Mourners nd-31

by Bill Pronzini

  “So it wasn’t sudden.”

  “Yes and no. I know that’s an ambiguous answer, but… The specific behavioral changes were more or less gradual, but I think something happened about two months ago that had a profound effect on him. Emotionally, psychologically. That’s when he really began to change.”

  “Can you connect it with any specific event?”

  “No. All I can tell you is that it seems to have had nothing to do with me or our friends or his work. Something outside our… his.. normal sphere.”

  “These behavioral changes-what are they exactly?”

  “Moodiness, hours alone in his den, avoidance of social activities. And recently, one or two evenings a week away from home. He won’t say where he goes, just stonewalls the subject. The one time I asked if I could go with him, he said he didn’t want company.”

  “How late does he stay out?”

  “Four to five hours, usually. From six thirty or seven on. Once last week, until after two A.M. He… well…”

  She fell silent, her gaze moving against mine. Neither my face nor my eyes showed her anything. One of the many things detective work teaches you is how to maintain a poker face. Besides, I wasn’t thinking anything yet. No preconceived notions and no quick judgments-that’s something else the business teaches you.

  I asked, “What else, Mrs. Troxell?”

  “Now he’s taking days off work-unexplained absences. One or two days a week.”

  “The same days?”

  “No. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it.”

  “You said unexplained absences.”

  “He won’t give me or anyone at Hessen and Collier a reason. He just calls in with some excuse.”

  “Does he stay home, hole up on those days?”

  “No,” she said. “He leaves at his usual time every morning, whether he goes to the office or not, and stays out most of the day.”

  “How did you find out he wasn’t going to his office?”

  “Mr. Hessen, Martin Hessen, called me last week. He’d spoken to Jim about it, but Jim stonewalled him, too.”

  “Is he letting his work slide?”

  “Not to a crisis point, not yet. But of course Martin and the other partners are concerned.”

  “Have you spoken to your husband’s friends?”

  “He only has one close friend, Drew Casement-they’ve known each other since high school. But he hasn’t confided in Drew. Or anyone else that I contacted.”

  “So you have no idea where he goes, what he does during his day and evening absences?”

  “Not a clue. I thought of following him myself, but I wouldn’t be any good at that sort of thing. That’s why I need your services. I have to find out before… I have to find out.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, there’s the obvious explanation for his actions and the behavioral changes-”

  “It isn’t another woman,” she said flatly.

  “I’m sure you don’t want to consider the possibility, but-”

  “It is not another woman.”

  “I have to say this. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a woman.”

  “No.” Sharply this time. “Whatever is causing this, it isn’t love or sex.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’d know if it was. A woman knows. Besides…”

  “Yes?”

  Her hands moved again, joining, unjoining. “My husband has been very attentive to me recently. You understand? Very passionate.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but you’re wrong. The passion has nothing to do with guilt or subterfuge or even release of tension. It’s more than simple physical desire. It’s a deep-seated need… in some way I don’t understand he needs me more than he ever has. The closeness, the intimacy. As if he’s trying desperately to hang on.”

  “To you emotionally?”

  “Just trying to hang on,” she said.

  Just trying to hang on. Euphemism for a man struggling against a mental breakdown. Based on what Lynn Troxell had told me and the two days’ surveillance I’d put in so far, that was the most likely explanation for her husband’s abnormal behavior. Stress-related, maybe, with the trigger being some disturbing event or experience; or the gradual degenerative result of a genetic flaw or any number of other possible psychological and/or physical factors. Breakdowns happen all the time to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons, and manifested in all kinds of ways. More and more every year, it seems; Tamara and Runyon and I had run up against an extreme case ourselves just last Christmas.

  Hell, with all the pressures and insanities in the modern world, it’s a wonder a lot more individuals don’t slide off the edge-great streams of them like lemmings off a crumbling cliff.

  It was after four thirty when I got to the new suite of offices in a venerable three-story building overlooking South Park. Jake Runyon was in, sitting at his desk and studying something on the screen of his laptop. Behind him, the seldom-shut door to Tamara’s office was closed.

  “Hey, Jake. Tamara leave already?”

  “No. In her office.”

  “Somebody with her?”

  “She’s on the phone.”

  “Must be important.”

  He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. He was a big, tense man who almost never relaxed completely, but he seemed to have found a certain comfort level these past few months. When he’d first applied for the job of field investigator eight months ago, his clothes had hung loosely on his compact frame, his slablike face had had an unhealthy cast, and he’d been so tight wound and hard to read that we almost didn’t hire him even though he had the best qualifications. Grieving for his second wife, who had recently died of ovarian cancer; alone in the world except for an estranged gay son who had been taught to hate him by Runyon’s bitter, alcoholic first wife. The son, Joshua, was the reason he’d moved to San Francisco from Seattle. He’d made some slight progress in establishing communication with Joshua, if not in mending a rift that might well be irreparable. The passage of time and the job with us had helped restore his equilibrium. He looked healthier, he’d put on weight, he wasn’t quite so reticent or closed off. The grief was still a powerful force inside him; you could see it in his eyes. It would always be a part of him, I thought, but it seemed he was learning to live with it. We weren’t friends-he hadn’t made any friends here, seemed not to want or need any-but we worked well together, and respected each other, and in the process we, too, were making some slight progress in communication.

  He said, “What do you think of these?”

  I leaned over his shoulder to look at his computer screen. Surveillance photos taken with his digital camera. The suspected insurance fraud case for Southwestern Indemnity. “Is that Nicholson?” I asked.

  “Helping his brother-in-law move furniture.”

  “So much for his spinal injury claim. Southwestern’ll be pleased.”

  “I’ll close it up tomorrow, then get on the Fisher skip-trace. Unless you need me for something else.”

  “As a matter of fact, how’d you like to take over the Troxell surveillance, beginning tonight?”

  “Okay with me. Troxell’s the financial consultant with the funeral fetish?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Tamara was working on his background when I came in.”

  I gave him a quick rundown of the afternoon’s events. “Tuesday evening outings seem to be part of Troxell’s pattern. I’d stay on it myself, but frankly two full days of funeral parlors, cemeteries, and solitary beach walks are about as much as I can take.”

  “Sure, I understand.”

  The understanding was mutual; I wouldn’t have asked him otherwise. It had nothing to do with my being one of his bosses or that I was nearly twenty years his senior. It had everything to do with the fact that I had a family to go home to and he didn’t, and he preferred working to sitting around his empty apartment. His job was t
he only thing that mattered to him now, except for his son-the one and only activity he had left that gave meaning and purpose to his existence. I knew all about that kind of obsessive sublimation. I’d been a workaholic loner myself, for different reasons, for a not insubstantial part of my life.

  He was writing down Troxell’s address when Tamara’s door opened and she came out. She looked like she wanted to bite somebody. Her round face-not so round now that she’d shed twenty pounds-wore a scowl that made it seem two shades darker than usual.

  “Oh,” she said when she saw me, “you’re back.”

  “Few minutes ago. Something wrong?”

  “No. Why?”

  “That scowl. I like you better with your mouth turned the other way.”

  “Yeah, well, no smiley faces today. Like the man says, some days the shit comes down so heavy you feel like wearing a hat.”

  I glanced at Runyon. He shrugged. “Line from an old movie,” he said. “ Body Heat, I think.”

  “Uh-huh.” I said to Tamara, “Translation into plain English, please.”

  “No,” she said.

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “That’s what no means.”

  “Problem with one of the cases?”

  “No.”

  “Personal, then?”

  “No.”

  My turn to shrug. You couldn’t prod her when she was in this kind of mood. I wondered if it had something to do with her boyfriend, Horace; if that was who she’d been talking to on the phone. He’d moved to Philadelphia just after the first of the year to pursue his career as a symphony cellist, and they hadn’t seen each other since. Seven months is long time apart when you’re twenty-five years old, in love, and chock-full of raging hormones.

  “So the man take you to another funeral this afternoon?” she asked me.

  I told her where Troxell had taken me after Colma. “I can’t even begin to imagine where he goes on his nights out. Jake gets the dubious pleasure of finding out. He’s taking over the surveillance starting tonight.”

  “What about the Fisher case?”

  “My baby, now. I’ll get moving on it in the morning.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Anything more on the three deceased women?”

  Head shake. “Names don’t mean anything to the client, either.”

  “You talked to Mrs. Troxell? You didn’t say anything about the funerals, did you?”

  “Do I look like my mama raised a backward child?” she said in a teeth-and-bristles voice. “I didn’t talk to the woman, I talked to your lawyer friend. Easier for him to feed her the names without getting her all bent.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah,” she said. Then she said, “Troxell’s background.”

  “What about it?”

  “One thing I found out, might be important. Happened when he was a kid. Ten years old.”

  “In Moraga?” That was the East Bay community where he’d been born and raised.

  “Right. His best friend was Clark Simmons, same age, lived a couple of blocks apart. Simmons kid’s father was an air traffic controller at the Oakland airport-stressed out, drinking too much, abusing his family when he was wasted. He showed up for work drunk one morning and they fired him. So he went home and started taking it out on his wife. Big screaming fight, he started beating her up, she took a kitchen knife and cut him with it. So he went and got his Army forty-five and blew her away. Blew himself away right afterward.”

  “Jesus. But what does that have to do with Troxell?”

  “He was there when it happened, just walked in with the Simmons kid. He saw the whole thing go down.”

  3

  TAMARA

  On the way home that night she stopped at a Baskin-Robbins on Geary and bought the biggest damn ice cream cake they had. Gooey fudge, whipped cream, about twenty thousand calories’ worth. But when she got to the apartment she couldn’t eat it. Two bites at the kitchen table, and her throat closed up and she pushed it away. All the weeks spent living on Slim-Fast to rid herself of twenty pounds of flab so she’d feel good, look good… good as she’d ever look… she just couldn’t do it to herself, start eating her way back into Fat City. Not for any reason.

  She put the cake away in the freezer, wandered into the bedroom. Still some of Horace’s clothes in the closet, stuff he hadn’t taken with him to Philadelphia. She yanked every piece off the hangers, threw them into a pile in the corner-all except his brown suede jacket, one of his favorites, overlooked or forgotten when he was packing. She found a pair of shears and cut off both sleeves at the elbow, snip snip, slash slash.

  Didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, she felt worse.

  She threw the mutilated jacket on top of the other stuff and sat down on the bed, then sprawled out on her back. Got up in less than a minute and went into the living room and turned on the TV and then turned it off again and shuffled through her CDs and picked one, nothing classical, especially nothing with cellos or violins, and plugged it in and then sat down on the couch. But she didn’t listen to the music. Couldn’t even hear it over the loop of Horace replays inside her head.

  … hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is make this call…

  Little quiver in his voice, real emotional.

  … hate to have to hurt you, I’m so sorry…

  You’re sorry, all right, sorry excuse for a man.

  … there’s somebody else, somebody I’ve known for a while…

  Lyrics out of a bad old song.

  … she’s a second violinist with the philharmonic here…

  Sure, that figures.

  … her name’s Mary, she’s from Rochester, New York…

  Do I give a shit who she is or where she’s from?

  … we’re in love, crazy in love…

  Like you and I never were, right?

  … didn’t want it to happen, neither of us did…

  More bad lyrics, a whole damn chorus.

  … as serious as it gets, we’re going to be married in the fall

  …

  Only wedding gift you’ll get from me is a gallon of rat poison.

  … wish to God it could have turned out differently for you and me…

  Bullshit.

  … never stop loving you, Tamara, even if you find that hard to believe now…

  Hard to believe? Try impossible.

  … want only the best for you, always…

  Can’t say the same for you. So long, you big lying sweet-mouth son of a bitch, I hope Mary strangles you with one your cello strings someday.

  She wished now that she been able to say something like that to him, something hard and wounding-gotten in the last word. Instead, her mind a blank, all she’d done was hang up. End of conversation, end of five-year relationship. End of love. With a click, not a bang, from three thousand miles away.

  Not that the Dear Tamara call had come as any big surprise. No word from him in nearly three weeks, two messages she’d left on his answering machine that he hadn’t returned. Oh, yeah, she’d seen it coming even with her eyes wide shut. All those months apart, seven long months of no contact except by phone, too busy in her case, too hooked up with somebody else in his, to follow through on plans to spend a few days together in Philly or here.

  Saw it coming, sure. But she didn’t expect it to come cold like that, him calling her at the agency instead of at the apartment-it had thrown her off balance. Thought he had more class, more courage, than that. Thought she knew him so well… how stupid was that? She didn’t know him at all. Consider herself lucky she wasn’t the one marrying him after all, Mary from Rochester could have him and good riddance. Didn’t want it to happen, neither of us did. What a load of crap. Back there screwing the second violinist for God knew how long, months probably, while she sat around pining away for him and being Ms. Faithful, putting her own needs on hold, keeping herself pure at heart for her big lovin’ man The hell with it.

  The
hell with him.

  Fuck men!

  … Well, now, there’s an idea.

  More than seven months since she’d done the nasty New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day farewell marathon with Horace. Seven months of denying herself, keeping the faith, living the lie. Well, not anymore. Cruise the clubs tonight, pick up the first good-looking guy who showed an interest in her-black, white, Asian, Martian, didn’t make any difference-and go to his place or bring him back here and let him hump her brains out. Why not? Horny, wasn’t she? Sauce for the goose, right?

  She showered, changed into the sexiest outfit she owned, put on her makeup, brushed her hair and dabbed on a little perfume, and went out to the car. Horace’s Toyota. Her Toyota now… Keep it, Tamara, I want you to have it.

  She was two blocks from the apartment before she realized, dammit, dammit, that she was crying.

  4

  Emily was home alone when I walked into our Diamond Heights condo a little past six. Some kind of godawful teen-shriek music poured out of her room, so I knew even before I went in there that she was by herself; one strict rule in the household is that she wears a headset when Kerry and I are on the premises. She was at her desk, working on her computer-which was also the source of the noise being perpetrated by a young female vocalist and a percussive band-and wiggling around the way kids do in time to the assault on her ears and mine. And to think that when I’d first met her, not so long ago, she’d been such a shy, introspective, quiet little girl.

  I had to yell at her twice before she knew I was home. She popped the CD out of her laptop, but even in the sudden quiet I could still hear and feel the afterechoes. If she kept listening to that kind of stuff at such a volume, she’d be wearing a hearing aid before she was fifty.

  “It’s after six,” she said in an amazed voice. “Sorry, Dad. I should’ve put on my headset, but I was surfing the Net and I guess I lost track of the time.”

  “How can you concentrate with that racket going on?”

  “Racket? That’s Shannon Stark’s new CD.”

  “Who?”

  “Shannon Stark. She plays Holly Grimes on TV.”