Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (2 page)

“And where were the meetings?”

“They were— well— not in this galaxy.”

“But how did you get there? I mean, it’s impossible, even traveling at the speed of light.”

“You just travel at the speed of thought, that’s all.” So there I was, right in Tadich’s, as safe and warm a harbor as you can hope to find in this galaxy, talking about the Interplanetary Council. Well, hang on to your hat, I thought; might as well enjoy it. I made the poor man tell me every detail.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know too many because he couldn’t remember his trips to the other galaxy, he just knew about them because the story was written in the Akashic Records, which, according to him, chronicled everyone’s lives, both current and past, from time immemorial. He was
really
vague about where
they
were, but he did know that they comprised such a huge library that it took ten thousand sentient beings (of who knew what description) to keep track of them. Which didn’t strike me as nearly enough if the Interplanetary Council implied what I thought it did.

He knew about all this because he had friends who were in daily contact with extraterrestrials and who lived a kind of shadow existence that shaped life on Earth. The setup reminded me of the premise of
Slaughterhouse Five,
in which, if you recall, a race of aliens called Tralfamadorians control the lives of Earthlings.

Roger described a few potentially earth-shattering disasters his friends had averted by using technologies not dreamed of by most of us, and then he swore me to secrecy on the details. After that, he told me how I fit into all this.

It was the funniest thing, actually. One of his friends, that same person who’d invented some of the futuristic technology, was involved in a legal battle over patents, and I was the lawyer who could get him out of it.

“Oh, gosh,” I said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t handle something like that on a pro bono basis.”

Roger looked absolutely horrified. “It won’t be pro bono. Stewart’s loaded. It’s just that… you’re the one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t. Stewart does. When I got back to Seattle, I told him about the psychics, and he said, ‘I already know about her.’”

“How did he know?”

“Stewart knows lots of stuff. You’re gonna love this guy— I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

Somehow, I just wasn’t interested.

I still don’t know if Stewart is a real person or the imaginary playmate of an adult with a child’s imagination. Or if Roger DeCampo has somehow been victimized by a gang of screwballs who’ve managed to convince him they have daily commerce with extraterrestrials.

Or if, as Chris flatly declared, “He’s crazy.”

“Well, I’m not so sure. I’ve called the college where he teaches, and he really does teach there. I’ve seen pictures of his kid, so he’s real. And I even have a book he wrote.”

“A published book?” She looked down her ski jump of a nose.

“Uh-huh. A comparison of Eastern religion with Western monotheism. I thought it was good.”

“A crazy person could write a book.”

“A crazy person isn’t supposed to be able to function, and he does that perfectly well. He’s very interesting when he’s talking about his subject— meaning religion, not UFOs.”

“Look, anybody who sees little green men is out there.”

“But the thing is, he doesn’t. Only his friends do.”

“He’s a fruitcake, partner. And sometimes I’m not so sure about you.”

“Me?”

“After all, you went on a blind date with somebody recommended by a stranger on the street on the basis of predictions by a psychic.”

“You mean you wouldn’t have?”

“Well, certainly not without consulting my own psychic.”

Perhaps it
had
been a bit rash, and yet I wouldn’t have given up the experience. I hadn’t known there were people like that, people who seemed utterly normal, who by all accounts led perfectly normal lives, but who operated in a wildly different reality. Yet how was Roger DeCampo any different from a person who believed in the Judeo-Christian god, a concept no more provable than space aliens? The only difference I could see was that the prevailing culture supported one belief system and condemned the other.

But there was no convincing Chris. To her, he was a nut case and that was the end of it. And honestly, I didn’t expect to convince her. I knew her, knew how her mind worked— or thought I did until the night she called me from the Hall of Justice.

It was a Thursday night, nearly midnight, and I was snug in my bed, not yet asleep but well on the way. The thing she said, the first thing out of her mouth, was so urban, so typical of her, so nearly brittle: “Listen. Do you believe that she who acts as her own lawyer has a fool for a client?”

I came bolt upright. “Chris, what is it?”

Drunk driving, I thought. She didn’t drink that much, but what else could it be?

This was her story:

She’d been driving home, minding her own business, when a police car had stopped her. The officers therein had asked if she was Chris Nicholson, taken a good look at her car, wondered how it got all bent, and brought her down to the Hall of Justice where they’d asked a number of other impertinent questions. She’d made a scene, of course. They finally told her there’d been a hit-and-run a couple of hours before, and a witness had gotten her license number.

At the Hall of Justice, she had been met by our old— I won’t say friends— our old acquaintances and rivals, Martinez and Curry of Homicide, who’d given her the notion she was in a heap of shit.

I splashed water on my face, pulled on some clothes, and made it to the Hall in a little over twenty minutes. Thursday night was the worst possible time to get arrested. They could hold Chris for forty-eight hours without charging her, but since there was no court on either Saturday or Sunday, that meant my genteel Southern law partner had an excellent chance of spending three days and four nights in jail.

There was only one solution— she had to talk her way out of it. It was ironic, since “clam up” was the first advice I usually gave anybody, but I desperately wanted Chris to sing like Pavarotti if that meant I could take her home that night. Because of course she had nothing to hide; not Chris.

By the time I got to the Hall, she was the color of instant mashed potatoes, and she was smoking, something I’d never seen her do.

“Since when,” I said, “have you been leading a double life?”

She turned a becoming shade of pink. “What?”

“Cigarettes. You’re a secret smoker.”

“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “About three minutes. On the double life.” She wasn’t at ease, even with me.

“What’s going on?” I said when we were alone.

“Jason McKendrick was killed tonight.” She shrugged. “They think I did it. I can’t seem to talk them out of it.”

“Jason McKendrick the critic? Is that who we’re talking about?”

“Uh-huh.” He worked for the
Chronicle,
reviewed movies, music, and theater, and was more of a celebrity in our town than most people he covered.

“Did you even know him?”

She shook her head. But I thought uneasily about the way she’d blushed when I made the double-life remark. “Well, why you?”

“Somebody plowed into him in a car that looks like mine, and apparently there was a witness who got the license number just screwed up enough that it came out the same as mine.”

“Didn’t you say something about your car being bent?”

“Well, yes, I didn’t even notice. I guess somebody backed into me in a parking space.”

“Was there— you know— blood or hair or anything?”

She turned red again. “I guess they’re checking that.”

I sat back in my chair.

“Did they give you a blood alcohol test?”

“Just roadside sobriety. Which I passed.”

“Did the witness describe the driver of the car?”

She shrugged. “Martinez says so— he says they’ve got two witnesses. But he could be lying.”

“This doesn’t look too good.”

“It gets worse.”

“Tell me.”

“The witnesses say it looked like a deliberate hit— the car swerved to hit McKendrick, he tried to dodge it, then it backed up for another try and chased him almost up on the sidewalk. That’s why they’re handling it like a homicide.”

I shrugged. “No big deal. It was clearly the most horrifying thing they ever saw. No wonder they screwed up the license number.”

But I was blustering and we both knew it. They had plenty to arrest her on, especially if they found physical evidence on her car. A good alibi could save her in the long run, but they sure weren’t going to go checking it out that night.

Desperate, I said, “How are we going to get you out of here?”

“I told them I’d talk after you got here.”

“Great. What are you going to say?”

“I was lying. I thought you could talk Martinez into letting me go.”

“Oh, sure. He loves me like a daughter.” I was impatient with her, couldn’t help feeling she didn’t understand just how much trouble she was in. “Did they say when McKendrick was killed?”

“About eight-thirty. One of the witnesses called 911.”

“Where were you then?”

“At somebody’s house.”

“Whose? A guy’s?”

“No. Someone you don’t know.”

“Fine. Who?”

“A woman named Rosalie.”

“Rosalie who?”

“I don’t know her last name.”

I didn’t say anything, just tried to digest all this, when she said, “I don’t know her. I was just … at her house.”

“Was anybody else there?”

“Yes. Three or four other people.”

Oh, God,
I was thinking.
Three or four. Which? Three? Four?
Couldn’t my law partner count anymore?

This whole deal was crazy. I realized suddenly that I’d been pulling reluctant little factoids out of her as if she were a client referred by a third party— someone I’d never met; and furthermore, someone acting guilty. Someone with a lot to hide from her lawyer.

I said, “Chris, what’s going on?”

She looked at me a moment, then stared off into space. She was wearing a white cotton sweater, which didn’t help her color any. She was so washed out she was almost ghostly.

Finally she clasped her hands, composing herself, and looked back in my direction. “It’s not something I can talk about.”

Martinez would have loved to arrest her, and Curry always went along with Martinez. But she’d agreed to a voluntary mug shot, which they’d probably showed to the witnesses, or would in the morning. Either way they didn’t have an ID. We figured that out because they let her go.

But if their physical evidence panned out, and if they turned up anything at all that passed for a motive, I was pretty sure they were going to arrest her.

Chris knew it, too. As soon as we got in the car, she said, “Oh, man, am I in
trouble
. Jesus shit, Rebecca, this is unbelievable.”

“Tell me about it.” It was partly just a remark and partly a plea.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“I’m sorry— it’s just that I’m going to look guilty as hell. And that’s still not the worst of it.”

I was getting impatient. “Look, were you having an affair with McKendrick? You know I’m not going to get judgmental about something like that.”

“Yeah, but you will about what it actually was.”

“Well, just tell me, Chris. Then we’ll deal with it.”

“You’ll never speak to me again.”

I decided to let it go. It was a decision that lasted all of two-and-a-half seconds. A horrible notion at the back of my consciousness was inching forward and starting to nag. “Drugs?” I blurted.

She turned toward me. Watching the road, I couldn’t see her face, but I felt the indignation that flamed in every cell of her being.

“Of course not. It’s nothing illegal, Rebecca.”

Just something so shameful she wouldn’t even tell her best friend and partner about it.

She didn’t talk for the rest of the ride, but she said a strange thing when I dropped her off: “Go see Rosalie. Talk to her and the others. I want you to see what we’re up against.”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to be in court the next morning.

I phoned our secretary, Alan Kruzick, filled him in, told him I wouldn’t be in until ten or eleven, and asked him to cancel my one appointment. For once— and I almost gave him a raise for this— he behaved in a businesslike and responsible manner.

It was an odd request Chris had made, to spend the morning chasing strangers. But she was my most important client now, and she must have had a reason, I thought. So eight-thirty found me driving to a rundown building on Larkin Street, very near the Tenderloin. Chris had given me Rosalie’s address, but I didn’t know if “the others” lived there or somewhere else.

Parking, I thought maybe it was drugs after all— this was the neighborhood for it. I began to wonder if I should have come alone.

But Rosalie didn’t look even slightly scary. She seemed to be a trusting soul happy to let someone who claimed to be Chris’s lawyer into her apartment. She was in her sixties, I guess, dressed in brown polyester pants and a Kmartish green sweater. Her shoes were thick-soled brown lace-ups, good for hiking— I guessed she probably didn’t have a car and did her errands on foot. Her hair was short, brown going gray, and a little thin. It looked a lot as if a neighbor or perhaps her sister had cut it, or maybe she had lost at six-dollar-salon Russian roulette. She was overweight, someone who probably found those errands I imagined adequate for her exercise. She wore no makeup, and most of her appearance suggested she didn’t give a damn how she looked, except for one small but attractive bow to feminine adornment— a pair of earrings depicting the goddess Isis.

The Egyptian theme was apparent in some of her furnishings as well, such as a miniature pyramid that may have been a sculpture; I wasn’t sure. There was also a black jackal-headed statue, ceramic perhaps, which would have been a little frightening if I hadn’t recognized it as the Egyptian god Anubis. The room was furnished with makeshift furniture brightened with ethnic throws, some quite lovely, one or two plain shabby. The beige rug was stained. The bookshelves were bricks and boards, and jam-packed— one or two titles I could see indicated an interest in the occult. And there were plenty of candles, which may have been another indication. On the walls were posters, one for a psychic fair, the other depicting a mermaid or some-such ethereal creature.