Spook

by Bill Pronzini

  “— but I couldn’t live with her any more.”

  “Couldn’t live with me anymore.”

  “I told you, I tried to get custody—”

  “If that’s so... God knows what my life would be like now if you’d succeeded. What I’d be like.”

  “Not so bitter, maybe. Not so filled with hate.”

  “The only person I hate is you.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Runyon said. “Look, I know she loved you and you loved her. I know she raised you alone, did the best job she could. I just want you to see her as she really was.”

  “Sick, selfish, spiteful?”

  “And self-destructive. Flawed human being, not a blameless saint—”

  “That’s enough!” Joshua shoved his chair back, stood up so fast it clattered against the empty table behind him. “I won’t listen to any more of this!”

  Runyon watched him stomp away blindly, almost colliding with one of the waiters. The entrance door cracked like a pistol shot behind him. Some of the customers were staring at Runyon, dislike on the faces of those close enough to have overheard. One of them said loudly to another, “Poor bugger. An asshole for a father, just like mine.”

  Runyon ignored him. He sat the way he had before his son’s arrival, stiff-backed, hands palms-up on the table. He was still sitting that way when the waiter brought his sandwich and tea, set the plate and cup down harder than necessary. Runyon ignored him, too.

  It had gone badly, but then he’d expected it would. Colleen would’ve known how to handle a situation like this; she’d been tactful, seemed always to have the right words at her command. But he was a blunt man, and his way was to plow ahead doing and saying what he believed had to be done and said. Joshua needed to hear the truth, no matter how much it hurt him or added fuel to his hatred. For his own good, even if it ended any chance of a reconciliation between them. He’d never really believed that would happen anyway. Hard enough fighting through twenty years’ worth of Andrea’s lies, half-truths, and self-serving omissions to try to forge a simple understanding.

  He had no appetite, but he ate his sandwich and drank his tea. Colleen had never liked it when he or anyone else wasted food.

  It was snowing in the Sierras. Just a light dusting on the way up Highway 80 to Donner summit, and the highway was clear; but there had been heavier falls recently — the snowplowed drifts along the verges proved that — and the Chains Required signs were liable to come out before he got all the way across. He had a set of chains in the Ford; you needed chains often enough during Washington state winters. But it was a hassle putting them on and taking them off, and driving with chains made him edgy at the best of times. Long, uninterrupted drives allowed him to relax, to shut down to basic awareness.

  He made it across the summit at slowdown speed but without having to stop. There wasn’t much snow at the lower elevations, and none at all in Reno or Carson City or points south on Highway 395. It started coming down again at nightfall, near Topaz Lake on the Nevada/California border, and stayed with him across into Mono County and most of the way to Sonora Junction. Heavy enough to cover the road and retard speed, but this was high desert country, flanked by the massive Sierras on the west and smaller mountain ranges on the east; through here it was flat enough to make chains unnecessary. Still, the snowfall required sharp attention, tightened his shoulder and back muscles, put a tired grit into his eyes.

  Nearly 8:30 when he reached Aspen Creek. He could tell little about it in the darkness, other than it was small and its main drag had been plowed recently; the low drifts along the roadway were smooth and even, gleaming pure white in the Ford’s headlights. Saturday night, but there wasn’t much going on in the town: a handful of bars and restaurants open, everything else shut down. Didn’t even seem to be much in the way of Christmas lights or decorations.

  He found a motel on the southern outskirts, checked in, asked about a place to eat. The woman on the desk recommended a nearby family restaurant that was open till midnight; best food in the county, she said. Runyon doubted it. And the doubt proved out right.

  In his room he checked the county phone directory. Bridgeport was twenty miles away. The county courthouse and main library were both open on Mondays, the courthouse at nine A.M. Lee Vining, if he needed to go there, was thirty miles beyond Bridgeport.

  He went to bed, tried to sleep, couldn’t. Colleen, Joshua, Colleen. He put on the flickery TV, lay there staring at it, waiting for his body to lose its road hum and his mind to finally shut down.

  19

  Jake Runyon

  The address for Robert Lightfoot was a mobile home park built along an aspen-lined stream a few blocks from downtown Bridgeport. Older complex of weathered trailers separated by small, well-kept yards carpeted now with thin layers of snow. Its network of black asphalt streets and courtyards had been swept recently, though there were patches of ice here and there that made driving tricky. The temperature, at a few minutes before ten A.M., was only a couple of degrees above freezing.

  Instead of steps, a switchbacked handicap ramp led up to the door of the Lightfoot trailer. Strips of rough, sandpaperlike material made the footing on the ramp more or less secure. The door was set into a glass-fronted porch that offered a partial view of the distant, snow-clogged Sierras. There was a little brass knocker instead of a bell push; Runyon used it twice, didn’t get a response either time.

  When he came back down the ramp, a woman was standing on the open porch of the trailer across the narrow courtyard. Late sixties, gray-haired, bulbous body encased in a white chenille bathrobe; wool-stockinged legs as thin as pipe stems showed beneath the robe’s hem. The overall effect was of a giant shorebird with an inquisitive expression in place of a beak.

  Runyon bypassed the Ford, moved slowly across to the edge of her yard. The frigid weather had started a steady ache in his weak leg, but he didn’t favor it. He refused to let himself limp, no matter how much the leg hurt. Stubborn pride, Colleen had called it, but she’d understood. There wasn’t anything about him she hadn’t understood.

  “If you’re looking for Mr. Lightfoot,” the woman said, “he’s not home.”

  “Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”

  “After services. He’s a Methodist.”

  “Ah.”

  “They hold services later than we do, the Methodists. I’m Catholic, I’ve already been to Mass.”

  “Ah.”

  “Mrs. Doyle took him about twenty minutes ago,” the woman said. “She cares for him, you know.”

  “Nurse?”

  “Housekeeper. She comes three days a week to clean and cook, and on Sundays she takes him to church.”

  “He’s an invalid, then.”

  “Confined to a wheelchair, poor man, since his stroke. That was... let’s see, four years ago. No, five years ago.” Her breath plumed. “The older you get, the harder it is to keep track of time.”

  “Mr. Lightfoot doesn’t have any family?”

  “Well... I don’t really know. I suppose not.”

  Evasive answer. He said, “Lightfoot’s not a common name. There’s a George Lightfoot in Lee Vining. Maybe they’re related.”

  “They may be. If they are, George Lightfoot doesn’t come to visit. In fact,” she said pointedly, “Robert hardly has any visitors except for Mrs. Doyle.”

  “Is that right?”

  “He’s... well, he’s not the most neighborly person, poor man. His stroke, you know.” She seemed about to add something, changed her mind.

  Runyon asked, “How long has he lived here?”

  “Since his stroke. He used to live in Aspen Creek, but he had to sell his home. Hospital bills — he didn’t have enough insurance. It’s criminal, what they charge you for medical care these days. Especially when you’re elderly and live on a fixed income, as most of us here in Shady Wood do. Everyone takes advantage of the elderly, or tries to.” Another pointed comment. “Salesmen, for instance.”

  “I’m not a
salesman.”

  “Well, I should hope not. It’s the Sabbath, after all.”

  “Would you know if Mr. Lightfoot had a daughter, or maybe a niece, named Dorothy? Married to a man named Anthony Colton in the early eighties?”

  The woman’s face went blank, as suddenly as if it had been swept with an eraser. She said, “Why are you asking about that?” in a voice gone as icy as the courtyard asphalt.

  “Then he is related to Dorothy Colton?”

  “That terrible business again, after all these years. My Lord.”

  “What terrible business?”

  “... Don’t you know?”

  “Only that Dorothy Colton died in Aspen Creek in nineteen eighty-five. I’m here to find out how and why, if there’s any connection to a man named Vernon Snow who died the same day.”

  “Why? Who are you?”

  “Private investigator,” Runyon said. “What happened back then has some bearing on a case my agency is handling in San Francisco.”

  “What case? What agency?”

  He ignored the first question, answered the second. “Any help you can give me...”

  “You won’t get any from me,” she said. “I won’t talk about it. Not on the Sabbath. And don’t you bother Mr. Lightfoot about it, either. Show some mercy, for heaven’s sake. That poor man has suffered enough.”

  She heeled around, disappeared into her trailer. He heard the lock click as soon as the door shut behind her.

  On his way out of Shady Wood, Runyon tried his cell phone. It worked, but the signal was weak because of the mountains and the weather; he didn’t even try to make a call on it.

  Bridgeport, like Aspen Creek, was built along Highway 395. A little larger, dominated by a courthouse at least a century old, many of its other buildings flanking the icebound East Walker River. The downtown streets were festooned with wreaths and candy canes and strings of lights — a town with more life and civic pride, maybe because it was the county seat. He found a café and a public phone, put through a call to George Lightfoot’s number in Lee Vining.

  A woman answered, told him to wait one moment. He waited a hundred or so before a gruff male voice came on. Runyon identified himself, asked if he was talking to a relative of Robert Lightfoot who used to live in Aspen Creek.

  Long silence. Then, warily, “Why you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to find out what happened to a woman named Dorothy Lightfoot Colton in August of nineteen eighty-five.”

  “Christ! Dragging all that up again? Who’d you say you were?”

  “A private investigator. Dorothy Colton’s name came up in—”

  “I don’t know nothing about it. He’s my asshole cousin, I haven’t talked to him in ten years, I don’t care if I ever talk to him again. I hardly knew the girl. Can’t you just let people forget?”

  “Forget what, Mr. Lightfoot? How did she die?”

  “Talk to Bob, you want the gory details. I got nothing to say. Don’t call me up again.”

  Runyon sat in the café drinking tea and letting time pass. At noon he drove back to the mobile home park. Robert Lightfoot was back from church, and apparently alone: the upper body of a man was visible behind the porch glass, and there was no car in the courtyard until Runyon brought the Ford in there. There’d been some blue in the sky earlier; now it was all gray threaded with black, with the cloud ceiling coming down. Colder, too. More snow on the way.

  He went up the ramp to the porch door. From there he could see all of the man, in a wheelchair at the far end. A heavy robe was draped loosely across his lap, the chair turned so that he was staring straight back at Runyon. Even at a distance he looked old, shrunken, what hair he had left as white as fresh snow, his face seamed and lined and drawn in on itself like a gourd left too long to dry in the sun. But the eyes were alive, bright and unblinking. Embers glowing hot in whitish ashes.

  Runyon tapped on the glass, made a gesture: All right if I come in? The old man’s hands were hidden under the robe; he didn’t move. Another tap, another gesture. Except for the eyes, Robert Lightfoot might have been dead in the chair.

  On impulse Runyon tried the knob. Unlocked. He opened the door, inward to the left; put one foot inside and said, “Mr. Lightfoot, I’m sorry to bother you—”

  That was as far as he got, motion and words both. The old man moved more quickly than Runyon would’ve believed possible. Gnarled hands threw off the robe, came into view clutching a short-barreled pump gun; the slide made an ominous ratchety noise as he jacked a shell into firing position. The muzzle held as steady as if it were clamped in a vise.

  “One more step, mister, I’ll cut you in two.”

  Runyon stood stiff and still. The words had come out of the right side of Lightfoot’s mouth; the left side seemed to have been frozen by the effects of his stroke. They had a slurred quality, but the threat behind them was stone-hard.

  “I mean you no harm. I only want to—”

  “Know what you want, you and your goddamn agency.” That information had to’ve come from the bird woman across the way. Leave Lightfoot alone, show some mercy, she’d said, and then shown him none herself. “Won’t get it from me.”

  “If you’ll just let me—”

  “Only thing I’ll let you do is leave. Back out, go away, don’t come back. You got five seconds.”

  Runyon backed out, pulling the door shut as he went. Through the glass the hot eyes and the pump gun’s muzzle followed him down the ramp and across to the Ford. He got in without looking back, started the engine, drove away.

  Bad scene in there. He’d been under a gun before, but not in a long time — not since the day he and Ron Cain chased the homicide suspect and Ron ended up dead in the car smash. The tension in him was the same, like sparking wires, even though the danger had been fairly small. It would be a while before it eased out of him.

  But he’d learned one thing in those few seconds, cemented one connection.

  The man who’d called Human Services in San Francisco, the man with the slurred voice, was Robert Lightfoot.

  If you wanted information in small towns off the beaten track, taprooms and taverns where the locals hung out were the places to get it. Pick one, nurse a drink, settle on a likely candidate, then play the schmooze game and work, the conversation around to where you wanted it to go. He’d developed a knack for it. Or maybe it just came naturally. He’d been the regular type once — good listener, easy rapport with strangers. When he was on the SPD, even after the accident, and pretty much right up until God or whoever pulled the plug on Colleen’s life and his along with it.

  Back in Bridgeport he spotted a Victorian-style inn on the river, a former stage stop, he found out later, for a place called Bodie that had once been a mining boom-town and was now one of the few remaining authentic ghost towns in the west. The bar lounge was moderately crowded, probably because they had an NFL game on a battery of TVs. He’d been a rabid football fan once, something else he and Colleen had shared. Went to the Dome for Seahawks games whenever they could cadge tickets or afford scalpers’ prices, seldom missed one on television. She’d get so excited in the heat of action that her face would turn bright red and she’d start screaming — in the stands or at home, didn’t matter where. He still watched games on Sunday, but now it was just something to do to pass the time. All his zest for the game was gone. One more on the list of things lost and gone forever.

  Most of the locals were watching the game. He picked a loner like himself, an old-timer down at one end of the bar who didn’t seem to be a football fan. Spent the better part of an hour and the price of two drinks schmoozing and pinching out bits and pieces of what had happened in Aspen Creek in 1985. But that was all they were, bits and pieces. Just enough to raise more questions.

  At halftime he left and drove through a moderate snowfall back to Aspen Creek, where he should’ve gone in the first place. Fewer watering holes there, and the first one he tried was a bust. The second, Magruder’s Bar and Grill on a
street off 395, looked like it would turn out the same until a middle-aged, red-bearded giant in a lumberman’s jacket and overalls walked in.

  Everybody in there knew the giant, treated him in the raucous way small-towners reserved for local characters. His name was O’Sheel. Friendly, opinionated, profane, with a fondness for pale ale in schooners and the sound of his own voice. All it took for a stranger to prime the pump was to be a good listener and the magic words, “How about another beer?” He wore a lot of local hats: fisherman, wilderness guide, construction worker, handyman. Talked about trout fishing, cross-country skiing, the restoration of Mono Lake, how much he loved the outdoors and hated politicians, taxes, polluters, city-bred environmentalists, the Bureau of Land Management, off-road vehicles, and watered-down beer. And eventually he talked about what Runyon wanted to hear.

  “Oh, yeah, sure, I remember that business,” he said in his rumbling voice. “Summer of ’eighty-five. You get a lot of whacko shit down in the cities, San Fran, L.A., but not up here. Big goddamn deal up here. People didn’t talk about nothing else for weeks, months. Still talk about it, some of us, because it ain’t finished yet. All these years, it still ain’t finished.”

  “What happened, exactly?”

  “Three people killed, that’s what happened. Boom, boom, boom, blew ’em away just like that one afternoon over on Sweetwater Street. Colt forty-one caliber semiauto, now that’s some piece, that baby does damage. Blew one of the guys’ heads half off, the way I heard it.”

  “Who did? Who was the shooter?”

  “Man named Colton, Tony Colton. Sold insurance for Ed Bateman right here in town. I knew him. Hell, everybody around here did. Nice guy, quiet, never any trouble, you’d’ve thought he was the last one’d go off his nut and start blowing people away. But you never know. Give a man enough reason, you or me, any man, he’s got the potential. It’d been me, my old lady, maybe I’d’ve done the same thing. Prob’ly not, prob’ly I’d just beat the crap out of her, but who knows? You don’t ever know what you might do until you come right up against it, am I right?”