Sinister Shorts

“John?”

“Yeah.” He roused himself with difficulty. They got out and he locked up.

Charisse leaned down, tightened her laces, said, “We should have brought a water bottle.”

“There's safe water at the top. A spring.”

“Okay. You're not going to bring that thing, are you?”

He was strapping on his shoulder holster. He looked at it, and at her. A couple of girls bounced past them, jogging toward the trail, chattering. An old man threw a soggy-looking te

“I mean, it'll show, and scare people. And you said the trail's been open a month, with no problems.”

“A precaution,” he mumbled. His eyes had blurred momentarily. He wondered what was wrong with him.

“Put it away, please, John.”

Reluctantly, he took the gun and holster and opened the car door, reaching for the glove compartment. Charisse started up the trail, and he followed a moment later, slinging the big telephoto-lens camera case around his neck.

The Long Walk, a dirt trail about five feet wide, wound along the side of the stadium. A jogger pounded past them on the trail, his ponytail flying. They fell in behind a middle-aged couple leaning on walking sticks, arguing in German.

“Just a hike,” Charisse said again, squeezing his hand. Now that he was moving, Fleck felt better. The temperature must already be over eighty degrees. In March, when Julie Mattei died, it must have been much cooler.

The trail began to climb and they left the athletic field behind. They passed a few people, and more passed them. Some of them said hi; most ignored them. Representatives of the Berkeley social hodgepodge, graybeards, couples with dogs, and loners hiked the path. Fleck didn't need to read minds to picture the broad fields they ranged: the sane, the crazy, the mild, the wild.

They all thought they were safe, but they were all walking the death beat every minute of their lives, and he'd given up trying to save them.

Julie, just like these young women looking so arrogant and confident this morning, had walked past this clump of manzanita three months ago, directly into the path of a truck. No. He shook his head to clear it. That was the kid in Atlanta, the one with a loving mom standing by to change his history.

Charisse looked out of place in tailored shorts and pristine white shoes rising above the dust. He must, too. These hills attracted white, except for a group of Asian boys they passed, sitting on rocks loading their cameras, and one other black girl who passed them with a wave, tall and broad-shouldered as a basketball player. They watched the girl's muscular calves disappear around the curve.

The walkers thi

He was sweating. The sun reflected off the ground and speared his eyes under the sunglasses. So Altschuler and Julie had an affair. Fleck wondered if that started before or after she helped break up his own marriage.

Charisse stopped and reached out to pick a solitary purple flower on the slope. Fleck pulled her back, said, “Drop it.”

“Why?” She held on stubbornly.

“The whole hillside's infested. Poison oak. Don't touch any of the plants.”

“Hoo, boy.” She withdrew her hand, rubbing it on her pants. “Do you think the senior partner killed her?”

“Altschuler? No.” She didn't ask why, just sat down on a rock and looked at him with interest.

“How about the guy who called you? Bell.”

He said nothing.

“You said the firm was small. Bell had to know her.”

“I walked into his office one night after hours. Just opened the door. It was like a TV comedy skit. He had her over the desk. She pulled her skirt down and turned her back to me. He never mentioned it after that. He never mentioned it to the police, either.” Fleck had sat down beside her. “Damn, I am thirsty.”

Charisse said, “It was one of them.”

Fleck said, “No,” again.

“How can you be so sure?” She looked exasperated.

He turned away. “I've done it for so many years. Pete Altschuler, he's a city boy. He wouldn't climb up here to do it. Too worried about his health.”

“He could have hired a hit man. A hit man in hiking boots.” She smiled, inviting him to join her, but he wasn't in the mood.

“He's not that ruthless,” Fleck said as she got up, smoothing her shorts. “He cared for her.”

They wound around another corner, through another dry canyon. The sun blazed down. Fleck stumbled and would have fallen if she had not caught hold of his arm.

“John, you're sick. Shouldn't we go down?” Charisse said.

“I'll take a rest on top. You were right about the water bottle.”

She let go of him, gave him a playful shove. “Okay, Macho Man,” she said. “Why not Bell?”

“He might get her fired. He might poison her. He might even shoot her,” Fleck said. “But he'd never get actual blood on his hands.”

“But he was hiding the fact he was seeing her!”

“They all hide everything. It's second nature for lawyers.”

“Then who did it?”

Voices carried down the hillside. Three kids, two girls and a boy, descended around the switchback ahead. They were all dressed alike, in jeans torn out at the knees and tank tops, hair tied back with banda

“Nobody murders another person for no reason,” Charisse went on. “It's just that the reason isn't obvious-like if it's not money, or power, or revenge-everything else gets lumped under general craziness.”

He trudged forward, irritated, watching his big feet move up a steep place, step by step.

“For instance, a woman kills her child for what seems like no reason. She's been neglected her whole life, and this is the only way anybody will pay her any attention. So they say she's nuts. They put her in an asylum, but she had her reasons, didn't she?”

“I'm talking about a random crime, not somebody's baby,” Fleck said.

“Or think about it. A man goes into his old office with an assault rifle and starts shooting. It's terrible. He didn't even know some of the people he killed. But he could explain it, John. He'd call it a payback. The people represented something to him, something he had to kill.”

“Some reasons can't be called reasons.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and he wasn't even sure she'd heard him. He didn't want to talk anymore. He just wanted to get up the hill.

They had been climbing hard. After a long time, long enough for Fleck to remember everything about his life in California, his wife's face, Julie's, all the dead faces he had looked into all those years, wanting to say I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I failed you, they came to an area where the Oakland fire had passed through. The dirt turned black, and all around them stood ski

Fleck said, “Suppose a man's wife leaves him. He blames the woman he was sleeping with… is that a reason to kill her? Shouldn't that man have blamed himself?”

Charisse didn't answer. She was watching a tarantula skitter across the path, hairy legs moving much faster than they should. She pointed, excited, her hand with the long nails and sparkling rings incongruous in the dirt and heat and stillness. Fleck kicked dirt after the spider. “This is what I think,” he went on, repressing the moan the pain in his stomach had started. “Julie Mattei hiked up into someone's hate zone. If she hadn't shown up, the next walker would have been killed. Simple as that.”