Mourners nd-31

by Bill Pronzini

  The second: cant cant coward cant coward coward coward

  The third: why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

  WHY

  WHY!!!!!

  The last: cant stop any of it from happening cant understand it cant get away from it in the midst of life we are in death its all around us everywhere

  SO

  MUCH

  DEATH

  Runyon used the small digital camera he carried to photograph each of the five sheets. Then he replaced the pad, closed the carton. There was nothing else to see in the studio; he’d seen enough, more than enough.

  He went back out into the cold night.

  Christ,” Bill said, “I was afraid of something like that.”

  “Better to know than not. For everybody.”

  “Except us. Evidence obtained by illegal trespass. We can’t sit on it, and that puts us smack between a rock and a hard place.”

  “I’ll take responsibility if it comes to that. You didn’t order me to get the key.”

  “I didn’t order you not to, either.”

  “How do you want to handle it?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll need to sleep on it, take a look at those digitals, talk to Tamara. One thing for sure: We’re off this case, as of right now.”

  Runyon didn’t argue. He put his cell away, started the car. The Troxell surveillance might be finished, but not the Erin Dumont homicide investigation. Not for Risa Niland. And not for him.

  Still nobody home at the Johnson number in Morgan Hill.

  McRoyd’s Irish Pub was noisy and crowded, standing-room only at the bar, two bartenders on duty and both needed. The older of the barkeeps was Sam Mc-Royd, a bantam of a man in his sixties, white-haired, garrulous-a court-holder who spent as much time arguing and bantering with his customers as he did mixing drinks. It took Runyon ten minutes to claim a stool, another fifteen minutes to get McRoyd’s ear and ask his questions.

  “Weighed three hundred pounds, ye say? Wore his hair in one of them ponytails?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And a uniform?”

  “Might have worn one in here, might not.”

  “Don’t place him. Not a regular customer. Let me think on it a minute.”

  Runyon ordered a draft beer. McRoyd went to draw it, and when he came back he said, “Now I recall the lad. Giants fan. Steroids.”

  “Steroids?”

  “Didn’t see nothing wrong with players like Barry Bonds using ‘em. Winning was all that mattered to him, never mind fair play. We had a few sharp words about that nonsense, one night.”

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “Drank Guinness. The right way, slow, to savor the taste. Quiet except for his Giants fever and his crap about steroids. Wore a Giants cap. Turned around with the bill in back, like a catcher before he puts on his mask.”

  “Every time he was here?”

  “Seems like. Never took it off.”

  “But no uniform?”

  “No uniform,” McRoyd said.

  “Did he talk to anybody besides you? Another customer?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Give you any idea where he lived or worked?”

  “Baseball, that’s the sum of it.”

  Runyon took a little more than that away with him. Giants fan, Giants cap, didn’t wear a uniform after working hours. Not much, but something. big man but just husky or fat? what kind of cap? baseball racing sun what?

  And maybe more than just a little something.

  In his cold apartment he brewed a cup of tea and then downloaded the five digital photos onto his laptop. They were all good shots, the writing clearly readable in each. He created and saved a file for them, e-mailed the file to Tamara’s computer at the agency.

  He carried his cup into the bedroom, sat on the bed and looked at the silver-framed portrait of Colleen on the nightstand. Her smiling image held his attention for a long time, until the tea was gone and his eyes began to ache and his vision to swim a little at the edges. Then he got up, returned to the living room, switched on the TV for noise. Sat staring at the screen without seeing it.

  There was a tight strain of anger in him now. Troxell. The world at large. But mainly it was for himself, for letting the loneliness and the grief get to him again and because he still couldn’t get Risa Niland out of his mind.

  16

  Lynn Troxell wasn’t alone when I showed up at her home for our late Friday morning appointment. I wouldn’t have minded if her other visitor was Charles Kayabalian. I wanted to talk to him, in fact had tried to arrange a joint meeting with the two of them, but he was tied up and unavailable until later in the day. A one-on-one conference with Mrs. Troxell was the next best choice. I wasn’t prepared for or comfortable with a one-on-two with her and Drew Casement.

  The way she looked didn’t help the situation much, either. Dressed in a black pants suit and a dark blue blouse, no color anywhere, her face pale without makeup, her expression bleak and that quality of deep sadness more pronounced. Expecting the worst and put together accordingly. Another mourner.

  She greeted me gravely, as a widow might, and ushered me through a formal living room filled with the kind of antique furniture nobody ever sits on, into a large and more comfortable family room with a row of windows overlooking a rear garden. And there was Casement, on his feet and wearing an expression to match hers. At least he didn’t look like he was on his way to a funeral: light blue golf shirt and beige slacks, the picture of health with that tanned skin and rugged manner.

  I couldn’t keep a frown off my face when I saw him. He said, “Lynn said it’s okay for me to be here. I’m just as worried about Jim as she is.”

  She said, “Please, it’s all right. I want Drew to stay.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing about. “Whatever you say, Mrs. Troxell.”

  She did the hostess thing, offering coffee or something else to drink, and I declined, and we all got settled in a little half-circle, her on a rose-patterned sofa and Casement and me on chairs. Out in the garden there were pale sunshine and noisy birds working around a pedestal feeder, but in here it was hushed and darker than it should have been despite all the light outside. Too much melancholy on my mind, maybe, but the atmosphere was such that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear sepulchral music playing soft and low in the background.

  Nobody said anything as I opened my briefcase and took out the report Tamara had prepared. She and Runyon and I had held a conference earlier, after I looked at the digital photos he’d taken, and we’d agreed on the only viable course open to us if we wanted to avoid potential repercussions. So the report was a slightly doctored account of our investigation-accurate except for any mention of Runyon’s illegal trespass last night and details on what he’d found in the rental unit. The Erin Dumont case was a focal point, but presented in allusions and inferences couched in general terms-“confidential sources indicate” and “we have good reason to believe.” None of us liked doing it this way, but we liked the prospect of heavy legal expenses and possible license suspensions a hell of a lot less. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little to get at the truth, and when you do that, sometimes you have to bend them a little more for maintenance reasons. It’s that kind of business; it’s that kind of cover-your-ass world.

  Immediately I handed the report to Mrs. Troxell, Casement got up and went to sit beside her on the sofa so he could read along with her. I looked out into the garden and watched the birds chattering at the feeder. When I shifted my gaze back to the two of them, Mrs. Troxell’s face was the color of buttermilk and Casement had his arm around her shoulders. The only change in his expression was a tightening of the muscles bracketing his mouth.

  She finished reading the last page, sat so rigidly she seemed almost to have stopped breathing. It was nearly half a minute before she moved, a sudden spasmodic lifting of head and breast. “God,” she said, “all of this… I can’t…” She could not seem to a
rticulate the rest of what she was thinking, shook her head and fell silent.

  Casement said grimly, “Worse than we expected. A lot worse.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You sure about Jim seeing what happened in the park, not doing anything about it?”

  “If we weren’t, it wouldn’t be in the report.”

  “So that’s what set him off on all the rest of it-the trigger we were talking about yesterday. Guilt, not being able to face himself.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Christ. Funerals, cemeteries, a rented hideaway, night walks on the beach-”

  Lynn Troxell found her voice. “Jim has always been drawn to water,” she said distantly, not quite a non sequitur. “The ocean, lakes, rivers. They have a calming effect on him.”

  Casement said, “He needs more than water. Prozac or Ritalin, maybe.”

  “I suppose so, but…” She shuddered and looked at me. “I don’t understand about the granny unit. What does he do there?”

  What does he do? I thought. He wallows in death, that’s what he does. But I said, “What he can’t do here because he’s afraid you’ll find out and he wants to spare you.” And spare himself at the same time.

  “Reads newspapers looking for violent crimes,” Casement said, “so he can attend the victims’ funerals. Broods. Christ knows what else.”

  “How can he be that obsessed, that… sick and I didn’t have any idea of it?”

  “Don’t go blaming yourself, Lynn. He’s so closed off, nobody could’ve known how bad he is.”

  “I should have,” she insisted. “I knew about the murders he saw as a child, I should have realized…”

  Casement tightened his grip on her shoulder. He said to me, “The other thing we talked about yesterday… you think he could be building up to suicide?”

  I gave him a sharp warning look.

  “No, it’s all right, Lynn and I talked about that, too. I told you, we don’t have any secrets.”

  She said, “I can’t imagine Jim doing a thing like that. I just.. can’t.”

  “I can,” Casement said, “and I wish I couldn’t. What he said to me that day, the look on his face-he’s capable of it, all right.”

  “What are we going to do?” Then, desperately: “We have to do something!”

  “Talk to him,” I said, “convince him to get professional help.”

  “A psychiatrist?”

  “He wouldn’t agree to it,” Casement said.

  “He might. What other choice do we have?”

  I said, “Frankly, none that I can see.”

  She blinked, frowned, pulled her shoulders back the way people do when a sudden thought strikes them. She asked me, “The police… you haven’t told them about Jim being a witness?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “I’m obligated to. Withholding information in a homicide case is a felony, no matter who does it or what the reason.”

  “When? How soon?”

  The correct answer to that was immediately. The one mitigating factor in favor of a delay: two months had already passed since Erin Dumont’s murder, and assuming that what Troxell had scrawled in his notes was the whole truth, he had no specific knowledge that could lead to identification and arrest of the perp. But then there was the unknown factor: his mental state. How close was he to acting on a suicidal impulse? No way to tell from outward appearances. Confronting him might shock him into facing his illness, force him to take action to help himself. It might also push him over the line into an act of self-destruction. For that matter, so might being detained as a material witness, having the truth about his cowardice come out that way. A risk in any case, and not my decision to make.

  I said all of this to Lynn Troxell, adding, “I can give you a little time if you want it. The choice is yours.”

  “How much time?”

  “Until Monday morning. Either your husband goes to the police voluntarily by then or I’ll have to do it and then they’ll come after him.”

  “I don’t know… I don’t know what’s best.”

  Casement said, “We’ve got to talk to him, Lynn.”

  “I suppose so… yes.”

  I said, “Have Kayabalian-and your family physician-present when you do. Show him the report if you have to.”

  “Let Jim know I hired a detective to spy on him?”

  “We’ll make him understand you did it for his own good,” Casement said.

  Her long, graceful hands moved in her lap, lacing and interlacing in that nervously habitual way of hers. Anguish bent her features into disproportionate shapes, like a face in a Dali painting. Casement and I both watched her struggle with decision, the anguish finally settle into a dull determination that readjusted her features and reestablished her poise.

  “You’re right,” she said, “there’s no other way.”

  “You won’t have to do it alone. I’ll be right there with you.”

  She nodded and asked me, “Does Charles know about any of this yet?”

  “No. I have a meeting scheduled with him later this afternoon. I’ll brief him then.”

  “All right.” Her voice and her manner were more forceful now. Making the decision seemed to have given her strength. “Please tell him to call me. I’ll contact Jim’s doctor and explain the situation to him and we’ll coordinate a time.”

  I said I would.

  Casement patted her arm; she returned the pat, absently, and got to her feet. “How much do I owe you for your services?” she asked. “I’ll give you a check before you leave.”

  I didn’t blame her for that. Once the dirty work is done in cases like this, the professional advice dispensed and considered, the important questions asked and answered, the clients focus on the primary issues and the hired guns like me become superfluous; we’re unpleasant reminders of the fact that we were necessary in the first place and they want us out of their lives as quickly as possible. One more reason you need a thick skin to be a detective.

  Tamara had prepared a final invoice; I gave it to Mrs. Troxell, and she wrote out a check and offered her thanks in return. She wasn’t really seeing me anymore, except peripherally, and Casement’s attention was all on her. None of us bothered to shake hands or say good-bye. Even before I let myself out, I felt as though I’d dematerialized-a latter-day invisible man.

  How’d it go?” Tamara asked.

  “About as we expected,” I said. “I gave her a three-day grace period. And I’m not sure it wasn’t a big mistake. Troxell is probably suicidal and the shock could trigger him the wrong way. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  “Her choice. You didn’t make it for her.”

  “Still.”

  “She’s not gonna do it alone?”

  “No. With Kayabalian and their family doctor present. And Drew Casement. Casement was there with her this morning. She wanted him to sit in, let him read the report.”

  “Something wrong with that? He’s a family friend, right?”

  “He also happens to be in love with her.”

  “Yeah? How do you know?”

  “Pretty obvious. The way he looks at her, acts around her.”

  “She feel the same way? Two of them getting it on together?”

  “No, it’s not like that. She may not even know how he feels. The only person she’s in love with is her poor bastard of a husband.”

  “So why do you care how Casement feels about her?”

  “I don’t, really. Just an observation.”

  “Lots of people in love with people they hadn’t ought to be who don’t love them back, you know what I’m saying?”

  “True enough.”

  “Love,” Tamara said with sudden vehemence. “Love is bullshit.”

  “Now what brought that on?”

  Big breath. “Nothing. Like you said, just an observation.”

  “One I don’t happen to agree with. Neither did you, not so long ago.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, well.”

  “Things aren’t good between you and Horace, are they? You can talk to me, you know-”

  She said, “I’ve got work to do,” and went scowling into her office and shut the connecting door.

  Women and their secrets. Kerry, Cybil, Tamara. Emily, too, someday, no doubt. Then I thought: Come on, women don’t have a monopoly on keeping things to themselves. James Troxell is living proof of that. Hell, so are you, you narrow-minded, moralistic jerk.

  The meeting with Charles Kayabalian went all right. He asked a couple of questions about the source of our information, and I hedged by saying, “I’d rather not reveal that. We had to take risks to get it, in the best interests of all concerned.” He’s a smart man, Kayabalian; he guessed or had a pretty good idea of what the risks were. He said he’d rather not know anyway, since I wasn’t his client and anything I told him would not be privileged, and we left it at that.

  He said he’d let me know how the meeting with Troxell turned out; his grimace added that he wasn’t looking forward to it and his expectations weren’t high. Neither were mine, but it wasn’t my problem any longer. I hoped.

  By the time I ransomed my car from the nearest parking garage, it was after three thirty, and Friday afternoon commute traffic was already clogging the downtown streets. I had one more piece of business to attend to, but I didn’t need to return to the agency to get it done. I headed home instead. It would be well after four when I got there, and the odds were good that Jack Logan would be off duty and I could leave a message on his voice mail: “Our investigation on that case I mentioned turned up a witness connection to the Erin Dumont homicide, Jack. We’re in the process of trying to verify it. I’ll lay it out for you Monday morning in any case.”

  More C.Y.A. manipulation. If Troxell could be kept in one piece and persuaded to report to the Hall of Justice by Monday, the police wouldn’t care how or why he’d been prodded into it. If he didn’t, we’d be officially on record as cooperating.