The Shape of Dread

by Marcia Muller

  Jack made the introductions, and Leora Whitsun sat down beside me, taking my hands in hers. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for my boy,” she said.

  I shrugged, embarrassed by what I considered undue gratitude. “I was just doing my job. I’m only happy that things may work out after all.”

  “Will work out, I know it.” She flashed us an even more brilliant smile. “I’m into the power of positive thinking today. Yesterday, when I found out about that girl’s body turning up, I was just in heaven. Been there ever since.”

  “Yesterday?” I said. “Jack didn’t even know until this morning.”

  “Leora found out at the clinic,” Jack said. “She was working intake yesterday, and Larkey’s partner’s wife came in, looking for Larkey, so she could break the news about Tracy personally.”

  Maybe Kathy Soriano had a heart after all, I thought. “Was he there?”

  “No,” Leora said. “None of our dentists work on holidays, although we always have one of the regulars on call. Anyway, somebody must of got hold of Jay, because he took the records up to Napa himself first thing this morning, so he could help with the identification.”

  I knew that forensic dentists appreciated the assistance of the subject’s own dentist whenever possible; the records, especially X rays, were open to wide interpretation, so it helped to have a person who was familiar with them on hand. I said, “How did Larkey seem to be taking the news?”

  “Poor man was upset, even though he was glad that my boy’ll go free.”

  Jack said, “Leora, I have to caution you: we’ve got a long pull ahead of us yet. What this evidence does is pave the way for a new trial. But Bobby could be convicted again.”

  She frowned. “But the body being up there in Napa proves his confession was no good. And from what you”-she looked at Jack-“told me on the phone this morning about that girl getting a traffic ticket, there wouldn’t have been time for Bobby to go up there and be back at the club before closing.”

  I said, “There’s no proof of exactly when she died. Given the state of the remains, there’s no way the medical examiner can pin it down. And even if it were possible, a jury might not believe the testimony of the parking attendants who claim Bobby came back to the club at closing.”

  Jack added, “We have no way of knowing how the prosecution might structure a new case against him.”

  Leora shook her head, earrings swinging violently. “But he didn’t kill her.”

  “We know that,” I said, “and what we’re going to do is work to find out who did.”

  For a moment she continued to look downcast but then rallied. “I just know you can do it, because you’ve already done one miracle.”

  Jack touched her shoulder reassuringly and got up to confer with the visiting desk officer. When he came back he said, “We’re on. Do you want to come with us, Leora?”

  “I better see my boy alone,” she said. “Gives him more visiting time. I don’t mind the wait.”

  Jack and I said good-bye to her and went to the segregated room assigned to us. After the door had closed and locked, he set his briefcase on the table and began taking files and a legal pad from it. He said, “How do you want to handle this?”

  “You explain to him about me finding Tracy’s body, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Just what is it you’re looking to get out of him?”

  “Bobby’s hiding something. It has to do with his quarrel with Tracy when she was leaving the club that night. I’ve an inkling of what that was all about, and I want to get him to confirm it.”

  Jack looked curious but merely nodded.

  After about ten minutes Bobby was let into the room on the opposite side of the grille. He seemed wary as he greeted Jack and me, and he held himself stiffly as he sat down. I supposed that each of Jack’s sessions with him required a certain amount of time for rebuilding their rapport. Jack explained quickly about the break in the case, cautioning him first about becoming overly optimistic. Bobby listened intently, wetting his lips and then compressing them, as if to keep his emotions contained.

  He was silent for a bit after Jack finished. Then he looked at me. “You say you’d try, and you did. Thanks. For that, and for believing me.” Quickly he glanced at Jack. “You, too.”

  Jack nodded.

  I said, “As Jack explained, we’re by no means in the clear yet. I’ve got a lot of work to do. We need to establish the facts-all of them.

  “The facts, Bobby,” I repeated. “Such as what you quarreled with Tracy about the night she disappeared. It was something that you felt would make you look even worse, wasn’t it? Something you’re so ashamed of that you’ve kept it to yourself all this time.”

  “…Don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “You do-and you’d better tell me about it.”

  “Tracy, she dead. It don’t matter now.”

  “It matters a lot.”

  He was silent.

  I reached into my briefcase and took out the notebook containing Tracy’s character sketches, opened it to the last page. “Does this sound like someone you used to know, Bobby?”

  He looked at me, then at the notebook, puzzled.

  I read, “’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.’”

  He moved his hand, as if to push the words away.

  “Tracy used people,” I said. “She let her friends confide in her, then built characters for her routines based on those confidences. When she ran out of material, she created it. Like she planned to create it by sleeping with you.”

  Jack grunted in surprise. Bobby lowered his head into his hands, his fingers pressing spasmodically against his skull.

  “If it’s any comfort,” I added, “she regretted what she’d done. She told her mother she thought she wasn’t a good person anymore, said she’d done things to hurt others.”

  He mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “Wasn’t the way she told it to me. That why we had the fight. I knew what we did was wrong. We were friends. I loved her, but not that way.”

  “When did you sleep with her?”

  “Two, maybe three weeks before.”

  “How many times?”

  “Just the once.”

  “And that Thursday night…?”

  “I wanted to talk about it, tell her no way it gonna happen again. I want to know why- She started it, see. But she wasn’t having any talk. I say we got to have it out, and she say…”

  “She said…?”

  “That it wasn’t no big deal. She done it ‘cause she was gonna use a white girl who slept with black men in her act. She wanted to know firsthand what it was like. You know how she make me feel? Like some slave put out to stud. I say that to her, and she say some ugly things. That the last I saw of her.”

  He raised his face; his eyes were bleak and moist. “Now we can’t never put it right. She dead, and I can’t tell her I’m sorry.”

  Beside me Jack cleared his throat and shifted on his chair. I didn’t feel any too comfortable myself, but I pressed on. “Okay-you fought, and then what?”

  Bobby wiped his eyes on his sleeve before he answered. “She run off, something about going to Marc’s.”

  That gave me pause; Emmons had said nothing about an appointment with Tracy that night. “He wasn’t working the bar?”

  “Guess not. He only a part-timer.”

  “Marc told me they’d broken up.”

  “Yeah, but every time she want something, she go to him. And Marc, he love her, so he give it to her, no matter what.”

  But love has its limits, I thought, and when they’re reached, it can turn nasty. “All right,” I said, “then what did you do?”

  “Just walked. Stopped for a couple of drinks.”

  “Where?”

  “Some bar, I don’t remember where.”


  “Think.”

  He thought. And shook his head. “The way it was, I’d done some crack, to get up for talking to Tracy. With the booze and all…”

  “Well, if you do remember anything, let me know right away. So you walked around, stopped for a couple of drinks, then went back to the club around closing?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to see if the other guys covered for me with Larkey.”

  “Had they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Look, I told you all this the other day.”

  “Tell me again.”

  He sighed. “I went to see this girl I know, but she not home. After that I go back to my ma’s place. She working all night at the clinic. My brothers, they off someplace. The old granny from next door, she sitting with the little ones. She the only one saw me, and that don’t help ‘cause she die the next month, before all this shit start to come down.”

  Now I sighed. He’d told it as he had before; it bore the unmistakable stamp of truth. But it wouldn’t be of much use in establishing his story.

  Bobby looked from me to Jack and back again. “Still don’t look good, huh?”

  I began gathering my bag and briefcase. “Things are better than they were last week. We’ll just take it one step at a time.” I wanted to get back to the city now, to call Stan Gurski in Napa to see if he had an identification on the remains. And I needed to check with Rae about what she’d turned up on Lisa McIntyre. And then there was George….

  Jack said, “You going?”

  “Yes. I’ll check in with you later.” We’d come in separate cars, so there was no reason for me to wait for him.

  Bobby said, “I thank you again.”

  “You’re welcome. Try not to feel discouraged. We’ll work this out yet.”

  “I wish…” He hesitated.

  “Wish what?”

  “I don’t know. All this time I been hoping you’d find her alive. So I could of got things straight between us.”

  I had no answer for that. I knew from bitter experience that every death diminishes us, but those that leave differences unresolved and things unsaid are the most painful of all.

  14

  “According to Larkey, McIntyre worked at the club the night that Kostakos disappeared. She was scheduled to have Friday and Saturday off that week, and they’re not open Sundays, so her next shift was Monday night. She never showed, never picked up her last check. In my book that’s a big coincidence….Sharon, are you listening to me?”

  I was, but with only half my attention. The rest of it was turned inward, focused on Marc Emmons. I’d called Detective Gurski that morning and relayed the information about Barbour’s visit to the cottage and Emmons’s counseling her not to go to the authorities. Gurski had said he’d request the SFPD to pick them up and hold them for questioning. But when I’d called him again after returning from San Quentin and told him Tracy might have been on her way to Emmons’s apartment the night she disappeared, he said neither had been located yet. That probably meant I’d panicked them into running, and I was now regretting my poor handling of the situation.

  In response to Rae’s plaintive query I said, “A big coincidence. You’re right. Did anyone at the club make an attempt to locate McIntyre?”

  “Larkey got worried and sent his partner’s wife around to her apartment later that week, but she’d vanished.”

  I’d been turned toward the bay window of my office, watching dusk fall over the monotonous expanse of the Outer Mission district, but now I swiveled to face Rae. She was pacing on the old oriental carpet, following its geometric pattern in precise steps. She often did that when we talked about a case; I assumed it was her way of slowing down and ordering thoughts that were frequently rapid-fire and chaotic.

  “What do you mean, ‘vanished’?” I asked. “Had she moved out?”

  “Apparently. Most of her stuff was gone. The manager told Kathy Soriano that she didn’t give advance notice and nobody saw her go.”

  “Interesting. The police should have been told about that. I want you to look into it more thoroughly. Talk to the manager, and to Kathy. Were you able to get any leads on where McIntyre went?”

  “No. There’s not much to go on. She’d recently moved here from out of state-she was originally from Oklahoma, Larkey thought-and hadn’t bothered to get a California driver’s license. I got the impression he wasn’t too surprised by her just up and going. He said a lot of would-be comedians drift from place to place.”

  “McIntyre wanted to be a comedian?”

  “That’s what he implied.”

  “Well, keep on it.”

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.” I glanced at the silent phone, then at my watch. A few minutes before five. Gurski hadn’t yet received confirmation that the remains I’d found were Tracy’s when I’d talked with him earlier; he’d said he’d call me as soon as he heard. When I’d phoned George, I’d gotten his answering machine. Wait for the beep; So-and-so will get back to you. That, and doorbells ringing in empty residences: sometimes it seemed they were all my days consisted of.

  Rae had stopped on the central block of the rug’s pattern and was looking hesitantly at me. “What?” I said, more snappishly than I’d intended.

  “Well, excuse me!”

  “Oh, come on, don’t be so touchy.”

  “Then you don’t be so much of a grouch.”

  “Sorry. What is it?”

  “Hank.”

  Now she had my full attention. “What’s wrong?”

  “He slept on the couch here last night.”

  “Uh-oh. Have you seen Anne-Marie?”

  “She hasn’t been in.”

  It didn’t sound good.

  Rae shifted from foot to foot, then said, “I was thinking maybe you should talk to him.”

  I recalled Hank’s abrupt dismissal of me on New Year’s Eve and shook my head.

  “Somebody’s got to help him, Sharon. He looks terrible. And I saw him head downhill to the Remedy right after noon. He’s still not back.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…all right. I’m not accomplishing anything by sitting here. Are you going to be around for a while?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. If Detective Gurski or George Kostakos calls, take a message and call me down there, okay?”

  Rae gave me a thumbs-up sign and left the office.

  The Remedy Lounge has long been my litmus test for discovering kindred souls among the co-op’s staff. One of Mission Street’s many working-class bars, it is totally devoid of character-unless you count cracked plastic booths and gouged formica tables, fly-specked mirrors and suspiciously clouded glassware, decrepit pinball machines and an often broken jukebox as hallmarks of individuality. But friendships at All Souls have blossomed or withered depending upon the person’s attitude toward it.

  Hank loved the Remedy; had, in fact, the dubious distinction of having discovered it. Anne-Marie liked to disparage it, but until she and Hank started having problems, she was almost always found on the next barstool. Jack and I spent a disproportionate amount of time there. Rae had felt I’d bestowed an honor upon her the first time I invited her down the hill for a drink. Even Ted-who despaired of the clientele’s staunchly heterosexual orientation-stopped in several times a week and, in fine neighborhood tradition, was tolerated by the patrons. Let others from All Souls sip their blush wines in fern-infested bars, we often declared. We knew where the good times were to be found!

  Only the times at the Remedy weren’t so good anymore. Hadn’t been for quite a while.

  Tonight the evidence of that was slumped over the bar at the far end, a glass of scotch in front of him. The happy hour was just getting started, and most of the customers were giving Hank a wide berth. Even Brian, the bartender, was keeping his distance. I waved at him and pointed to Hank, a signal that he should bring my white wine down there.

  When I slipped onto the stool next to
him, Hank didn’t glance my way. But when Brian set down my wine and took a dollar and a quarter from the pile of bills and coins on the bar, he looked up in surprise.

  “You owe me,” I said.

  “I do?” Behind his thick lenses, his eyes were vague and unfocused; he was badly in need of a shave.

  “Yes. You were downright nasty to me on New Year’s Eve.”

  “I was?”

  “Uh-huh. You ordered me out of your office, told me to go find a surfer and take him home and screw him.”

  “I did?”

  I nodded and sipped wine.

  “Jesus.” Hank ran a hand over his thick curly hair.

  “Of Anne-Marie, you said, ‘Fuck her.’”

  “Ah, I’m beginning to remember.” He took a gulp of scotch.

  “Do you want to talk about it now?”

  He was silent, turning his glass round and round between his palms. The bar beneath it was wet with spills from many earlier drinks.

  “I’ve held off asking you anything for months,” I added, “because I hoped things would improve, or that one of you would talk to me. But I can’t hold off any longer.”

  “So why don’t you ask her? I’m sure she’ll be happy to give you all the explanation you need.”

  “I plan to, but right now I want to hear your side of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my friend, dammit! We go all the way back to the old days in Berkeley. What the hell’s wrong with you, that you can turn your back on that kind of friendship?” my voice had risen; the people two stools over looked at me, then hastily glanced away.

  Hank said, “Shar, I just can’t talk about it.”

  “You talked to Jack. He gave me a brief outline way back last fall.”