Blood Orange Read online

  “Where’s Jason?” she asked Beth. “He did so much for the committee, I want to thank him.”

  Beth beamed with pride. “He’s working in the kitchen, didn’t want to come out. He’d be so pleased if you went in and said something.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “He’s got a bit of a crush on you, I think.”

  She found Jason and another boy on the edge of the parking lot behind the kitchen. Three white vans nosed into the diagonal spaces not twenty feet from him. Each had bumper stickers. She did her best to ignore the alarm that clicked on in the pit of her stomach. David was right, she was becoming paranoid about white vans; if she reported every one she saw to Gary, he would dismiss her as a flake. Jason hid his cigarette behind his back when he saw her.

  “I don’t care if you smoke, Jason,” she said. “I just want to thank you so much for everything you did, all those flyers and posters. I wish you’d come in and see Bailey.”

  He bobbed his head, took his baseball cap off, smoothed his hair, and put it on again. “Nah.”

  A piece of cherry licorice dangled from the mouth of the boy beside him. He kicked Jason in the shin.

  Jason said, “This is Bender.” Another gawky boy with bad skin and baggy clothes. “He helped too.”

  “Then why don’t you both come inside? My husband would like to meet you both and thank you.”

  “Not me,” Bender said.

  Jason’s shoulders squirmed.

  Their shyness touched Dana at the same time she found it mildly irritating. “Shall I bring him out here, then?”

  “We gotta go.” Jason’s cheeks were the color of the licorice vine.

  “You’re sure?”

  Jason dropped his cigarette and ground it under the toe of his Dr. Martens.

  “We’re cool,” Bender said.

  As Dana turned to go back into the kitchen, Bender said, “Your husband, when they get the guy, he gonna be his lawyer?”

  Dana took a second to untangle Bender’s syntax. “No. That would be called a conflict of interest.”

  “But he’s that other guy’s lawyer, the one did the little girl.”

  Did. The way Bender used the word freighted it with ugly meaning.

  “David’s defending Frank Filmore because it’s his job. He’s a defense attorney. It’s nothing personal.”

  Bender shoved the licorice deeper into his mouth. “I don’t get how he can do that.”

  Jason said, “You won’t tell my grandma I was smoking?”

  “No, Jason,” she said, laying her hand against his cheek and ignoring Bender. “Not a word.”

  That evening, as they moved through the house, closing it down for the night, Dana told David about her conversation.

  “What kind of a name is that? Bender?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t ask me. He was a creep.”

  “So’s Jason.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s just gawky and awkward.” Dana twisted the front-door lock. “Plus, Beth says he’s got a crush on me, which explains why he can barely put two words together when I’m around.”

  She looked behind her. David had dropped onto the couch in the dark living room. “Come to bed,” she said and held out her hand.

  “God, I’m glad that thing’s over.” He patted the cushion beside him. “I hope everyone’s just going to ignore us from now on. Let us get back to ordinary.”

  She sat next to him. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, Bay wasn’t. If I’d let her, she’d of cut and run. You notice how she sort of zones out?”

  “It’ll pass,” Dana said.

  They were silent for a few moments.

  “Maybe Gary’s right. Maybe we should get her to talk to someone.

  “Talk?”

  “I mean someone who’d make her talk.”

  “Hasn’t she suffered enough? You want to make it worse?”

  The radio was on, tuned to a classical station. Bach, Dana thought. Orderly music for a more orderly time.

  “If I hadn’t taken the Filmore case it never would have happened.”

  David was probably right, but she told him he wasn’t. It was the same when he had a bad game. The quarterback’s wife never mentioned the slow footwork, the wobbly passes or fumbled snaps.

  “It was my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight. She was too excited. I shouldn’t have trusted her alone.”

  “When I was in law school Gracie and I used to talk about the risks a defense attorney has to take. Back then it sounded kind of exciting. When you’re young you don’t think about how everything changes if you have a kid.”

  “You do good work, David; you know you do. Think about that boy last year; he would have gone to prison for something he didn’t do-“

  “Shit, Dana, he was guilty.”

  “Well, even so, it was his first offense. He didn’t deserve to go to prison.”

  “Youth Authority can be just as bad.”

  She put her arms around him. “Don’t be so down on yourself. You’re a good man and a good attorney. Even someone like Filmore deserves a fair trial.”

  He lay back on the couch, drawing her down beside him. “I love you, Danita.”

  “Don’t call me that.” She remembered Micah using her full name.

  “DanitaDanitaDanita.” He pulled her closer. “Kiss me and IT shut up.”

  Bailey’s abduction had driven Micah from her mind. Now all at once he seemed to be standing in the room with them, leaning against the doorjamb, watching David tug down the zipper of her slacks and slip his hand down the front of her panties.

  She pulled away. “I’m tired, David. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Come on, Dana. I miss you.”

  “I know. I miss you too. But I just can’t do it yet.”

  He groaned and sat up. Resting his elbows on his knees, he ran his fingers back through his hair. She was surprised by how much gray there was.

  “It’s been weeks.”

  “Don’t guilt-trip me. Please.”

  He said, “When Bailey was gone it made sense. I got that. But she’s back now. We’ve got our life back. We should be fucking our brains out to celebrate.”

  “I just need a little more time.” She stood up and zipped her pants. Her body ached with fatigue that ran clear through to her bones. She doubted she had the energy to climb the stairs to bed. “I’m not ready.”

  “Sometimes I feel like … What’s happening, Dana? Where’ve you gone? Where’s Number One?”

  She looked down at him from halfway up the stairs and told the truth. “I don’t know.”

  -n David’s oversized office chair, Marsha Filmore looked like Alice after too many bites of the cookie.

  “I’m sorry,” David said as he stowed his briefcase in the well of his desk. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

  He had been in court all morning on a too-good-to-be-true personal injury case involving a child, a crossing guard, and a San Diego Gas and Electric truck. David would have liked a break for lunch between court and this interview, but judge Wellman had started late, as he often did. Hungover, from the look of his trembling hands, he had embarrassed everyone while he figured out where he was and why. Incompetence and irresponsibility heated up David’s stomach acid and made him want to punch someone. Not the best time to see Marsha Filmore.

  “I don’t know why I’m here at all,” she complained. “Frank says I’ve talked to you enough already.”

  David sat down and pressed a button on his phone. “Barb, ask Allison and Gracie to come in, will you?”

  “I have a doctor’s appointment.”

  Marsha put her long, bony hands over her stomach. Behind the big knuckle of her ring finger she wore a plain gold band and a diamond solitaire so big David would have guessed it was a good fake if Filmore had not declared it among his assets.

  “In an hour.”

  David smiled in a way that made his jaw ache. “No pr
oblem.”

  “I’ll have to get a taxi,” she said. “There are never any taxis in San Diego. It’s such a burg.”

  “We’ll take care of you, Marsha. When’s the baby due?” He did not want to begin the serious questions without Gracie and Allison. “I should remember, but-“

  “Men never remember,” she said and suddenly became disconcertingly chatty as if his question had flipped her animation switch. “Last week I went to see Frank, and he acted like he didn’t even know I was expecting. He’s so smart, but he forgets the little things.” She smoothed her hands over her stomach. “Six weeks. Six weeks to go.”

  “You’re feeling okay? Everything going okay?”

  She gawked at him. “Oh, yeah, sure. Dandy as candy.”

  David felt a rush of dislike as powerful as it was sudden. His inability to warm to her, to feel even vaguely empathic, reminded him of his father’s attitude toward the men he sentenced. Since David was ten and began spending the school year with his aunt and uncle in Texas, he had made a hero of his uncle and trained himself to be like him; but unwanted aspects of Claybourne Cabot still crept into his personality like enemy mercenaries nosing under the tent. The judge would have hated Marsha Filmore. His uncle would have recommended tolerance and reminded David that he could not guess what hells Marsha Filmore had walked through.

  In the big wing chair-David wanted his clients and visitors comfortable, because comfortable people were more likely to speak freely-Marsha Filmore did not look like the competent business woman she had been before her husband’s arrest. A few months ago this lank-haired, skinny little woman smelling of nicotine and hairspray had been chief accountant for a chain of local drugstores. David wondered which woman was the real Marsha Filmore, the mouse or the manager.

  The office door opened, and Gracie stepped in wearing a tiny, tight skirt and very high heels. David smiled.

  “Afternoon, Boss.” Blond, bouncy Allison followed her, similarly dressed. David thought, Thank God for pretty women. He said, “Let’s get started. When we finish, Allison, you go down with Marsha, help her get a cab.”

  “Right, Boss.”

  Since the days he had quarterbacked the Pinewood High School Patriots, Boss had been his nickname, one he encouraged.

  He glanced at the notes he had written that morning at just after six A.M. in anticipation of this interview. Despite multiple interrogations, he could not shake the sense that there was more he should know about Frank and Marsha Filmore. The prosecutor, Les Peluso, would leave nothing to chance.

  “I know this is repetitive, Marsha, and going over the same ground can seem-“

  “Pointless. I’ve told you everything I know. Frank didn’t do it. He never would do such a thing.” She squirmed in the big chair. “He is a very smart man, you know. Probably smarter than all of you combined.”

  Gracie said gently, “Just tell us again about that morning.”

  “He’s not a monster.”

  “Of course not,” Gracie said and laid her large hand on Marsha’s forearm.

  Marsha shook it off. “I was in the supermarket the other day, and a woman saw me, recognized me from the television. I’m going to have to move. Out of town. Everyone knows me. I’m like a pariah. What about my baby?”

  This was the fourth time David had interviewed Marsha Filmore, and at each meeting she seemed more rattled and uncertain.

  “You don’t have to worry about your baby,” David said. “Your baby’s going to be fine, and we’ll get you somewhere to live.”

  “There’s nowhere I can go where I’m not recognized. If I went to the movies no one’d watch the show.”

  Gracie said, “Tell us again what happened that morning.”

  Marsha cupped her palms over her face, her fingertips pressing on her eyelids. “Oh, all right. I was talking to Sandra Calhoun, hanging over the fence and laughing.” She made a sound into her hands that was half laugh, half sob. “You go your whole life and you laugh all the time and you never think about it, and then you realize … Last night I tried to watch a Robin Williams video, that one where he’s in Vietnam? I barely even smiled.”

  “What were you and Sandra laughing about?”

  “How should I know? Jesus, the questions you ask. Something about Mexico, I think. About when Frank and I lived down in Rosarito Beach.”

  David thought he saw Gracie’s pupils widen.

  “When was that, Marsha?” she asked.

  “God, years ago. In the early nineties.”

  “How long did you live there?”

  “Why? What do you care about Mexico?”

  David leaned forward a little. “I always thought it might be cool to live in Mexico,” he interjected. “Commute to San Diego. ‘Course the line at the border would drive me crazy, but I guess it wasn’t so bad back in the nineties. What took you down there?”

  “We lived there. I told you.”

  Expectancy feathered up behind David’s ribs.

  “It’s gotta be cheaper than here,” Gracie said.

  “We had a little house on the beach.” The chatty switch clicked on again. “It was a good life. We had plenty of room and a nice, safe, fenced yard.”

  “You had a dog, huh?”

  “Oh no, never. Frank hates animals.”

  Her hands fluttered, and she smiled like a girl on prom night. “The best thing was the help we could afford. Frank had a man to drive him to the border every day-traffic irritates him. A man of his intelligence couldn’t be expected to cope with that confusion every day. I had a live-in maid to help me with-” Marsha stopped, looked at David, and then down at her watch. A jewel-studded Rolex. “If I miss my appointment the doctor makes me pay any, way.

  “It must have been great,” David said, “having live-in help with the baby.”

  From the corner of his eye David saw Allison’s hand pause over her laptop. Marsha was silent.

  “You said you had a live-in to take care of the baby.”

  “No, I didn’t. I never said that.”

  David laughed. “I think I need my ears checked.”

  Gracie said, “So you were talking to Sandra Calhoun that morning. Then what?”

  David turned his chair enough to see out the square office window behind his desk. He used to have an unobstructed view of the bay and Coronado Island, but in recent years construction in the part of town called Little Italy had filled up most of the gaps between the old two- and three-story buildings, the mom-and-pops left over from the days when San Diego was a navy town. On a typ ical day he could count three construction cranes and a half dozen condominium and office buildings in progress. He liked the urban view and the feel of being at the center of a city that was doing something, going somewhere.

  If there was a baby in Mexico, where was it now?

  He listened as Gracie continued to question Marsha Filmore and made a mental note to send her flowers for stepping in and giving him a chance to gather his thoughts. Against the background of the women’s voices-Gracie’s low and smooth like a deep river and Marsha’s like shallow rapids-he let his thoughts drift.

  He was certain Marsha had been about to tell them she had a Mexican maid to help with a baby. When she denied it she looked caught. Yet Frank had made a big thing about the expected baby being their longed-for first.

  As she was leaving the office Marsha Filmore said, “I read in People magazine you got your daughter back. I saw the picture. Do they know who took her?”

  Bailey wasn’t a subject he wanted to discuss with this woman.

  She stopped at the door. “Why do people-men-do things like they do?” Her eyes lost focus for a moment. “The man who took your little girl, did he hurt her? Did he violate her?”

  Gracie said quickly, “Taxis are tough to get in this town. Allison?” She practically shoved Marsha forward.

  Marsha shook her off. “You bring a baby into the world now, you take such a chance.”

  Gracie held Marsha by the upper arm and steered her out o
f the office. When the door closed behind them, David sank back into his chair and closed his eyes. He felt his eyelids trembling.

  ana wondered if the sharks in the tanks at the Birch Aquarium (knew they were swimming in a sea the size of a backyard pool. What went on in their brains and nervous systems? A kind god would have created them without a sense of space and time.

  The Birch Aquarium, part of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography north of La Jolla, is a strikingly handsome building perched on a bluff overlooking the northern portion of La Jolla Shores Beach. On a Wednesday in early October the crowd was thin, just a few tourists enjoying the hot fall weather, nannies and mothers pushing strollers the size of whales, a noisy school of preadolescents led and lectured to by a teacher wearing shorts and a tank top.

  Dana and Bailey had visited the library the day before; and as they had done prior to Bailey’s disappearance, they spread the fish books on the table open to the full-color pictures. Dana had turned the Technicolor pages slowly, pointing out fish she knew anything about, commenting on all the colors, hoping for some sign of interest, waiting for a smile.

  In the first days after her return, Dana had not been deeply troubled by Bailey’s lack of speech and her flat-line emotions. The shock to the little girl’s system had been seismic, and Dana reasoned it would take time for her happy nature to recover itself. But Bailey had been home more than three weeks now, and there had been no improvement. She still watched Dana and David with disconcerting intensity. Her lethargy was pervasive; even pictures of predatory eels failed to kindle a response from her. Gone entirely was the mania that had once singed Dana’s nerve endings. Bailey no longer airplaned from room to room caroling her favorite words: smelly- bellyjelly, stinkypinky. These days she clung to Dana or sat pressed against her or lay on her bed or in front of a video sucking her thumb. And never spoke.

  In the aquarium they stood before a vast glass tank where sequoias of kelp grew up from the bottom and swayed in the artificially created swells. In and out, like birds through a forest, the popeyed fish glided, kissing the water. Dana recognized the groupers, fat brown gentlemen and ladies of substance and propriety, and their gaudy cousins, the golden Garibaldi damselfish. But the small fish she could not name were her favorites, the darters and jerkers that flashed by in a blaze of electric blue, yellow, and scarlet.