Hooked (14 page)

34

E
rin pulled her knees up to her chest. She was looking out the window with a distant, defeated stare.

I hadn’t
known
Erin had lied to me, but I’d suspected, even before Danny’s warning.

“He didn’t get that far under your skin just because he flirted with the waitstaff,” I said.

Erin turned to me.

“The Napa mud gave him away.”

Napa.
The epicenter of Northern California’s wine country, three hours due north of our current location. Maybe Erin liked to start her confessions in the middle.

“At the Four Seasons, they keep the mud baths ninety degrees, so the minerals get good and baked into your skin. Simon called it the ‘dirt shirt,’” she said. “I told you Simon was a word person. And a lying son of a bitch.

“He didn’t tell me he was married for three months.”

Erin said they met almost immediately after she started working at the café. He came in almost every day, ordered a caramel latte and wrote on his laptop, and checked his stock prices on one of the café’s three Internet computers. He made friends with everyone. They were drawn to his charm and wealth, which he commented on just enough to establish its existence. He was witty and sure of himself and Erin didn’t have anything else going on.

They kept the whole thing private. He never invited her to his house. They spent weekends away from San Francisco together—in Napa, drinking and bathing in mud. It turned out that those were the weekends his wife took their autistic son to a special clinic at UCLA. Eventually, he got caught by his wife, or so he claimed, and came clean with Erin. Over time, she came to see this was serial behavior.

“He was a sinner to his core,” she said.

Andy came along shortly after. He and she experienced a much different attraction, the strongest one Erin had felt. “He was the first person who made me feel that the lifestyle I was living was okay. When I moved from Michigan, I knew someone like him was out there.”

They had a fling too, but it didn’t stick and gave way to something more than that—mostly platonic and deep.

“Six months ago, he started getting distant,” Erin said.

It correlated with a time that Simon and Andy became good friends. Both men liked to talk about books and writing. Andy started babysitting for Simon’s kids. He wanted a family of his own.

“What does that have to do with you, Erin? C’mon,” I said, filling in the silence that followed. “You were jealous? Is that it?”

“No.”

“He was your best friend, and your relationship got strained, and then he died. It was easy to blame Simon.”

“You’re reaching.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You couldn’t possibly understand,” she protested quietly. “What Simon did was so terribly cruel.”

“Did he kill Andy?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What makes you think it was even a possibility?”

“Simon was a seducer and a manipulator. He got inside Andy’s head. Andy got depressed. He felt so conflicted. Alone.”

“Enough to kill himself.”

“I need to see the diary,” she said.

The phone rang. It was Danny. The reception was choppy. “Turn . . . news. Radio . . . news.” I was hearing every third word. I told him to call me back. I told Erin to find a news station.

I saw an unpaved entrance to a cove beside the Santa Cruz pier, the cove where I’d watched a flotilla and an amphibious team try to find Annie’s remains. A sign read, “Emergency Vehicles Only.” I drove in.

Maybe I just wanted to pretend the last four years hadn’t happened. Maybe I wanted to go back
before
Annie. At least before I got the excruciating headache. Maybe it was the thick sea air, but it felt like the insides of my brain were pushing against my skull. The linebackers that had been dancing
Swan Lake
on my spinal column had taken steroids. My eye twitched, my legs were cramping.

Erin found a news station.

“A major development in the investigation of this week’s café explosion in San Francisco.”

I slammed on the brakes and put my hands on top of Erin’s, for the purpose of stopping her from changing the dial. I had reached a clearing where road met beach. I looked out over a gorgeous blue sea.

“Sources at the San Francisco Police Department said they are looking for two people in connection with the explosion, which took at least five lives. Police sources said they want to question a San Francisco resident and a café employee who survived the blast. Police declined to say whether the people are official suspects or what their motive might have been. We will provide details of this remarkable breaking story as they emerge.”

Two possible suspects, sitting in my car—an employee, and a San Francisco resident. Could there be any doubt who they meant?

And I knew goddamn well I hadn’t blown up the cafe.

Were the cops on the same page?

I felt a surge of excruciating pain. A migraine, I thought. It felt like my skull was peeling back, letting a harsh wind scream through the opening. I opened my door just in time. I threw up.

I picked my chin off the ground and looked at Erin. She was stone-faced.

“Did you?”

“Did I what?” she said. “Did I
what
?!”

The light hurt. I closed my eyes and squinted.

“What about Michigan, Erin? The fire?! Goddammit! What aren’t you telling me?”

She responded by opening her door. She stepped outside and started walking.

“Erin!”

But I couldn’t continue, or follow her. Whatever it was that was tormenting me, it had won. I leaned out the door. I purged again. Bile and stale air pouring out in heaves.

Seconds later—or maybe minutes—I heard a noise. I lifted my eyes. I caught a reflection in the rearview mirror. Of flashing lights. I turned my head to look at the newest visitor. A police car had parked behind me, blocking my escape.

35

A
s the cop exited his car and walked toward me, I wiped my chin and considered my options. According to the radio, I was wanted in connection with the explosion of a quaint San Francisco neighborhood café. If the officer knew this, I probably was going to be arrested. That seemed like a rotten way to spend such a cloudless day, or the next forty years.

That left my alternatives as lying or leaving in a hurry. I didn’t like my chances either way.

“You okay, sir?”

Sir.

“This beach is restricted,” he said, walking to the driver’s side door. “Eighty-five-dollar fine. But you look like you could use a break.”

I looked up to find a giant mustache and ears. The cop didn’t exceed five and a half feet. But he had the facial hair of a man twice that size. A handlebar mustache, and round ears protruding from the sides of his cap. I wondered if it might be from acromegaly, a condition that causes facial features to get coarse and pronounced over time.

“Tempting to come down this way,” he said. “But I tell ya—when the tide gets high, it’s a son of a gun out here.”

I told him I’d get out of the way. But he started right in chatting about what a beautiful day it was, and what a terrific view. In San Francisco, you get used to everyone being in such a rush, but Officer Ears just wanted to take a few minutes to reflect and sip a cool lemonade on the porch.

I fought off the nausea and took a chance on his goodwill. I told him that I’d lost a friend in a boating accident about four years earlier and was wondering how I might find out more about the accident—could I get incident reports or the like?

He said I could do a Freedom of Information Act request, if I wanted to wait for a couple of months, or I could try to talk to the officer in charge of the investigation. He said I could ask the clerk at the Santa Cruz Police Department. He said I could use his name.

First, I had another stop. By the side of the road. I turned on Andy’s laptop and called up his diary. I combed through pages of seemingly innocuous entries typed in shorthand. The short entries appeared to span a couple of years, though they were denoted by day and time, not by date and year.

Thursday, 10:10; saw art flick with e. (playful). I ask you: is the definition of an art movie anything that has moral ambiguity . . . another run-in with d-wad. Only reason he runs the dept is no one else wants it. Position does not equal wisdom.

Sunday, midnight or thereabouts. head cold. Hate taking meds. Can’t let it keep a fellow down tho. Got research done at Sunshine, napped in car for an hour, bowling with S. (2nd gm = 210).

I mostly skimmed, until I got toward the end. I was drawn by a couple of entries with a word in all caps. It read:

Dinner with the wiz over bridge. parked in the headlands. YOWZA.

Then a week later.

Friday night in san anselmo on wiz’s dime. Ate lobster and a fat choc souffle and one thing led to another. Are you kidding, asks I? An unequivocal no. woke up at 8 and didn’t get out of bed untl 2.

Then:

bought the new j. mayer at Amoeba. Copied for wiz and got smiles and admonitions (cool!). Worked out with free pass at gym du gorilla. Told e id meet for dinner then bagged out. deadlines, deadlines

I did a search back through the document. I found the first entry that mentioned the wizard.

Wednesday: 6—book shopping in am. Afternoon at the ’shine. met book writer of kids’ fantasy. proofread my summary; too many adjectives says he. Helpful grammatical wizard. (face man)

I turned it over in my head. “e” could be Erin; who was the Wizard? Simon Anderson? He was a book writer. Had something happened between the Andy and the Wizard? Was it obvious?

The computer beeped. The battery life was waning.

I looked toward the end of the diary. The entries seemed to reinforce Erin’s reports. Toward the end, more capital letters caught my eye.

Wiz sick too. Headaches. He’s pissed. Or something to do with a new flame? Who is Tara? Whatever, whatever WHATEVER.

The computer beeped again. I looked at the clock. There was still time to get to the Santa Cruz PD. I’d have to finish probing Andy’s personal life later.

My head was spinning. I couldn’t shake the tremors and nausea. Other than exhaustion, no ready diagnosis came to mind. They say a lawyer who represents himself in trial has a fool for a client. They also say: Physician, heal thyself. Why are doctors expected to be more adept self-service professionals than attorneys?

The clerk at the Santa Cruz Police Department must have been thirsty—there were five empty diet Coke cans on her desk. Maybe the caffeine was why she gave me her full attention. Or I looked just as brutalized as I felt and she took pity. Maybe it helped my cause that, moments after I arrived, Officer Ears walked by and said hello to me. “Give this fella our top-notch service,” Ears told the clerk, with a smile. The clerk listened to my plea but said that unless I knew the case number, she probably couldn’t give me the name of the cop who investigated Annie’s death. I did have the exact date. She clicked and clacked around her database. She told me the search would take more time. After five minutes more of poking around, she said she could she call me when and if she found something. I gave her my cell phone number.

I pointed the car back to San Francisco, and phoned Danny. He sounded particularly professional as he informed me the police wanted to interview me. He asked me if I wanted to meet him so he could escort me into the station. I said I would think it over. Then he hit me with the bombshell. He said the police knew I’d been hanging out with Erin and that was problematic.

“They found explosive residue at her apartment,” Danny said.

“Someone was attempting to blow her place up?”

“Someone was using her place to make explosives.”

A few minutes later, a couple of miles out of town, my phone rang.

“Where are you?” Erin said. “You’re really not planning to leave me here, are you?”

“You need to turn yourself in.”

“I didn’t blow up the café. I swear to you. Nathaniel. Please. I am begging you. You have to believe me.”

“They found explosives at your apartment.”

“No.” She was crying.

“Who are you working for? Who are you working with?”

“Please come get me,” she said, now sobbing. “I can explain.”

36

I
called Samantha and asked her and Bullseye to meet me at the acupuncture studio in Daly City in ninety minutes, explaining I needed their help.

Then I drove to the Santa Cruz bus station, where Erin had said she’d be waiting, and indeed, she was standing outside, looking like she had nothing left to give, or lose. I asked her to remove her jacket and I did my best imitation of someone at airport security. I let her get in the car.

“Start talking.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Is Annie alive?”

“I swear to you, I have no idea. I’ve never met Annie. I’ve never seen Annie. I think you’re losing it, Nathaniel.”

“Romp Studios.”

For a moment, silence.

“How do you know about that?” Suddenly sharp.

I reached into my wallet and pulled out the arson report Danny had found.

Erin was crying again, but she finally started talking. “The third year of my marriage got really brutal” was how she started her story.

It wasn’t so much that her husband hit her, which he didn’t do all that often; it was what the future held: a lifetime in purgatory. He wanted kids and she secretly took the pill.

“The bloodline stops here,” she said.

She stopped talking to her mother and any friends who might hold a mirror up to her. She devoted herself to church, where she was befriended by two women, one of them a mother of five kids who was sickly sweet but fire and brimstone. The woman blamed everything on forces destroying families.

“I don’t know why, but I confided in her. About everything—about taking birth control, and having trouble in the marriage. I wanted absolution, or maybe to get caught,” Erin said.

The woman invited Erin to join her on a crusade—to sneak late at night into a small office park on the outskirts of town. A back office belonged to Romp Studios. The woman first asked Erin to go, then threatened to tell her husband about the birth control if she didn’t.

“So you were forced?”

“I swear I wish I could say that. I took a gasoline can and poured it over everything. I went crazy. I told myself that the men who hired women to do sex movies were just like my husband.”

When she was caught, Erin said, she copped a plea and turned state’s evidence.

“It made me hate myself even more,” she said quietly. “I was a pawn in everybody’s everything. I ceased to exist as a person.”

My gut told me that Erin was telling the truth. It didn’t exonerate her; she was capable of great violence. Maybe something at the café had set her off again.

“Tell me about Simon and Andy.”

“Will you help save me?”

“You made your bed, Erin.”

“I didn’t do anything. The cops want me. Aravelo’s been calling me every day. But
I swear to you
I’m innocent.”

So Aravelo had been on to Erin. Of course. I was interested in the why.

“Did Simon and Andy have an affair?”

Erin nodded. By then it came as little revelation.

At first Andy was babysitting for the Andersons. She thought the two men had writing in common. She denied to herself that Andy seemed drawn to Simon—because she saw Simon as such a jerk and Andy as such a good friend. It dawned on her slowly that Andy was probably gay. That might explain why their own physical relationship was so short-lived. He finally confided in her—about Simon, and how it wasn’t his first encounter with a man. Simon seemed relatively safe; married and interested only in conquest. Still, Andy was hurt when Simon blew him off completely. Erin said she felt betrayed too.

“And then he started getting angry, and tired, and mean,” Erin said.

“Was Simon having headaches too? Or acting strange?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I think. Maybe. Andy said something was bothering Simon. I don’t know.”

“Was there someone named Tara at the café?”

“No. What are you talking about?”

“I need to know.”

“He slept with a lot of people. I’ve never heard of Tara.”

She seemed genuine in her uncertainty about the woman Andy had mentioned in his diary.

“You’re not telling me everything.”

“What do you want from me?” Erin said. “Andy had been my best friend. And then suddenly he wasn’t. He was a stranger.”

“And you blamed Simon.”

“How else can you explain it? How else can someone who is your best friend in the world turn against you? He was the first and only person to really understand what I was trying to become. He let me be weak. He didn’t press. He didn’t take advantage. Then he got sick, and frantic, and . . . he died.”

“That’s why you did it.”

“No.”

“You lit those fires, didn’t you?”

“No, Nathaniel.”

“Just admit it, Erin.”

“Stop! Stop it!” she said. “You’re acting just like Andy.”

I already was on the edge when my cell phone rang. It was the clerk from the Santa Cruz Police Department. She had come up with the name of the officer who investigated Annie’s death. Suddenly, upon hearing the name, I realized there was no one in the world I could trust.