River's End (14 page)

“Some things you don’t forget. And because you don’t, because you can’t, you make sure the job stays done.” And he’d made a promise to a young girl with haunted eyes as they’d stood in the deep shadows of the forest. “He hasn’t forgotten either. What better way to pay me back than to use you?”

“He can’t hurt me, Dad.”

“I imagine that’s just what Julie MacBride thought the night she opened the door to him. Stay away from him, Noah. Put this one aside.”

“You haven’t.” He held up a hand before Frank could speak. “Just listen a minute. You did your job. It cost you. I remember how it was. You’d pace the floor at night, or come out here to sit in the dark. I know there were others that followed you home, but nothing ever like this one. So I never forgot it either. I guess you could say it’s followed me, too. This one’s part of us. All of us. I’ve wanted to write this book for years. I have to talk to Sam Tanner.”

“If you do that, Noah, and go on to write this book, drag out all that ugliness again, do you realize what it might do to Tanner’s other victims? The parents, the sister. Her child?”

Olivia. No, Noah told himself, he was not going to cloud the issue with Olivia. Not now. “I thought about what it might do to you. That’s why I’m here. I wanted you to know what I’m going to do.”

“It’s a mistake.”

“Maybe, but it’s my life now, and my job.”

“You think he’d have contacted you if you weren’t mine?” Fear and fury sprang out in equal measures, turning Frank’s eyes hard, snapping into his voice like the crack of a bullet. “The son of a bitch refuses to talk to anyone for years—and they’ve tried to get to him. Brokaw, Walters, Oprah. No comment, no interviews, no nothing. Now, just months before he’s likely to get out, he contacts you, offers you the story on a plate. Damn it, Noah, it doesn’t have to do with your work. It has to do with mine.”

“Maybe.” Noah’s tone chilled as he slipped his sunglasses back on. “And maybe it has to do with both. Whether or not you respect my work, it’s what I do. And what I’m going to keep doing.”

“I never said I didn’t respect your work.”

“No, but you never said otherwise either.” It was a bruise Noah just realized he’d been nursing. “I’ll take my breaks where I find them and make them work for me. I learned that from you. I’ll see you Sunday.”

Frank stepped forward, started to speak. But Noah was already striding away. So he sat, feeling his age, and stared down at his own hands.

Noah’s foul mood drove home with him, like a separate energy, an irritable passenger in the stone-gray BMW. He kept the top down, the radio up, trying to blow away the anger, drown out his thoughts.

He hated the sudden discovery that he was hurt because his father had never done a tap dance of joy over the success of his books.

It was stupid, he thought. He was old enough not to need the whistles and claps of parental approval. He wasn’t eighteen and scoring the winning basket at the tail of the fourth quarter any longer. He was a grown man both happy and successful in his profession. He was well paid, and his ego got all the boosts it required from reviews and royalty checks, thank you very much.

But he knew, had known all along, that his father disapproved of the path he’d taken with his writing. Because neither had wanted to confront the other, little had been said.

Until today, Noah thought.

Sam Tanner had done more than offer a story to be told. He’d put the first visible crack in a relationship Noah had counted on all his life. It had been there before, hidden, from the first moment he’d decided to write about all the ripples on the river of murder.

Fiction would have been fine, Noah knew. Entertaining. But digging and exposing the realities, stripping down killers, victims, survivals for public consumption. That’s what his father disliked—and couldn’t understand.

And just now, because he didn’t know how to explain it, Noah’s mood teetered on the edge of vile.

Spotting Caryn’s car parked in front of his house tripped it over the rest of the way.

He found her sitting on his back deck, her long, smooth legs clad in tiny pink shorts, a wide-brimmed straw hat protecting her face from the sun. When he opened the glass door, she looked up, her eyes brimming behind the amber lenses of her designer sunglasses. Her lips trembled.

“Oh, Noah. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

He cocked his head. It would’ve been fascinating if it hadn’t been so tedious. It was a pattern he recognized from their weeks together. Fight, curse, accuse, throw things, slam out. Then come back with tearful eyes and apologize.

Now, unless she’d decided to deviate from form, she would slither around him and offer sex.

When she rose, smiling tremulously as she crossed to him and slid her arms around him, he decided she just didn’t have the imagination to improvise.

“I’ve been so unhappy without you these last few days.” She lifted her mouth to his. “Let’s go inside so I can show you how much I’ve missed you.”

It worried him a little that he wasn’t tempted, not in the least.

“Caryn. It’s not going to work. Why don’t we just say it was fun while it lasted?”

“You don’t mean it.”

“Yes.” He had to nudge her back so she’d stop rubbing against him. “I do.”

“There’s someone else, isn’t there? All the time we were living together, you were cheating on me.”

“No, there’s no one else. And we weren’t living together. You just started staying here.”

“You bastard. You’ve already had another woman in our bed.” She rushed past him, into the house.

“It’s not
our
bed. It’s my bed. Goddamn it.” He was more weary than angry, until he walked into the bedroom and saw she was already ripping at his sheets. “Hey! Cut it out.”

He made a grab for her, but she rolled onto the bed, leaped off the other side. Before he could stop her, she’d grabbed the bedside lamp and heaved it at him. The best he could do was block it so the base didn’t rap him between the eyes.

The sound of the glass crashing on the floor snapped the already unsteady hold on his temper.

“Okay, that’s it. Get out. Get the hell out of my house and stay away from me.”

“You never cared. You never thought about my feelings.”

“You’re right, absolutely.” He went for her as she made a beeline for his prized basketball trophy. “I didn’t give a damn about you.” He panted it out as he struggled to get her out without losing any of his own skin to her long, lethal nails. “I’m a pig, a creep, a son of a bitch.”

“I hate you!” She shrieked it, slapping and kicking as he dragged her to the front door. “I wish you were dead!”

“Just pretend I am. And I’ll do the same for you.” He shoved her outside, shut the door, then leaned back against it.

He let out a long breath, rolled his shoulders. Then because he hadn’t heard her car start, glanced out the window. Just in time to see her rake her keys over the glossy finish of his BMW.

He roared like a wounded lion. By the time he had flung open the door and burst out, she was leaping into her own car, squealing away.

Hands clenched, he looked at the damage. Deep, nasty scratches formed letters on the hood. PI. At least she hadn’t had the satisfaction of finishing the thought, he decided.

Okay, fine. He’d have the car repaired while he was out of town. It seemed like a very good time to head north to San Quentin.

Noah’s first distant glimpse of San Quentin made him think of an old fortress now serving as some sort of thematic resort complex. Disneyland for cons.

The building was the color of sand and stretched out over San Francisco Bay with its multilevels and towers and turrets with a faintly exotic air.

It didn’t smack of prison unless you thought of the armed guards in those towers, the spread of security lights that would turn the air around it orange and eerie at night. And all the steel cages it held inside.

He’d opted to take the ferry from San Francisco to Marin County and now stood at the rail while it glided over water made choppy by the wind. He found the architecture of the prison odd and somehow very Californian, but doubted the inmates had much appreciation for the structure’s aesthetics.

It had taken him only hours to clear through channels for permission to visit. It made Noah wonder if Tanner had connections on the inside that had helped smooth the way.

Didn’t matter, Noah decided while the wind cut through his hair like jagged shards of glass. The results were what counted.

He’d taken a day to read through his files on the MacBride murder, to study, refresh his memory, to consider. He knew the man he would meet as well as anyone from the outside was able to, he imagined.

At least he knew the man Tanner had been.

A hardworking, talented actor with an impressive string of successful movies under his belt by the time he’d met Julie MacBride, his co-star in
Summer Thunder.
He’d also, by all accounts, had an impressive string of females associated with his name before he’d married. It had been a first marriage for both of them, though he’d been seriously involved with Lydia Loring, a very hot property during the seventies. The gossip
columns had had a field day with their stormy and very public breakup once he’d set his sights on Julie.

He’d enjoyed his fame, his money and his women. And had continued to enjoy the first two after his marriage. There’d been no other women after Julie. Or, Noah mused, he’d been very, very discreet.

Insiders called him difficult, temperamental, then had begun to use terms like “explosive temper,” “unreasonable demands” when his two films after
Summer Thunder
had tanked at the box office.

He’d begun to show up late and unprepared for shooting, had fired his personal assistant, then his agent.

It became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets that he was using, and using heavy.

So he’d become obsessive about his wife, delusional about the people around him, focused on Lucas Manning as his nemesis and, in the end, violent.

In 1975, he’d been the top box-office actor in the country. By 1980, he’d become an inmate in San Quentin. It was a long way to fall in a short amount of time.

The careless spread of staggering wealth and fame, the easy access to the most beautiful women in the world, the scrambling of maître d’s to provide the best tables, the A-list for parties, the cheers of fans. How would it feel to have that sliding through your fingers? Noah wondered. Add arrogance, ego, mix it with cocaine, a little freebasing, jealousy over an up-and-coming box-office rival and a shattered marriage, and you had a perfect formula for disaster.

It would be interesting to see what the last twenty years had added, or taken away, from Sam Tanner.

He was back in his rental car when the ferry docked, and anxious to get on with it. Though he hoped to be done with the initial interview in time to get back to the airport and catch the evening flight home, he’d tossed a few things in a bag just in case he decided to stay over.

He hadn’t mentioned the trip to anyone.

As he waited his turn, he drummed his fingers on the
wheel to the Spice Girls and inexplicably thought of Olivia MacBride.

Oddly, the image that came to his mind was of a tall, gangly girl with pale hair and tanned arms. Of sad eyes as they’d sat on a riverbank watching beavers splash. He had done his research, but had found nothing public on her since her childhood. A few speculations now and then in the press, a recap story, the reprint of that stunning photo of her grief when she’d been four—that was all the mass media could manage.

Her family had pulled the walls up, he thought, and she’d stayed behind them. Just as her father had stayed behind the thick sand-colored walls of his prison. It was an angle he intended to pursue.

When the time came, he’d do whatever it took to convince her to speak with him again, to cooperate with the book. He could only hope that after six years her bitterness toward him would have lost its edge. That the sensible—and wonderfully sweet—science student he’d spent such a lovely few days with would see the value and the purpose of what he meant to do.

Beyond that, he couldn’t think of what it would be like to see her again. So he tucked her away in his mind and concentrated on today.

He drove his rental car down the road toward the prison, passed an old pier and a pumping station. He caught a glimpse of a paved trail which he assumed led down to the water, and what might have been a little park, though he wondered why anyone would want to loiter or picnic in the shadow of those forbidding walls.

The visitors’ parking lot skirted a small, attractive beach, with the waters a dull iron gray beyond. He’d considered a tape recorder, or at least a notebook, but had decided to go in cold. Just impressions, this time. He didn’t want to give Tanner the idea he was making a commitment.

The visitors’ entrance was a long hall with a side door halfway down. The single window was covered with notices, preventing views from either side. There was a sign on the door
that had a chill sliding down his spine even as his lips quirked in wry amusement:

PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK. WE KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE. WE WILL GET TO YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

So he stood, alone in the empty hallway with the wind whistling stridently, waiting for those who knew he was there to get to him.

When they did, he relayed his business, gave his ID, filled out the required forms. There was no small talk, no polite smiles.

He’d been the route before—in New York, in Florida. He’d been on death row and felt the ice slick through his gut at the sound of doors sliding shut and footsteps echoing. He’d spoken to lifers, the condemned and already damned.

He’d smelled the hate, the fear and the calculation, as much a stink in the air as sweat and piss and hand-rolled cigarettes.

He was taken down a hallway, bypassing the main visitors’ area, and shown into a small, cheerless room with a table and two chairs. The door was thick with a single window of reinforced glass.

And there, Noah had his first look at what had become of Sam Tanner.

Gone was the pampered screen idol with the million-dollar smile. This was a hard man, body and face. Noah wondered how much his mind had toughened as well. He sat, one hand chained, the bright orange prison jumpsuit baggy and stark. His hair was cut brutally short and had gone a nearly uniform ash gray.

The lines dug deep into his face gave him the look of a man well beyond his age of fifty-eight. And Noah remembered another inmate once telling him prison years were long dog years. Every one behind bars was the equal of seven out in the world.

The eyes were a sharp and cold blue that took their time studying Noah, barely flicked toward the guard when they were told they had thirty minutes.

“Glad you could make it, Mr. Brady.”

That hadn’t changed, Noah realized. The voice was as smooth and rich and potent as it had been in his last movie. Noah sat as the door closed and the locked snicked into place at his back.

“How did you get my home address, Mr. Tanner?”

A ghost of a smile played around his mouth. “I still have some connections. How’s your father?”

Noah kept his eyes level and ignored the jolt in his gut. “My father’s fine. I can’t say he sends his best.”

Sam’s teeth bared in a fleeting grin. “A straight-up cop, Frank Brady. I see him and Jamie . . . now and again. She’s still a pretty woman, my former sister-in-law. I wonder just how close her and your old man are.”

“Did you get me all the way up here to annoy me, Tanner, with speculations on my father’s personal life?”

The smile came back, small and sly. “I haven’t had much interesting conversation lately. Got any reals?”

Noah lifted a brow. He knew most of the basic prison terms. “No, sorry. I don’t smoke.”

“Fucking California.” With his free hand, Sam reached inside his jumpsuit, carefully removed the tape that affixed a single hand-rolled cigarette and wooden match to his chest. “Making prisons nonsmoking facilities. Where do they come up with this shit?”

He lighted the match with his thumbnail, then puffed the cigarette to life. “Used to be I had the resources for a full brick a day. A couple packs of reals is decent currency inside. Now I’m lucky to get a carton a month.”

“It’s lousy the way they treat murderers these days.”

Those hard blue eyes only glimmered—amusement or disdain, Noah couldn’t be sure. “Are you interested in crime and punishment, Brady, or are you interested in the story?”

“One goes with the other.”

“Does it?” Sam blew out a stream of ugly-smelling smoke. “I’ve had a long time to think about that. You know, I can’t remember the taste of good scotch, or the smell of a beautiful
woman. You can deal with the sex. There are plenty inside who’ll bend over for you if that’s what you want. Otherwise you’ve always got your hand. But sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night just aching for the smell of a woman.”

He jerked a shoulder. “There ain’t no substitute. Me, I read a lot to get through those times. I used to stick to novels, pick a part in one and imagine playing it when I got out. I loved acting.” He said it with the same cold look in his eyes. “I loved everything about it. It took me a long time to accept that part of my life was over, too.”

Noah angled his head. “Is it? What role are you playing here, Tanner?”

Abruptly, Sam leaned forward, and for the first time life sprang into his eyes, hot and real. “This is all I’ve got. You think because you come in here and talk to cons you understand what it’s like? You can get up and walk out anytime. You’ll never understand.”

“There’s not much stopping me from getting up and walking out now,” Noah said evenly. “What do you want?”

“I want you to tell it, to put it all down. To say how it was then, how it is now. To say why things happened and why they didn’t. Why two people who had everything lost it all.”

“And you’re going to tell me all that?”

“Yeah, I’m going to tell you all of it.” Sam leaned back, drawing out the last stingy sliver of his smoke. “And you’re going to find out the rest.”

“Why? Why me, why now?”

“Why you?” Sam dropped the smoldering bit of paper and tobacco on the floor, absently crushed it out. “I liked your book,” he said simply. “And I couldn’t resist the irony of the connection. Seemed almost like a sign. I’m not one of the pitiful who found God in here. God has nothing to do with places like this, and He doesn’t come here. But there’s fate, and there’s timing.”

“You want to consider me fate, okay. What’s the timing?”

“I’m dying.”

Noah skimmed his gaze coolly over Sam’s face. “You look healthy enough to me.”

“Brain tumor.” Sam tapped a finger on his head. “Inoperable. The doctors say maybe a year, if I’m lucky—and if I’m lucky, I’ll die in the world and not inside. We’re working on that. It looks like the system’s going to be satisfied with my twenty now that I’m dead anyway.”

He seemed to find that amusing and chuckled over it. It wasn’t a sound that encouraged the listener to join in. “You could say I’ve got a new sentence, short stretch with no possibility of parole. So, if you’re interested, you’ll have to work fast.”

“You’ve got something new to add to everything that’s been said, printed, filmed over the last couple of decades?”

“Do you want to find out?”

Noah tapped a finger on the table. “I’ll think about it.” He rose. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Brady,” Sam said as Noah moved to the door. “You didn’t ask if I killed my wife.”

Noah glanced back, met his eyes dead on. “Why would I?” he said and signaled for the guard.

Sam smiled a little. He thought the first meeting had gone well and never doubted Frank Brady’s son would come back.

Noah sat in Prison Supervisor Diterman’s office, surprised and a little flattered that his request for a meeting had been so quickly granted. Hollywood would never have cast George Diterman in the role of head of one of the country’s most active prisons. With his thinning patch of hair, small build and round black-framed glasses, he looked like a man very low on the feeding chain of a midlevel accounting firm.

He greeted Noah with a brisk handshake and a surprisingly charming smile. “I enjoyed your first book,” he began as he took his place behind his desk. “And I’m already enjoying the second.”

“Thank you.”

“And should I assume you’re here gathering information to write another?”

“I’ve just spoken with Sam Tanner.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” Diterman folded his small, neat hands on the edge of his desk. “I cleared the request.”

“Because you admire my work or because of Tanner?”

“A little of both. I’ve been in this position in this facility for five years. During that period Tanner has been what you’d call a model prisoner. He stays out of trouble, he does his work in the prison library well. He follows the rules.”

“Rehabilitated?” Noah asked with just enough cynicism in his tone to make Diterman smile again.

“That depends on which definition you choose. Society’s, the law’s, this house’s. But I can say that at some point, he decided to do his time clean.”

Diterman unlaced his fingers, pressed them together, laced them tidily again. “Tanner’s authorized me to give you access to his records and to speak to you frankly about him.”

He works fast, Noah mused. Fine. He’d been waiting a long time to begin this book, and he intended to work fast himself. “Then why don’t you, Supervisor, speak frankly to me about Inmate Tanner.”