12

The lush grass at my feet was perfect. Such a small lawn, kept so flawless: grass as work of art.

From inside Blake’s house came the muted sound of the official world, the authoritative sound of police dispatchers, and the quiet voices of men and women accustomed to aftermath.

I had told them that I would be in the back garden, and they had said that there was no need, that they could get further information from me at my home. But I could not trust myself to drive just now. I was mentally torturing myself with what amounted to a shopping list of guilt.

Life, at that moment, appeared a series of blunders. This sort of violent end was common, the way things really were. I huddled. Grief, shock, sorrow, always had their way with me. I was always the wet-eyed one at funerals. Rick, my brother, is always the dry-eyed one, reaching for a cigarette, tapping his foot through the Twenty-third Psalm.

A black shoe inserted itself into my view. The shoe was well-shined, and yet did not resemble the shoe one would wear to the opera. I glanced up, and stood, aware that I had been sitting there for a long time. I stood.

“Sometimes I think I was not cut out to do this kind of work,” said Childress. “It’s a little easier if you didn’t know the guy. But everybody knew Blake Howard.”

Childress was going to be an important man some day. Right now he was the best politician in Homicide. He had the cheerful courtesy of a man who had plans. He was just canny enough to know that you treated Matthew Fields’s son with a little extra quiet when you saw he had trouble saying good morning.

He lifted a hand to say that he understood. “Simple. Simple and tragic. The investigation is over.” Childress put his hand on my shoulder.

“All the documents on the table,” I said.

“A child could figure it out.” Childress let an appropriate silence pass. Then it was clear that the investigation was not quite over. “Did you know if he was depressed about something?”

“I talked with him yesterday.”

Childress nodded, meaning: Keep talking.

I couldn’t go on for a moment.

“Maybe he was sick,” he suggested.

“There was something wrong.”

“Maybe he couldn’t go on living. It happens.”

This was not the hard statement it sounded. Many were sick, troubled, lost in one way or another, and suicide was uncomfortably endemic in San Francisco. I turned away, but the white azalea, the map of leafless ivy on the garden wall, did nothing to eclipse the memory of the blood.

“It wasn’t as though he seemed despondent.” Despondent. That was a newspaper word, a television word. I continued, “Not too long ago Blake had been debonair. Christ, what an old-fashioned word. He had seemed gentlemanly and charming. But when I saw him yesterday he was different.”

“In what way?”

I said, “He was a good friend.”

“An old friend.” It was not a question, and his voice was gentle, but he meant something he wasn’t saying. He meant: Tell me everything you know. “How had he changed?”

I was aware that Childress was, as gently as Childress knew how, mentally beginning to fill out a form that had not yet been brought out into the back garden. Childress was solicitous. It was so routine that I was comforted, at first. This routine was the red tape of violent death, the way the law picked up the carcass and carried it away, and I was expected to be sophisticated, even in my state of shock.

My voice managed to find itself. “He was troubled.”

“By what, exactly?” He said this a beat too quickly. As an investigator, he would be delighted to call this suicide and hurry on to life’s greater challenges.

I couldn’t answer.

There was, behind his diffident manner, a change of tone. “There are going to be questions like that,” he said. “It’s not my fault.”

“I don’t mind the questions.”

“About the circumstances.”

“Of course.”

“There’s the death on television this morning,” he said.

I nodded, and my voice was ragged. “Awful.”

“I took a call from DeVere a few minutes ago.” He let the impact of the name sink in. “Here, in this house,” he added, as though to emphasize some point I could not follow. “He says that we should take a close look at you.”

I met Childress’s gaze. I said one word. “Motive.”

Childress made a sideways move of his head, a silent apology.

I continued, “He says that I had reason to want both men dead.”

I knew when DeVere had arrived. Far off, doors thudded in the street, solid doors to the sort of limo DeVere favored. I could hear the murmur of detectives deflected from their duty to eye the famous man in their midst.

He looked good, one of his own overcoats, lightweight DeVere rainproof, tossed over his shoulders like a cape. The creases in his face were set in a mask of handsome malice.

I put forth my hand, and he shook it before he could stop himself, and I was the one who turned to Childress and said, “Please leave us alone for a few minutes.”

One of DeVere’s guards positioned himself beside the ivy wall, hands behind his back, but he was well beyond earshot. DeVere’s security men were not window dressing. Credible rumor was that they had broken bones in the defense of their employer’s good name.

DeVere’s tone was almost friendly. “This is certainly a sad day for all of us. We’re all speechless with grief. Absolutely speechless. Allow me to offer my condolences.”

I gave a nod.

“I would like to know how you did it, Fields.”

I did not respond.

“How did you arrange it?”

Our eyes met.

“You made a clean sweep,” said DeVere. “I’m impressed.”

I shook my head. I wanted to tell him how much he disgusted me, but I could only give him a bitter smile.

“I happened to like Blake Howard. A lot,” he said.

“He was easy to like.”

“I’m afraid of you,” he said, in a voice that was firm, crisp, and anything but fearful. “And I will do everything I have to do to protect myself.” He paused, no doubt to let the words sink in. “But I will not run away.”

I had to laugh.

He continued, “You think I’m going to be worried? A couple of deaths and I’m supposed to be shaking? Maybe you wanted to humiliate me. You wanted me to see my protégé blow himself to shit on television, and you wanted me to see that you could destroy even an accomplished man like Blake.”

His tone was nearly friendly, although surprised. He had discovered both an opponent, and a kindred spirit.

“Blake was a friend,” I said.

“That’s what impresses me,” said DeVere.

I kept my voice low. “You think that I’m exactly like you,” I said.

“Sure. It turns out you’re a lot like me. But more foolish.” Then there was a slight smile on his face. “I almost like this. Two complete bastards slugging it out.”

I had to admit there was something admirable about this man. He would have looked good with a rope and horse. His eyebrows were tufted, and he had a sun-weathered look, although as I knew he had been seasoned by scotch and spread sheets, and not by endless horizons.

“You’ve done something brilliant,” he went on. “I don’t know how. Of course, you’re going to pay a heavy price for this,” he was saying, in a tone that was easy, almost cheerful.

I decided to gamble. “Agree to allow me to receive the award, and then, perhaps, you’ll be spared.”

I don’t know what power induced me to say such a thing, but DeVere’s eyes brightened. He did not speak for a moment, eyeing me with an expression that was hard to read. “I was so wrong about you. Jesus. How could I have misread you so totally? If I were dead there would be no one to engineer the award. You needed me alive to be certain that the award wouldn’t go to Peterson posthumously, with some gaggle of young designers to put his plans into effect.”

I shrugged.

“Or maybe you want me alive just so you can humiliate me. Make me eat the award, choke on it.” He chuckled. “You surprise me. Don’t take it as an insult. But I didn’t expect this from someone like you.”

I said nothing.

“I thought you were one of those weak people, one of those good people.” He said “good” as though the word described something loathsome. “Maybe you have someone smart giving you advice.”

I returned home, and changed clothes hurriedly, as though to disrobe from rags now grown unclean.

I sat and gazed at the white surface of my drafting table. I had always found solace in work, but now I could not concentrate. I needed to look at something otherworldly, something that would ease me.

I flipped the pages of my Milton.

A feather is an amazing act of nature. Like a leaf, it radiates out from a central stem, and like a leaf it is made to both withstand and to master air. This leaf was all colors at once, although white, the white of noon sun off a fjord, was the color that predominated.

Go outside, I told myself. Go out into the garden, where you can think.

I wanted to clip the privet bush, trowel the earth around the tulip bulbs, where any day now they would be erupting.

I hurried into my back garden. There was the lawn, the greenhouse, and the side buildings where, I knew, I could find everything from a chainsaw to a bicycle. I stopped.

Surely I was mistaken. This couldn’t be happening.

The gingko tree was full-leafed. The leaves were tiny, still the greenery of early spring. But the tree was back again, as it had been years before.