Trophies And Dead Things

Without stopping he replied, 'I need to keep busy. Besides, I've got a law co-op to run. What with people being all excited and upset about last night's sniping, I've got my hands full.'

Ted is convinced that All Souls would cease to function without his constant attention; half the time I suspect he's right.

I remained by the desk. After a moment Ted lifted his long-fingered hands from the keys and dropped them in his lap. 'All right-what?'

'I'm sorry about Harry, and I'm here if you need me.'

He nodded and briefly closed his eyes, compressing his lips. Despite his anglicized last name, Ted, a slender man with short black hair and a goatee, is of Russian-Jewish ancestry. His ascetic features make me think of a poet or composer, rather than an efficient and dedicated legal secretary. This morning they were honed fine by pain; his skin had the waxy, translucent quality that comes from lack of sleep.

I went around the desk and gave him what I intended to be a brief hug, but sudden panic engulfed me and I clung tightly to his shoulders. What if Ted contracted AIDS? How could any of us bear that?

He seemed to sense my fear, because he patted my arm-the bereaved comforting the comforter-and said, 'Don't worry. I'll be here to get your phone messages garbled when we're both in our dotage.'

'At least you'll have a good excuse for it then.' I released him and hurried upstairs.

My office is at the front of the second floor-a big room with a fireplace and a bay window that overlooks the flat, characterless sprawl of the Outer Mission district. I dumped my bag and briefcase on the new rose-colored chaise longue that I'd recently bought to replace my ratty old armchair, then took off my jacket and dropped it there, too. My original plan for the chaise had been as a place to lie down and relax while I thought through difficult cases. What I mainly did, however, was pile things on it. At the moment it also held a cardboard file box, a tape recorder, and my camera.

I went to the desk that stood in the window bay and reached out to dial Hank on the intercom, then realized he'd said he would be in court until noon. 'Damn!' I muttered, wishing I could talk to him now.

Before I'd left his flat the night before, I'd asked Hank if he thought the sniping might have been directed at him, as Hilderly's attorney-that Willie might have been mistaken for him in the dark. Perhaps Hilderly's killing had had some connection with him changing his will; perhaps the sniper thought Hank possessed more knowledge of Hilderly's doing so than he actually did.

But Hank had been adamant that there was no connection. The sniper striking where he had, he said, was merely a bizarre coincidence. After all, he pointed out, what possible connection could the other victims have with Hilderly?

It was a valid point, but I was unconvinced. And I thought Hank's insistence on sheer coincidence was more of a way of not dealing with a personally frightening aspect of what had begun as a simple probate of an estate. I would have liked to ask him if he still felt so certain in the sane light of morning.

After a moment I stopped brooding about it and removed a handful of files that had appeared in my In box since Friday: background checks on two prospective employees for a small security firm that Larry Koslowski, the health nut, represented; a request for surveillance on a clerk thought to be stealing and reselling merchandise from a liquor-store client; a list of points needing clarification from an interview I'd conducted with a witness to an industrial accident at another client's dry-cleaning plant. I put the surveillance job aside for Rae. She liked getting out into the field, but most of the routine tasks she handled didn't permit that; this would be a chance for her to spread her wings. Then I put in a call to Gene Carver, Hilderly's former employer at Tax Management Corporation, hoping to ask him about the seminar Hilderly had attended in May and later described to his son Kurt as having had a profound effect on his life. Carver, however, was out of town; his secretary said he would call back later in the week.

Finally-in order not to dwell on the events of the night before-I began to work through the other files: telephoning, checking and rechecking facts. When my intercom buzzed for the first time that morning, I was surprised to see it was nearly ten.

'Tracy Miller on line three,' Ted said.

'Thanks.' Tracy is my friend at the DMV, who-in exchange for lunches, dinners, and an occasional free ticket to a play or a concert-cuts the red tape by running names through her computer for me. I punched the flashing button. 'Hi, how you doing?'

'Better than you, I'm sure. That was a hell of a thing you were involved in last night.'

The Chronicle had been full of news of the city's apparent fifth sniping this morning, and Willie's picture had been prominently featured on the front page. 'Sure was. I'll tell you all about it the next time we get together.'

'Good. Listen, your assistant's on another line, and since I know this information's for you, I thought I'd pass it on directly. We show no driver's license or vehicle registration for David Arlen Taylor, but I came up with an address on Libby Heikkinen Ross. Post-office box in Inverness over in West Marin, and an address on Pierce Point Road there.'

I took them both down and reminded Tracy that I owed her a dinner for various favors done over the past couple of months. She promised to check her calendar and call me back on the weekend. After I replaced the receiver, I swiveled around and stared out the window at the gray-shrouded flat-lands.

I knew Inverness, more or less. It was a picturesque country town with a population of no more than a few hundred, nestled between heavily wooded hills and the marshes of Tomales Bay, not far from the Point Reyes National Seashore. One of its chief attractions was a Czechoslovakian restaurant where a former lover and I had taken refuge during a downpour one long-ago October night, warming ourselves by the woodstove and drinking slivovitz with the proprietor. In a place like Inverness, Libby Heikkinen Ross would not be difficult to locate.

I swiveled around again and dialed Rae's extension on the intercom. When she answered, I asked, 'How's Willie this morning?'

'I was just talking to him. He's so pleased with his newfound celebrity that he's even forgotten his jaw hurts. KPIX is sending somebody out to interview him for the six o'clock news, and I think he's having visions of stardom.'

'God forbid that his head should get any more swelled. Look, I've got an address for Ross over in West Marin, so I'll probably be gone for most of the day. They didn't have anything on Taylor, but I want you to hold off on checking out-of-county Vital Statistics; there's a chance Ross might know his whereabouts.'

'I guess I'll just cover here, then.' Rae sounded disappointed at not getting out of the office. 'Only for a while. I need you to finish up a background investigation I've started for one of Larry's clients. But then we've got a surveillance job, starts at noon when the subject comes on shift at Lloyd's Liquors. I'll drop both files by your office on the way out.'

'A surveillance job? For me?'Now she sounded elated.

I knew how she felt. The prospect of a drive to West Marin had raised my own spirits measurably.

Nine

The western part of Marin County is a world in itself, a spectacularly endowed strip of coast and countryside that has as yet managed to escape the ravages of industrial growth, overpopulation, and tourism. Much of this has to do with the weather, which is often foggy and cold; other factors are the sluggish economy and lack of jobs, coupled with the long, inconvenient commute across the ridge of hills that separates West Marin from the rest of the county. The presence of some sixty large dairy ranches guarantees that a good deal of acreage will be devoted to agricultural use; the Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area further ensure that much of the land will remain as it was when the Miwok Indians roamed it, before the Spanish incursions of the early nineteenth century.

Up to now my experience with West Marin had been of the ordinary tourist nature: picnics at the Seashore, a tour of the Point Reyes lighthouse, oysters at Nick's Cove, Sunday drives on two-lane roads through the dairylands, and-of course-the Czech restaurant. I'd even once spent the night at the Olema Inn, a former stage stop in a hamlet of less than one hundred people, but by and large my knowledge of the area was gleaned from newspaper features and the California history course that every public-school student is force-fed before graduating. Although