Part 7 (2/2)
”No,” I said. ”I think someone pushed him in, one way or another, and then the wave finished the job.”
”A natural wave?”
”No, not there, with the water hemmed in by piers and breakwaters and ferries. It would take a howling winter storm to raise enough water to force someone under.”
Ari slammed his right fist hard into the palm of his left hand. ”I should have seen this coming,” he said.
”So should I, and more likely me than you. In fact, since I didn't see it coming, I wonder if the murderer got the idea at the last minute, a totally unplanned impulse.”
”True Chaos behavior, then?”
”It could be, yeah. Or panic.”
I wished I could speak with the recently dead, the way that psychics do on TV, but that's fiction. I couldn't get Evers' side of the story. As much as I'd disliked him during our brief meeting, no way did he deserve to die, especially not by drowning a few yards from dry land.
CHAPTER 4.
BETWEEN THE TELEVISION NEWS AND THE INTERNET, we got the public version of Evers' supposed suicide before we went to meet Sanchez. That night I read aloud the newspaper account off my computer screen while Ari flicked around the television channels, looking for coverage.
Plenty of witnesses saw Evers walking along the Embarcadero, a troubled man from the look of him. One witness said he seemed drunk, because his eyes were glazed, and he staggered at moments. At the south end of the main Ferry Building, he turned down the alley that runs between the buildings toward the wharflike area that houses the Farmers' Market on Sat.u.r.days. Before he walked out on the concrete jetty, he stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky.
He started walking again, then broke into a run, stumbled and screamed, kept running across the market square. At the wooden railing he hesitated again. One witness described him as looking like a baffled bull, turning this way and that. Finally, he climbed the railing and plunged in before anyone could stop him.
He floated, flailing his arms, bobbing up and down, while a good Samaritan on the jetty yelled at him to stay calm. It took this would-be rescuer some seconds to strip off his jacket and kick off his shoes, then climb the railing. He was just about to dive in when the wave-a perfect arc of gla.s.sy green water-rose up and swallowed Evers. The rescuer dove anyway, found Evers, and hauled him to the jetty, where other pa.s.sersby helped pull both of them out.
”It's ridiculous!” Ari snapped. ”Just one single wave, not a sign of any others, out of nowhere.”
”Ridiculous, you bet. Also deadly.”
”Here are more pictures.” Ari gestured toward the TV with the remote. ”Come watch.”
He'd found my favorite TV news reporter, Vic Yee, interviewing the would-be good Samaritan, a young African-American man, still damp and s.h.i.+vering, who described himself as a strong swimmer. He'd once worked as a lifeguard at one of the local YMCAs.
”I've never seen anything like that in my life,” the guy told Yee. ”It looked like something out of the movies, you know, special effects.”
”So this wave,” Yee said, ”broke and fell over the victim?”
”Yeah, just like a breaker on the beach. The weight of the water pushed him under and then the back current dragged him out toward the bay. So I jumped in and got him, but it was too late.”
Yee turned and faced the camera. ”The victim was p.r.o.nounced dead on arrival at General Hospital. Police are withholding his name until they notify the next of kin.”
Ari and I already knew the victim's name, of course. Ari clicked off the TV, then tossed the remote onto a pile of books on the coffee table.
”It's a good thing,” Ari said, ”that a lot of people witnessed this, or no one would believe it.”
”You bet,” I said. ”But whoever murdered Evers gave his hand away with that wave. He must have been nearby and seen that Evers was about to be rescued. It strikes me as a desperate move.”
”Let's hope someone noticed him, then. Or would he be noticeable? Waving his arms, muttering curses-that sort of thing. Well, a.s.suming it was a he, not a she. We don't really know which.”
”No, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure we can eliminate Satan as a suspect, however.”
”Yes, and you're quite right: it does remind me of that girl who drowned at the beach.”
”You bet. In this case, it sounds to me like our murderer had already ensorcelled Evers and told him what to do before he sent him on his run down the pier.”
”What did he do to make the wave appear?”
I thought-hard-for a minute. ”I'm only guessing, but I'd say he summoned more Qi and sent it flying at the surface of the water. If he hit the angle just right, it would scoop up a wave ahead of it. He'd have to move his hands a lot, yeah, but by then everyone would have been looking at Evers and the guy trying to save him.”
”Summoned Qi?” Ari looked at me with a martyred droop of eyelids. ”Very well, I'll take your word for it.”
In the chilly morning, we headed out to inspect the murder site. We ended up parking under the Embarcadero Center complex that housed Evers' office, just a short walk from the Ferry Building itself, a huge gray edifice that stretches the length of a city block right next to the Bay. Until they finished the Bay Bridge, way back when, this building functioned as the transportation hub for the entire Bay Area. Now, while actual ferries still run to a few locations from the piers around it, it mostly houses restaurants and bars.
At the south end of the Ferry Building, we found chaos in full swing, the human kind, not the psychic version. Sat.u.r.day was market day, but temporary metal barriers festooned with yellow police tape still barred the entrance to the walkway leading out to the market area. A line of uniformed police, truncheons out and threatening, stood in front of the barrier. Trucks loaded with fruit and vegetables had defiantly double-parked in every ”No parking” zone available. Angry merchants stood on the street side of the barrier yelling at the cops. Pedestrians waving empty shopping bags milled around, confused and annoyed. TV trucks and men with cameras and sound equipment wandered through the melee.
When Ari showed his Interpol ID, a uniformed officer pulled the barrier aside just enough to let us pa.s.s. I glanced over at the huge window as we walked by the building's end wall and saw gawkers staring out in our direction. Since I can't throw wards through gla.s.s, I had no way of discovering if any were Chaos spies.
More uniformed officers wandered back and forth across the market square itself. I noticed that they were all staring at the ground as they walked. Bundled in a gray raincoat, Sanchez was pacing up and down near the wooden railing that edged the area. Beyond him stretched the Bay waters, dark green and flecked with white; choppy, certainly, but I saw nothing that could be described as a real rolling breaker. Still, open water lay right at hand for someone adept at handling Qi to fas.h.i.+on into a killer wave.
When Ari hailed him, Sanchez left the railing and hurried over to meet us. He was a tall man, with jet-black hair and thick eyebrows over dark eyes that glared at the world around him. He dispensed with any sort of h.e.l.lo.
”I've gone over your report,” Sanchez said to Ari. ”Evers sounds like a man on the edge to me.”
”Edge of suicide, you mean?” Ari said. ”I'm not sure I'd say he was that desperate, but then, he had a lot to lose if news of his addiction got out.”
”And all that weirdo occult s.h.i.+t wouldn't have done his reputation any good.” Sanchez frowned out at the Bay. ”I don't mind telling you that he had important connections in local politics. I've been hara.s.sed over the phone a couple of times already.”
”They want you to keep it quiet, huh?” I joined the conversation.
”Nailed down and shut up tight, yeah. They say it's because he was in the middle of handling a couple of very important divorces.”
”I don't get that.”
”Let me just say that the word blackmail's been thrown around.” Sanchez paused for a small bitter smile. ”People tell their divorce lawyer unpleasant stories about their spouses.”
”So you haven't ruled out murder.”
”You're quick on the uptake, O'Grady. Let's just leave it at that.”
I had no intention of pressuring him, not yet anyway.
”Something else I don't get,” I said instead. ”Why seal off this area? What are your men looking for?”
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