“Who was he?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some guy Marla knew from the bar. I only worked there a couple of months, so I didn’t get to know them like she did.”

  “Why was he there?”

  “I guess his car had broke down or something. We figured he probably wrecked it. I don’t know. The guy was drunk as a pig. Marla hauled him into the back of her van and we drove to some ranch house outside San Celina. He could barely walk, but she helped him up to the front door and went inside. She wasn’t in there but five minutes and then she took me home. The pizza was cold and the beer hot by then. Fool ruined our night.” She took another long drag off her cigarette.

  “Go on,” I said harshly.

  Suzanne eyed me coldly. “Hold your horses. Look, all I know is the next day she was reading the paper at the bar and told me she’d found a sure thing. I thought she was talking about a racehorse or something. A couple a days later she gave me five hundred bucks and told me not to tell anyone about what I saw that night. When I moved up here to be near my sister, she just kept sending money to me. Said she might need me to tell what I saw someday. It was no skin off my back. I took the money.”

  “Why did you conceal where you were, change your name?”

  “She just thought it was a good idea. This was like cops and robbers to her. I didn’t care. Just went back to my maiden name. Hart was my second husband’s name.”

  “Could you find this ranch again?”

  “It was past three in the morning after an eight-hour shift and four beers. I didn’t know my name, much less where we dropped that guy off at.”

  “What did he look like?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know. Like a guy. Middle-ageish. Good-looking. I don’t really remember.”

  “Did he have a mustache?” Wade? Ray? I didn’t want to consider it, but I had to.

  She thought for a moment, pulling absently at a strand of her thin red hair. “No, I don’t think so. Seems to me he was clean-shaven. Looked like something the cat coughed up, but he was a pretty good looking guy. That, I remember.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked again, feeling desperate. This was all so ambiguous, like no real information at all. “Did Marla say his name at all? Did she talk to him at all?”

  “Look, all’s I remember is when she helped him out of the van, she made some kind of joke, called him something that made him laugh.”

  “What?” I said, my voice frantic. “What did she say? What did she call him?”

  “Jimmy Olsen.” Suzanne gave a wet cough. “She called him Jimmy Olsen. Now, what do you think she meant by that?”

  18

  I WANTED TO drive. Anywhere. Coming to the freeway on-ramp, north and south beckoned with conflicting arms, like divorcing parents with an only child. I pictured myself speeding north through the pastel housing tracts of San Jose, the pumpkin patches of Half Moon Bay, over the Golden Gate Bridge, up the long cold northern coast of Calfornia, Oregon, Washington, to Canada; changing my name, my citizenship, dyeing my hair black.

  I drove south. The shock of finding out Carl was in the jeep with Jack the night he died finally caused an uncontrollable trembling in me that made it impossible to drive. Outside Paso Robles, I pulled over and parked in a scenic turnout overlooking a dark field where a farmer was night plowing, the headlights of his tractor a long silver knife in the blackness. Unusual for this time of year. I wondered what problems drove him out of his warm bed to carve the long, even furrows. I sympathized with him. At least plowing a field was something you could control.

  I climbed up on the hood of the truck, leaned back against the windshield, and stared up at the sky.

  “Feelin‘ restless,” Jack would have said on a night like this, stars like white stitches in a navy quilt sky. We’d ride across cattle-cropped pastures, miles from the ranch, tie the horses to an oak tree, spread out an old wool blanket and look for planets.

  “Like playing connect the dots with God,” he’d say, then turn to me and we’d make slow love, the lemony taste of his tongue, the husky rake of his calloused fingers on my neck, the sound of the horses blowing watery sighs in and out; nowhere to go, they seemed to say, all the time in the world.

  I never knew myself capable of the kind of hatred I felt at that moment.

  It became finally, as the dark sky faded into the gray-orange of morning, a blind, raging fury that threatened to explode like a dandelion at a child’s puff.

  As the sun came up, I started toward San Celina. I had no idea what I was going to say to Carl. It never occurred to me to be afraid, even though he’d probably killed two people. I only knew that I had to hear the truth of what happened the night Jack died.

  I stopped by his dad’s ranch first. The housekeeper informed me that both Carl and J.D. had been at the Tribune since three A.M. The computer had gone down and things were a mess. When I reached the newspaper, I used the employees entrance in back, walked through the empty lunchroom, past the unoccupied desks. The scent of a working office lingered: the crispy smell of old french fries, a mixture of sweet perfumes, the undeniable scent of a forbidden cigarette.

  Carl sat in his office, his back facing the door as he talked on the telephone. I stood for a few minutes looking at him through the glass windows. The shininess of his blond hair, the very aliveness of it, angered me as he leaned back in his chair and laughed at something his caller said.

  I paced in front of his office, not knowing how to start. Somewhere, a radio played softly. An oldies station. “Do you believe in magic?” the radio sang.

  You remember the oddest things those moments in your life that are pivotal points of change.

  I had been asleep in my childhood bed when Dove woke me that early morning nine months ago. For a split second, her hand on my shoulder, her voice sharp in my ear, I was a little girl again, time to get up, do my chores, run for the school bus, braids flying. My bare feet stung with cold as I stood in the kitchen where Wade told me, his voice tight with grief, choking out the words. The kitchen smelled of strawberries, onions and the steaks Dove had fried for dinner. I ignored Dove’s arms, backed up against the refrigerator, shivering as if I would never be warm again. The refrigerator cycled, a mechanical insect in my ear; Daddy cursed softly in the background. “Benni, Benni,” Wade had said.

  I opened the office door.

  “Benni,” Carl said. He turned his chair around and hung up the phone. He gestured to the brown office chair in front of his desk. “What’s wrong?” he asked when I remained standing. “You look like death microwaved.” He laughed at his own joke, then stopped when I didn’t respond.

  “I’ve been up all night,” I said. “Driving.”

  He furrowed his brows in concern. “Having trouble sleeping?”

  “I went to Salinas. To find Suzanne Hart.” I waited for his reaction.

  “Oh?” he said, his face blank. “Who’s Suzanne Hart?” He had to be the best actor in the world.

  “A woman with a very interesting story.”

  “Concerning what?”

  I set my purse down on one of the chairs in front of his desk. “I wish you’d just tell me,” I said.

  “Tell you what?” He tilted his head, perplexed.

  “About Jack. Suzanne told me everything. Why keep pretending?”

  He looked at me, his handsome features liquid with confusion. “Benni, I have no idea what you’re rambling on about.”

  I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. At a time when I most wanted to stay in control, be strong, my emotions sold me out. The tears came in great torrents down my cheeks, wet, salty, hot. Losing control made me angry, which made me cry even more.

  “Oh, honey,” Carl said. He stood up and came around the desk, holding out his arms.

  “Get back,” I said, my voice soggy from tears.

  “All right,” he said, his voice slightly hurt. He pulled some tissue out of the box sitting on his desk and held them out to me.

  “No.” I reached into my purse to search for some. I didn’t want to take anything from him. My hands touched Jack’s pistol. I didn’t even think twice about pulling it out. I pointed it at Carl.

  “Tell me about the night Jack died,” I said.

  “That isn’t funny, Benni,” he said.

  “It isn’t meant to be.”

  He glanced up as the door of his office opened. Julio, the night supervisor, started to talk, then stopped cold when he glanced over in my direction and saw the gun.

  “It’s okay, Julio,” Carl said in an easy voice. “Just a joke Mrs. Harper is playing. Go back to work.”

  Julio gave him a nervous glance and backed out slowly.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Carl said. “You’ve gone and scared Julio. Honey, why don’t you just put the gun away and we’ll talk about this rationally.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said coldly. “And I’m not putting it away until you tell me what happened the night Jack died.”

  “What are you talking about?” His voice became irritated.

  “Look, Carl, I know you were with him. I talked to Suzanne Hart. She told me everything.”

  “Who is this Suzanne Hart you keep talking about?”

  I felt the gun tremble in my throbbing hand. Stop it, I commanded myself. Hold on.

  “How could you? He laid there for hours before anyone found him. What if he was alive, Carl? What if he was alive?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I felt the tears start again. “Don’t lie to me, Carl. Not now. I swear, I’ll use this gun if you lie anymore.” For the first time, a look of fear came over his face.

  “Honestly, Benni, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I admit, I don’t remember him leaving but ...”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t know about Jack’s death until the next day.”

  “Who was driving? Is that why you killed Marla and Eric? Were they blackmailing you because they knew you were driving?”

  He looked at me in confusion. “You mean the Chenier and Griffin murders? What have they got to do with all this?”

  “What’s going on here?” J.D. slammed the door open and stood, a big silver bull, in the middle of the room. “Young lady, I didn’t believe it when Julio told me. You’d better give me that gun right now.”

  “Tell him,” I said to Carl. “Tell your dad what a fine, upstanding citizen you are. What a good friend you are.”

  “What’s she talking about?” J.D. asked.

  Carl glanced at his dad and held out his hands, a dumbfounded look on his face.

  “Girl, what would your daddy think?” J.D. said.

  “He’d probably tell me to pull the trigger,” I said. “He taught me that friendship meant something. You don’t walk out on a friend. You don’t leave friends to die alone.”

  “Give me the gun, Benni,” J.D. said. “You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re saying. Give me the gun and we’ll just pretend like this never happened. Come on now.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? He’s a murderer, J.D.,” I said. “He left Jack to die and then killed Marla and Eric because they were blackmailing him. You raised yourself a fine boy here. You ought to be proud.” Tears flowed freely down my cheeks again. The gun trembled in my hand. I wasn’t sure what to do now.

  I turned back to Carl. “I ought to shoot you. Let you lie there and feel your life drain out of you, inch by inch, like the way you did Jack.”

  “I don’t remember,” Carl said, his voice almost a whisper. “Benni, I never wanted you to know this but I don’t remember a lot of what happened the night Jack died. Dad told me about Jack’s accident the next day when I woke up.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’ve had about all I’m going to take from you, young lady,” J.D. said. He pulled a small pearl-handled pistol from his pocket and pointed it at me. “Now, give me that gun right now.”

  “Dad!” Carl exclaimed. “Put that away. It’s bad enough Benni’s gone nuts. This is getting ridiculous.”

  “I mean it, girl.” J.D. gestured with his gun. “Give it to me now.”

  “How can you protect him, J.D.?” I said. “He killed two people. He left Jack to die. Don’t you think he should have to pay for what he did?”

  “I didn‘t—” Carl started.

  “He didn’t know about Jack until the next day,” J.D. interrupted. “It was a dumbass thing, but he didn’t do it on purpose. Jack was his best friend. Jack wouldn’t have wanted him to have his life ruined over a stupid mistake.”

  “What are you saying?” I looked at him, confused.

  “You heard me. You heard him. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  A thick, hoarse groan, like that of an injured dog, came from Carl. J.D. and I turned to look at him. His mouth worked but no sound came out. The look on his face was like someone who’d seen a ghost, or reality for the first time.

  “You mean, oh shit, I didn’t ... I’m sorry....” The words spilled out in a torrent, his face contorted in a horrible mask of realization and remorse.

  “It wasn’t your fault, son,” J.D. said in a soft voice that sounded strange coming from him. He walked toward his son. “No one blames you.” His face was full of some emotion, though I couldn’t tell what—love, pity, regret.

  “Wait,” I said, the gun still trembling in my hand. “If he didn’t even know about any of this, then he couldn’t have killed Marla and Eric. Who else ...” Then it dawned on me. But by that time, J.D. had already pointed the gun back at me.

  “You never did know when to give up, Benni Harper,” J.D. said. “You just couldn’t let well enough alone.”

  “J.D.” All I could whisper was his name. It had taken me hours to get used to the idea that Carl was a killer. That it was really J.D. seemed too shocking to even contemplate.

  “Dad?” Carl looked unbelieving at J.D. His face was wet with tears. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel disgust. He might not have killed Marla and Eric, but he’d still left Jack alone to die. Drunk or not, I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him for that.

  “I’ll take care of it, Carl. You just go on to my office and wait for me.” J.D. gestured with his gun for Carl to leave.

  Carl looked at me, at the gun I had pointed at him, and gave a small, bitter laugh. “You’d be better off shooting me now, Benni. Dad’s obviously not going to let you out of here, so you might as well perform one last community service before you die. Then we’ll all be where we want. You’ll be with Jack, and I’ll be in hell where I belong.”

  “Carl,” J.D. said. “Quit talking foolish.”

  He turned to his dad, a look close to amusement on his face. “Give it up, old man. You never did know when to quit helping, did you? You can’t buy or manipulate your way out of this one. Why did you have to kill those people? Why?”

  “Because we made a deal, a little every month. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted more, a lot more. Then that little wimp thought he’d take over when I got rid of her.” J.D. shook his head. “Fixed his wagon. Kid was sitting there counting his money when I met him at the museum. He honestly thought we could work something out. As if J.D. Freedman would be held hostage by some little twerp like him.” He gave a low chuckle.

  Carl laughed. It was a creepy, disjointed laughter that made me feel as if someone had dropped an ice cube down my back. J.D. laughed with him until, after a moment, he realized his son wasn’t laughing with him, but at him. J.D.’s face became as still as a buck hearing a leaf crunch.

  Carl picked up the phone.

  “What are you doing?” J.D. said.

  “Calling the police.”

  “Have you gone loco?” he said. “Put that phone down now.”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me? You should have done that the night Jack died; then none of this would have happened.”

  He dialed 911 and spoke evenly to the dispatcher. He was smiling when he hung up. “Someone’s already called.”

  “That stupid Julio,” J.D. said. “I told him not to call the police.”

  “Guess he thought he was protecting you,” Carl said, laughing that crazy laugh again.

  Out of the corner of my eye, through the glass windows of Carl’s office, I could see the police moving cautiously through the outer room, guns drawn. Miguel’s face stood out from the rest. It held a slightly sick look as he watched me hold the gun on Carl. I concentrated on the throbbing in my hand, trying to decide what to do. I held my breath and waited.

  “Put the gun down, Benni,” Miguel called out. From where he was standing, he could only see J.D.’s back. He didn’t realize he had a gun.

  “I can’t,” I called back, my voice high and wavering. More activity in the outer office. I glanced over and saw Ortiz’s black hair among the uniforms—messy, uncombed, as if he’d just crawled out of bed.

  “Give it up, Dad,” Carl said in a voice as gentle as a mother’s with a sick child. “There’s nothing else you can do. It’s over.”

  J.D. stared at his son for a moment. A look passed between them, and for a moment, it was hard to tell who was the parent, who was the child. Years appeared on J.D.’s face, like one of those high-speed camera tricks that show a flower blooming and dying in the course of seconds. He slowly placed the gun on the desk in front of his son as if giving him a precious gift.

  I lowered my gun and in seconds the room was full of police. Miguel gently pried the gun out of my hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, laying a hand on my shoulder.

  “I think so.” It was too much to comprehend right then. Someone I’d known since I was a little girl had killed two people, was willing to kill me. For what? To protect his son? His reputation? Sheer ego? I stood over in a corner of the office while the police tried to sort out what had happened.

  Ortiz walked over to where I was standing. I hugged my jacket close around me. All I could think was home—I want to go home.