Interesting, that dynamic, I thought. "Was the man with the scar there at the time the three were arrested?"
"Yeah. Afterward, too."
"What about the blond-haired boy?"
"Oh, he was gone by then. Months before."
"But the man with the scar stayed on after the arrests?"
"Well, not exactly. They raided the place, you know. The feds, they came in there and took all sorts of stuff away. And the man with the scar was with them."
"What? Was he handcuffed?"
"Not that I could see. If they arrested him, they must of let him go later. That flat was sealed up all through the trial, but when they took the seal off, he was living there again. And after she got done testifying against her friends, the little dark-haired girl stayed with him for a while. Then she was gone, and the next thing I knew, end of the month a family moved in."
"So when was the last time you actually saw the man with the scar?"
He considered. "Well, a day or two after the little dark-haired girl left."
I leaned back against the cigar-musty upholstery, revising quite a few of my preconceptions. And putting together some things that hadn't made sense or hadn't seemed important before. But I didn't want to jump to conclusions; I needed proof.
I asked, "If I brought you pictures of those people, could you identify them?"
"Think so. The older I get, the sharper I am on things that happened a long time ago. Damn, I wish I could say the same for what's going on day to day."
"I don't think you're doing so badly. I'll see if I can get hold of some pictures, and as soon as I do, I'll check back with you. Meantime, if you think of anything else, call me, please."
After I got out of the car, Cal Hurley smiled at me and extended his hand. "I'll do that," he said. "And you stop back anytime. I'll be here, that's one thing you can count on."
All Souls was as quiet and deserted as if it were a sleepy Sunday afternoon. No clients or media people waited in the parlor; Ted's desk was vacant. I went past it and stuck my head into Rae's office. Empty. I frowned, checked my watch. Four thirty-seven, too early for everyone to have gone home. Then I heard a murmur of voices in the kitchen. I hurried back there, feeling what I told myself was an unreasonable foreboding.
The scene in the kitchen reminded me of wakes I'd attended. Rae, Ted, and Jack sat around the table, faces somber, drinks in hand. Ted clasped Ralph the cat as if he were a security blanket. Alice, subdued for once, perched on the windowsill. I set my bag and briefcase on the counter and leaned against it, braced for bad news.
"There you are," Jack said, a little too heartily. For once he didn't cast a lustful glance at my legs or cleavage. Jack was recovering from a divorce and for some reason had made me the object of his yearnings. If he wasn't ogling me, something terrible must have happened.
"What's going on here?" I asked, my voice matching his for false cheer. "You guys starting the Friday happy hour early?"
"Something like that." Ted stood and handed Ralph to me. "You look like you could use a drink." He went toward the cupboard where the glasses were kept.
I took the last empty chair, setting the cat on my lap. He tucked his tail around his front paws and stared solemnly at me. I turned him around so I wouldn't have to undergo his yellow-eyed scrutiny. "What's going on?" I repeated in a more urgent tone.
Ted returned with a glass of white wine and handed it to me. "Hank had additional surgery this afternoon. He started bleeding internally again, so they had to go in and tie off some blood vessels. None of us could work, so we decided to knock off early."
I froze, glass halfway to my lips. "Will he be-"
Rae said, "Anne-Marie called a little while ago. He's in recovery, holding his own."
I set the glass down on the table and pressed my hands against Ralph's round sides, so hard he grunted. "What does that mean-holding his own?"
It was a stupid question; no one bothered to answer me.
Did I imagine it, or was there a tension in the room that hadn't been there when I entered? I looked around the table, saw in the others' guarded expressions that they didn't know quite how to deal with me. To them I was not the same person they thought they'd known before last night. Rae had seen my face just before I'd started up the hill after the sniper; Jack and Ted had arrived with the police and found me straddling his supine body, gun pressed to his skull. I doubted any of them would ever fully reconcile their prior conceptions of me with the near-murderous stranger they'd seen. And while time would somewhat dull the memory, it would always be there, always set me a little apart from them.
The realization filled me with sadness. I squeezed Ralph harder, and this time he let out a tiny mew! of protest. "Sorry," I whispered, and handed him back to Ted. Suddenly I needed to be out of there, to be alone. I got up, grabbed my bag and briefcase, and fled into the hall. Behind me Rae said, "Let her go. She'll be okay."
But footsteps followed me. I turned and saw Ted, still clutching the cat. "Shar-"
"What now?"
He blinked, recoiling from the harshness in my voice. "I only wanted to tell you there's an envelope for you on my desk."
"Oh. Oh, thanks, Ted."
Without a word he went back into the kitchen.
The sadness came on more strongly. As I went down the hall my sight blurred from tears. Angrily I brushed them away, got the manila envelope from Ted's desk, and took it up to my office. It contained the copy of the report Wolf had promised me. I sat down at the desk and began to read.
Wolf appeared to have consulted the same published resources as I had, plus interviewed a number of people who had known Jenny Ruhl. The most fruitful of these talks was with a woman who was Ruhl's roommate during their freshman year at Berkeley. Although their lives took off in very different directions after those first semesters, the two remained close. The woman confirmed that Andy Wrightman was the father of Ruhl's child. He was, she said, a campus hanger-on who was auditing the course Ruhl was taking on the origins of the Vietnam war when they met; they lived together a year or so before Ruhl became pregnant. When she told him about the expected child, Wrightman disappeared from Berkeley. But he returned to Jenny before she moved from the East Bay to San Francisco, and after the trial, when Ruhl's friend contacted her to see if there was any way she could help out, Ruhl and Wrightman were living in the flat on Page Street.
I read the report twice, the second time trying to guess what Jess Goodhue's reaction to it had been. Then I reviewed my contacts with the anchorwoman, eventually focusing on the telephone conversation we'd had late on the afternoon that she'd picked up the report. I'd told her that I thought Tom Grant figured in my case more than he would admit; said one of the other heirs had been startled by my description of Grant; said he'd said something about Grant being the "right man."
But by then Goodhue had known it was a name-Wrightman. The name of her father. And Grant was someone she'd met, had interviewed and found "charming"
Then I thought of the conversation I'd had with Grant the next morning. We'd set our meeting for nine that evening because he'd scheduled a client dinner and then an appointment for "an interview." When Angela Curtis had told me he'd sent her out to the movies because he didn't want her around the house, I'd assumed the interview was with a prospective employee, possibly a replacement for Curtis. But media people also scheduled interviews. And when I'd tried to call Goodhue before I'd left for Grant's, she'd supposedly been in her dressing room, where no one ever bothered her.
It was time, I thought, to have a frank talk with Jess Goodhue.
Twenty-Three