Mourners: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery)
Page 15
One of the faceless women said, “Who’s that at this hour?”
I said, “What? What?”
Kerry said, “The phone, there’s somebody on the phone.”
And I was sitting up in bed, damp and disoriented, part of the sheet in a stranglehold around my neck. The lamp on Kerry’s nightstand was on; the light made me squint. I fought off the sheet and blanket, fought off the remnants of the dream, and got my hand on the phone and finally shut off the noise.
I growled something half coherent into the receiver. A woman’s voice said my name, then rushed into an apology for calling so late, and then there was a jumble of words that didn’t signify. What did come through was the emotion behind them: they were soaked in the raw fluids of panic.
“Slow down,” I said, “I can’t understand you. Who is this?”
“Lynn Troxell.” Raggedy breath. “Oh God, I didn’t know who else to call. . . .”
That got rid of most of the sleep fuzz. “What is it, what’s happened?”
“It’s Jim, he’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“A few minutes ago. I woke up, he wasn’t in bed, and then I heard his car. I don’t know how he could have found the keys but he must have, I hid his spare set, too. . . .”
The red numerals on the nightstand clock swam into focus: 12:57. Sunday night, Monday morning.
“He’s going to kill himself,” she said.
Christ! Completely awake now, the night sweat cold on my back and under my arms. “What makes you think that?”
“He left me a note.”
“Saying what, exactly?”
“ ‘I’m so sorry for all the pain. Please forgive me.’ ”
“Nothing else?”
“Just ‘all my love’ and his signature. He never writes notes, it can’t be anything but . . .” Another raggedy breath. “I thought he was all right, he seemed all right. Drew talked to him for a long time this afternoon and said he seemed all right . . . oh God, I don’t know what to do . . .”
“Have you notified the police?”
“I wanted to, but . . . no, I called Drew first and he said the note isn’t enough for them to do anything, it’s too vague, it doesn’t mention suicide. . . .”
He was right about that. A 911 call wouldn’t have bought her anything but frustration and more panic.
“He thought maybe the place on Potrero Hill, he’s on his way there now, but what if Jim isn’t there? I can’t think where else he might have gone. . . .”
I could; I had a better idea than Casement’s. I said, “I’ll see what I can do to find him, Mrs. Troxell.”
“Will you? I know it’s not your problem anymore, but I didn’t know who else to call. . . . You’ll let me know right away, no matter what?”
“Right away. You have my cell phone number if you hear anything first. Meanwhile, try to stay calm.”
“Calm,” she said. “Yes, all right, yes.”
Kerry had picked up enough from my end of the conversation to understand what was going on. She said as I yanked on my pants, “Is there anything I can do?”
“No. One of us chasing around in the night is enough.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“If there is,” I said, “it shouldn’t take long to find out.”
Ocean Beach.
That seemed the most likely place he’d head for. Not Potrero Hill. Troxell was a neat, almost fastidious individual, conscious of the feelings of others; he wouldn’t want to clutter up the Lindens’ lives by doing the dutch in their backyard. His wife had said yesterday that he was drawn to water, and the beach, the Pacific were a magnetic pull; he’d already been out there twice this week. Walk into the ocean, maybe, let the undertow drag him out; hypothermia would make the drowning fairly quick. Neat, clean. From his point of view, anyway.
Suicide. Building to it, planning it all along. That was the reason for his call Saturday evening. In his careful way he’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t still being watched, followed. The thank-yous and explanations had been sincere enough but nothing more than camouflage. Hell, I’d known it at the time. Refused to admit it to myself because I couldn’t be sure and there hadn’t been anything I could do about it. You can’t stop a person from plotting to do away with himself, any more than you can stop a person from plotting a crime, until it reaches the commission stage. Something I could do now, if it wasn’t too late, but even then it might only be a stopgap measure. If a suicide case is determined enough, nobody—not a loved one and esspecially not a stranger—can prevent him from going through with it sooner or later. Still, you have to try. As long as he’s alive there’s hope he can be saved. Even if there wasn’t you’d still have to try.
As soon as I was in the car and rolling I used my cell phone to call Jake Runyon. I didn’t like dragging him out of bed, but it was necessary and I knew he wouldn’t mind. A night call woke him up a lot faster than it did me; he was alert and responsive within seconds. Three sentences were enough to tell him what was going down and what I suspected.
He said, “Lloyd Lake’s another possibility. That’s where he saw the abduction.”
“Christ, I didn’t even think of that. You’re right, he might be drawn back there. But I still think it’s the beach.”
“I’ll swing through the park first and check it out.”
“Okay. I’m on Portola now, heading for Sloat, so I’ll cover the south end of the beach. If he’s not at Lloyd Lake, you head for Cliff House and work on down the Great Highway.”
Traffic was light; I drove faster, risked running one of the lights on Portola Drive. There might still be time. If Troxell didn’t act immediately; if he stuttered out there on the beach, like the ones who crawl into bathtubs with a razor blade often do with their hesitation cuts. It all depended on how intent he was, how far he’d stepped over the line.
Sometimes you make the right guesses. The first place I went to was the beachfront parking area at the foot of Sloat Boulevard, because it was the closest section of Ocean Beach to both St. Francis Wood and Diamond Heights, and because it had been Troxell’s Thursday night destination. His destination this time, too, by God. The only car on the sandswept asphalt out there was his silver BMW.
I almost missed it; would have if I hadn’t driven through the horseshoe turnaround at the entrance and into the lot itself. It was drawn in close alongside the old building that housed public restrooms, all but the rear deck invisible in the thick shadows. I cut in next to it, dragged the six-cell flashlight from under the dash before I jumped out.
He hadn’t bothered to lock the driver’s door. I leaned in, flashed the light front and back. Empty.
The tide was in and the wind was up as it had been all week; the breakers rolling in off high, choppy seas made a steady roaring noise like the oncoming locomotive in my dream. The pavement was drifted with sand; I had to pick my way across to the beach side of the lot to keep from slipping. The moon was out, but high running clouds kept hiding and then revealing it—shine, dark, shine, dark, like an erratic neon sign blinking on and off. In the seconds it shone, I could see the beach for a few hundred yards in both directions. He wasn’t on it. Nothing was on it, not even a seabird.
I buttoned my overcoat collar to the throat, pulled on the gloves I’d jammed into a pocket, and climbed over the wire guardrail. The earth shelved off abruptly here, in a series of short drop-offs and rock-and-sand declivities; I used the flash to pick my way down onto the beach. The wind, heavy with the smell of brine, flung stinging grit into my face and eyes as I slogged through loose, dry sand. Down here the crash of surf was thunderous. Big waves, white-foamed and angry-looking, spread fans of dirty spume over two-thirds of the beach’s width.
If Troxell had walked out into that pounding surf, he’d have been dead in less than a minute. Sucked out by the undertow and carried away, what was left of him to be deposited here or somewhere else up or down the coast when the sea was calm again.
Salt spray caked my face now. Particles of sand had gotten into my left eye and set up a burning so sharp I had to keep it squeezed shut. The wind cut through the layers of clothing I wore, seemed to lay a sheeting of ice over my flesh. Give it up, I thought, before you catch pneumonia. But my legs weren’t listening. They kept slogging me forward, beyond the entrance to the parking lot toward the skeletal remains of an old pier farther up the beach.
The wet sand remained smooth, unbroken.
A sudden gust blew up a whirlwind of sand; I managed to get my head and body turned in time to keep most of it out of my face. In that same moment the moon appeared from behind a rampart of clouds. When I opened my good eye I had a clear look at the series of low, grass-crested dunes that stretched away close to the Great Highway. The moonglow painted their slopes white—empty white, all except one. That one, close beyond the parking area, had a blob of something dark and elongated on it about halfway up.
I squinted, moving forward to try to get a better look. Man-sized blob, a shorter elongation jutting out to one side that might have been a leg.
The moon vanished again. Darkness shrouded the dunes; all I could see over there was the backwash of lights along the the Great Highway and Sloat Boulevard. The flash beam wasn’t strong enough to reach that far. I tramped that way as fast as I could, the wind giving me a good push from behind. By the time I neared the foot of the dune I was panting and shivering. I switched on the six-cell again, laid its light on the back-sprawled shape.
Too late. Already too late when I arrived at the beach, by maybe fifteen minutes.
Troxell’s eyes were open wide, their view of eternity obscured by a film of blown sand. Small wound on his right temple, the blood still glistening wet there and where it was spotted on the sand near his head.
I’d been wrong about him letting the sea take him out. That hadn’t been his intention at all. He’d walked straight over here from the parking lot—the single line of his footprints was still visible—and sat down on this sheltered dune with the highway hidden behind him to avoid any possible interference. And then, for whatever skewed reasons, the man who’d been a vocal advocate of gun control had blown his brains out with a small-caliber pistol.
22
I said, “Poor miserable bastard.”
Runyon said, “At least he’s not hurting anymore.”
“That sounds like you approve of suicide.”
“Not a matter of approval. Let’s say I understand the impulse.”
I let that go. Maybe he’d entertained the idea himself after his wife’s slow, painful death; I did not want to know. Suicide was an alien concept to me. I’d seen too much death, spent too much time trying to keep myself and others alive; life was too important to me to see it thrown away on a selfish and cowardly act. Maybe Troxell wasn’t hurting anymore, but his wife damn well would be for a long time to come. As far as I was concerned he’d had no right to do that to someone he professed to love, to any survivor who had to keep on with the hard business of living.
We were standing on the dune, on either side of what was left of James Troxell, both of us with flashlights. I’d notified the 911 dispatcher before calling Runyon, but he had been up by the Beach Chalet, not far away, and he’d gotten here first. Nonemergency 911 calls take a while to bring a response, even late at night, in these emergency-glutted times.
He put his light on the small weapon in the dead man’s hand. It threw cold glints off the metal frame. “Twenty-two semi-auto.”
“Target pistol.”
“Yeah. Looks new.”
“Bought for the occasion,” I said. “He didn’t own a gun before. Didn’t like guns, from what I was told.”
“Funny way to take himself out then.”
“Making some kind of statement. Or because it was the quickest way.”
“Takes guts to shoot yourself in the head,” Runyon said.
“Not if you want to die badly enough.”
Neither of us held our lights on the dead face, but I could see it well enough in the overspill from where the beams were pointed. I shut mine off, turned my back to the corpse. The sea continued to hammer at the beach, the larger breakers throwing up jets of faintly luminescent mist as they came crashing down. The wind seemed stronger now; it had erased Troxell’s footprints, was filling in most of mine and Runyon’s. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my nose and ears when I touched them.
Runyon asked, “So where does this leave us on the Dumont homicide?”
“Good question. I’ll talk to Jack Logan first thing in the morning. He’ll chew my ass for allowing the weekend grace period, but if we’re lucky that’ll be the end of it. We’re covered as long as the Lindens don’t say anything when the law comes around and finds what you found.”
“They’ll keep quiet. Last thing they want is trouble.”
“No pressure on them to give up that key, right?”
“No. I was careful about that. There’s no reason for them to turn on me.”
“Unless the illegal rental angle comes out some way. Never know how people will react when their little scams blow up in their faces. Sometimes it makes them vindictive as hell.”
Runyon had nothing to say to that. He knew the truth of it as well as I did.
I watched the ocean for a time, the constant shifting from oily black to light-striped gray as the moon and the running clouds played around overhead. “I wish I knew if Troxell knew any more about the homicide than he wrote down.”
“We’ll never know, now.”
“What’s your guess?”
“He didn’t.”
“Mine, too. But that could just be wishful thinking.”
Other sounds rose above the pound of the surf: more than one vehicle turning off the Great Highway into the horseshoe entrance to the parking lot. Swirls of red light put a bloody shine on the sky in that direction.
“Here we go,” I said.
We spent another long, cold hour and a half up there with uniformed cops and then a team of plainclothes homicide inspectors, none of whom I knew but one of whom, the older of the inspectors, recognized my name. I did most of the talking. There wasn’t any hassle, just the usual time-consuming, crime-scene grind of repetitive Q and A—all very routine and professionally handled. An ambulance showed up halfway through and a pair of attendants slogged off and then slogged back with the clay shell of James Troxell encased in a black body bag. That was all very routine and professional, too. No muss, no fuss. Every man who dies in the city, no matter who he is or how he ends his life, is treated the same: get the remains under wraps and on ice as quickly as possible, so the living don’t have to face yet another reminder of their own mortality.
I asked the older inspector if it would be all right if I notified the widow. I wouldn’t have done it if this had been a homicide, or if there had been doubt that it was anything but a suicide; the book says there has to be an official notification of next of kin in cases like that. But there’s usually some latitude in a cut-and-dried suicide. No cop wants to break that kind of news if he can avoid it; it’s one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in police work. I hated the prospect myself, but I felt I ought to do it because I was involved and because Lynn Troxell had called me for help and because I was the one who’d found the body. Moral responsibility, if nothing else.
The inspector tried not to look relieved. If I wanted the job, he said, I was welcome to it. Just make sure the widow showed up to ID the remains within twenty-four hours. I said I would.
We dispersed not long after that. Runyon went to his apartment, the cops went
back to their mean streets, Troxell went to the morgue, and I went to St. Francis Wood. On the way I called Charles Kayabalian and notified him, too. One more lousy task that I felt obligated to handle.
Drew Casement opened the door at the Troxell home. Face black-rimmed with beard stubble, hair uncombed, athlete’s body slumped a little inside faded Levis and a heavy sweater. And a grim ramble of words once I was inside: “I made Lynn take a Valium and lie down, she’s frantic, exhausted. You didn’t find him, right? He wasn’t at the place on Potrero Hill, I don’t know where the hell he could be. I thought it would be best if I came here instead of chasing around the city, I didn’t want Lynn to be alone at a time like this—”
“I found him,” I said.
“. . . What?”
“I found him.”
“Where?”
“Ocean Beach.”
“Ocean Beach. Jesus, I should’ve thought of that myself—”
“He’s dead, isn’t he.”
Those words came from Lynn Troxell in a flat, empty voice. She was standing in the doorway to the formal living room, barefoot but dressed under a loose-fitting terrycloth robe, her face pale and her eyes starry and unblinking. Composed, with no outward signs of the earlier turmoil. The Valium, maybe. But more likely it was hopeless resignation, the ashes of panic in this kind of situation.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Troxell.”
She sagged a little against the doorjamb. Otherwise, no reaction.
Casement went to her, put his arm around her as if to hold her up. She didn’t seem to notice he was there. He said to me, “How did you find him?”
“Does that matter?”
“No, no, I just . . .” He shook his head.
Mrs. Troxell said in that same flat, empty voice, “How?”