Free Power Slide by Susan Dunlap Page B

pictured the pineapple. “Yes.”
    “Who is his next of kin? Parents, siblings, wife?”
    Wife! “I don’t know.”
    “He never mentioned any relatives at all?”
    “No.”
    “Friends?”
    “I’ll have to think about it.”
    “You do that.”
    I gave up. “Look, I’m being straight with you. I’m going to do everything I can to find out who killed him. I was the one holding his hand when they lifted his car off him; I don’t just want to find who did it, I want to bludgeon him. But I have to tell you, Guthrie and I had an, uh, unusual relationship. Part of its appeal was that we didn’t ask questions. But here’s what I do know. He did something years ago and the guilt was eating him alive.”

    “What was that?”
    “He said he let a man die.”
    “He killed him?”
    “No! He walked away.”
    “Give me details.”
    “I’ve told you everything.”
    But she wasn’t buying that. “You have to know more—”
    “Like I just said, we didn’t ask questions.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Twice in two days he was at the Palace of Fine Arts. He was to meet me there the day he was killed. The day before that I followed him and lost him—”
    “You were following him? Why was that?”
    I told her about Jed Elliot’s demand. “I said I’d have Guthrie call him.”
    “Did he do that?
    “For chrissakes, get off this! His job prospects don’t matter. He’s dead. Look, we were working at Port of Oakland. It’s not next door to the Palace of Fine Arts. He doesn’t live in this area. Here’s what’s important, that something drew him to that spot twice.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She checked her pad. “His guilty incident, when was that?”
    I was ready to snap back again, but I stopped. “Good question. He didn’t say, and he’d never mentioned it before. I mean, it’s the thing that he kept secret. There was some kind of wall around him when I first met him; he didn’t suddenly change one year or another. So, my guess is that it happened well before I knew him.”
    “Did he talk to anyone else about this?”
    “He was going to meet John, my brother.”

    “Inspector Lott?”
    She uttered his name with such disdain that if I’d had any doubts about which side she’d picked in the departmental wars, it was sure gone now. “Right. But Guthrie didn’t meet John. By then he was dead.”
    “No one else?”
    I hesitated. I’m careful to protect friends, but this time I couldn’t let any stone go unturned. “He talked to Garson-roshi, the priest here.”
    She did a flash-reveal. In acting it’s a hard thing to learn, showing your true emotion just long enough for the audience to get it, then shifting into a different, usually neutral expression. In front of the cameras you have to hold the flash longer than seems reasonable, to allow time for the audience first to see it and then to register what it means in relation to what happened before. Higgins did it normal speed. She flashed frustration, then tried to cover by busying herself with that pad of hers. She was thinking Leo’s talk with Guthrie would be privileged, as if it’d been in a confessional. I wasn’t sure where Zen fit into the world of legal privilege, but I didn’t disabuse her.
    At that moment Leo opened the zendo door. Turning, Higgins saw a bald guy with features too big for his face, dressed in sweats and sandals. He grinned at us, waiting for an invitation from me.
    I hesitated. Three things were in play here: I was desperate to know what Guthrie had told Leo. But I hated to involve Leo more than I already had. And Leo had an unfortunate habit of answering questions truthfully. He’s not naïve; it’s just that his commitment is to the dharma rather than the exigencies of the moment, and in the past some of his responses have led to exigencies in custody.
    Still, it had worked out. He’d survived fine. “Inspector Higgins,” I said, “this is Garson-roshi.”

    She did another flash-reveal before saying,