Savages nd-32

by Bill Pronzini

  Six thirty already. No place to go, and the only exercise she was getting was slap-talking herself for being a lump. She didn’t feel like reading or vegging out in front of the tube or even listening to music. The only thing she did feel like was heading out to the nearest Golden Arches and stuffing herself on McGrease. Not that she would. Damn, no. Worked too hard to lose weight to start moving back into Fat City just because she was lonely and depressed and horny and about sixteen other things.

  In spite of herself she wondered what Horace was doing tonight. Playing a gig with the Philadelphia Philharmonic… no, symphonies were dark during the summer. Out with Mary from Rochester, doing the town. Or home alone doing each other. Or maybe planning their big October wedding, making out the guest list. Tamara could just imagine him with his face all scrunched up the way it got when it was puzzling on something, saying, “What do you think, Mary, should we send my ex Tamara an invitation or not?”

  Well, damn him and her, too. Second-chair cello, second violinist-a couple of second-rate musicians who deserved each other and their second-rate lives in the City of Brotherly Love. She was well rid of that man. Sure she was. She knew it; everybody said so. So why did he keep popping up inside her head like a big black smiley jack-in-the-box?

  Clue in, Tamara. You know why he keeps popping up. Takes time to get over somebody you thought was the love of your life. A lot more time than three months.

  She hopped off the couch and went to pee again. World’s smallest bladder. When she came out, she detoured into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. Bottle of sauvignon blanc, nice and cold. No. Only make her more depressed, and she’d feel worse in the morning. She looked at the cans of Diet Coke, made a face, and shut the door. Well? Gonna do what now?

  Uh-huh.

  Work.

  Only thing she was likely to get her head into tonight. Most nights, for that matter. If it wasn’t for the heavy agency caseload and the fact that she could do a lot of the Net searches and billing from home, somebody’d have to come in and scrape her off the wall.

  Not that she minded the overtime. Thing was, she loved detective work, even the routine stuff. Never imagined she would, when she first went to work for Bill, after seeing Pop so tired from all the overtime he put in at the Redwood City PD and him drumming it into her and Claudia’s heads that one cop in the family was enough. Big career in the computer industry, that was what Tamara had mapped out for herself. But the detective business got into your blood after a while. Fascinating, for the most part. Stimulating-sometimes too stimulating. Partner in a growing concern, her own boss, and she made good money and eventually she’d make a lot more as the agency continued to expand.

  Of course it had its downsides, same as police work. All the hours you had to put in, the sometimes boring routine, the kinds of people and situations you had to deal with…

  Blink. New thought: The business not only sucks you in; it controls your life. Look at Bill, all those years running a one-man agency, a real workaholic loner before he met Kerry. Look at Jake, always on the move, still working 24-7 whenever he could, still a loner with his wife gone and his son not wanting anything to do with him. Look at her. Before she got into the game, she’d had a love life and a social life and she’d played hard and didn’t worry about much and didn’t have any hang-ups she couldn’t deal with. Now here she was, no love life, no social life, a solitary working fool herself. Maybe there was something about the business that screwed up normal lives. Or maybe it was just that people like Bill and Jake and her were the ones who were attracted to it. Maybe she hadn’t known herself as well as she’d thought; maybe underneath all the teenage grunge and cockiness and uptight racial bullshit there’d been a born workaholic loner inside her tubby body waiting to pop out.

  Well, anyway, it was something to think about. Or not think about.

  Okay. Work.

  She went into the small second bedroom that Horace had used to practice cello compositions before the lowbrow neighbors complained. The apartment was his before she moved in and it was still jammed with his memory and his scent. Damn hand-me-down, like his Toyota Camry. She’d keep the car a while longer, but no way was she going to renew the apartment lease come the end of October. She could afford a better neighborhood than the avenues fog belt, a bigger apartment, and besides, living well was the best revenge. Wasn’t too early to start the hunt for a new place, see what was available in other parts of the city. Might as well start tomorrow. She didn’t have anything better to do on another boring Sunday.

  The stack of computer discs Bill had given her was on the secretary desk. They were from a PC, so she dragged her old laptop out of the closet and plugged it in and booted it up. The discs dated back four years, to the time of Nancy Mathias’s marriage; each one had dates hand-printed on it, three months’ worth of entries on each. She fed the first one in, waited for it to download. Nancy Mathias’s diary. Dead woman’s diary. She sighed. This ought to be fun, she thought.

  It wasn’t. All the entries were headed with the date and time they were written, which made the chronology easy to keep straight. But some were hard to decipher because the woman had been a sloppy typist and referred to people and places by their initials and didn’t use any apostrophes. And at first the entries weren’t all that interesting. Long descriptions of the Mathiases’ honeymoon on Maui, places they went and things they did after they got back to Palo Alto. Shorthand comments on art and art galleries-painting in watercolors had been the woman’s hobby-and somebody with the initials TQ whose impressionism she admired; on restaurants, plays, a ballet, weekend and holiday trips to some place called CV, wherever that was, probably a vacation home. Happy, chattery, lovey stuff. Almost every one had at least one reference to B-Brandon, her husband. Some of them were were embarrassing and annoying at the same time, like passages from a bad romance novel:

  Every time I look at him, even now after three years together, my heart leaps. I never thought I was capable of such total devotional love for any man. I loved J but it was nothing like what I feel for B. I would walk through fire for him, I would lie curled at his feet like a dog if he asked me to. I have no pride, no mind of my own where he is concerned. I have no life without him.

  No man was worth the slave attitude. What if she’d felt that way toward Horace? She’d be a basket case right now.

  The references to the Mathiases’ sex life were even worse:

  B and I made love last night. Fabulous as always. He touches me so deeply in so many ways, with his hands and his mind and his soul. When he moves and swells inside me I feel as if Im soaring, as if there are two of me, one reveling in the moment, the other high above watching with tears of joy in her eyes.

  Mercy!

  The second disc was more of the same, only not quite as happy-sappy. End of honeymoon, back to reality. By the third disc, a few mild complaints started to creep in. He was critical of her opinions and her personal appearance. He demanded perfection and didn’t like to be questioned about anything. They didn’t make love as often; B was working long hours and he was so tired when he came home, poor baby. They didn’t go out much anymore. They didn’t go to CV together. B didn’t like her sister, her friends, didn’t want her to spend time with them away from home. Not that she minded, oh no. Whatever B wanted, B got.

  It went on like that for more than three years, B tightening the reins until she was no longer seeing her sister or her friends, not going to CV by herself as she’d done a couple of times, not even going out of the house much anymore. Classic control-freak crap that got Tamara’s blood heated up. But Nancy Mathias had bought into it with no more than an occasional whimper.

  B made me cry again last night. I said something that displeased him, Im not even sure what it was, and he berated me mercilessly. Voice of ice, stare of ice. I look in his eyes and I see myself shriveled and cowering there and as always it frightens me to abject tears.

  By the fourth year she wasn’t much more than a good little rob
ot, put away and waiting for the master to come home and turn on the juice. She didn’t mention her painting or art galleries anymore. The entries were now one long dull, repetitive chronicle of what she ate and drank, what she read, the music she listened to, the little errands she ran. And B, naturally. Hardly a single entry without his initial in it.

  Early this year, too late, she started to wake up. His hold on her was so tight she was feeling the pressure in physical ways-menstrual problems and intense migraine headaches. Every third or fourth entry was an expression of loneliness, bewilderment, frustration. Fear, too, that led her to question his love and commitment, if not hers. Tamara paid closer attention. Now she was getting to the kinds of things Bill had asked her to watch for.

  Sometimes he looks at me as if Im nothing to him. Less than nothing, a piece of lint on his coat that he might brush off at any moment. It terrifies me. What if he decides hes had enough of me, brushes ME off? I cant conceive of living without him.

  He doesnt hate me, he cant hate me, but his eyes last night, oh God, as if he wished I were dead. Did I imagine it? I must have. I know he loves me. He never says the words anymore, but I know he does. Hed never hurt me. He isnt a violent man, he has never touched me except with loving hands. How could he hate me?

  So he’d never slapped her around, beat her up. Big deal. What the bastard had done was bad enough. In some ways, even worse.

  B told me again how useless I am. How many times now? A hundred, a thousand? I cant stand it anymore. I had one of my worst migraines ever, the pain so bad I vomited and then had to lie down with a wet cloth over my eyes. He followed me, stood over me, berating and accusing the whole time. Does he really think I have migraines on purpose just to annoy him? I cant make him understand. I dont think he wants to understand.

  Tamara scanned through a dozen similar entries. Woman’d had plenty to complain about, all right, but complain was all she’d done. Why? Why hadn’t she walked out on the bastard, asked her sister or somebody for help?

  Why did J have to die and leave me alone? I was happy with him, we had a wonderful life together; HE loved me as much as I loved him. If hed lived I would never have met B and sometimes now I wish I hadnt.

  Well, there was the answer. Couldn’t stand to be alone. Weak, dependent, and so beaten down and disillusioned all she could do was throw pity parties for herself.

  A mid-February passage caught Tamara’s attention:

  B brought his new assistant home for dinner last night. He thinks the world of him, says he has a brilliant mind, and oh hes personable enough but there is something about him that puts me off. Im not sure what it is, other than a sly toadying quality and his physical appearance. Foolish to judge someone by his looks I suppose but you cant help an instinctive reaction. What kind of name is Drax anyway? Eastern European? It reminds me of Dracula. He reminds me of Dracula, the movie image, with his sharp teeth and odd eyes and leathery skin. I can imagine him in a swirling cape, his mouth all red with blood, and the image gives me chills. I haven’t said anything to B about this, I dont dare, but I hope he wont invite him to the house again.

  No more mention of Drax the vampire after that. The rest of the disc was the usual dull litany of books read and films watched on TV and doctors’ and dentists’ appointments and whines about B and one small desperate expression of hope on a morning after he decided it was time he got laid again.

  The next entries that jumped out were on the last disc. First of these was dated August 23:

  Yesterday

  Yesterday I

  Oh God I cant write about it I can barely think about it.

  Its so its just too I just cant

  Gap of two days. Then:

  I told B last night. He has never shown his emotions but I could tell he was very very upset. I cried and told him how much I loved him and how sorry I was and he held me, so tender and loving the way he was in the beginning. It was all I could have hoped for.

  The following week:

  I was wrong, he doesnt give a damn about me! He didn’t come to Ds yesterday as he promised, he made me go through it alone. His excuse was an important meeting he couldnt get out of. Important! A fucking meeting! What about me, I said, arent I important? Of course of course, he said, but he didnt mean it. He doesnt care. He never cared. I dont know what Im going to do.

  The entries got shorter and shorter after that, with less information about what was going on in the woman’s life. She got up, ate, took naps, watched TV, read, went to bed; B was there, B wasn’t there. Flat, empty words that had to’ve come out of deep depression.

  Then this one, five days before her death:

  I cant go on alone. I could call C but I cant seem to bring myself to. God help me I still need B. I hate myself for needing him when I know now how he really feels about me and what a fool Ive been but I cant help myself. If I have to Ill go to M, Ill do something drastic to force B to be there for me. I CANT be alone now.

  And two days before:

  Another ugly fight with B last night. Another terrible headache, so bad I vomited and barely slept. Hes so cold, so unfeeling. He terrifies me when hes like that. His eyes, the way they look through me, it gives me chills. I think, no Im sure now, hes actually capable of doing me physical harm.

  The final entry had been made on the day of her death. It was the shortest of any, just the date and time and two words in capital letters: WHY ADHERE?

  Tamara had been making notes all along; she made another, with a big question mark after it, then sat back and read through the list of direct quotes and her comments. Not too much there, no real motive for Brandon the asshole to want to off his wife. But there sure were a lot of questions.

  What had Nancy done that she couldn’t write about, then confessed to him two days later?

  What was it she’d had to go through without him at D’s?

  Did “D” stand for Drax the vampire?

  Why was she so desperate those last couple of weeks?

  Who was M and what was the “something drastic”?

  What did that weird final entry mean?

  Tamara stared at those last two words. WHY ADHERE? Why adhere to what? Her marriage? Life itself? Couldn’t be a suicide note, could it? No, no way. Woman wanted to off herself, she’d swallow a bottle of pills or slash her wrists in the tub. One thing she’d never do is throw herself down a flight of stairs on the slim chance she’d break her neck.

  Well, there was no use speculating without more facts. Bill had pounded that into her head enough times.

  He terrifies me when hes like that… I think, no Im sure now, hes actually capable of doing me physical harm.

  Yeah. Enough meat here to justify an investigation. The hit she’d gotten from that entry and the others on the last disc was pretty strong. Call it intuition or whatever, something had been wrong, bad wrong, in the woman’s life, and her death sure could’ve been more than just a simple accident.

  The laptop clock read 8:50. Not too late to call Bill and fill him in. If he didn’t want to handle the investigation, she’d take it on herself.

  9

  JAKE RUNYON

  The girl’s voice on the phone was shrill, quivery. “He’s gone! Jerry’s gone!”

  “Calm down; take a deep breath.” Runyon waited for her to do that. “All right. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I drove out here this morning, like we talked about, and he’s not here. He didn’t leave me a note or anything; he just… he’s gone.”

  “He didn’t say anything to you yesterday about going someplace else?”

  “No, no. I don’t understand why he’d leave here. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the camp. I’m on my cell.”

  “What camp?”

  “Oh, right, you don’t know. Old migrant workers’ camp on the Hammond farm. It hasn’t been used for years.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “It’s about three
miles from town. More east than south.” She gave him directions, complicated enough so that he had to write them down.

  “Stay there and wait for me. I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

  Almost ten by his watch. He’d been up and dressed for three hours, sitting in the motel room for the last hour waiting for Sandra Parnell to call. There was enough of the headache left for him to be aware of it, but none of the aftereffects Dr. Yeng had warned him about. The swelling was down on his ear, and when he put on a new bandage from his first-aid kit the stitched wound on his temple hadn’t shown any signs of infection. His appetite had been good this morning, even if the coffee shop food wasn’t. He was ready to be out and on the move again.

  It took him nearly half an hour to find the migrant workers’ camp. Well out in the country, off a hardpan side road, surrounded by orchards and cattle graze, all flatland except for a couple of rocky hillocks in one of the fields, and no farm buildings in sight. Ghost camp. Dozen or so crumbling wood and cinder-block shacks, the single-room type, doorless, the glass long gone from their windows. Two small, rusted Quonset huts, also without doors or windows, and the remains of an ancient Airstream trailer. Built along a narrow stream, summer-dry now, shaded by willows and cottonwoods and overgrown with weeds, dead grass, clumps of manzanita. The sun, already hot in the eastern sky, gave it all the look of a mass of tinder lighted by a match flame.

  Sandra Parnell’s Chrysler was drawn in under one of the willows, so that it couldn’t be seen until you came in off the side road; rows of fruit trees hid the camp from the county blacktop beyond. She was waiting beside the car, smoking. She dropped the butt and ground it out quickly under the heel of her flip-flop as he pulled up nearby.

  The gathering heat folded around him when he got out. The girl hurried over, bringing the faint smell of marijuana along with her. The joint hadn’t been her first; the glaze on her eyes told him that. Not cheap, just young and stupid. However many she’d smoked, they’d taken the edge off her anxiety. She stood slack shouldered, the way people do when there has been an easing of tension.