“You’re next of kin?”
“My wife.”
“Close enough. You’ll need to see the ME over there, make the ID. I’m sorry, but we need to do it.”
“What happened?” Ben said, staring at her face, torn by shards of glass where she must have hit the windshield, her hair matted with blood. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was open, as if it were still saying “oh.”
“She went through there,” the cop said, pointing to the broken fence. “Into the canyon. The car didn’t catch fire, so that’s one thing, but a drop like that, be a miracle you survive it. You just get knocked to hell.” He looked up at Lasner. “Sorry.”
Ben looked at the length of road, almost straight after the hairpins coming up.
“What do you think?” he said. “She swerved to avoid another car?”
The cop shook his head. “No sign of that. No skid marks either side. Course the rain didn’t help there. But you get a slippery patch here, you take it a little fast-” He raised his hand, letting them fill in the rest. “We had a hell of a time getting her out. The door stuck.”
But the curve wasn’t sharp, a gradual arc that anyone should have handled easily-unless you hadn’t driven a car in years, or never intended to turn. He looked down at the body again, trying to imagine the last minute, through the fence and then suspended in nothing, waiting for it to be over. Something no one else ever knows, the desperation for release. But what prompts it? Ben wondered, an awkward second, whether he had been part of it, the unexpected reminder, ghosts coming back.
“Reuben, it’s you?”
He turned to find Feuchtwanger, a raincoat over his jacket and tie, the slicked-back hair and wireless glasses formally in place.
“Herr Feuchtwanger.”
“Such a commotion. We saw the lights.” He looked over at Genia’s body, clearly not recognizing her. “Poor woman. Oh, these roads. Marta says it’s no worse than the corniche but me, I think a death trap.” He paused. “But what are you doing here?”
“She’s a cousin,” Ben said, indicating Lasner, huddled now with the ME.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you like to come back to the house? Some coffee?” A ritual courtesy.
“No, no, thank you. We have to-” He spread his hand to the accident scene, policemen still moving idly around. “Stay with the body. Sign things.” He looked down at her. “She survived the camps,” he said, perhaps a memory trigger.
But Feuchtwanger still didn’t know her. The sorrow on his face was impersonal, another victim.
“The camps, but not this road,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, what am I doing here? They say in English a rubberneck-it’s amusing, a rubberneck. So.” He looked toward the group of neighbors, still gawking. “Marta wanted to know-all the lights. If you need to telephone, please come to the house.”
Ben nodded a thank-you.
“And coffee one day. Tell Liesl to bring you, we’ll talk. She looked well. So strong. I thought it would kill her, too-the way she felt about him. But no, strong. The father’s daughter.” He looked down at the stretcher. “But so much death.”
Ben stood in the road, watching him walk away. The way she felt about him. But Lion was a romantic, his books filled with duchesses and men in wigs and undying love. He didn’t know she could lean her head into your shoulder, soft, not strong at all. Everybody saw what he wanted to see.
Lasner was almost finished with the police. Once the ID had been made there was little either of them could do except arrange for the car to be towed. He looked again at the road. No skid marks, the policeman had said, but you didn’t need to slam on the brakes to have an accident here. Another car, with its lights in your eyes. The inky darkness of the canyon beyond, making the guard rail hard to see. The slide effect of wet pavement. There were lots of ways it could have happened, all of them easy to believe, unless you had sat with her at dinner and seen her eyes.
Still, why this road? The next turnoff would have taken her up over the coast highway itself, a more dramatic plunge off the cliff into the traffic, a spectacular end. But the etiquette of suicide could be peculiar, oddly discreet. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to make a point, just go quietly, no trouble to anyone.
“Who found her?” Ben said suddenly to the cop. They had pulled the sheet back over her face. “I mean, anybody see it happen? Stop?”
“No. Some kids. See the shoulder over there? It’s a view point, daytime anyway. Sometimes they park there- it’s away from the houses. Nights you don’t get many cars, so it’s-anyway, they’re there, going at it, and when they leave they spot the fence. They take a look and there’s the car, her in it. So they call it in.”
“This was when?”
“Hour ago, maybe. Couldn’t have been too long after she went over. No rigor. Tire marks still fresh. Must have been a quickie.” He caught Ben’s look. “The kids, I mean.”
“Nobody heard the crash?”
“Nobody said. Pretty quiet up here. She’d have the place to herself. Till morning anyway. Then you get the dog walkers.” Hours later, not an instant attraction on the highway. “It’s just lucky it didn’t burn. A few weeks ago, all you’d need is one spark and- woof. ”
But she would burn now, finally the ashes the Germans had wanted. Unless Sol decided to have her buried. He looked over to where Lasner was standing, a little lost. He was avoiding the stretcher, still shaken. But Sol had scarcely known her. It occurred to Ben that their talk at dinner may have been the only real connection she’d made in California, that he had known her better than anyone. Not buried. She’d want to go up in smoke, erasing herself.
Another car had pulled up, with a noisy greeting to the police photographer. Kelly. Ben, not yet seen, went quickly over to Lasner.
“Get in the car,” he said.
“What?”
“Now. Don’t let him see you, the guy over there-he’s press. If he thinks there’s a studio connection, he’ll do a story. You don’t need that.”
“You’re looking after me now?” he said.
“I know him, I’ll take care of it. Just don’t let him see you. He’ll recognize you. Not her.”
“Another Bunny,” Lasner said, but moved to the car, his face turned away.
Kelly was already at the stretcher with the cop.
“Hey, Kelly,” Ben said. “Chasing ambulances?”
“Hey,” Kelly said, surprised to see him. “It’s a living.” He nodded to the stretcher. “More trouble in the family?”
“Just visiting down the street. We heard the sirens.”
“Visiting,” Kelly said, taking in the neighborhood, an open question.
“If you need to call you could use their phone.”
Kelly turned back to the cop. “Who is it? Anybody?”
The cop passed over a clipboard. “Here,” he said, “I can’t even pronounce it. Copy it if you want. Polish or something. Slid in the rain and went through the fence.”
Ben looked nervously at the form on the clipboard. They’d have the Summit Drive address, a Crestview phone exchange, easy for Kelly to spot. But Kelly didn’t bother to look.
“Polish,” he said, a code for no story. “Anybody else hurt?”
“If so, they took off. Just her.” He lifted the sheet off her face.
“Christ, she did a job on herself, didn’t she? What’s with the head, in the back? You get banged up there, you’re the driver?”
The cop nodded to the cars. “Take one and find out. I’ll give you a push.”
“I’m just saying. A wound like that, it’s consistent with a crash?”
“Kelly, for chrissake, anything’s consistent with a crash. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s always got to be something,” he said, taking the clipboard away. “It’s not enough she’s dead. She’s got to be somebody dead.” Ben waited for him to mention Lasner, but evidently the name hadn’t meant anything to
