Grave Error Read online

  “I might be the last.”

  Marks banged his pencil down on the desk. “There’s a murderer running around with your friend’s blood on his hands, Tanner. I don’t like it. Not one damned bit. I wouldn’t think you’d care for it either.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then give me something to work with.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have anything.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide that? It’s my job.”

  “I’m not going to trot every one of Harry’s cases out for you to chew over when as far as I know none of them have any relevance to his murder. The minute I come across something that will help you out I’ll let you know.”

  “Remind me to put you in for citizen of the year. Meanwhile, I’m going to get a court order to let me look at Spring’s files myself.”

  “You do that. It’s a waste of time, but I don’t expect you to take my word for it.”

  “I’m glad, because I don’t. Now I guess I’d better get Mrs. Spring back over here.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “She doesn’t know anything. She didn’t even know where Harry was till Fannon came and told her he was dead. Leave her alone, at least until she gets her husband in the ground.”

  “Why should I do you any favors? Or her either?”

  “Her, because she’s a good woman and you knew it the minute you set eyes on her. Me, because I’m going to break my ass trying to find Harry’s killer and unless you care more about your ego than about catching the bastard you’ll go along with me.”

  “I ought to throw you out of town, Tanner. Better yet, I ought to tell Harley out there to toss you in a cell and interrogate you until you tell us all you know about Harry Spring. Harley just loves interrogation.”

  “So did Himmler.”

  “All right, Tanner. I’ve got work to do. Here’s what we have. Nothing. Body was found in a ditch exactly three point two miles south of the city limits on the county road. Not enough blood there for it to be the murder site. He was dumped. No car tracks, no footprints. The gun was a thirty-two, fired from between five and ten feet away. The gun hasn’t been found. There was some alcohol in Spring’s blood, but not enough to make him drunk.”

  “There was always some alcohol in Harry’s blood.”

  “Found his car at the Laurel Motel. Nothing in it and nothing in the room except some dirty underwear. He’d been registered for two nights, paying day to day. No long-distance calls. Phone company says they can’t trace his local calls separate from those of anyone else in the motel, but I’m getting a list anyway. It’s going to take them a week. No one at the motel saw anything or heard anything. If anyone else in town knows what Spring was doing here they haven’t told me about it. His money was gone, so officially I’m calling it a mugging.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “Unofficially I think it was a semiprofessional hit job. Spring knew too much.”

  “About what?”

  “Who knows? Maybe some day you’ll tell me.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  FIFTEEN

  It was too soon to meet Sara so I detoured to the county courthouse, a crumbling adobe-colored structure built in an impotent imitation of the Alamo. The stone below the doors and windows was streaked and stained, as if blood were seeping out through the cracks.

  The county clerk’s office held the usual collection of books and papers and files and ledgers and overweight ladies who hadn’t been working there long enough to answer your questions. On the third try I found someone who knew what and where the adoption register was.

  It didn’t take me long to see that Roland Nelson’s name wasn’t in the register. I hadn’t thought it would be, but it was worth a check. The adoption proceeding had probably been handled in San Francisco or in Sacramento where the orphanage was. I knew I didn’t have a prayer of getting information on a San Francisco adoption. I’d tried that before. They guard those records like their right to a coffee break.

  If Sara didn’t come up with anything at the hospital I’d have to try Sacramento. Finding Claire Nelson’s natural parents might not get me any closer to Harry’s killer, but it was as good a lead as I had and it would at least keep me a step ahead of the sheriff. Plus I wouldn’t mind doing Claire a favor. If she was as stuck on Al Rodman as she seemed to be, she could use one.

  I gave the register back to the woman who’d found it for me. She was about sixty, a small, round bundle of bones wrapped in a sky-blue dress with hair rinsed to match. She asked me if I had found what I was looking for. I told her I hadn’t. Then I asked if she remembered a big, ruddy-faced man asking to see any of their records within the past week, a man with brown hair and eyes, huge hands and a not-quite-huge paunch, probably wearing a light green sports jacket. The little woman wrinkled her brow to show me she was thinking hard, then said she thought she remembered him.

  “What was he doing?” I asked.

  “The same thing you did. He asked for the adoption register and he took it over to that table and thumbed through it for a while, then brought it back.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” she said, drawing the word out four times its normal length. “Except he told me my hair looked nice. Asked me where I had it done.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Surely. The Oxtail House of Beauty, every Thursday morning. I go to Betty Rose. She gives the best permanents.”

  I told her it sure looked like it and we both smiled and I left. I didn’t tell her the nice man who liked her hair was in the morgue.

  When I got to the Deadeye Cafe Sara was already there. I slipped in across from her and lit a cigarette and pulled my soggy shirt away from my chest. It did as much good as the fan hanging from the ceiling above my head, which was none.

  Sara looked as fresh as a daffodil. She asked where Ruthie was and I told her. A waitress came over and asked what I wanted. Her white apron was as streaked and spotted as a de Kooning. I asked if she had any ice cream and when she nodded I ordered a dish of vanilla. Sara asked for another lemonade.

  “So how’s the triumphant return to the old hometown?” I asked.

  “It’s hardly triumphant,” she answered. “People around here think a woman’s a failure if she’s not married by age twenty, no matter what else she’s doing.”

  “See any old friends?”

  “Just one. At the hospital.”

  “Have a nice chat?”

  She nodded.

  “Find out anything interesting?”

  “I don’t know. I may get a break. I went down to the nurse’s station and talked to the head nurse. It wasn’t the same woman I used to know, and she wasn’t helpful at all. Said she didn’t know what I was talking about. I was just about to leave when I ran into Donna Rae Childress. I’ve known her since kindergarten. We were both cheerleaders. She was Homecoming Queen and I was Prom Queen. Rivals, in a way, but friends, too. She married the son of one of the big ranchers around here and works part time at the hospital just to have a reason to get out of the house. Anyway, after we compared notes I asked her about Mr. Spring. Turns out she talked to him.”

  “What about?”

  “He wanted a list of all births at the hospital on July twelfth, nineteen fifty-eight. He wanted the names of the parents and the full names of the babies.”

  “Sounds like he was working on Claire’s case.”

  “That’s what I think. But he didn’t mention her name to Donna.”

  “Did she give Harry the list?”

  “No. She’s afraid of the head nurse and doesn’t want to lose her job, so she told him she couldn’t give out the information. She doesn’t know whether he tried to get it from anyone else.”

  “I want you to go back and ask her to give you the same information,” I said quickly.

  Sara laughed. “I’m not as dumb as I look, Mr. John Marshall Tanner. I already asked.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “No, not yet. But I thin
k I will. Donna used to be the prettiest girl in town. Everyone always told her she’d be a movie actress some day. I think she believed them. Then she got pregnant and moved out to the ranch and gained thirty pounds. Now the big things in her life are flirting with the X-ray technician and staging the Miss Oxtail Pageant every year. Donna asked a lot of questions about what I’d been doing at the Institute. I think she was envious that I was doing things that mattered, at least to me. Somewhere along the line I implied that the list of names had something to do with my work, and that if she gave it to me she’d be helping me in a life-and-death matter.”

  “You were half-right.”

  “I guess so. In any case, when I left Donna she had a gleam in her eye, the kind she used to get when she tried to get us to go skinny dipping in the irrigation canals. I think she’ll do it. I left my number and asked her to call as soon as she got the names.”

  “Did Harry mention the significance of the date he gave her?”

  “No, but I know what it is.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Claire Nelson’s birthday.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That about takes care of the question of what Harry was working on.”

  “Yes. But what made him think Claire Nelson was born in Oxtail?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I imagine if we looked we’d find some lonely spinster up at that orphanage in Sacramento who dug up the information for him. Harry had a way with lonely spinsters. They all wanted to keep him for a pet.”

  Sara examined the tabletop the way a major examines the promotion list. We finished the ice cream and lemonade and I paid the bill.

  “Skinny dipping,” she said finally and shook her head. “That was the epitome of daring in those days. Now half the kids in Oxtail probably sniff cocaine and you couldn’t find a virgin with a team of interns. Tempus really fugits, doesn’t it?”

  “Speaking of fugit,” I said, “we’d better be getting back to the city. I want to tell Claire to expect the cops at any time. The sheriff decided not to accept my suggestion to let me handle the whole investigation.”

  “Mercy. I wonder why.”

  “He’s quite a man, the sheriff of Oxtail,” I said. “He’ll get to Claire before long and she’d better be ready. I think we should bring Andy Potter in on this too, so he’ll be available for legal advice if the whole thing breaks open.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You may have to help me persuade Claire to tell Andy what’s going on.”

  “I will. But I hope Donna Rae calls tonight with the information and I can give Claire the names. Then maybe she won’t feel it necessary to keep the whole project quiet any longer.”

  “Maybe. Do you want something to eat before we go?”

  “I can wait, unless you want something.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I want to make a detour first.”

  I found the road leading south out of town. A cloud of dust billowed around us and became a train of brown chiffon as we left the pavement and the city that went with it. If Sara was interested in where we were going she didn’t show it. She just stared at the window as though she had lost something but couldn’t remember what it was.

  Three miles south of the city I started looking for signs and pretty soon I saw them. At the top of a slight rise the shoulder was pitted by the tracks of vehicles which had pulled off the road, then back on again. Traces of white marking powder frosted the dirt. I stopped and got out and went down in the ditch.

  There wasn’t anything to see, except for some dark spots on some clods of earth and some empty beer cans and liquor bottles that should have been taken in and dusted for prints but hadn’t been. The dark spots could have been drops of Harry’s blood or the juice from a deputy’s chewing tobacco or the remnants of a rancher’s bourbon. I didn’t waste time figuring out which.

  I scuffed around in the dirt and squinted into the sun and said a few things to myself until I felt I’d done right by the place where Harry died. Then I went back to the car and turned around. We were back on the main street and heading west when Sara suddenly asked me to turn right at the next corner.

  “This won’t take long,” she said. “Slow down in the next block.”

  Sara’s eyes were fixed on a tiny bungalow perched precariously on a brick foundation. The sides of the house were black and gray shingles that were so torn and decomposed there seemed to be holes clear through the walls. A sixty-nine Plymouth was parked in the front yard, its rear tires flat and its front axle up on blocks. On the porch a ringer washer leaned against the house for support, or maybe it was the other way around. Here and there the few tufts of brown grass that had forced their way through the sun-baked earth were dying of thirst.

  “I grew up in that house,” Sara said softly. “Of course that was before they added the car in the yard and installed the ventilating system. A nice touch, don’t you think?”

  “Where do your parents live now?” I asked.

  “On that Tobacco Road in the sky,” she answered. Her face and voice were flat, without emotion. “They got TB a few years ago. Both of them. Hard to believe in this day and age, isn’t it?”

  I did something to show I agreed.

  “You know,” she went on, “I used to send them money every month. First I sent checks and they never cashed them. Then I sent cash. After they died one of the neighbors sent me a coffee can he’d found in the shed out back. It was full of bills. They never spent a dime I sent them. Proud people. Proud, ignorant, stubborn people.”

  I circled the block two more times and watched the tears flow down her cheeks and drip onto her lap.

  “They weren’t easy to love,” she said to herself. “I guess I wasn’t either. Sometimes I wish we could all start over. Other times I’m thankful I’ll never have to go through that again.”

  Her voice melded into a silence. When the tears stopped I left the sad little house and drove out of town, back toward San Francisco.

  The setting sun seemed to melt the landscape, to deepen and soften its colors, to make it more human. Long shadows flowed like lacquer down the distant hills. Sara fell asleep beside me, emitting sounds of trust and contentment. We were alone on the narrow highway. All of a sudden it was dark. I felt like I could drive forever.

  Sara slept until I stopped beside her apartment. After she patted and pulled herself into shape she asked me if I wanted to come up while she fixed something for us to eat. I told her that would be nice.

  The apartment was big and roomy and as neat as a nunnery. Out the back she had a nice view of the Presidio Forest. There was an air of seclusion about the place, as though we were camped in a mountain cabin far away from everything but ourselves.

  Sara asked me if I wanted a drink and I said yes. She asked me if tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches were all right and I said yes. A long time later she asked me if I always feel in love with the woman I made love to, at least for a little while, and I said yes. I was telling the truth each time.

  When I let myself out Sara was naked and asleep and dawn was a white silk curtain behind the Berkeley Hills. I picked up some coffee and doughnuts at an all-night restaurant and drove to the top of Twin Peaks and watched the city wake up. It was naked and beautiful, just like Sara Brooke, and right then I loved them both.

  I stayed there for quite a while, until so many people were awake the city was ugly again.

  SIXTEEN

  I went back to my apartment for a shower and a change of clothes. Before setting out for the office I called Claire Nelson and told her about the trip to Oxtail, leaving out the part about Sara’s visit to the hospital.

  “You can expect a visit from the police at any time,” I told her. “There aren’t that many names in Harry’s files. It won’t take long to get around to you.”

  “Do I have to answer their questions?” she asked.

  “Not now. But if you don’t, the investigation will immediately focus on you. All cops assume
the only reason anyone would refuse to answer their questions is because they’re guilty, at least of something.”

  “Can they ever make me answer?”

  “Not until they get you in front of a judge. Even then you can plead the fifth amendment, until they give you immunity. But if you do refuse to answer they may arrest you.”

  “It’s just that I don’t want Roland to know I’ve been looking for my real parents, Mr. Tanner. I can’t bear to see the hurt in his eyes if he finds out. I’ll do anything to keep my business with Mr. Spring private. Even go to jail.”

  The only people who made statements like that had never been to jail, even to visit. “There are only two ways to go,” I said. “One, you can lie to the cops about what Harry was doing for you. That will buy you a little time but not much, and it won’t win you any brownie points with the police. Two, you can refuse to talk and hope that someone finds the killer before they really put the heat on you.”

  “Do you think he’ll be found soon? The killer, I mean?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Do you have anything to go on at all? Mr. Spring wasn’t working on my case when he was killed, was he?”

  She couldn’t tell the cops anything she didn’t know, so I just said I wasn’t sure what Harry was doing in Oxtail, that I was working on some angles but didn’t have anything solid.

  “Mr. Tanner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you promise me to tell me anything you find out that might indicate the identity of my real parents? I know you’re only interested in your friend’s death, but if you do come across something will you tell me about it? Please?”

  Her voice was firm and young and innocent and I told her I would, but I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth.

  “Here’s a suggestion,” I went on. “Let me tell Andy Potter about your hiring Harry. Not why you did it, but just that you did, and that Harry’s been killed and since your name is in the files the cops will be coming around to talk to you. That way Andy will be available when the police come and you can tell them you don’t want to talk until you consult your attorney. That will delay things a little, I hope, and Andy can tell you how he thinks you ought to handle the whole thing. He’s a pretty good man.”