At eleven the phone buzzed. Fleck had been dreaming, gazing out the window at the busy Atlanta street scene four floors below. He punched the conference button and heard the loud tinny voice of Franklin Bell calling from California. “Hey, John,” Bell said. “You are a hard man to track down.”
“You found me now,” Fleck said. He had been relaxed; now he was uneasy. He straightened his back and the action down there snapped into sharp focus.
A woman pushing a stroller paused to extricate an angry child while Bell talked through the speakerphone.
“I got a job for you,” he was saying. “The firm has a problem.”
“I'm listening.” His eyes stayed with the mother on the sidewalk. The child struggled out of her arms, made a break for the street.
“Just how tied up are you in Atlanta?”
“Depends,” Fleck said. “What have you got?” By now he was standing, watching the woman tear after her kid.
A roaring semi blasted through Fleck's sight line. The woman launched herself into a tackle, arms out. When the truck had passed, his eyes searched for her again and found her dragging her child across the sidewalk. She picked him up, smacked his butt, and tethered him back into the stroller, tears streaming down her cheeks. Fleck sat down, turning to face the wall.
Bell said, “Pete was talking about you the other day. He liked your work on the Ibanez fraud case. I told him you were in Atlanta. He said call you. Confidentially, of course.”
Law firms were like that. Discretion was the big virtue, even bigger than turning misery into money. Fleck didn't like Franklin Bell, but he liked Pete Altschuler, Bell 's boss, a senior partner at Stevenson Safik & Morris, Berkeley 's best-known law firm. Pete had represented him in the divorce and taken his middle-of-the-night calls, calls he was ashamed of now.
So he waited while Bell moseyed through the Berkeley weather report-hot and sunny-and talked about the fraud case, and Pete's mild heart attack, and the latest craziness on Telegraph Avenue, a shoot-out at one of the college bars, until he got back around to the reason for his call, which was to ask Fleck to catch the Delta red-eye Sunday night and meet him and Pete Monday morning to look into something important.
“I've got four more weeks on contract here,” Fleck said.
He was working a temporary security job at one of the Peachtree Plaza skyscrapers. He had been in Atlanta for several months, and he liked it, the jazz, the bars, the style. In fact, he was thinking about moving here. In Atlanta, people of color could feel comfortable, could forget the race issue much of the time. In Berkeley, his hometown in California, it would always be black folks in the flats and white folks in the hills, white guilt and condescension, black rage. His ex-wife had been white. She still lived in their house on the old Grove Street, on the borderline.
“Interrupt it for a couple weeks,” Bell said. He kept talking, wheedling, persuading.
Fleck let him talk. His mind returned to the memory he had been caressing. Last night in the candlelight, and Charisse in his bed.
In his small apartment for the first time, shy with each other, they had moved together to a slow song, bodies slick with heat where they touched. Charisse had started it, dancing him toward a blowing curtain and then past it, to the door of his bedroom. He had forced himself to follow her, lighting the candles by the bed, lifting her onto the pillows. He meant to hold back his emotion, but he couldn't help himself. Groaning, he had buried himself in her soft flickers.
Toward morning, brief thunder and lightning filled the sky off his balcony. Fleck admired Charisse's body with his hands. She stirred, mumbling something. Thick drops splashed against the glass. She sat up in bed, reached over to the bedside table for her glasses, wrapped her arms around her knees, and peered out, unself-conscious.
“You ain't goin' nowhere.” He had reached up to tug gently at her.
“Fleck fits you,” she murmured, looking down at him. “Yellow flecks in green eyes… where'd those light eyes come from, your mama or your daddy? Hey, now… hey.”
Later, he had rolled his fullback's body out of bed, embarrassed because he knew Charisse was watching him. She got up too, classic as a temple goddess wrapped in the yellow sheet, stretching her brown arms above her head and yawning. They showered and dressed, then walked together across the concrete plaza toward the concrete tower they both worked in, avoiding the puddles, not hurrying.
Charisse had said, “Having second thoughts?”
“No, ma'am. Never. Just scared of my luck,” he'd answered.
“Not luck,” she said. “Don't you believe in destiny? Paths always cross for a reason.” They walked into the building, got into the same elevator they had met in.
“Paths cross by chance,” he said. “You never know.”
Charisse laughed, said, “All those chance events, all those coincidences for the last ten thousand years, all those ancestors, all those travels, all those births and deaths and tragedies and comedies, all that led to you and me meeting right here, going up. Honey, that is destiny.”
He had looked at her, so small and sure and important-sounding, having to tilt her head up even in her high heels. He loved how she thought, big thoughts. He had wanted to hiss something sweet into her ear. Instead, as he stepped out, he touched her cheek, saying, “Doesn't matter why. Here we are.”
Fleck wondered how long his silence had lasted. “No. I'll have to pass,” he told Bell.
Now Bell paused. “We'll give you a five-thousand-dollar bonus for the rush.”
“Now you have my attention. But get specific, okay?”
“Julie Mattei, remember her? Pete's legal secretary, pretty, ah, black girl, her desk right in front of Pete's door?”
He remembered Julie. He felt the familiar chilly liquid rush up his spine. “Yeah.”
“She's dead,” Bell said. “Beaten to death, awful thing, on a trail up behind the UC campus, up in the hills. Just before Easter. It's one of those random killings, some joker freaked on the latest street drug.”
“She had a nice smile.”
“Among other things,” Bell said. “Three months now, and your former colleagues at the Berkeley PD still can't find the guy. They had to reopen the trail to the public. They're interviewing all the partners and staff again. They act like they suspect one of us. We're talking major PR problems. The Berkeley press is frothing at the mouth.”
“Bring in a few clients,” Fleck said.
Bell took him seriously. “This kind of coverage doesn't bring in the right kind of clients. Pete's upset. He got the okay to hire you to look into the murder at the last partners' meeting.”
“I'm sorry to hear all this. But I don't want to come back right now, Frank.”
“I'm authorized to offer a further bonus of ten grand if you locate the killer,” Bell said, squeezing each word out as if it hurt him.
“Unless it's somebody at the firm,” Fleck said.
“Would we be bringing you in if we thought that? Look, you know us; you know Berkeley.” Another pause. Bell couldn't resist. “Come on, John, what's the big deal? You need the money, I happen to know.”
“I'll call you back,” Fleck said. The money, he needed. The job… it was wrong to go back there. Stupid, even. He hung up, thought a minute, then called Charisse, waiting impatiently for her line to clear. Finally she said, “Hello?” with that breathy Southern voice she had, and he said, “How about you fly to California with me?” She surprised the hell out of him when she said yes.
They flew out Sunday at midnight, first class. Charisse slept the whole way with her head against his shoulder. He froze his arm, not wanting to wake her up. While he sat there, he memorized her, her dark springy hair brushing his face, her full lips parted like a child's, her smooth broad forehead, her long eyelashes resting peacefully on her cheeks. The emptiness in him receded, to be replaced by something he was afraid to name.
He left her in the hotel room in San Francisco, driving his rental car against the traffic over the Bay Bridge the next day, morning sun assaulting his eyes the whole way. Atlanta had been warm and humid, but above downtown Berkeley, the East Bay hills shimmered dry yellow, the brush desiccating in the August heat. Sun baking him through the driver's window sucked the moisture out of him.
Stevenson Safik & Morris occupied the third floor of a downtown office building on Shattuck, half a mile from the UC campus. Inside, it felt too cold, too dark.
Franklin Bell hadn't changed. The smooth pasty face was crowned with a short TV-interview haircut and the muddy eyes appraised Fleck coolly. He didn't offer to shake hands. He'd done the job, brought Fleck in. There was no need to make nice anymore. He motioned at the secretary to bring some coffee, and strode off to find Pete Altschuler.
The two white lawyers came into Bell 's office together a few minutes later. Pete Altschuler pumped his hand, saying how glad he was to see him. Altschuler had lost weight since the heart attack. When he smiled, the folds in his cheeks made deep parentheses; his lips had turned purplish. He sat down carefully in the other client chair. Bell frowned at both of them, then slid a heavy brown accordion folder stuffed with papers across his wide desk toward Fleck.
“The police reports. Autopsy. Photos. Lab stuff. It's all there. Take it with you,” Altschuler said.
“We want you to clear the firm's name,” added Bell. “Tamp the rumors. So she worked here; it's not like she got killed at her desk. No, she had to go marching around by herself out there in the hills until a crazy got at her. So much for the feminists.”
A note of triumph sounded in his voice. Fleck thought, His wife's left him.
“Are the police focusing on anybody in particular here?” he asked Altschuler.
Altschuler seemed to have used up all his energy shaking hands. “Pete was just about to let her go,” Bell interposed. “Her work performance wasn't up to par. She had told some of the other secretaries. She threatened to sue.”
“So?” Fleck said.
“She was a flake. She told stories,” Bell went on. “Never considered the consequences of her mouth.”
“Ah, let's get it over with,” Altschuler said in a weary voice. “You might as well hear it from me, John. We were having an affair. She wanted to break it off with me and I wanted to keep her. There were scenes. Everyone here knew about it.”
“Why was she breaking it up?” Fleck said.
Altschuler shrugged. “Who knows? They never tell you the truth when they want to dump you.” His voice was light, but his hands patted his thighs as if he needed comforting.
“Did you kill her?”
Altschuler's smile had turned into a grimace. “No. Guilty? Hell, yes. But not of murder.”
“What about your wife?”
“You've got to be kidding. Anne never knew.”
Franklin Bell's expression said, Yeah, sure. “Who else might have done it?” Fleck asked Bell. “Any ideas, Frank? Not that you knew her well, right?”
“It's no use looking for a motive,” Bell said smoothly, leaning back in his swivel chair, clasping his hands behind his head, elaborately casual. “You of all people know this town, John. Every misfit with a grudge comes to Berkeley. Nobody follows the rules. Nobody leashes 'em. It was somebody she didn't even know. She met him on the trail, he had it in his head to kill somebody that morning, and there she was.”
“She lived alone,” Altschuler said. “Her mother lives in the city, teaches anthro at San Francisco State. She played piano, liked Japanese food, worried about her weight, decorated her desk with bottlebrush in a vase. This was a good, decent, fine girl, John.”
“Have there been any other killings, attacks, anything like that, on that trail?”
“Not this one,” Bell said. “But all those hill trails, bad things happen now and then. Berkeley 's no exception. There was the Hillside Strangler in Santa Cruz. The Tamalpais trails are really dangerous. Hikers find bodies there every year.”
“What about this trail-what is it called?”
“The college kids call it The Long Walk,” Bell said. “It's about five miles, winding up from the UC stadium behind Strawberry Canyon. It's popular with the students, of course, and the hikers and the runners. At the top there's a stretch of flat granite and a rocky place they call The Cave, with a spring. They sunbathe there, rest up before going back down. It happened on a side path near The Cave.”
“No witnesses.”
“No witnesses, no weapon, no evidence. Somebody just grabbed her and bashed her brains in,” Altschuler said. “It's not just for the firm, John. It's for her.”
“She was a flake,” Bell repeated, “and we really don't need this kind of attention.”
“Why did you call me?” Fleck said. “Why do you think I can step in, when the Berkeley PD can't close it?”
“You worked there all those years. You know how it is,” Altschuler said. “Other priorities. Drugs, runaways, domestic violence, foreign students getting robbed and killed, political demonstrations, the annual riots on Telegraph, the big murders, the orders to keep a low profile…”
Bell looked bored. He hauled himself out of the chair, said, “It's in the reports,” looked at his watch. On cue, his phone buzzed. “Take care,” he said. The meeting was over.
“Call me in a day or two, John,” Altschuler said at the door into the hall. “Where are you going to start?”
“The Long Walk,” Fleck said. He hefted the file under his arm. “You ever been there, Pete?”
“Not me,” Altschuler said. His mouth opened in his long mournful face like he was about to say more, but the door closed, and Fleck was shut out.
Charisse had never been to the huge amusement park of San Francisco. That night they climbed the Coit Tower hill in a balmy sunset and ate at an Italian restaurant in North Beach. Then they drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and had a few drinks on the outside deck at the Reef, looking back over the dark brilliant water toward the glowing city.
Some kids leaned too far over the railing, tossing bits of sourdough. A sea lion barked itself hoarse in the shallows below the deck and Charisse ran over to look. Pelicans and gulls circled and dove. Fleck sat there, too big for the flimsy wicker chair, finishing his drink, the sharp aromatic fumes of the brandy blending with the salt tang of the air. He had read the reports. He should not be on this case.
“So beautiful,” she said, pulling her chair out. Her thin dress with its full skirt poufed around her as she sat down and he caught her perfume. “John-”
“Um-hmm.” He tossed off the last of his drink.
“Why'd you leave California?”
“Because it smells like death to me,” he said. He hadn't meant to say it that way. He didn't want her to be afraid of him. But he wanted her to understand him. She deserved to know what she was getting. It smells like fifteen years of crime scenes, corpses, court, he said to himself, swirling the ice in his glass. Finding the victims in bed, in old abandoned buildings, in the ashes of their homes, in the gutters, on the playgrounds, under the dirt. Always too late to save them. Trying to be satisfied locking up the pathetic killers.
“Working homicide, every day was the same,” he went on. “Somebody killed somebody. I found out who was dead, and who did the killing. I found out why they did the killing. More and more, there was no reason. You know, some kid would say, he got in my face, he looked at my girl. Or, I needed a few bucks to buy crack. Or, I just exploded, I can't explain why. Everybody dying, and I couldn't stop it. I come back here and it's just the same.”
Charisse covered his hand with hers, shivering. “You're only here for a little bit, and you and me, we're apart from all that.”
“ Atlanta 's still got some of that… innocence,” he said. “Like you. Not spoiled.”
“Maybe you shouldn't have come back so soon, feeling like you do.” She turned his hand over, kissed the palm, her lips a bird's wing brushing his skin.
“I came back for the money. There's so much money here. Maybe when I go back to Atlanta, I can buy a little house. Get over it.”
“You wouldn't be leaving… family here?”
“No. No family. Not anymore. And you? Who do you come with?”
“Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, dozens of cousins. You should see the party on the Fourth of July.”
“If I'm in Atlanta,” Fleck said.
“I hope you will be.” She was bold, but her voice was so gentle it sent a root down into his soul. “Listen, John. Let's fly back right now,” Charisse went on, her voice half-playful, half-serious. “I feel like-this isn't good for you. Our business is in Atlanta.”
“I'll be fine,” he said. Fifteen, eighteen thousand, he said to himself. Make me worth knowing, maybe. “Tomorrow I have to get up early. I'll be back to take you to dinner.”
“Are you going to take The Long Walk?”
“Yeah. I have to leave San Francisco before dawn and get over to Berkeley. The girl was killed in the morning. I want to check it out at about the same time of day.” He stood up abruptly. “Let's get out of here.”
While they drove back to the hotel, Charisse rested her hand on his leg. They lay down on the bed as soon as the hotel door closed and kissed for a long time.
Once more he didn't sleep well. He wasn't used to having a warm solid woman pressed against him.
He shifted and her arm swept across his bare chest. Damn her. The only sane thing was not to care.
In the predawn he heard Charisse rustling around, running water in the bathroom, opening the curtains. He had been deeply asleep for the past hour. He felt like he'd just had his bell rung by Mean Joe Green. He pulled on his khaki pants and T-shirt.
“You didn't have to get up,” he told her.
“Do you always bark like that in the morning?”
“I'm working, that's all. I shouldn't have dragged you here. This is a bad place for me.”
“I'd like to come with you,” Charisse said. “I could use the exercise.”
“What? Go on The Walk? Don't be ridiculous,” he said coldly. “I'm not putting you in any danger.”
“Danger? What danger? It's just a hike.”
“I can't be responsible,” he said.
“That all happened months ago. Anyway, baby, don't you know me well enough by now to know that this is exactly the way to make me do what you don't want me to do?”
The sentence made them laugh, and cleared the air for breakfast at a greasy spoon on the corner. Fleck ate the dripping special, Charisse refused. She would go hungry and she would go with him. So be it.
By six they were driving the rental car up University Avenue toward the campus. Nobody was around, unless you counted the heaps in the doorways. The sun cast low warm rays down the long street, its asphalt already storing up heat.
They turned right on Oxford Street and then left on Haste, cruising up the south side of the campus. As they waited for the light at Telegraph, a sharp pain lanced Fleck's stomach. His heart pounded, and his eyes blurred. He said nothing to Charisse, who watched with pity as a ragged human shape slowly pushed a shopping cart across the intersection.
Fleck had seen the early-morning scene before too many times. Dizzy and angry to be back, somehow he kept driving, parking on Durant near the Greek Theatre two blocks from the stadium. “Just give me a minute,” he said, angling his head back. In a moment he was half-asleep.
“John?”
“Yeah.” He roused himself with difficulty. They got out and he locked up.
Charisse leaned down, tightened her laces, said, “We should have brought a water bottle.”
“There's safe water at the top. A spring.”
“Okay. You're not going to bring that thing, are you?”
He was strapping on his shoulder holster. He looked at it, and at her. A couple of girls bounced past them, jogging toward the trail, chattering. An old man threw a soggy-looking tennis ball across the tall dewy grass by the fence. His dog sniffed around eagerly, nose down in the wetness.
“I mean, it'll show, and scare people. And you said the trail's been open a month, with no problems.”
“A precaution,” he mumbled. His eyes had blurred momentarily. He wondered what was wrong with him.
“Put it away, please, John.”
Reluctantly, he took the gun and holster and opened the car door, reaching for the glove compartment. Charisse started up the trail, and he followed a moment later, slinging the big telephoto-lens camera case around his neck.
The Long Walk, a dirt trail about five feet wide, wound along the side of the stadium. A jogger pounded past them on the trail, his ponytail flying. They fell in behind a middle-aged couple leaning on walking sticks, arguing in German.
“Just a hike,” Charisse said again, squeezing his hand. Now that he was moving, Fleck felt better. The temperature must already be over eighty degrees. In March, when Julie Mattei died, it must have been much cooler.
The trail began to climb and they left the athletic field behind. They passed a few people, and more passed them. Some of them said hi; most ignored them. Representatives of the Berkeley social hodgepodge, graybeards, couples with dogs, and loners hiked the path. Fleck didn't need to read minds to picture the broad fields they ranged: the sane, the crazy, the mild, the wild.
They all thought they were safe, but they were all walking the death beat every minute of their lives, and he'd given up trying to save them.
Julie, just like these young women looking so arrogant and confident this morning, had walked past this clump of manzanita three months ago, directly into the path of a truck. No. He shook his head to clear it. That was the kid in Atlanta, the one with a loving mom standing by to change his history.
Charisse looked out of place in tailored shorts and pristine white shoes rising above the dust. He must, too. These hills attracted white, except for a group of Asian boys they passed, sitting on rocks loading their cameras, and one other black girl who passed them with a wave, tall and broad-shouldered as a basketball player. They watched the girl's muscular calves disappear around the curve.
The walkers thinned out after the first mile. Fleck and Charisse walked along a ridge, the golden underbrush on their left climbing the hillside, poison oak the only green, fresh and glistening everywhere. They passed more stands of sharp-branched manzanita. Now and then they got into culverts and flats where looming eucalyptus trees cast shapes across the path, their acorns littering the ground, releasing a dry pungency that made his stomach churn.
He was sweating. The sun reflected off the ground and speared his eyes under the sunglasses. So Altschuler and Julie had an affair. Fleck wondered if that started before or after she helped break up his own marriage.
Charisse stopped and reached out to pick a solitary purple flower on the slope. Fleck pulled her back, said, “Drop it.”
“Why?” She held on stubbornly.
“The whole hillside's infested. Poison oak. Don't touch any of the plants.”
“Hoo, boy.” She withdrew her hand, rubbing it on her pants. “Do you think the senior partner killed her?”
“Altschuler? No.” She didn't ask why, just sat down on a rock and looked at him with interest.
“How about the guy who called you? Bell.”
He said nothing.
“You said the firm was small. Bell had to know her.”
“I walked into his office one night after hours. Just opened the door. It was like a TV comedy skit. He had her over the desk. She pulled her skirt down and turned her back to me. He never mentioned it after that. He never mentioned it to the police, either.” Fleck had sat down beside her. “Damn, I am thirsty.”
Charisse said, “It was one of them.”
Fleck said, “No,” again.
“How can you be so sure?” She looked exasperated.
He turned away. “I've done it for so many years. Pete Altschuler, he's a city boy. He wouldn't climb up here to do it. Too worried about his health.”
“He could have hired a hit man. A hit man in hiking boots.” She smiled, inviting him to join her, but he wasn't in the mood.
“He's not that ruthless,” Fleck said as she got up, smoothing her shorts. “He cared for her.”
They wound around another corner, through another dry canyon. The sun blazed down. Fleck stumbled and would have fallen if she had not caught hold of his arm.
“John, you're sick. Shouldn't we go down?” Charisse said.
“I'll take a rest on top. You were right about the water bottle.”
She let go of him, gave him a playful shove. “Okay, Macho Man,” she said. “Why not Bell?”
“He might get her fired. He might poison her. He might even shoot her,” Fleck said. “But he'd never get actual blood on his hands.”
“But he was hiding the fact he was seeing her!”
“They all hide everything. It's second nature for lawyers.”
“Then who did it?”
Voices carried down the hillside. Three kids, two girls and a boy, descended around the switchback ahead. They were all dressed alike, in jeans torn out at the knees and tank tops, hair tied back with bandannas. “Hot today,” the boy offered as he walked by. His nose was peeling under his enigmatic shades. A buck knife sheathed in leather looped through his belt. The girls passed by without a word.
“Nobody murders another person for no reason,” Charisse went on. “It's just that the reason isn't obvious-like if it's not money, or power, or revenge-everything else gets lumped under general craziness.”
He trudged forward, irritated, watching his big feet move up a steep place, step by step.
“For instance, a woman kills her child for what seems like no reason. She's been neglected her whole life, and this is the only way anybody will pay her any attention. So they say she's nuts. They put her in an asylum, but she had her reasons, didn't she?”
“I'm talking about a random crime, not somebody's baby,” Fleck said.
“Or think about it. A man goes into his old office with an assault rifle and starts shooting. It's terrible. He didn't even know some of the people he killed. But he could explain it, John. He'd call it a payback. The people represented something to him, something he had to kill.”
“Some reasons can't be called reasons.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and he wasn't even sure she'd heard him. He didn't want to talk anymore. He just wanted to get up the hill.
They had been climbing hard. After a long time, long enough for Fleck to remember everything about his life in California, his wife's face, Julie's, all the dead faces he had looked into all those years, wanting to say I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I failed you, they came to an area where the Oakland fire had passed through. The dirt turned black, and all around them stood skinned-looking fire-seared trees. Across the canyon, on top of the next hill over, distant but clear, they saw bare burned land, a stone chimney still standing guard in the middle of nothing at all.
Fleck said, “Suppose a man's wife leaves him. He blames the woman he was sleeping with… is that a reason to kill her? Shouldn't that man have blamed himself?”
Charisse didn't answer. She was watching a tarantula skitter across the path, hairy legs moving much faster than they should. She pointed, excited, her hand with the long nails and sparkling rings incongruous in the dirt and heat and stillness. Fleck kicked dirt after the spider. “This is what I think,” he went on, repressing the moan the pain in his stomach had started. “Julie Mattei hiked up into someone's hate zone. If she hadn't shown up, the next walker would have been killed. Simple as that.”
“I don't believe it,” Charisse said. “They have their reasons.” She left it at that.
Another rest. The pain had settled in his gut, cramping him, making him stop and bend over now and then till the worst of it passed. Charisse was tired, too; she had slowed down and she walked with a slight limp. No one had passed them for some time. He was burning with thirst.
This walk was acting on him, replacing the forgetting with awful, fresh memory. Why had he returned?
“John, did your work make you start to think that life is senseless, too? Random and meaningless like you keep talking about?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Because if it is, then you could do anything to another human being. I mean, what kind of morality would be left?”
“There you go,” he said quietly, so quietly she didn't even hear him.
“Just think of her up here, on an overcast day. A spring day, everything blooming… she was thinking about making love the night before, maybe. Or about chicken tarragon for dinner. Then, like this”-she snapped her fingers-“she's gone.”
He had stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his face. Gnats floated around their heads. “If they get too bad, walk with your hands raised above your head for a while,” he said. “They circle the highest point.”
“Did you ever meet her?” When he didn't answer, she wiped her forehead and repeated the question.
“We went out a few times,” Fleck said. The trail had narrowed between two boulders. They were hidden there. You could bury something here easily, he thought. An earthquake right now would bury them together.
If his words had surprised her, she didn't show it. “When did you move to Atlanta?”
Fleck ignored the question. “Doesn't this place scare you, Charisse? A woman died here and all.”
Now it was her turn to remain silent.
“I wish you hadn't come today,” he said. She stepped back, her spine pressing against the rock.
“You moved to Atlanta at the end of March. Right after Julie Mattei was killed,” she said, her voice low.
“That's right. And you've only known me for two weeks, that's right, too.” His head swam; he licked his dry lips. The camera case banging against his chest had been beating him up rhythmically with each step. “You look a little like Julie,” he said to her. “She was a glamorpuss like you.”
He was leaning over her, both hands against the rock above her head. Charisse said levelly, “You're trying to scare me. Why?”
Some tension in him went back into hiding at her words. He moved back from her and said, “You're too trusting.”
“Don't play games like that, John. I'm not like you. I'm not afraid of the world like you.”
“You should be,” he said. They went on, back into another patch of blinding sun.
“We're almost there,” he said. “Up another quarter mile, past that stand of pine.”
Charisse had stopped again. “What?” he said, then remembered he'd told her that morning he'd never been on The Long Walk. “I forgot,” he said. “That's all. I did hike this trail once, a long time ago. Come on, Charisse, don't look at me like that.”
“I'm going-back down the trail.”
“No,” Fleck said. “It's dangerous.” He grabbed her arm, as much to support himself as to restrain her. They stood there on the dusty path in the hard sun. “C'mon. We'll get some water, then we'll go straight down.”
She tried to shake him off. He held on.
“Let go of me, John.”
She started back down the trail. He took her arm again and turned her around. “No, I'm not letting you go,” he said. “We're going to get some water, then we can go back. I'm sorry if I scared you,” he was saying to her as he half-pushed her ahead of him up the trail. Silent, tearful, and exhausted, Charisse went along, which was fortunate since the immense pain that had lodged in his gut had fragmented and he could barely control his legs. Into a buzzing black shade they climbed, unable to see ahead through the psychedelic play of light and shadows beneath the canopy of leaves.
One more steep incline. The hillside turned rocky. Off to the right, beyond the scarred hillsides, he could now see the whole bay, a vast glittering silver lagoon dotted with boats, ringed by sunlit cities, the four great bridges connecting the peninsula and the headlands of Marin and the East Bay, San Francisco on the horizon partially veiled in its mountain range of white fog, the city of Oakland spread along the water, just below their feet. It all looked so pretty from far away.
One more thick stand of eucalyptus, and the trail abruptly delivered them out onto a flat sweep of granite. On the other side, about a hundred yards ahead, Fleck made out a rock wall, what looked like a depression. The Cave. Where the spring would be, inside and out of sight. On the right, another cliff fell away into miles of air.
“That's it,” he said, pointing. “Water.” Just saying the word made him feel better. He must have heatstroke, plus whatever else was gnawing away inside him.
Ducking down to enter, he nudged Charisse ahead. The dark blinded him; the coolness immediately started him shaking.
The Cave was a small rock room, lit only by the blazing open arch where they had entered. As his eyes adjusted, he saw Charisse in the corner, her whole head under the spring, her hands splashing up clear water, drinking greedily while it flowed over her head and neck.
Another shadow in the dark, an older man, drank water out of a tin cup, watching Charisse. Fleck put his hand against the wall and blinked several times. Some of the faintness went away. The man was a white biker type, tall and brawny, with a heavy gnarled walking stick. He stepped aside into indistinct shadows when he saw Fleck. Charisse came up for air, saw Fleck, and moved back.
Heedless, Fleck dove for the spring.
Freezing! It hurt, burning his head. His neck muscles spasmed. Red waves crashed inside his eyelids-
He slid down on the hard cold floor, his back propped against the wall, choking and sputtering. “Charisse,” he gasped as soon as he could speak. “Wait a minute. I'm sick.”
Charisse didn't answer. With a sound like a sob she turned and, lowering her head at the arch, ran outside. Fleck was gripped by sick dread. He scrabbled to get up, but he fell into a cramp.
He had to be with her. He got to his knees, shaking his head like a bull, droplets flying off his hair. Suddenly he felt the man behind him, wrapping long arms around his chest, pinning his arms.
His dread degenerated into physical panic and he struggled. So it was this stranger, the one he had forgotten to watch. A snap of the fingers-
Fleck was hauled to his feet. The man stepped back, saying, “You okay, buddy?” Fleck pushed him off, walking unsteadily to the mouth of The Cave.
His hand shading his forehead, he saw Charisse out in the glare, crossing the flat, looking so small. The sight of him made her rush off the main path, off to a narrow shaded walkway fringed by exotic red plumes of bottlebrush…
She ran up the path where Julie died.
Blind again, each breath a scorching effort, Fleck loped out of The Cave after her, hunched over, but she ran hard until she disappeared. It wasn't until he reached the far end of the flat and made his way to the brush that he saw the sister, the black girl who had waved at them earlier, way up the path beyond him, rising out of the eucalyptus forest behind Charisse. She had to be almost six feet tall, her hair in a natural like pictures he'd seen of Angela Davis in the sixties.
Stepping behind Charisse, the girl wrapped her arms around her neck in a choke hold. They struggled and Charisse fell. The girl went down with her and began methodically beating Charisse's head against the rock-
He tore up the path, his pain forgotten, the biker hollering and waving his stick, following, both trying to scare her off. The girl jumped up alertly. Charisse wasn't moving at all. Then the girl lifted a heavy stone, grunting a little, and raised it above her head, the muscles on her arms as strong and defined as the forelegs of a tiger above its kill-
They heard her say, angrily, almost petulantly, “Renee, you stay dead this time-”
– and Fleck shot her, from fifteen yards away. She fell slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, still holding the stone, eyes wide and startled. Her big handsome body twitched, would never move again-
– and he was holding Charisse, crying out her name. Her eyes were closed and her hair in back was matted with blood.
“Can you make it, pal?” the old biker said. He scooped Charisse up, and they ran down the trail, taking turns with her. Halfway down she roused and said she wanted to walk, so they supported her the rest of the way.
ER at Alta Bates Hospital admitted her. When Fleck passed out in the waiting room, they admitted him, too, and pumped the rotten food from his stomach. “Health department closed that place down where you ate today. You're our fourth customer,” the nurse told him.
He slept then, and a few hours later two officers he knew came to talk to him.
Through the window in her door, on the outside looking in, he could see only the bottom part of her body on the bed, the sheets lifting and falling with her breath, one elegant hand at rest.
She sat up, saw his face in the window, and wiggled a finger at him. “Aren't we a fine pair?” she asked when he came in, adjusting the white gauze bandages in back where hair used to be.
He gathered her up. Neither of them talked for a long time, until she said, “You were right to bring the gun. In the camera case, wasn't it?”
“Ex-cop, ever vigilant. I was afraid-”
“Of me. You think everyone around you dies-”
“You almost did. You walked into her zone.”
“You didn't let her take me. You saved me, John.”
Snatched her off the dangerous street, and loved her.
“It wasn't random,” Charisse said. “She had her reasons.” She held him even tighter.
Charisse and her big thoughts-
Fleck wondered where she was-Renee, the woman who looked like Julie, who looked like Charisse. Out there, everywhere, women who wouldn't stay dead.