Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

  Murdered her intentionally or accidentally and then, under cover of darkness, took her body somewhere to get rid of it. Or maybe . . .

  The garage, I thought, her car?

  I went out there, used my knife to snap the lock on the rear door. The interior of the Geo Prizm was as deserted as the house. So was the trunk. She hadn’t been put anywhere else in the garage, either, at least so far as I could tell without disturbing the welter of stuff that clogged its other half.

  Back into the house, into the bedroom. Something I’d noticed earlier drew me into the walk-in closet—a pile of soiled clothing on the floor, all of it a man’s. Underwear, socks, two dress shirts. One of the shirts was a blue pinstripe. Dumped here recently, because Sally Chehalis kept a neat house, wouldn’t have allowed dirty laundry to sit smelling up the closet for more than a week. He’d come back yesterday, all right.

  I poked through the rest of the closet, still not touching anything. None of his luggage was there. But hanging from his side of the closet was a full complement of suits, sports jackets, clean shirts. I went out and knuckled open the drawers in the dresser. His were mostly full of underwear, socks, a jewelry case that contained a few hockable items.

  Whatever had happened here and wherever he’d gone afterward, he wasn’t running. He’d repacked his bags with a couple of days’ fresh clothing at the most. Sooner or later, he intended to return.

  Try it this way: He gets rid of his wife’s body and then heads out on the road for another day or two, sees clients, reestablishes a normal routine. Then he figures to come home, clean up the mess or maybe just leave it as is, report her missing, and bluff his way through the investigation into her disappearance. Any man who had gotten away with rape and murder for two decades was cold-blooded and calculating enough to try a trick like that and to expect it to work.

  It’s what he’s doing, I thought. He killed her and it’s the only way short of running that he can get himself out from under.

  And what am I going to do about it?

  Choices occurred to me; I didn’t like any of them. If I reported what I’d found to the local police, I would have to admit I’d entered the house on an illegal trespass—a felony that could cost me my license if they wanted to get hard-nosed. Reporting it anonymously would bring them out here, but it wouldn’t stir them to much action; a face-to-face detailing of my suspicions would be necessary to accomplish that. Not reporting it at all was out of the question.

  There was one other possible way to handle it. I went out to where a telephone sat on a small table in the living room, hunted through the table’s single drawer. Nothing. Then I tried a rolltop desk fashioned to resemble an antique. Nothing there either. In a drawer under the wall phone in the kitchen was where I found what I was looking for: a spiral-bound address book.

  Most of the entries were in what I took to be Chehalis’s handwriting. Med-Equip accounts, tradespeople, professional services; if he had any friends, the book didn’t reflect the fact. Sally Chehalis didn’t have many either. Only four women’s names were listed in a different, feminine hand. Under “S” I found an entry marked “Sis,” no other name, and an address and phone number in Morgan Hill. The address looked to be the same one I’d gotten from the insurance company for Sally Chehalis’s sister, Alice Goldman. I copied the number down in my notebook. And in case “Sis” couldn’t be reached, I added the numbers of two women with Los Gatos addresses.

  Dusk was fading to black when I left the house. Under the dark cover I got away from there all right, without being noticed. Or at least I didn’t see anybody who might be paying attention.

  A THIRD OF A MILE from Eastridge Road I came on a small shopping center. I wheeled in there, parked under one of the arc lights, and used my mobile phone to call the Morgan Hill number. On the fourth ring a woman’s voice answered, sounding harried. I could hear kids yelling in the background.

  I said, “I’m trying to reach a relative of Sally Chehalis. Are you her sister?”

  “Why, yes, that’s right. Alice Goldman. What . . .”

  I told her my name and profession. And then lied a little, to protect myself; but it was the only lie I was going to tell her. “I saw your sister at home on Sunday, on a matter I’ll get into in a minute. She was badly upset and I wanted to call somebody to calm her down. She talked me out of it, but not before I found your number in her address book.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “You’re a detective?”

  “My office is in San Francisco.”

  “But why—” She broke off because the kids were still abusing each other; I heard her shout at them to shut up. Then she said to me, “Why are you calling now? Has something happened to Sally . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. Have you heard from her in the past couple of days?”

  “No. Not a word.” Now there was alarm in her voice. “What’s this all about? You’d better tell me.”

  I said, “I first spoke to your sister last week, in the course of an investigation that involved her husband. On Sunday I drove down to see her in person. I found her in the backyard, burning a scrapbook she’d found.”

  “Scrapbook?”

  “Belonging to her husband and linking him to a series of crimes. Very serious crimes.”

  “Oh my God. What’s he done?”

  “Felony assault. Rape. Possibly murder.”

  “Oh my God!” Then, with a flare-up of anger: “That bastard, that bum . . . I told Sally to leave him the first time he laid a hand on her, I told her he was capable of killing her or somebody, but she’s so stubborn, so loyal, she wouldn’t listen . . .”

  “He abused her?”

  “More than once. The first time six years ago. Choked her, she had bruises on her neck, twice I saw bruises....”

  “Mrs. Goldman, I was at her home again a few minutes ago. It’s closed up and no one answered the door, but her car is in the garage.”

  “You don’t think he did something to her . . . ?”

  “It’s possible. He’s been on the road, wasn’t supposed to return until later tonight. But he may have come back early, and if she told him about finding the scrapbook ... Do you have a key to her house?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have one.”

  “Would you meet me there? As soon as you can? I’ll explain the rest of it then.”

  “Half an hour,” she said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  DEFALCO SAID, “HOW’D IT GO?” He must have been nesting on top of the phone; the circuit had barely opened when he snatched up on his end. “Is the wife willing or not?”

  “I didn’t talk to her. Situation just got worse.”

  “Worse how?”

  “I think he may have killed her.”

  “Holy Mother.”

  “So the lid’s got to come off tonight. For one thing, she may not be dead. For another, there’s enough probable cause now for a full-scale investigation.”

  “You haven’t called the police yet?”

  “No. I had to bring the wife’s sister in to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “No choice. I’m meeting her in half an hour.”

  “Enough time for me to join you? Remember our deal.”

  “Not enough time, no, and I can’t wait.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Los Gatos.”

  “Shit, that’s an hour and a half drive!”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get here in time to back me up when the questions start flying.”

  “Where in Los Gatos?”

  “The Chehalis house.” I gave him the address and directions.

  “Chehalis. Is that the bugger’s name?”

  “That’s it. Stephen Chehalis. Last name’s spelled C—”

  “Wait a second,” he said, “I want this on tape. Recorder’s right here.... Okay. Talk fast, paisan, and don’t forget any relevant details.”

  I’D BEEN WAITING in front of the Chehalis house for five minutes when Ali
ce Goldman arrived. She wasn’t alone; she’d brought her husband with her. Smart move, under the circumstances. She was short and on the frail side and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds; he was two inches over six feet, beefy, and looked as though he could handle himself in a brawl. He demanded to see some identification, then wanted proof that I wasn’t carrying a weapon before we went inside.

  The mess in the bedroom and blood in the bathroom shook them both. But Mrs. Goldman was the kind of person who met a crisis head-on; anger burned even more strongly in her than fear. She charged through the rest of the house, then out to the garage as I’d done earlier. When we were finished looking in there she said flatly, “Sally’s dead. That bastard killed her.”

  “Al,” Goldman said, “you don’t know that. Looks like somebody was hurt, but maybe—”

  “She’s dead. He killed her.”

  “Why would he kill her and take her body away?”

  I told him why. Then I explained the whole story, keeping it brief but not withholding anything and not glossing over the uglier parts. Goldman seemed stunned by the enormity of it. He kept shaking his head, as if he was having difficulty accepting the fact that a man he knew personally could be guilty of such crimes. Not so Mrs. Goldman. She accepted it, as she’d accepted the apparent death of her sister; used it to fuel her hatred for Chehalis.

  “If he walked in here right now,” she said, “I’d kill him. I’d put a knife in his heart.” She meant every word.

  She was the one who called the police. It was her place, and she did a better job of it than he would have: calm, straight to the point. And she didn’t omit the fact that her brother-in-law was a suspected serial rapist and multiple murderer, which ought to bring the big guns in a hurry.

  It did. The place was swarming with cops inside of fifteen minutes, plainclothes and uniforms both. The people in charge were a fiftyish man named Butterfield and a fortyish woman named Talley; I never did get their ranks straight. There were preliminary questions, most directed at me. Then, for the time being, they stashed the three of us in the kitchen.

  DeFalco showed up while we were waiting. At first the law didn’t want to let him in; when he convinced them he had a good reason to be there, they made him cool his heels along with the Goldmans and me. He had his reporter’s face on, very aloof and businesslike, but underneath I could tell he was happy as a clam. Old Joe craved the limelight more than most newspaper hacks. He was a man born a generation too late, the same as me: he’d have been right at home in the muckraking thirties, like a character in The Front Page.

  My emotional state was more in tune with Alice Goldman’s —bleak and angry. I kept thinking about Sally Chehalis, the pain I’d seen in her eyes on Sunday. About the Sacramento nurse who had lost her unborn child, the dead woman in McKinleyville, the murdered coed in Chico who had been violated after death. I believed in the judicial system, the American way of justice; I believed that every man and woman has the right to a fair trial; I was fundamentally opposed to the concepts of capital punishment and vigilante law. But there was a part of me, when confronted by unhumans like Stephen Chehalis, that leaned toward the old-fashioned, terrible-swift-sword variety of retribution. The Chehalises of the world had shown no mercy; why should mercy be shown to them? Put a gun to his head as soon as he was found and blow him away—clean, swift, sure.

  But that was a form of barbarism too. Indulge in it as a society and the entire society becomes barbarous. I knew that better than most, because once, only once, I had given in to that part of my nature and meted out a swift and merciless justice of my own—and it still frightened and sickened me to remember it. I had done it for the victims, all the victims, but what good had it done them? They were still victims. The only thing I’d accomplished was to diminish myself. In my eyes, in rational society’s eyes, in God’s eyes.

  Butterfield and Talley again. More questions, most directed at the Goldmans this time; DeFalco and I were being saved for later. Inside of twenty minutes everybody was outside, the house was being locked up again, and the uniformed cops had begun dispersing the crowd of neighbors that had gathered. The Goldmans were sent home. Police headquarters was where DeFalco and I went, each of us driving his own car.

  Our grilling there lasted two hours, with the chief himself, Talley, Butterfield, and two other officers in attendance. We told them everything we knew. In repetitive detail. The only hesitation I had was in giving them Melanie Aldrich’s name, but there was no way I could withhold it. I settled for asking to have her and her name kept out of the investigation, so she’d never have to know the truth about her biological father.

  Talley said, “You’re sure she knows nothing about Chehalis?”

  “Positive. She has no idea anybody by that name exists.”

  “Then we’ll keep her out of it. But we can’t stop the media from printing the story if they get hold of it.”

  She looked pointedly at DeFalco as she spoke. He said, “I won’t print her name. Or give it out to anybody.” To me he said, “I’ll word my story so there’s no mention of the adoption search. You turned up Chehalis’s name in the course of a routine investigation—that’s all I’ll say.”

  The chief said, “You won’t print anything until we give you the go-ahead.”

  “When will that be? When you have him in custody?”

  “We’ll let you know.”

  “Uh-huh. But I get the go-ahead first?”

  “If you continue to cooperate.” Eye shift to me. “That goes for you too—complete cooperation.”

  He was referring obliquely to the fact that DeFalco and I hadn’t come straight to his department with our suspicions; that we’d sat on them for a couple of days while we investigated on our own. We’d explained why, but it still seemed to rankle him. Nobody had said that Sally Chehalis might not be missing and presumed dead if we’d come in immediately; the unspoken inference was there, however. I didn’t buy it. They might have listened, but they damned well wouldn’t have acted without probable cause. Still, it had a distancing effect that kept them hammering at us longer than they might have otherwise.

  When we were finally allowed to leave, it was with the usual admonition to keep ourselves available. Outside in the parking lot DeFalco said sourly, “Keep myself available. Gee, now I’m going to have to cancel my around-the-world luxury cruise.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  He sighed. “It’s not going to be easy to keep quiet about this.”

  “Easier than before. Talley and Butterfield will take the pressure off with those police sources of yours.”

  “Not with my other sources. Suppose another news hawk gets wind of this and breaks it before I do? There goes my best shot at a Pulitzer.”

  “I feel for you, Joe.”

  “Besides,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm, “I’m itching to write the story. I’ve already got the first three paragraphs done in my head. How long you think it’ll be before they bust Chehalis?”

  “Depends. If he is planning to come home, and if he doesn’t get a whiff first of what went down tonight, he should be in custody sometime tomorrow. But if he’s running or starts running ... hell, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Soon, that’s all I ask.”

  “Soon,” I agreed, but not for the same reason as DeFalco. The quicker Chehalis was behind bars, the less likely he’d be to add another victim to his list.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE FIRST CALL ON WEDNESDAY morning came at nine forty-five, from a lieutenant of detectives on the Carmichael P.D. I had two more before noon: an investigator with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, the agency that had jurisdiction in the McKinleyville rape and murder case, and a detective on the Portland force. They all wanted the same thing: a firsthand rehash of what I’d dug up on Stephen Chehalis and any information I might have forgotten or left out of my report to the Los Gatos authorities. I gave them full cooperation, but I hadn’t forgotten or left anything out.
I’d made sure of that.

  After lunch it was more of the same: four calls from various other California and Oregon police agencies. One of the callers was the Walnut Grove cop whose name had been in the six-year-old clipping scrap, Robert Arliss. Another was with the state bureau of investigation in Sacramento.

  The number of calls and intensity of the questions and comments passed by the various officers was reassuring. Arliss as much as confided that his office had enough physical evidence in their case file to make a DNA-test conviction a virtual certainty; the Portland cop alluded to the same thing. The way matters were shaping up, there wasn’t a criminal lawyer in the country who could keep Stephen Chehalis from rotting in prison for the rest of his unnatural life.

  DeFalco stopped by at four-thirty. He was in his Type-A mode: tightly wound and manic. “Why the hell haven’t they picked him up yet?” he said. “Half the cops in two states must be looking for him by now.”

  “Maybe they did.”

  “Did? Did what?”

  “Pick him up. You and I aren’t exactly on top of the list of people to notify.”

  “You’re right. Get on the horn to Los Gatos, will you? I’d do it, but you know how they are about the media.”

  “They don’t like me much either right now.”

  “You seemed to get along with Talley. Call her.”

  So I called Vivian Talley. No, she said, as far as she knew Chehalis hadn’t been located yet. He’d checked in at Med-Equip yesterday afternoon, told them he would be seeing a customer in Marysville late in the day, as scheduled, and then might stay out on the road an extra day and pay a call on another customer in Red Bluff; he expected to be back in San Jose no later than one o’clock Thursday. He’d kept the Marysville appointment but the Red Bluff account hadn’t seen or heard from him. Nobody had seen or heard from him since five yesterday afternoon—nobody that was owning up to the fact, anyway.

  “Sounds like he might’ve been tipped,” I said.

  “That’s our take on it too. One of his neighbors or somebody at Med-Equip, probably by mistake. I’d bet on a neighbor. He calls one to see if it’s still safe to come home, the neighbor says what was all that commotion at your house or why are the police so interested in you, and he knows it’s all coming apart.”