“Go on.”
“I put the medal in a plastic bag and listed it. It went into the evidence locker with the clothes.”
“Did you then go out to El Encinal Cemetery?”
“Yes. We arrived at seven A.M., when it was getting light. Officer Graydon, the backhoe operator, and the groundskeeper from the cemetery were waiting outside the tape line Officer Graydon had set up. I pulled on my gloves and went in and looked down in the hole. The floodlights were bright. I clearly saw an arm sticking out of a trash bag.”
“What did you do then?” Jaime had a rhythm going with her; he must have taken her testimony dozens of times.
“I got on the ground on a tarp, reached in with scissors, and opened the bags. There were three layers of trash bag. I cut a slit maybe three feet long. There was a woman’s body in there.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We didn’t move her. She was cold. She had been dead for a while. I took photos and put a call in to the pathologist, Susan Misumi, and our forensics technician. While Dr. Misumi was en route we checked out the area. Officer Graydon pointed out some apparent footprints. We took casts.
“When Dr. Misumi arrived, she spent some time with the victim. She examined the remains in place, taking photos, then she had us remove the body for transport to the morgue at Natividad. By then the sun was well up and we turned off the lights.
“I had called Alex Zhukovsky again regarding opening up his father’s coffin. He gave his permission. The backhoe hit the top of the coffin at about eight A.M. and, with the assistance of Officer Martinez, I opened it.”
“And what, if anything, did you find?”
“The mahogany coffin had been recently disturbed. The satin lining inside was ragged. There was some gray hair at the top. Evidence of insect activity. Shreds of clothing. The bones, which I would expect to find, were missing.”
By now, the gasps had abated to
“Pretty obvious the coffin had contained a human body, which had been removed, although we couldn’t tell when. Dr. Misumi came over and looked at it and more photos were taken.”
Surprisingly, Jaime skipped through the details of that hideous early morning find. Nina hurried along with him in her mind, wondering why he was in such a rush to leave the grave, not finding her fissure yet.
“Did you then return to the station?” asked Jaime.
“Yes. I had received a radio message that Alex Zhukovsky had showed up. He’d received two phone calls from us and he wanted to know what was going on.”
Salas called the mid-afternoon break and everybody rushed out for enough caffeine to float them through the final afternoon session. Klaus and Nina stayed at the conference table with Stefan.
When they returned, the jury, so fresh and ironed in the morning, had the look of laundry left too long on the line, shirts and sweaters sagging. Weary hands stroked eyes and foreheads. Concentrating for so many hours took a lot of effort, and the golfing lady Klaus had winked at rubbed her leg often, as if to keep it awake or stave off some pain.
During the break, Nina had decided she understood Jaime’s strategy-he had seen the break coming and saved the luscious best for last. He would give those jurors something to dream about! Sure enough, he, who appeared as combed and fresh as he had in the morning, leisurely pulled out the forensics photos and transported them back to the graveyard, evoking the fog, the cool morning, the digging toward the victim, all the time questioning Banta exhaustively on the details. By the time he was finished spinning his scene, the dank soil, black bags, and bones had practically taken seats in the courtroom.
After adjournment for the day, before they took Stefan away, Nina asked, keeping her voice down as low as she could, “Stefan, why did you call Alan Turk?”
Stefan said, “Gabe-my brother. Gabe consulted him a while back, had some legal thing with him.”
“Any idea what it was?”
“Sorry, no.”
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Only as good as you guys in court. In other words,” he attempted a smile, “ups and downs. Like I keep saying, you have to get to Alex Zhukovsky somehow. It’s too weird, this thing where his sister’s body was found in their father’s grave. I mean, he’s the link, the only link. Plus, he hired me. He killed his sister and buried her in their dad’s grave for his own reasons, or else why lie about hiring me?”
And then why hire Stefan to dig them both up? It made no sense. “We’re working on it.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Stefan said in a pragmatic tone at direct odds with his expression of abject defeat.
“Why not?”
“I’m jinxed. Always have been.” He licked his lips and thought about it. “Cursed from birth. I wasn’t born to a good life.”
“Has your life been so terrible?”
“Erin was my only good luck, and now she’s gone.” He held tight to the chain he always wore around his neck.
“She may still come around.”
“You’re a woman,” Stefan said.
Nina laughed. “Well, yeah. Mostly.”
“Do you think-if someone was in jail for a long time-and maybe he would never get out, how would you feel about him?” The hard work of asking made his big shoulders slump. “Could you ever forgive him?”
If Paul went to jail, and she never knew whether he would get out, how would she feel? The question, one she had never asked herself, made her shiver. Paul deserved jail, at least in the eyes of the law. He had killed to protect her at Tahoe, and she was complicitous in that murder, because she knew and because she said nothing. She shook herself free before the alarming swing of her thoughts knocked her down. Focusing on Stefan’s earnest, dark eyes, she said, “You need to ask Erin those questions, Stefan.”
“I tried writing to her, but I threw the letter away. Because what could I talk about? The guy two cells over who screams all night, or maybe I could entertain her with stories about the nights I can’t close my eyes without seeing that grave. I never saw a dead body until I saw Christina’s.”
“Stefan, do you believe Erin loved you before all this happened?”
“Yeah. I believe she did.”
“Then you tell her how you feel.”
“I’m locked up. I have no power. I can’t go over there, take her out to the beach where we could really talk… And then, even if you pull it off, even if you get me out, would she ever trust me again?” he asked, eyes turning inward. “Nina, I want to marry her. She’s my only hope. I’d buy her a house, get a regular job, the whole deal. She could have a baby. I asked her once, and she said she’d like one. I would, too. Cut down on Dart League. No more drinkin’ until I’m singin’, except on weekends or birthdays.” His grimace held the shadow of a smile. “She says I’m a lousy singer.”
“Write to her again, Stefan. It’s been some time. Maybe she’s ready to hear from you.” Nina gave him an encouraging squeeze on the arm before they led him away.
Outside, Paul stopped her. “You’re doing great in there.”
“We need more to work with. You go get Alex Zhukovsky and nail him. Talk to Stefan’s brother, Erin, his mom, Wanda, everyone again. I feel like we’re missing a layer of meaning here.”
“Strange way to put it.”
She didn’t know how else to describe the feeling, but looking at this case was like looking down a pit without a light. The end remained elusive, and could harbor whales, it was so deep. “Someone knows something. And I need to know everything about Christina Zhukovsky, what she hated, what she wanted from her life. She didn’t exist in a void over there in that fancy place on Eighth Street. She had friends, a lover, connections. Important emotional contacts. Find out who they are. We should already know these things!”
He stepped back from her quickly, as if trying to avoid a runaway truck. “Settle down, will you? I’m on it.”
She got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. His cheek smelled outdoorsy, like eucalyptus. “Of course you are. I’m just a little worked up.”
“Dinner at seven, okay? Bring the kid and the dog if you want, but we need to talk business. I’m not just sitting on my hands all day while you wrap those infernally pretty legs around Sandoval and Salas, you know.”
“That’s a relief.” Nina hustled out to find Klaus and drive him home, thinking all the while she didn’t like knowing about Paul’s past relationships. She didn’t like knowing about his past, period.
Paul doesn’t love me like Stefan loves Erin, she thought. He’s too experienced, too complicated. And I’m the same. She twisted the ring on her finger, for a moment wishing fiercely that they were some other kind of people.
Paul had never asked
8
BOB AND HITCHCOCK, THE BIG BLACK MUTT, STAYED BEHIND, FEASTING respectively on canned spaghetti and kibble back at the cottage while Paul and Nina grabbed quick bites at The Tinnery, overlooking the ocean. After they ate, Paul asked her if she wanted coffee so they could discuss what he had been working on.
“A room and a car,” Nina said, sighing, looking at Lover’s Point beyond the window. “A car and a room. And then comes the night.”
“What?”
“I spend all my time inside.”
Paul put money on the table and stood up. “C’mon.” They walked outside to a summer evening in full swing. A gaggle of bikers swooped past, spandex taut. Twenty cameras clicked. Children dripped ice creams.
“Can you make it down the hill in those shoes?”
“No problem,” Nina said, letting the tangy ocean air refresh her lungs.
Like licks of transparent watercolors, sunset darted superreally over the beach, transforming Earth temporarily into Mars. Taking the warning signs on the rocky point seriously, they walked to the back side of the cove, where a rough path wound safely down.
Out on the point, closer to the gargantuan power of the ocean but careless of it, a group of Vietnamese tourists read the beware signs, had a good laugh, and headed down to flirt with danger, arms linked. They clung like barnacles to a rock, in a direct line with the treacherous sleeper waves. Arranging them on the rocks like flowers on a sunny, safe, dining room table, a friend snapped endless pictures. No wave knocked them down, nothing disturbed their placid belief in an innocent universe. Eventually, they clambered back up to the street, illusions of immortality undisturbed.
