The Shape of Dread

by Marcia Muller

  “I may actually be done.” I paused, wondering how to broach the subject of the Foster case.

  “You seeing anybody?” he asked.

  “No. You?”

  “No.”

  The silence that followed was not a comfortable one. Greg watched me speculatively. I looked away, saw Willie Whelan performing one of his commercials for Rae’s benefit. She was laughing uproariously. Maybe they- No, that was too unlikely a combination.

  “Greg,” I said.

  He raised his dark eyebrows, looking hopeful.

  “Greg, there’s something I need your help with.”

  The eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “Uh-huh. Here it comes.”

  “Hear me out. You remember the Bobby Foster case?”

  “…Kid who kidnapped and killed the Kostakos girl, right? Gallagher headed up the investigation.”

  “Right. Jack Stuart’s handling the appeal.”

  “And he believes those cockeyed rumors about Kostakos not being dead.”

  “I think there might be something to them. That investigation was full of holes.”

  “Look, Gallagher wasn’t one of the department’s brightest, but-”

  “I’d really like to take a look at the case file.”

  “Why do you always have to ask me for things like this?”

  “It’s been a long time since I asked for a favor.”

  The speculative look was back on his face. “What’ll you do in return?”

  “Well, not that!” The words popped out before I could consider them.

  Greg threw his head back and laughed so loudly that several people looked at us.

  My face got very hot. “Hush,” I said, tugging on his sleeve. “I didn’t mean-”

  “You meant exactly what you said, but don’t worry-it wasn’t what I had in mind. Although I have to warn you, I’m not counting us out just yet.”

  It was the first time he’d so much as hinted that he would like to get back together, and it silenced me.

  He added, “What you can do is buy me dinner one night next week. Why don’t you come down to the hall tomorrow morning? I’m on duty, and things will be quiet.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem. If there really are holes in the investigation, I want to know.” He stood up, reached for my glass. “I’ll get us another drink.”

  Halfway to the punch bowl, however, he was buttonholed by one of the city’s watchdog activists, and I could see he would be a long time fielding her criticisms of the department’s policies. Finally I got my own drink and wandered about, talking with friends and renewing old acquaintances. And waiting for the time when we could all sing that such things should be forgot, and then go home.

  The party had begun to depress me. Every time I turned around Jack was there, looking wistful and staring at my cleavage. Hank never emerged from his office, and I was afraid he had passed out in there, but didn’t want to appear to be checking up on him. Greg’s speculative gaze kept following me around the room, and I sensed he would make some move before the evening was out. My soul mate had failed to materialize, and I didn’t so much as spot a surfer. Finally, at half past eleven, I slipped upstairs for my coat, shoved the envelope from the DMV into my bag, and went home to usher in the New Year alone.

  I had a bottle of champagne on ice-perhaps I’d subconsciously expected I’d leave the party early-and I opened it, then turned the TV to the replay of the Times Square celebration. Even that was depressing. The big red apple that had been installed there some years before in an ill-advised burst of civic pride had finally been supplanted by the more traditional golden ball that I remembered from my childhood, but it now looked tacky to me. The drunken revelers seemed asinine, and I kept looking for pickpockets in the crowd. It was a relief when the ball dropped and I made my solitary toast to new beginnings.

  And then the phone rang.

  I looked at it, afraid it might be Jack or Greg or somebody else wanting me to come back to the party. Or a maudlin, drunken Hank. Or my mother, whom I love but didn’t particularly want to speak with just then. Or worst of all, a wrong number. But it also might be something important, so on the fourth ring I answered.

  “Happy New Year,” George Kostakos’s voice said.

  I felt a surge of warmth. “Happy New Year to you, too.”

  “I wasn’t sure I should call, but I wanted to share the moment with someone-and who could be better than a fellow personality-group member?”

  “I’m glad you did call. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share it with.”

  We talked for a while, about other New Year’s Eves-good ones, bad ones, pleasant surprises, disappointments, disasters. Long after we’d hung up, the warm glow persisted.

  When I poured the last of the champagne, I again toasted to new beginnings.

  10

  On the way to the Hall of Justice the next morning, I thought about Tracy’s character sketchbook, which I’d read the previous day before the New Year’s festivities began. It contained some 50 two- or three-page descriptions of women in the young-to-middle-aged range. They were less physical descriptions than psychological profiles-reflecting the kind of insight her father possessed-and the way she turned a phrase led me to believe that had she not gone into comedy, she might have become a writer. I was particularly interested in the first entry because, having seen Tracy’s room, I suspected she might have been describing herself.

  In part, it read: No need for a physical description. She is superiorly average, almost nondescript. What stands out is her greed-for material things, for life itself. Why such neediness? Easy to blame it on her family. The mother was cold. She never hugged her. She wanted to be a mentor. But there’s no place for mentors in families. The girl needed a mother. The beloved father, for all his academic knowledge, was little better. Vague, fondly absent. Sometimes she thought him only half-alive.

  As I read the other profiles, I realized that Tracy had based a good number of her characters on actual individuals. Although she had given most fictional names, the brief physical details in two of them allowed me to recognize people I’d recently met: Kathy Soriano, Larkey’s partner’s wife; and Amy Barbour.

  The interesting portion of Kathy’s profile read: Not for her the garden club, the volunteer work, the kiss-kiss luncheon-and-fashion-show circuit. She prefers to hover on the fringes of power, a sort of exalted golfer for those who control. But she has no power herself. That belongs to the husband, the man of steel-rimmed glasses and steelier eyes. Deceptively mild-mannered, he watches his wife jump at whatever fingers are snapped and remains amused and detached. She knows this, so she indulges in petty revenge, nasty little affairs designed to wound a man who is unwoundable. A circular bind here, because he will never let her have power over him-which is what she wants the most.

  Besides the entry in another color of ink, Tracy had noted: Can’t use. Too grim, and she’s likely to recognize herself.

  Amy’s sketch was gentler, more affectionate, but most of it still damning: She’s a poor thing, clinging to each current craze, desperately hoping to define herself by externals. The tough façade easily gives way to anger, the anger to fear, then to tears. A bundle of rage, despising whoever is convenient for what her parents have done to her, but actually despising herself because she believes their neglect was deserved. She thinks if she finds someone to love, she will belong. An impossibility, because she is incapable of loving even herself.

  Tracy had merely drawn an X through the entry.

  In the latter pages of the notebook the profiles became more brief and even more grim than Kathy Soriano’s, as if Tracy had lost her ability to see humor in those around her. The last five or so did not even bear fictitious names, and the final one was only a paragraph.

  It has become her habit to milk every emotion, even her own, for personal gain. Everything is useful. She sleeps with this one and that one solely for the exotic experience. She sleeps with another
for his influence, all the while professing love. But if she does love him, shouldn’t she take steps to protect him? It’s a form of paralysis, her inability to act.

  Reflecting on the sketchbook now, I thought of Laura Kostakos’s claim that her daughter had been upset and disillusioned with herself shortly before her disappearance. If her impression was correct-and I had no reason to doubt it-it would account for the apathy and disinterest shown in these last pages.

  When I arrived at the hall, I found a parking space directly in front on Bryant Street and hurried inside. The Hall of Justice is normally a noisy, bustling place, but on this Sunday and holiday, with the courts closed and the various offices minimally staffed, it seemed strangely quiet. I found Greg in his cubicle upstairs, looking cheerful. Perhaps, I thought, he’d gotten together with the tall, admiring redhead after I’d left the party. Whatever the reason, his mind was on business this morning, and after a perfunctory inquiry about where I’d disappeared to the night before, he sat me down at an out-of-the-way desk with the bulging files on the Foster/Kostakos investigation.

  I plowed through the material for more than three hours, even though much of it was familiar because I’d read it in the files Foster’s public defender had turned over to Jack. I took notes on a few details that had previously escaped me: what Tracy had been wearing when last seen (a red llama’s-wool cape, jeans, and matching red rubber rain boots); the registration of the blue Volvo that had been stolen from the club’s lot and later abandoned in the Santa Cruz Mountains (Atlas Development Corporation); the statements of witnesses who said her performance had been off that last night, and that she had made a phone call shortly before leaving the club.

  I’d saved a stack of Ben Gallagher’s scribbled notes for last, and I went through them quickly, dismissing most as unimportant. There was one sheet that interested me, however: jottings on a phone inquiry to the DMV. Tracy had apparently received a citation for reckless driving (left turn across oncoming traffic) at a location in Napa County two days before her disappearance.

  What had she been doing up there? I wondered. And in whose car, since she didn’t have one of her own? I studied the notes more carefully, trying to decipher the crabbed writing, then remembered the envelope from my friend at the DMV, that I’d stuffed in my bag when leaving All Souls the night before. I pulled it out, found it contained a computer printout of Tracy’s driving record. But on it, the date of the final entry was different.

  Gallagher’s scribblings showed the citation as having been issued at two-ten in the morning on February eleventh. The printout said the thirteenth. If the printout was correct, Tracy had been in Napa County a good four hours after she was last seen outside Café Comedie quarreling with Bobby Foster. And around fifteen minutes after Foster returned to the club, according to the testimony of his fellow parking attendants.

  I held up Gallagher’s notes and studied the date. That wavery “1” could easily have been intended to be a “3.” The significance of the date might not have registered when Ben wrote it down; he might have been interrupted and not gotten back to the notes for some time. And by then, he would merely have read the number as “11,” two days too early to have any bearing on the disappearance.

  The location of the violation was given as Cuttings Wharf Road at Highway 121 in Napa County. I had no notion where that was, but it had to be at least an hour away from the city. The car Tracy had been driving was a Volvo, license plate number-

  I looked back at the information I’d copied down about the stolen car belonging to Atlas Development Corporation. The license plate number was the same.

  There was no written confirmation of Gallagher’s inquiry from the DMV, but that didn’t surprise me. It might never have been sent, or it might merely have been another piece of paper that got lost in the shuffle.

  One piece of paper that would have invalidated Bobby Foster’s confession. A piece of paper whose absence had condemned him to death.

  I stared at Gallagher’s notes for a moment. Although I told myself not to get too excited yet, feelings of elation spread through me. It was the first break-and a major one-in a case I’d initially thought unsolvable. I checked the date and time of the citation once more, then got up and went to the door of Greg’s cubicle. “Would you come here a minute?” I said.

  Since it was New Year’s and the next day was also a legal holiday, there wasn’t much Greg could do to check out the discrepancy. He would request verification of the date, time, and vehicle license plate number from the DMV when their office opened on Tuesday, as well as contact the highway patrol, to see if the issuing officer remembered anything about the incident. But, as he cautioned me, that was unlikely; officers give so many tickets that they’re not apt to remember one from that long ago-unless there had been something exceedingly unusual about the circumstances. My spirits refused to be deflated by that, though.

  When I left the hall and climbed into my MG, I took the packet of maps from the side pocket and found one for Napa County. Cuttings Wharf Road ran south from Highway 121, just beyond where it split off from Highway 29, the main arterial into the city of Napa and the wine-producing valley to its north. The smaller road seemed to be an accessway to the Napa River. To get there, I would take the Bay Bridge….

  There was an entrance ramp to the I-80 freeway and the bridge less than a block from the hall. I drove down to Fifth Street and joined the light flow of eastbound traffic.

  On the other side of the bay, the freeway took me past Berkeley, where I had lived for four years but now seldom visited. Beyond Richmond, the land became gentle, rolling hills; as I approached the Carquinez Strait, the hills were dotted with pastel-colored oil storage tanks, and I could see smoke-belching refineries spread out on the shores of San Pablo Bay. Another bridge took me across the strait, and at Vallejo-a bland town whose only distinctions are the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and Marine World/Africa U.S.A.-I cut over to Highway 29. The traffic was even sparser there; the businesses that fronted the road were closed for the holiday. After about ten miles, Highway 121 curved off to the northeast, toward Lake Berryessa. I stayed on the main route, crossing a high-arching bridge over the river, then took the other branch of 121 toward Sonoma.

  Cuttings Wharf Road appeared in less than a mile; a sign indicated it was the way to the Napa River resorts. There was a turn lane, the one from which Tracy would have made the dangerous left across traffic that had attracted the attention of the highway patrol. The officer would have followed her onto Cuttings Wharf Road and stopped her immediately, I thought, perhaps here in front of these small houses or next to that high-tension tower.

  A good deal of the land was planted in grapes here, black knotty vines devoid of leaves. Windbreaks of eucalyptus edged the road. I drove slowly, looking at names on mailboxes, searching for some clue as to what Tracy might have been doing here in the dead early hours of a February morning. When the road branched, I hesitated, then took the arm that went toward the public fishing access.

  There were more vineyards and a Christmas tree farm down there, as well as a number of cottages that looked to be closed up for the winter. A large boat- and RV-storage yard spread out on the right, its signs advertising groceries, bait, and beer. Beyond it was a mostly deserted parking area.

  I drove to the edge of the water, stopped, and got out of the car. The river was perhaps a hundred yards wide at that point, edged on both sides with rocks and tule grass. A couple of lonely-looking fishermen wearing heavy parkas hunched over their poles on the wharf; neither bothered to glance my way. I stood there for a few minutes, listening to the ripple of the current. Black rain clouds massed over the distant hills; closer in I saw the towering superstructure of a drawbridge, its steel gray a darker complement to the gray of the sky. Finally I turned back to the car. There was nothing here for me, no one to question. Even the bait-and-tackle shop at the water’s edge-called, so help me, The Happy Hooker-was closed for the holiday.

  I drove back the way I’d
come and took the other fork-a winding road that led through more vineyard and past small farms. The land was flatter here, the cloud-shrouded hills many miles away. I met with no other cars, and the only signs of human habitation were vehicles parked in driveways and occasional wisps of smoke from the farmhouses’ chimneys.

  The road took a sharp turn in the direction of the drawbridge I’d glimpsed earlier. Now it was built up on only the left side: a solid row of houses set close to the pavement on narrow lots that backed up to the river. To my right was a flat plain that signs announced as belonging to a salt company; a railroad spur cut across it and the road to the drawbridge. I bumped over the right-of-way, nearly in the shadow of the great clockwork structure.

  More houses hugged the river’s edge, some of them large, others mere cottages. Now I spotted a few people in the small yards, encountered a couple of joggers loping along the pavement. I slowed, continued to study mailboxes, looking for…what? I wasn’t sure.

  After about a mile, the houses were more widely spaced. The road narrowed, became potholed. Then there were several vacant lots, covered in scrub vegetation and iceplant, which rose to a levee beside the river. Beyond them I saw three more cottages set far apart from one another, and a turnaround where the road ended. I slowed in front of the first of these, a house that was screened from sight by a tall wooden fence overgrown by vines. A weathered sign attached to the sagging gate said BARBOUR.

  My breath caught and I jammed on the MG’s brakes, almost killing the engine. That was not your typical spelling of the name, I thought. Not likely to be mere coincidence.

  I left the MG next to the fence and went up to the gate. It was secured by a hasp and padlock, but its hinges had given way on one side, providing enough of an opening for me to wriggle through. Inside, a rutted driveway led through a thicket of pyracantha bushes. I followed it, batting their berry-laden branches aside.

  The cottage was weathered shingle, with a sagging front porch and an equally sagging roofline. All its windows were shuttered. To the left was a dilapidated garage, its double doors also secured by a padlock. An ancient apple tree spread its branches over the porch’s roof; as I walked toward the cottage, I breathed the sour odor of many seasons’ windfall fruit.