Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

by Smith, Julie

  I was less afraid for the moment, and my heart slowed a little, knowing he probably wouldn’t shoot me now, not while his own life depended on my being alive.

  I had time now to think, and I couldn’t get something he’d said off my mind: “I got the reporter.”

  How was I supposed to interpret that? I shivered and tried to get it out of my mind. I needed to focus.

  The man sitting next to me was so crazy he’d shot his only daughter, but perhaps there was some ounce of sanity left in him, some tiny speck of conscience that I could appeal to. I said, “Adrienne’s dead, I think.”

  “Bullshit. I wouldn’t kill Adrienne.”

  “But there’s a very good chance you did. You shot her in the chest.”

  “Shut up!”

  He broke the silence every now and then to give me directions. Once we were safely on the Bay Bridge, heading back to the East Bay, I tried again. “How did your wife die?”

  “Suicide, goddammit. You know that.”

  “After Sean died?”

  He shook his head, but not, I realized, to signify a negative. It was the shake of sadness that people give. “It damn near killed her.” And then, realizing what he had said, he gave a mirthless hoot. “It did kill her. We had an old gun I kept around just in case. One day she ate it for lunch, right in front of me.” His head went from side to side— shake, shake, shake— as if the horror of it had loosened his neck bones.

  “McKendrick killed Sean, and he killed Carlene. Bastard!”

  “He deserved to die, I guess.”

  “Damn right he did!”

  “You must have gotten the keys to my partner’s car when you went to visit Adrienne at her office.”

  “Of course I did. It was the perfect setup.”

  “But my partner was innocent. She could have gone to prison for a murder you committed.”

  “First of all, you just said it yourself— it wasn’t fuckin’ murder. It was an execution. He killed my son, I killed him; that simple. And so what about your damned partner? I lost Sean, and then I lost Carlene. Why shouldn’t the inside lose two of theirs?”

  “The inside?”

  “Yeah, the inside. You know what it’s like to have a vegetable for a son? To spend every fuckin’ nickel you make trying to keep him alive when he’s never going to talk or think or do anything except shit his pants? Carlene insisted on that. That’s why it hit her so hard when he died. She got born again after the accident, and she just knew Jesus wasn’t going to let her down. He was going to come right down from heaven and make her baby well again. Instead, he sent a lifetime of seizures and a case of pneumonia.”

  I was losing the thread. “But what’s the inside?”

  “Everything but us, missy. That’s the inside. Having Sean like that, having to live like that made us outsiders. Look at Adrienne! The girl dresses in black all the time. She’s not normal. There’s nothing normal about that girl. How could there be? Her little brother’s skull got cracked when she was five years old. How the fuck was she supposed to be normal?”

  “Adrienne’s dead, Mr. Dunson. You got one on the outside too.”

  “Adrienne is not dead! I wouldn’t kill my own daughter.”

  Would you kill my friend Rob?

  I didn’t have the courage to ask.

  As we got off the bridge, I said, “Where to now?”

  “Just listen, that’s all. I’ll tell you a little bit at a time.”

  When I found myself looking out at the City from the East Bay hills, taking in the view of three bridges from Tilden Park, I realized where he was taking me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “We’re going to Inspiration Point, aren’t we?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because I met Jason’s brother, Michael. He told me all about the accident and how it tore his family apart; how they never recovered from it. They became outsiders, too, you know. The parents died young— and so did Jason, of course. The sister’s a dry husk of a woman, and Michael’s either an alcoholic or headed toward it.”

  “I’m supposed to care? Look at me? I’ve been an alcoholic for fifteen years! You know what my wife had to put up with? Goddammit, she was a saint.”

  “Why are we going to Inspiration Point?”

  “I’m going to kill you there.”

  No clever rejoinder came to mind.

  “You are Carlene today. She died, and you are going to die.”

  “And you?” I had an idea this was it for him as well.

  He nodded. “And I am, too.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of the Indian summer day nearly two decades ago, not much later in the season than this, when the impulse of a moment, a young boy’s desire to see his dog run free, had started a chain of events that destroyed the lives of two families. At least two of the Dunsons were dead as a result— possibly three— and so was one McKendrick. Maybe Rob was too and perhaps I would be in a few minutes. It was so senseless, all this; it reminded me of the feud in Huckleberry Finn.

  “What’s your name?” said Dunson. “I’ve forgotten.”

  “Rebecca.”

  “Today, Rebecca, you represent Carlene Dunson, who lived in horror and died in horror. It’s all I can do for her now.”

  That enraged me so much I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “You’re going to kill me for her? You really think she’d want that? The saint? You think she’d have wanted you to kill your own daughter?”

  “I didn’t kill Adrienne.” We were stopped now, in the parking lot of the Point. “Give me the keys.”

  He took them and stared at his gun a moment. “Stay in the car until I get to your side.”

  I hated myself for obeying, for remaining passive, but I couldn’t see an alternative. There was no way to slide under the wheel, out one bucket seat and into another, then out the opposite door before he got there. There was nothing to do but sit and drum my fingers, contemplate my own mortality. It made me furious, having to submit that way.

  When I did get out, he took my hand and slipped the gun in his pocket.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking you for a walk. We’re going to hold hands because I can’t keep the gun on you right now.”

  He guided me to the path that Jason and his siblings had taken the day of the accident, the path Dunson had taken as well on his bicycle, his baby son strapped on behind.

  We walked. It was a beautiful day just like that other one, and plenty of hikers were out. There were people on bicycles as well, and some dogs, safely on leashes. Such a peaceful scene, yet so much capacity for havoc. I felt a physical ache, almost, at seeing the elements laid out like this, so ironically, so vividly. Thinking about it, that fateful moment eighteen years ago, I felt tears well and I had to sniff. Dunson yanked my arm; why, I wasn’t sure. I sneaked a glance at him, and his face was hard.

  We walked. The sun was pure luxury on our skin. I had no idea how far he intended to walk, and what he would do— perhaps he would simply blow my head off without announcing his plans. One second I’d be walking under a benign sun, the next I’d be dead. I could worry about that or I could enjoy the walk. In retrospect, it seems preposterous that I didn’t worry with every atom of every cell, but we walked a long time. Perhaps endorphins kicked in. I really can’t explain it, all I can say is that I experienced a very ill-advised sense of well-being, that even under the circumstances I couldn’t close myself off to the pleasures of the day.

  My hand stopped feeling sweaty in his, started actually to feel companionable. This was, after all, another human being, and my skin was touching his. Perhaps it was the beginning of the Stockholm Syndrome, I don’t know. I just know that for the first time I was aware of Dunson as a man rather than a monster.

  “You can’t kill a person you’ve held hands with,” I blurted.

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re not a killer, I know that.”

  “Crazy bitch,” he yelled, but not at me. Looking where
his eyes were trained, I saw that a young girl had just loosed her dog, a terrier that looked as if it had ten or twelve hell-bent-for-leather miles in it before it would even start to flag. In half a second the dog was a blur.

  The girl stood transfixed, staring at Dunson.

  “You crazy, crazy, crazy bitch. You can’t let that dog run loose. Don’t you know what can happen on a trail like this?”

  The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her skin looked as if she’d grown up on the Shetland Islands, perhaps, someplace with heavy fog. Her hair was blond and short. She was slender, almost wispy. I half expected her to flee in alarm, but she only shrugged. “So arrest me.”

  For a moment I thought he would, knew he considered it. I almost encouraged him but remembered in time that he was crazy. The distraction might save my life, but it could endanger hers. He would probably train the gun on her, and might very well shoot. Go! I wanted to shout. Go catch your dog— anything. But get out of here fast.

  I didn’t, though, didn’t dare cause a scene.

  The dog came galloping back, it’s energy not even slightly spent, a force of nature set free, more gale-force wind than animal. There were bicycles on the path, as there had been that other time, but the dog made it safely back to its owner, stopped to be petted, and took off again.

  I had an idea. It was a crazy idea, and dangerous, but I was damned if I was going to walk quietly to my own execution. I looked around for what I needed, and saw it, a few steps ahead. If only the dog would return …

  “Bijou! Here, Bijou.” The girl was calling her pet, who surely must have been a puppy. It turned around more or less in mid-gallop, and came tearing back toward us. Dunson was nearly apoplectic, too intent on the dog to pay much attention to me.

  “Get that goddamn dog on a leash, or I swear I’ll make a citizen’s arrest!”

  I swooped down and picked up the stick I’d spotted. “Bijou!” Hearing its name, the dog inclined its head toward me. I threw the stick, and luck was with me— a bicycle was heading down the path, on a collision course with Bijou.

  Dunson apparently forgot me completely, forgot the whole purpose of the mission, went crazy in an entirely different way. He let go of my hand and took off after the dog, the girl and me chasing him. I tried to stop her. “Call the police! He’s got a gun. Get out of here— please!” She kept coming. But other hikers started to scatter, and the oncoming cyclist began to wobble on her bike. Bijou, completely oblivious, kept galloping, and at that moment, another cyclist came into view, coasting down a small incline, wind in his face, having a fabulous time and suffering absolutely no notion of the pandemonium in his path. The stick landed right in front of him.

  Bijou and Dunson arrived at nearly the same time, with me a millisecond behind. Though I’d never played football in my life, I launched my body at Dunson in what I imagined was a flying tackle; I caught him around the pelvis and we leaned forward … leaned, leaned, and finally fell. Bijou jumped out of the way, escaping so narrowly that I saw her brown paw come down inches from my face. The cyclist flying down the hill ran over us.

  Or at least he would have if he’d been on a motorcycle, but the bicycle overturned as soon as it hit Dunson’s shoulder, and fell on top of us, the rider barely managing not to. Still, it hurt. It hurt me, and I didn’t get the brunt of it. It hurt Dunson more, I hoped, and better yet it pinned him. I groped in his pockets, reaching for the gun.

  “Stop that, goddamn it! This woman’s trying to rob me!” But the bicycle held his right arm, and his own body had pinned his left.

  I pulled the gun out and jammed it into his lower back as hard as I could, exactly as I’d seen in the movies: “Freeze or I’ll blow your ass off.”

  Considering that he was planning to kill himself, it wasn’t much of a threat, but he froze just long enough for me to pick myself up and get to my knees. “Okay, stand back everybody. Somebody call the police.” The cyclist got out of the way. I rose carefully, the gun trained at the middle of Dunson’s back.

  He still couldn’t move without a great upheaval of metal and wheels, but he twisted his face around. “Is Adrienne okay?” he said. “Where’s Adrienne?”

  “You killed her, you fucker.” Good-bye Stockholm Syndrome; I wasn’t cutting him one inch of slack. “What did you do with Rob Burns?”

  “Rob Burns? Who’s Rob Burns?”

  “The reporter.”

  “Oh, him. He’s at my house.”

  I swallowed. “What did you do with him?”

  “What do you mean what did I do with him?”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he? You killed him.” I shouldn’t have asked. I felt dizzy, watched his face go out of focus.

  “No, I didn’t kill him. Why would I kill him? I just tied him up to get him out of the way.”

  “You didn’t kill him?” I was aware I was gibbering, also smiling, poor strategy while holding someone at gunpoint.

  “Hey, watch it. Watch it! Let me take that, okay?” The spilled cyclist was trying to get macho. I couldn’t really blame him— my gun was shaking a little— but no late-arriving Ken Doll was getting it away from me.

  “You want to try to take it?” I said. “Go ahead, make my day.” Since I avoid clichés whenever possible, I forebore to add “punk.”

  And so we waited for the cops, Dunson and me, a frozen tableau, as fascinating, judging from the thickening crowds, as the Mona Lisa.

  After about a millennium, the police came.

  A century or so after that, I persuaded them to go get Rob, and three years later, Chris joined us at the police station. A month after that they released us.

  Acting on some good news Chris had brought, we headed for San Francisco General.

  Adrienne had a hole in her shoulder, but she was out of surgery and conscious by the time the three of us could get to her.

  She was dead-white, still pretty doped up, but she managed to smile. “You’re all alive.”

  “You’re the one we were worried about.”

  Her face darkened. “Is Dad okay?”

  “He’s been arrested, but he’s fine.”

  “He shot me. My own dad shot me.”

  “He didn’t mean to, Adrienne. Your dad’s pretty out of it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Rebecca,” said Chris. “Stop making excuses for him. He’s her dad, and he tried to kill her— she’s got to live with that.”

  Adrienne nodded. “Thank you.” Some of the trouble left her face. I realized that it wasn’t the time to take the side of the man who’d done this to her— and that it must have sounded as if I had.

  “I tried to cover for him,” she said.

  “We know. You must have figured out he’d killed Jason when you noticed the keys missing.”

  “Uh-huh.” She couldn’t seem to say anymore.

  “You’re tired, aren’t you? Do you want us to leave?”

  “No!” Her voice was much stronger. “Please don’t leave me.”

  I felt for her. She was twenty-three, and she’d lost so many people, so much. She’d lost nearly everything. I hoped it wasn’t too late for her, that her life could start again.

  She said, “I found out … I don’t want to die.”

  “You took the pills rather than turn your dad in?”

  She nodded, looking grateful we understood. “And then, when he came to the hospital, I tried to get him to give himself up. And he went nuts. He didn’t know I knew, you see. So he…” She searched for the right word. “He took me.”

  “He kidnapped you.”

  “I guess so. I guess that’s what it was. He locked me in a room.” Her eyes filled, and she fought for control for a minute; then she turned to Rob. “What were you doing there?”

  “I was watching the house. Waiting for you to show up. Then I saw you two doors down.”

  “I got loose and went out the back door. I just stayed in backyards till I thought it was safe.”

  “Brilliant me.” Rob was speaking to Chris and m
e. “I hailed her, which alerted the old man.” He smiled ruefully. “Adrienne got away, but I didn’t.”

  “I had to get some gas, though, and that slowed me down.

  “Dad went through my things when he took me from the hospital. So he knew about Eddie from a journal I had. I found out where Eddie was from Tommy, who’d already talked to you and Chris, Rebecca. I guess Dad followed me to the park, and we all ended up in the Conservatory at the same time.”

  “He must have talked to Eddie’s wife. That’s how we got there.”

  Adrienne said, “Poor woman. I wish…”

  Her strength seemed to fail then. She couldn’t complete the sentence, but I knew what she wished.

  She wished she could have found someone to love her who wasn’t already taken.

  She wished she hadn’t been so desperate that her only friend in the world was somebody else’s husband.

  She wished her mom was alive, and her brother.

  She wished her dad hadn’t tried to kill her.

  She wished Jason McKendrick hadn’t let his stupid dog off its miserable leash on a gorgeous sunny day eighteen years before.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  If not for the kindness and generosity of people like the following, books simply wouldn’t get written. Many thanks to Steve Bryzman, Steve Holtz, Barry Gardner, Mary Jean Haley, Michael Patella, Jon Carroll, Brooke Smith, Officer Rose Melendez and Inspector Jim Bergstrom of the San Francisco Police Department and Sergeant John Hunt III of the Piedmont Police Department.

  Try Julie Smith’s Skip Langdon series— police procedurals with a delightfully non-conformist female sleuth. Get the Edgar-winning NEW ORLEANS MOURNING at www.booksbnimble.com or www.juliesmithbooks.com

  “Murder at the Mardi Gras and the flavor of New Orleans … old secrets are highlighted in this wonderful story that is as filled with topical information as it is with a great story about murder and history. Smith writes with authority about her city.”