MacLean drove past the Crystal Springs Reservoir, high and green in the curving Coast Range. He soon began his descent. After a few green minutes, he passed Bongard's Christmas tree farm on his right, and artichokes and horses on the steep hills to his left. He passed the Obester Winery and the Spanishtown Arts and Crafts Center. Then he passed a supermarket, already glowing fluorescently in the early evening. Turns, lights, twilight's grey glow. He drove until he had entered the State Beach. The lot was nearly empty of cars.
He parked near no one and got out. The surf thumped in his ears and it felt good. The rhythmic, mythic crash of the waves rubbed his ribs, and the sea salt licked his face; the wind damp with foam from waves broken in sandy tumbles now tousled his hair affectionately. The sky was deepening blue behind him and sultry grey above and forward to the horizon. Seagulls called to each other above the roar of the Pacific Ocean and shore birds hopped on the damp part of the sand. There was seaweed the color of old coffee and there were dime-sized white shells bleached by the sea. MacLean tasted the scent of the seawater in the air and his mouth salivated at the salt. America was at his back. He had come home.
He looked at his watch and felt connected again with the world of men and their machines. He didn't like that feeling so he took off his watch and slid it into a pocket. He thought about hurling the thing into the water but he loved the ocean too much to pollute it with a tool Man used to guess at Time. MacLean smelled the wind change: the smell of coolness, the coming of the night. The lights were going on at the Princeton Harbor and in Jake and JoJo's Saloon. They were going off in the shops on Kelly Avenue and in the two banks and the insurance agent's offices on Main Street. He looked out to sea.
There were probably whales out there. "Godspeed," he blessed them. He climbed back into his car and drove into Main Street looking for some place to eat. The simple thoughts of coffee, hot food and a warm bed sang an adult lullaby in his ears. He smelled good cooking, heard some laughter and saw warm lighting in a blue and cheerful place called the San Benito House. He turned and parked on Mill Street. He heard a scrape when he moved his boot from accelerator to brake: sand had joined him in his car. He looked down and smiled at that. He had made it back to California. He had made it to Half Moon Bay.
Half Moon Bay is about thirty miles south of San Francisco. But it might as well be a hundred miles or a thousand miles away. Some of the water in the tide that pulls south along the San Mateo County coast may originate from San Francisco Bay, but few other ripples from the bug city (or simply, "The City") reach into the place where Arroyo de los Pilarcitos touches the Pacific Ocean.
It started out life when two Mexican soldiers were granted land across the creek from each other. They called it San Benito in the early days. The children of the two families grew and intermarried and built adobe houses around the area. Someone put up a wooden bridge so they could visit on holidays, and they put up a church to go to on holy days.
The Mexican War came and the Californios banded together on the ranchos of the area, and then the Gold Rush and Statehood came on the heels of each other. The town changed a bit as the newcomers, from all over the world, put up wooden buildings of two and even three stories. You still needed to speak Spanish, however, so these settlers called the place Spanishtown. A lot of the settlers were Portuguese and Italians, but those languages sounded much the same to the other new settlers from Ireland and the East Coast and San Francisco.
The place still didn't change much even when it began going by the name of Half Moon Bay. The Post Office still delivered mail addressed to Spanishtown and would have if it were addressed to San Benito, probably. The tallest building was still the Occidental Hotel at three stories, till it burned down in 1894. When they rebuilt it they only gave it two stories, and now the Post Office is on that site anyway.
For a time the prospect of a coastal railroad excited a land boom and inflated the prices of the lots in town and along the coast. Hopes were high that Half Moon Bay would grow up and be like Santa Cruz, a resort and shipping center linked to San Francisco. But that dream evaporated like fog in the forenoon. The railroad came and went. Prohibition came, a few made money and a few more died in the secret coves and roadhouses, and then Prohibition went too.
In 1959 Half Moon Bay incorporated itself as a city, but no one noticed much. Today it sits around its Main Street, sleeping in the sun, occasionally stirring as if it forgot to do something like turn off the water in the pea rows, and then it settles back into a misty and fresh-aired dusk. The village of Pescadero and the hamlet of San Gregorio nestle in the canyons to the south. To the north, the commercial and charter fishermen liven up the Princeton Harbor, and then a string of communities color the coast: El Granada across the Cabrillo Highway from the Pillar Point Marina, Princeton-by-the-Sea, Moss Beach, and Montara.
The sea is everywhere. As you drive along Highway 1 it shines and sparkles in view. When you turn a corner on Main Street or Kelly Avenue it suggests itself in the whisper of a wave or the foghorn of the Point. And even as you rise in the Purissima and Pilarcitos valleys, the scent of saltwater touches the eucalyptus aroma and you know that the water running down the hill will find its way to the Pacific, because its destination is its destiny.
Needing a few household start-up items, MacLean drove to the Longs in Strawflower Village shopping center. The wind made the air fresh and new each minute. He methodically went through his list of mundane items and decided to treat himself to a Brother Cadfael mystery in the paperback book section.
She was in the same aisle further up with the magazines. Behind her was the warm soda and the charcoal briquettes and the fire extinguishers, and next to her were the key chains and flashlights. MacLean stopped and pretended to look at a crossword puzzle digest.
She wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, a form-fitting minidress, black tights and low black boots. She was curvy and voluptuous, and he figured she had to be intelligent since she was reading The Atlantic. He kept turning to her and then she looked up and straight into his eyes.
Under the purple eye shadow and the aggressive magenta lipstick and the midnight mascara was a perfect face. She had lovable cheeks and a mouth like a bow. Under all the paint she had a sweet face. Under the superficial expression of jaded experience she had her own collection of beliefs she accepted on faith. She was in that time of youth when you cast away the colors and music of childhood; in that time when you reach, scrambling, for all that is left, and try to save some torn fragments of all you threw to the wind. She looked about 24, was dressed about 20, and the wisdom in her eyes was beyond her years.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then looked away. Closed The Atlantic. Took it to the checkout stand and paid. Left.
MacLean was home before he realized that he'd walked out, paying for everything except the crossword digest he still held rolled in his hand.
For the next month MacLean was occupied with tasks: finding a place to live, re-registering his car in California, and calling his contacts for work. Although he had headed out to the Golden State with only a vague idea of where he'd get his work from, his luck had been as full as his optimism. In a week he had an assignment revising a manual for a program called JumpStart, a software package specifically developed for service station owners. He worked on both versions: one for affiliates of the big oil companies and one for independents.
MacLean had found a niche in the world of computers. Engineers can create brilliant programs but manufacturer-issued user manuals and tutorials are notoriously confusing to the purchaser. Many manufacturers simply don't bother with a good manual, leaving it up to a third party to market an "X Made Easier" book a few months after release. But the young president of Macrosoft, Karl Lynx, wanted his software to win the award for Best Manual (among other honors) in the PC press; when MacLean left his calling card and brochure and references, Lynx leapt at the opportunity. He immediately signed MacLean to edit manuals for his next two projects: On-Vine (a program for wineries) and StageManager (package to help theatres build subscription sales and automate operations and recordkeeping in general). Macrosoft had its headquarters over the hill in Redwood City, about a half hour drive for MacLean.
MacLean was set now, with money coming in, his PC power-stripped, surge-protected and humming, the hum coming from a new tape backup drive that he had splurged on but which offered protection against data loss, which in his case could be his livelihood--the manuals he painstakingly created. His apartment was a studio above a bakery, cheerful and sunny, with food in his fridge and wine on his table. The bottle he had placed there to be opened when he saw her again.
He had not stopped thinking about the woman since that evening in Longs, and he hated himself for not having spoken to her, or asking her something--where she worked, her telephone number, anything--to get an idea of how to get in touch with her.
He found excuses to go to that combination drug and discount center, but she was never there. He had lingering Saturday morning coffees at McCoffee's and sat in the window at San Benito House, befriending Siobhan ("Just say Shove On, and you're there,") the barmaid and enlisting her assistance. He would work at his assignments in two shifts, from 9 to 12 and 2 to 5:30, and look for her before and after each. A month had gone by and it was raining slightly. This late afternoon he was restless and felt like walking even though his clothes would soon soak up the wetness floating in the air. He started thinking about his life and found himself again irresistibly drawn to the Pacific.
At the beach the rain made sad holes in the loose sand. The breaking waves seemed confused by the water entering them from above. A few solitary figures, an old man picking up bottle caps and shells, another middle-aged man surfcasting, and a young Filipino guy in a tan suit smoking a cigarette and staring at the sea, populated the strand. MacLean kept walking until no one was around him. He saw a hill and debated whether or not to climb it. His body said yes and so he did, and at the crest he saw her sitting wrapped in a purple poncho, staring at him. She had set out a bottle of wine and two glasses.
She smiled at him, and then looked down to pour the wine. It was a Beaulieu Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Sauvignon had always sounded like the name of a song to him. She held the glass up, out to him, and he realized that it had almost stopped raining.
Three men stood in the late dawn facing the silver sea and the ground level fog that dusted their faces with moisture. The larger waves rolled forward, indifferently wrapping around the object on the sand and then receding.
"Any sign of the legs?" Lieutenant Mills asked.
"No. I looked up and down the beach," replied Detective Sergeant Grayson.
"Did you check around the rocks at Miramar?"
"Not yet."
"We can when we finish here." Lt. Mills looked down at the body of a man he guessed to be ten years younger than himself, which would put the age at early thirties. Older than Grayson, who was twenty-three. Except for being soggy with water it--and no Mills realized how quickly the living mind calls a dead body "it"--was not very bloated. The smell of death was apparent but it was not yet the smell of decomposition. It had been a recent demise.
"Fresh stiff," Grayson said, reading his thoughts but more bluntly. He nodded, and guessed that his young D-S wanted to show toughness at his first sight of a corpse before the relatively antiseptic view in the morgue. He bent down to examine the hands. They looked like they had not done much manual labor. He looked at the nails for any possible skin or blood visible to the naked eye, but observed that they were clean and quite closely clipped, like a guitarist's. Mills could not compare the hands to the feet: both legs had been severed just above the knees.
"Will you need me any further?"
Lieutenant Mills turned to Miles Warren. Taking his Sunday morning beach walk, normally to work up an appetite, from the mobile home park where he lived, Warren had found the body. He was retired and slept about four hours a day, and was usually on the move in Half Moon Bay. "I haven't seen a dead body since the war. Haven't missed it either."
"Did you see anyone else on the beach this morning?"
"A girl jogger ran by after I called you."
"She have straight brown hair, black and yellow outfit?" asked Detective Sergeant Grayson.
"Why, yes. Nice body."
"That's Siobhan. She always runs at that hour."
Mills was impressed. He didn't know the locals as well as his subordinate. He also knew that Grayson was very ambitions, and since he was at peace with himself, he let the younger man show off when he wanted.
"Thank you, Miles. The Detective Sergeant here'll take your statement. We'll type it up and ask you to sign it later. Wait--Was it your impression that the body washed up, or could it have been dumped.
"Well, the furthest of the waves was splashing more before. The tide is pulling back now. It was a lot higher early this morning, so I'd say it's most likely he washed up. But I can't say for sure."
The statement didn't take long. After Mr. Warren had left Mills asked, "Is the wallet still in the pocket?"
Grayson bent down and gingerly patted the back pockets of the trousers. "No."
"Check the front ones."
Grayson held his breath and turned the body over. "Hey, I think it is here. That's kind of a paranoid dude, keeping his wallet in front."
"Drunks sometimes do that. Or it may have been put there after he was killed.
Grayson filed these bits of information for future examinations and opened up the damp billfold. "Driver's license...he lived up in San Francisco. Credit cards...two VISAs, Lieutenant. One for Milan Hall and one for Martin Handleman. ATM card for Milan Hall. Damn!"
"What?"
"Piece of paper. I ripped it."
"Take it slow."
"It's a note. '214 Kelly Av.' That's the, I means it's right next to the Crystal Shop. Woman lives there by the name of Dickens. Saw it on the mailbox."
"And the first name?"
"Don't know."
"All right. We have to be the scene of crime team here. Roll the body back over. Damn it, I should have photographed it before we stepped all over this sand."
Grayson blushed a little. "I, uh, I snapped some shots while we were walking over here from the car. I dropped behind you."
Mills faced Grayson. "Good job, Paul. And next time if I start to forget something, you can tell me."
"Yes, sir."
"We got one body bag in the trunk. Let's get it." As they returned to their car, Mills suddenly wondered where they were going to store the body. They could truck it over to the morgue in Redwood City, the County seat, but with travel time and form filling they would lose two hours. He wanted to do some investigating now. "Where can we take Mr. Hall, or, as he may be, Mr. Handleman?"
"How about the old ice house up in Princeton?
"What?"
"The Harbor Master won't like it but it'll do till noon, anyway."
"They don't use it at all anymore for fish? Are you sure? 'Cause the Board of Health--"
"No, no. They only use the new one at Pillar Point now. Once in a while they keep guts and heads for the fertilizer dudes. I could pack him right up in a nice ice tray."
"All right." Grayson seemed to be a little too enthusiastic, almost macabrely hospitable about the project. "Take care of it. I'm going to check out that address. Meet me at the station in forty-five minutes."
"Ten-four."
Five minutes later at 7:10 he appeared at the Crystal Shop. He made a note to speak with each of the neighbors. First, however, he'd speak to the occupant of 214 Kelly. He waited five minutes watching for any nervous movement of the curtains, any comings and goings. But it looked as sleepy here as any other home on an early Sunday morning. He climbed and knocked on the upstairs door.
MacLean answered it and immediately stiffened at the sight of the uniform. He could feel the cop smelling prison on him and now he'd better make it clear to him he had been an employee, not a guest. "Good morning...officer."
"Lieutenant Mills, Half Moon Bay Police. Your name, please?"
"MacLean. Can I help you?
"Do you live here?"
"No."
"Who does."
MacLean wanted to say, "What's it to you?" but he said, "I'll go and get her. Um--will you come in?"
"Yes."
MacLean closed the door after them and went to the bedroom to tell her. Grace went paler than her normal porcelain white. She wrapped her robe tightly around her shoulders. "Why?"
"He didn't say."
She sat and thought for a moment. Distractedly she pulled on her stretch pants, a bra, a shirt and sweater, and her riding boots. "O.K."
They emerged from her room and sat to face Mills.
"Do you know Milan Hall?"
Her voice was calm. "Yes."
"Have you seen him lately?"
She was silent.
"Have you seen him lately?"
"I saw him on the beach two weeks ago."
"Did you speak to him?"
"No."
Mills was now silent and MacLean interjected, "was that the guy you turned away from?" He was trying to help, but he wished he'd shut up.
"Yes," Grace said.
"I can verify that, Lieutenant. We turned around and didn't talk."
"What was your reason for wanting to avoid him?"
"I--we used to be neighbors."
The phone rang. Grayson. "Yes, Paul."
Grayson was even more excited. "I was coming back from the old ice house--everything's set there--and I saw this car parked near the Miramar. I had a hunch, you know, it was by itself and when I drove up to it I saw it was a rental out of SFO. I called the rental company and they said they'd rented it to Hall."
"Good work. Did you open the car?"
"We've got the legal right to do that in the course of a murder investigation. I found only one thing but it's key: in the ashtray another one of those pieces of paper. It said, "G, Miramar, and yesterday's date."
"All right, Paul. Do the best dust you can for prints and then get it towed. If possible, keep the two truck driver's bands off the usual surfaces. We'll do another dusting in the garage. Put a Do Not Touch sign in plain view, may three of them around. Seal the car and get it towed to the station. Get on the phone to the coroner and set up an autopsy." He hung up the phone. "Grace Dickens, Milan Hall's body was found on the beach a few miles from here. Since you have said you knew him I would like to ask you to identify him and also to answer some more questions about your relations with him."
"Am I under arrest?" Her voice as strangely dry-sounding.
"No. But you can request your attorney's presence after the identification."
"I do. May I call from here?"
"You may."
Grace called her attorney and left a message, then performed the grim task of identifying Milan Hall. She voiced the opinion that Handleman was probably an alias he used to increase his credit card chances. They continued to the station.
At the Police Station MacLean demanded to see the Chief but Mills told him that the Chief was on a cruise to Alaska for another week. He'd probably be mad too, missing the most exciting thing since the bust of a creative stolen car ring a few years back. Grayson asked Grace if she wouldn't mind waiting in the holding cell and allowed MacLean to join her. He and mills then set about finding survivors and relatives.
Grace leaned into MacLean. After a time smelling the antiseptic odor of industrial cleanser that permeated the cell, MacLean asked quietly, "What did he have over you?"
"A death."