Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (13 page)

We talked for a while, about other New Year's Eves—good ones, bad
ones, pleasant surprises, disappointments, disasters. Long after we'd
hung up, the warm glow persisted.

When I poured the last of the champagne, I again toasted to new
beginnings.

On the way to the Hall of Justice the next morning, I thought about
Tracy's character sketchbook, which I'd read the previous day before
the New Year's festivities began. It contained some 50 two-or
three-page descriptions of women in the young-to-middle-aged range.
They were less physical descriptions than psychological
profiles—reflecting the kind of insight her father possessed—and the
way she turned a phrase led me to believe that had she not gone into
comedy, she might have become a writer. I was particularly interested
in the first entry because, having seen Tracy's room, I suspected she
might have been describing herself.

In part, it read: No need for a physical description. She is
superiorly average, almost nondescript. What stands out is her
greed—for material things, for life itself. Why such neediness? Easy to
blame it on her family. The mother was cold. She never hugged her. She
wanted to be a mentor. But there's no place for mentors in families.
The girl needed a mother. The beloved father, for all his academic
knowledge was little better. Vague, fondly absent. Sometimes she
thought him only half-alive.

As I read the other profiles, I realized that Tracy had based a good
number of her characters on actual individuals. Although she had given
most fictional names, the brief physical details in two of them allowed
me to recognize people I'd recently met: Kathy Soriano, Larkey's
partner's wife; and Amy Barbour.

The interesting portion of Kathy's profile read:
Not for her the
garden club, the volunteer work, the kiss-kiss
luncheon-and-fashion-show circuit. She prefers to hover on the fringes
of power, a sort of exalted gofer for those who control. But she has no
power herself. That belongs to the husband, the man of steel-rimmed
glasses and steelier eyes. Deceptively mild-mannered, he watches his
wife jump at whatever fingers are snapped and remains amused and
detached. She knows this, so she indulges in petty revenge, nasty
little affairs designed to wound a man who is unwoundable. A circular
bind here, because he will never let her have power over him—which is
what she wants the most.

Beside the entry in another color of ink, Tracy had noted:
Can't
use. Too grim, and she's likely to recognize herself
.

Amy's sketch was gentler, more affectionate, but most of it still
damning:
She's a poor thing,
clinging to each current craze,
desperately hoping to define herself by externals. The tough facade
easily gives way to anger, the anger to fear, then to tears. A bundle
of rage, despising whoever is convenient for what her parents have done
to her, but actually despising herself because she believes their
neglect was deserved. She thinks if she finds someone to love, she will
belong. An impossibility, because she is incapable of loving even
herself.

Tracy had merely drawn an X through the entry.

In the latter pages of the notebook the profiles became more brief
and even more grim than Kathy Soriano's, as if Tracy had lost her
ability to see humor in those around her. The
last five or so did not even bear fictitious names, and the final one
was only a paragraph.

It has become her habit to milk every
emotion, even her own, for
personal gain. Everything is useful. She sleeps with this one and that
one solely for the exotic experience. She sleeps with another for his
influence, all the while professing love. But if she does love him,
shouldn't she take steps to protect him? It's a form of paralysis, her
inability to act.

Reflecting on the sketchbook now, I thought of Laura Kostakos's
claim that her daughter had been upset and disillusioned with herself
shortly before her disappearance. If her impression was correct—and I
had no reason to doubt it—it would account for the apathy and
disinterest shown in these last pages.

When I arrived at the hall, I found a parking space directly in
front on Bryant Street and hurried inside. The Hall of Justice is
normally a noisy, bustling place, but on this Sunday and holiday, with
the courts closed and the various offices minimally staffed, it seemed
strangely quiet. I found Greg in his cubicle upstairs, looking
cheerful. Perhaps, I thought, he'd gotten together with the tall,
admiring redhead after I'd left the party. Whatever the reason, his
mind was on business this morning, and after a perfunctory inquiry
about where I'd disappeared to the night before, he sat me down at an
out-of-the-way desk with the bulging files on the Foster/Kostakos
investigation.

I plowed through the material for more than three hours, even though
much of it was familiar because I'd read it in the files Foster's
public defender had turned over to Jack. I took notes on a few details
that had previously escaped me: what Tracy had been wearing when last
seen (a red llama's-wool cape, jeans, and matching red rubber rain
boots); the registration of the blue Volvo that had been stolen from
the club's lot and later abandoned in the Santa Cruz Mountains (Atlas
Development Corporation); the statements of witnesses who said her
performance had been off that last night, and that she had made a phone
call shortly before leaving the club.

I'd saved a stack of Ben Gallagher's scribbled notes for last, and I
went through them quickly, dismissing most as unimportant. There was
one sheet that interested me, however: jottings on a phone inquiry to
the DMV. Tracy had apparently received a citation for reckless driving
(left turn across oncoming traffic) at a location in Napa County two
days before her disappearance.

What had she been doing up there? I wondered. And in whose car,
since she didn't have one of her own? I studied the notes more
carefully, trying to decipher the crabbed writing, then remembered the
envelope from my friend at the DMV, that I'd stuffed in my bag when
leaving All Souls the night before. I pulled it out, found it contained
a computer printout of Tracy's driving record. But on it, the date of
the final entry was different.

Gallagher's scribblings showed the citation as having been issued at
two-ten in the morning on February eleventh. The printout said the
thirteenth. If the printout was correct, Tracy had been in Napa County
a good four hours after she was last seen outside Café Comedie
quarreling with Bobby Foster. And around fifteen minutes after Foster
returned to the club, according to the testimony of his fellow parking
attendants.

I held up Gallagher's notes and studied the date. That wavery "1"
could easily have been intended to be a "3." The significance of the
date might not have registered when Ben wrote it down; he might have
been interrupted and not gotten back to the notes for some time. And by
then, he would merely have read the number as "11," two days too early
to have any bearing on the disappearance.

The location of the violation was given as Cuttings Wharf Road at
Highway 121 in Napa County. I had no notion where that was, but it had
to be at least an hour away from the city.

The car Tracy had been driving was a Volvo, license plate number—

I looked back at the information I'd copied down about the stolen
car belonging to Atlas Development Corporation. The license plate
number was the same.

There was no written confirmation of Gallagher's inquiry from the
DMV, but that didn't surprise me. It might never have been sent, or it
might merely have been another piece of paper that got lost in the
shuffle.

One piece of paper that would have invalidated Bobby Foster's
confession. A piece of paper whose absence had condemned him to death.

I stared at Gallagher's notes for a moment. Although I told myself
not to get too excited yet, feelings of elation spread through me. It
was the first break—and a major one—in a case I'd initially thought
unsolvable. I checked the date and time of the citation once more, then
got up and went to the door of Greg's cubicle. "Would you come here a
minute?" I said.

Since it was New Year's and the next day was also a legal holiday,
there wasn't much Greg could do to check out the discrepancy. He would
request verification of the date, time, and vehicle license plate
number from the DMV when their office opened on Tuesday, as well as
contact the highway patrol, to see if the issuing officer remembered
anything about the incident. But, as he cautioned me, that was
unlikely; officers give so many tickets that they're not apt to
remember one from that long ago—unless there had been something
exceedingly unusual about the circumstances. My spirits refused to be
deflated by that, though.

When I left the hall and climbed into my MG, I took the packet of
maps from the side pocket and found one for Napa County. Cuttings Wharf
Road ran south from Highway 121, just beyond where it split off from
Highway 29, the main arterial into the city of Napa and the
wine-producing valley to its
north. The smaller road seemed to be an accessway to the Napa River. To
get there, I would take the Bay Bridge…

There was an entrance ramp to the I-80 freeway and the bridge less
than a block from the hall. I drove down to Fifth Street and joined the
light flow of eastbound traffic.

On the other side of the bay, the freeway took me past Berkeley,
where I had lived for four years but now seldom visited. Beyond
Richmond, the land became gentle, rolling hills; as I approached the
Carquinez Strait, the hills were dotted with pastel-colored oil storage
tanks, and I could see smoke-belching refineries spread out on the
shores of San Pablo Bay. Another bridge took me across the strait, and
at Vallejo—a bland town whose only distinctions are the Mare Island
Naval Shipyard and Marine World/Africa U.S.A.—I cut over to Highway 29.
The traffic was even sparser there; the businesses that fronted the
road were closed for the holiday. After about ten miles, Highway 121
curved off to the northeast, toward Lake Berryessa. I stayed on the
main route, crossing a high-arching bridge over the river, then took
the other branch of 121 toward Sonoma.

Cuttings Wharf Road appeared in less than a mile; a sign indicated
it was the way to the Napa River resorts. There was a turn lane, the
one from which Tracy would have made the dangerous left across traffic
that had attracted the attention of the highway patrol. The officer
would have followed her onto Cuttings Wharf Road and stopped her
immediately, I thought, perhaps here in front of these small houses or
next to that high-tension tower.

A good deal of the land was planted in grapes here, black knotty
vines devoid of leaves. Windbreaks of eucalyptus edged the road. I
drove slowly, looking at names on mailboxes, searching for some clue as
to what Tracy might have been doing here in the dead early hours of a
February morning. When the road branched, I hesitated, then took the
arm that
went toward the public fishing access.

There were more vineyards and a Christmas tree farm down there, as
well as a number of cottages that looked to be closed up for the
winter. A large boat-and RV-storage yard spread out on the right, its
signs advertising groceries, bait, and beer. Beyond it was a mostly
deserted parking area.

I drove to the edge of the water, stopped, and got out of the car.
The river was perhaps a hundred yards wide at that point, edged on both
sides with rocks and tall grass. A couple of lonely-looking fishermen
wearing heavy parkas hunched over their poles on the wharf; neither
bothered to glance my way. I stood there for a few minutes, listening
to the ripple of the current. Black rain clouds massed over the distant
hills; closer in I saw the towering superstructure of a drawbridge, its
steel gray a darker complement to the gray of the sky. Finally I turned
back to the car. There was nothing here for me, no one to question.
Even the bait-and-tackle shop at the water's edge—called, so help me,
The Happy Hooker—was closed for the holiday.

I drove back the way I'd come and took the other fork—& winding
road that led through more vineyard and past small farms. The land was
flatter here, the cloud-shrouded hills many miles away. I met with no
other cars, and the only signs of human habitation were vehicles parked
in driveways and occasional wisps of smoke from the farmhouses'
chimneys.

The road took a sharp turn in the direction of the drawbridge I'd
glimpsed earlier. Now it was built up on only the left side: a solid
row of houses set close to the pavement on narrow lots that backed up
to the river. To my right was a flat plain that signs announced as
belonging to a salt company; a railroad spur cut across it and the road
to the drawbridge. I bumped over the right-of-way, nearly in the shadow
of the great clockwork structure.

More houses hugged the river's edge, some of them large, others mere
cottages. Now I spotted a few people in the small yards,
encountered a couple of joggers loping along the pavement. I slowed,
continued to study mailboxes, looking for… what? I wasn't sure.

After about a mile, the houses were more widely spaced. The road
narrowed, became potholed. Then there were several vacant lots, covered
in scrub vegetation and iceplant, which rose to a levee beside the
river. Beyond them I saw three more cottages set far apart from one
another, and a turnaround where the road ended. I slowed in front of
the first of these, a house that was screened from sight by a tall
wooden fence overgrown by vines. A weathered sign attached to the
sagging gate said HARBOUR.

My breath caught and I jammed on the MG's brakes, almost killing the
engine. That was not your typical spelling of the name, I thought. Not
likely to be mere coincidence.