“Ever since I got out of high school, part-time. Daddy wanted me to go to college, but I didn’t have the grades. He says I didn’t study hard enough-I guess he’s right. I never did like school much.”
“Sometimes,” Runyon said, “fathers want things from their kids they can’t have.”
“Sounds like you know from experience. You have kids?”
“One son.”
“Is he smart?”
“Yes.”
“But he won’t give you something you want, right?”
He didn’t answer that. “How do I get to the hardware store?”
“It’s on Fourth and A, two blocks off Main.”
He put the Ford into gear, swung around out of the cul-de-sac.
“It’s a shitty job,” she said, “but if I couldn’t go to college, I had to work and pay my way. Daddy’s big on that kind of stuff. Being responsible, a good citizen, a good Christian.”
“Sounds like a decent philosophy to me.”
“Oh, sure. But strict fathers can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Were you a strict father?”
I never had the chance. But he didn’t say it.
Ashley was silent for half a block. Then, “There was another fire last night. You know about it, I guess.”
“I was out there a little while ago.”
“I heard it burned up the migrant workers’ camp and everything around it for half a mile.”
“Not quite half a mile. But close enough.”
“Jerry must be really crazy, setting another fire so soon.”
“If Jerry’s guilty.”
“Sure he is. Guilty as sin.”
“Some people don’t think so. Sandra Parnell, for one.”
“That’s because she’s fucking him.”
The words were intended to shock; Ashley said them with a sidelong glance. Runyon kept his eyes front.
Ashley sighed. “Poor Sandy, she’s not real smart. Where guys are concerned, anyway. She knows some of the things I know about Jerry, but she’s still hung up on him.”
“What things?”
“You know I dated him for a while, before she did?”
“I heard as much.”
“Daddy didn’t like him, didn’t want me seeing him. Then he caught us fooling around in our house one day and kicked Jerry’s ass right out into the street. It was the best thing that could’ve happened. I knew about Jerry’s ugly side; I just didn’t know how bad it was.”
“Ugly side?”
The flippancy was gone now; her face was serious. “Reckless driving, racing other cars. One night when I was with him he hit a dog on purpose, no lie, just ran it down in the road. He likes to hurt people, too, when he’s high on weed.”
“Are you saying he hurt you?”
“Hit me a few times when I said or did something to piss him off. Slaps, mostly, but one time with his fist. I had a bruise on my hip that lasted for a week.”
“You tell your father about this?”
“Not until after what happened last Friday. I was scared to before, because of what he might do to Jerry.”
No wonder Kelso was so hot after the kid. You couldn’t blame him.. if what Ashley said was the truth.
“You said Sandra knows what you know about Jerry. He beat up on her, too?”
“Couple of times, yeah.”
“She admit it to your father?”
“He dragged it out of her yesterday.”
“What else did she tell him?”
“Nothing. She swears she doesn’t know where Jerry’s hiding now, but I’m not so sure. Neither is Daddy.”
“Where do you think he might be?”
Ashley raised a hand and a pointing finger. “Turn left there at the corner. That’s Fourth Street.”
Runyon turned left.
“I don’t have a clue,” she said. “About where Jerry is, I mean. But Daddy thinks he’s still around somewhere in the area, that he’ll set more fires, hurt more people, if he’s not caught pretty soon.”
When Runyon stopped in front of Battle Hardware, Ashley gave him a quick smile and a brief thank-you for the ride and hurried into the store without a backward glance. He watched her out of sight before he drove away. Smart-ass seductive on the one hand, grimly serious on the other. And no dummy, poor grades or not.
Question was, was she also a liar?
H e had to stop two people to get directions to Basalt Street. Not worth the trouble, as it turned out. When he reached the semi-industrial area on the west side of Highway 5, found the street and the run-down frame house at number 600, there was nobody there to talk to except for a barking German shepherd in a fenced side yard. Father drinking up his unemployment benefits, mother at one of her two jobs, Sandra at the Hair Today Salon where she worked as a stylist. Trying to talk to the Parnell girl in that kind of business environment would be an exercise in futility. He could look her up later in more private surroundings.
K elso wasn’t at the Belsize farm, but he’d been there not long before Runyon’s arrival. Mrs. Belsize told him that. She came hurrying from the chicken coop when he rolled into the yard, a big woman in khaki pants and sweat-stained shirt, gray haired, round cheeked, and still angry.
“That deputy,” she said, “he poked around all over the place, every building. Thinks we’re hiding Jerry somewhere. He’s got it in for my boy, for no reason that makes good sense. I don’t blame Jerry for running away from him.”
“Kelso have a search warrant?”
“No. Did he need one?”
“To conduct a search of your property he did.”
“Well, I wish we’d known that. John would’ve run him off damn quick.”
“Where’s your husband now, Mrs. Belsize?”
“Back in the corral with the horses. You want him?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What’re you doing here anyhow?” she demanded. “You think we’ve got Jerry hid up in the hayloft, too?”
“I thought Kelso might be here.”
“Why you looking for him?”
“Because he’s looking for me.”
His bandage seemed to register on her for the first time. Her face softened slightly; so did her voice. “How’s your head? That blow give you a concussion, they told us.”
“Mild one. I’m all right now.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. You don’t blame us for what happened?”
“Not at all.”
“Last thing we need is some damn personal injury lawsuit.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not litigious.”
“Glad to hear that, too.” Heavy sigh. “Shame you didn’t get here with that subpoena of yours half an hour sooner on Friday night. Maybe poor Manny’d still be alive.”
Runyon said he wished he had, too.
“A subpoena, of all things. As if Jerry don’t have enough grief.”
“It’s just a piece of paper requiring him to appear in court, that’s all.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?” She sighed again, wiped her damp face with a man’s handkerchief. Her gaze seemed drawn to the larger of the two barns. “Why anybody would do such a terrible thing, go to all that trouble to get John and me away from here so they could kill Manny-that’s what I don’t understand. He was a good man, a family man. Got along with everybody.”
“Including your son.”
“They were friends, by God. Jerry no more done that to Manny than he can fly like a bird.”
“She’s right, mister,” John Belsize said. “Make no mistake about it.”
Runyon had seen him coming, the man’s slatlike body moving in long, hard strides across the yard. He stopped next to his wife. They were about the same height, but she was at least a foot wider. His stance was both aggressive and protective, which seemed to make him the dominant partner.
“I don’t doubt you believe your son is innocent, Mr. Belsize.”
“Meaning you do doubt he is.”
“I don’t h
ave an opinion one way or the other. What I think doesn’t matter anyway.”
“That’s for goddamn sure.”
She said, “John,” not loud or sharp but with iron in her tone. It scraped the edge off Belsize’s temper; you could see him back off. Runyon revised his opinion as to which of them was dominant.
“We don’t know where Jerry is,” Belsize said, evenly this time. “That’s what we told Kelso and that’s the truth.”
“What would you do if you did?”
“Don’t make any difference because we don’t.”
“You was out at the workers’ camp yesterday, before the fire,” the woman said. “Deputy told us you was.”
“I was there.”
“With that girl, Sandra Parnell.”
“Yes.”
“Told us there was marijuana in that trailer where Jerry was hiding,” Belsize said. “Claimed Jerry was smoking dope out there. I don’t believe it. His mother don’t, neither.”
“There were roach butts in the trailer. I saw them myself.”
“Somebody else smoked them. Jerry’s a good boy, clean-cut. Don’t you suppose we’d know it if he was the kind of wild, crazy kid Kelso says he is?”
“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Belsize said, “is why he went to that girl for help.”
Runyon said, “She’s his girlfriend.”
“No, she ain’t. Not anymore.”
“Since when?”
“Couple, three weeks ago. He broke up with her.”
“Good thing, too,” Belsize said. “I never liked her much.”
“No? Why not?”
“Just didn’t. Fast. One look at her, you knew she’d spread her legs for anybody that asked.”
“John.”
He shut up again.
Runyon asked, “Why did Jerry break up with her?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Mrs. Belsize said. “Just said he found out some things and she wasn’t the girl he thought she was and he didn’t want nothing more to do with her.”
“He was real angry about it, too,” Belsize said. “So if he was scared enough to hide from Kelso, how come he went to the Parnell girl instead of us? Why’d he put his trust back in her all of a sudden?”
16
Philomena Ruiz lived in East Palo Alto, on a shabby street a block and a half from Highway 101. Mixed neighborhood, Hispanic and black. Small, old, close-packed houses with tiny yards, many of them barren except for scatters of kids’ toys. When I got out of the car I could hear the constant thrum of freeway traffic, smell the faint stink of exhaust emissions and diesel fumes.
A youth about sixteen sporting a sparse patch of chin whiskers opened the door to the Ruiz house. The suspicious look he gave me didn’t go away when I asked for Mrs. Ruiz.
“Ma ain’t here,” he said. “She’s working.”
“When will she be home?”
“Six thirty, seven.”
“I’ll stop by again around seven thirty.”
“Nah. Seven thirty’s when we eat.”
“I’ll make it around seven then.” I handed him one of my business cards. He looked at it as if he’d been presented with a small dead animal of unknown origin. “Tell her it’s about Mrs. Mathias.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Nancy Mathias. One of her employers.”
“Yeah,” he said, and shut the door in my face.
I drove back across the freeway into Palo Alto. It was like crossing a thin line of demarcation between poverty and affluence. Over here there were stately homes on large lots. Wide lawns, gardens, plenty of shade trees; fences, and locked gates. No wonder East Palo Alto was a simmering pot of anger and resentment and despair that now and then spilled over into violence. You couldn’t blame the mostly poor residents, living as close as they did to all the things they could never have, the lives they could never lead. All those hungry faces pressed against an invisible glass wall peppered with invisible signs: Look, but don’t touch. Keep out except by daylight invitation.
The Mathias home was on a long block strung with venerable old elms that gave it a parklike atmosphere. Mediterranean style, two stories, decorative wrought-iron balconies, fronted by a barbered lawn surrounded by six-foot privet hedges. The circular driveway was empty; so was the extension of it alongside that led back to a two-car garage. No sign of life on the property; too soon for Mathias to be home. If he spent much time here at all these days. For all I knew he slept in his office at RingTech, to make it easier to manage his pressing and oh-so-stressful business affairs.
I parked under one of the curbside elms and set out to canvass the neighbors. There were five houses on the south side of the block, four on the north side with the Mathias pile in the middle; I started with the ones flanking it and then moved across the street. No answers at two places, one of them occupied-lights glowing faintly behind drawn curtains, a car sitting in the drive. Only a little after five thirty, broad daylight, and the people still hid themselves behind closed and no doubt locked doors. Fear of strangers, even a sixty-two-year-old man wearing a conservative suit and tie, fear of home invasion, fear of solicitors after their money, just plain fear. Not a good way to live, even in these parlous times.
One of those who did answer their doors wouldn’t talk to me, looked at me with the same sort of suspicion as the Ruiz kid and then brushed me off with an “I’m busy right now” excuse. Another demanded to know why he was being bothered with “old business.” A third gave me a couple of minutes to ask my questions but had nothing to tell me about Nancy Mathias or the night she died. Hardly knew her, kept to herself, used to be friendly until she remarried; didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything.
Then, on the sixth try, I got lucky.
It was the next to last house on the south side, a larger than average bungalow surrounded by neatly tended formal gardens. It had a deep front porch covered by the kind of motor-driven Plexiglas awning that can be lowered in bad weather and furnished with a couple of old, comfortable armchairs. A frail-looking woman in her late seventies sat in one of the armchairs, a robe over her lap and a tortoiseshell cat curled up on it. She was more than willing to talk. She introduced herself-Mrs. Mary Conti-invited me to sit down, asked if I’d like something to drink, commented on the nice late-summer weather. At first I thought she was the garrulous type, but that wasn’t it at all.
“I’m a widow,” she said. “I lost my husband, Adam, last October. Heart trouble; he was bedridden for nearly a year before he finally passed on. We were married fiftytwo years, he was a wonderful man. We used to sit out here together on summer evenings before he became ill. My daughter keeps after me to sell the house and move in with her, but I can’t bring myself to do that. I’ve lived here for forty years, both my children were born here. How can I sell all those wonderful memories?”
Lonely. Sad and lonely.
Gently I steered the conversation around to the Mathiases. Oh yes, she said, she knew poor Nancy. Not well, hadn’t seen much of her in recent years, but she was a good neighbor, always had a kind word. Her new husband? Mrs. Conti had waved to him once or twice, but he hadn’t waved back. He seemed a very dour sort of man, she said, but then she really didn’t know him.
Nothing in any of that. But when I asked her about the night Nancy Mathias had died, I got some of what I was looking for.
“Oh yes, I remember that night,” she said. “It was very warm, a beautiful night, so many stars. Just the kind of night Adam would have loved. Big Girl and I sat out here until quite late-this is Big Girl, my tortie; she’s a terrible slug, isn’t she?”
“A beauty, though. How late did you sit out that night, Mrs. Conti?”
“Oh, it must have been almost eleven before I went in. Yes, almost eleven.”
“Did you happen to see or hear anything unusual?”
“Unusual?”
“At or near the Mathias house. Someone entering the property.”
“Well, you know, I did see someo
ne, but I’m not sure if he went to the Mathiases’ or one of the other houses. The elms throw out heavy shadows, and my vision isn’t what it used to be.”
“Man or woman?”
“A man. Yes, I’m sure it was.”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, it must have been about ten o’clock. It seemed odd to me because it was late for visitors and because of where he parked his car. The people who live on our block all park in their driveways or garages, not at the curb.”
“Where did this man park?”
“Right across the street.”
“And he walked from there to the Mathias house?”
“In that direction, yes, he did.”
I looked across toward the Mathias house. The privet hedges blocked any view of the front entrance. “Could he have turned in at their gate?”
“He may have. I’m just not sure.”
“Did any lights come on in the Mathias house?”
“… No. None that weren’t already on.”
“Which lights were already on?”
“The night-light over the door. It’s always on after dark. Some sort of timer, I believe. And a light in the room above. Mrs. Mathias’s study.”
“How do you know that’s her study?”
“Oh, I’ve seen her working in there many times. Adam and I used to take evening walks around the neighborhood. Sometimes she would wave to us. That was when she was married to Mr. Ring.”
“Did you see the man again, the one who parked across the street?”
“Not for some time.”
“How much time?”
“It must have been half an hour or more.”
“Could you tell where he came from?”
“No. He was just there when I glanced up, in the shadows. He seemed to be in a hurry, now that I think of it. Very long strides. Adam used to walk that way-long, swinging strides. I had to practically run to keep up with him.”
“What kind of car did he have?”
“Adam?”
“No, ma’am. The man, the stranger.”
“I don’t know very much about cars, I’m afraid.”
“Small, large? Two-door, four-door?”
“Well, it was small. Sort of… what’s the phrase? Low-slung?”
“Yes. A sports car?”
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