Т Паркер - The Fallen

But the name of the bridge had never been mentioned. It would have to be someone who knew their story and their attachment to the Cabrillo Bridge.

She looked at me. “How would they know which bridge?”

“You told your friends about the bridge because it was romantic. Assume that Garrett did the same. Friends tell friends, stories get repeated. Enemies hear things. Enemies collect things. Years pass. Anybody could know, Stella.”

She closed her eyes and let her head roll back against the rest. “Okay. Say that’s what happened. Someone knew the story and the bridge. Someone used that conversation to kill Garrett. Why would they send a tape of it to you?”

“They’re either trying to confuse me or trying to help,” I lied.

I saw the red squares hovering in the space between us. I didn’t want to lie to Stella, but I had Arliss Buntz to consider.

Stella opened her eyes. “This tape doesn’t really surprise me. For the last few months, I’ve felt watched and listened to. It’s been very strange.”

“Where?”

“On the street. In my car. Even in my home. Crazy? Maybe. Maybe some of Garrett’s paranoia rubbed off on me.”

“Have you ever seen anyone watching or following you?”

“No,” she said. “But I’ve felt as if I’ve made him turn his face away, like he knows I’m feeling watched and he stops. Like I’ve just missed seeing him. Garrett and my landlord are the only people I even told about it. The landlord lives on the ground floor of the building. I figured he could, you know, keep an eye out.”

“Is this watcher a man?”

“I think so.”

“You should have told me a lot sooner.”

She gave me an odd look, part strength and part surrender. “I didn’t want you to think I was losing it. Now I don’t care if you think I’m losing it.”

I ejected the tape from the player.

“Come up to my apartment,” she said. “There’s no reason we have to sit in a cold car.”

Stella put the tape in a player. She tossed her baseball cap on a chair and we sat at opposite ends of the big purple couch with the gold piping. There was only a corner lamp on, and one distant light from the kitchen, and it was strange to sit in the near darkness and listen to Stella Asplundh talk to her dead husband.

She played the tape again.

Then again.

I thought of “The Life and Death of Samantha” and how I had watched it over and over, unable to pull myself away but not sure why.

GARRETT: Okay, Bess, the landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

STELLA: Hardly.

GARRETT: You’ll always be that to me. Bye.

“You know what is most difficult right now?” she asked. “Garrett was my own husband, and I’ve got no idea why someone would kill him. Do you know how confusing that is? To not even know why? I wish there was one logical killer. One clear reason. One understandable event.”

“Garrett had videodiscs made by prostitutes,” I said. “They showed city leaders and cops and businessmen with the girls.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Some of the men are influential. Even powerful. I thought at first that Garrett had probably stepped on the wrong toes. Like you said, he had plenty of enemies.”

“But now?”

“I’m not so sure. You said he didn’t tell you much about his work.”

“Few specifics,” said Stella. “He told me, for instance, that there was a prostitution problem in the city that nobody was acknowledging. I knew he was involved in some aspect of that.”

The telephone rang again and Stella excused herself to answer it.

Oh, hello, Mom... Oh, no, I’m glad you called... I was just talking with Detective Brownlaw... Yes... Okay, I will. Bye, and I love you, too...

Stella came back and sat on the couch.

“I want to ask you about people that Garrett may have mentioned. How about Jordan Sheehan?”

“No,” said Stella.

“Chupa Junior?”

“No.”

“Carrie Ann Martier?”

Stella shook her head.

“Abel Sarvonola and Trey Vinson?”

“I know of Sarvonola, of course. But not Vinson.”

“Chet Fellowes?”

“Not much anymore,” said Stella. “We used to be friends with Chet and his wife, but the four of us drifted apart after Samantha.”

“Ron Mincher?”

“No.”

“Did Garrett ever talk about someone he’d really love to take down? Someone he just couldn’t stand?”

Stella thought about this for a while. “No. But he didn’t fully trust his own director. He thought that Kaven was too tight with Sarvonola and the mayor and the supervisors, that Kaven would let them... well, stretch their ethics a little too far for Garrett’s taste. Apparently Kaven wasn’t overwhelmed with the idea of hiring Garrett. He thought Garrett was better off staying a cop. John Van Flyke was the one who brought him aboard. Garrett and John saw themselves as the good guys lined up against the corrupt legions. I mean, they’d joke about it, but I know they saw themselves as fighting the good fight. And they always put up a united front for the Ethics Authority. Garrett would never have dissed Kaven behind his back.”

“Like the soldiers who see the action while the generals stay above it all.”

“That was my take.”

“But you and Garrett thought enough of Kaven to invite him to your home.”

She thought for a moment. “We had a wonderful social life. Even though everyone thought he was tough and uncompromising, Garrett loved his friends. He was ferociously loyal. And oddly trusting, too, for a man with a job like his. We had a wide variety of friends — people from the PD, people from the school district where I was a counselor. I had old college friends from swimming, and Garrett had boyhood friends who were still very close. He made friends all the time. He became friends with the guy who serviced his car — he was at the memorial today. One summer Garrett came back from Montana with a young fishing guide who was having some problems. The kid stayed with us for a month and Garrett got him a job on one of the charter boats out of Point Loma. He was there today, too.”

It’s always interesting to see a side of someone you never knew was there. I thought about Garrett Asplundh’s odd mix of suspicion and generosity, morality and forgiveness, humility and superiority.

“Did you know about Garrett’s National City apartment?”

“He told me about it. But not exactly where it was.”

“Did you know that a young woman named April Holly has been living there since late January?”

“No,” said Stella. “I did not. Someone named April came to the funeral.”

I told her the story about April’s scrape with prostitution and Garrett’s entry on the white horse. I told her that April said there had never been any sexual contact.

She listened without interrupting and was quiet for a long while.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’m not surprised at that, really. Before Samantha he was trusting and generous with people. We let one of his nephews live with us for a year because he was having trouble at home. We took in a neighbor boy once because his parents were separating and his home life was in a shambles. I mean, Garrett brought home stray animals. After Samantha, though, all that trust reversed itself. I’m glad to know that some of it came back, with this April girl.”

“Explain.”

“He’d always been a drinker, but then he began drinking very heavily,” said Stella. “He became worried that something was going to happen to him. He became obsessive about locks and alarms. About varying his travel routes and schedule. About phones and bugs and tape recorders. About my safety. He would worry about every single thing that I did. He got worse and worse. I couldn’t live with him like that. It was like being strangled. I took this place in September, barely eight weeks after Samantha. He got the apartment in Hillcrest and a month later the one in National City.”