Burn Out (15 page)
Once again I contemplated the phrase from Robert Frost’s “Death of a Hired Man” while Elizabeth Long looked for the notes she’d taken after Miri Perez’s sudden appearance and equally sudden departure on Monday.
Miri’s oldest daughter, Hayley, had returned to Vernon after years of disappointment and hardship. Miri’s youngest daughter, Amy, had returned to the cabin where she’d been squatting at the Willow Grove Lodge.
Where was the home to which Miri would naturally gravitate?
Long sat down at her desk, put on narrow-rimmed glasses, and stared at the notes. “There’s nothing here besides what I told you. You can read them, if you like.”
I waved the pages away. “These people in Sacramento to whom you sent Miri—who are they?”
“You know I can’t—”
“You signed that contract.” I pointed to it where it lay on top of a heap of files.
“. . . Dean and Jane Ironwood. I don’t have an address for them; as a safety measure, we never knew the whereabouts of the people who assisted us.”
“Was there anyone else involved in helping Miri— Isabel—escape? She told her sister there was a friend in California who had introduced her to a nice family.”
“I can’t remember—”
“Try, please.”
“. . . Hillary King. Also in the Sacramento area.”
“Well, maybe I can locate her, or the Ironwoods.”
“Why, after all this time?”
“Because, home is— Never mind. Thank you for your time, Ms. Long.”
Another dreary motel room, but on this trip in Carson City I’d brought my laptop. And I was on a roll.
I went straight to the expensive search agencies the agency subscribed to. Hillary King. None in the Sacramento area. She could have moved, married and changed her name, or died. I’d concentrate on the Ironwoods.
Ironwood, Dean, Sacramento. He’d been a lobbyist. There was a ton of information on him, but he’d died two years ago.
Ironwood, Jane. She was a registered nurse, license still active. Address and phone number in Carmichael, a suburb northeast of Sacramento. I phoned the number, but reached an answering machine. Left a message asking her to call me on my cellular. Then I settled down to the takeout dinner I’d picked up across the street and a bad made-for-TV movie.
I was asleep before the movie ended. For once it was a peaceful sleep, without nightmares.
I woke in the morning to my cellular’s ring and, as I reached for it, was shocked to see that it was after ten.
Hy. “Sorry I haven’t called, McCone. I’m in Tokyo.”
“A crisis?”
“No, major new client who wanted to meet in person. I tried to leave a message on the ranch machine before I went, but I think it malfunctioned. Squawking noises, like an enraged chicken.”
“Damn machines. I swear they make them with a chip that tells them to die the day after the warranty expires. I’ll pick up another.”
“Good. I had to rush to catch my flight and I’ve been jammed up ever since, so I haven’t had time till now to call your cell. What’s doing?”
I explained what had happened since we last talked. “I may have to go to Sacramento. Where’s the best place around here to rent a plane?”
“El Aero at Carson City Airport. Ask for my buddy Pete. He’ll give you a discounted rate.”
Hy had “buddies” in airports throughout the country—sometimes I thought throughout the world. “Will do. When will you be back stateside?”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here, and when I get back home I’ll have to play catch-up. Any idea when you’ll be coming to the city?”
“I’m not sure. This case—”
“Uh-huh. Now it’s a case. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Hy was right, I thought as I stepped into the shower. Since last winter, I hadn’t been living—at least not in the sense that I usually did. Although I wasn’t yet sure that I wanted to make the reentry, I turned up the water’s heat, washed vigorously, and emerged into a new and better day.
There had been a call on my cell while I was in the shower. Ted, with his daily report. I dealt with him, spoke briefly with Patrick, and got off the phone.
Freedom from the tyranny of the agency.
While I was eating breakfast in the motel’s coffee shop, the phone rang again. The number on the screen was Jane Ironwood’s. While I don’t usually talk on the cell in a public place, there were few other patrons and none seated near me, so I picked up.
The voice that spoke was throaty—what in old movies they called a whiskey voice. “Of course I remember Miri,” she said after I explained why I’d called. “She was a pleasure to have in our household, more like family than the other children in trouble we usually took in. And we loved Hayley as if she were our own granddaughter. But eventually Miri married Jimmy Perez and they moved to Mono County.”
“You sound as if you didn’t approve of the marriage.”
“When Miri met Jimmy, he’d been around our neighborhood for a little more than a year, doing gardening and handyman work. We never used him because I’d heard that he was unreliable. My husband and I questioned whether he’d be able to give Miri, Hayley, and any future children they might have a good life, but he said he had a brother who owned a ranch outside of Vernon and would give him a good job.”
The brother: Ramon Perez. The ranch: Hy’s and my small spread.
“Did you hear from Miri after she moved away?”
“A few letters at first. Christmas cards. Four birth announcements. Then nothing.”
“Jimmy left her right after their fourth child was born.”
A sigh. “So we were right after all.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The house where you lived in Sacramento—I imagine you’ve sold it.”
“Oh, yes. When my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, we had to stop taking in troubled children. And when he died . . . well, it was like living alone in a drafty old barn. I had friends here in Carmichael I wanted to be closer to, so five years ago I sold the house to a company that was going to convert it into commercial space. So far as I know, nothing’s been done with it.”
“Would you give me the address?”
“Certainly. But may I ask why?”
“Miri’s running, trying to escape her life. I have a hunch she might have gone to the one place where she was happy.”
“I see.” She gave the address and asked me to call again if I had any news.
I set off to rent an airplane to fly to Sacramento.
The former Ironwood home was on Twenty-fifth Street in midtown Sacramento, a block off J Street, in an ethnically diverse area of mixed-use buildings—small shops, restaurants, offices, and private residences. Huge old elm trees and shrubbery that had run wild screened it from the sidewalk, but I could make out a white, three-story shape with a big porch and dormer windows. A flimsy-looking chain-link fence surrounded the deep lot, and a rusted sign proclaimed it as being under renovation for commercial space by Four Star Associates and gave a number for leasing inquiries. It didn’t look as if any renovations had ever been made, and I doubted anyone had called the number in a long time. All the same, I copied it down.
Next door was a similarly old but better-kept-up house, outside which a law firm had hung its shingle. On the other side, a big light blue clapboard house with multicolored banners hanging on the porch and a bicycle on the neat lawn— a private home. Across the street a secondhand bookshop, a dental clinic, and another private home.
My prospects for getting onto the property now didn’t look good, even though the runaway shrubbery screened it to either side. The attorneys next door might go home at five, but then again they might not. The family on the other side would probably be there in the evening. The bookshop and dental clinic would close down, but the home next to them had large windows overlooking the street.
Why was I even bothering with this? If I was doubtful of gaining entry, how could Miri have done so?
Because she knew the property. She’d lived there for five years.
It was now close to four-thirty. It had taken a while to get a plane from Hy’s buddy in Carson City, longer to get a rental car at Sacramento Executive Airport. And then the rental clerk had given me the wrong directions. In a way, the delays had worked to my advantage: it wouldn’t be long until dark.
I started the car, U-turned, and drove to a coffee shop I’d spotted along the way. Primarily I wanted to use their restroom, but I also bought a large coffee and a sandwich to go. Then I drove back and parked a few spaces down from where I’d been before. And waited as dusk fell.
Across the street the bookshop and dental clinic were already closed. Lights were on in the private home, but they glowed from behind closed curtains. Lights shone in an upper window of the law firm, but once it became fully dark they went out. Shortly after, a figure descended the front steps, got into a nearby car, and drove away. The private home on the other side of the former Ironwood property remained dark. I waited half an hour longer, then took my small flashlight from my purse, got out of the car, and slipped into the shadows on the side of the property that abutted the law firm’s.
The fence continued to the back of a deep lot. A breeze had come up, rustling the leaves of the old elms. I stopped at the fence’s rear boundary, saw that it backed up onto a paved space between two buildings on the next street—parking lot, probably, and empty. I moved along, muting the flash’s light with my cupped hand. Shone it on the fence and finally saw a place shielded from the parking lot by a disposal bin, where the chain link had been pried up to the height a normal-sized person could slide under.
I looked around, then scrambled under the chain link on my back, headfirst.
The ground was covered with fallen leaves; they clung to my hair and my back. A vine on the other side of the fence took a stranglehold on my ankle and I kicked it free. Then I was inside, sitting on the damp leaves and feeling moisture soak through the seat of my jeans; it must have rained here recently.
I scooted away from the fence and under the drooping branches of a huge cypress. Ahead I could make out unidentifiable shapes and then the house itself. The moon hadn’t yet risen—or at least it couldn’t be seen from my vantage point—so in order to make my way across the yard I’d have to risk using my flashlight. Small risk, I thought as I turned it on and started out.
The trees ended after a few more feet, followed by an area of waist-high grass that once must have been a lawn. Trees shielded the property to either side. My flash picked out a jungle gym—iron piping, not the colorful plastic ones they have now. Halfway to the house I banged hard into something hidden by the tall grass: that was going to leave a nasty bruise on my thigh. I brushed the grass away and found a concrete birdbath, its bowl cracked and crumbling. What else was out here—
“Oof!”
My foot had come down on something round and as it rolled away, I fell on my ass. Jesus, what was
that
? I got up on all fours, felt around, and retrieved the object—croquet ball, the colorful stripe bleached out, covered in cracks and nicks.
Terrific. I’d probably trip over a mallet next, or bugger myself on a wicket.
I straightened and moved more slowly toward the house, feeling around with my hands and feet for other hazards. Arrived unharmed and started up the wide back steps toward a set of French doors.
One of the boards broke under my weight, and I fell through, trapped up to my ankle.
And this is what you used to live for, McCone? Creeping around in dark, dangerous places in search of someone who’s probably heard you flailing about and fled to the next county by now?
I dismissed the questions, extricated my foot from the hole in the boards, and tested each step before I put my weight on it. The French doors proved to be no problem: vandals had broken most of their glass panes, and one side stood slightly ajar. I moved slowly into a large room with a fireplace. The walls were marred by graffiti; beer cans and liquor bottles littered the warped hardwood floors. Used condoms and a pair of woman’s lacy panties, too.
Only five years, and all this destruction—courtesy of a company that had bought a handsome, valuable property and allowed it to go to seed. I imagined Miri’s distress at finding her former home in this condition. Had she run again—and this time to where? Back to the house in Vernon, where she’d led an unhappy life since Jimmy Perez deserted her—and probably before? I didn’t think so.
I moved across the destroyed room and through an archway. This space had not been damaged as much, probably because it faced the street from which lights could be seen by neighbors and passing cars. It was a big, old-fashioned foyer. A staircase ran up either side wall toward the rear, then met in the center and continued.
She’d go up. Up to the bedroom she’d shared with baby Hayley.
I went up, too, along the right-hand branch of the stairs. Turned down the hallway, where open doors revealed rooms empty of anything but more graffiti and trash. Something scuttled across the floor in front of me—a mouse or a rat. Cobwebs brushed my face and clung to my hair. It was cold, and the scents of mold and dry rot clogged my nostrils. Miri couldn’t possibly have stayed here. . . .
My instincts prodded me on.
And then I smelled it—faint, but unmistakable. The odor of death.
I moved quickly along the hall to a closed door. Pushed it open and swept the room beyond with my flash. A bare mattress lay on the floor; on it was what looked like a pile of rags.
Not rags. A body.
I crossed the room, shined my light down onto a round face that bore a strong resemblance to both Hayley and Amy Perez. The woman was covered in ratty and torn blankets. She lay on her back, long gray-streaked hair fanned out around her shoulders. Death had removed the evidence of a hard and unhappy life from her features; she looked like a child, deep in peaceful sleep.
I knelt and felt for a pulse that no longer beat. Her skin was as cold as the air around her. I suspected rigor had come and gone.
A shabby purse, an empty liter of a cheap brand of vodka, and an empty vial of pills lay on the floor beside the mattress. I pulled a pair of disposable plastic gloves from my bag, put them on, and checked the purse: driver’s license in the name of Miriam Perez, a rumpled card listing Ramon as next of kin, and three dollars. I examined the pill bottle without touching it: a strong tranquilizer prescribed three weeks ago by a doctor in Bridgeport. How many had been left when she mixed them with the vodka I couldn’t guess.