Whispers (12 page)

She turned to Lieutenant Clemenza. "Is this really necessary?" she asked exasperatedly.

Clemenza said, "Frank, can you hurry this along?"

"Look, I've got a point I'm trying to make," Lieutenant Howard said. "I'm building up to it the best way I know how. Besides, she's the one slowing it down."

He turned to her, and again she had the creepy feeling she was on trial in another century and that Howard was some religious inquisitionist. If Clemenza would permit it, Howard would simply take hold of her and shake until she gave the answers he wanted, whether or not they were the truth.

"Miss Thomas," he said, "if you'll just answer all of my questions, I'll be finished in a few minutes. Now, will you describe Bruno Frye?"

Disgustedly, she said, "Six-four, two hundred and forty pounds, muscular, blond, blue-gray eyes, about forty years old, no scars, no deformities, no tattoos, a deep gravelly voice."

Frank Howard was smiling. It was not a friendly smile. "Your description of the assailant and Bruno Frye are exactly the same. Not a single discrepancy. Not one. And of course, you've told us that they were, in fact, one and the same man."

His line of questioning seemed ridiculous, but there was surely a purpose to it. He wasn't stupid. She sensed that already she had stepped into the trap, even though she could not see it.

"Do you want to change your mind?" Howard asked. "Do you want to say that perhaps there's a small chance it was someone else, someone who only resembled Frye?"

"I'm not an idiot," Hilary said. "It was him."

"There wasn't even maybe some slight difference between your assailant and Frye? Some little thing?" he persisted.

"No."

"Not even the shape of his nose or the line of his jaw?" Howard asked.

"Not even that."

"You're certain that Frye and your assailant shared precisely the same hairline, exactly the same cheekbones, the same chin?"

"Yes."

"Are you positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Bruno Frye who was here tonight?"

"Yes."

"Would you swear to that in court?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" she said, tired of his badgering.

"Well, then. Well, well. I'm afraid if you testified to that effect, you'd wind up in jail yourself. Perjury's a crime."

"What? What do you mean?"

He grinned at her. His grin was even more unfriendly than his smile. "Miss Thomas, what I mean is--you're a liar."

Hilary was so stunned by the bluntness of the accusation, by the boldness of it, so disconcerted by the ugly snarl in his voice, that she could not immediately think of a response. She didn't even know what he meant.

"A liar, Miss Thomas. Plain and simple."

Lieutenant Clemenza got out of the brown armchair and said, "Frank, are we handling this right?"

"Oh, yeah," Howard said. "We're handling it exactly right. While she was out there talking to the reporters and posing so prettily for the photographers, I got a call from headquarters. They heard back from the Napa County Sheriff."

"Already?"

"Oh, yeah. His name's Peter Laurenski. Sheriff Laurenski looked into things for us up there at Frye's vineyard, just like we asked him to, and you know what he found? He found that Mr. Bruno Frye didn't come to Los Angeles. Bruno Frye never left home. Bruno Frye is up there in Napa County right now, right this minute, in his own house, harmless as a fly."

"Impossible!" Hilary said, pushing up from the sofa.

Howard shook his head. "Give up, Miss Thomas. Frye told Sheriff Laurenski that he intended to come to L.A. today for a week-long stay. Just a short vacation. But he didn't manage to clear off his desk in time, so he cancelled out and stayed home to get caught up on his work."

"The sheriff's wrong!" she said. "He couldn't have talked to Bruno Frye."

"Are you calling the sheriff a liar?" Lieutenant Howard asked.

"He ... he must have talked to someone who was covering for Frye," Hilary said, knowing how hopelessly implausible that sounded.

"No," Howard said. "Sheriff Laurenski talked to Frye himself."

"Did he see him? Did he actually see Frye?" she demanded. "Or did he only talk to someone on the phone, someone claiming to be Frye?"

"I don't know if it was a face to face chat or a phone conversation," Howard said. "But remember, Miss Thomas, you told us about Frye's unique voice. Extremely deep. Scratchy. A guttural, gravelly voice. Are you saying someone could have easily imitated it on the phone?"

"If Sheriff Laurenski doesn't know Frye well enough, he might be fooled by a bad imitation. He--"

"It's a small county up there. A man like Bruno Frye, an important man like that, is known to just about everyone. And the sheriff has known him very well for more than twenty years," Howard said triumphantly.

Lieutenant Clemenza looked pained. Although she did not care much what Howard thought of her, it was important to Hilary that Clemenza believed the story she had told. The flicker of doubt in his eyes upset her as much as Howard's bullying.

She turned her back on them, went to the mullioned window that looked out on the rose garden, tried to control her anger, couldn't suppress it, and faced them again. She spoke to Howard, furious, emphasizing every word by pounding her fist against the window table: "Bruno--Frye--was--here!" The vase full of roses rocked, toppled off the table, bounced on the thick carpet, scattering flowers and water. She ignored it. "What about the sofa he overturned? What about the broken porcelain I threw at him and the bullets I fired at him? What about the broken knife he left behind? What about the torn dress, the pantyhose?"

"It could be just clever stage dressing," Howard said. "You could have done it all yourself, faked it up to support your story."

"That's absurd!"

Clemenza said, "Miss Thomas, maybe it really was someone else. Someone who looked a lot like Frye."

Even if she had wanted to retreat in that fashion, she could not have done it. By forcing her to repeatedly describe the man who attacked her, by drawing several assurances from her that the assailant had been none other than Bruno Frye, Lieutenant Howard had made it difficult if not impossible for her to take the way out that Clemenza was offering. Anyway, she didn't want to back up and reconsider. She knew she was right. "It was Frye," she said adamantly. "Frye and nobody else but Frye. I didn't make the whole thing up. I didn't fire bullets into the walls. I didn't overturn the sofa and tear up my own clothes. For God's sake, why would I do a crazy thing like that? What reason could I possibly have for a charade of that sort?"

"I've got some ideas," Howard said. "I figure you've known Bruno Frye for a long time, and you--"

"I told you. I only met him three weeks ago."

"You've told us other things that turned out not to be true," Howard said. "So I think you knew Frye for years, or at least for quite a while, and the two of you were having an affair--"

"No!"

"--and for some reason, he threw you over. Maybe he just got tired of you. Maybe it was another woman. Something. So I figure you didn't go up to his winery to research one of your screenplays, like you said. I think you went up there just to get together with him again. You wanted to smooth things over, kiss and make up--"

"No."

"--but he wasn't having any of it. He turned you away again. But while you were there, you found out that he was coming to L.A. for a little vacation. So you made up your mind to get even with him. You figured he probably wouldn't have anything planned his first night in town, probably just a quiet dinner alone and early to bed. You were pretty sure he wouldn't have anyone to vouch for him later on, if the cops wanted to know his every move that night. So you decided to set him up for a rape charge."

"Damn you, this is disgusting!"

"It backfired on you," Howard said. "Frye changed his plans. He didn't even come to L.A. So now you're caught in the lie."

"He was here!" She wanted to take the detective by the throat and choke him until he understood. "Look, I have one or two friends who know me well enough to know if I'd been having an affair. I'll give you their names. Go see them. They'll tell you I didn't have anything going with Bruno Frye. Hell, they might even tell you I haven't had anything going with anyone for a while. I've been too busy to have much of a private life. I work long hours. I haven't had a lot of time for romance. And I sure as hell haven't had time to carry on with a lover who lives at the other end of the state. Talk to my friends. They'll tell you."

"Friends are notoriously unreliable witnesses," Howard said. "Besides, it might have been that one affair you kept all to yourself, the secret little fling. Face it, Miss Thomas, you painted yourself into a corner. The facts are these. You say Frye was in this house tonight. But the sheriff says he was up there, in his own house, as of thirty minutes ago. Now, St. Helena is over four hundred miles by air, over five hundred by car. He simply could not have gotten home that fast. And he could not have been in two places at once because, in case you haven't heard, that's a serious violation of the laws of physics."

Lieutenant Clemenza said, "Frank, maybe you should let me finish up with Miss Thomas."

"What's to finish? It's over, done, kaput." Howard pointed an accusing finger at her. "You're damned lucky, Miss Thomas. If Frye had come to L.A. and this had gotten into court, you'd have committed perjury. You might have wound up in jail. You're also lucky that there's no sure way for us to punish someone like you for wasting our time like this."

"I don't know that we've wasted our time," Clemenza said softly.

"Like hell we haven't." Howard glared at her. "I'll tell you one thing: If Bruno Frye wants to pursue a libel suit, I sure to God will testify for him." Then he turned and walked away from her, toward the study door.

Lieutenant Clemenza didn't make any move to leave and obviously had something more to say to her, but she didn't like having the other one walk out before some important questions were answered. "Wait a minute," she said.

Howard stopped and looked back at her. "Yeah?"

"What now? What are you going to do about my complaint?" she said.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to the car, cancel that APB on Bruno Frye, then call it a day. I'm going home and drink a couple cold bottles of Coors."

"You aren't going to leave me here alone? What if he comes back?"

"Oh, Christ." Howard said. "Will you please drop the act?"

She took a few steps toward him. "No matter what you think, no matter what the Napa County Sheriff says, I'm not putting on an act. Will you at least leave one of those uniformed men for an hour or so, until I can get a locksmith to replace the locks on my doors?"

Howard shook his head. "No. I'll be damned if I'll waste more police time and taxpayers' money to provide you with protection you don't need. Give up. It's all over. You lost. Face it, Miss Thomas." He walked out of the room.

Hilary went to the brown armchair and sat down. She was exhausted, confused, and scared.

Clemenza said, "I'll make sure Officers Whitlock and Farmer stay with you until the locks have been changed."

She looked up at him. "Thank you."

He shrugged. He was noticeably uncomfortable. "I'm sorry there's not much more I can do."

"I didn't make up the whole thing," she said.

"I believe you."

"Frye really was here tonight," she said.

"I don't doubt that someone was here, but--"

"Not just someone. Frye."

"If you'd reconsider your identification, we could keep working on the case and--"

"It was Frye," she said, not angrily now, just wearily. "It was him and no one else but him."

For a long moment, Clemenza regarded her with interest, and his clear brown eyes were sympathetic. He was a handsome man, but it was not his good looks that most pleased the eye; there was an indescribably warm and gentle quality in his Italian features, a special concern and understanding so visible in his face that she felt he truly cared what happened to her.

He said, "You've had a very rough experience. It's shaken you. That's perfectly understandable. And sometimes, when you go through a shock like this, it distorts your perceptions. Maybe when you've had a chance to calm down, you'll remember things a little... differently. I'll stop by sometime tomorrow. Maybe by then you'll have something new to tell me."

"I won't," Hilary said without hesitation. "But thanks for ... being kind."

She thought he seemed reluctant to leave. But then he was gone, and she was alone in the study.

For a minute or two, she could not find the energy to get out of the armchair. She felt as if she had stepped into a vast pool of quicksand and had expended every bit of her strength in a frantic and futile attempt to escape.

At last she got up, went to the desk, picked up the telephone. She thought of ringing the winery in Napa County, but she realized that would accomplish nothing. She knew only the business office number. She didn't have Frye's home phone listing. Even if his private number was available through Information--and that was highly unlikely--she would not gain any satisfaction by dialing it. If she tried calling him at home, only one of two things could happen. One, he wouldn't answer, which would neither prove her story nor disprove what Sheriff Laurenski had said. Two, Frye would answer, surprising her. And then what? She would have to reevaluate the events of the night, face the fact that the man with whom she had fought was someone who only resembled Bruno Frye. Or perhaps he didn't look like Frye at all. Maybe her perceptions were so askew that she had perceived a resemblance where there was none. How could you tell when you were losing your grip on reality? How did madness begin? Did it creep up on you, or did it seize you in an instant, without warning? She had to consider the possibility that she was losing her mind because, after all, there was a history of insanity in her family. For more than a decade, one of her fears had been that she would die as her father had died; wild-eyed, raving, incoherent, waving a gun and trying to hold off monsters that were not really there. Like father, like daughter?