In an Evil Time

by Bill Pronzini

  As soon as they were alone: “What’s that little prick doing here, Jack? When did he come crawling back?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “You should’ve warned me.”

  “I know. Just not tracking like I should.”

  “Well, what the hell is he sucking around for?”

  Hollis gave a terse explanation.

  “Changed?” Gabe said. “Him? Bullshit.”

  “Angela seems to be buying it.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Looks to me like he’s trying to worm his way back with her. You don’t think she’s naive enough to let it happen?”

  “She isn’t naive. She’s scared.”

  “Meaning she might?”

  “Meaning I don’t know. Cassie thinks she’s still in love with him.”

  “Christ! After all this time?”

  “I don’t want to believe it, either.”

  “You can’t let her get involved with him again.”

  “What do you want me to do, spank it out of her? It’s her life, Gabe. Her choices.”

  “Damn poor choices when it comes to men,” Mannix said. “First Pierce, then Rakubian, now Pierce again. Did she tell him where she’s going?”

  “She’s not telling anyone the exact location, including Cassie and me.”

  “Suppose he follows her?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “He showed up here, didn’t he.”

  “She’ll take precautions. She won’t allow anything to jeopardize the relocation.”

  “I hope you’re right. Little pissant. The way he treated her and the boy …”

  “Get off Pierce, will you?” Hollis said. “He’s not the main problem here.”

  Mannix ran a hand over his face, worked his mouth as if he were tasting something sour. “Yeah, Rakubian. What’re you going to do about him?”

  Hollis said carefully, “If I had the answer to that I’d’ve done it long ago.”

  “You’ve got the answer. You just won’t face up to it.”

  “Get off that, too, all right?”

  Mannix looked at him for several seconds, his expression unreadable. Then he shrugged and said, “All right. I’ll be around if you want to talk some more. Right now I need another hair of the dog. Hell, the way I feel I may try to swallow the whole frigging pelt.”

  Monday

  He kissed his daughter and grandson good-bye a little before seven-thirty. She was anxious to get on the road early, drive as far as Winnemucca today so she could get to Salt Lake City tomorrow night. Dark smudges under her eyes, twitchy movements, her gaze darting to the street the entire time he and Eric were helping load her car as though she half expected Rakubian to come roaring up in his BMW. Eric wasn’t in much better shape today. Withdrawn, mostly silent. Conscience working on him, too, Hollis thought.

  The good-byes were brief and awkward. Quick kisses that were little more than pecks, even Kenny’s. Eric’s hand dry in his, and the contact broken in an instant. Thin smiles, hurried promises, halfhearted reassurances. Angela and Eric left together, a two-car procession with her in the lead; he would follow her all the way to Highway 80, to make certain she had no pursuit. It twisted Hollis again to know that there was no need for any of this and yet he was powerless to stop it.

  He stood with Cassie in the driveway, her arm tight around his waist, watching both cars pass from sight, and for some time after they were gone. When he felt her looking at him he made eye contact.

  She said, “I feel a little lost right now. You know what I mean?”

  He knew, all right. He felt that way himself.

  All that morning, working at his drafting board, he was on tenterhooks. Had he overlooked anything at the Chesterton site to make Pete Dulac’s crew suspicious? He was unable to conjure up a clear image of the way the excavation looked when he’d finished cleaning up. Saturday had begun to recede in his memory, the details to blur, as if he’d been an observer rather than a participant—like with a movie he’d seen, or one of those queer omniscient dreams in which you stand apart and watch yourself doing things that make little or no sense.

  Every time the phone rang he paused to listen to Gloria’s end of the conversation, imaginary dialogue running on a loop inside his head: “Oh, yes, Pete, he’s right here” and “Jack, Jesus, we found a body up here, somebody got in over the weekend and buried a dead guy in Chesterton’s wine cellar.” It didn’t happen. None of the calls were from Dulac or anyone else connected with PAD Construction.

  His tension was obvious to Gloria, but she took it to be a reaction to the kids’ departure; she left him alone and took care of most of the callers herself. Mannix wandered in at ten-thirty, looking even more hungover than yesterday. He had little to say, worked less than an hour, and wandered out again before noon.

  Hollis insisted on staying in between twelve and one. To give Gloria a chance for a restaurant meal instead of her usual brown-bag lunch, he said, but the real reason was that he could not have choked down a bite of food without gagging. The phone didn’t ring at all during that hour. He should have begun to relax by then; perversely, the waiting and the uncertainty increased the strain. By the time Gloria returned, he’d had as much as he could stand. He went into his cubicle and called Pete Dulac’s cell phone number.

  “Jack Hollis, Pete. How’s it going?”

  “Same as last Thursday,” Dulac said shortly. “On schedule.”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you Chesterton was pleased. Nothing but good things to say about you and your crew.”

  “I’d be damn surprised if he’d had any complaints.”

  “He particularly liked the way the wine cellar looked.”

  “Yeah, well, rich people and their priorities. Listen, Jack, I’m glad about Chesterton, but I’m busy as hell here. They’re pouring the slab right now.”

  “You mean in the wine cellar?”

  “That’s what I mean. Anything else you wanted?”

  “No,” Hollis said. “No, nothing else.”

  He sat slumped in his chair. The release of tension made him feel light-headed, as if he were melting inside. Pouring the slab right now: sealing Rakubian in his grave. The murder weapon, the bloody carpet, the body with its shattered skull … all hidden where no one could ever find them, under two feet of solid concrete. Eric was safe. Angela, Kenny, Eric—all safe.

  Not himself, though, not yet. Still wriggling on the hook. He wondered how long it would be before Rakubian was reported missing and the San Francisco police got around to him.

  12

  Tuesday Evening

  APRIL Sayers, the woman from the Santa Rosa support group, called before dinner with a brief message: Safe arrival. No incidents, no difficulties. They’d be receiving an e-mail shortly.

  Now, at least for the time being, he could quit worrying about Angela and Kenny.

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Stan Otaki was a well-regarded urologist and usually too busy to make short-notice, nonemergency appointments. But Hollis had known him for thirty years—they’d been classmates at Los Alegres High—and when he apologized for canceling his last two appointments and indicated he was ready to begin treatment, Otaki squeezed him at one o’clock.

  He disliked doctors’ offices almost as much as hospitals—the medicinal odors, the gleaming equipment, the admixture of sterility and implied suffering. He sat uncomfortably in Otaki’s private office, offering another round of weak excuses and answering probing questions about urination, erectile dysfunction, levels of pain and discomfort. Then he submitted to a teeth-gritting rectal exam, a check of his blood pressure and vital signs. Otaki was not much for his words in the examining room; he waited until they were back in his office.

  “Of course, I can’t tell you how far the cancer has progressed until we do a blood workup,” he said, “but my guess is that it hasn’t reached an advanced stage. If that’s the case, and your health is otherwise good, we should be able to control it with aggressiv
e treatment.”

  Advanced stage. Number III on the chart: cancer cells have spread outside the prostate capsule to tissues around the prostate, possibly into the glands that produce semen. It was probably too soon to worry about Stage IV—cancer cells have metastasized to the lymph nodes or to organs and tissues far away from the prostate such as bone, liver, or lungs—but then, you never knew with cancer; it could spread like wildfire. Number III was bad enough. Number IV was the next thing to a death sentence.

  “I won’t make a definite recommendation until I see the test results,” Otaki said. “If they show no radical change, however, your best option is still going to be a prostatectomy. And the sooner the better.”

  “No.”

  “Look, Jack, you’ve made it plain how you feel about surgery, but—”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to let you or anybody else cut me open, no matter how far the cancer has progressed. There’s radiation therapy, isn’t there?”

  “Yes. Five days a week, six to seven consecutive weeks. Are you willing to undergo that kind of rigid schedule, endure the probable side effects?”

  “If necessary.”

  “Well, the decision is yours,” Otaki said. He ran a knuckle over his neat salt-and-pepper mustache, a gesture Hollis took to be disapproving. “Your body, your health.”

  “Are you telling me radiation probably won’t work?”

  “Of course not. It may well do the job.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Ruling out surgery under any circumstances radically increases the risk factor. That’s a fact—that’s what I’m trying to make you understand. If you doubt me, get a second or third opinion—”

  “I don’t need any other opinions. I don’t doubt you.”

  “Will you at least give it some more thought? Talk to Cassie about it?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  But he knew he wouldn’t.

  Thursday Morning

  There, at last, on page 3 of the Chronicle:

  PROMINENT S.F. ATTORNEY

  REPORTED MISSING

  It was the second item in the Bay Area Report section devoted to minor news stories. Less than three column inches—another good sign. He read the paragraphs avidly.

  David J. Rakubian, 35, personal injury attorney known for his tenacious courtroom tactics … last seen late Friday afternoon at his South Beach offices … reported missing by his paralegal, Valerie Burke, on Monday afternoon … mandatory waiting period before police could take official action … Rakubian’s car found in the garage of his St. Francis Wood home … no evidence of foul play … recently divorced from his wife of nine months … arrested in Los Alegres three weeks ago for public battery on his ex-wife …

  No evidence of foul play. That was the key phrase. The police hadn’t found anything suspicious in the house; it would take a thorough forensic examination to bring out blood traces, and it wasn’t likely there’d be one without something concrete to support it.

  The paralegal would be the source of information about the marriage breakup, coloring it to favor Rakubian; the part about public battery probably had been dug up by the reporter. The police had Hollis’s name from Valerie Burke, too, and a full account of his angry outburst in Rakubian’s office, plus the fact of his second visit last week. It would not be long before he was contacted—today, tomorrow at the latest. Unless he took the initiative first.

  He glanced across the breakfast table. Cassie was sipping coffee, reading the Datebook section. He drew a breath, then rattled the newsprint and said explosively, “My God!”

  Her head jerked up. “What?”

  “Look at this,” he said. He passed her his section, tapping the article with his forefinger.

  She looked. And then she looked at him, looked past him—a bleak, distant stare. After a few seconds she said, “What does this mean?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Coincidence, Jack?”

  “Coincidences happen. One could’ve happened to him.”

  “Such as what? A convenient accident?”

  “That, or something else. A shyster like him must have plenty of enemies. He paused. “There’s another possibility, too.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was voluntary,” he said. “What if he found out somehow about Angela going away?”

  It was like a slap; she winced, stiffened. “You mean he might’ve gone looking for her, hunting her?”

  “I hope to God that’s not it.” The lies were like fecal matter in his mouth, hurting him as much as they were hurting her. He went on with it, hating himself again. “But I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “How could he have found out?”

  “How does anybody find out anything?”

  “But he couldn’t know where she went.”

  “No. There’s no way he could’ve followed her, with Eric right there. We’ll e-mail her, tell her what’s happened, warn her to be extra careful. Alert April Sayers, too.”

  Cassie nodded. But then she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know, Jack.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “His car … the paper says it’s in his garage. If he’s gone looking for Angela, why didn’t he take his car?”

  “Decided it was too conspicuous, maybe. Or he went somewhere by air.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Rakubian. To just drop out of sight that way—no calls to his office staff, leaving everything behind.”

  She was thinking too much. Too smart for her own good. “He’s psychotic, Cass. You can’t predict what a psycho will do.”

  “He’s been consistent all along, hasn’t he? Disappearing when he can’t possibly have any idea where Angela went … it just doesn’t sound right.”

  He couldn’t push it any more; it would only arouse her suspicions. He said, “If something did happen to him, accident or otherwise, it’s good news—the best news we could ask for. A kind of miracle.”

  “Is it?”

  “If he turns up dead, or doesn’t turn up at all, it means Angela and Kenny can come home. It means we can all stop being afraid.”

  “I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t like this.”

  “What don’t you like? You can’t want Rakubian to still be alive somewhere.”

  “I’ve wished him dead a hundred times.”

  “Well?”

  “If he’s dead … why? What happened to him?”

  “The details aren’t important—”

  “They are if he was murdered.”

  “By a stranger? What does it matter who?”

  “Suppose it was Eric?” she said.

  His first call was to April Sayers. She’d already seen the piece in the Chronicle, had just gotten off the phone with her Utah relatives. Angela and Kenny were fine. Extra precautions were being taken, just in case. And all for nothing, Hollis thought as he rang off. He could imagine how upset his daughter must be over this. Consoling himself that it was only temporary, that the end result justified the additional anxiety, was cold and bitter comfort.

  Second call: Eric. It was early enough so that he was still in his room and his line was free. Hollis would have preferred to talk to him alone, but Cassie insisted on picking up the extension. Her fear that Eric was responsible had rocked him. He should have seen it coming, but he hadn’t. He’d managed to allay the fear somewhat, enough to keep her from saying anything to Eric; she let him do most of the talking. Eric’s reaction may have reassured her, but it bothered Hollis. No hint of surprise that Rakubian had been reported missing, not found murdered in his home. Concern about his sister and nephew, cautious optimism—the same outward pose as Hollis’s. But was he handling it too well? Not feeling as much guilt and remorse as he should, perhaps thinking that what he’d done was wholly justified?

  The third and last call was to the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, Missing Persons division. The inspector in charge of the Rakubian case, he was told, was Napoleon Macatee, but he wasn’t
at his desk. Hollis left a message, supplying both home and office numbers. Now he was on record as having made first contact.

  Inspector Macatee called him at Mannix & Hollis shortly before noon. Polite, soft-spoken, voice inflections that indicated he was African American. No, Hollis said, he had no information about David Rakubian’s disappearance. He’d seen the news story, he was concerned because of the potential danger to his daughter.

  “You know he assaulted her in public a few weeks ago,” he said, “and we had to get a restraining order against him. He’s been getting more and more irrational, calling at all hours, showing up here, making threats.”

  “His office staff paint a different picture of the man,” Macatee said.

  “Sure they do. They only saw his public face. We have tapes of all his calls, his letters, everything. If you’d like to go through the …”

  “Pretty sure I’ll want to do that. Mr. Hollis, I understand you went to the man’s offices last Thursday morning. Mind telling me why?”

  “The obvious reason. One last futile attempt to get him to stop harassing my family. It was a waste of time, like talking to a piece of stone. As far as he’s concerned, he isn’t guilty of anything except trying to get his wife back. He’s obsessed with her. He’s not only a control freak and an abuser, he’s a dangerous psychotic.”

  “Psychotic’s a pretty strong word.”

  “Not for Rakubian. The last time he showed up in Los Alegres, he caught my daughter alone and threatened to kill her and my grandson both if she didn’t go back to him.”

  Macatee digested that before he asked, “Anyone else there at the time?”

  “Just Kenny, my grandson. But my daughter wouldn’t make up a story like that. She doesn’t lie and she doesn’t exaggerate. She said he meant it, and I believe her.”

  “Did you know about this threat when you went to talk to him on Thursday?”

  “I knew and I called him on it. He denied it, of course.”

  “You make any threats against him in return?”

  “No. I lost my head the first time I went there—I guess you know about that—and I was determined not to let it happen again. But I came close to losing it, I’ll admit that.”