Sitting on the counter, still on the telephone, Stuart Gorman was crying silently, making no attempt to stem the flow of tears. His shoulders were hunched, one arm tucked under the other one. He barely whispered, saying, "I know" and "Yeah, baby, I don't know," and Juhle could watch no more. Instead he went back outside to the deck and stood in silence as they bagged the body and began to lift it and load it onto the gurney.
Juhle didn't want to watch that, either. Reflecting that there weren't that many fun things to do at homicide scenes, he went back to the kitchen. He pulled around a chair and sat on it.
The phone conversation continued a few more minutes before
Gorman said, "Do you need me to come up there? You're not. Where are you? You've only been up there two weeks and…? Okay, okay, you're right, it doesn't matter. Call me when you get close, and I'll come get you."
He clicked the phone off and, as though it were a high explosive, placed it next to him on the counter. He closed his eyes and, for a long moment, didn't move.
Finally, Juhle spoke. "She going to be all right?"
Gorman tried and largely failed to arrange his face into a controlled expression. "I don't know," he said. "I don't have any idea." He exhaled heavily. "I don't believe this. This can't be happening."
Juhle resisted his urge to leave the man to his miseries. If he had in fact killed his wife-and his obvious pain and possible remorse now did not in the slightest degree rule out that possibility-then this was the time to exploit his vulnerability. Juhle needed to get him talking again, so he asked, "What school does she go to?"
"Reed. My alma mater. Although it turns out she's down in Santa Cruz now. Don't ask me why. But she's enrolled at Reed." He paused. "She's smart and weird, like her dad, and the place worked pretty well for me."
"How were you weird?"
A dry chuckle caught in Gorman's throat. "How was I not weird? I just never fit in as a kid. I was big, gangly, ugly." He pointed to the birthmark on his face. "This thing. I liked solitude. I wanted to write. That by itself is weird enough. When I think about it, that was probably half the problem with me and Caryn. She wanted someone normal, and I wasn't him."
"Normal in what way?"
"Motivated by money, for example. Guys my age, we're supposed to be driven by money. It's how we gauge our success in the world, right?" He shrugged. "I don't really think too much about money and never have."
"And this bothered your wife?"
Gorman smiled, but there wasn't any humor in it. "Are you kidding me? What greater failing can a man have than not to be the primary wage earner in his family?" "You weren't that?"
Another shrug. "I make more than decent enough money, I think. Eighty or a hundred grand a year, give or take. I'm a writer, so there's good years and bad years. But eighty grand to me is a fortune. It's not like I don't publish, like I'm not putting out good work. It just doesn't pay enough to suit Caryn."
"She wanted you to make more?"
He shook his head impatiently. "It wasn't so much that. With her income, we certainly didn't need any more money. She made enough for most third-world countries."
Juhle cast a quick glance around-the eight-burner stove, the Sub-Zero refrigerators, the shining copper pots and pans, all the gadgets on display on the counters, the other creature comforts he'd noticed everywhere. To say nothing of the size and location of the house itself-probably four to six million dollars in real estate and furnishings alone. "So she felt she was carrying you financially, was that it? Did she resent that?"
Gorman paused. "I don't know what she felt anymore, Inspector. I didn't think she was anywhere near asking me for a divorce until Friday, but then she did. I mean, after Kym left for school, we both knew there'd be… adjustments. But here it's only been a couple of weeks and that's it. It's all over, like we never had anything together, like everything we'd ever done was just a fucking stupid charade." He stopped abruptly, then started again more calmly. "She was just waiting for Kym to go. After that, there wasn't any reason for us to stay together."
"No discussion?"
"More like an announcement. 'My life with you is over. Do whatever you want. You're nothing to me.' " "That bother you?"
"No. I fucking loved it. What do you think? Did it bother me? Give me a break, Inspector."
"Taking that as a yes, then."
Gorman's eyes narrowed. He visibly reined himself in. "You don't know how hard I tried to keep it together. And she wasn't easy, let me tell you. She was never easy the last few years. You know what that's been like? And then hearing that you're a nonentity, that her world is just so much more important than yours, more financially rewarding, more everything. How's that make me feel? Like a piece of shit. Like a worthless piece of shit."
Something was going on behind Juhle in the living room, and suddenly Gorman straightened all the way up. "Hey! Wait a minute! What are you doing?" Boosting himself up from the counter, he was across the kitchen before Juhle could even stand. In the middle of the living room, the medical examiner's assistants with the gurney and its body bag had stopped at the interruption. "What are you doing?" Gorman demanded again.
Juhle stepped in front of him. "They're taking the body downtown, sir. The medical examiner is going to need to do an autopsy, then…"
"You mean he's going to cut her up?"
"To determine the exact cause of death, yes."
"But…" Gorman turned from Juhle to the men pushing the gurney, then back to the inspector, a low-wattage panic now evident in his eyes. "Why do you have to do that? I told you she had pills upstairs. If she'd been drinking and then got in the hot tub…"
"That's one way it might have happened," Juhle said, "yes."
"Well, what else?"
"She might have slipped getting into the tub. There's a good-sized bump on her head."
This news seemed to confuse Gorman, but he shook his reaction off. "That doesn't matter. What matters is she's dead! If she killed herself or it was an accident, what difference does it make?" He brought a hand back to his face, rubbed at the birthmark. "Jesus Christ, this is unbelievable. She's just now dead. It's only been a few hours. Don't you understand that? You don't have to cut her up. It won't make any difference."
Juhle wondered if Gorman could in fact be so clueless, or if this was some kind of an act. Every schoolchild knew that homicide victims got autopsied. Juhle had been playing his role as understanding cop comforting a victim's relative up until now, but this was the time to bring some reality into the discussion. "Mr. Gorman," he said, "surely you realize it makes a difference if somebody killed her."
Gorman opened his mouth and started to say something, then decided not to. His shoulders sagged, he shook his head from side to side. "God help us," he said.
Three
After getting up at dawn and hiking out from Tamarack Lake, Gina Roake drove to her Pleasant Street condominium on Nob Hill in under four hours. By noon, she had unpacked and stowed her gear, showered, and changed into her work clothes-a light mauve business suit and black low heels.
As she came out the doors onto the sidewalk in front of her building, Gina discovered that, somewhat to her surprise, she wasn't inclined to go straight to her office. True, that had been her intention since last night, but now that the moment had arrived, something about it didn't feel quite right. She knew that she could go in and report to her partners that she was ready to get back in harness. At that announcement, right away they would probably be able to throw her some work on cases they were handling, get her back up to speed, give her some billable hours.