Belinda shrugged. “Ten. Eleven. Maybe later. I don’t know. There’s a place down there by the parking garage, near that gravel parking lot. I go there sometimes when the weather’s nice. I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was there.”
“Who was?”
“The lady. This pretty lady with long blonde hair and a long dress and long white gloves and high heels. She was standing there by the stairway, waving at someone who was coming up the stairs to the parking lot from the waterfront.”
Long white gloves too. I let the air in my lungs out slowly. “Could you see who was coming up the stairs?” I asked.
Belinda shook her head. “No, but it was a man.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I saw him when he got to the top of the stairs.”
“Is the parking lot lit?” I didn’t remember if there had been lights there or not, and I wondered how Belinda could have seen things in so much detail.
Belinda glared at me impatiently. “It was a full moon,” she said. “Anyway, this woman waved at him like she was waiting for him, and I could hear him coming up the steps toward her. She leaned down then. She took hold of the handrail and leaned down and reached for her shoe like she had a rock in it or something.”
She stopped. “Then what happened?” I asked, urging her to go on.
“So I saw him, but only for a second. When he reached the top where I could see him, the lady straightened up. She had taken both shoes off. All of a sudden she went after him, pounced on him like she was a cat and he was a mouse. For a minute I thought they were both going to fall back down the stairs, but somehow he got away from her. He tried to run, but she grabbed him by the knees and pulled him down. The next thing I knew, she was on top of him, pounding on him with the shoe. He tried to fight her off, but it was like…like…” Belinda hesitated again.
“Like what?” I insisted.
“You’ll think I’m making this up.”
“No. Just tell me what happened.”
“It was like she was too strong for him. And too quick. I thought it would never end,” Belinda added.
“Go on,” I said.
“All of a sudden he got real still, but she kept beating on him. Kept hitting him. I could hear it. It was awful, like somebody pounding meat to tenderize it.” She shuddered at the memory, and her whole body trembled.
“But she didn’t know you were there?”
“No. I held my breath. I didn’t want her to hear me, to know where I was hiding. Pretty soon she stopped and got up. She looked around like she was checking to see if anyone saw her. First she looked up toward the market, then back down toward the water. When she couldn’t see anybody, she started pushing him.”
“Pushing?”
“Rolling, I guess. Toward the fence. There’s a fence there, to keep people from falling off the cliff. It’s pretty tall, but there’s a hole under it, a hole big enough to crawl through. She shoved him under it. He rolled down the hill and kept on rolling until I couldn’t see him anymore. I don’t know why he didn’t get hung up in the fence.”
“What happened then?”
“The lady walked around until she found her shoes. Then she took off.”
“Which way?”
“Down the stairs. The same way the man came up.”
“What did you do?”
“For a while, I didn’t do nothing. I was scared. I was afraid she’d come back and find me.”
“So you waited?” Belinda nodded. “How long did you wait?”
“I don’t know. Finally, when I was sure she was gone, when I was sure she wasn’t coming back, I got my stuff and left. I went down Western. It’s easier than going back up the hill with the cart.”
“Are you the one who called 911?” I asked.
Belinda gave a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. She drew away from me, shrinking against Reverend Laura. “How’d you know that?” she demanded.
“I didn’t know, I just guessed. It’s easy to get to the ferry terminal from the lower end of Western, and that’s where the 911 call came from. Why didn’t you leave your name?”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid we’d think you’d done it?”
She shook her head. “Afraid you’d think I was crazy. Delusions, that’s what they called it years ago when I used to see things. This isn’t that, is it?”
“No,” I assured her. “The woman you saw was real enough. And the man you saw is dead. Is there anything more you can tell us about her or him?”
“Not really. I only saw her from the back, and after he got there, it all happened too fast.”