Sudden Exposure Page 6

  I started toward the kitchen—I could taste the marzipan, feel the ground almonds between my teeth, smell the—I stopped. No. I couldn’t have ice cream, either. Howard classified that not as the staff of life, which it is in my life, but as junk food.

  Damn, I needed to eat something. There was a box of chocolate chip cookies Howard’s mother had sent in the …

  No.

  There were some Snickers in the bedroom.

  He’d probably consider them junk food, too.

  Suddenly I was starved. What could I eat? It was way too early for Noah’s Bagels to open. The scones at Peet’s Coffee wouldn’t be available for four more hours. What else was there? I was ravenous and there wasn’t one thing available.

  I was going to shrivel and die. And the only keening at my wake would be Howard’s laughter.

  In the meantime I’d spend the rest of the night lying awake thinking how hungry—and stupid—I was.

  In the end I—and Howard—decided to test the theory that sating one appetite dulls the others.

  It was close to 11A.M. when I woke up. Starved. I went through the whole food litany again—pizza, ice cream, cookies, the emergency Snickers in the night stand. The Snickers was out anyway. Howard, the crumb, had devoured it after concluding that the Law of Cross-sating is erroneous. He’d taken it into the bathroom as a courtesy to me, but I could still hear the wrapper crackling and catch a whiff of that chocolate and caramel. It had been the last smell in my mind before I fell asleep. It must have stayed there all night—I remembered a dream in which I was buried, happily, in a mudslide—and now the whole bedroom smelled like suburban Hershey. Miserably, hungrily, I sank back under the covers. What did Prozac taste like? But even if it came in chocolate, the tablets had to be too small to matter.

  In a wicker chair across the room, Howard sat, elbows on thighs, chin in hands, eyes glazed. “Walls are filthy,” he grumbled. “Need a coat of paint.”

  The walls—deep green—could have gone half a century without showing dirt. In fact, Howard had painted them a year ago. I smiled. “A little lost for things to do?” Caught in my own anguish, I’d almost forgotten Howard’s half of the bargain.

  “Nah. I’m going to the Y. Or maybe I’ll just come back to bed.”

  “Maybe you should just do that.”

  He was dressed, but undressing was another of his skills. He dropped his jeans to the floor, exposing his long lightly furred legs, stretched, and wriggled out of the yellow turtleneck I’d gotten him from Eddie Bauer, displaying his lightly muscled chest and those sinewy shoulders that told of hours of crawl and butterfly. And when his Jockeys hit the floor, I noted once again what a fine tight set of buns the man had. I clasped one of them as he slid under the sheets and kicked off the blankets. My nipples hardened against his chest; I ran my lips across his collarbone, and when he pulled me closer, I arched my neck so I could continue to breathe. I loved the man; he had a great body, but practically speaking, in bed there was too much of it. And there had been times when he’d clutched me to him and pressed my mouth and both nostrils hard into his chest. Sex is like swimming, though, and over the years I’d learned where the air pockets were. And now I luxuriated in the smooth warm feel of his skin, the communion of his kisses that required no words.

  But an hour later, after we’d traipsed sweatily to the shower, I was hungry.

  “Let’s get on the road,” Howard said.

  “Okay, if we can go by Peet’s first.” At least I could have a latte. No one in Berkeley would label Peet’s as junk food.

  A scone occupied me till we crossed the Carquinez Straits, the latte all the way past Vallejo, but after that the road rolled on undifferentiated like a giant cruller. Howard and I were on the far side of Sacramento when we figured out exactly how long it had been since we’d been out of the Bay Area together. Between tiling, shingling, spackling, and painting commitments and my overtime in Homicide (a little obsession of my own I decided not to bring up), we had become the stable homebodies of our neighborhood.

  It wasn’t until we started up into the Sierra that I realized we never had gotten around to discussing either of the cases. With all the conflict and accusations between Bryn Wiley and Sam Johnson, I’d almost forgotten the Bare Buns Brigade. “Any word on the naked runner?”

  “No.”

  “We have an ID?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t his friends ID him?”

  “No.”

  “Howard, why not? It’s not like the Bare Buns Brigade lures passing men off the street to a life of lewdity. They had to know the guy.”

  “Right, but they knew him as Dingo. I suppose I could contact the Australian Feral Dog Society and see if any of their charges have hightailed it east.”

  “The guy knew the terrain better than I did,” I insisted, a mite churlishly. Sugar deprivation does that.

  “Could be a transient who cased the area.”

  “A transient casing beat two? Naked? It’s not like he was planning to burgle, at least not and hide the loot.”

  Howard shook his head and concentrated on the road, and the bittersweet pleasure of driving his new truck. He would not be taking it to Fresno; if it had been made of marzipan, I would have been pleased about that. The road was clear, but snow sugared the trees and bushes. I turned the heater up. If I had stayed home, I would have sat out in the yard, lapping up the warmth of that big caramel sun and reading the latest Oliver Sacks article in The New Yorker. In the Bay Area you sunbathe in March and drive to see snow. Even ghetto schools close for Ski Week.

  Howard downshifted as the traffic slowed. “I questioned the two guys, them bitching the whole time about being cold, like the salmon-pink Hilton should have offered them terry-cloth robes instead of jail clothes. What I got out of them was that Dingo’d been in town a couple of weeks.”

  “And he’d masterminded their routine?” I speculated.

  “No, they’d done the dance before.”

  “But the location, Howard, Dingo chose that, didn’t he?”

  “They swore they didn’t.”

  “You believed them?”

  Howard hesitated. “Yeah. They’d given their performances before, on the Avenue, on Shattuck, outside the Ashby BART station, places where there are students and the like. But Rose Walk, for them it made no sense.”

  I nodded. “It’s not like they’re an outreach program taking their art to nudity-deprived neighborhoods. But they did choose Rose Walk, or Dingo chose it.” I sighed. “I just can’t believe it has no connection to Sam Johnson or Bryn Wiley.”

  Howard laughed. “Jill, you want to believe that.”

  “Well …”

  “Okay, here’s the question: If you could choose to discover Dingo was Sam Johnson’s spy, or that the hotel in Tahoe served broccoli that tasted like chocolate, which would you pick?”

  “Low blow, Howard. And this from a man who’s missing the antique baseboard sale at Recycled Home.”

  The vacation would have made Connie Pereira proud. We cross-country skied enough to develop aches in places I didn’t know I had muscles (and I guess I didn’t have them before). We took in shows. Howard won a hundred thirty-six dollars at blackjack, and our only argument was whether maple syrup pushed pancakes into the junk food category. (I won twenty of Howard’s dollars when ten out of ten people agreed with me. Then to rub it in, I ordered the manhandler’s special, forgetting that I don’t like either pancakes or maple syrup.)

  On Wednesday, our 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. day, I left for work, knowing Howard would be gone when I got home.

  The first thing waiting for me at the station was a message from Herman Ott, Telegraph Avenue detective. A message from Ott is never a plus. I tossed it. The second was a note from Brucker: “Need to go over your cases. I’ll be here until noon.” There were no open homicides and I had left him notes on all the felony assaults that required explanation. Still, his wasn’t an unreasonable request. I would answer his questions, after we
were eye to eye about sticking my belongings on the squad room table. And after I’d dealt with Bryn Wiley.

  I didn’t know how serious Bryn Wiley had been about her threat to force Johnson’s hand at her press conference Saturday. She’d expect me to be on Johnson’s tail, not “wasting time” reminding her how unpredictable the man was and objecting to her plans. She wasn’t going to be pleased to see me at her own door.

  Which is why, when I got there, I was surprised to be greeted with a look of panic followed by a smile. And more surprised that the woman at Bryn Wiley’s door was not Bryn Wiley but Ellen Waller. “Come on in,” she said. In the daylight she looked less like Bryn’s deflated ghost. I could see now that the resemblance was more general than it had seemed last Saturday—two thin, tallish women with short, full, chestnut brown hair. But Ellen Waller’s face was softer than Bryn’s. Her eyes were brown, not blue. And she was older than Bryn. Forty-five or so to Bryn’s thirty-three.

  “Can I get you some coffee? It’s decaf,” she said, in that wary tone we police officers hear so often we begin to think of it as normal.

  I pulled out a line that always puts female witnesses at ease. “I wish I could take you up on that coffee. But not in the middle of a ten-hour shift driving around.”

  She smiled. “The dangers of police work they don’t tell you about, huh? Well, sit then. Oh, I guess that’s not really possible with all that stuff hanging off your belt? How about a stool? I’ll get the one from the kitchen. It’s not real comfortable, but—”

  “Thanks.” I was impressed at how quickly she’d sized up the situation. Bryn hadn’t noticed it at all. Still I followed Ellen to the kitchen door and held it open as she carried the stool in. I didn’t think she’d make a break for it, but I wasn’t about to take the chance.

  She put the stool in the middle of the living room, moved toward one of the sofas, and then, reconsidering, she moved the lusting Shiva to an end table and sat in its place on the end of the confessional bench. She curled her feet under her and rested her right arm familiarly on the penitent’s shelf, next to the priest’s seat. It was a remarkably uncomfortable-looking pose; one, I thought, that merited whatever forgiveness she might request. A clever hostess puts her guest in her debt by offering her the best of the food, the most comfortable chair. It’s not easy with a police officer, but Ellen Waller was managing better than average.

  “Where is Bryn?”

  “At a planning meeting. She should be back anytime.”

  “Planning for the press conference?”

  “No. For the fall’s lecture schedule at The Team.”

  I nodded. I considered asking Ellen about her sudden departure last week, but the level of potential cooperation was four hundred times what I had expected and I wasn’t about to undermine it—yet. “What can you tell me about the attacks?”

  She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and those loose sweat shorts. Now she rearranged her bare legs on the bench, using the time to prepare her answer. I wondered if Bryn had cautioned her about me, or if Ellen herself knew something she hadn’t decided whether to say. Or if she just had more sense than her cousin about pushing Sam Johnson too far. “First off,” she said slowly, “Bryn’s really undone by them. She’s unnerved, but more than that she’s shaken to find out that she is unnerved. She thinks she should be able to handle this, like she did the handstand on the ten-meter platform.”

  A meter is 39.37 inches. Upside down, 33 feet above the water? My stomach lurched. I’m better about heights than I used to be, much better. Hardly anyone knows I had a problem. But standing at the edge of a cement block 33 feet above the water … I’d cut off my foot before …“In a handstand?” I must have sounded more horrified than I’d intended.

  She reached out automatically and almost patted my arm before she caught herself. “Yeah, and they don’t cancel competition just because it’s windy. Of course, Bryn wasn’t afraid. Fear isn’t something she deals in. For her it’s all challenges to be mastered. Like life’s a finite number of trophies waiting to be moved into her room. There’s no question whether she’ll get one, it’s only a matter of when. If she makes a mistake, she learns her lesson and moves on. Athletes are trained to block out the thoughts of their mistakes, and concentrate, over and over, on the way the thing should be done.” Ellen paused, noting my reaction. “I’m hoping some of that rubs off on me.”

  She was observing me as carefully as I was her, as if assessing whether I was adequate to protect Bryn. Or maybe take her on. I’d heard the “past behind you” theory of athletic trainers: that thinking about the road to the mistake wears that sequence of thoughts into the brain and into the body and then, under performance stress, the athlete is likely to veer onto Mistake Road. So block out the errors, mentally rehearse how the performance should be, and create the freeway to Success. Useful in sports, and in life? If all-for-my-goal were a sign of character, Brucker would be up for Role Model of the Year! “How about social things? Relations? Does Bryn handle those as well?”

  “If she did, she’d be too perfect to tolerate. Surely you know that.” Ellen’s wide mouth pulled into an ironic smile—it looked like that was the kind of smile for which it had been created. “She’s tolerable, socially, but it’s not her medal sport. Really she’s had to focus too much on her performance to … or maybe it’s just that she’s never had to fit in.” She jerked toward me. “I don’t mean that as a criticism. You can’t be everything; what she does is important. For instance, she handles problems when someone else, a lesser person, would fall apart.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, right before she had to dive at the very last Nationals meet, she heard that one of the other Cal divers had been seriously injured in a dive. It unnerved everyone, but she had to block it out and climb up on the same kind of diving platform and dive. Then at the Olympic Trials every time a reporter asked about her dives, her making the Olympic Team, overcoming her scoliosis and that year off, it was always coupled with questions about Tiff. You know the type: ‘Your problems are gone and your friend is in the hospital, how does that make you feel?’ Bryn couldn’t let it get to her.” She shook her head. “It would only have taken one look at a newspaper to make me a basket case; but of course, Bryn didn’t—couldn’t—let herself read those papers, let Tiff’s error taint her.” Ellen must have read my expression; she added quickly, “She’s not callous. Look at how hard she worked, and all the people she’s helped since then. There’s no benefit to wallowing. What’s done is done; she knows that.”

  “But do you—does Bryn—think the attacker could be someone from her diving days?”

  “She thinks it’s Sam Johnson.”

  I leaned toward her, matching her movement, trying to slip into her mental motion. “May be, but it may not be. Either way, I’ve got to have some leads. You’ve been thinking about this, Ellen, and I can see you’re concerned about Bryn. Who do you think might possibly, in the widest range of consideration, be angry enough, hurt enough, crazy enough …”

  Ellen shook her head.

  I didn’t break the silence.

  In Ellen, there was none of Bryn’s smooth, controlled movement so characteristic of the athletic. Her nods and headshakes, the abrupt reach of a hand gave her the semblance of Bryn with the top layer scraped off. Like she’d thought so much about Bryn, observed and pondered her, tried on her skin, that her own effect was evident only in reaction to her brave, demanding cousin. She drew back again, quivering softly in the gray sweats in the beige room. “I haven’t been here that long. And, well, we weren’t close before. So even though we’re family, she’s got friends who know lots more than I do.”

  “Who? The friends?”

  That threw her back farther. “I don’t know. I guess I mean she should have friends like that.”

  “What about a lover, present or past?”

  “No one now; no one she’s mentioned. She’s so busy and her schedule’s so peculiar. She’s so focused on her work …”


  “How long have you been here?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  I laughed. “Because I’m a police officer, Ellen.”

  “Lest I forget, huh?” She smiled but the movement looked forced. “It’s been about two months since I started here. Before that Bryn wouldn’t even admit she needed a secretary. Everyone else knew it. It took me three weeks just to deal with her unanswered correspondence!” Ellen laughed.

  The blue Volvo wagon pulled into the dirt space in front.

  The laugh was gone. She glanced from the window to me and back, and said in a quick near-whisper. “The thing I want you to know is that no one’s as perfect as Bryn seems. She’s got devils she can’t face. So when she snaps at you, it’s not because of you, it’s her. She can’t deal with being undone by this. You do understand?”

  It was Ellen I didn’t understand. Or what she really thought of Bryn, or of me. “Ellen, I appreciate your concern.” I did. Most subsidiary interviewees paid as much attention to my feelings as I do to those of the clerk who sells me my Snickers. I waited till she flashed a nervous smile. “Why did you go out the door when you saw me last night?”

  “Last night?” she repeated, looking beyond me at the car outside. “Bryn wouldn’t …”

  The car door slammed.

  “Bryn wouldn’t what?”

  Bryn got out and took the steps to the door in two bounds.

  Ellen jumped up and pulled open the door, ready for Bryn.

  “Ellen,” I said, “the question still stands.”

  Bryn strode in, chestnut hair gleaming, bright blue eyes glowing, shoulder muscles peeking out of a sleeveless Girls’ Team T-shirt that just matched her eyes. But when she spotted me her face hardened. It might as well have been a marquee flashing: I let you see me emotionally naked. Now I’m going to wrap myself in so much anger, blanket you with so many demands and accusations, I’ll entirely cover over that shameful incident. She flopped on the couch and glared up at me. “Have you interrogated Johnson?”