State’s Evidence Read online

  “Has she always lived in El Gordo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anything at all peculiar about her marriage?”

  Kathryn Martin shook her head. “She almost never mentioned her husband or their life together. They seldom went out. Every time I asked Teresa if she wanted to go to a movie or something she was always free to go. Like I said, she just never talked about it. I realize now that might have been because I was so busy talking about mine.”

  “Do you have a picture of her?”

  “Yes. Not a very good one, though.”

  She went into the kitchen and pulled something off the bulletin board beside the telephone and came back and handed me a square of newsprint. The picture was under the heading “New Business in El Gordo.” The paper was the El Gordo Democrat. The date was June 1979. The man in the picture was Elliott Farnsworth, the woman Teresa Blair. The paper said they were the co-owners of Bathsheba’s. The man was tall and daintily elegant, the woman darkly sensual. She seemed slightly amused by the proceedings. The picture quality was such that if I knew Teresa Blair was in a room with me I could pick her out of the crowd, but if I didn’t know that for certain, then I couldn’t.

  “How about her friends?” I asked.

  “She certainly acted as though I was the only one she had. There must have been others, of course. I’m sure the Racquet Club people would know.”

  “Other men?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Virtually. She just didn’t seem interested.”

  “Where’s she from originally?”

  She paused. “I don’t know. I haven’t the vaguest idea. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “Parents?”

  “Dead. At least she never mentioned them.”

  “Siblings?”

  “No.”

  “Haunts?”

  She shrugged.

  “Enemies?”

  “I can’t believe there were any.”

  “Children?”

  “No.”

  “College?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Anything else? Anything at all?”

  She shook her head again. “It seems silly, but I can’t think of a thing. She dressed beautifully, of course, what with the boutique. She was athletic. She was a truly liberated woman without going on about it, if you know what I mean. But she had no particular interests as far as I know. Except me, I guess is what I mean.”

  “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  I slipped the question in fast, hoping that while she fumbled for an answer she would tell me something useful. But she had an answer ready: “Teresa wouldn’t like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She just wouldn’t.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No, it’s just something I know. She didn’t trust the police. She didn’t trust anyone.”

  I walked into the kitchen and put my empty coffee mug on the counter next to the sink. The remains of Davy’s peanut butter sandwich lay on the counter, too, oozing jelly as thick as sludge. I went back to Mrs. Martin. “What happened the last time you saw Mrs. Blair?” I asked her.

  “Let’s see. She came over about eight thirty in the morning.”

  “What day?”

  “Last Thursday.”

  “Anything at all different about her?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think so. She looked like she’d just stepped out of Vogue, as usual. Camel slacks: White boat-neck sweater. Carrying her coffee cup and her newspaper, as usual. She always brought her own cup.”

  “And you talked about the meeting with the lawyer?”

  “Yes. Teresa thought Wayne might have hidden some assets away. She didn’t want me to sign anything until Wayne had been forced to swear under oath as to what property we owned.”

  “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “C. Dale Gibson.”

  “Where’s his office?”

  “Here in El Gordo.”

  “Did Mrs. Blair know him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Anything else happen?”

  “I’m trying to see her that morning, envision what she did. She skimmed the paper, like she always did. Somehow she could read and talk to me at the same time and absorb from both sources. Looking back, it does seem like she was worried about something. But it’s probably my imagination.”

  “Any idea what might have worried her?”

  “No. I don’t think Teresa ever once complained to me about anything.”

  “She sounds like quite a woman.”

  “She is quite a woman.”

  I smiled. “Do you know anything about her being a witness in a criminal case?”

  “What? Oh, that auto accident thing? Is that the one?”

  “That’s the one. Did she talk about that at all?”

  Kathryn Martin shrugged. “Back when it occurred, I saw something in the paper so I asked her what had happened. She told me she’d seen a car run down a pedestrian and would probably be called to testify against the driver if it ever went to trial.”

  “Did she seem worried about it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did she mention it again?”

  “No.”

  “Was she the kind of person to run away from having to do something like that? Appear in court, I mean?”

  “Teresa Blair wasn’t the type of person to run away from anything.”

  The testimonial was heartfelt and didactic and as a result impressive. I asked Mrs. Martin if she could think of anything else that might be helpful and she shook her head. I glanced at my watch. I was late. I stood up.

  “Hey,” Mrs. Martin said. “How about staying for dinner? I mean, I’m starving, and Davy hasn’t eaten anything hot for days. It’s easy to set an extra place.” Her words trailed off into silence. The invitation was awkward, too eagerly issued, revealing a lack of practice.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment and I’m late already.”

  I left Kathryn Ellington Martin standing in the middle of her family room and her divorce, a dazed and slightly apprehensive look on her face, and went over to call on the man she had just accused of murder.

  4

  This time when I pressed the little white button beside the gate, the gate swung open. Somewhere behind the bushes a little motor whirred. After I entered, the gate closed, silently and automatically, at my back. I felt as though I’d entered a carnival attraction, dark and cavernous, the Pirate Cave or the House of Horrors. An instant later the darkness vanished, the ground became lit like a stage by scores of invisible bulbs, the theatrical light and shadow creating shapes as vague and undefined as the new life Mrs. Martin was building for herself on the next lot.

  I absorbed the scene for a few seconds, then started down a flagstone path through a rock garden of raked white pebbles, thick green moss, and bleached, twisted wood. Halfway down the path an arching footbridge took me across a small pool that was lit from below the water line and azure as a result. Gold and black carp swam listlessly in the clear, still water. The bamboo fronds and Boston ferns at the edge of the pool fondled each other in the wind. It was ethereal, a special place, a Zen place, a place reminiscent of my past, of my stay in Kyoto during the Korean War, of the Awata Palace and the Kiyomizu and the Moss Temple. I wanted badly to linger, but I followed the path instead.

  A monkey puzzle tree guarded the door of the house with wispy, spindly arms. Beside it a stone lantern served both as porch light and as caution: when I crossed this threshold, it said, I would cross an ocean and a culture.

  The house itself was low and broad, its dimensions subtly disguised by landscaping and perspective. Alternating panels of glass and stone were separated by redwood squares arranged geometrically, like shoji screens. The effect was delicate and striking. I punched the buzzer with eagerness.

  James Blair opened the door, bowed slightly at th
e waist, and beckoned me to enter, as polite as a man with something to sell. He was formally dressed, down to the rep tie knotted snugly beneath the roll of his white collar, but over it all he wore a black silk robe, loose at the arms and wrapped at the waist with a white cloth band. The silk whispered secrets when he moved.

  I followed his slippered feet across the tatami floor mats in the foyer and into the living room, which was sunken and bordered on three sides by sliding screens and glass. I obeyed his gesture and took a seat on a flat, low sedan, feeling guilty for wearing shoes.

  On the teak table beside me a bonsai cypress wound out of a small thick pot of soil. On the far wall was a set of four wood-block prints—deeply colorful, precisely wrought—Hiroshige or one of his imitators. On another wall a large scroll hung, partially unrolled, between two of the door screens. From where I sat the rows of ideographs seemed to move about, a swarm of bees servicing their queen. Above the scroll a cloth carp swayed in the air at the end of a string, colorful, festive, symbolic of manhood.

  Blair bowed to me again and sat cross-legged on a cushion in the middle of the floor. I wondered if I was supposed to worship him, or vice versa. For the next few seconds Blair didn’t move, didn’t seem to see or breathe. Then suddenly he smiled and asked if I wanted a drink. I told him I had a sudden craving for sake. He said it was available, and he would be happy to serve it, but it would be better warmed. I opted for Scotch instead. Blair rose, almost floated, from the floor, slid open a screen, and disappeared. To the left of the door a collection of kendo swords rose up the wall like rungs on a silver ladder.

  The room, its woods and brasses, ceramics and lacquers, massaged me with pulses from a host of different and refreshing wavelengths. I resolved to delve into Zen once again, in light of what seemed to be a new receptivity, or perhaps a new need.

  When Blair returned with my drink, I complimented him on the house. He seemed pleased, although he spoke no words that said so. When he asked if the Scotch was satisfactory, I told him it was. When I asked if it was Suntory, he merely smiled. When I asked if he would join me in a drink, he told me he drank only tea, and nothing after sundown. In a careful but nonobvious way Blair had put me on the defensive, awakening my slumbering sense of inadequacy. Since he possessed control of the situation, I decided to see what he would do with it.

  For several minutes he did nothing but watch me sip my drink. I glanced idly about, uneasy and insecure in the silence. When I found myself looking at a particularly stark scroll on the far wall, I asked Blair what it was.

  “It’s a koan,” he said. “One of my favorites.”

  “What does it say?”

  He smiled. “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.”

  I was startled and must have looked it. Blair’s smile widened. “I find it particularly helpful in reminding me that the path to satori lies within, not without, that there is in my world no separation between the human and the divine.” He paused for effect. “Can you imagine a Christian saying the same of Mister Christ?” he asked, his eyes flickering with mischief.

  I told him I couldn’t. Blair nodded. I expected him to slip me a cookie as a reward.

  “What made you embrace Zen and all this?” I asked.

  Blair shrugged. “When a thinking man finds himself in a madhouse, he must either become twice mad or seek to escape to another place. I have made my choice.”

  “But you still work on the outside, don’t you?”

  “Ah. One must eat. Few accommodations are perfect.”

  “Does your wife share your philosophy?”

  “Not entirely. We are different people. In the beginning our differences bound us together. I hope they will not now destroy us.”

  Blair returned to the mat across from me and sank onto it and sat, erect and cross-legged, with his hands poised like blossoms on his knees. He explained that he could only give me an hour, that he had to return to the office to review the confirmations of some receivables. When I asked about his business, he told me he was an independent accountant, employed by a small number of individuals and businesses for whom he prepared tax returns and financial statements. When he glanced briefly at his watch, I assured him I would get down to business.

  “Tolson seems to think this Fluto character might be responsible for your wife’s disappearance,” I said. “Was there any evidence at all your wife was taken by force?”

  “No.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  He shook his head. “I checked very carefully. I know this house well. I believe I would know if an entry was forced.”

  “So there isn’t any basis, other than theoretical, for you to believe that Tony Fluto has your wife.”

  “That is correct.”

  Our eyes met then, because we both knew where we were going, and we were both uneasy. “I’m going to proceed on the assumption that your wife left on her own,” I told him. “For whatever reason. If I’m wrong, someone will let me know, sooner or later. In the meantime, I’m going to have to know a lot about her. Everything you can tell me. Including how she felt about you.”

  Blair remained as he was for a moment, a breathing Buddha, then stood and crossed the room and stared at one of the prints on the wall. The water in the little fishing scene was a fathomless blue, and Blair seemed to probe its depths, to immerse himself in its mystery. “I want to help,” he said finally, his back still to me. “But you will be disappointed, perhaps even dismayed, at how little I know. About her.”

  When he turned to face me, there was the beginning of a sheepish smile on his face. “I am an accountant, as you know,” he said, “and I am also, perhaps naturally, a student of Eastern philosophy and art, particularly the teachings of the Japanese Zen masters. I lived in Kyoto for a year. I briefly attended Otani University, the school of Dr. Suzuki. I considered becoming a monk, until I realized I was unworthy and would always be.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not important. I tell you this simply to confirm what you have doubtless observed. I am a man of precision, of patience, of exactitude. In my work. In my habits. In my pleasures. In one area only have I deviated. That is the conjugal. I met and married Teresa in eleven days.”

  Coming from Blair that was tantamount to an admission of treason. I grinned. “Have you ever regretted the impulse?”

  “Never.”

  “Has Mrs. Blair ever regretted it?” I asked, without quite meeting his eyes.

  It was almost impossible to detect, but I thought a bit of anguish was twisting his features, creating disharmony. “I cannot speak for her,” Blair began slowly. “We have never communicated a great deal, at least not as that term is normally understood. Our relationship is one of conventions, of roles. It is as we both wish it. However, I am sure Teresa has no doubts about my feelings for her. I have admitted her and no one else to my life. At times Teresa seizes me like a savior, an antidote for some mysterious poison she has somehow ingested. But at other times, well, there is a gulf, and we exist as islands. It is not unpleasant, but it is not, how shall I put it, a life of shared experience. It is not a confluence.”

  “Was Mrs. Blair frightened of Tony Fluto?”

  “Of course. But not hysterically so. She seemed determined to testify.” His tone was nonchalant, his attention unfocused for the first time that evening.

  I looked at him carefully, alert for any reaction he might give to what I would say next. “You think she’s running from you, don’t you? Not from Fluto at all. That’s why you suggested that someone like me be brought in on the case. You think the cops are on the wrong trail.”

  Blair met my eyes. “Basically, that’s correct. I don’t like to acknowledge it, but yes, that’s what I believe.”

  “That leaves us with motivation. Why would she want to leave you?”

  Blair closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them. They were orbs of flickering blue flame. “I am perfectly content here,” he said, his hand sweeping the room, the house, the compound. “I b
uilt the house before I met Teresa. Except for her it contains everything that interests me. My texts, my dojo, my bonsai, my rock garden. I am at peace here, but the same cannot be said for Teresa. She is not given to contemplation. She likes people, movement, to be directed away from her center, not toward it. It was part of her charm, part of what she brought to me, but it created tensions. She may have concluded that another life would offer more. If so, it would sadden but not surprise me.”

  “If you two were so different, why did she marry you in the first place?”

  “We each had goals, duties to perform, obligations we had to fulfill, that we could not escape. We came to realize we could do it best together.”

  “What kind of obligations?”

  Blair blinked. “Just those that life bestows. I didn’t mean to sound so dramatic. It’s a failure of those who spend much time alone—their existence tends to assume exaggerated significance. It is one of many impulses I try to suppress, but I often fail. As I said: unworthy.”

  Blair stopped talking, the strange rhythms of his speech leaving ripples in the room. I sensed I had all the details of his domestic intimacies I was going to get. “Thank you for your candor,” I said to him. “It might help me find your wife. A woman on the run from a man like Fluto will do things differently from a woman on the run from her husband. One question is, assuming Mrs. Blair is running from you, What do I do if I find her? From experience I can tell you that it’s almost impossible to force a woman to return to a man she’s definitely decided to leave.”

  Blair shook his head. “I simply want to know where she is,” he answered. “So I can speak with her briefly. I would certainly not force her to come back to me, even if I had the power to. But I would like to talk with her, to make one final attempt to put it, to put us, together.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “You’re the client, you can do whatever you want. But just remember the information goes to Tolson, too. Those were the rules, and you agreed to them. I assume they still apply.”

  He nodded. “But I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Tanner. If you do find Teresa and if she agrees to speak with me, I intend to advise her to refuse to testify against this Fluto. For her own good and for mine.”