“Any of them. Being the wife of an active-duty marine stationed five hundred miles from my home. Taking care of my baby while I went through the hardest parts of the nursing program. Working to pay back my loans while my husband got shipped away somewhere. I was tough, and I told her so. I’d get through the hard time, and things would get better. But it was the story that bothered her.”
“The story?”
“The story everybody has heard a million times. The smart, pretty black girl has a big future ahead. She gets through nursing school, and maybe after she works a few years she’ll try to get through medical school, too. But something happens. She ends up with a baby-in this case, a white man’s baby-and there’s no way for her to have her future.”
“Did you want to go to medical school?”
“I had thought about it. The main thing was that she and I saw what I was doing differently. I thought I was considering getting married and having a family. She thought I was setting myself up to be just another black girl with no money raising a child alone. I said it wasn’t that way. She said I was living in a dreamworld. It wasn’t that easy to be the black wife of a white man. I said I was strong enough. She said, But is he?”’ Lee Anne stopped and held Emily with her eyes, and all at once, Emily knew.
“That’s right. While my mother was talking to me, his family and friends were talking to him. He was trying to imagine the future, just as I was. And when he was through thinking, he had a different answer than I had. I remember so clearly the day when he told me. He had the foresight to have the conversation with me in Oakland, so I would be two miles from my family, at my apartment, near school. All I had to do was shut the door when he left, lie down on my own bed, and cry. If I had been nine or ten hours from home, among strangers in a cheap hotel in Oceanside, I don’t know what I would have done. By then my brother Eldon had been promoted and shipped to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for some kind of special training, so I couldn’t have gone to him.”
“I’m so sorry,” Emily said. “I’m ashamed for him. I want you to know I never knew any of this.”
“Of course not. Oh, he wasn’t so bad. Over the next twenty years or so, I came to understand him better, and maybe to see his point of view wasn’t entirely selfish and cowardly. He contributed money to Dewey’s support from that time until Dewey grew up and went in the marines. And even after that, he sent checks to me, in case I wanted to send money to Dewey. He sometimes made it here for Dewey’s birthday, and he always made it on Christmas.”
Emily was stunned. “It seemed as though he always was out on Christmas. He had me convinced that it was the best time to find out about the subjects of investigations. They all stopped looking over their shoulders.”
“Well, now you know. Some of the time he was here.”
“And the other times?”
“Honestly, Emily, I don’t know. I was never his confidante. He may really have worked some or all of those times. After we broke up over twentyfour years ago, I wouldn’t have that kind of relationship with him anymore. I was polite to him, but I didn’t ask him for anything or try to be his friend. All we had in common was Dewey. That was for Dewey’s sake, and not his.”
Emily’s head had sunk into her hands. The tension that had been keeping her erect and active had simply left her. She said, “I’m sorry I bothered you. I wasn’t trying to pry into your personal life so I could live with mine. Believe me, nothing I’ve learned has made me happy.” She raised her head. “I assume Dewey told you about the man in the ski mask?”
“Yes. It must have been horrible.”
“Dewey saved my life. The man was in the process of dragging me off when Dewey got there. Today I had some faint hope that you might know the answer to the man’s questions.”
“That I would?”
“You were Phil’s secret. Nobody knew that you and he had been … close. You would be the ideal person to keep something for him. It would have been a box, like stationery comes in.”
Lee Anne stood up, suddenly agitated. She paced to the other side of the room, and back. “Oh, my God. I didn’t know.”
“What?”
“He left it with me.”
“Where-here?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell Dewey?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want anything to do with his secrets. But he said all he wanted me to do was take a big padded envelope and put it in the bottom of a drawer. He opened it to show me it wasn’t drugs or money or anything that could get me in trouble. All that was in the box was a file-thick-an envelope with some snapshots, all people I had never seen before, and a couple of cassette audiotapes.”
“Can I see it?”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
Lee Anne didn’t avoid her stare. “You think I should have given it to you. You think that because he married you, everything he left anywhere is for you. I don’t blame you. It should have been for you. But he had postage stamps on it, and a mailing label. He said that if anyone asked about it, or anything happened to him, I should put it in the mail. When Dewey called me that day and told me that Phil was dead, I remembered the box. I thought about sending it to you, but I didn’t want to. Maybe it was because all I could do for Phil was perform the favor exactly as he asked. His death naturally made me think about what had become of my own life, and maybe I was resenting you a little. So I took it to the post office and mailed it.”
“Please, Lee Anne. The man with the mask-the one who was kidnapping me-is looking for it. I think that if I don’t get it first, he’ll eventually kill me. It’s evidence against the man who had Phil murdered. Did you look at the address? Do you know where it was going?”
“Seattle. The address was in Seattle.”
“Was the name Sam Bowen?”
“I think maybe that was the name. Who is he?”
Emily was up, clutching her purse. “He’s an old detective who used to work with Phil years ago.” She moved closer to Lee Anne. “I’m terribly sorry for the way Phil treated you.”
Lee Anne said, “I’m sorry for what happened to all of us.”
“You have a wonderful son,” Emily said, then looked away. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Thanks for helping me.”
31
Hobart could tell from the way Emily Kramer hurried from the black woman’s house that she was more preoccupied than before. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder for him, and she wasn’t taking any precautions. As she walked to her car, he kept his eyes on her. He couldn’t see anything in her hand or under her arm, so he couldn’t be sure that she had the evidence with her, but something had happened. Maybe she had it in her purse. He had to do it now.
He drove after her. As he followed her car, he felt himself move into a familiar mental state. The world around him seemed unnaturally bright and clear. He felt he could hold in his consciousness all of the trajectories of the moving objects in the hundred eighty degrees he could see, and track in his mind the ones he had merely caught in an earlier glance. He felt it would be possible to predict the rest of the motion and intercept any one of them, but all he needed was to put himself where Emily Kramer was about to be.
He kept Emily Kramer’s Volvo in his field of vision as he drove, but concentrated on keeping her from noticing him. After he had watched her drive for a few minutes, he was certain that she was driv ing to Ray Hall’s house, where she had been staying. Maybe Hall was waiting there for her, but he could be up north setting up Theodore Forrest to pay for evidence. The thought made him more convinced than ever that he had to make his move now. Hobart turned at the next corner and drove hard toward the house. It was crucial that he be there before she was. He stopped his rented SUV one door from Hall’s house.
Hobart got out, walked to Hall’s driveway and around to the side of the garage, where he entered through the
