Savages nd-32

by Bill Pronzini

  Well, there it was. The explanation for the August diary entries, the reason Nancy had given the $10,000 to T. R. Quentin and refused to take any of the woman’s paintings. It opened up other possibilities, too. I glanced at Celeste Ogden. She hadn’t moved or changed expression. Will of iron, I thought.

  “You told this to Mrs. Mathias, of course.”

  “Of course,” Dr. Prince said. “I must say she took it bravely.”

  “When was this?”

  He consulted a paper on his desk. “August twenty-second. The day after I received the final test results.”

  “Here in your office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she come alone, or with her husband?”

  “Alone. I understood Mr. Mathias was to be present, but he didn’t come.”

  “Did he join her on subsequent visits?”

  “He did not.”

  “Did he ever contact you about his wife’s condition or prognosis?”

  “No.”

  “Did you try to contact him?”

  “No. Mrs. Mathias asked me not to.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Only that she would tell him when the time came. She didn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Not even me,” Celeste Ogden said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ogden. Not even you.”

  T hat son of a bitch!” she said.

  Her first words since we’d left the Medical Associates offices. Low, hard, venomous. Mathias, of course, not Dr. Prince.

  We were alone in the elevator going down. She stood with her back tight to one wall, staring straight ahead. There were cracks in the armored facade now, a moist sheen to her eyes. This was as close as she would ever come, I thought, to a public display of emotion.

  “He didn’t care enough to be there for her, even after she told him. She did tell him; her diary proves that.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate him,” she said. “God, I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate that man.”

  “You have good reason.”

  So did I, for that matter, whether he was guilty of complicity in his wife’s death or not. There was a disturbing, close-to-home parallel here. Nancy Mathias had had a malignant tumor; so had Kerry. One inoperable, prognosis negative; one operable, prognosis favorable. And Mathias’s reaction when he was given the grim verdict? Unresponsive, nonsupportive, even argumentative. He couldn’t have loved his wife, or cared about what she was going through, the turmoil of fear and suffering. Kerry was life itself to me. How could I not hate that kind of man, that kind of selfish indifference? Oh yeah. As much as you can hate a virtual stranger.

  The elevator doors whispered open and we started across the lobby. Mrs. Ogden murmured, more to herself than to me, “Why didn’t Nancy want me to know? Him, yes, but not me? I loved her, I’d have done anything for her. She knew that.”

  Rhetorical question. The kind answer was that Nancy hadn’t wanted to upset her; the probable truth was that Mathias’s control was too strong and he wouldn’t allow it. She’d told him, all right, two days after she found out on August 22. The following week he’d again promised to meet her at Dr. Prince’s and then failed to show up, using an important meeting as an excuse; that was what her angry diary entry that week referred to. The handwritten note among her papers was another unanswered plea for his presence at a consultation with Dr. Prince. “D,” in her shorthand, stood for doctor.

  Outside on the sidewalk, Mrs. Ogden said, “I was wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “As miserable as he is, as much as I loathe him, he couldn’t have been responsible for Nancy’s death. It must have been a tragic accident after all.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If she was dying, with less than a year to live, there’s no reason for him to have had her killed, is there?”

  “Mercy killing, put an early end to her suffering,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.

  Neither did she. “There’s no mercy in him. Not an ounce.”

  I could see one other motive, now, given the kind of man Mathias was-the most monstrous, obscene motive for spousal homicide imaginable. It started my blood boiling just thinking about it. But I kept it to myself. Conjecture, with nothing to back it up. And that was what I’d been concerned about all along, the source of the bad feeling about this investigation.

  How the hell could murder be proven, by me or anybody else?

  22

  KERRY

  She didn’t know what to do with herself.

  For a while she worked on her computer, but there just wasn’t much for her to do from home. It was make-work anyway. Jim Carpenter and Miranda Doyle were covering her accounts; she gave them input on concepts, copy, art, TV and radio spots, but time pressures meant that they were the ones responsible for most of the creative refinements and for organizing the campaigns. What she was given was already-completed work for her rubber-stamp approval. Her function since she’d taken the leave of absence was mainly advisory.

  She read a couple more chapters in The Magic Island. Interesting enough, if a stretch of credulity, but her mind kept wandering. Hyperactive lately, thoughts and ideas piling up, tumbling against one another. Part of it was cabin fever. But it was more than that, too. She had already broken through the shell of fear and anxiety she’d been trapped in for the past three months. The medical ordeal was finished; the tumor and the cancerous cells were gone; the prognosis was favorable. She felt fine aside from the soreness and stiffness from the radiation burning, and even that wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been during the last few treatments. Her stamina was coming back; she didn’t need daily naps anymore; she was sleeping well and had energy most of the time. Her sex drive hadn’t quite returned, but the fact that she was thinking about it again, and had discussed it with Bill, meant that it was only a matter of time. Lovemaking, for a while, might not be very pleasant; there was bound to be some awkwardness and probably some discomfort. But that wasn’t going to prevent her from doing it. For her own sake as well as his.

  Next week sometime. And next week she would be back at Bates and Carpenter full-time-resume that important part of her life as well. She’d already talked to Jim Carpenter about it. He was just as eager for her return as she was.

  Bill thought it was premature. He felt she ought to stay home another couple of weeks, rest, continue to build up her strength. He’d been a rock throughout this damn crisis, she couldn’t have gotten through it as well as she had without him, but he couldn’t seem to let go of his concern for her. He was still afraid, and she loved him even more for that, but you can’t keep existing in a constant state of anxiety and fear. She wasn’t any longer. She couldn’t say exactly when she’d emerged, but it had been before the end of the radiation therapy. Woke up one morning and she was no longer afraid-fear today, gone tomorrow. In its place was the growing, driving need for normalcy, to be in control of her life again, to be whole and live whole. He said he understood how she felt, but he didn’t, really. You had to experience it to understand it fully. And please, God, don’t ever put him in that position.

  Thinking about him made her feel tender. He was so many things, most of them good, a few bemusing, one or two annoying. Like all men, she supposed. He probably felt the same about her, about all women. Women are from Venus; men are from Mars-true enough. She still hadn’t quite forgiven him for keeping the knowledge of Cybil’s wartime rape from her, or the now-disproven possibility that that bastard Russ Dancer and not Ivan Wade was her father. Hadn’t quite forgiven Cybil, either, for that matter, though she could understand her mother’s need to keep the secret all these years. The woman thing again. But she’d never been able to stay angry at Bill for long. Even if he wasn’t justified in circumventing her right to know, he’d done it for the same basic reason Cybil had-to protect her because he loved her, didn’t want to see her hurt. You couldn’t really fault him for that. Part of what made him a good husband, wasn’t it?
Part of what made a good marriage. Caring combined with love, desire, friendship, understanding, a little mystery, and spiced with a clash of wills and attitudes every now and then. By those standards, theirs was just about the best you could ask for.

  It was after one now and she still hadn’t had lunch. She’d thought about going out to eat, driving over to Larkspur and taking Cybil out or calling Paula to see if she was free. But she wasn’t quite up to a long solitary drive yet or in a mood for Paula and her new voodoo passion, and the prospect of a restaurant meal alone didn’t appeal to her, either. She made herself a green salad with tomatoes and avocado and strips of leftover chicken. While she ate, she considered her options for the rest of the afternoon.

  Too restless to sit around here. She needed to get out somewhere for a while. A walk in Golden Gate Park would be nice, but it was foggy and cold again today and even if she bundled up, it probably wasn’t a wise idea. No, but she could still go to the park-visit the de Young. She hadn’t been in some time, since shortly after the museum’s architecturally controversial new home had opened. She’d enjoyed the visit to Brookline Gallery on Sunday, the exhibit of T. R. Quentin’s paintings, but as good as Quentin’s work was, it was neither fine art nor as stimulating.

  Settled. Check her e-mail again on the slim chance that something pressing had come in from the agency, and then she was out of here.

  Shameless followed her into the spare bedroom, hopped up on her desk, and peered at the screen as if he were also trying to read her messages. Nosy animal, but good company just the same. Nothing from Jim or Miranda or anyone else at Bates and Carpenter. But there was one e-mail of interest, from Tamara, sent at Bill’s request: Nancy Mathias’s diary entries over the last six months of her life. Tamara had picked out the ones that struck her as meaningful, but he probably wanted to have a look at the entire batch himself. Even as technologically challenged as he was, he could manage to open a computer file and scan through the contents.

  So could she, with a lot more ease.

  Better not. The idea of peering at a dead woman’s private thoughts still struck Kerry as ghoulish. And she and Bill had always been respectful of each other’s privacy-no interference in personal or professional business matters. Then again, they had no secrets from each other, and he’d let her go through Nancy Mathias’s private papers with him, hadn’t he? Involved her in the investigation? And last night, before they went to bed and without her asking, he’d volunteered a full report on his meetings with Brandon Mathias and Anthony Drax, what he’d learned from the elderly neighbor in Palo Alto and from Philomena Ruiz. No earthly reason why he’d object to her looking at the diary entries.

  Oh, hell, go ahead, she thought. It may be ghoulish, but you can’t help being curious. Or wanting to play detective.

  She opened the file and began to read.

  Painful experience. She’d been prepared for it, or thought she was, but a linear paging through day after day of loneliness, misery, and reported abuses by the son of a bitch Nancy Mathias had married was not the same as being presented with a capsule summary. Poor woman. Some of her suffering had been brought on by her own weakness, her inability to walk away from that hellish relationship. But she’d been under tremendous psychological pressure and it’s not always easy to know what to do under those circumstances. Control freak Mathias was responsible for most of her pain, yet it was clear that something else, some other force, was affecting her as well. Did that force, whatever it was, have anything to do with her murder? If it was murder. Tamara was right: there was nothing in the diary entries, no matter how you looked at them, that suggested a motive.

  Kerry read to the final entry, sighed, and looked at the time in the upper corner of the screen. Already 1:30; she’d better hustle over to the de Young before it got any later.

  She started to close the file so she could shut down. And stopped herself, frowning, staring at the screen. The final entry stared back at her.

  Time. Date and time.

  September 9, 10:05 P.M.

  WHY ADHERE?

  Something there that didn’t seem quite right…

  Yes, it did. Now it did.

  Of course!

  Excited, she picked up the phone and called Bill’s cell.

  23

  JAKE RUNYON

  Stander was a nowhere place.

  Not a village or a hamlet-an old, disused railroad siding. If it had ever been anything more, the only evidence left standing were a gutted stone building between the two-lane blacktop and the main rail line, the remains of a water tank, and the fenced-in compound that had once been RipeOlive Processors. Nearest signs of life were a farmhouse some distance back, a combination country store and junk dealer a quarter of a mile before that. Anybody’s guess who or what Stander had been, or why the siding had a name at all.

  Olive groves stretched out on both sides of the road here, flanking the compound to the east, hiding Highway 5 to the west. Some of the gnarled trees looked as though they were still being harvested; others seemed as dead as the RipeOlive buildings. The plant was set back a hundred yards or so from the blacktop, the chain-link fence around it and the entrance gates capped by slanted strands of barbed wire. The main rail line was still in service-the condition of the rails and ties told you that-but the spur that branched off to the plant, weed choked, broken up, rusty, hadn’t been used in years.

  Runyon turned off onto a potholed ribbon of pavement that bent up across the right-of-way. The paved portion of the road looped around to the front gates; a once-graveled, now mostly dirt track intersected it near the fence corner, led around to the olive groves at the rear. On a pole next to the gates stood a metal sign, bullet pocked where somebody had used it for target practice, the green and black lettering on it beginning to fade:

  RipeOlive Brand

  “From Our Trees to Your Table”

  Two buildings, both of unpainted wood with sheet-metal roofs, were visible inside the fence from here-a long, low warehouse and a shorter structure that formed a detached ell on the north side. Coming in, he’d seen a third building at the rear, some kind of long shed stretched out parallel to the warehouse. The yard was paved, the pavement cracking and sprouting weeds and dry grass. Heat shimmered over everything, gave the buildings an insubstantial, two-dimensional look.

  Just what he’d expected to find.

  Nowhere place, abandoned place.

  He got out to examine the gates. Double padlocked, the locks showing rust and free of key scrapes. No signs of life in the compound, or that anybody had been in there recently-not from this vantage point. Another entrance?

  Back in the car, he U-turned to the dirt road and followed it along the side fence. Thin plumes of dust rose up behind, seemed to hang in the sultry air before they began to settle. The fence, as far as he could tell, hadn’t been breached anywhere on this side or at the rear.

  The road split again back there, one branch veering in among the trees, the other continuing parallel to the fence. Two-thirds of the way along the latter he came on another, smaller set of gates. Rear entrance for trucks coming in from the groves. He stopped there and went over for a look. Padlocked, like the main entrance, but when he tugged on the lock it came open: the shackle had been set into the case, so that it seemed secure at a glance, but it hadn’t been pressed down to engage the locking mechanism. On the underside, around the keyhole, were faint, recent scratches.

  He let the lock hang, stood peering through the wire mesh. Dead still inside. A crow came swooping down overhead, cawing, and disappeared into the olive grove. Stillness again.

  Call Joe Rinniak in Red Bluff? Not yet, not without some idea of what there was to find here.

  Criminal trespass, like it or not.

  Rinniak wouldn’t care if it helped catch his firebug. Kelso might, but Kelso didn’t have to know about it until later. A long time later, and word given to him by somebody else. Runyon didn’t want anything more to do with the deputy if it could be avoided.<
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  He fetched his flashlight and the Magnum in its carry holster. Clipped the holster to his belt, shoved the torch into a pants pocket to keep his hands free. Then he unhooked the padlock, eased himself through the opening, and closed the gates again behind him.

  Out on the frontage road an approaching vehicle made a low-pitched rumbling noise. Sounded like a pickup truck, heading from the south in the direction of Gray’s Landing. He stood still, waiting. The noise held steady as the truck passed by the compound; faded, and was gone.

  The nearest of the buildings, the long shed, was off to his left. He went there first, fast-walking, the sun burning the back of his neck. Equipment and storage shed, probably. Two sets of doors, one on either end. The first set was locked. The second wasn’t. One door half-creaked loudly when he pulled it open; the sound froze him again for a drag of seconds. He readied the flashlight in his left hand, wedged his body inside.

  Thick gloom, stifling with trapped heat, rank with a mix of smells-oil, dust, heat, dry rot, rodent droppings. When he switched on the flashlight, the beam sent something small scurrying across the floor into darkness. One cavernous room, an area along one side that had once been a workshop, all of it empty now except for the car parked straight ahead of him at the back wall.

  Dark blue ’57 Impala with chrome rims, tuck-and-roll upholstery.

  Both of its doors were locked. Runyon walked around it, shining the light inside through the windows. Empty.

  He was running sweat when he stepped outside again. The heavy, breathless silence remained unbroken. He kept the flash in his left hand, his right on the butt of the Magnum, as he crossed to the shortish ell. A platform dock with two loading bays extended across two-thirds of the front. The one-third at the near end had once been the plant office. Two windows there, the panes all broken now, a couple starred with holes-probably the same sharpshooter who’d plinked the sign at the front entrance. Runyon poked the flash through one of the openings, switched it on. Debris, broken glass, an abandoned chair. Nobody had been here in a long time.