To Catch the Moon (5 page)

She had the same guilty feeling she often did
about Jorge, the same worry that she was screwing him indirectly,
like a sin of omission. A venial sin, she told herself, not the
kind that’ll land you in hell for all eternity. But she gave
herself leeway, as she always did. She didn’t know she wasn’t going
to end up with Jorge. It would only be bad if she knew, because
then she’d be leading him on, giving him false hope.

The raw truth was that Jorge served a cynical
purpose in her romantic life. He allowed her to be dating someone
truly worthy, someone other people, even she sometimes, thought was
a keeper, while still secretly keeping her options open. She had a
companion whenever she wanted one. She had someone to watch videos
with on Saturday night. She had a bedmate. More than anything else
she had an answer for those pesky questions about her love life.
“How’s Jorge?” someone would ask. “Oh, he’s great,” she’d say, and
she’d smile, like she was the most satisfied woman in the world and
Jorge Ramon was a bedroom stallion and everything was on course for
the diamond solitaire, the picket fence, and the Baby Bjorn
carryall.

The truest, innermost secret was her sneaking
suspicion that if she did say yes to Jorge, she’d lose part of her
soul, some essential bit that made her Alicia. It would fly away,
never to be found again, and its loss would leave her dried out and
disappointed.

Did all this make her terrible? she wondered.
Or did it just make her like a man?

Alicia rubbed her eyes, deeply tired. She
would make more coffee, she decided. And she’d forage in Joyce
Ching’s desk for a chocolate bar. Maybe the double dose of caffeine
would keep her going till dinner. Joyce was the best kind of fellow
D.A., since she always had food and never locked her desk. A very
handy habit for Alicia, since the second-floor snack bar was open
only on weekdays and its concession machines were invariably empty
by this late in the weekend. Unfortunately, Joyce’s desk was on the
exact opposite end of the office.

She clambered to her feet. Her own office was
nothing to write home about, but she was proud of it anyway. It was
hard won. Like every other county civil servant’s office, it was
small, fluorescent-lit, and generally depressing. Behind her desk
was a single grimy window over which the shade was usually pulled,
unless she wanted pedestrians on Alisal Street to peer in at eye
level. She was convinced that if the prosecutorial workload didn’t
kill her, the asbestos lurking in the ceiling would. The
ill-assorted furniture might well have come from Goodwill. Her desk
was scratched-up oak, her file cabinets beige metal. What desk
space wasn’t occupied by phone and computer was taken up by
canary-yellow felony case files and bulky black binders for those
rare cases that actually made it to trial. The only decorative
items were her beloved photographs.

There were three, hung on the wall directly
opposite her desk for maximum inspiration. Alicia figured in all of
them, standing alongside Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez in one; next
to Congresswoman Nydia Margarita Velazquez in another; and with
Congresswoman Grace Napolitano in the third. Sanchez was the most
daunting: she got elected to Congress at age thirty-seven, leaving
Alicia only two years to catch up. Velazquez made it at forty.
Napolitano was sixty-three. Thank God, Alicia always thought, for
small favors.

These women were her heroes. All her life,
from as early as she could remember, she dreamed of going as far as
they had. Thoughts of them got her through those exhausting years
of college and law school, when she was working full-time to pay
her way. Some mornings even now they inspired her to get out of
bed. She figured they must have had times when they felt stalled,
too. Maybe they still did. She hoped so. She hoped they were like
her in lots of ways.

On those rare occasions during her childhood
when her father was home—when he wasn’t hauling produce along the
nation’s highways—he told her there was nothing those proud Latin
women had achieved that his Alicia couldn’t. She believed him then;
she tried to believe him still. Yet it was no easy trick balancing
her father’s ambitions on her shoulders. Though he never said a
word, she knew he’d had his days when he wished she was a boy.
She’d had her days when she wished she wasn’t the oldest, or the
smartest, and that it was Carla or Isela who was earmarked to get
the good grades and be the first Maldonado to make it through high
school. And beyond.

How her father fastened on law for her she
never understood. Lawyers must have seemed the most powerful people
to him; they must have seemed to understand how the world worked in
a way he never did.
Law, law, law
was his constant refrain,
and by the time she was ten she was singing the same tune. Now it
was the only song she knew.

On her way out of her office she lightly,
ritualistically, touched each of the three photo frames, then
headed out the door. Getting to Joyce Ching’s desk required her to
navigate the narrow perimeter corridor past small D.A. offices on
the exterior side and chin-high cubicle walls along the interior.
The Monterey County district attorney’s office took up the first
floor of the courthouse’s west wing and was full to bursting with
about three dozen prosecutors. Most were two to an office; only
senior D.A.s like herself got their own space. Alicia rounded the
final corner, approaching Penrose’s office down the long hall, and
then saw, through his open door, signs of life.

Finally
. Something must have happened.
She quickened her step. Shikegawa was standing inside, with Niebaum
and Bucky. Penrose suddenly came into view, bending to turn on a
corner table lamp. Sunday or no Sunday, he was wearing a suit and
tie. Knowing him, he probably wanted to be ready to go on
camera.

Also there, she saw now, was Louella Wilkes.
Big, blond, curvaceous Louella, transplanted ten years earlier from
her native Georgia. Alicia always thought Louella looked like
Marilyn Monroe back in her Norma Jean days, before Hollywood buffed
and polished her. Even after fifteen or so years in the business,
Louella was about the most unlikely D.A. investigator you’d ever
meet. And, Alicia thought, about the best.

Alicia felt a stab of anger, directed
entirely at Penrose. He hadn’t included her in this meeting, though
he’d summoned all the other principals who had gathered the prior
afternoon at the crime scene.

Worry rapidly displaced anger. This was not a
good sign. If Penrose intended for her to prosecute this case, she
would have been the first person he called.

He glanced over then, saw her in the
corridor, and at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. She
stepped inside his office without waiting for an invitation and
immediately claimed one of the two upholstered chairs in front of
his desk. It was no surprise that Penrose had the nicest
furniture—genuine antiques—and the best wood paneling, oil
paintings, and Oriental carpets taxpayer money could buy. The other
decorations were photos of him shaking hands with every important
person he’d ever been able to get on celluloid. It irked Alicia
that they had that much in common.

Louella plopped down in the other chair and
grinned, cheery as ever. “Hey, Alicia. Glad you’re here.” She
looked at Penrose, her blue eyes mischievous. “Wanna kick it off,
Kipper?”

Alicia knew he hated that but had long ago
given up reprimanding Louella, who was a force of nature. “Right,”
he said, then sat down behind his desk, which unlike every other
horizontal space in the D.A.’s office was bereft of paperwork. Not
surprising, since Penrose spent most of his time sucking up to
higher-placed elected officials, which didn’t require much written
documentation. He leaned forward, steepled his fingers, and looked
over them at Niebaum, who was wearing a hole in the fancy carpet.
“Let’s start with you, Ben.”

The autopsy had been completed with
remarkable speed, entirely because the victim was prominent and his
murder a major news event. In death as in life, Daniel Gaines was
getting VIP treatment.

The pathologist continued pacing as he spoke,
and kept his eyes trained on the carpet. “The arrow’s entry point
was the left anterior sixth intercostal space. It lacerated the
left main pulmonary artery and apparently caused a tension
pneumothorax.” He paused and looked up at his listeners. “This
wound was fatal in two respects. There’s no question that massive
blood loss into the left thoracic cavity would have proved fatal
within twenty minutes. But as it is, the victim died of
asphyxiation in, I’d say, eight to ten minutes. Perhaps slightly
less.”

Alicia frowned. “Asphyxiation? Doesn’t that
mean he suffocated?”

Niebaum nodded. “That’s correct. The arrow
created a vacuum hole that allowed the victim’s chest to fill with
air, preventing him from taking a breath. The experience would have
been like a slow drowning.” He shook his head. “With every breath
he struggled to take, he sucked more air into his chest. His lungs
collapsed more and more each time, driving him closer to
death.”

Shikegawa winced. “What a way to go.”

Niebaum’s bearded face was thoughtful.
“Indeed, if the killer wanted the victim to suffer, he, or she,
succeeded brilliantly. Any arrow to the chest would cause massive
damage, but this pinpoint placement, precipitating a tension
pneumothorax, caused a particularly unpleasant demise.”

Everyone was silent for a time before Louella
spoke up. “When would you put time of death, Ben?”

“Given that the body remained in a stable
environment with regard to temperature, we can narrow the time
frame to two hours. I would put death at between ten PM and
midnight.”

“Thank you, Ben,” Penrose said. “Andy?”

The criminalist, in his uniform of beige
corduroys and plaid flannel shirt, cleared his throat. “What we
have here is an extraordinary compilation of evidence.” He spoke in
his formal style, trotted out for momentous occasions like naming
suspects and testifying in court. “All of which points in one
direction.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Alicia’s
heart beat so hard against her rib cage she thought it might burst
out and land on Penrose’s snazzy carpet.

“There is no sign of forced entry,” Shikegawa
went on. “The home is equipped with a state-of-the-art security
system, which was not activated during the span of time in which
Gaines was killed.

“In the house, we have four distinct sets of
prints belonging to someone other than the victim, his wife, and
their housekeeper, an Elvia Hidalgo. Mrs. Hidalgo left the house
Friday around six PM and had the weekend off.” He consulted his
notes, printed neatly in a small, crimson leather-bound journal.
“As for the prints, they were found on the exterior of the front
door, on the arrow with which the victim was killed, on the
hardwood floor next to the victim’s feet, and on the wall of the
room in which the body was found.”

Shikegawa then looked at each of them in
turn. “All those prints belong to the same person.” He paused.
“They match the prints of Treebeard.”

“So it was Treebeard,” Penrose said
immediately. Alicia let out a shaky breath. It was what she had
thought, too, what for sure they had all thought, for how could
they not, given how Gaines had died and the well-documented history
between the men?

“What about the arrow?” Louella asked.
“You’re sure it’s Treebeard’s?”

“It appears to be exactly like the arrows
that Treebeard uses, and let me explain that,” Shikegawa went on
hastily, as Penrose immediately objected to the word
appears
. He hoisted a silver metal briefcase onto Penrose’s
desk and opened it, taking out a videotape. “May I?” he asked
Penrose, then opened a tall cabinet to switch on the TV and VCR
stored inside.

Alicia thought this was yet another way
Penrose was a jerk: he was in love with seeing himself on camera.
Whenever he scored an interview with a reporter, he recorded the
news to catch his performance. He went so far as to save the tapes
and file them by case and date.

Shikegawa punched a few buttons on the VCR
remote. On the television screen rose images from the local Channel
8 newscast. Shikegawa fast-forwarded, then began to play on the
thirty-something blond female anchor. “The environmental activist
who calls himself Treebeard is back in the news tonight in yet
another public confrontation with local timber executive Daniel
Gaines. Sherry Li reports.”

Alicia knew the story’s gist, mostly because
she’d heard it so often. Treebeard’s band of activists was
constantly trying to derail the felling operations of Headwaters
Resources, Daniel Gaines’ timber company. At the tree-felling
operations north of San Francisco in Humboldt County, Treebeard and
his people would chain themselves to trees, throw animal blood on
lumbermen, or lie across forest roads to keep the logged cargo from
moving. Alicia sympathized with them to some extent. It bothered
her, too, to hear that ninety-five percent of the virgin forest in
the United States was gone, or that deforestation in the Northwest
was worse than in the Amazon rain forest. But how could you not
dismiss Treebeard as a kook?

His name, first of all, ripped off from a
character in J. R. R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
, who both
looked like a tree and claimed to speak for the trees. His
extremism, which was of a whole different ilk than that of Julia
Butterfly, who herself had gained national notoriety for living for
two years in a giant redwood to call attention to their eradication
in California. His always dressing in fringed rawhide skins and a
coonskin cap, camping in the woods, and, most chilling now, hunting
his own game with bow and arrow.

Shikegawa spoke. “Look at this.” And there on
the tape was Treebeard, a man whose fifty-plus years rode hard on
his face. His hair dark and stringy, his skin hardened by wind and
sun, he stood in front of Headwaters’ Monterey headquarters in his
usual animal-skin getup. On a poster-board next to him was a
hideous depiction of a wolf caught in a trap, and across it in
jagged red letters, as if scrawled in blood, were the words
Timber Companies Kill
. And slung over Treebeard’s left
shoulder was a quiver of handmade arrows.