Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery)

by Bill Pronzini

  Runyon’s car came bouncing up the driveway. Out on Old Stovepipe Road I could see a straggle of people—neighbors, probably, drawn by the noise—but none of them ventured onto the property. The car stopped and Tamara and Runyon both got out.

  He said, “County law and paramedics on the way,” and I nodded and put my arms around Tamara and held her. Normally neither of us went in for that kind of thing, but this situation was anything but normal; we clung to each other for several seconds before I broke the embrace and stood her back to get a good look at her. Scratches, abrasions, torn clothing, and the way she stood on one leg indicated a twisted ankle. Not too bad, considering.

  “You’ve really had a hell of a time, haven’t you?”

  “Not as bad as that poor little kid,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when you and Jake showed up when you did. I guess we’re pretty lucky.”

  “It wasn’t luck.”

  “No? What was it then?”

  I grinned at her. “Timing,” I said. “What else?”

  30

  TAMARA

  A lot of stuff happened over the next few days.

  Some of it was kind of exciting. Lauren and her being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with the siren on full wail. All the attention while she repeated everything that’d happened to the county law, then a bunch of reporters, then a couple of honest-to-God FBI agents. More than once hearing herself called a hero for saving Lauren’s life, even though she’d made a really stupid mistake there at the end that’d almost gotten both of them killed anyway.

  Some of it was horrifying. The four filled graves out back of Lemoyne’s barn, one adult and three children, probably his wife and the real Angie and two other little girls he’d kidnapped. And the two freshly dug graves that’d been meant for her and Lauren. And somebody telling her Lemoyne had been examined in a hospital prison ward and he had a malignant brain tumor.

  Some of it she could’ve done without. Doctors and nurses fussing over her in the hospital ER, poking and prodding in rude ways; she’d never much cared for medical people even when she was growing up. Telling her story so many times it began to sound remote and unreal in her own ears, as if it’d happened to somebody else. Answering the same questions over and over and over. Too much attention, too many people getting in her face.

  And some of it—no surprise—was same-old, same-old.

  Ma: “I almost had a heart attack when I heard. That’s twice in four months we almost lost you. I swear, worrying about you is going to drive your father and me into an early grave.”

  Pop: “Why didn’t you call me that first night, tell me what you suspected? What in God’s name made you go back there by yourself and prowl around that man’s property? You’re too reckless, you don’t think before you act, you don’t follow the rules.”

  Sister Claudia: “Of course I’m glad you saved that poor little girl’s life, but you shouldn’t’ve been in that situation in the first place. You’re not a wild child anymore, you’re supposed to be a responsible adult.”

  Horace: “It makes me crazy, thinking about what almost happened to you . . . again. I understand how you feel about your career, you know I do, but maybe it’s time you took a leave of absence. Come back here and let me take care of you for a while. Will you at least give it some serious thought?”

  Vonda: “Tam, my God, what a horrible experience. I mean, it must’ve been like living through a Samuel Jackson movie or something. Makes all my troubles seem pretty small, not that they are small. Not to me anyway. I thought Alton was gonna take Ben’s head off just for walking in the front door. And you should’ve heard Daddy go off on him when he said he wanted us to get married in a synagogue . . .”

  Best part, far and away, was finding out Lauren didn’t have pneumonia, just needed an IV and some antiobiotics and a few days’ rest, and then later on going to the hospital with Bill and Jake to see her and meet her folks. Her dad had a city government job in Vallejo and her mom was a schoolteacher—nice mixed race couple. There were a lot of hugs and a few tears; she even got a little moist herself when the mother said, “Thank you for our daughter’s life.”

  Lauren was all smiley and happy, surrounded by stuffed animals and her Alana Michelle African-American doll. As if the kidnapping, all that’d gone down up in Nevada County, had never happened. That was the great thing about kids—they were resilient, they could get on with their lives more easily than adults because they didn’t have all the grown-up baggage to carry around yet.

  She got a long, clinging hug and a kiss from Lauren. And a whisper into her ear that made her blink and grin all over her face: “I love you, Tamara.”

  Sweet little girl. Funny, but she had a feeling she was going to miss her a little. The bonding thing. Or maybe it was more than that. In fact, she knew it was. For the first time in her life tough Tamara, independent Tamara, really wanted kids of her own . . . someday.

  JAKE RUNYON

  It was Saturday before he had a chance to talk to Joshua in person, at the Hartford Street flat. If he’d thought about it beforehand, he’d’ve known how it would be, that it couldn’t be anything else. But he’d been too busy, too tired out, and so he walked into it cold.

  The first thing Joshua said to him was, “I’ve been reading about you in the paper,” with a faint sneer in his voice. “Busy week, saving lives and catching bad guys all over the place. My father, the hero.”

  “I’m not a hero. And I don’t give a damn about all the publicity. I’m just a man doing a job—a shitty job, most of the time.”

  “Cops and plumbers, experts in shit.”

  “Why the snotty remarks? What’s chewing on you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I knew.”

  “You expect me to be grateful, I suppose. Forget what you did to my mother, tell you all is forgiven and now we can start being buddies.”

  “I don’t expect anything. I did what you asked as a favor, that’s all.”

  “Is that why you didn’t tell me the truth about the bashings? Because you were doing me a favor?”

  Runyon didn’t answer.

  “You think I don’t know about Troy Douglass? Word gets around fast in the gay community. And I had to get blindsided with it from somebody else. I felt like a goddamn fool.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry.” Voice dripping scorn. “So why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure of the real motive the last time I saw you.”

  “Oh, bullshit. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about Kenny and Troy then. That’s why you wanted to talk to him alone at the hospital.”

  “All right. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think it was my place.”

  “More bullshit. Didn’t think I’d believe you is more like it. Didn’t think I could handle the truth.”

  Again Runyon was silent.

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” Joshua said. “Or blind. I know what Kenny is, I’ve known all along. Troy wasn’t his first affair since we’ve been together. And I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

  “Then why do you stay with him?”

  “I love him, that’s why.”

  “Enough to risk him giving you AIDS?”

  “That’s right. You understand what it’s like to love somebody so much you can’t stand the thought of losing them, no matter what.” His belligerent, challenging tone. “That’s how much you loved the woman you left my mother for, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t leave your mother for Colleen.”

  “But that’s how much you loved her.”

  “Yes,” Runyon said, “that’s how much I loved her.”

  “Well, at least I still have Kenny. And I’m going to keep him. He’s coming home tomorrow.”

  Nothing to say to that.

  “You should’ve told me,” Joshua said.

  “And you’re going to hold it against me that I didn’t.”

  “Well?”

/>   “Another reason to hate me, another excuse not to deal with me.”

  “I don’t need excuses. I have all the reasons I need, twenty years and a dead mother worth of reasons.”

  No use in arguing, in any more talk; they might have been living in alternate universes, for all the connection between them. Neither of them said good-bye when Runyon left. He might see Joshua again and he might not; it wouldn’t matter to their relationship either way. His son was lost to him, had been lost to him the day the Seattle court granted Andrea sole custody.

  Colleen was lost to him, too, but he had his memories of her. In that respect she was still alive, he’d have her as long as he lived and breathed. She was all he’d ever needed. She was all he’d ever really had.

  31

  Cybil opened her door, took one long look at me standing there alone, and she knew why I’d come. I could see the knowledge in her tawny eyes, in the play of emotions across her still beautiful face.

  She turned without saying anything, leaving the door open. I went in, followed her into the living room. It was warm over here in Larkspur and her air conditioner was turned on; the motor had a hitch in it that created a clunking noise every thirty seconds or so. Cybil hesitated with her back to me, then sat down in her favorite chair. I sat facing her. The air conditioner made the only sounds in the room while each of us waited for the other to speak.

  “I destroyed the manuscript,” she said finally. “Burned it last night.”

  “I figured you probably would.”

  “Do you think I lied to you about what it was, what was in it?”

  “No. It’s what you didn’t say that keeps bothering me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Come on, Cybil. I’m not an enemy, I’m family and I’m your friend. I’m also a detective. I know when I’m not getting the whole story and the one I am getting is too pat.”

  “Kerry’s satisfied. Why can’t you be?”

  “I’m not so sure she is. If this concerns her in some way—”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “If it does, she has a right to know the whole truth.”

  “Does she? I don’t think so.”

  “Those messages from Dancer in the hospital—D-Day and amazing grace. They weren’t just references to his unpublished novel. They were personal.”

  She looked away.

  “References to something that happened between the two of you,” I said. “D-Day. Occurred to me that could mean something other than the day of the European invasion. It could mean a special day in his life—Dancer’s Day.”

  The words made her flinch. “Oh, God.”

  “Did you have an affair with him in 1944?”

  “No.”

  “At any time during the war?”

  “No.”

  “After the war?”

  “No.”

  “All right, a one-night stand then.”

  “No.”

  “If you’re trying to split hairs about your relationship—”

  “He raped me,” she said.

  I stared at her.

  “You’re bound and determined to know the truth, all right, that’s the truth. It didn’t happen in June of 1944, it happened on VJ Day, 1945. Dancer’s Day—Donovan’s Day in his damned manuscript. The day he took what I’d never give him voluntarily.”

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  She stared off into space for a time before she answered. And I was glad, once she started talking, that I couldn’t see exactly what she was seeing inside her head. “There was a party at his apartment. An end of the war party—a lot of heavy drinking and unrestrained hilarity, all of us a little crazy with happiness and relief. Russ kept feeding me drinks and I didn’t have the sense to know when to stop taking them. I remember him saying he’d take care of me, see that I got home, but in the morning when I woke up I was in his bed. Naked and alone in his bed with the worst hangover of my life. I couldn’t remember a thing about what happened after the party broke up—I still can’t.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Up and dressed by then. When he came into the bedroom . . . I knew I’d been violated, a woman can tell when she’s been used that way, and I screamed accusations at him. He denied it, of course. The kind of denial with a smirk wrapped up in it. He claimed that all he’d done was take my clothes—so he could get a glimpse of what I looked like without them, he said—and put me to bed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do? It was his word against mine. Times were so different back then. Women were considered as much to blame as men, particularly in cases of acquaintance rape. And the circumstances . . . all the drinking, passing out the way I did . . . it would have made an awful scandal. I couldn’t bear that, and I didn’t want Ivan to know. It happened only a few days before he came home from Washington.”

  “You never told him?”

  “Never. You know what a terrible temper he had. I was afraid of what he might do to Russ.”

  “Or told anyone else?”

  “Not until just now. I . . . buried it. Avoided Russ as much as I could, and when I did see him I pretended nothing had happened. But inside I was a mess. Just looking at him turned my stomach.”

  I said slowly, “Kerry suspects, doesn’t she? If not about the rape, that there was something between you and Dancer.”

  No response. The air conditioner made another of its stuttering noises.

  “Cybil . . . straight out. Is she Dancer’s child?”

  “No!”

  “But she could be. The timing’s right.”

  “She’s not! Ivan was her father—Ivan!”

  Too much protest. She desperately wanted it to be Ivan, but she wasn’t completely sure.

  I said, “Dancer believed she was his. That’s what the amazing grace message meant—his sly, sick little joke. And he put it all in that unpublished manuscript, didn’t he? The rape, your pregnancy, his possible fatherhood.”

  “In graphic detail. God, he was a son of a bitch.”

  Yeah. A son of a bitch, a rapist, another slimy nightcrawler. It made me sorry, very sorry, that I’d saved his ass from the murder charge years ago, that I’d cut him slack and pitied him.

  Cybil drew a long breath before she said, “Are you going to tell Kerry?”

  “Has she ever asked you directly if she might be Dancer’s daughter, or about your relationship with him?”

  “No.”

  “Then she doesn’t believe it, doesn’t really want to know. No, I’m not going to tell her. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “. . . Thankyou.”

  “For what? I shouldn’t have come here, I should’ve let it stay buried. In fact, I wasn’t here today. We didn’t have this conversation and we’ll never have another one like it.”

  I left her and walked slowly across the landscaped grounds to the parking lot. My car had been sitting in the direct sun; it was like an oven inside. But it could’ve been two hundred degrees in there and it still wouldn’t have been as hot as where Russ Dancer was right then.