If we’d had The Fin or Dewey Mains or someone else to pit against Riordan, maybe we’d have gotten somewhere in breaking that story. As it was, all we had was my word against hers and her father’s money. Riordan wouldn’t give her up, and stood by that fairy tale all the way to the gallows, where they hanged him.
Well, he wasn’t the first man to take the drop because of his taste in women.
Mabel returned with Daddy to the Oak Park mansion, to life as she used to live it, although I suspect family gatherings may be more rowdy than old man Stearns would admit publicly, with that wild one sat down among the lambs at the dinner table. I have hopes that her taste for the more exciting existence some of us live may bring her back into my sphere someday, where I can have a shot at putting that fine head on the wall.
I think about that trophy more than some others because when they sewed up my hand they missed the point of the knife, which had broken off in the heel of my thumb. I can see it now, buried deep. Cold and gray. Like her eyes.
Part III
Isle of broken dreams
Deceptions
by Marcia Muller[9]
Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is deceptively fragile-looking, especially when fog swirls across its high span. But from where I was standing, almost underneath it at the south end, even the mist couldn’t disguise the massiveness of its concrete piers and the taut strength of its cables. I tipped my head back and looked up the tower to where it disappeared into the drifting grayness, thinking about the other ways the bridge is deceptive.
For one thing, the color isn’t gold, but rust red, reminiscent of dried blood. And though the bridge is a marvel of engineering, it is also plagued by maintenance problems that keep the Bridge District in constant danger of financial collapse. For a reputedly romantic structure, it has seen more than its fair share of tragedy: Some eight hundred — odd lost souls have jumped to their deaths from its deck.
Today I was there to try to find out if that figure should be raised by one. So far I’d met with little success.
I was standing next to my car in the parking lot of Fort Point, a historic fortification at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. Where the pavement stopped, the land fell away to jagged black rocks; waves smashed against them, sending up geysers of salty spray. Beyond the rocks the water was choppy, and Angel Island and Alcatraz were mere humpbacked shapes in the mist. I shivered, wishing I’d worn something heavier than my poplin jacket, and started toward the fort.
This was the last stop on a journey that had taken me from the toll booths and Bridge District offices to Vista Point at the Marin County end of the span, and back to the National Parks Services headquarters down the road from the fort. None of the Parks Service or bridge personnel — including a group of maintenance workers near the north tower — had seen the slender dark-haired woman in the picture I’d shown them, walking south on the pedestrian sidewalk at about four yesterday afternoon. None of them had seen her jump.
It was for that reason — plus the facts that her parents had revealed about twenty-two-year-old Vanessa DiCesare — that I tended to doubt she actually had committed suicide, in spite of the note she’d left taped to the dashboard of the Honda she’d abandoned at Vista Point. Surely at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon someone would have noticed her. Still, I had to follow up every possibility, and the people at the Parks Service station had suggested I check with the rangers at Fort Point.
I entered the dark-brick structure through a long, low tunnel — called a sally port, the sign said — which was flanked at either end by massive wooden doors with iron studding. Years before I’d visited the fort, and now I recalled that it was more or less typical of harbor fortifications built in the Civil War era: a ground floor topped by two tiers of working and living quarters, encircling a central courtyard.
I emerged into the court and looked up at the west side; the tiers were a series of brick archways, their openings as black as empty eyesockets, each roped off by a narrow strip of yellow plastic strung across it at waist level. There was construction gear in the courtyard; the entire west side was under renovation and probably off limits to the public.
As I stood there trying to remember the layout of the place and wondering which way to go, I became aware of a hollow metallic clanking that echoed in the circular enclosure. The noise drew my eyes upward to the wooden watchtower atop the west tiers, and then to the red arch of the bridge’s girders directly above it. The clanking seemed to have something to do with cars passing over the roadbed, and it was underlaid by a constant grumbling rush of tires on pavement. The sounds, coupled with the soaring height of the fog-laced girders, made me feel very small and insignificant. I shivered again and turned to my left, looking for one of the rangers.
The man who came out of a nearby doorway startled me, more because of his costume than the suddenness of his appearance. Instead of the Parks Service uniform I remembered the rangers wearing on my previous visit, he was clad in what looked like an old Union Army uniform: a dark blue frock coat, lighter blue trousers, and a wide-brimmed hat with a red plume. The long saber in a scabbard that was strapped to his waist made him look thoroughly authentic.
He smiled at my obvious surprise and came over to me, bushy eyebrows lifted inquiringly. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
I reached into my bag and took out my private investigator’s license and showed it to him. “I’m Sharon McCone, from All Souls Legal Cooperative. Do you have a minute to answer some questions?”
He frowned, the way people often do when confronted by a private detective, probably trying to remember whether he’d done anything lately that would warrant investigation. Then he said, “Sure,” and motioned for me to step into the shelter of the sally port.
“I’m investigating a disappearance, a possible suicide from the bridge,” I said. “It would have happened about four yesterday afternoon. Were you on duty then?”
He shook his head. “Monday’s my day off.”
“Is there anyone else here who might have been working then?”
“You could check with Lee — Lee Gottschalk, the other ranger on this shift.”
“Where can I find him?”
He moved back into the courtyard and looked around. “I saw him start taking a couple of tourists around just a few minutes ago. People are crazy; they’ll come out in any kind of weather.”
“Can you tell me which way he went?”
The ranger gestured to our right. “Along this side. When he’s done down here, he’ll take them up that iron stairway to the first tier, but I can’t say how far he’s gotten yet.”
I thanked him and started off in the direction he’d indicated.
There were open doors in the cement wall between the sally port and the iron staircase. I glanced through the first and saw no one. The second led into a narrow dark hallway; when I was halfway down it, I saw that this was the fort’s jail. One cell was set up as a display, complete with a mannequin prisoner; the other, beyond an archway that was not much taller than my own five-foot-six, was unrestored. Its waterstained walls were covered with graffiti, and a metal railing protected a two-foot-square iron grid on the floor in one corner. A sign said that it was a cistern with a forty-thousand-gallon capacity.