Hardy 11 - Suspect, The (50 page)

Stuart, Walden had discovered in the past week, was pretty much a creature of habit. Every morning he seemed to wake up at or near the same time; every morning he came outside and picked up his morning newspaper off his steps. Last night, the lights had gone off when they usually did, around ten thirty. So he was probably on his regular schedule. If he was slightly off, Walden could always just come by tomorrow, or the day after that. It was a limited window of opportunity, true, but a day or so one way or the other wouldn't make any difference.

Now, just short of seven o'clock in the morning, Walden sat at the curb, peering through the fog at the front door of Stuart Gorman's house. His shotgun lay halfway across the passenger seat, its muzzle down on the floor of the stolen Honda Accord. Walden had already rolled the passenger window down. There was very little traffic on the street, and no pedestrians.

Suddenly, the light came on over the front door, and Walden turned the ignition key, then grabbed for the shotgun. At the house, the door opened and Stuart, with a coffee mug in his hand, started down the steps. One. Two. Three.

The newspaper was on the sixth step down. Walden had had a little trouble seeing it, making sure it was already there when he'd driven up. He'd even brought another paper to throw onto the steps, just in case. But no, it had been there.

Four. Five.

Walden raised the barrel of the gun.

Six.

He pulled the trigger.

38

CityTalk

By Jeffrey Elliott

The police shootout and killing yesterday at the Sausalito home of San Rafael High School biology instructor Enos Crittenden added yet another bizarre chapter to the ongoing story that began last September with the hot tub drowning of Dr. Caryn Dryden. The drama connected to this series of events continued through the assassination attempt on Dr. Dryden's husband, the outdoor writer Stuart Gorman, later in the fall by a shadowy figure only tentatively identified at the time variously as "Walden" or as an e-mail presence who signed off with the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Also connected to this extraordinary chain of events has been the decertification by the FDA of the Dryden (Hip Replacement) Socket, several dozen subsequent lawsuits against its manufacturer, Polymer Innovations, Inc. (PII), the bankruptcy filing of PII and the suicide in February of that company's chief executive officer, William Blair. With the trial of former California Assemblyman Jedd Conley for the murders of Dr. Dryden and Kelley Rusnak, her lab assistant at PII, scheduled to begin next week, the story's eventual ramifications may endure for years to come.

Yesterday’s developments began about a week ago when one of Crittenden's students hacked into a private e-mail site linked to his regular teacher's website. Discovering threatening letters written to several prominent public figures, as well as links to other websites dedicated to environmental terrorism, the student informed first his parents, and then the police. When authorities appeared at San Rafael High to question Crittenden, he fled, leading police on a chase back to his home, where he opened fire on them. He held the SWAT team at bay for nearly an hour before a sniper bullet to his chest ended the standoff.

Crittenden, 34, had a lengthy history of activism on animal rights and other "green" issues, although no criminal record. In his basement, police discovered a large cache of weapons and ammunition as well as several boxes of literature on various environmental issues. Much more threateningly, they discovered over 500 pounds of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate and several gallons of the fuel oil nitro-methane, ingredients that had been used in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. According to Homeland Security spokesman Marshall Brice, plans on Crittenden's website indicated that he was planning to bomb a "large target" in San Francisco to protest the sale of meat and meat products. (Sources close to the investigation, speaking under condition of anonymity, have told this reporter that the intended target was the Ferry Building.)

It also appears certain from books, newspaper clippings, e-mails, and other material discovered in Crittenden's basement, that it was he, identifying himself as Walden, who had shotgunned and critically wounded Stuart Gorman in the days following the outdoor writer’s release from jail after charges that he had drowned his wife had been dropped in favor of Assemblyman Conley.

In a chilling bit of irony, Mr. Gorman, who professes himself completely recovered from the assassination attempt (although he still walks with a pronounced limp), will be signing copies of new paperback editions of his three books,
Reflections on a Lake, The Mysterious Stream,
and
Healed by
Water,
at 7:00 this Friday night at Book Passage in the Ferry Building.

Gina waited back among the shelves until the other customers had gone. There had been close to a hundred of them. Stuart remained seated alone at the small writing table, pulling copies of his books over from the pile on his left and signing them one by one, methodically, moving them to a growing pile on the right as he finished. Finally, she came up to him. "Hey."

He broke a smile. "Hey, yourself. I'd get up and give you a hug, except I'm still having a little trouble with the hip. How are you, Gina?"

"I'm good, Stuart. How about you?"

"Getting by. It's been a bit of a year, in case you haven't noticed."

"Yeah. I read about the wedding, too. It's kind of what made me decide to come down and say hi. That and Jeff's article reminding me."

"I'm glad you did." He shrugged. "It's weird. I can't seem to avoid making the news anymore. Beware of what you wish for."

"I never thought you wanted fame."

"No. I never wanted money. Fame was all right. Fame opens doors. It's okay."

"And how's Debra?"

"She's good." He shrugged, perhaps with some embarrassment. "We're good. I never thought I'd marry my wife's sister, but there you go. I never thought I'd get tried for murder, either."

"You never did," Gina said.

He shrugged. "Close enough. Anyway, the whole Debra thing. She's been good with Kymberly. I never thought I'd say that, either. I'm starting to think there might be hope for her. Maybe even me getting shot wasn't all a bad thing. It made her realize she could lose me too, and she finally didn't want that. She's even back at school."

"That's good. I'm glad to hear that."

"It is good," he said. For a moment, a silence built. "And you'll be glad to hear I've finished the new book."

"So you said."

"You were here all along? Tonight, I mean?"

"Hiding out in the back. I didn't want to get in the way of your talk. It's a little bit of a different title for you, isn't it?
The Imposter
Syndrome T

"Yeah. Breaking out of fishing psychology and into true self-help. It's a bit of a leap, but my publisher thinks it's a winner. It's the idea that came to me in the courtroom that day, you know. You remember?"

"I remember you getting it. Not what it was, though."

"Well, you'll have to read the book, but it's all about figuring out why I felt like I had to keep protecting Kym, instead of confronting her and trying to help her deal with her problems. It was because I couldn't really do anything else except write, and writing's one of those things—sometimes you lose the sense that it has any real intrinsic value. So if I can't do anything else, and what I can do doesn't have any real quantitative worth, what became important was the illusion that I was at least a good father. Raising a successful child is something you can point at that you've done."

"But you are a successful writer, and it sounds like you're on the way to having raised a successful child."

"Well, let's hope," he said. "Maybe. Anyway, the book takes off from there and goes off on my usual tangents. I got something out of writing it, and that's what's important. That and keeping things together with the family." Suddenly remembering, he squinted up at her. "And how's your writing going? Still at it?"

"Actually," Gina couldn't keep some pride out of her voice, "I just finished mine, too. It's probably no good, but I least I got to the end."

"That's the hardest part. Now you just go back and fix everything you don't like."

Gina laughed. "That's all, huh?"

"Pretty much. But I'll bet you won't need to do too much. Not if you did trial scenes like you did at my hearing."

"Well . . . that's nice of you to say, but we'll see. Anyway, I just had to come down and make sure you were okay and say hi. I'm so happy for you. You deserve a little peace."

"And the only reason I've got any is because of you. Don't think I don't realize that."

Gina looked down at her former client. She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Stuart. Stay out of trouble."

"Don't worry," he said. "That's my new motto."

Gina had started on the vigorous circle hike around the lake at a little after noon, and now, coming into sight of her camp, the sun was just about to go down behind the mountains. Her critic was still sitting where she'd left him three hours ago, the stack of pages next to him telling her practiced eye that he was probably getting pretty close to the end.

No way was she going to interrupt him now, so she cut off the trail and walked down to the lake. She stood still for several minutes on the shoreline, drinking in the beauty around her, never tiring of its ability to refresh and nourish her. Then, sitting on a boulder, she undid her shoelaces and pulled off her hiking boots and socks. Hot and sweaty, she unbuttoned her shirt and dropped it and her shorts to the ground, then got rid of her underwear.

The first few steps into the cold water were shocking, as they always were, but she walked through the shallows, grinning like an idiot, until it was deep enough to let her dive. She stayed underwater, eyes open, for as long as she could, pushing the water behind her with strong and broad strokes, skimming over the seaweed, hoping to catch sight of a trout.

When she came back up, she treaded water for a second, and gloried in another eyeful of wilderness. But with the water temperature under fifty degrees, she couldn't stay in it too long, so she went under again and pulled for shore. When she got to where she knew she could stand, she stopped and surfaced.

He was standing on the shore, holding her pages.

"It's great," he said.

"You really think so?" She was coming toward him. "I want the real truth."

"I just gave you the real truth. It's fantastic. I couldn't put it down. It's really good, Gina. I mean it."

She was out of the water now, standing right in front of him. "You're not just saying it because you're hoping I'm going to let you kiss me, are you?"

"Would that work?"

"No. I'd be able to tell you were lying."

"But I'm not lying."

"All right, then, Wyatt Hunt," she said. "Then you can kiss me."