“I’m not through with you!” Lisa said, slamming the door on her kids and jumping into the driver’s seat. “I’m not through with either one of you!” Tires screaming, she took off with the children.
Nina parked in a visitors’ spot in the lot beside Kevin’s building and walked up a winding path through dirt and low bushes up to a set of shredding wooden steps. Kevin now stood on the porch looking at the spot where Lisa’s car had been parked.
“You okay?” Nina asked, approaching.
He ran a hand over his short hair. A cigarette burned forgotten in his other hand. Hot ash fell onto the tinder wood of the porch. Nina forced herself not to move, but watched the ash turn from orange to gray before she breathed again. He lifted a Coke can from the ground, poured its contents out into the dirt, and smashed it flat with a fist. “I hate when we lose it like that in front of the kids. Did you see the looks on their faces?”
“Sorry. I really am. It’s rough. I think you ought to have me arrange for a civil backup when you and Lisa are making trades.”
“Have a cop stand by? I’d be a laughingstock. I know everybody. I don’t know what happened, how we exploded. I picked them up from school. I thought Wednesday was my night this week to make dinner and then get them back to Lisa’s by eight. But she came screeching over here insisting tomorrow was the night. I decided to let it go just before you drove up.”
“I looked at the visitation schedule, and Thursday’s your night for dinner with Heather and Joey.”
“Guess I was mixed up. Schedules. Every day something different. It isn’t good for them. And Lisa. I never saw her blow up like that. She’s steamed about Ali.”
“Shouldn’t we go inside?” Nina asked, feeling the eyes of the neighborhood, but Kevin sat heavily down on the bottom step, and after a moment considering the damage that might be done to her suit skirt, but seeing no alternative except to stand officiously, she sat beside him. He tossed his cigarette into the dirt.
“Fuck it,” he said.
“Kevin, before we get any further, did you get a chance to talk with Ali Peck?”
“I called her,” he said. “I asked her what the deal was, with her spilling out the story of our relationship at the hearing. I mean, she knew how much that would hurt me. Well, she didn’t volunteer anything. She said Lisa’s attorney called and woke up her parents first thing Friday morning, then some guy showed up and handed her a subpoena. Her parents called their lawyer. She was told to come to court and she did. She had to tell.”
Riesner. Nina’s teeth ground. How did Riesner know about Ali? Did he really get a phone call? Where was Sandy when she needed her to say something objectionable?
“He suggested that Ali called him,” she said. “He didn’t come out and swear it.”
His lips formed a hard line. “You’re surprised? I thought that’s what lawyers are famous for.”
Nina said with heat, “Do I do that, Kevin? Do I lie and mislead people? I’m sorry to think you have such a low opinion of lawyers in general. As a matter of fact, I’m proud of what I do.”
“Forget what I said, okay? I get those comments all day in my line of work, too. Sorry.”
“Oh, well. Never mind.”
“You know the upshot, and that’s what matters. Lisa’s got her teeth in my kids. You say it’s temporary. I say, I have one more chance to get them back and I’m giving it all I got. Whatever it takes.”
“Does Ali know whether the D.A. is pursuing a statutory-rape charge against you?”
“She said the D.A.’s office talked to her about it. She said she was real honest, and after they talked, they seemed inclined to let it go. She also told them if they went through with it, she’d leave the state. She would never testify against me. She thinks it’s offensive that a mature seventeen-year-old can’t make her own sexual choices without the law butting in.” He shook his head. “Isn’t she something? I believe her, Nina. Apparently, they did, too. So I think that gets me off that particular hook.”
“That’s good to know, Kevin. It must be a relief to you.” This news wouldn’t help him keep his kids, but at least they didn’t have to worry about a wrench flying in from that direction to smash their case.
“Of course, things aren’t looking too good at work now they know about Ali. They’re investigating the situation before they decide whether to put me on probation or fire me. And there’s still Lisa to worry about.”
“Maybe Lisa stole the Bronco. Maybe she did,” Nina said, half to herself, remembering the coldness in Lisa’s eyes as she drove away. Paul had a lot to do but he was going to have to check Lisa out, and soon.
“Maybe she did. I don’t know,” Kevin said flatly. “It’s a fight to the death between us.” Hopelessness drained color from his eyes. “I would like to take back everything that’s happened. I wish I could go back to those weekends. We’d take a paddleboat out of Zephyr Cove, or rent a motorboat over at the Ski Run Marina and take off with a bottle of wine and this sweet honey bread Lisa made. And peanut butter. Have you ever looked at her lips? So soft,” he said. “Malleable. That’s a word, isn’t it? Maybe I thought that meant she was malleable.”
He picked up a forked branch and began to break pieces off. “I thought Lisa and I were together for life. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I can’t go on like this, watching my kids cry.”
She saw hostility in his eyes. Representing him in his divorce and custody fight meant she represented all that was going wrong with his life. She took information from the alcohol on his breath. That couldn’t be helping him with his problems. “Since I’m here,” she said, “let’s go over how the visitation schedule works.”
“It’s too complicated. I did crummy in math in high school.” His arms crossed over his barrel chest, as if to defend himself. He must be getting cold out here. She thought, I want to leave. What good am I doing sitting here with this guy? He seemed to be working himself up to something. She hoped it wasn’t another revelation.
“Would it help if we organized a simple calendar for you?” She tried again to find a practical solution to his insoluble dilemma.
“No.”
“What would help?”
Kevin leaned in toward her.
“I guess only one thing,” he said, his voice desperate.
“What?” At that moment, she would do anything to make him happy and get him out of her hair. She had never thought a cop would need so much hand-holding.
He answered by seizing her face between two meaty fists, pushing his face against hers, sticking his tongue down her throat, and moaning joylessly.
The whole thing lasted about half a second and she was so shocked it took her that long to fight back. Then she pushed so hard he fell back against the porch railing. He stood up. So did she. She moved away, putting several feet between them. Looking down, she saw that when she pulled away he had grabbed for her, ripping her silk blouse. Her bra was showing. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, never taking her eyes off him.
He took a step toward her. She carried a small can of pepper spray in her purse. She opened the purse and put her hand inside, found it, and took it out.
Kevin’s face flared red. Apologizing profusely and abjectly, he backed toward his doorway. Making very little sense now, practically babbling at her, he insisted she wait while he looked for a pin for her blouse.
She had been assaulted by him. Had he gone crazy?
“Come inside,” he babbled. “You can’t drive around like that! Just inside for a minute. I can fix this.” He was almost shouting. “Don’t go! Please let me make this one thing right!”
“I’m leaving now,” she said. “Don’t come after me. Go inside, quiet down, and go to bed.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-it just happened. Don’t look at me like that.” He kept calling after her, but she didn’t wait to hear any more.
14
A FTER INTERVIEWING MARIO LOPEZ at the jail in Placerville, Paul drove back to Tahoe in good time and picked up Wish at Nina’s office. Nina listened without much comment to his report, passed on joining them for dinner, and examined her watch, saying she had to pick Bob up from somewhere. She looked upset, but she waved off his questions.
So Paul gathered Wish up from under the iron fist of his mother. On the way out of town, they hit the Coyote Grill in Round Hill Mall, a spanking-new shopping center just over the Nevada state line. Stuffed full, they drove along the eastern side of Tahoe toward Incline Village as dark descended and stars burst into the dark of a moonless sky. Moist lake smells floated around them until Wish complained of frozen ears and Paul pulled over and raised the soft top.
A funky bunch of wooden cabins that had been around for as long as Paul could remember, the Hilltop Lodge loomed over Truckee from a small hill southeast of town. The lodge rooms backed up to views of the town and curved around a central area. They pulled up to a spot not too far from the main building and parked. For several minutes, they watched groups in various stages of happiness laugh, reel, and lurch around the parking lot, in one case piling into a Jeep, deciding not to drive after all, and bumping out down the hill singing, arm-in-arm.
“Looks like a permanent party,” Wish said.
Paul got out. “Wait here. Keep watch.”
As Wish rolled down the window, Paul could see his breath in the air. In September the weather changed from moment to moment; a cold front must be rolling west from Nevada. Clouds spiraled up in the night sky and a few drops of rain fell on Paul’s head as he went looking for the manager’s office.
Not surprisingly, no one had registered under the name of Cody Stinson. A minor lie involving a special request for service from the girls in number eight that made the manager’s cheeks flame and got him away from his desk briefly meant Paul could check out the register, but no name leaped out as an obvious alias.
He returned to the car. Wish stood next to it, arms wrapped around himself. “Must be under forty degrees tonight,” Wish said. “You bring an umbrella?”
“No,” Paul said.
“Shoot.”
“Tough guys don’t use umbrellas.”
They watched from inside the car for a long time, using the defroster and heat intermittently to keep the windshield clear and their bodies from freezing. Cars from the highway below whizzed by, and the lights of the town turned cloudy in the mist.
Doors opened and closed. People came and went. No sign of Cody Stinson.
At midnight, Paul told Wish to take a nap. They would need to stagger each other. He had a chart marked, keeping a record of who seemed to belong to what lodging, and by now they had narrowed their field of interest to three doors. He hunched into his jacket and prepared himself for a nightlong wait.
By three in the morning, all celebrations ceased. The dull roar from the town stopped. No more trains flew by on the tracks below; the cacophony of different musical styles from bars on the main street faded. Wish snored in the backseat. Paul pulled his leather jacket tighter.
Door number two opened. Paul, half dozing against the steering wheel of the Mustang, first noticed the absence of light. Generally when someone opened a door, they left a light burning in the room behind long enough to see the way out. This time, only a qualitative change in the black of a shadowy doorway showed him someone was standing there.
Paul reached a hand into the backseat and tapped Wish on the shoulder. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” he said in a low voice. Wish opened his eyes with the immediate alertness of the young and slipped silently out of the car to watch with Paul.
The door opened wider and a man stepped out into the light rain, long-armed and lean, carrying a brown bag. Cody Stinson.
They both recognized him. “Now what?” Wish said.
