Trophies And Dead Things

But something was wrong with that. Cal Hurley had told me the federal agents had raided the flat, taken evidence away. If the gun had been there, they would have found it. 'Did Grant tell you why he wasn't in on the Port Chicago bombing attempt?'

'He said he was, that he'd done a cowardly thing. When he saw the FBI men, he gave another man his gun and then faded into the background. A Weather collective in Oakland hid him until after the trial, when he and my mother got back together.'

A second contradiction to what Cal Hurley had told me. According to the old man, Grant had been at the flat on Page Street when the agents conducted their search. Of the two, I tended to believe Hurley, who had no reason to lie.

Goodhue added, 'Grant said he hung out in the Weather Underground for a long time, then bought false documentation, set up a new identity, and went to law school. But he claimed that what had happened had ruined his life, anyway-because of his shame at his cowardice and his fear that one day someone would recognize him and destroy everything he'd built up. He became quite maudlin about it, practically cried, but I sensed he was working on my sympathy. Unfortunately for him, after what he'd said about my mother, I couldn't feel much.'

Ruined his life. It was the same as what Hilderly had said of Grant to his employer the day he'd encountered Grant at the taxation seminar. Had Grant also become maudlin when he'd told Perry a similar story over lunch at Tommy's Joint? Perhaps added the heart-wrenching detail that he lived in such fear that he was unable to acknowledge his own daughter?

It struck me that Grant, who had been interviewed by Goodhue, could not have helped but notice the newswoman's striking resemblance to Jenny Ruhl. And the name Goodhue must have rung a bell with him, since he had visited at Ben and Nilla's home in the Portola district. I would not have been at all surprised if Grant had a background check run on Jess to ascertain that she was indeed his offspring.

On the other hand, Hilderly had lived in the past and probably seldom watched TV newscasts. In all likelihood he had not known the whereabouts of Ruhl's daughter until Grant told him, and this finishing touch to Grant's tale of woe would have been sure to deeply affect a man who was more or less estranged from his own sons. The bond that he imagined between himself and his former friend-evidenced by his telling Gene Carver that he saw a lot of himself in Grant-could only have been reinforced by it.

But there was a great deal wrong with Grant's story…

I asked, 'Then what happened?'

'He threatened me, in a subtle way. Said it would be dangerous for me to go up against someone in his position, that sort of thing. It didn't frighten me. It only made me sad. I started to cry. He put his arms around me and told me to cheer up. He said that just because he wasn't my father, it didn't mean we couldn't be very good friends. And then I realized he was coming on to me again-this man who really was my father, who knew that, no matter what he said.' She covered her face with her hands; tears welled through her spread fingers.

'I'd finally found my father,' she added, 'and he was a pervert.'

I doubted that. My guess was that Grant had been trying to put her off so that she would leave him alone in the future. There was something in his past that he didn't want to come out-but it wasn't the story he had handed her.

After a bit Goodhue went to get some tissues and wiped her face. She sat on the stool by the counter, her gaze turned inward, on the hopelessly bleak memory of Wednesday night.

I said gently, 'Tell me the rest of it.'

'The rest is just… ugliness.'

'Don't bottle it up.'

A long silence. Then the words came out in a rush; she was eager to get the telling over with. 'I was outraged. Shoved him away, hard. He stumbled and reached out for me. I shoved him again. He fell, and his head slammed into the iron leg of the worktable. And he just lay there, bleeding.'

'And then?'

'I got out of there. Ran. I was halfway down the path by the house when I remembered I'd left my coat in his office. I went in, got it. There were the glasses we'd drunk from. I put them back in the cabinet under the wet bar. Then the phone rang. I panicked, rushed out of the house, right through the front door.'

I frowned. There was a gaping hole in her story. Had she blacked out, repressed the memory of how savage her attack on Grant had been?

'Jess,' I said, 'think back to the studio, after Grant fell. Did you touch anything?'

'Like what?'

'Well, the fetish he had in progress?'

'No.'

'What about his body? Did you touch it? Check to see if he was actually dead, or-'

'I couldn't touch him. Afterward I hoped maybe he'd just been knocked unconscious. But back at the studio, when the reports started to come over the police-band radio in the newsroom-I knew I couldn't go before the cameras and report a murder I had committed. So I went home, and one of the co-anchors from the weekend news filled in for me. I didn't have to fake being sick-I was.'

'Did you watch the news that night? Read any of the accounts in the papers the next day?'

'Just the story in the Chronicle.I wanted to see if they suspected… and they didn't.'

The newspaper article had merely said Grant had died of blows to the head; the police had held back the brutality of the attack and the nature of the murder weapon. In her panicked state, Goodhue could easily have ignored the plural, or thought the reporter was mistaken. I wasn't yet willing to fully credit her story, though; I asked her to go over it again. She did, with enough backtracking and minor inconsistencies to give it the ring of truth.

I asked one final question. 'Did you see anyone on the street when you ran out? Did anyone see you?'

'… There was a truck, one of those ancient pickups. It was weaving down Lyon Street, and I ran in front of it.'

'What color was it?'

'I don't know. Orange, maybe. What does this matter, anyway? Like you said before, you'll have to tell the police-'

'I can be selective about what I tell them, though.'

'I don't understand.'

'There's a lot of this that need never come out. You didn't kill Tom Grant, Jess. A person who arrived after you left did.'

Twenty-Four

Goodhue was so relieved and elated at what I explained to her that she wanted to contact the police and set things straight immediately. I cautioned her against doing so until she consulted an attorney.

'The inspector in charge of the case is a real… well, asshole. He'd see charging someone as well known as you with obstruction as a major coup. Talk with Harry Sullivan. And in the meantime, I'll keep at it, try to wrap the investigation up quickly.'

'You think you can do that?'

'Yes.'

'Do you know who killed my… Tom Grant?'

'No,' I lied, in the interests of saving time, 'not yet. But I think I will soon.'

Goodhue turned on the lights around the mirror and began repairing her makeup. I was impatient to make some calls, so I went downstairs to the newsroom and used the same phone as I had Monday afternoon. As then, I put in a credit-card call to the Fleming residence in Blackhawk.

Judy Fleming answered. I identified myself, asked for Kurt. She said she'd call him to the phone. Then she asked, 'Does this have to do with why Perry changed his will?'