The murder of Manuel Silvera had been premeditated. He’d seen Ashley and Sandra leaving the scene of the barn fire, made the mistake of going to Ashley about it instead of her father. Like a lot of people in Gray’s Landing, Silvera was afraid of Kelso, but he was a moral man and his conscience wouldn’t let him keep quiet about what he’d seen. Ashley saw killing him as the perfect way to shut his mouth and blame Jerry at the same time. There was another reason, too: she was curious to know what it felt like to kill somebody. She arranged to meet Silvera in the barn Friday night, made the anonymous call to the Belsizes to lure them away, hit him with the two-by-two when he wasn’t looking. Stringing him up was what she called “an inspiration”; she’d never seen anybody hanged before, and the idea excited her. After she and Sandra finished planting the false evidence in the hayloft and in Jerry’s room, they went back to the barn for one more look at their handiwork—and that was when Runyon arrived. They hid behind the stack of lumber, and he got the same two-by-two treatment as Silvera. He might’ve gotten the hanging treatment, too, if the Belsizes hadn’t come back when they did.
The game playing was partly kicks, partly a means of tightening the frame around Jerry, partly payback against Runyon; Ashley was pissed at him for showing up at the farm and almost spoiling her plans. Jerry had never been in the trailer at the migrant workers’ camp. The whole thing—roach butts, sleeping bag, fast-food remains, Sandra coming to Runyon with her plea for help, the anonymous phone call to Kelso—was an elaborate setup. Sandra hadn’t wanted to do it—she was afraid of Runyon as well as Kelso—but Ashley forced her into it. She hadn’t been told in advance about the anonymous call; her reaction to Kelso’s arrival on Sunday had been genuine. Ashley’s little surprise joke.
Runyon had figured out the sham even before he found Belsize, been pretty sure then that Ashley and Sandra were the real perps. Too many inconsistencies, too many lies. Jerry didn’t drive like a maniac or run down dogs in the road or beat up on his women—that was game playing and character assassination. He didn’t do drugs, had never bought weed from Gus Mayerhof. But Ashley did and had. Nobody knew Jerry or had seen him in Lost Bar because he’d never been there. Sandra hadn’t seen him on Friday night because he was already shackled at RipeOlive by then, and Jerry’s father hadn’t told her that Runyon was a detective because she hadn’t talked to his parents in weeks. The little scene between Ashley and Sandra in the restaurant parking lot on Saturday night had been staged, too. Ashley made a slip then that Runyon hadn’t caught until later. “I’ll bet if Jerry hit you any harder with that two-by-two, he’d’ve taken your head right off.” Unlikely that either her father or Rinniak would have told her the exact nature of the weapon. There was only one other way she could’ve known.
The label fragment hadn’t gotten into the trailer on the bottom of Jerry’s shoe but on the bottom of Ashley’s or Sandra’s. Once Mayor Battle had identified it, Runyon remembered Jerry’s summer job at RipeOlive a few years ago and Rinniak telling him Sandra’s father had worked for the olive processors. The fact that Martin Parnell headed the skeleton crew before RipeOlive shut down for good made it a fair bet he’d had keys and still had them. Simple enough for Sandra to lift the ones to the rear gate and the warehouse door and return them later.
All of this Runyon had told Rinniak and Macon yesterday after he delivered Jerry Belsize to the hospital ER. And it was all in the statement he signed.
On the way out of the station he saw Kelso coming in. Dressed as usual in full uniform down to the Sam Browne belt and holstered revolver. Same cowboy walk, same aggressive jaw thrust, everything in place and untouched. Except for the eyes. The eyes were as dead as a corpse’s. One glance passed between them; Kelso’s went right through him. Best that way. Even if he’d been on friendly terms with the man, Runyon would have had nothing to say to him. His only child hated him, too, with a deep and abiding hatred, but they didn’t even have that in common.
Joshua, despite his problems, was a responsible member of society.
Ashley was a demon seed.
The third reason he didn’t get on the road until late was Jerry Belsize. Rinniak had told him the kid’s condition was critical, but that he was conscious and responding to medical treatment and would probably pull through. On Runyon’s first trip to the hospital, a few minutes past noon, a nurse told him visitors would probably be permitted for a short period, but that it wouldn’t be until after a doctor’s examination at two o’clock. So he was forced to waste two hours with lunch and some aimless driving around Red Bluff.
Belsize’s parents were there when Runyon was admitted to the ward room at two thirty, and he had to endure a weepy round of gratitude from them. The kid was doped up and foggy and didn’t seem to be tracking too well; he didn’t have much to say other than a whispered thanks. Runyon didn’t stay long. He wouldn’t have stayed long in any case.
Before he left he did what he had to do, even though it cost him some of the parental goodwill and made him feel like a shit.
He served Gerald Belsize with his subpoena.
27
Folie à deux,” Kerry said.
“Come again?”
“It’s a psychiatric syndrome, also known as shared psychotic disorder or induced delusional disorder. Where a paranoid delusional system develops in one person as a result of a close relationship with another who has or is capable of a similar delusional system. Literal translation: madness shared by two.”
“I’ve heard of it. And?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking. From what you told me about the firebug case Jake was involved in up north, I’ll bet that’s what was operating there—folie à deux. Strong, domineering woman infects a weaker, less intelligent friend and lover with her insanity and together they commit public outrages—arson, murder, false imprisonment, torture. Contributing factors of sexual perversion, if you can call it that, and religion and rebellion against parental authority. It’s not exactly a classic case, but it does have a lot of the elements.”
“If you say so. What’s your point?”
“My point,” she said, “is that in a way you were dealing with a case of folie à deux at the same time—you and Tamara and I. How’s that for a crazy coincidence?”
It was early Thursday afternoon and we’d just finished having lunch at the Gold Mirror, her favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant. She was on her second glass of red wine, which always makes her a little flakey and unpredictable.
“What case?”
“The Mathias case, of course.”
“I don’t want to talk about the Mathias case.”
“Just let me tell you my theory and we’ll drop the subject.”
“All right. How do you figure it’s another folie à deux?”
“Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. A brilliant sociopath, Mathias, cares so little about his dying wife that he wishes her dead sooner so she won’t interfere with his business plans, and communicates this to another sociopath with a similar bent and an inferior intellect, Drax, who acts on it.”
“Not intentionally and not on direct order.”
“Doesn’t matter. Drax was infected just the same.”
“The two of them may be sick, but they’re not delusional.”
“They are if they think they’re normal.”
“No religious or sexual motivation or rebellion,” I said.
“You could make a case that hero worship is a form of latent sexuality.”
“Now you’re really reaching.”
“Anyhow, Drax wouldn’t have gone to see Nancy Mathias that night if he wasn’t infected to some degree with his boss’s psychosis. Wouldn’t have killed her, accidentally or otherwise. Subconsciously he was carrying out Mathias’s wishes, and he covered up the crime to protect Mathias as well as himself.”
“My wife, the wannabe shrink.”
“Be scornful if you want, but I like my theory. Parallel cases of folie à deux.”
“With opposit
e resolutions.”
“I know, but that doesn’t change the psychological implications.”
No point in arguing with her after two glasses of red wine. Pretty soon I said, “You know, you can make anything fit any concept if you try hard enough.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Folie à deux, for instance. You could say we suffer from a form of it ourselves. We have a close relationship and I’m crazy in love with you and my madness has infected you and made you crazy in love with me. A couple of delusional nutcases.”
“Delusional?”
“Okay, just plain nuts.”
“I won’t argue that. So which of us is dominant and which the weaker intellect?”
“Sometimes it’s me; sometimes it’s you. We’re democratic nutcases.”
“You have a point,” she said. “There’s plenty of sexual motivation, too. Even what some bluenose types might consider perversion, now and then.”
“Let’s not get started on that topic again.”
“Why not? It’s on both our minds.”
“Premature, that’s why.”
“Only by a week or so. Besides, I can’t help it if I’m caught in the clutches of the mania you infected me with.”
“I’m still not sure we ought to rush back into things.”
“We’re not rushing; we’re easing into it. Kind of like foreplay.”
“Kerry . . .”
“Oh, don’t be stuffy. It’s my decision to make, or don’t you think so?”
“Not if you’re hurt by it.”
“I’ve been hurt by a lot worse and you know it. The decision is mine in any case.” She smiled suddenly. “My folly à do or folly à don’t, you might say.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. You just leave everything to me. It won’t be spur-of-the-moment, either. I’ll give you plenty of advance warning.”
“What for?”
“So we can arrange for Emily to sleep over at a friend’s.”
“Why is that necessary?”
“If we’re alone,” Kerry said, “think of all the noise we can make.”
28
Some things, like Kerry’s breast cancer, do work out pretty much as you want them to. Other things take a sudden bizarre twist and tie off loose ends in ways that you didn’t see coming at all.
I’d told Celeste Ogden that there was nothing she or anybody else could do to prevent Anthony Drax from getting away with the murder of her sister, or Brandon Mathias from getting away with his tacit role in the crime. But she proved me wrong. Dead wrong.
Nine days after our last meeting, she waited in the RingTech parking lot for the two men to come out together and emptied her husband’s 9 mm Beretta into their bodies—seven rounds at point-blank range. Drax died at the scene. Mathias died six hours later at a Palo Alto hospital.
She did it for Nancy, she told police calmly and matter-of-factly. She couldn’t bear the thought of them going unpunished; they were evil, pitiless men who did not deserve to live. Nancy would not be able to rest in peace as long as they were alive, and neither would she. She’d spent three sleepless nights thinking about it, summoning her courage. And then she’d destroyed them.
And destroyed herself at the same time.
And left me feeling partially responsible, an unwitting catalyst in my own right, when I heard the news.
Justice?
You tell me.
Savages: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) Page 20
