E is for Evidence

Having finished, I made a neat packet of all the pa-pers. I'd make a separate holding file for them until I could decide if any might be of use. I shoved the trash back in the bag and tossed it in Henry's garbage can. I let myself into my apartment and checked my answering machine. There was one message.

"Hi, Kinsey. This is Ash. Listen, I talked to my mother yesterday about this business with Lance and she'd like to meet with you, if that's okay. Give me a call when you get in and we'll set something up. Maybe this afternoon some-time if that works for you. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Bye."

I tried the number at the house, but the line was busy. I changed into my jeans and made myself some lunch.

By the time I got through to Ash, her mother was resting and couldn't be disturbed, but I was invited to tea at 4:00.

I decided to drive up the pass to the gun club and practice target shooting with the little.32 I keep locked in my top desk drawer in an old sock. I shoved the gun, clip, and a box of fifty cartridges into a small canvas duffel and tucked it in the trunk of my car. I stopped for gas and then headed north on 101 to the junction of 154, following the steep road that zigzags up the mountainside. The day was chilly. We'd had several days of unexpected rain and the vegetation was a dark green, blending in the distance to an intense navy blue. The clouds overhead were a cottony white with ragged underpinnings, like the torn lining on the underside of an old box spring. As the road ascended, fog began to mass and dissipate, traffic slowing to accom-modate the fluctuating visibility. I downshifted twice and pulled the heater on.

At the summit, I turned left onto a secondary road barely two lanes wide, which angled upward, twisting half a mile into back country. Massive boulders, mantled in dark-green moss, lined the road, where the overhanging trees blocked out the sun. The trunks of the live oaks were frosted with fungus the color of a greened-out copper roof. I could smell heather and bay laurel and the frail scent of woodsmoke drifting from the cabins tucked in along the ridge. Where the roadside dropped away, the canyons were blank with fog. The wide gate to the gun club was open and I drove the last several hundred yards, pulling into the gravel parking lot, deserted except for a lone station wagon. Aside from the man in charge, I was the only person there.

I paid my four bucks and followed him down to the cinder-block shed that housed the restrooms. He opened the padlock to the storage room and extracted an oblong of cardboard mounted on a piece of lathing, with a target stapled to it.

"Visibility might be tough now in this fog," he warned.

"I'll chance it," I said.

He eyed me with misgivings, but finally handed over the target, a staple gun, and two additional targets.

I hadn't been up to the practice range for months, and it was nice to have the whole place to myself. The wind had picked up and mist was being blown across concrete bunkers like something in a horror movie. I set up the target at a range of twenty-five yards. I inserted soft plastic earplugs and then put on hearing protectors over that. All outside noises were damped down to a mild hush, my breathing audible in my own head as though I were swim-ming. I loaded eight cartridges into the clip of my.32 and began to fire. Each round sounded like a balloon popping somewhere close by, followed by the characteristic whiff of gunpowder I so love.

I moved up to the target and checked to see where I was hitting. High and left. I circled the first eight holes with a Magic Marker, went back to the bench rest and loaded the gun again. A sign just behind me read: "Guns as we use them here are a source of pleasure and entertain-ment, but one moment of carelessness or foolishness can bring it all to an end forever." Amen, I thought.

The hard-packed dirt just in front of me was as littered with shells as a battlefield. I saved my brass, collecting the casings after each firing, tucking them neatly back into the Styrofoam brick that cradled the live rounds.

By 3:15 I was cold, and most of my ammunition was gone. I can't claim that my little semiautomatic is wildly accurate at twenty-five yards, but at least I was feeling connected to the process again.

8

At 3:55, I was turning into the circular drive to the Wood family home, located on seven acres of land that sat on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. Their fortunes on the rise, they'd moved since I'd last visited. This house was enor-mous, done in a French Baroque style-a two-story central structure flanked by two prominent tower wings. The stucco exterior was as smooth and white as frosting on a wedding cake, roofline and windows edged with plaster garlands, rosettes, and shell motifs that might have been piped out of a pastry tube. A brick walk led from the driveway around to the seaward-facing front of the house and up two steps to a wide uncovered brick porch. A series of arched French doors spanned the facade, which curved outward around a conservatory on one end and a gazebo on the other. A heavy black woman in a white uniform admitted me. I followed her, like a stray pup, across a foyer tiled in black and white marble squares.