“Leave it alone, Cass.”
“I can’t. I won’t. Where were you?”
The wind made noises in the Japanese elm outside the window. He listened, concentrating on the sounds. He had to pee again and he didn’t want to get up and go to the bathroom so soon after the last time.
“Answer me, Jack.”
“I drove down to the city,” he said.
“I knew it. You went after Rakubian.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Am I? What did you intend to do?”
“He wasn’t home, he was up here terrorizing Angela.”
“That’s not an answer. What did you intend to do?”
He shifted position to ease the hurt in his bladder.
“Talk to me,” she said.
He couldn’t go there with her. Could not make her understand, and above all would not make her an accessory. “Talk to him again, that’s all. Plead with him. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I felt I had to try one more time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, if that’s all it was?”
“Pride, I guess. And I didn’t want you to worry.”
A little silence. “That isn’t all,” she said. “You had something else in mind.”
“Like what? What’re you thinking?”
“I was scared to death all day you’d do something crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” he said.
“We’re all a little crazy right now. But we’re not desperate enough to resort to murder.”
The word seemed to hang in the heavy blackness. He could almost hear it like an echo above the skirling of the wind.
“It’s what’s in your head, isn’t it?” Cassie said. “I don’t care about Rakubian, I despise him as much as you do—it’s you I’m concerned about. I couldn’t stand to lose you too.”
“You’re not going to lose me.”
“What else would you call sacrificing yourself for Angela?”
“Come on, now—”
“No, you come on. That’s exactly what it would be, a sacrifice. Even if you got away with it, it would destroy you.”
“Not if it made her and Kenny safe.”
“No matter what. You couldn’t live with a thing like that on your conscience. I know you, Jack Hollis.”
“Nobody knows another person that well.” But she was right, and no use in denying it. His conscience would tear him up. Not that he was about to let that stop him.
Something banged outside, far off but still loud enough to carry. Ordinary sound, bump in the night, but they both lay quiet for a time, listening.
Cassie said, “The one hope I have is that you’re not able to go through with it. Take a human life, even a life like David Rakubian’s.”
Sitting in the cold car with the .22 on his lap, frozen in place, crippled. Not able to go through with it.
“Don’t try to find out,” she said. “I’m begging you. Don’t do it.”
The darkness had begun to feel thick and oppressive, wool-like, as if it were contracting around him. “I won’t let that son of a bitch hurt the kids. Or you. Or me. That’s the bottom line.”
“It isn’t up to you. The problem is Angela’s, and whether we like it or not the decision of what to do about it is hers too. That’s the bottom line.”
“Run away, live in fear somewhere else. Some solution.”
“If she can stand it, so can we. I hate the idea as much as you do, but we’ve got to stand by her.”
“What about Rakubian?”
“There must be some other way.…”
“To keep him from hunting her down? He’s relentless. He’s not going to give up, vanish from her life or ours.”
“Lord, how I wish he would.”
Suppose he did? Hollis thought.
Suppose he does?
“Promise me you’ll be rational about this,” Cassie said. “That you won’t do anything we’ll all regret.”
“Rational. Yes.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
It was not another lie. Rational was exactly what he would be from now on. He needed a plan, one that eliminated the threat of potential witnesses, the necessity for a bogus alibi. One in which there was no body and no evidence linking him to any crime. A rational, detailed plan, drawn with the same care as he drew one of his building designs. Could he go through with it then?
Yes, because he had to.
“You’re right,” he said, “we have to let Angela do what she believes is best. Give her as much support as we can.”
“You mean that?”
“I mean it. But this Boston idea … I don’t care for it at all. It’s one thing to have people in support groups helping her; they know what they’re doing. But trusting complete strangers three thousand miles away? Even if Eric can arrange it, I think it’s a mistake.”
“So do I. I’ll talk to her again, try to persuade her not to rush into anything. If she won’t listen, we’ll just have to let her go. But at least get some information from Eric about his friend’s family when you talk to him.”
“I will.”
“The only other thing we can do is pray,” she said. “Trust in God to keep them safe.”
God, he thought, God created David Rakubian, didn’t He? God isn’t the answer.
The answer is me.
3
Thursday Morning
ANGELA and Kenny were still in bed when he left the house. Cassie usually got up when he did, even though she wasn’t due at Animal Care until ten, but not today; she was inwardly focused, uninterested in both coffee and conversation. He understood her reticence and was grateful for it. His head ached from tension and lack of sleep; he had no more patience than she did for a replowing of last night’s hard and bitter ground. They’d talk later, after he spoke to Eric and she had another go-round with Angela.
On the way downtown he tried calling Eric’s private number at his Cal Poly dorm. Busy signal. And another at the number of his roommate, Larry Sherwood. Dorm life was a lot different now than when he’d gone to college; there were private phone lines in each room, to accommodate computers as well as telephones. Constant computer use made getting through difficult sometimes. He’d just have to keep trying.
The building Mannix & Hollis, Architects, shared with two other small businesses was a converted and refurbished Victorian, once someone’s elegant home, on the bank of the Los Alegres River near the boat basin. An attractive location, with a view of part of the historic downtown district across the waterway. And a barometer of how well he and Gabe were doing, how far they’d come since pooling their talents and starting the firm in the old, cramped quarters on North Main fourteen years ago.
He parked in the adjacent lot, next to Gloria’s noisy—“farty,” she called it—little Nissan. Gloria Rodriguez, the firm’s occasionally irascible, often foulmouthed (in both English and Spanish) and indispensable jack-of-all-trades: computer draftsperson, bookkeeper and accountant, receptionist, secretary. Most mornings she was in and working before he arrived; Gabe, a habitual slow starter, seldom showed up until after nine-thirty. Gloria’s computer workstation was a neat island in the office’s chaotic sea of angled drafting tables and flat-topped tables cluttered with designs, specs, U.S. and California code books, supply catalogs that hadn’t been shelved with the others covering one wall. She swiveled away from her Mac as he entered, hoisted her plump body out of her chair, and scowled at him. He knew that scowl. Knew even before she pushed three business-size envelopes at him that David Rakubian was its source.
“These were shoved under the door when I got here,” she said. “Looks like that verga has taken to hand-delivering his crap now.”
Hollis took the envelopes. Same as the others, plain white, except that the only computer-generated typing on these was his full name, Jackson M. Hollis. Gloria wasn’t reticent about opening anyone’s mail; the fact that the envelopes were still sealed meant that she didn’t care to view
the contents any more than he did. She knew all about Rakubian. He could not have kept the situation from her and Gabe if he’d wanted to, not after the phone calls and mailings began coming here as well as to the house.
“I’ll bet he showed up at your place last night too,” Gloria said. “He didn’t go after Angela and Kenny again?”
“No. Phone calls and drive-bys, mostly.”
“Jesus, Jack, how much more of this can she take?”
“Not much more. She’s made up her mind to go into hiding with the boy.”
“Oh, shit. When?”
“Soon. I doubt we’ll be able to talk her out of it this time.”
Gloria scowled and heaved a sigh. “I hate to say it, but maybe it’s the best way. I mean, guys like Rakubian, stalkers, psychos …” She crossed herself and added, “I don’t understand how God can let people like him walk this earth.”
Hollis didn’t respond to that. He said, “I’ll be in my office,” and crossed to enter his private cubicle at the rear.
He threw the envelopes on his desk, cocked a hip against the edge, and tried again to call Eric. Still busy, both lines. He resisted an urge to bang the receiver down, went to open the blinds.
The early fog was beginning to burn off; pale sunlight sparkled on the muddy brown water below. For a time he stood looking downriver, watching a small launch glide beneath the D Street drawbridge. Pleasure craft and dredgers were all you saw on the river these days. Not so long ago, when Los Alegres had been an agricultural center mostly undiscovered by day-trippers, San Francisco commuters, Silicon Valley dot-commers, and voracious suburban developers, there had been barges loaded with feed and grain from the old mills that had once flourished here; and until the mid-sixties, barges and small cargo ships had carried chickens, eggs, produce, and other goods to and from the San Francisco Bay markets.
Everything changes, he thought. For good reason, bad reason, no reason at all. Blink your eyes and familiar things, things you’ve taken for granted all or most of your life, are suddenly different. Blink your eyes and everything you’ve built, the whole perfectly designed, rock-solid structure of your existence, is so unstable it might collapse at any time.
He turned from the window, sat at his desk. The thick file with Rakubian’s name on it was in the locked bottom drawer; he took it out, set it beside the three envelopes. Looked at them, looked away at the framed blueprints of two of his AIA award-winning home designs on the wall. Out front he could hear Gloria running the big copy machine. He was aware of the faint, not unpleasant ammonia smell of blueprints that seems always to linger in architects’ offices, that was overpowering for a time after the blueprint service made delivery of a new batch. Familiar, comfortable. One more part of his life on the brink of irrevocable change because of a tiny malfunctioning gland and one man’s psychotic obsession.
Three or four minutes passed before he finally stirred and picked up one of the envelopes, tore it open. Single sheet of white bond paper, black computer printing in its exact middle. Two words in oversize capital letters.
SHE’S MINE!
He laid the sheet aside, ripped open a second envelope. Several lines on this one’s single sheet, also neatly centered.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we;
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
of the beautiful Angela B.
Hollis tasted bile in the back of his throat. Poe again. Rakubian and Poe, one madman fascinated by another. “Annabel Lee.” He knew that was the source of the stanza because Rakubian had sent others to Angela, each of them, like this one, with her name—Angela B. for Angela Beth—substituted for Annabel Lee.
The third envelope. And still another stanza from the same poem, the intent behind this one as clear as it was sickening.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Angela B.
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Angela B.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea.
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Tight-lipped, he opened the file, lifted the thick sheaf of papers inside and slipped the three new sheets onto the bottom. Keep all correspondence in chronological order … as if that would do any good in stopping a homicidal stalker. He let the file remain open in front of him, picked up the phone again.
This time Eric’s line was free, but it was Larry Sherwood who answered. “You just missed him, Mr. Hollis. He left about five minutes ago for his ten o’clock.”
“Can you try to catch up? Or get word to him in class? It’s important we talk as soon as possible.”
“Something wrong? I mean—”
“No, it’s not serious. But there is some urgency.”
“I’ll let him know. Where should he call you?”
“My office.”
Hollis put the phone down, looked again at the file. The top papers were a dossier on David Rakubian that he’d compiled from conversations with Angela and a San Francisco attorney who knew him, and some research on his own. It was fairly complete: Know your enemy. He read through the facts and figures once more—looking, this time, for something he might be able to use in the new plan he was forming.
David Thomas Rakubian. Born in Fresno thirty-five years ago, only child of second-generation Armenian parents. Father a raisin grower, mother a librarian, both now deceased. Loner as a child, no interest in sports or other activities, preferred the company of books. Didn’t date much as a teenager or as an adult—told Angela he’d been a virgin until he was twenty-four and seemed proud of the fact. High IQ, high enough to qualify for membership in MENSA, and an intense student—straight A’s, valedictorian of his high school graduating class. Studied law at UCLA, high marks there, too; LLB degree and immediate placement after graduation with a respected L.A. firm. Moved to San Francisco after passing the state bar exam, to accept a better-paying position with an old-line Montgomery Street firm. After three years, decided corporate work was too limiting and opened his own practice specializing in aggressively handled, high-yield personal-injury cases. Successful from the first, won two big settlements in two years, the second allowing him to buy St. Francis Wood real estate before his thirtieth birthday. Refused to expand his operation since, because taking in partners meant relinquishing some control. Still maintained a small suite of offices with only two employees—a paralegal, Valerie Burke, who’d been with him for five years, and Janet Yee, the latest in a string of secretaries.
Political conservative. Strong antiabortion beliefs and an advocate of family values, but without any right-wing religious bias. Claimed to believe in God but seemed to consider organized religion beneath him. Staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, but no ties to the NRA or any other pro-gun group. Didn’t own a weapon of any kind as far as Angela knew. Which meant nothing, of course. If he wanted one, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting it.
Outwardly charming, cold and inflexible on the inside. Tenacious, often ruthless in his legal methods. Uncompromising. Unforgiving.
Massive ego—center-of-the-universe type. Angela: “He’s close to being a solipsist. You know, a person who believes he’s the only reality and everything and everybody else are self-creations.”
Control freak. His way or no way. Never admits to being wrong, to any fault or deficiency. Fearless. Believes he’s smarter than anyone else and therefore indestructible.
Violent tendencies. No record of arrest for any crime before the attempted kidnapping, or of abuse against women before Angela. Had one other serious relationship, he’d told her, but wouldn’t say when or identify the woman. No one else knew or w
ould say who she was, so there was no way of finding out if he’d abused her, too.
Living relatives: none. Friends: none. During the eleven months Angela lived with him, they never once entertained at home (except for the handful of times Hollis and Cassie were allowed in the house) and saw no one socially except an occasional business acquaintance.
Hobbies and interests: books on the law, and gloomy prose and poetry by Poe, Hawthorne, Henry James, Blake. Poe in particular: collected rare editions of his work and books about it and his life. Collected artwork of the same Gothic sort; his house was strewn with nineteenth-century paintings, statuettes of brooding ravens and gargoyles, a life-size bust of Poe. Referred to himself as a “neo antiquary.” Liked the symphony and heavy Russian classical music. Didn’t like opera, plays, modern music, or films of any kind. Refused to own a TV set. Wouldn’t permit Angela to use her personal computer at home. Nor allow her to continue working, spend time with her friends and family, talk to another man in his presence, do much of anything at all that interfered with his concept of the subservient, dutiful wife.
Rakubian in odious and bitter sum.
The rest of the papers in the file were evidence, clear if not legally conclusive, that he was a ticking time bomb. Letters, notes, one-line messages to Angela, to Hollis, to Cassie, professing his love, his imagined ownership, his rage and frustration, his demands and implied threats. Quotations about love and death from Poe and others. Listings of all his phone calls, drop-bys, drive-bys, and confrontations. Uncashed checks made out to Angela, one for $500 and another for $750. Records of deliveries of expensive clothing, exotic perfume, bouquets of flowers—and the other items, disguised as presents in beribboned and fancy-papered boxes, such as lace underthings scissored into strips and the portrait of Angela with the top of her head cut off. Snapshots of the two of them before and shortly after their marriage, smiling at each other, embracing, laughing, each accompanied by a cryptic handwritten note. And the other photos, sometimes mixed with the snapshots, sometimes sent separately, of funerals and dead women in coffins and bloody aborted fetuses.
Enough, Hollis thought. No more. He closed the file, relocked it in the desk drawer. No more letters, phone calls, drop-bys, drive-bys, confrontations, presents, photos, bullshit, lunacy, fear, uncertainty, desperation. No more!
In an Evil Time Page 3