Camouflage (Nameless Detective Mysteries)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Murder for profit.”

  “Murder factory. Rent that room to somebody with no close friends or relatives, somebody with money or other valuables. Victim doesn’t come to them soon enough, one or both of ’em go trolling for one in Mission Bay or SoMa or Potrero Hill. That’s how they found Rose O’Day, right?”

  “According to Selma Hightower.”

  “Then when they got everything they could from those poor old folks, they offed ’em. Probably been doing it the whole seven years they lived there.”

  “The real Roxanne McManus doesn’t fit that victim profile,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe she was how they got started, part of Mama Psycho’s plan to set up the dog-boarding front.”

  “Here’s another possibility,” I said. “Mama Psycho, as you call her, needed a new identity because she has a criminal record somewhere. Might even be a fugitive warrant out on her.”

  “Carson, too, I’ll bet. Thelma and Louise.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s right, the only flicks you watch are old black-and-whites on TV.”

  “What do movies have to do with this?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “So McManus and Carson are running this murder factory, nobody suspects anything for seven years, and then along come Virden and us investigating and they can see the whole thing starting to unravel. Virden thinks things over in The Dog Hole after his first visit to the house and decides maybe we didn’t screw up after all. Goes back to confront the impostor, threatens to go to the cops—and that’s the end of him.”

  I agreed that that was a likely enough scenario, given the bloodstain I’d found in the living room.

  “We keep investigating,” Tamara said, “and McManus tries to warn you off with the lawsuit threat. Smoke screen to buy them time—they’ve already decided to haul ass out of Dodge. We’re getting too close to the truth and they can’t afford to wait around. So they empty their bank accounts, dig up their cash stash, whatever, and start loading up their SUV. Man, I wish we had some idea where they took all that stuff of theirs.”

  “Storage unit somewhere, maybe.”

  “Come back for it later, after things’ve cooled down? That’d be pretty risky. Seems more likely they’d want to get far away from San Francisco and never come back.”

  “Depends on what their plans are. They’re too shrewd to run blind—they’d have a hideout set up or in mind.”

  “So they could be anywhere now.”

  “Just about. One thing they’ll do before they go very far is switch that SUV for another set of wheels, make themselves even harder to trace.”

  “We can’t just sit back and let them get away,” Tamara said grimly. “We’ve got to do something.”

  I said, “I’ve already told the SPCA about the abandoned dogs. And I’ve got a call in to Jack Logan. When I hear from him, I’ll lay out everything we suspect. He knows I wouldn’t come to him unless I was reasonably sure I had good cause.”

  “But will he do anything even if you fess up to unlawful entry?”

  “Whatever he can. The abandoned dogs should give the police the right to inspect the kennels. McManus’s and Carson’s prints are bound to be in there, and if we’re right that the two of them are fugitives, that’ll be enough cause for a search warrant for the house.”

  “All that’s gonna take a long time,” Tamara said. “Too long.”

  “No use worrying about what we can’t control. Even if APBs were put out right away, it might already be too late. They could already be off the highways by now, holed up someplace.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at it this way,” I said. “No matter what happens, they won’t be killing any more people in Dogpatch.”

  “I’d feel better about that if I knew they won’t be killing any more people anywhere.” She was silent for several seconds. Then, “I keep wondering what happened to the bodies. No place on the property where they could’ve buried ’em?”

  “Not unless there’s a pit hidden under the kennels.”

  “… You think maybe?”

  “No, I don’t. Chancy disposal method anyway.”

  “What about that sick dude in Ohio a couple of years ago, had decomposing and mummified corpses all over his house and yard?”

  “Different type of case. Trust me—there aren’t any corpses hidden on the Dogpatch property.”

  “So maybe they cut ’em up and fed ’em to the dogs.”

  “Pretty grisly work for a couple of middle-aged women.”

  “Well? Men don’t have a monopoly on being monsters.”

  She was right enough about that. But whatever the answer, I had a feeling it wasn’t chopped-up human dog food.

  * * *

  Jack Logan hadn’t returned my call by the time I headed home. I’d left two messages for him, one on his cell’s voice mail, the other at the Hall of Justice, both stressing the urgency of the information I had for him, but he’d become a busy man since his promotion to assistant chief. The constant demands on his time came not only from the PD but also from the city’s political hierarchy and individuals a lot more powerful and influential than I would ever be. Jack and I had been friends a long time, but that didn’t count for much on the priority ladder.

  In the old days I’d had other friends in the department I could have appealed to, but they were all gone now—retired, working for other police departments or at other jobs. One more example of the effects of time erosion. There were a few inspectors I’d had business dealings with, but I didn’t know any of them well enough to approach them with a handful of nothing much more than speculation based on circumstantial evidence. Logan was the only one who’d give Tamara’s and my suspicions the attention they deserved.

  * * *

  Mild argument with Kerry when I got home. She wanted to go out to dinner—Emily was spending the night with a friend—and I wanted to stay in, relax after the long day, wait for Logan’s call. She won the argument, as she usually does when she really wants something, by a combination of cajolery, guilt-tripping (we hadn’t been out together alone in weeks), and subtle sexual promise. Not that she used sex the way some women did, as a form of extortion. She’d never said no to me just because she didn’t get her way—too honest and caring for that kind of nonsense. But if she did get her way, her natural tendency was to be more enthusiastic in her lovemaking. I may be crowding geezerhood, but I can still be as swayed by the prospect of enthusiasm as I was in my younger days.

  So we went out to dinner, at a Sicilian restaurant that had just opened up in Noe Valley. My one proviso being that I keep my cell phone on because Logan still hadn’t rung back. Normally doing that goes against my grain—people who get calls and then chatter in public places are near the top of my list of my pet peeves—but this was a special circumstance. Kerry had no objection when I explained the situation on the drive down to 24th Street.

  The restaurant was crowded; we had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Worth the wait: the food and the service were both first-rate. I had chicken marsala, Kerry a pasta dish called finocchio con sarde, made with fennel and sardines, that tasted a whole lot better than it sounds, and we shared a bottle of light Corinto wine. The place was atmospherically decorated and the lighting kept purposely dim in order to maximize the effect of candlelight. Kerry looks good in any light, the more so since she’d treated herself (and me) to the facelift after her bout with breast cancer, but there’s something about candle glow that makes her especially attractive. Gives her auburn hair a kind of fiery shine, her face a luminous, ageless quality. The longer I looked at her across the table, the more glad I was that I’d lost the argument tonight. Enthusiasm. Right. I could feel mine rising by the minute.

  We were sipping the last of our wine when she broke a brief conversational lull by saying, “Tom Bates just bought a second home, a small ranch down in the Carmel Valley.”

  “Good for him. He can afford it.”

  “We could afford one, too, you
know.”

  “What, in Carmel Valley? I don’t think so.”

  “No, you’re right; the Carmel area is too expensive. But somewhere else—Lake County, the Sierras, the north coast.”

  “You’re not serious about this?”

  “Why not? Wouldn’t you like to have a weekend getaway place?”

  “I don’t know … would you?”

  “Yes. I love the city as much as you do, but a change of scenery now and then would be good for both of us. Emily, too. I don’t mean day trips—quiet weekends, minivacations.”

  “You sure we can afford it?” Kerry handled all the household financial matters; she has a much better head for figures than I do.

  “Since Jim Carpenter promoted me to vice president we can. The market’s down now; we could get a small cabin or cottage for a reasonable price.” The prospect excited her; the candlelight emphasized the high color in her cheeks. “And we could take our time looking in different areas until we find just the right place. It’d be fun.”

  “You really think we’d use a second home enough to make it worthwhile? I mean, we don’t get away on weekend trips much as it is.”

  “That’s just the point,” she said. “We wouldn’t keep finding excuses to stay home or take only short day trips if we had a place of our own to go to. You’re supposed to be semiretired, but you’re right back to working four and five days a week. Wouldn’t you like to take more time off, do something besides sit around the condo when you’re not at the agency?”

  “You work longer hours than I do.”

  “Yes, and I’d like to cut back a little myself eventually. Don’t you think we’re entitled to some leisure time? We’re not exactly spring chickens, you know.”

  “Don’t need to remind me.”

  “There are other benefits, too,” she said. “Buying a piece of California real estate is always a good investment, no matter where it is, and it’ll help our tax situation. And you know we’re almost out of storage space at the condo. We could move a lot of stuff to a getaway place, not just nonessentials but utilitarian items like clothes and furniture. The living-room couch, for instance. I’d been wanting to buy a new— What’s the matter? Why are you staring off like that?”

  “Storage space,” I said.

  “… What about it?”

  “Piece of California real estate. Storage space.”

  “Are you all right? You have the oddest look on your face—”

  “Lightbulb just went off.” I slid my chair back. “Wait here; finish your wine. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Make a phone call to Tamara.”

  I tried her home number first; it was late enough so that she should be there by now. Five rings, while I stood shivering on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. On the sixth ring, she answered sounding grumpy.

  “Got me out of the tub,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “That piece of rural property Rose O’Day inherited. Didn’t you say it was in Marin County?”

  “Some place called the Chileno Valley.”

  “What kind of property? How big?”

  “Farmland. Thirty acres.”

  “Buildings on it?”

  “I’d have to check the tax records, but—” She broke off and then let out a little yip; quick on the uptake, as always. “And the Chileno Valley is west of Highway One-oh-one going north. That’s where McManus and Carson were headed—that’s where they’re hiding out!”

  22

  JAKE RUNYON

  Robert Darby cooled down some after Runyon let him come in and look through the apartment. Darby stood flushed and jittery in the middle of the living room, his red-eyed gaze flicking here and there without resting on Runyon or anything else for more than a second. Man badly in need of rest, beset by grief, anxiety, impotent rage. An unlikable, self-centered shyster whose treatment of Bryn was little short of cruel, but seeing him like this, you couldn’t help but feel for him.

  “You’re sure you haven’t seen Bobby, heard from him?”

  Second time Darby had asked that question. Runyon gave him a slightly different version of the same answer. “I’d tell you if I had. I’m not your enemy, Mr. Darby.”

  “All right. All right.”

  Runyon asked, “Did something happen to make the boy run away?”

  “No.” Darby shook his head, scraped fingernails through his close-cropped hair. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “The nurse I hired, she went in to use the bathroom and when she came out he was gone. Just like that … gone.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A couple of hours. Just before I got home.”

  “No prior indication that’s what he had in mind?”

  “Didn’t say a word to her. To me, either. Closed up tight since that horror show yesterday, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t eat … ah, Christ. Where would he go?”

  Runyon said, “His mother’s house, maybe.”

  “No, he’s not there; I just came from there. First place I thought of.”

  “Did you or the nurse tell him where Bryn’s being held?”

  “… You think he went to the Hall of Justice?”

  “Might have, if he has an idea that’s where she is. You notify the police that he’s missing?”

  “No, I drove straight out here—”

  Darby broke off, jerked his cell phone out of his coat pocket; fumbled it, almost dropped it in his haste. It took him a nervous two minutes to get through to either Farley or Crabtree; his voice rose and cracked a little as he talked. From Darby’s end of the conversation Runyon gathered the boy hadn’t been seen at the Hall and that they’d put out a BOLO alert for him.

  “I should’ve called them sooner,” Darby said when he ended the conversation. “First Francine, now this with Bobby … just not thinking straight.”

  “The police will find him. Best thing you can do is go home and wait for word.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, goddamn you!”

  Runyon sidestepped the flare-up with a question. “Did Bobby take anything with him when he left? A bag, clothing?”

  “What? No. The nurse looked, I looked … a jacket, that’s all.”

  “What about money? Bus fare, cab fare.”

  “He couldn’t have much, no more than a few dollars from his allowance.…” Darby shook himself, a sharp rippling action like a dog shaking off water. “What the hell am I doing standing here talking to you? If Bobby does come here or you hear from him, notify me right away. Understand?”

  Runyon said, “You and the police both,” but Darby was already on his way out.

  * * *

  Why had Bobby run away?

  Bad environment in that flat, whether the boy had had anything to do with Whalen’s death or not. Painful memories, ghosts haunting his impressionable mind. Fear made worse by his overbearing father’s anger and grief, by a stranger called in to watch over him, by not being told what had happened to his mother. Sensitive, damaged kid huddled inside himself for security and solace, but too bright and too needy to stay that way for long. Perfectly natural that when he freed himself from his shell he’d want to free himself from his oppressive surroundings as well.

  Where would he go?

  Linked answer: familiar place where he felt safe, where he might find genuine comfort, where he might find his mother. Her house, his second home, the only real home he’d ever known—that was the logical choice.

  Three hours. More than twice as much time as it would usually take to travel by bus from the Marina to the Sunset District. Unless he’d gotten lost or something had happened to him on the way … No, the hell with that kind of thinking. But Darby had been to Bryn’s house, presumably still had a key and searched it, and Bobby wasn’t there—

  Or was he?

  * * *

  The brown-shingled house was completely dark, sheathed in mist, when Runyon pulled up in front. Fast walk up the path and stairs to the front porch. Bryn kept
a spare key in a little box mounted under the window ledge to the right of the door. He went there first, felt inside the box. Empty.

  All right.

  He had his own key to the place, as Bryn had one to his apartment—an in-case-of-emergency exchange and a measure of their mutual trust. He let himself in, closed the door behind him, and stood listening before he switched on the hall light. Silence except for the faint snaps and creaks you always heard in an old house in cold weather. Cold in there, too, with the furnace off or turned down; he could see the faint vapor of his breath as he made his way to the bedrooms at the rear.

  Bobby’s room was empty, the bed neatly made, everything in place. Same in Bryn’s room. The spare bedroom, her office, the living room, the kitchen were just as empty. She kept a flashlight in the pantry; Runyon found it, tested it, and then opened the door to the basement and flicked on the light.

  A short flight of stairs led downward. He hadn’t been in the basement before, took a moment to orient himself. Furnace and water heater at the far wall. To his left, washer and dryer and storage cabinets; to his right, a workbench and rows of hand tools hung on a pegboard. Behind the water heater, Bryn had said. He crossed to it, found the narrow space where he could wedge his body behind the unit. The opening to the crawlspace that led deeper under the house was closed off by a sliding panel. He eased it open partway.

  “Bobby? It’s Jake.”

  Silence.

  He slid the panel open the rest of the way. The pale overhead light didn’t reach this far; all he could see inside was heavy blackness.

  “It’s okay for you to come out now,” he said, keeping his voice low pitched, normal. “Your dad’s gone. There’s nobody here but me.”

  Silence.

  “You can trust me, Bobby, you know that. I’m your friend and your mom’s friend. I know where she is and I’m doing everything I can to help her. But I need you to help me do that.”

  Silence.

  Runyon hesitated. He didn’t want to go into the crawlspace himself or use the flashlight, but he had to be sure the boy was there. Had to get him out if he was, and without scaring him any more than he already was.

  “I’m going to put on a light,” Runyon said. “Don’t be afraid. I just want to see where you are.”