The Ever-Running Man

by Marcia Muller

  Kessell’s handcuffs were tight around my wrists but loosely linked. I moved them to my left side, twisted around, and craned my neck so I could see my watch.

  Five after midnight. Horrible start to a new day.

  I had time, though; there was no need to panic. Kessell probably wouldn’t make any inquiries about me at this hour. He’d said he didn’t know who I was, just that I must be rich because I owned the Touchstone property. So he didn’t know I was an investigator, let alone that my husband was a partner in RKI. He’d also said he didn’t want to hurt me—which was natural, because anything that happened to a “rich” property owner would trigger a serious inquiry by the Mendocino and Sonoma County authorities—but once he made the connection with RKI, my life wouldn’t be worth two cents. The bluff here was high, the house invisible from the highway, the ocean currents wicked. One shove, and I’d disappear without a trace, become fodder for sharks.

  So get moving.

  I slid down onto the concrete floor, lay on my back. The cuffs chafed my wrists, sent a sharp pain up my spine. I raised my hips and slid my cuffed hands under them. Then I pulled my knees to my chest, bent my calves down, and pointed my feet toward the ceiling. The cuffs caught on my heels, and I strained to free them; then they were over my feet and in front of me.

  I lay on my back for a minute, wrists throbbing, heart pounding. Thank God for the stretching exercises I did most days and the frequent swims in the health club pool. Finally I struggled to a sitting position.

  Even though he knew I’d been in his house, Kessell hadn’t searched me. I still had the lock picks in my jacket pocket.

  Not bright, Danny Boy.

  I went to work.

  The lock on the cuffs was a piece of cake. They were so poorly manufactured I could have broken them with a pair of pliers. Kessell had probably purchased the least expensive set he could find, against the rare instance when he had to roust a squatter from one of the properties he patrolled.

  The door lock proved trickier. I tried a variety of picks and techniques, none of which worked.

  My watch showed three-fifteen when I selected my favorite pick, in terms of aesthetics. The Serpentine, my informant had called it—an elegant, long, snakelike piece of flexible metal. Unfortunately, it had limited use and was seldom effective. But this time: a gentle probe, a careful positioning, a swift upward motion, and I was free.

  I shut off the storage room light and stepped into the hallway. Listened for a moment. Empty-house sound and feel. Kessell had left. I crossed the family room to the deck where I’d earlier fallen asleep. Kessell wasn’t there, and he’d replaced the lounge chair on its stack. It was still dark, not a trace of light showing above the ridgeline.

  I stood there, considering my options.

  Kessell was probably in bed asleep. But what if he’d left the Doberman on guard? Or positioned himself outside, in the event I’d somehow escape? If I opened the sliding door, it might alert one of them. I didn’t have my flashlight anymore, and even if I did, using it to get to the highway would also give me away. But staying here was an unacceptable risk—

  Idiot!

  My cellular wouldn’t work here, but there had to be a phone in the house. Second-homers—even those who use their places less frequently than Hy and I—don’t have the service disconnected when they aren’t in residence; it’s too much trouble, and expensive.

  I found a phone on a table between two chairs facing a big-screen TV. Picked up the receiver and got a dial tone. And then sat there, trying to decide whom to call.

  The county sheriff? God, no. I’d have to file charges against Kessell, and then he’d file countercharges against me, and even if I’d left no evidence that I’d been in his house, it would trigger an inquiry by the state department of consumer affairs that would put my license in jeopardy. I’d already gone that route once, through no fault of my own, and I wasn’t about to travel it again.

  I’d have called Hy, but he was far away in San Diego. No help there.

  There were any number of friends on the coast I could wake up and ask for assistance, but their driving along the road to this house might alert Kessell. One of the rules of my profession is not to involve friends and family in a potentially dangerous situation.

  How to get myself out of here?

  No. Get Kessell out of here.

  I called the San Diego PD. Gary Viner was off duty. I tried information. Fortunately, he was listed. I dialed his number, and he answered after two rings—homicide cops are used to early-morning calls.

  “Did you get that file I e-mailed?” I asked.

  “And a good morning to you, too.”

  “The file?”

  “Yeah. Promising information.”

  “More than promising.” I told him what I’d found out up here, omitting the fact that Kessell had me trapped in a stranger’s house. “I need you to issue a pickup order on Kessell to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, effective immediately.”

  “Why immediately?”

  “I think he’s about to commit murder again.”

  “Who’s the potential victim?”

  “Me.”

  “Jesus, McCone, what makes you think that?”

  “He’s figured out I’m on to him.” When Gary still hesitated, I added, “He’s trespassed on my property up here before, and he knows how to breach the security system.”

  “Okay, I guess we’ve got enough to ask Sonoma County to pick up and hold.”

  “Great. I think he’s at the home address in the file I sent you. And, Gary, can you leave me out of it for now?”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Nothing. But I don’t need the publicity.”

  “. . . Okay, I understand. For now, you’re out of it. I can’t guarantee that indefinitely, though. Now, hang up so I can get this thing in motion.”

  A faint pink line had appeared above the coastal ridge by the time a sheriff’s department cruiser pulled up in Kessell’s driveway. I watched from the front window on the upper level of the house where he’d trapped me as two officers went to his door and were admitted. Five minutes later, they came out with Kessell, who was yelling, although I couldn’t make out his words, and gesturing toward this house. On the other side of his cottage, the dog barked wildly. The deputies ignored Kessell’s protests, put him in the backseat of the cruiser, and drove away.

  The tension that had been building as I waited ebbed. God, I was tired. Still, I checked around the house for any evidence of my presence. My fingerprints weren’t on any of the surfaces I’d touched, as I hadn’t removed the surgical gloves I’d used to search Kessell’s place. There was nothing I could do about locking the storage room door, but the owners would probably consider that an oversight on their own part. They’d probably complain to the phone company about the calls to San Diego and have them removed from their bill. I climbed to the upper level again, and left by way of the front door.

  Okay, Kessell was gone and wouldn’t be returning for some time, if ever, but now I had another problem: what had he done with Hy’s .45? If the case against him proved strong enough for the authorities to get a search warrant for his house, they’d most likely find the gun, and its registration would lead directly to Hy—and me. Its presence there would be difficult to explain.

  I moved along the road toward the green cottage. Both the front and back doors were locked, but not the deadbolt on the front. I went to work with my picks on the snap lock and was inside within a minute. After a quick sweep of all the rooms, I found the .45 under a pile of dish towels in a kitchen drawer next to the back door. I took it and left the way I’d come.

  The light above the ridgeline intensified as I trudged along the road toward the highway and my truck. Kessell’s Doberman yammered a good-bye.

  Back at Touchstone, I locked the .45 in Hy’s nightstand and then called Gary Viner; his voice mail message said he would be out of to
wn today on official business. When he got on to something, he got on to it right away.

  The light on the machine was blinking. I depressed the play button. Walter Waggoner, at ten-forty p.m.: “Sharon? Are you there? Kessell came back, said he was having problems with the plane’s radio. He’s on his way home.”

  Second message: Hy’s voice, recorded at 2:51 this morning.

  “McCone, if you’re there, pick up.” A pause, then a sigh. “Oh, hell. Call me when you get this—it’s important.”

  I dialed his cellular; he answered immediately. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The ever-running man’s been at it again. This time he took a shot at me in the parking lot.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I sensed a motion in the shadows, ducked, and the shots—two of them—broke the windows in the company car I’ve been using. Then the night crew came running out of the building, and he disappeared.”

  I sank onto the chair next to the phone. “What time was this?”

  “Around two-thirty.”

  No way Kessell could have made it to La Jolla in two hours after he’d imprisoned me, much less back by the time the sheriff’s deputies took him away. He couldn’t have been the shooter.

  Was I wrong about him being the ever-running man?

  “McCone?”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. More pissed off than anything else.”

  “You call the police?”

  “They came out, took a report. I told them to get in touch with Viner at SDPD.” La Jolla was a separate jurisdiction, with a police force of its own.

  “You tell them why?”

  “Yeah. They’ll pass the information along to Viner.”

  “Gary’s on his way up here.” I explained what had happened last night, omitting nothing.

  Hy was silent when I finished. Then: “So Dan really was this Dr. Richard Tyne. He took over Kessell’s identity, Kessell found out years after the fact, and killed him.”

  “Apparently. He left a fairly clear trail to San Diego and back.”

  “But he’s not our ever-running man.”

  “Not unless he was working with someone else. I suppose he could’ve contacted a partner after he imprisoned me and ordered a hit on you.”

  “That doesn’t feel right.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  After a pause, Hy said, “What I don’t understand is which Kessell broke into the house and deleted the Tyne file from my iMac. Ours, who came by boat, or the one up there, who came by air?”

  “I suspect it was our Kessell. The other just liked to do touch-and-goes at our strip. Our Dan—Tyne, whatever—must’ve realized you’d been in his office and seen the pad where he scribbled Tyne’s name. He knew that would make you curious, that you’d probably Google Tyne, but you wouldn’t do it on your office computer. And he knew about the iMac from the time he stopped by Touchstone and you showed him something on it.”

  “The Tyne file was on the desktop, easy for him to access. But I keep a computer at the ranch as well; why didn’t he go there?”

  “Had he ever been to the ranch?”

  “No. I don’t think he even knew where it is.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  “So what’s next on your agenda?”

  “Sleep—if possible. Then I’ll get hold of Gary, ask if they’ve gotten anything out of Kessell. And then back to the city. I want to go over this information with my staff, help Patrick coordinate his flow charts, see if anything new comes out of that.”

  “Everything okay at Touchstone?”

  “Now it is.”

  When I broke the connection, I realized that this had been the most normal conversation—if talk of a shooting attempt can be considered normal—that I’d had with Hy since last week’s unpleasant revelations. Somehow, maybe, we were making our way back to each other.

  Air traffic was heavy at Oakland, freeway and bridge traffic even heavier into San Francisco. I’d slept till two in the afternoon and was hitting the Bay Area at a busy time of day. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel of the MG, watched its temperature gauge rise. I loved this car, had gifted it with a new engine, extensive body and interior work, and a new convertible top. Now the paint was blistered from the explosion at Green Street, and something else was about to go wrong. Minor, but still . . .

  Maybe I should buy a new car. Something like Rae’s BMW Z4. Bells and whistles—

  No. This little gem was a classic that car lovers like me would kill for. I’d keep it, and if I bought a second vehicle, I’d get something inexpensive, sensible, and nondescript—the perfect car for stakeouts. Like my investigator friend Wolf’s car: it was so nondescript I wasn’t even sure of its make, and he’d driven it forever. But, come to think of it, Bill—Wolf was my nickname for him—didn’t do many stakeouts anymore since he and his partner, Tamara Corbin, had hired a couple of new operatives. Neither did I.

  The hell with it. I’d keep the MG, and use the agency van when I needed to be inconspicuous. A second, inexpensive, sensible, and nondescript car be damned.

  I pulled into my parking space on the floor of the pier at quarter to five. Patrick’s car and Mick’s motorcycle were in their spaces, but everybody else’s vehicles were gone.

  I hurried up the catwalk, thrust my head into Ted’s office. Kendra Williams, who took the MUNI to work, smiled up at me. “You’re back! Ted’ll be relieved. You know how he worries when you fly.”

  “Do I ever.” I smiled back at Kendra. She was a petite woman in her mid-twenties with a milk-chocolate complexion and cornrows; she was also the perfect assistant office manager for the agency—unflappable, and so efficient that even Ted was in awe of her.

  “He go home early?” I asked.

  “No, the dentist. Between his twitchiness over having his teeth cleaned and you flying, he’s been wringing his hands like Butterfly McQueen. He said to tell you that all’s on an even keel here. And I can testify to that.” She handed me a few message slips. “Nothing important, I don’t think.”

  “Thanks.” I went along the catwalk to my office, amused by the reference to the Gone With the Wind character who had performed her histrionics long before Kendra—or even her mother—was born.

  Once I’d hung up my jacket and used the restroom, I glanced through the message slips. Hy, of course, from the early hours of the morning. Ma, twice—God, I’d have to remember to phone her tonight! A client, thanking us for a job well done and particularly praising Julia Rafael’s work. Jim Keys, the contractor at Church Street, asking if I wanted to check the progress on the house. A couple of new clients whom Ted noted he had referred to Charlotte and Craig.

  I picked up the receiver and called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department in Santa Rosa, where I knew they would have taken Kessell. Gary Viner was there, but conducting an interview and couldn’t be interrupted. I left a message for him to call me. Then I buzzed Mick and asked him to come to my office.

  As soon as he stepped through the door, I could see he was depressed: his shoulders slumped, and he shuffled his feet. He didn’t look me in the eye.

  Oh, God, the romantic weekend in Carmel and the marriage proposal must not have gone as planned.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “If you really want to know, I feel like shit.” He flopped into one of the clients’ chairs.

  “Not a good weekend?”

  “No. Well, it was fine till Saturday night when I sprung the engagement ring on her. She turned me down flat. Said she’s felt pressured by me lately. She thinks she needs more space.” He laughed, with a bitterness I hadn’t heard from him since his parents’ divorce. “She’s moving out. Temporarily, she says. I suspect it’s permanent.”

  Damn! He was so happy when he showed me the ring.

  “Shar, I don’t know if I can work here anymore.” His face reminded me of when he was a confused little boy contending with a badly dysfunctional family. But he
wasn’t a little boy anymore; he was a grown man who’d already suffered more than his fair share of life’s disappointments.

  I said, “You can, and you will.”

  “But she doesn’t want to quit her job, and I honestly can’t ask you to fire her.”

  “I wouldn’t, under any circumstances. What’s between the two of you is your private business.”

  “But how can I—”

  “Let me tell you a story,” I said. And explained exactly what had gone on between Hy and me since Mick had revealed his information about Hy’s past.

  “If you’re strong about this,” I finished, “if you’re professional, Charlotte will respect you. She may not come back, you may never even be friends again, but she’ll respect you, and you’ll respect yourself.”

  “But you said you and Hy might be coming together again.”

  “I said we might. There’s no certainty.”

  He bent his head, his longish blond hair falling over his forehead, and remained in that pose for a moment. Then he looked up at me and said with a half smile, “If you can live with that kind of situation, so can I. I always told Mom and Dad that when I grew up, I wanted to be just like you.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. Now let’s call Patrick in and fill in some of the gaps on his flow charts.”

  The more gaps on the flow charts that we filled in, the more we realized we didn’t know. Unless Dan Kessell broke down under Gary Viner’s questioning and admitted to being the bomber—something that seemed unlikely—we would have to assume the ever-running man was still out there. When Gary called at around six-thirty, what he had to report confirmed that line of thinking.

  “We’ve got a strong case against Kessell in the San Diego murder,” he told me. “We’ve already confirmed the vic as Richard Tyne. A search of Kessell’s plane turned up a thirty-eight police special in the cargo space, and I’m sure ballistics’ll make a match. The other evidence you gave us is circumstantial, but with the weapon, the prosecutor can build a case that’ll stick.”