Camouflage (Nameless Detective Mysteries)

by Bill Pronzini

  Over tea and a plate of kung pao chicken and fried rice, he went over his talk with Kevin Dinowski. As much as Dinowski seemed to hate Francine, he might’ve exaggerated the extent of her behavior, but that scar on his arm, assuming he’d gotten it the way he claimed he had, said otherwise. Further confirmation that Francine was violence prone and unstable. Capable of greater acts of violence than hurling a pot of boiling water, inflicting bruises, and breaking a little boy’s arm. Capable of killing someone, child or adult, if one of her sudden rages got amped up high enough and she completely lost control.

  Runyon had already decided not to repeat what Dinowski had told him to Bryn. Without the self-centered banker’s cooperation, it would only increase her fear and anxiety.

  Dinowski, out. Francine’s two sisters, out. Maybe Charlene Kepler had a horror story of her own to tell and was willing to pass it on to Robert Darby. But even if she did, there was no guarantee it would do any good. Without a second or third person’s account to back it up, Darby might claim she had an ax to grind and dismiss it as fabrication. A man in love or lust, a man who had yet to be subjected to Francine’s violent outbursts, was a man in denial.

  Runyon had lost his appetite, not that he’d had much to begin with. He left half the meal unfinished, went back out into the foggy night.

  * * *

  Charlene Kepler was home and willing enough to talk to him. Runyon interviewed her in an untidy living room while her current roommate banged pots, pans, and dishes in the kitchen. Kepler was a plump thirtyish redhead, the chattery, scatterbrained type who had an annoying habit of starting every other sentence with “well” and sprinkling others with “you know.”

  “Well, I don’t know what I can tell you about Francine,” she said. “We were roomies for only about five months and that was, what, six or seven years ago. I haven’t seen her since she moved out to get married.”

  “So you weren’t close friends?”

  “Well, no, we weren’t. We shared expenses and that’s about it.”

  “How did you happen to get together?”

  “Well, we were both working at the same place, Mitchell and Associates—that’s a law firm in Cow Hollow. I was in the secretarial pool and she was one of the, you know, the paralegals. Well, she’d been living with this guy and they broke up because he got another job back east someplace and she needed a place to live. And I needed a roommate because the girl I was living with moved out to get married. My roomies are always moving out to get married, I don’t know what it is—I wish I had that luck with my relationships. Well, anyway, that’s how we got together.”

  “The guy Francine was living with—do you remember his name?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. David, Darren, something like that.”

  “Last name?”

  “I don’t think she ever mentioned it.”

  “Did she say what kind of work he did, where his new job was?”

  “Well … no, I don’t think so. She didn’t talk about him much. I mean, well, you know how it is when you break up with somebody; you don’t want to even think about the person.”

  “How did you and Francine get along?”

  “Oh, well, okay, I guess. We didn’t spend very much time together. She had her life and I had mine.”

  “Ever have any problems with her?”

  “Problems? You mean did we argue or fight about stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there were a few times. She liked everything neat and tidy and I’m not a neat and tidy person. I mean I try not to be a slob, but I just don’t care about picking up after myself, you know? Life’s too short to worry about the little things.”

  “Did she ever become violent?”

  Kepler blinked at him as if he’d asked her a question in a foreign language she didn’t understand.

  Runyon said, “I’ve been told that Francine has a violent temper, a tendency to lose control when she’s angry. Did she ever attack you, try to hurt you?”

  “Well…” The plump face colored slightly. Kepler’s voice was rueful when she said, “Well, there was one time, right before she moved out. She got all dressed up to go out on a date with the guy she married, Kevin I think his name was, and the outfit she had on … well, the colors, you know, they just didn’t go with her blond hair. I shouldn’t’ve said anything, but I did and she got real mad, I mean real mad, and started yelling four-letter words at me. I tried to tell her I was sorry, but she wouldn’t listen, just started after me like, you know, like she wanted to break my neck or something. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. She pounded on it a few times and I guess after that she calmed down and went out. Well, I was so shook up I stayed in the bathroom for a good half hour, until I was sure she was gone.”

  “What happened when you saw her again?”

  “Well, she acted like nothing had happened. I told her she’d scared me pretty bad and she said, ‘Well, don’t ever criticize my clothes again,’ and I said I wouldn’t and that was the end of it.”

  “And that was the only incident?” Runyon asked.

  “The only one. Francine was real sweet most of the time, you know?”

  * * *

  Charlene Kepler, out.

  Now he had nothing to tell Bryn.

  10

  BRYN DARBY

  She stood looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, fingering the vial of Xanax and wondering how many of the little white pills it would take to put her out of her misery.

  A dozen or so would probably do it. This was a new prescription, the vial almost full—more than enough. Wash them down with a couple of glasses of wine, throw in four or five Vicodin to make sure, and when she started feeling the effects lie down in bed with the lights on to wait for the dark. Easy, painless. Just go to sleep and no more hurt or fear or black depression, no more looking at what she was looking at right now.

  The face in the mirror was like one of those split theatrical masks, only hers wasn’t half tragedy and half comedy; it was half living and half dead. That was how she thought of the left side, not as paralyzed or frozen, the euphemisms used by the doctors and everybody else, but as dead. Part of her already dead. Pale waxy flesh, the corner of the mouth puckered so that she couldn’t open it all the way, couldn’t eat or drink in a normal fashion, dribbled and drooled like a baby. Puckered lines around the eye, too, and the optic nerve damaged so that she had cloudy vision out of it. The muscles and nerves already atrophying, no way to stop it, no chance of recovery. Most of the time she had no feeling on that side, but sometimes, and now was one of them, there was a faint burning sensation as if she were standing too close to a stove or heater. Her doctor claimed that this was psychosomatic, a phantom sensation, because of the extent of the nerve damage. Dead tissue has no feeling. Death has no feeling. Except that it did. The dead side of her face burned.

  How many times had she stood here like this, thinking these same thoughts? More than she could count after the stroke and before she met Jake. Only a couple since he’d come into her life, the one good thing that had made living bearable the past few months. Somebody she could lean on, take strength from; somebody to drive away the loneliness and despair for short periods; somebody she cared about beside Bobby, at a time when she believed she would never care about anyone else again. If it hadn’t been for Jake and Bobby, she would have mixed the Xanax and Vicodin and wine cocktail by now. And the rest of her would be as dead as the left side of her face.

  The depression was bad tonight, as bleak and overpowering as it had ever been. Worrying about that bitch Francine hurting Bobby again, really hurting him, putting him in the hospital, putting him in a coffin … it was maddening because there was nothing Bryn could do short of giving in to her impulses and destroying the woman. Running away with Bobby to some place where he’d be safe wasn’t an option. She didn’t have enough money to travel very far or hide for very long; wherever she and Bobby went, Robert had the money and the resources to find them. And t
hen he’d make sure she never saw her son again.

  Jake was doing everything he could—he’d already found out that Francine had a probable history of abuse with her two sisters—but it wasn’t enough. The sister in Berkeley had mental problems and wouldn’t talk about the abuse; the sister in Ojai wouldn’t, either. How could they expose Francine for what she was before she hurt Bobby so badly that his father could no longer deny the truth? All Robert could or wanted to see now was that falsely sweet young face.

  Still, Jake was the only hope she had. Keep the faith in him, pray for Bobby’s safety … otherwise, the despair would consume her. And then she really would mix and swallow that last cocktail.

  Bryn put the Xanax back into the medicine cabinet, turned away from the mirror. Her hands and face were sweaty; she dried them on a towel, then retied the scarf over the dead half. Even when she was alone in the house, she’d taken to hiding it behind cloth. Out of sight, out of mind—that was the idea, anyway, even if it didn’t always work.

  In the kitchen she poured another glass of wine. How many did this make today? She’d lost count. But it would have to be the last. She had to walk a fine line with alcohol. Just enough took the edge off her anxiety, allowed her to continue functioning; too much made the depression worse.

  She lifted the glass, then set it down again. She really didn’t need another drink—she’d had too much already. The last glass was what had led her into the bathroom, to remove the scarf and stand there wallowing in her misery. Already there was a dull ache in her temples and her mouth was dry and sour tasting; any more alcohol and she’d suffer for it in the morning.

  She took a small funnel out of the utility drawer, poured the wine back into the bottle, and returned the bottle to the fridge. The house held an empty kind of silence, broken only by an occasional settling creak and the humming and rattling of the wind outside. She’d had a CD of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance playing earlier, spritely music in an effort to ward off the demons, but it had run through and stopped. She thought about starting it again, decided she was no longer in the mood for comic opera. Another CD? Something on television? They didn’t appeal, either.

  What she really wanted was to talk to Bobby, make sure he was all right. But she’d called last night and Robert had grudgingly let her talk to him and he seemed okay then, if still quiet and distant. She couldn’t keep calling every night. Robert would refuse to put the boy on, harrangue her about bothering him at home, and then hang up; he’d done that before. And if she called and he wasn’t home and Francine answered, the bitch would hang up right away. That had happened before, too.

  Would Robert let her know immediately if anything serious happened to Bobby? He might, and he might not. She might not know about it for hours, even days.…

  “Stop,” she said aloud. “Stop, stop.”

  She went down the hall into her office, booted up her Mac, and opened the Hardiman file. Her current project—designing an extensive new Web site for Hardiman Industries. It was half-finished, the graphics satisfactory so far, but she hadn’t been able to work steadily on it for days. The deadline was looming; she’d have to get back to it soon or risk losing the commission. Now? Not now. Her thoughts were muzzy and the color images blurred as she stared at the screen. Tomorrow morning …

  And the rest of tonight?

  It was too early for bed. Maybe she could do a little more work on one of the three unfinished watercolor paintings.… Bad idea, for the same reason she couldn’t concentrate on the Hardiman Web site design. Her headache had worsened; she felt a little sick to her stomach.

  Warm bath, she thought, that might help. In the bathroom again she drank a glass of Alka-Seltzer to relieve the queasy feeling. She was leaning into the tub to turn on the water taps when the doorbell rang.

  Jake? He usually called before he came over … unless he had something new and important to tell her. She hurried out to the front door, unlocked it, and pulled it open without first looking through the peephole. And sucked in her breath and felt her body go rigid because it wasn’t Jake standing there in the glow of the porch light.

  “Hello, Bryn,” Francine Whalen said through one of her bright, empty smiles.

  “… What do you want here?”

  “It’s about Bobby. Can I come in? I won’t stay long.”

  “What about Bobby? Where is he?”

  “Home with his father.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Of course he’s all right. Well? Are you going to let me in?”

  Reluctantly Bryn complied. Once Francine was inside with the door closed, the smile disappeared. She had a longish, narrow face framed by long, feathery blond hair—an expensive designer cut to go with the expensive leather jacket and tight slacks and Gucci boots she wore. All paid for by Robert, no doubt. Her eyes were her most striking feature, large gray eyes with irises so pale they were almost translucent. The kind that men would find warm and smoky, that to Bryn gave the exact opposite effect. Ice eyes.

  “The reason I’m here,” the woman said, “is to tell you straight to your face—stop trying to turn Bobby against me.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Filling his head with nonsense, trying to convince him that I’m some sort of wicked witch.”

  “That’s just what you are.”

  “Oh? So now you admit that’s what you’ve been doing.”

  “You’re the one who turned him against you, not me. And we both know the reason.”

  “Yes? What reason?”

  “You’ve been hitting him, hurting him. A little boy, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s a damn lie,” Francine said. But nothing changed in her expression; no shock or surprise or outrage. The face of unrepentant guilt. “Why would I do something like that?”

  “Yes, exactly. Why? Why did you fracture his arm? Why do you leave bruises all over his body?”

  “I did no such things. He gets into fights with other boys his age and he’s accident-prone.”

  “Like hell. You, you’re the one.”

  “Did Bobby tell you I was hurting him?”

  Bryn didn’t answer. Rage was like a probe moving through her; the dead side of her face burned as if it were on fire. She locked her fingers together at her waist to keep them still, keep herself under control.

  “Well? Did he?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  “I’ll bet he’s never said a bad word about me.”

  “He hates you. He said that much.”

  “Natural in a boy his age to have some hostile feelings toward the woman who replaces his mother in his father’s affection. Particularly when the mother reinforces it, stuffs his head with lies.”

  “I’ve never lied to my son and I never will.”

  “Bullshit.” The word sounded twice as ugly coming out of that angelic mouth. “You’ve done your damnedest to poison my relationship with Bobby. You’d better stop, Bryn, I’m warning you. I won’t stand for any more of it and neither will Robert.”

  “And I’m warning you—hurt him again and you’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh, really? And how are you going to make me sorry?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re as helpless as a baby. Not to mention paranoid and delusional—the stroke crippled your mind as well as your face. Robert says so; that’s why he left you. I say so, too.”

  “And you’re a cold, sadistic cunt.”

  “Call me any names you like to my face, but don’t put them in Bobby’s head anymore. If you do, Robert and I will see to it that you don’t have any more time with him.” The smile flashed on again, tight-lipped and humorless. “We can do that—Robert can—and I promise you, we will.”

  An image flared up behind Bryn’s eyes: herself leaping forward, hands unclenching and hooking into claws that ripped furrows down the sides of that smug, smirking face. She struggled against the urge, fought it down. Felt herself shaking visibly
now. The hot taste of bile filled her throat; the question she managed to push through it had a liquidy sound.

  “Did Robert send you to tell me that?”

  “No. He doesn’t know I’m here and I’ll deny it if you tell him. This is between you and me, Bryn. Robert’s mine now and so is Bobby. I took them away from you and I’m going to keep them and you’d better resign yourself to the fact and quit trying to cause trouble for us. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Bryn’s throat muscles worked, but she couldn’t get any more words out.

  “I think you do. Good,” Francine said. And what she did then was so shocking Bryn was incapable of any reaction: she reached out, almost casually, and yanked the scarf off and dropped it fluttering to the floor. “I’ve always wanted to see what that side of your face looks like. My God, you’re even uglier than I thought. No wonder Robert couldn’t stand the sight of you.”

  Francine opened the door, turned long enough to smile her poison-sweet smile again, and then vanished into the darkness.

  11

  I’d been at the agency just long enough on Thursday morning to pour a cup of coffee from the pot on the anteroom hot plate when Tamara came out of her office. “The call that just came in on line one,” she said, “I think you’d better pick up.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Judith LoPresti. David Virden’s fiancée.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She’ll tell you. I’ll listen in.”

  I carried the coffee into my office. We still hadn’t heard from Virden and I figured he was nursing his grudge and wanted nothing more to do with us. But he hadn’t put stop payments on the two checks he’d written to the agency; Tamara had contacted the bank yesterday afternoon, late, and both of them had gone through.