Civil Twilight Read online

  “Forget you asked.”

  “But—”

  Again he smiled. His features were too big for his face; when he smiled it looked like they were about to leap off of it. “Let’s take a few steps down that pole. Why, all of a sudden, are you asking?”

  “I mentioned the koan to a woman who doesn’t sit zazen and she knew the answer . . . well, an answer. She said: You step off.”

  “Why did you mention it?”

  Why had I? We’d been heading to Coit Tower, which I’d mistakenly said was a hundred feet high. But why had I made such a silly error? “I was trying to figure out who she was.”

  “Because?”

  “I thought Gary was . . . I don’t know what I thought. It all happened so quickly. I thought . . . I thought he was involved in something secret . . . but maybe for a good reason. Though John instantly assumed he was setting up some prank.”

  “We see through our own eyes.” He glanced up at me. “Things are as they are.”

  Things are as they are was a deceptively obvious-seeming teaching of his.

  “You saw through your eyes, Darcy. You didn’t just see your brother, but this woman, and what you took to be their relationship.”

  “I saw her as a friend. Then as crazy. Then as a woman who’d played my brother. Maybe more than one brother. Then suddenly, she was dead. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Don’t.”

  He was right, I knew. Thoughts would just stumble over each other in my head. But I couldn’t help it. “She said she was going through a divorce, but, you know, that wasn’t the vibe I got. She was in too good a shape. She was”—I suddenly realized—“someone I could picture Gary dating.” Gary dating! Was that what John pictured? “She’d plugged into that sudden fascination Gary emits when he’s utterly focused on something outside himself. It’s a seductive quality, particularly when the object is yourself.” I paused, hoping for an observation from Leo but he offered none, waiting for me to go on. “I felt like there was a big exciting secret they shared, not like she was a client Gary was representing but more like they were doing something together. Something that was going to happen fast, because, when we talked about going to dinner she said she wanted it to be somewhere special.”

  “A celebration?”

  I swallowed hard but still could feel my eyes fill. “Or last meal.”

  “Are you seeing through your eyes now or then?”

  I had to think. “Then I’d have said there was an air of last fling, but nothing as dire as last meal.”

  “Nothing that suggested she was going to jump off a building onto the freeway.”

  “Omigod! How did you know?”

  Leo shrugged. “Korematsu called. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Damn. Is he coming here?”

  “He asked you to call him.”

  “Did you tell him I would?”

  “I said I hadn’t seen you, couldn’t say when I would.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It was the truth. You’re not always here for zazen, and I don’t expect you to be.”

  “Thanks.” It was a relief that Leo already knew about Karen, but it also introduced other subjects I preferred not to raise. I glanced at him, sitting as calmly as he did in the zendo, as if he had nothing at all but this moment with me to consider. As if by the time he got out of here his sweater wouldn’t already be too heavy. Something occurred to me. “When you agreed to come back to the city, after all those years at Redwood Canyon, I’ll bet you envisioned all sorts of problems, but never that so many would be caused by your assistant’s family.”

  He let out a hoot. “But, Darcy, I really like them, your family.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, are you going to call Korematsu?”

  “Not now. Not on three hours sleep. That’d be a big mistake. I can’t have him throwing my words in my face when I not only can’t remember my last syllable but barely can find my face.”

  “You’re going back to bed?”

  “Can’t. I need to find John,” I said as if his mention of Korematsu had beckoned my worry about John. “He promised to call me last night and he didn’t. His phone isn’t working.”

  “Maybe that’s why he didn’t call.”

  “I never thought of that. But it’s not the answer, even if for anyone other than John it’d make sense. I was going to hunt him down last night, check at Gary’s house, at Mom’s, at Lost Sock—”

  “Lost Sock?”

  “His apartment. He acts like he lives there, but he’s almost always at Mom’s because he wants to keep an eye on her—not that she appreciates that. The family joke is that John’s apartment exists only in his imagination, like the place where lost socks and keys end up.”

  Leo grinned. “But you don’t think John’s there.”

  “He would have called.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Because something happened. Because he had to ditch his phone, because he’d called someone he didn’t want the police or someone to know about.”

  “But they can subpoena his phone records.”

  “Not right away. He’ll buy a week or more at least.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he call you from some other phone?”

  “He wouldn’t want that number on my record.”

  “But a pay phone?”

  “When was the last time you came across a pay phone that worked? But wait, he might have left a message here, on the land line! Did he?”

  Leo shrugged. I leapt for the phone. Two voicemail messages. The first from last night at 9:33 P.M. “Darcy”—it was a woman’s voice. The traffic noise in the background was so loud I had to press the receiver against my ear—“I’m so sorry. I would have liked dinner . . . really . . . if things’d been . . . different.” She—Karen!—laughed. A car door—hers?—slammed. “Later, huh?”

  I played it again, desperate to turn back time. Her voice was breathless, just like it had been at the top of Greenwich Street as we stood panting. I saw her again, in the blue linen shell and slacks that made her running shoes look out of place. Her blonde hair blowing in the easy breeze. Back then. But now as she spoke, I felt her drawing away from the phone as if watching for something—no, someone. The person who shut the car door. The person who’d soon kill her? She’d thrust out last words—“Later, huh?” in a single breath.

  I stared at the white wall in front of me.

  Leo still sat on his futon. Someone else would have been overcome with curiosity, but he was waiting.

  Very carefully I saved Karen’s message. “I was with her less than an hour, but, the thing is, I was so focused on her, trying to figure out—” I stopped. That was one part of this Leo didn’t already know. “It was like a script summary.”

  He seemed to hesitate, as if balancing the need to speak with the lack of invitation. “Like one version of a script?”

  That wasn’t quite it. “Like the first act was missing.”

  He nodded. “So you were penciling in possibilities as you went?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be aware.”

  “Yeah.” I played the tape again in my mind. “Things change. Karen’s changed entirely, gone. But her voice, her words are still there. They’re not going to change.”

  “But you will.”

  “Maybe.”

  He didn’t insist though we both knew he was right. I could understand or could choose not to.

  The second message was from Korematsu, telling me to call.

  I saved that, too.

  Leo pushed himself up to standing. “I’m off to a meeting. And you? What are you going to do?”

  “Call Korematsu.”

  12

  I LEFT A MESSAGE for Korematsu, saying I was returning his call, not asking how come he was still doing the scut work on Broder’s case, much less what was what with that case. Had they found the evidence on John’s car? Had they—God forbid—found John? Was Korematsu planning to sit on me till they d
id? I barely had time to hurry Leo away from the zendo so he didn’t muddy the waters I was about to jump into, when an unmarked car squealed to a stop. I walked out into the courtyard to draw Korematsu’s attention as Leo turned the corner onto Columbus.

  “I’m glad you called, Darcy.” Translation: surprised you called.

  I nodded. I’d been right: it was a mistake to see him when I was so tired. I needed a shower. I felt like something that had been wadded up and tossed on the floor. Korematsu, on the other hand, looked freshly laundered from his light blue shirt, his dark brown sports jacket to the dark hair that flopped over the corner of his forehead. His skin had the shine of scrubbedness and his eyes looked sharper than coffee could create.

  “What were you doing at the scene last night?”

  “Come this way.” I led him into the zendo to the upstairs hall where the phone sat in a nook, punched the number and handed him the receiver. “Listen to this. It’s from Karen Johnson.”

  He stood, eyes half closed as he concentrated on it. He replayed it, then went on to the next message, the one from himself.

  “Hey, I only authorized you to listen to that one.”

  “I’ll need the records of all calls to and from this number for the last week.”

  “No way. This is the zendo phone.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Fine, you can deal with my attorney.”

  “Your brother?”

  I didn’t like the way he’d said that. “Snideness is unbecoming in an officer.”

  “Fine. In the meantime I need to hear everything you know about the deceased.”

  “Can we do it over coffee? I’ve been up—chances are you had a late night, too?”

  He hesitated as if loath to admit he was less than a hundred percent, then shrugged. “Sure. Is Renzo’s open this early?”

  “Of course. He’d be insulted you even considered otherwise.”

  “What’re you drinking? I’ll bring them back.”

  “Double espresso.” I was in a better mood than I had been minutes ago, before Korematsu’s sarcastic reference to Gary. If he’d had any idea Gary was representing Karen Johnson, he’d have been all over me.

  I hoisted myself onto the courtyard wall while I waited for him. It was about four feet high with a curved top, a dicey perch for most people and one that would require some attention from Korematsu. He was going to be firing questions; I needed answers of my own. Any physical advantage I could manage would help even things out.

  He held two paper cups as he walked back up the still empty street. When I put out my hands for them I could see that, politely, he hadn’t even sipped his yet. I felt a stab of guilt about the wall.

  But he swung up easily and looked at me and laughed. “What’d you think? That I was John?”

  Was I that transparent? I handed him his coffee. “Nah. It’d take you years of hard couch time to get in that bad shape.” I took a sip. Double espresso barely described it. It was syrup. “Did you put sugar in this?”

  “Nope. Blame Renzo. He had the lid on before he gave it to me.”

  “Guess he figured if a cop was volunteering to get me a double at this hour of the morning I must need all the help I can get.” I sipped again, feeling the rush of hot coffee flow down my tubes warming my whole torso, that boom of caffeine snap open every pore in my face. Renzo, I owe you. “This is Broder’s case, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So how come you’re fetching and carrying for him?”

  “We don’t just assign one detective to a case. You know that, Darcy.”

  “A high-profile case, you mean?”

  He nodded again. Tones of voice can be revealing. A nod is just a movement of the head.

  I prodded. “So Broder’s just figure-heading?”

  “Chief of Detectives Broder is in charge. I am assigned. My assignment is to liaise with you.”

  “Then ‘liaise’ for me the status of the investigation.”

  “We ask; you answer.”

  “You asked why I was at the crime scene. I asked the status. We bargain; you agree.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Puh-lease.” Korematsu had worked undercover for five years, an eternity in a small city. He was a master at not revealing. He made John look minor league. What he wasn’t revealing was his motive. Was he asking: why were you at the crime scene of a woman you just met? Or was it: why were you and your brother at the scene where your brother’s car killed her? Was I a witness or a possible accessory after the fact? “I came to the scene because I saw the story on the news. John got us in. Now you: what’s the status?”

  “We’ve got the murder weapon. Your brother’s car.”

  “How do you know it’s the weapon?”

  “Scratch marks on the hood—”

  “It’s a police car! They’ve probably all got scratches.”

  He shrugged.

  There wouldn’t have been time to get lab results back. I sipped the coffee. What could I admit without making things worse? What could I conceal without ending up in jail? “She stole the car, you know that, right? After that it had nothing to do with John. Fifty people at Coit Tower were there. You could spend a week interviewing them.”

  He nodded.

  “So what’s her background? Her fingerprints have to be all over it. Have you matched them?”

  “No.”

  “Not yet?”

  “Not ever.”

  I stared.

  “The steering wheel’s been wiped clean. Also the dash, door handles on both sides, and every other surface in the front seat area. When the vehicle in question is one of ours, our techs go over every inch. She must have floated on air and driven it by magic, and wiped her wand clean.”

  “You’ve got her body, why don’t you print . . .” I read the answer in the look on his face. He didn’t try to hide it.

  “You don’t want to know how badly a body can be mashed. She could have run under a power mower and come out better. Jumping onto a freeway was the worst way to die, for her, for the drivers on the road. How are those people going to live with it? A body flies out of the sky; they can’t avoid it, maybe if they could she’d be alive. Maybe they don’t kill her, just run over a hand, a leg, a shoe. One woman was hysterical. A guy was next to catatonic.”

  I lifted my cup to drink, realized it was empty and sat holding it. “I . . .”

  “I want you to be prepared.”

  “For?”

  “I need you to identify the body.”

  The cup was still in my hand, still in front of my mouth, empty. “No.” The word was barely audible. “I just can’t. I was with her; I talked to her. I liked her. I can’t look at her body so mashed up that she doesn’t have fingers! I just—”

  “Darcy, your brother’s a prick—”

  “A by-the-book prick.”

  “True, but guys like that, they’re wound tight and a single perfect-storm thing can send them spinning. So I’m not saying he could never be involved in this murder.”

  “Hey—”

  “But I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, which is more than many will. I’m sticking my neck out, not for him; I’m sticking it out for you. You understand that?” He stopped, waited till I nodded, watching me the whole time.

  I couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t let myself wonder. Any suspect who trusts a cop deserves to be in jail. Another John Lott maxim. I didn’t dare trust Korematsu, despite those yearning chocolate brown eyes, the sweet thatch of dark hair falling over them. He’d never deceived me before.

  But I couldn’t trust him, not now when what we were playing for was John.

  “Right now,” he insisted, as if inviting my reservations about him, “we have nothing on this case—no ID, no witnesses after the victim left the crash site. The only thing we know about the car is that your brother signed it out. He never reported it stolen, not when it happened, not when he was standing right beside it at the murder scene, not after he ma
de his memorable exit. And now he’s gone to ground.”

  “But . . .” There was no but.

  “Unless some other lead turns up the whole focus is going to be on John. When the public learns that a detective’s car is being called the cause of death, the pressure on the department is going to be enormous, unrelenting. All stops will be pulled out and pressure put on every member of your family. Your phones will be tapped, you neighbors questioned, your mother’s neighbors, and a make will be run on everyone who walks into this Zen center, including Leo Garson. The story’ll be headlines all over the country. After the first day, when there’s no update, the press will glom onto Mike’s disappearance and speculate about any connection to the missing brother. If it goes on another day, they’ll find out about that Victorian on Guerrero and the woman who lives there and her well-placed friend. And then heads will roll. Need I say that there are people in the department who’d go to great lengths to avoid that happening? Throwing John to the wolves is the easiest way. No one’s going to object.”

  I couldn’t say anything. It was all true.

  “There are only two reliable persons who saw the victim yesterday. You and John. The body is the only thing we have.”

  I swallowed. “Okay.”

  13

  ONLY AN IDIOT with a secret gets into a police car. Yet another John Lottism. Korematsu would undoubtedly turn on the questions as soon as he turned the ignition key.

  But he didn’t. He just drove. And I sat there leaning against the door, watching his dark brown eye peek out under his hair and glance everywhere but at me. It was so tempting to speculate about him, as opposed to worrying about John, thinking about Karen or imagining what was awaiting me at the Hall of Justice.

  Outside pedestrians shivered as sun pierced the fog and retracted. Once we pulled up outside the morgue, any hint of warmth vanished. Inside the building it was just another busy Wednesday morning with officers clacking past, clerks calling out, cell phones ringing, metal trolleys rattling, and everything echoing off the walls.

  I steeled myself against the moment when I’d have to step into the icy room and a tech would pull open the drawer and—I couldn’t bear to think what I’d see. But Korematsu took me first to an evidence room and a minute later returned with a box the size of a fixed-price postal mailer. “I’m hoping her clothes will suffice.”