The Day He Left, page 26
Before Mahler left to return to the station, Zoe had poured out the story of her mother’s accident. She perched on the sofa, legs stretched out to rest on the coffee table. She looked down at her hands, squeezing her fingers together. “It was a little more than a year ago. April 12, 2018. Saturday night. I memorized all this because I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.”
Mahler watched Zoe. Sensing a fragility in the girl, he resisted the urge to interrupt with questions.
“My mom and dad attended a winemaker dinner in Alexander Valley. You know, one of those things where a local chef prepares a meal and they match wines with each course? Both Mom and Dad had been drinking, but my mother had less, so she drove home. My father fell asleep in the front seat.
“It happened on Chalk Hill Road. There was a pedestrian, a woman, walking on the shoulder. My mom never saw her until it was too late. She hit the woman with the right front bumper and headlight of the car. They stopped. Daddy woke up, and they got out of the car. They felt for a pulse but could tell she was dead. It was late. Dark. No other cars came by. They moved her body off the road. And they…left.”
Zoe looked from Mahler to Eden, as if expecting something. “There wasn’t cell phone service where the accident happened. They thought they’d call later, when they got into service, closer to home. But then, you know, they…didn’t.”
“When they got home, Mom wanted to call the police. Daddy didn’t. He said the woman was already dead. Admitting their fault wouldn’t change that. No one would find out. He’d have a friend fix the car.” She looked across the room into the darkness. “I almost understand it.”
“I Googled the accident,” Zoe said. “Her name was Melanie Rosen. She was walking home from a friend’s house. The CHP investigated the accident as a hit-and-run. It was on TV, in the newspaper. The driver was never found.”
Zoe stopped. The room fell silent.
Mahler had listened to every word, impressed by the girl’s calmness and clarity. He noted the lack of excuses, rationalizations. It sounded like something the girl had turned over in her mind for days, baring it to its reality. “How’d you find out?” he asked.
“For months, I knew something was wrong. Mom was taking pills, sleeping all the time, losing weight. Then, like, a month ago, I heard my mom and dad arguing. It was late at night, in their bedroom, which is next to mine. Mom was crying. I heard her say the word ‘kill.’ That’s what woke me up. My dad kept telling her to shut up.”
“The next day, I asked Mom what happened. At first she denied it. But I knew she was lying. I said I’d talk to Daddy. Then she got really scared. She said she’d tell me what happened if I promised not to tell my father. She made me promise like I was a little kid. She said, ‘Promise, promise, promise.’ So I did. Then she told me. When she finished, I said you have to tell the police.” Zoe sat forward and waved one hand as if sweeping something aside. “You can’t just hide it.”
“She said my dad would freak.” The girl fell back and her voice softened. “That if people found out, my mom would go to jail. Maybe both of them. My dad’s business would be ruined. All their friends would know and… Even if my dad didn’t go to jail, we’d lose the house and have to move somewhere far away. She kept saying I’d already promised not to tell anyone.”
“That’s a lot to put on you,” Eden said. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing. For a few days. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. In English, we were reading Twelfth Night. Mr. Behrens talked about secrets and the bad things that happen when we have secrets. After class, I asked him what to do if you knew a really terrible secret.”
Zoe smiled thinly. “He thought it was weird, I could tell. That I was, like, being sexually abused or something at home. He got real serious. He closed the classroom door and sat next to me. He said if it was worrying me, I should tell the truth.”
“So I told him. The whole thing, everything I knew. How I was afraid to talk to my dad. He said it wasn’t my responsibility to contact the authorities. It was up to my parents, and they needed to come forward. It was a legal thing…a moral thing.”
“Did you go back to your parents after that?” Mahler asked.
“No. Mr. Behrens and I talked about it three times that week. Finally Mr. Behrens said he’d talk to my father. That scared the crap out of me. Mr. Behrens is nice. My dad… He’s not like that. I told Mr. Behrens if he spoke to my dad, I’d run away. He tried to talk me out of it. He said I had to go somewhere safe. That’s when he arranged for me to stay here. I got scared late Tuesday night and called him. He said it’d be all right. Just give it time.”
“I need to get some water.” Zoe went to the room’s sink and poured herself a glass.
Mahler and Eden exchanged looks. As secrets go, this one was pretty good. They were getting closer to something. Here was the missing reason for McFarland to meet Behrens on the coast, and the Tuesday night phone call was what Claire overheard her father say.
Zoe returned to the sofa. “I have messages from both my mom and dad. My mom says I should come home. My dad says he knows I told Mr. Behrens. It’s going to be okay. He and Mr. Behrens talked. He just wants me home, too. But then I heard Mr. Behrens is dead, and I didn’t know if my dad—” Zoe looked at Mahler. “Did my father kill Mr. Behrens?”
“We don’t know,” Mahler said. “That’s why we’re trying to find him.”
“But wait, Zoe.” Eden rose from her chair. “Have you actually talked to your parents in the past forty-eight hours?”
“No,” Zoe said. “They texted. I texted my mom back and told her I was okay.”
Mahler leaned forward. “Zoe, your parents aren’t at the house. Do you know where they are?”
Zoe shook her head. “I mean, they have an apartment in the city. Mom has a house on the river. They could be at one of those. I can give you the addresses.” She tapped at her phone screen.
“It’s probably not a good idea for you to be here alone,” Eden said. “Is there a relative’s house where you can stay?”
Zoe looked up from her phone. “Maybe my aunt Jeannine and uncle Roy. I think they’d be okay with that.”
“All right,” Mahler said. “We’ll contact them. In the meantime, I’d like Officer Somers to stay here with you. Would that be all right?”
Zoe smiled at Eden. “I guess so. I’m not going to off myself or anything.”
“We know,” Mahler said. “We just need to be sure you’re safe.”
After Mahler left, Zoe climbed into one of the queen beds and fell asleep.
Eden stretched out on the sofa in the sitting area. She tried several times to close her eyes but kept seeing Anthony Dunbar’s face on the video screen from Albuquerque. Finally she sat up and made notes on the Albert Jory case.
When Zoe awoke, Eden heated the electric kettle and poured two mugs of herbal tea. Zoe opened the curtains. They stood side by side, looking out the window at the quiet hotel parking lot and the morning sky.
“Zoe,” Eden said, “your parents told one of our detectives they were concerned about Mr. Behrens’s attitude toward you. Something about the novel Emma?”
Zoe sighed. “It was nothing. Mr. Behrens was trying to make a joke. It bothered me when it happened, and I told my mom. Afterward, I realized it was kind of lame, but he was just trying to be funny. My mom and dad took it the wrong way.”
“And your grades?”
“Mr. Behrens was a hard grader. He said he was getting us ready for high school and beyond that college. My essays weren’t my best work. That’s all. It was me, not him.”
Eden nodded and let some time pass.
“I don’t understand how I’m supposed to feel,” Zoe said after a few moments. “Does that make sense? I love them. I love my parents. But what does it mean that they did this thing, this hit-and-run?”
“People act differently under pressure,” Eden said. “Sometimes even people in your family. It’s hard to predict. You can still love someone even if you don’t understand their actions. You may never understand or condone what they did, but that doesn’t mean you stop loving them.”
They resumed staring out the window. The night before, Eden had seen similarities between Zoe and Claire, both being the same age—the thinness of their limbs, their bodies coming into womanhood, naivete revealing itself even as they tried to assert their worldliness. Now, with time to watch Zoe, she saw the differences. Where Claire was shy and just beginning to find her adult voice, Zoe showed the advantages of her family’s wealth and status. She had adopted from her mother the bearing of the privileged; from her father she had learned how to look for the angles.
“Are you close to your parents?” Zoe asked.
“There’s no short answer to that.” Eden considered the question. “I was close to my dad, but he passed away nine years ago when I was in college. My mom lives in Connecticut. We talk once a week.”
“When you grew up, did your mom and dad have secrets, things they didn’t tell you?”
Eden tasted the tea. A car slowly circled the parking lot. She remembered the first anniversary of her father’s death. Her mother had opened a bottle of rosé that night after dinner on the screened-in porch behind her parents’ home. It was quiet. The sun had set, draining the sky of color but not yet dark enough for stars. “We lost a baby before you were born,” her mother said, as if suddenly discovering the occasion for the news. While she spoke, she looked across the quiet backyard, not at her daughter. “Did I ever mention it? Stillborn at six months. A little boy. For a while after that, your father and I didn’t talk or, what’s the expression, have relations. I believe there was a nurse in his practice at that time. A pretty girl, younger than me. I don’t think he loved her. He came back to me after a few months, and we made the best of it, as one does. Then you came along. I named you Eden. Your father had no part in that decision. I liked the name, of course, but really it was because I wanted to remember the innocence from before. My goodness, you were always my lovely innocence.” Her mother turned to smile at Eden for a second before continuing her gaze outside.
Eden remembered her mother’s thin, liver-spotted hand as it lifted the wineglass to her lips. The porch was silent, which seemed wrong for that moment and the adjustment of history. Eden opened her mouth but couldn’t get a word out. In that instant the story both remade her and vanquished what she had known of herself.
Now Eden turned to face Zoe. “I think my parents had their secrets. But they were old-fashioned Yankees. They believed in a kind of New England propriety. There’s a Robert Frost poem called ‘The Good Hours’ about a man walking past cottages late at night in the snow. His very presence is a profanity because it’s well past the good hours when everyone else is asleep. My mom and dad believed in that kind of strict, socially accepted sense of right and wrong. There were things my parents didn’t say between themselves, let alone share with me.”
Zoe swirled the tea in her mug. “I’m alone now, aren’t I?” she said.
Looking at Zoe’s eyes, Eden could see the girl working out the consequences in her own mind. She wouldn’t be taken in by false assurances or hand-holding. “Whatever happens, your parents will always be your parents,” Eden said. “But you’ll have to spend some time with your aunt and uncle. Someone will take care of you. You won’t be alone.” But it will feel that way. From her own loneliness, Eden knew it was the thinnest of comfort, but she also knew nothing she said now would be a match for the girl’s future.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
(i)
(Friday, 8:43 a.m.)
“This is the summary of the joint investigation by the state medical licensing board and the Sheriff’s Office.” Mahler laid the papers on the table in front of Gregory Winter and Kate Langley. “The indictment involves theft of Schedule I drugs from the medical supplies of the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Specifically, the charge refers to the illegal withdrawal of 150 tablets of Abstral, a sublingual form of fentanyl, in 400 microgram doses.”
Kate pulled the papers closer and turned the pages slowly.
“The full text of the case isn’t available because it hasn’t been presented to the district attorney.” Mahler imagined the wheels turning inside Kate’s head. “But we know it involves the theft and sale of drugs over a two-year period. Your client is looking at fifteen years.”
“It’s a misunderstanding.” Winter straightened in his chair. The man intended to play the whole nine innings. “The whole thing is a procedural error in how the paperwork was handled.”
“Your attorney can argue that in court,” Mahler said.
“Why’re you pursuing this now, Eddie?” Kate dismissed the papers by pushing them back across the table. “What’s this have to do with VCI’s investigation of Paul Behrens’s disappearance and death?”
“The latest coroner’s report on Behrens shows the presence of fentanyl,” Mahler said. “We believe it was administered through the whiskey found in the victim’s car. Your client’s fingerprints were on the bottle.”
For a moment the room fell silent.
Mahler watched Kate and Winter absorb the new information. Mahler’s guess: Kate hadn’t known about the fentanyl.
Winter examined his hands folded on the table, considering how to begin. “When I went back to Doran Park the second time, Behrens was still there. I lied about that.”
“What time was this?” Mahler opened his notebook and began writing.
“Around three. Behrens was still sitting in his car, but he was more subdued than in the morning. I think the whiskey calmed him down. Made him more talkative. Said he’d taken his wife for granted and needed to win her back. Told me a story about how they met at a friend’s backyard party. She was sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water. When she looked up, she smiled right away even before he spoke. He remembered the way her wet hair fell across her face. It was like he was going back over these old memories, and he needed to tell someone. I just happened to be there.”
Mahler tried to remember when he first met Kate. Did it mean something that he couldn’t remember the moment? Or had it simply not been memorable? Should he ask her now to remind him? He remembered other moments. The time she came home after midnight from a meeting, woke him with a kiss to make love. The time they drank tequila shots and he told her about the ballroom dance class he failed at age thirteen and they laughed until tears rolled down their faces. The time he heard her crying in the shower and she pulled him fully clothed into the water to hold her while she wept.
The time he came home to find her closet empty and a note under a set of house keys that told him not to call.
Dr. Schafer: Did you try to reconcile with Kate after you separated?
Mahler: It wasn’t like that.
S: How was it?
M: You read the reports. I was talking to a dead girl.
S: How do you feel about it now?
M: Regret. Obviously. But there’s nothing I can do.
S: Isn’t Ms. Langley married?
M: Yeah. That kind of tied my hands.
S: So Kate’s moved on and you haven’t?
M: I always hated that expression. What does “move on” mean? It seems to me when a relationship ends, the moving part, going from one place to another, isn’t the important thing.
S: What is the important thing, Eddie?
M: Isn’t it your job to tell me? Parts of me changed because of Kate. I can’t change back like a chameleon. What do I do about that? Who am I without her?
Winter leaned over the table. “Behrens said he and Annie were happy at the beginning, but they were serious about their careers and put their energy into work and the kids. No time for each other. Then something happened in the last few days that made him rethink things.”
“Did he say what it was?” Mahler pictured Behrens sitting in his car, telling the doctor about his wife, the schoolteacher’s memory warming with the alcohol.
“No. But he said he was trying to meet another person, and the meeting kept getting canceled. I could see it bothered him.”
“Did he tell you who he was meeting and what it was about?”
“No. But he was drinking, so he was kind of all over the place.”
“Where does the fentanyl come in?”
Kate raised her hand. “Before my client tells you anything else, has the DA said anything about what Dr. Winter will be charged with? And what’s the DA willing to give in exchange for my client’s cooperation?”
Mahler met Kate’s eyes. In her voice he heard the same challenging tone she had adopted in the last month of their relationship. Its origins had never been clear to him. Was it meant to assert her own strength, to push back against the intractable behavior she couldn’t change in him, or to test the boundaries of the give-and-take in their daily redefinition of their relationship? Had he and Kate been doomed from the start? In his job he swam in a world of lies, trying to find truth in the constant misdirection of suspects and witnesses, while, as a lawyer, Kate had a different relation to truth, something guarded behind the shield of privilege. “I haven’t spoken to the DA,” Mahler said evenly. “I’m just trying to find out your client’s involvement in the death of Paul Behrens. Plus Dr. Winter has lied already. How do I verify any of what he’s said?”
“It’s okay,” Winter said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know about the fentanyl. Behrens said he was going to reconcile with his wife. As part of that reconciliation, he’d tell her the kind of person I really am. He said he knew the truth about me. He’d talked to my colleagues and friends and knew what I’d done. I asked him what he meant by that, but he just kept saying once Annie knew who I was, she’d leave me.”
“You believed him?” Mahler held Kate’s eyes across the table.
“Not until I knew he’d talked to the doctors in my office building and my receptionist. I have no idea what they told him, but the other physicians have some knowledge of my financial challenges. He seemed very proud of what he knew. He looked right at me and said, ‘I know more than you can imagine. You’re fucked, you douche.’”
