Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

“Where is it, then? Where’s the evidence he put together?”

“Gone,” she said, with a brittle smile. “Someone broke into my office and took it all.”

“You still got Uncle Karl’s mail though, right?” Sam asked, and Elaine turned toward him as if in surprise. “Karl said there was some letter he was going to share with him. It’s in your top desk drawer.”

“You’re very helpful Sam,” Elaine murmured as she opened the drawer and withdrew an official-looking envelope. “Thank you so much for remembering.” She handed it to me.

“It’s been opened,” I noted. It was from a Special Agent Miller out of the FBI’s San Francisco Headquarters. I folded the letter up and put it in my back pocket.

“Sam,” I said. “This Reese cat? I’ve met him. If he killed Karl, I know you can tell me lots about him.”

“Well, he’s got a cast iron pair, that has to be said,” Sam said, sounding as if he hated to admit it. “He’s the guy the SBPD mainly uses to serve their warrants. He’s kicked in a lot of doors, has Officer Reese. It’s pretty plain he doesn’t like people with sun tans.

“He’s pretty tough. Anyone who took him on would have to be real careful,” Sam said. He gave me a bleak smile when he saw my expression, despite the blood fever momentarily shining from his eyes. “Don’t worry, I can be patient.”

Sam turned to start eyeballing Elaine again. But she was still studying me close, and he got a sulky expression on his face.

“You remind me of Karl a lot,” she told me. “I thought the world of him. Did you know he worked with the homeless here? There’s a ruined lumber treatment plant behind the Mall where a lot of homeless used to camp before the police sliced up their tents and chased them away. Many of them were vets with PTSD. Karl used to go back there to the ruins checking up on them – some of them were so shy and bashful, he could only communicate with them by leaving notes under rocks.”

“That sounds like Karl,” I admitted. He’d been a habitual marshmallow heart, but I’d been the one who always wound up saddled with the strays he regularly brought home.

“Sam,” I said, “I have a favor to ask of you. I want you to stay with Elaine for a while, bird dog her for me. I don’t think Lola here is enough.”

I gave an apologetic glance to Lola, who thumped her tail on the floor at hearing her own name. Sam’s eyes widened at my request but he didn’t appear too displeased at the prospect of hanging around this pretty lawyer.

As for Elaine, she actually blushed as she looked down at her Jimmy Choos. If she noticed I’d ensured Sam would be underfoot 24/7 interfering with whatever schemes she was running, she didn’t seem to mind. Unless Sam was in on it with her?

“I’ll be in touch,” I said as I headed to the door. But I stopped in with my hand on the knob and turned to study Elaine. Maybe she thought all she had to do was say Karl’s name to push my buttons. Buttons were being pushed all right, but not the ones she seemed to be trying for.

“What up?” Sam asked, and I realized I’d just been standing there staring at Elaine.

“Nothing. Like I said, I’ll be in touch.”

I smiled sheepishly at Elaine as if in apology. Her own gaze of cold appraisal faded into an amiable expression as fake as my own.

I left them alone to get as closely re-acquainted as they wanted, and headed down the hall toward the elevator. But behind me I heard her office door open and close, and I turned to watch her forthright approach.

“Is there something you want to ask me?” she demanded. “Anything you want to say?”

“Well, if you insist,” I said. “You were saying you weren’t from around these parts. I was wondering, did you move up here to enjoy Stagger Bay’s scenic beauty? Or were you in a hurry to be away from someone – I mean somewhere else?”

“How is that any of your business? What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?” She didn’t even bother pretending offended innocence, which made me relax a bit.

“Well, it’s just I always find a murky, mysterious past so exciting and romantic in my associates. But if you must, to the chase, then. So, Karl investigates for seven years, you help him for the last few, and y’all never quite get the goods till just before he becomes dead? Hell, when he does the unexpected and finds out the truth despite your interference, are you the one who tells Karl’s killers he has the goods on them?

“Maybe you were using Karl as an unwitting bully stick to run some kind of extortion game on the local hillbilly mafia, and your scam cost my brother his life. And it’s beautiful timing on my release; it’s surely nice for you to have a violent ex-con as a body guard, maybe even as a potential fall guy.

“But I’ve played that role before, haven’t I? And you, you’re so very very frightened here aren’t you?”

“You’re a bastard,” she hissed. “You’re nothing like your brother.”

“I never claimed not to be one. And as for Karl? He could afford to think he was nice sometimes, he always had me. You're right about us being different though: After all, he's dead and I’m still breathing in and out for the time being. Maybe I should be more like him, play patty cake with you and not do dick for seven years.”

“Do you really think we dragged our feet all that time?” she asked, eyes wide. “Do you really think your own brother would let that happen to you? Karl and Sam have always trusted me, and you can too.”

“You’re the one who’s not playing fair here, Elaine,” I said. “You just don’t like having suspicion aimed your own way, but if you take a step back you’ll see my point.

“Of course I’m grateful for you getting me sprung – that buys you payback from me whatever your motives, whatever you’ve got cooking. But that’s my only son’s neck you’re hanging on. I have to have some reason to trust you before I can get comfortable with letting you stay that close to him.”

She grabbed a double handful of my tattered work shirt and pulled me close enough I heard her heart beating in her bird narrow chest; saw her pulse throbbing on the side of her thin neck.

“I won’t let you turn him against me,” she breathed into my ear. And then she let go.

Our local TV station was a few blocks over, wedged between a candy store and a gun shop. The station was a rinky-dink affair, but sufficient to the needs of Stagger Bay.

A few network news vans were in the parking lot, the nearest out of Oakland from an East Bay station. Even from half a block away I recognized the beautiful redheaded anchorwoman standing by the side of the van, sipping her coffee.

When she saw me rolling up, her mouth opened and the coffee cup tumbled from her grasp to slosh its steaming contents into the gutter. Then she put her news face back on and started slapping the side of the van with her dainty little hand.

Behind her I saw our local station’s excuse for an anchorman, standing in the entrance to his studio. He saw me but didn’t try to approach – he’d made some on-air remarks during my trial seven years before that had been less than kind, and he probably figured I wouldn’t give him the time of day now. He was right.

By the time I reached her, her cameraman was backing her up and another assistant flanked her. The camera tracked me as I approached, making me feel like I had a bull’s eye painted on my forehead.

“Markus,” she said with a grin, sticking the microphone up at me like a weapon. “This is news.”

Her cameraman stepped back and adjusted his lens focus to include us both.

“I’ll keep this short,” I said, facing the camera’s bulbous insectile eye full on like an opponent. “I’m speaking to the coward who killed the Beardsleys seven years ago. I’m talking to the human waste who’s terrorized the people of this town ever since.”