over his lip.

  I flipped the pad shut, stuck the pen in my pocket, and pulled the pad to my edge of the table. Then I unplugged the tape recorder.

  “Okay,” he said. “I don’t like doing this, but I don’t have any choice.”

  Now I allowed myself a smile. Plugging the recorder back in I said, “We’ll record this. For my use, and your protection.”

  He leaned forward toward the recorder, his face suddenly relaxed. It made me a bit uncomfortable to see how easily he had assimilated my offer of rationalization.

  “Give me the full names of your parents.”

  I expected him to fuss, but he simply said, “Edward Horton Morris and Pamela Blaine Morris Dixon. They’re divorced.”

  So he wasn’t Liz’s son. I’d have to check his roommates. “Tell me how the ring operated.”

  “She set it up. We just kind of went along for the fun of it. When she first suggested it, it was like a game. I mean, we didn’t really think she could run a scheme like this. I mean she is, well, like they say, limited.”

  “How exactly did she run it?”

  “She got the word that someone wanted a pair of say, Nikes, size 10-C. Some common size. I mean, she would never have taken an order from me.” He glanced down at the table, as if peering through to his huge feet. “Sometimes the guy would take any of a number of shoes. That made it easier; it gave us a bigger pool to choose from.”

  “Where did she get the shoes?”

  “We got the shoes. She just took the names of guys, or women, depending, from the sales slips in the running shoe store. You know the one, Racer’s Edge.”

  “But they weren’t all from Racer’s Edge.”

  “No, it would have been too suspicious that way. We all know that. So every so often we just grabbed another pair and tossed them in the Good Will or something.”

  “Go on with the Racer’s Edge operation.”

  “She got the names and addresses of all the people who had bought the shoe we wanted in the last week. There were a lot. I mean, everyone on campus and half of Berkeley must be going through running shoes like the streets are burning. She gave us the names and we followed them. If we could, we struck up a conversation, casual-like, like on line for a frozen yogurt. Then we could ask them about yoga, or dance, or meditation. Listen, half of Berkeley is into one of those things. You know this isn’t a scam you could pull off in Lakewood, New Jersey. People are really big on leaving their shoes outside, here. I’ll tell you it really made me think. Now I never leave the house without locking the door. Can I have a glass of water?”

  I turned off the tape and filled a paper cup from the fountain outside. Flicking the tape back on I said, “Repeat the last thing you said so we have continuity on the tape.”

  He gulped down the water. “You mean when I asked for this, the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have a glass of water?”

  “How did you actually get the shoes?”

  “Oh, well, we just followed the guys till they went to a class and lifted them. I mean we couldn’t follow a guy if we’d already talked to him. Then we had to switch off.”

  “And then what did you do with the shoes?”

  “Brought them home.”

  “And?”

  “She picked them up.”

  “What did you get paid?”

  For the first time he smiled and his eyes softened. “You could say we got half. Fifty dollars a pair. But most of the time it just worked out that we didn’t pay her.”

  “You didn’t pay her?” What was the four hundred and fifty dollars Heling found? “You didn’t pay her because she was one guy’s mother?”

  “Mother?” He laughed. “She wasn’t anyone’s mother. She was our house cleaner.”

  CHAPTER 21

  AURA SUMMERLIGHT HAD BEEN running the shoe theft ring. I greeted that knowledge with a variety of emotions: relief that Liz Goldenstern had not been involved, and at the same time discomfort with that relief; delight that the mastermind was so easily accessible, under guard at the county hospital, yet disappointment that this discovery led nowhere. At least if Liz had been involved, this case might have given me a clue to her murder. Now I had nothing but the solution to a small-time theft ring.

  As for the murder case, I was left with less than I thought I had before. I had hoped that Liz’s son would turn up and bring with him the key to her killer. But as Ian Stuart had assured me, Liz had no son. Not only was none of the shoe thieves related to Liz, none but Blaine had even heard of her. Blaine Morris was the boy Greta Tennerud took to be Liz’s son. Blaine had admitted seeing Liz once or twice when he left a note for Aura at Liz’s flat or passed her on the way to the back room at Racer’s Edge. But he hadn’t gone back there to see Liz; he’d gone to meet Aura. (Why hadn’t he waited until she came to clean his house, I’d asked in amazement. Rush orders, he’d replied, sounding like head of General Motors.)

  What I didn’t know was why Aura had hid the shoes in Liz’s bag and the money in her bedside drawer. But that could wait until morning. She’d still be here, and I’d be awake.

  It took me an hour to finish the minimum paper work and sign out. In my IN box was a note from the patrol officer who had contacted Liz Goldenstern’s lawyer. It verified what Laurence Mayer had told me about their financial arrangement. He gave her the building and paid her attendant.

  I considered stopping for a hamburger, but it seemed too great an effort. Even eating ice cream was a more daunting task than I could handle.

  I have a better-than-average ability to manage without sleep. I’d learned all the tricks in school, and afterwards, when normal people let all-nighters become memories of a wild or procrastinatory youth, I had stayed up with my graduate student husband. Then, I had started in the department on Night Watch. And now, working what the guys on shifts call banker’s hours, I frequently found myself staying up too late and jolting awake in shock when the alarm rang. But thirty-six hours of chasing suspects, of psyching myself up for confrontations, or of being taken aback by ones I hadn’t expected—of seeing death—had shown me my limits. When I got in my own car, it took me two tries to find the ignition.

  I headed home, relieved that night had fallen and it was too dark for Mr. Kepple to be dervishing around the yard. He wouldn’t be traipsing after a power mower louder than the snoring Ott. He wouldn’t be futilely trying to start his rip-cord edger. He wouldn’t be scattering the fifteen or so leaves that dared to settle outside my jalousies with his hurricane-force power blower.

  I pulled up in front of the house and walked up the path—or what used to be the path, and was now the bare earth I had tripped in last night—around to my flat. The yard was empty, except at the back, where there was a tarp with a long cylindrical object under it. Mr. Kepple was nowhere in sight. I smiled. There was, after all, some fairness in life. The forces that be were repaying me for last night’s mishap. Tonight Mr. Kepple would be making the circuit of garden shops, assessing every redwood burl in the East Bay.

  I opened the door and walked across the green indoor-outdoor carpet, ignoring the piles of magazines, newspapers, and catalogs that could provide for my every need throughout eternity. I should root out the ones I was never going t
o read and clear off the table. But they would still be there when I got around to it. For now, a quick shower, and into my sleeping bag before dusk darkened to night. (I should think about getting a futon. But that project would be there, too, when I got around to it). I turned the water on high, hung my clothes on the hook, and stepped into the shower. It was almost as good as sleep. The staccato spray from the shower head massaged my tense neck and shoulders, then worked its way down my back. I almost forgot to soap up, and stepped out reluctantly when the hot water ran out. Pulling on a nightshirt, I dashed through the kitchen and drew the sleeping bag up around my neck.

  I had just set the alarm when a spotlight lit the yard. I scrunched down and pulled the sleeping bag over my head. The air inside was thick and hot. I thought of Liz Goldenstern gasping for breath in the inlet. I told myself to blot out that picture before it gave me nightmares. But the scene grew dimmer before I could will myself to action. My body gave that moment-before-sleep jerk, as if I had stepped off the sidewalk by mistake.

  The whirr of the chain saw shrieked from the yard.

  I jolted up.

  The noise stopped.

  Warily, I lay down. I could hear Mr. Kepple’s footsteps in the yard. The tarp flapped. I pulled the bag back over my head.

  The saw shrieked again.

  I put the pillow over my ears.

  The pitch lowered. Mr. Kepple was sawing wood. Eight-thirty at night, in the dark, and he was sawing wood! Now he lifted the saw away, its frustrated blades caterwauling.

  Furious, I sat up in the bag and edged toward the jalousies. Opening the bottom half, I yelled, “Mr. Kepple!”

  He lowered the saw back to the ten-foot log.

  A light came on in the kitchen of the house behind us. Bert Prendergast peered irritably through the window, shut off the light, and stepped out onto the porch.

  “Mr. Kepple!” I yelled.

  Of course he didn’t hear me. He lifted the saw with reverence and attacked the spotlit log.