Fever nd-33

by Bill Pronzini

  The woman was Mary Ellen Layne. Krochek’s age, conservatively dressed as befitted the surroundings-Tarbell’s was one of the more exclusive downtown jewelry stores-and a general body double for Janice Krochek. Mitch evidently liked his women slender, brunette, high-cheekboned, small-breasted. Her professional smile evaporated when I showed her the photocopy of my license and asked if she’d mind answering a few questions about her ex.

  “Why?” She said it softly, with a glance across at where the male employee was polishing the glass top of a display counter. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention. “Are you investigating Mitch for some reason?”

  “Not specifically, no. He’s involved in a case I’m working on.” Little white lie to maintain confidentiality and forestall a lot of questions and explanations.

  The shape of her mouth turned wry and bitter. She leaned forward and said even more softly, “It has to do with a woman, I’ll bet.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “And not his wife. If he’s still married to number two.”

  “He is.”

  “Amazing. She must be a saint.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “To put up with him this long. I divorced him after ten months, and I was a fool not to have done it sooner.”

  “He was unfaithful to you?”

  “Oh, yes.” No hesitation, no reticence about discussing personal matters with a stranger. I had the feeling the pump in her was always primed and ready when the subject of Mitchell Krochek came up. “Twice that I know about. Twice in ten months. The first time… well, let’s just say the honeymoon didn’t last very long. If I’d found out about it at the time, I’d have left him then and there.”

  “He was pretty young then,” I said. “Young men make mistakes that they don’t always repeat as they grow older.”

  “Are you telling me he’s turned into a faithful husband? I don’t believe it.”

  “Once a cheat, always a cheat?”

  “That’s right. Mitch… well, it isn’t just a roving eye with him. It’s compulsive. He’ll never be satisfied with just one woman. He needs a steady stream of conquests to boost his ego.”

  “And he doesn’t really care about any of them, is that it?”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true. Give the devil his due. He cares for a while, genuinely, I think, but he just can’t sustain his feelings. He-”

  “Mrs. Layne.” That came from the male across the room. “Do you need any assistance?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. Tarbell.” She reached down into the display case, brought up a bracelet bristling with diamonds, set it on the glass in front of me. “Pretend you’re interested in buying this,” she whispered to me.

  I picked it up, gingerly. A discreet little price tag hung from one clasp. $2,500. Some bracelet. Kerry would love it. She would also give me a swift kick in the hinder if I bought her a piece of jewelry anywhere near that expensive.

  “How did Mitch react when you told him you were divorcing him?”

  “React?” she said. “I’m not sure I know what you mean?”

  “Was he angry, upset over the financial implications?”

  “No. He was just starting out at Five States Engineering and we didn’t have much to divide between us, much less get upset about.”

  “Was he ever violent?”

  “Mitch? Violent? Good Lord, no.”

  “Never raised a hand to you?”

  “Never. I’ll say this for the man-he was always a gentleman, in and out of bed.”

  “How would he handle a major argument?”

  “The same way he handled everything else. Yell a little, whine a little, rationalize everything, and never accept responsibility. The two affairs that broke us up… it was the women’s fault, they wouldn’t leave him alone, they seduced him?

  All of which pretty much coincided with my take on the man. I still had the diamond bracelet in my hand; it felt cold and hot at the same time and I put it down as gingerly as I’d picked it up. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

  “Oh, a long time. More than seven years. I ran into him at a party about a year after the divorce. We didn’t have much to say to each other.”

  “No contact since then?”

  “None.”

  “Do you know his second wife?”

  “No. When I heard he got married again, I thought about calling her up and sharing some things with her. But I’m not really the vindictive type. And I expected she’d find out for herself soon enough what he’s like.” She leaned forward again, her eyes avid. “Has she, finally?”

  I said, “I think they both know each other pretty well after eight years together,” which I thought was a noncommittal response, but the words made her smile anyway. Mary Ellen Layne may not have been a vindictive person, and nine years is a long time, but she was still carrying a grudge. Not that I blamed her, if what she’d told me was an accurate portrait of her ex-husband.

  H einold’s First and Last Chance Saloon was the oldest little piece of Jack London Square, a historical anachronism surrounded by the concrete, asphalt, and modern buildings that now dominated the Oakland waterfront. It was a literal shack built around 1880 from remnants of an old whaling ship, first used as a bunk house for men who worked the East Bay oyster beds, then converted into a saloon. It’d been in continuous operation ever since, with food service added when the Square began to flourish decades ago. Jack London himself was rumored to have hung out there with his pals in the oyster pirating game.

  Deanne Goldman was seated at one of the umbrella-shaded outdoor tables when I arrived. There weren’t many of them, so she must have been there a while; the place was already teeming with lunch trade. She was shorter and darker than Krochek’s two wives, but cut from the same body mold and bearing a vague resemblance to Mary Ellen Layne. She wore a neutral expression that didn’t change when I introduced myself and sat down, but there was nervousness behind it: she kept rotating a glass of iced tea in front of her without drinking any of it. A determined set to her jaw told me I was not going to get anything out of her about her boyfriend that she didn’t want to give voluntarily.

  The first thing she said to me was, “Have you found out anything yet about Mitch’s wife?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s half-frantic with worry, poor man. He’s so afraid that Janice is dead and he’ll be blamed for it.”

  “If he’s innocent, he has nothing to worry about.”

  “ If he’s innocent? Of course he’s innocent.” Her eyes narrowed; the determined jaw poked out a little farther. “He’s your client, for God’s sake. Surely you don’t think…”

  “I don’t think anything, Ms. Goldman. I’ve exhausted a lot of possibilies in Mrs. Krochek’s disappearance and there aren’t many others left. I need to get as complete a picture of the situation as possible-that’s why I’m here. He’s told you everything about the situation, I take it?”

  “Everything, yes. We don’t have any secrets from each other.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Eleven weeks. I know it’s not very long, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know somebody for a long time to love and understand them.”

  Wrong, lady. Some people you do; some people you could know for a lifetime and never understand. But I said, “When did he tell you he was married?”

  “At the beginning of our relationship. That’s one of the things I love about Mitch-he’s honest, forthright, he doesn’t try to hide anything.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “That he’s married? Why should it? He doesn’t love her anymore, and she doesn’t love him. He loves me.”

  “But you know he doesn’t want a divorce.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. She’s already squandered so much of his assets, why should he give her half of everything he has left?”

  “He wouldn’t have to give her anything if she were dead.”

  “
He doesn’t want her dead. He’s not like that.”

  “Solve all his financial problems. And he’d be free to marry you.”

  “We don’t have to be married to be together,” she said. “I’m not a conventional person. The kind of relationship we have right now, based on love and trust… it’s enough for me.”

  No, it wasn’t; I could see it in her eyes. I said, “He told me he was with you Tuesday night from seven until after eleven. True?”

  “Yes. At my apartment.”

  “He never left, even for a few minutes?”

  “Not for one second.”

  “Did you see him on Wednesday?”

  “No. You told him to stay home all day, and he did.”

  “I spoke to his first wife this morning,” I said. “He tell you about her?”

  “Yes. She’s a bitch.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I’m glad I don’t. I’ll bet she had all sorts of nasty things to say about Mitch.”

  “Not really.”

  She rotated the iced tea glass again. “Why did you talk to her anyway? What could she possibly know about Janice’s disappearance?”

  “Nothing. As I told you, I’m trying to get a complete picture.”

  “By asking all these questions about Mitch?”

  “Among other things. You think he’d object?”

  “… No, I guess not. He… has faith in you. He told me that.”

  “I hope I can repay it,” I said.

  “I hope so, too. You… well, you just don’t know how bad it is for him right now. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but… he cried in my arms last night. Like a hurt child.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I felt so awful for him,” she said. “He’s such a warm, caring, loving man.”

  And she was a naive young woman riding for a big fall. But it wasn’t up to me to burst her rose-colored bubble; she would have fought me if I’d tried.

  A waitress came by. I asked for the same as Deanne Goldman was drinking. The waitress asked if we wanted to order lunch and I said not yet and she went away. Ms. Goldman sat making more wet circles with her glass.

  “It’s not his fault, you know,” she said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “The affairs he’s had. She told you about the one that broke them up, didn’t she? His first wife?”

  “She mentioned it.”

  “She drove him to it. Nagging at him all the time, denying him… you know, in bed. He wouldn’t have been unfaithful to her if she’d been a proper wife.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “It’s the truth,” she said. Sharply, but with a defensive undertone. She had her own doubts, I realized then, even if she wasn’t admitting them. If she were lucky, she’d burst the rose-colored bubble herself before Krochek had a chance to hurt her too badly. “He wouldn’t have been unfaithful to Janice, either, if it weren’t for her gambling sickness.”

  “With you, you mean?”

  “With me, with that neighbor of his. He was vulnerable, he’s still vulnerable…”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “He had an affair with one of his neighbors?”

  “Before he met me. It didn’t last very long. She wanted it to, but it was just… physical for Mitch. Not like it is with us.”

  “Which neighbor? Did he tell you her name?”

  “The woman who lives next door to him. It was right after her divorce.”

  “Rebecca Weaver?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Rebecca Weaver.”

  23

  JAKE RUNYON

  Aaron Myers’s car was a ten-year-old Buick LeSabre. He got that info from Tamara on the way back to the city. When he reached Noe Valley, he drove around within a three-block radius of Myers’s apartment building. If he found the LeSabre, and Myers still wasn’t answering his bell, he’d figure some way to get inside the building and then the apartment.

  He didn’t find it.

  And nobody answered the bell.

  Maybe good, maybe not. Depended on where Myers had gone. Runyon drove up to Duncan Street-and the LeSabre was parked around the corner from Youngblood’s flat, facing downhill at a bad angle. There was a narrow space behind it; he squeezed the Ford in there and went to have a look. All the doors were locked, the interior empty. Under the windshield wipers was a parking ticket, issued at 9:40 that morning. A sign just down the way said that Friday was street-cleaning day and there was no parking on this side between four a.m. and noon. The Buick had been here since early morning or sometime the night before.

  He didn’t like that at all.

  He hurried uphill and around the corner. He expected to have some trouble getting into Youngblood’s building, but he caught a break. One of the residents had bought a new refrigerator; a delivery truck was double-parked in front, and two burly guys were hauling the old one out through the propped-open front doors. Runyon waited for them to pass by, stepped through as if he belonged there, and hurried up the stairs.

  A one-minute lean on the bell bought him nothing but muted noise from inside. When he tried the knob, it turned under his hand and the door edged inward. The muscles in his gut and across his shoulders pulled tight. Cop’s instincts, telling him something was wrong here-bad wrong. He stepped inside, shut the door softly behind him.

  The place smelled of death.

  The odor was so faint and indistinct that most people wouldn’t have noticed. He’d been in too many places where people had died; the smell was sometimes strong, sometimes not, but always there and always the same.

  He went down the hallway into the living room. And that was where he found Aaron Myers, slumped down in a chair in front of one of the computers, his head lolling sideways, his eyes squeezed shut.

  Runyon touched knuckles against one cheek, felt the neck artery. Cold skin, no pulse. Dead a long time; rigor had already come and gone. Last night sometime. There were no marks on the body, nothing except a thin foamy drool that had leaked from one corner of the mouth and dried there. Overdose of some kind-hard drugs or prescription pills.

  The computer in front of the corpse was turned on. Sleep mode, looked like. He wiggled the mouse with the back of his hand, and the screen lit up. Writing, more than a page single-spaced. Suicide note-he read enough of it to tell that. The rest could wait.

  He backed away, his lips flattened in against his teeth, and turned to look around the room. No signs of disturbance anywhere in here. The way the flat was laid out, there’d be a bedroom at the front and another at the rear beyond the kitchen. The one in front, adjacent to the living room, would be the larger of the two. He checked in there first.

  Drapes drawn, a lamp burning on a nightstand. And another dead man, sprawled backward across the bed.

  No need to check this one’s pulse. One side of his head had been caved in by a heavy blunt object-the brass lamp, a twin to the one on the nightstand, that lay streaked with dried gore on the carpet.

  When you’d been on enough homicide scenes, you learned not to let the blood and torn flesh and staring eyes and cold waxy faces bother you too much. This was just another in a long string. Standard murder-suicide, the kind that happened almost daily in a city the size of San Francisco.

  Except that it wasn’t. Not this one.

  The dead man on the bed was wearing black net stockings and a blue silk dress. The dress had twisted open in front, exposing a pair of foam-rubber falsies; hiked up far enough on the thighs to reveal lacy, black silk panties. Close-cropped black hair showed where the hennaed wig had come undone. The face under the pancake makeup and crimson lipstick was lean, ascetic, the chin slightly beard-stubbled.

  Brian Youngblood.

  And Brandy.

  One body, but for months now it had contained two personas-the quiet hacker and the foulmouthed bimbo. Half him and half her, even now in death. There was a walk-in closet across the room; from where Runyon stood he could see racks of women’s clothing inside, four or five tim
es as many garments as there were of men’s wear. Brandy had been the dominant personality for some time.

  There was no surprise in any of this. He’d begun to catch on as soon as he heard the voice-mail message on Shari Lucas’s cell phone-the same voice that had said, “If you want to know who hurt Brian Youngblood and why, ask Nick Kinsella” in the anonymous phone call. Which meant Aaron Myers had pretended to be Brian Youngblood at Monday’s interview. And Brandy, the mystery woman that nobody seemed to know? A couple of other sound bytes from his memory file had helped give him the answer. Ginny Lawson saying: “He’s mentally ill… Sick, sick, sick.” Verna Washington laughing slyly as she said, “What you see ain’t always all there is… Underneath, you know?”

  He should have figured it sooner, much sooner. Plenty of clues, hints. The weird behavioral changes, Dre Janssen’s comments. The normal way Myers walked on that first visit, while Brandy grimaced with pain when she moved in her chair-that alone should have tipped him to the switch. Youngblood was the one who’d suffered the recent beating by Kinsella’s enforcer, Youngblood who’d still been stiff and sore.

  If he hadn’t been so focused on himself and Bryn Darby, he could’ve prevented this, saved two lives-

  No.

  None of this was his fault. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the actions of others-that was a hard and fast truth you learned when you first went into police work. If you didn’t learn it, you either quit and got into some other line of work or you stayed on and made a lousy cop.

  Runyon turned away, went back out to where the other body slumped in the chair. Without touching anything, except the computer keyboard with the back of one knuckle, he read the rambling suicide note Aaron Myers had typed there.

  I killed Brian. Only he wasn’t Brian anymore, she’d taken over. Brandy. She kept hurting me. People been hurting me all my life but nobody as badly as her. She was a control freak, a monster. She made my life a living hell. I couldn’t take it anymore. She deserved to die.