Swift Horses Racing Page 5

  Had Schuler been targeted? He didn’t know enough about Karl Schuler to rule out that it wasn’t the man himself that the killer in the SUV had been after.

  “Duke, when did you first meet Karl?” Ruiz pulled off a piece of the pink-frosted donut on his plate. He hoped Duke was one of those old people who liked to tell stories. It didn’t take much to get his abuela and her friends launched into the stories they’d stockpiled over the years. He knew them by heart.

  “We met years ago,” Duke said, continuing the movement of his hands over the table. “We worked together for years at Lockheed. We’d both been in the valley at different companies and our paths had crossed a few times before that. Karl was a history book of flight—he’d worked in the field for so long. He’d been involved in aviation since after the second world war. We used to joke that he’d probably given the Wright brothers advice on aerodynamics.”

  “What kind of things was Karl involved in besides aviation? Anything that might have gotten him into trouble?”

  Duke let out a laugh, which made Ruiz feel like the man was moving from shock to a place of remembering his friend fondly. “I can tell you. Diddly squat. The guy was a straight arrow. Responsible with his money. Good husband—his wife Aggie died about fifteen years ago and she was the love of his life. He went to church, delivered meals to seniors, and mentored students in science. The rest of the time, he liked to read about anything that flew. That was Karl’s life.”

  Ruiz nodded appreciatively. Then he asked about the thought that his mind had settled on today. That the shooting could have been road rage from an earlier incident: Karl cutting someone off.

  “You ever drive with Karl? How was his driving?”

  Duke might get defensive. The man had to be in his seventies. From what he’d seen with the elderly residents of Monte Verde who persisted in driving long past their ability to do it, it was the men who fought it most. Not wanting to give up their independence. Which, Ruiz had to admit, he understood.

  Duke paused.

  “No problems I could see.” From the look on his face, Duke had carefully analyzed all data from his rides with Karl and made the assessment.

  “What about his grandkids? Any problems there? Illegal activities?” He wasn’t sure if Duke would be aware of these things, but he had to ask.

  Duke gave him a sideways look. “Karl said a couple of his grandkids were into smoking marijuana.” He pronounced the word with the precision of someone who had never come into contact with the substance or anyone who’d smoked it. The man’s lips tightened in disapproval.

  “Got it. Thanks, Duke.” Ruiz smiled. He’d have to talk to the family members if he wanted more information. “Do you know if his family is planning a memorial service?”

  “I talked to his daughter Rose this morning,” Duke said. “He’s being cremated. They’re waiting to set a date for the service so the family out of state can be there.”

  As they left the shop, Ruiz watched Duke make his way back to his car in the strip mall parking lot. Then he sat in his truck eating the last of his pink donut. Reyna wouldn’t approve of this afternoon snack. He picked up the chocolate jimmies with his finger and ate them one by one to get rid of the evidence. He balled up the white paper bag and tucked it into his car litter bag.

  That night of the shooting still seemed vivid to him. It started up in his mind at random times, when he least expected it.

  Something deep and angry in him stirred when the innocent were threatened. It always had.

  He felt that same feeling twenty-five years ago, the night the police had come to their apartment, after his father had thrown his mother against the kitchen wall so hard it broke three of her ribs. The police had come before. This was back in the days before the officers could charge someone in a domestic abuse case, regardless of whether the assaulted party agreed or not. At least twice he’d heard his mother’s words, denying that her husband had meant to hit her, had meant to shove her—but Ruiz had been there. He’d seen what happened.

  Ruiz had studied the officers’ faces. They were kind and they gently pressed his mother to describe what had happened. He saw the barely concealed anger in their eyes. anger he now related to, when he saw someone had gotten away with something.

  But that night, things were different. As the EMTs did triage on her face and ribs and prepared to take her to Valley General, Lupe Maria Ruiz had turned to the police and said it loud enough that he heard.

  Si. Press charges.

  After they left, he’d cleaned the blood off the floor and put his little brother Mateo to bed. Then he sat at the kitchen table, waiting to hear from his mother.

  He knew what he would do after high school. He’d been thinking about it for a while. That night he said it to himself out loud, and he felt a new strength rising up inside him.

  He would join the police force.

  10

  Duke unlocked the mailbox and pulled out the folded bunch of mail.

  Flyers from a local pizza parlor, a utilities bill and a giant 50 percent off coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond, which he’d never use.

  He wondered why he bothered to check the box every day. Did people write letters anymore? He remembered when Joanne was back east at college and wrote him two letters a week. He felt a flutter inside as he remembered her perfectly slanted cursive writing on the envelopes. She’d write about her sorority sisters and what they were planning and funny things her friends had said. He’d been busy in his first job, excited to be working on what he loved, but he felt very alone.

  He missed the way her smile opened her up to him, her spunky attitude, and the way her hair turned up at the ends, defying gravity itself. He lived through her descriptions of parties and the hijinks that went on at them. Even in her letters, he heard her laugh. Back in those days, it bubbled out of her so easily. Over the years, that had changed. She’d become tight lipped and withdrawn, communicating mostly about the children, bills or things that needed to be fixed.

  The meetup at Donut Haven had raised Duke’s hopes. Detective Ruiz wanted to find out what had happened that night; obviously Karl’s murder had affected him deeply. Ruiz had reassured him that Flores was trying to track down the SUV.

  As he stood in front of mailboxes, the choice wasn’t hard for Duke to make: head back to his cold, empty home or keep walking in the sun, now peeking through the grey cloud layer. He tucked the bill in his pocket and deposited the flyers and coupons in the trash can.

  It was a mile and a half to Karl’s house, longer than he usually walked. Whether for nostalgia or to pay tribute, he headed down the street. He wanted to see his friend’s house again.

  He made it within a half an hour, taking the side streets, then crossing Almaden Expressway at the light. He remembered the way from driving and turned onto Karl’s street. The neat, two-story, white house with black shutters looked no different than it had in the nearly fifty years he’d known Karl. It was midafternoon, and he smelled the powdery floral smell coming from dryer vents as he passed the houses. It filled him with a sense of longing, for a time when he’d lived in a household, not just by himself.

  There was a car in front of Karl’s. Rose’s maroon Honda Accord.

  He tapped on the door, and waited, as footsteps approached. Rose usually dressed neatly and fashionably, to accent her figure. Today she wore sweatpants and a t-shirt and was holding a bin full of magazines and newspapers. Without makeup, she looked pale and more her age. It felt odd to see her this way, as if he’d barged into a private space where he didn’t belong.

  Rose always scared him. He knew from how she’d cared for her father that she must have a kind, loving side. But he always felt he had to be careful or he’d cross her.

  “I was out for a walk, and I was thinking about him.” He smiled. Rose rarely returned smiles, and he’d come to expect that. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to take care of right now.”

  “I’m trying to figure out
what to pack up and what to get rid of.” Rose set the bin next to the door. It was filled with yellow, dogeared aerospace magazines and aeronautics journals, featuring topics that were big news forty years go. “We’ve got to clean the place out to sell. The market’s on an upswing right now. I want to make sure it’s ready when we talk to a realtor.”

  He wondered if Rose was looking for work to plunge into, to keep her occupied. He could relate to that. The week after Joanne passed away, he’d entered her sewing room to box up her clothes, quilting supplies and craft boxes. It helped to be busy, engaged in a task.

  He’d also wanted to get rid of anything that reminded him of the days when she was active and fully herself.

  Rose stood in the door for a minute, as if trying to decide whether she’d let him in. “You can come in and help if you like.”

  Karl’s normally cluttered living room was filled with stacks of books and boxes filled with neatly folded clothes. There were stacks of old, framed photos on the end tables. He picked one up—Karl with John Glenn and the 1950s test pilots who became the first astronauts. Another one with Neil Armstrong.

  The air was musty, as if Rose’s efforts had unwisely disturbed layers of dust untouched for decades. He noticed a stack of books and pulled up a chair and started going through them. Books about the space program, pilots, and high-speed flight. He picked one about early high-altitude flight and started leafing through the pages.

  “Take whatever you want from those piles,” Rose looked up from a stack of papers and three-ring binders—notes Karl had made over the years on things that interested him. Duke would love to go through these later and he hoped she wouldn’t toss them. “Everything has to go. Might as well go to someone who’ll appreciate them.”

  Duke smiled his thanks and began setting aside a pile for himself. After a few minutes, he realized he had more than he could walk home with.

  “Can you go through the books on the shelves by the couch?” Rose waved her hand in the direction of the front window. “I have no idea what he’s got over there. There are some boxes by the door. Pull out what you’d like for yourself and for anyone from the donut group, then put the rest in a box.”

  “Okay if I pick them up another time? I’m walking home.”

  Rose nodded curtly. “Fine.” She finished off another trash bag of notebooks and papers with the resolute jerk of a plastic tie and carried it to the door. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

  None of her father’s warmth. Rose Schuler Mulvaney was a little like her mother. There’d always been something sad about Aggie Schuler, distant and tamped down. Joanne complained that she’d never been able to connect with Aggie. She’d resented that she seemed to end up in the kitchen with her when the families got together. I’m sure she’s a nice person, Duke—but we’re nothing alike. I don’t even know what to talk to her about.

  Rose went back to the papers, tossing sheafs of paper and binders in the bag. She worked with a steady, rhythmic motion, like a collator on a copy machine.

  He’d made his way through the first shelf, when he remembered Detective Ruiz had wanted to know about Karl’s memorial.

  “Have you set a time for the service, Rose?”

  “Probably a Friday afternoon. That works best for the family flying in.”

  “Christoph will be coming then?” Duke enjoyed talking to Christoph Schuler, who ran an aviation services company in Florida and flew his own plane.

  “Of course. And Hermann’s grandson and his wife.”

  Duke looked up at her, startled. Karl hadn’t talked about his uncle Hermann much, though they’d come to the U.S. together. They’d worked together for a while in aerospace in Florida, then Karl had moved out to California and married Aggie. Hermann had died in a plane crash in the 1970s. Duke got the feeling that there had been a falling out between Karl and Hermann, but Karl had never talked about it.

  Duke finished going through the two top shelves of the massive oak bookshelf. Aviation textbooks, technical journals—most of them outdated and good to throw out. Then biographies of physicists and inventors. There were a few old, cloth-bound books that looked like they were written in German, with elaborate, medieval-looking lettering. He opened one and found his high school German was no help in reading the antiquated script. The yellowed pages smelled good, somewhere between an old library and a forest. He laid one in the box, along with some of the biographies he’d picked out.

  Rose returned to her steady churning through the papers and filling bags. After a few minutes, he lost himself in a book about airships stationed at Moffett Field in the 1930s. The photographs of the immense ships floating in the giant hangars were mesmerizing. Planes had always been his interest and speed impressed him. But airships had a beauty that was ethereal, almost regal—they moved slowly, not to be rushed. They’d disappeared long before Duke’s time, though Karl would have been of an age to see them, as a child.

  He looked up at the bay window and saw the colors of dusk outside. Long purple shadows falling across the front yard. How long had he been here?

  The room had gone still. Rose’s paper shuffling had stopped. She’d settled on the couch, her hand resting on the page of a clothbound notebook. She had her reading glasses on. She was transfixed, her mouth open.

  She turned pages slowly. In the few minutes she’d been reading, her face had changed. The harshness of her expression had softened, and Duke swore he saw ruts of tears on her cheeks. He’d never seen Rose cry. He had wondered if she was capable of it.

  With light dimming outside and busy streets to cross, he knew he’d have to go. He pulled out a few books, light enough to carry on the walk home, zipped up his jacket and said goodbye to Rose. The soft look on her face went away. She nodded at him, then pressed her lips together. She switched on the end table lamp and returned to the notebook and her perch on the couch.

  He would have given anything to know what she was reading.

  11

  Ruiz was alone.

  Reyna had gone to bed only an hour after Jacky, since she had spin class at 5 a.m. Ruiz opened the cabinets in the kitchen to look for the potato chips she carefully hid from him. After rifling through the cabinets and drawers, he found the bag in the salad spinner under the stove—a new spot this time. Nice job, babe.

  He took the clip off the bag and shook some into a bowl, with the exhilaration of having gotten away with something.

  He sat down at the computer desk just between the kitchen and the dining room and googled Karl Schuler. All he knew about the man he’d gotten from online news feeds.

  The first thing that came up was an article from two years ago in the San Jose Mercury News about Schuler’s work with students on San Jose’s east side.

  He remembered East Point Youth Center. It wasn’t far from where he’d grown up. If he’d had any interest in science and math in high school, he might have met Schuler there. But math made his head hurt and science seemed all about memorizing things. Criminal Justice had been his interest at that age. That and football, but after his peak playing years in high school, he’d spent most of his community college football games on the bench.

  The article listed Schuler’s achievements in aerospace and aeronautical technology. He’d worked at Lockheed when he first came to California, in the late 1940s, working with high altitude planes. He’d worked with the U2 spy plane program, then for a couple of aeronautical firms. He held patents for several plane component designs.

  Ruiz took a few chips, then wiped his hands carefully on a napkin as he watched a video of Karl Schuler explaining how a plane takes off and stays in the air. The twenty-year-old video was from a presentation at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

  Schuler didn’t talk like a scientist. He was a small, white-haired man in a baggy button-down shirt and gold-rimmed glasses, a plastic pen holder in his pocket. It was hard for Ruiz to see this as the dying man in the Camry. He bubbled over with energy, a mischievous look on his face, as he
bounced on his heels in front of a white board, a group of students seated in a semicircle in front of him. He explained through a series of drawings, how a plane’s engine forced air over the wing. He drew a cartoon wing, with a happy face on it, its eyes closed as the wind passed over it. This caused the plane to lift, cancelling the gravity—an arrow pointing down on the plane with a mean face—that kept it pinned to the ground. This rush of air was able to lift a 200-ton airplane speeding down a runway into the air. Then the pilots tamed that powerful airflow—drawn as a superhero—by using the wing flaps, rudder and back elevator to turn the plane or make the nose go up or down. Schuler imitated the voice of the pilot and even of the plane at one point.

  Schuler’s goofy presentation made the kids smile. Hearing Schuler’s explanation made him wonder why he’d never known this before. He made it sound so simple. It made him want to fly again. He loved the flight to Hawaii he and Reyna had taken last summer—his first flight outside of California. Schuler’s excited explanation made flying sound nothing short of a miracle.

  Karl Schuler had a Wikipedia entry, though most of it was a list of technical achievements Ruiz didn’t know the significance of. Patents for systems on various planes, wing designs he’d worked on. Then his employers, one in Florida, three in Silicon Valley. It gave his birthdate as 1926, Brocken, Germany, which would explain the accent.

  His spouse was Agnieszka Kaminski Schuler – born 1923, died 2006. It also mentioned a Dr. Hermann Schuler, his uncle. When he clicked on the man’s name, he saw another list of technical achievements he didn’t understand. Though he did see that Hermann Schuler’s contributions to the United States space program included work on the Mercury and Gemini missions in the 1960s.

  Ruiz sat back and finished off his chips, then fluffed up the bag to disguise the fact that half the contents were missing. He placed it back in the salad spinner carefully and noiselessly shut the cabinet.