Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [1]
I turned and faced south. Cars moved on the toll road leading away from the border; beyond it sprawled the pastel houses and iron and red-tiled roofs of Tijuana. The famed bullring—like a giant satellite TV dish that could service all of Baja—stood alone at the edge of town. I stared at the black steel-paneled boundary fence that lay across the ridge of rugged hills, and thought of satin funeral ribbons.
For a long time I stood there, thoughts and impressions trickling randomly through my mind. I recalled the words “You keep what you can use, throw the rest away.” And then the sluggish flow began to rush in an unstemmable torrent toward the obvious conclusion. When I finally began to feel, the emotions were not the ones I’d anticipated. I turned and ran back to where AndrÉs still contemplated the sea.
I’d come here this morning on a pilgrimage, thinking that everything was over, finished. Now I realized my search was only beginning.
One
Monday, June 7
“Hey, where’re you going in such a hurry? I need to talk with you.”
Hank Zahn’s hand gripped my shoulder as I tried to squeeze by him on the front stairs of All Souls Legal Cooperative’s main building. He jerked me to such an abrupt halt that I nearly lost my footing on the fog-damp step.
“Sorry,” my boss added, steadying me with his other hand and whacking me on the elbow with his briefcase.
“Let go of me,” I said through gritted teeth, “before we both fall down and end up in matching leg casts.”
Hank did as I told him, running his free hand over his wiry gray-brown hair. “Sorry,” he repeated.
“Just see that it doesn’t happen again.” I kept going, hoping to make a getaway while he was still befuddled.
“Wait!” he called.
I sighed and turned. “What?”
“I need to talk with you before the partners’ meeting at three.”
It was close to noon now. “What about?”
Hank’s eyes grew evasive behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses. “Oh, some things to do with the reorganization.”
So they’d finally coined a term for it—reorganization. It referred, I supposed, to the mixed bag of changes that had gone into effect during All Souls’s transition from a small neighborhood law cooperative to one of northern California’s largest legal-services plans. At any given time during the past year you could have found at least one employee reeling from some change in job status or description, and now it appeared it was to be the turn of their chief investigator. From the look in Hank’s eyes, I wasn’t going to like what I heard. Still, I had my priorities.…
“Hank,” I said, “I’m working a case, and I’ve got to take off.”
“I really need to—”
“I’ll try to get back to you before three.”
“If not …” He paused, looking downright guilty now.
“Yes?”
“The partners would like you to attend the meeting.”
Bad sign. Very bad. What the hell was this? Surely they didn’t plan to fire me? There had been a number of dismissals lately, and Lord knew I’d played fast and loose any number of times with what few rules All Souls had, but I was a good investigator, and they damn well knew it.
I frowned, but before I could say anything, Hank fled up the steps. “Be there,” he called back to me.
I watched him go inside, his shoulders hunched under the burden of his guilty knowledge, then shrugged and headed downhill, where my old red MG was sandwiched between the corner and a fireplug.
* * *
All the way to Oakland Airport I fretted. I’d just come off an investigation that had turned into a flat-out case of obsession, and I’d expected to give such behavior a rest for a while, but here I was tying myself into emotional knots a day and a half later. From All Souls in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights district to Treasure Island