Mourners nd-31

by Bill Pronzini

  “Not openly, maybe. Lies of omission are still lies.”

  “Only if they stem from certain knowledge.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “You want to know the truth. But the fact is, I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. Not beyond any doubt.”

  “Another evasion.”

  “No, it isn’t. Kerry…”

  “You and Russ Dancer, dammit. You had an affair with him, didn’t you.”

  “I did not. You know how I felt about the man.”

  “Later, yes. Not how you felt about him during the war.”

  “I tolerated him then. I hated him afterward.”

  “After D-day.”

  “After the war ended, yes.”

  “Ivan was in Washington on D-day. Did you and Dancer celebrate together? Is that when you slept with him?”

  “I would never have voluntarily slept with that man.”

  “You had other affairs. With that pulp editor, Frank Colodny, for one.”

  Cybil winced. “Mistakes, foolish youthful mistakes. But never with Dancer. Never.”

  “Then why were you so upset by that envelope he left you when he died? What was in the letter he wrote you, what was in his unpublished manuscript? What’s the real significance of D-day?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Isn’t it? Cybil, I can count to nine-I was born nine months after D-day. Was Ivan really my father? Or was it Russ Dancer?”

  Out, now. All the way out into the open and lying there between them like the scab off an open wound. Cybil squeezed her eyes shut for three or four seconds. An expression of pain mixed with bitterness changed the shape of her face.

  “No!” she said in a fierce whisper.

  “But he could be, couldn’t he? That’s what you’ve been hiding, you and Bill, these past three months.”

  “Ivan was your father. Ivan.”

  “You want it to be Ivan, but you’re not one hundred percent positive.”

  “Ivan, Ivan, Ivan!”

  “But it could have been Dancer. I can see it in your face.” She caught Cybil’s hand, held it tight in both of hers. “Why won’t you admit it? Don’t you understand, I have to know! Today, now, right now!”

  Her voice sounded strained, desperate, too-loud in her own ears. Cybil’s stare was not the only one directed at her; all the eyes made her shrink inside herself, her skin feel loose and prickly.

  Cybil’s mouth moved; Kerry could barely hear the words. “Why? Why the sudden urgency?”

  Lies of omission, secrets-she was as guilty of them as Cybil and Bill. Put an end to hers here and now. She’d known she might have to; it couldn’t be concealed much longer anyway. Come clean as she was making Cybil come clean.

  “Medical reasons,” she said.

  “I don’t… what do you mean?”

  “If there’s any chance that Dancer was my father, it means my medical history might be different. Different inherited genes, good and bad. I have a doctor’s appointment later this afternoon-that’s why I have to know now.”

  “… Doctor’s appointment?”

  “With a surgeon. For a biopsy.”

  “Oh my God!”

  10

  Stonestown, off Nineteenth Avenue near San Francisco State University and Lake Merced, was the city’s first big shopping mall, built in the sixties to serve west side and Daly City residents. In its early years it had been open-air, with shops off a central courtyard and side ells that were like arctic tundras whenever the wind and fog came howling in off the ocean. As a result the flow of shoppers dwindled steadily and a number of businesses closed down. The entire mall probably would have shut down in the late eighties, if it hadn’t been for a group of developers who took it over and spent millions renovating and enclosing it. All sorts of new retail blood poured into the new Stones-town Galleria, including department stores and chain stores, and the shoppers came back in droves. It had been a thriving operation ever since, and despite high rents, that meant a long waiting list for available space. However long Drew Casement had been in business there, he must be doing pretty well to keep on meeting his monthly nut.

  Westside Pro Sports was a large, deep space along one of the short side ells. In keeping with the time of year, most of the upfront displays were of summer pursuits: baseball equipment, golf paraphernalia. The rest of the store was crowded with fishing and hunting apparatus, half a dozen customers, one twenty-something clerk earnestly trying to sell an item called a subcontinental adventure travel pack to a dubious teenager, and a sun-browned, well-set-up guy in his late thirties marking down prices on a rack of pro football jerseys. I figured the tanned guy for Drew Casement-right age, and a walking advertisement for the healthy sporting life-and that was who he was.

  Casement was expecting me; I’d called from the office to make sure he was in before driving out here. He didn’t waste any time after I identified myself. Just pumped my hand once, said he was glad to meet me, and led the way into a cluttered private office at the rear.

  No wasted time in there, either. He said as soon as he shut the door, “What’ve you found out about Jim? Is it another woman?”

  “That’s doubtful,” I said.

  “Doubtful? Then you’re not sure?”

  “We’re reasonably sure it isn’t.”

  “What’s going on then? What’s the matter with him?”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Casement.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both. My reports go directly to my client, no one else.”

  “Lynn and I don’t have any secrets.”

  “Then you can get the details from her when the time comes.”

  “You haven’t told her anything yet?”

  “There’s nothing definite to tell at this point. That’s why I’m here. Gathering information, trying to piece things together.”

  He ran a hand over his face. He was clean-shaven, but he had a heavy beard shadow; longish fingernails made a faint rasping noise in the bristles, like the wheeze of an asthmatic. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to push myself at you. It’s just that I’m worried about Jim. Lynn, too.”

  “Sure. Understood.”

  “I’ll help in any way I can, but…” He made a helpless gesture. “If I knew anything I’d’ve told Lynn right away. Jim is… well, he’s shrink-wrapped.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “Oh, you know, not a guy who’ll open up to anybody about anything, even his wife. She must’ve told you that. Sometimes you have to work just to get him to talk about sports or the weather.”

  “You’ve known him since high school, is that right?”

  “Right,” Casement said. “Senior year at Lafayette High. His family moved over there from Moraga the summer before. He didn’t have any friends, never made friends easy. Funny, in a way, that the two of us ever hooked up.”

  “How so?”

  “I was a jock back then-football, baseball. One of the cool crowd, lots of chicks, always partying. I didn’t study much and my grades got so low I came close to being declared academically ineligible partway through football season. Jim… well, he was the nerd type. Smart, real smart. His best subjects were my worst: history, math. So I asked him to help me out, and he did.”

  “Tutored you.”

  “That’s it. Once we got to know each other, spent some time together, we hit it off. The old opposites thing, I guess. He was never easy to talk to, but once you got past his… what’s the word?”

  “Reticence?”

  “Yeah, reticence. Once you got past that he still didn’t say much, but what he did say made sense. He helped me and I helped him. He’d always been a loner, shy, still a virgin in his senior year.” Casement grinned. “I took care of that little problem for him. Got him some dates, got him laid more than once before graduation.”

  “Did he ever say anything about his childhood?”

  “You mean what happened with his friend’s
parents? No. Never. I asked him about it once, and he just wouldn’t deal with it.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” Casement said. “It wasn’t a secret or anything and I guess somebody mentioned it-my old man, maybe, he was always going on about violence in our society.”

  “Do you know if Troxell ever talked to his wife about what happened?”

  “If he did, she never mentioned it to me. You think that could have something to do with the way Jim’s acting now?”

  “It’s possible. Do you?”

  “Well… it happened so long ago, more than twenty-five years.”

  “Some people never get over that kind of shock.”

  “Yeah. I can see that.”

  “A few develop a kind of morbid preoccupation with death,” I said.

  “Is that right? How so?”

  “They think about it constantly. Read and talk about it. Develop obsessive interests in violent crime. Attend funerals, even the funerals of strangers.”

  “None of that sounds like Jim.”

  “He never expressed or exhibited any particular interest in violent crime?”

  “Not to me. I mean, the subject’s come up, sure, how can you avoid it these days? He hates all that crazy shit, same as I do. But he puts the blame on the wrong horse. Only serious argument we ever had was over gun control.”

  “So you’d say he’s strongly antiviolence?”

  “Absolutely. Bleeding heart, victims’ rights type of guy.”

  Like me. But all I said was, “Nonviolent himself.”

  “Oh, sure. Jim wouldn’t hurt a fly. At least…” Casement paused. “What about the idea of suicide?”

  “What about it?”

  “That’s another sign of preoccupation with death, isn’t it?”

  “It can be. Why?”

  “Well, something Jim said to me when we were having the gun control argument. I just remembered it. I said suppose somebody attacked him, could he kill in self-defense. He said, ‘No, the only person I could ever kill is myself.’ ”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “You bet I did. Something like ‘Don’t tell me you’ve thought of knocking yourself off.’ He said yes, he’d entertained the notion. Those were his exact words, entertained the notion. He meant it, too. He wasn’t kidding around.”

  “Did he elaborate, give you a reason?”

  “Uh-uh. I said, man, you’ve got everything to live for-beautiful wife, money, nice home, great job-why would you ever think about a thing like that? He just shook his head and changed the subject.”

  “Did it ever come up again?”

  “No,” Casement said. “Christ, that couldn’t be it, could it? What’s going on with him now?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “But if it is, why now all of a sudden?”

  “There’d have to be some kind of provocation,” I said. “Even people who’ve thought about suicide over a long period of time don’t suddenly decide to do away with themselves.”

  “You mean something has to push them into it.”

  “A trigger, yes.”

  “What would do it?”

  “Severe shock, emotional upheaval.”

  “Something he saw? Like when he was a kid?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Casement said, “A few weeks ago, right around the time he started acting weird, I stopped by their house and he was even quieter than usual. I asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘I saw something, Drew.’ I asked him what’d he seen. He wouldn’t say. All he’d say was ‘I wish to God I’d gone straight home that night.’ ”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Near as I can remember.”

  “He give you any idea which night he meant?”

  “No.”

  “Or where he was or had been that night?”

  “Uh-uh. Just closed right up again.”

  “But you’re sure the conversation took place a few weeks ago? Late March, early April?”

  “Had to’ve been right around the first of April.”

  “Was his wife there at the time?”

  “Not in the room with us, no.”

  “Did you say anything to her about what he’d said?”

  “I meant to, but I didn’t. Didn’t seem all that important, went right out of my mind.”

  “And he didn’t bring it up again?”

  “I’d remember if he had.”

  11

  TAMARA

  Horace called the office again at one thirty.

  “Tamara, listen to me, please. I didn’t sleep much last night, haven’t been able to stop thinking about how we left things yesterday. I can’t stand the idea of you hating me, after everything we had together. Can’t we-”

  That was as far as she let him get before she banged his ear.

  She thought about putting the answering machine on in case he called back. Didn’t do it. Didn’t want to hear his voice again. Damn the man! He’d gone and hooked up with Mary from Rochester, he was through with Tamara from San Francisco and she was through with him, why couldn’t he just leave her be so she could get on with her life?

  Until his call, some numbness had started to set in. Hadn’t been an easy morning with Bill hanging in the office, giving her the kind of looks Pop used to-you couldn’t keep anything from that man, not for long. Word! What she needed today wasn’t paternal understanding, what she needed was to be left alone. Better after he went on out. Not as much trouble concentrating, able to throw herself deep enough into her work to keep her mind off Horace and the sorry state of her love life. Everything was humming along on the professional side-they’d have to hire another investigator if their caseload got much heavier-and then all of a sudden the personal side turns to shit. And wasn’t that always the way with her? Get one part straightened out and running smooth, and bang, something else screws up. Like she was cursed or something. Like somebody somewhere kept making voodoo Tamara dolls and sticking pins in them.

  The phone didn’t ring again.

  Yeah, but Horace wouldn’t give up. Fool would call again, here or at the apartment, and keep on trying to punk her. She knew him so well

  … that side of him anyway. Stubborn. Once he got an idea in his head, you couldn’t yank it out with a pair of pliers. And the idea now was to get her to say okay, sure, I forgive you, big guy, let’s be friends, and then he’d feel better about himself and what he’d done and go on doing the nasty with his Mary from Rochester with a clear conscience. Well, it wasn’t gonna happen. No way. She’d keep right on banging his ear until he let her be, no matter how long it took.

  Now she was restless. She paced around her office and the anteroom, stared out through the windows at South Park, paced some more. Lord, she wished she’d gone through with her plan last night, made the club scene and picked up some guy and humped the night away. Sexual frustration was part of her problem, no question about that. But she hadn’t been able to do it. Got all the way over to the Mission, drove around looking for a parking place, and the next thing she knew she was on her way back home. Hadn’t even thought about it, just drove back to the apartment and dragged that ice cream cake out of the freezer and ate half of it in about two minutes flat. And then she’d gone into the bathroom and puked it up like some bulimic teenager.

  Too soon after the Dear Tamara call, that was one reason she’d blown off the club crawl. A knee-jerk reaction to sudden trouble wasn’t like her; she’d outgrown the impulsive behavior that’d gotten her messed up more than once when she was younger. Another reason was that maybe she’d outgrown casual sex, too. As much as she wanted to get laid, she didn’t really want it to be with some stranger who didn’t have a clue who she was or care any more about her than she would about him. Being with one man for so long had changed her outlook, turned her into the same sort Bill was and Jake had been when his second wife was alive. Monogamous. Wanting more than just an orgasm out of a sexual r
elationship-needing closeness and caring and understanding and some mutual respect.

  Like she’d had once with Horace.

  Like he was having with Mary from Rochester.

  Then go find somebody else, girl. Easy as pie, right? Put an ad in the newspaper, sign up with an Internet dating service, join a church group. Mr. Right’s out there someplace, just waiting for Ms. Right to come along. Can’t take more than a few weeks, a few months, a few years at the outside.

  Got a better idea, she thought. Go out tonight after work and buy some new batteries for that vibrator of yours. May not be the perfect solution, but at least Mr. V’s an old and caring friend and besides, you won’t have to talk to him afterward or look him in the eye when you wake up in the morning.

  Behind her, the phone bell went off. Fax line this time; the bell made a different sound. She stayed by the window, watching a group of young kids playing on the swings and slides on the little playground below, until the transmission was finished. Then she went over and gathered up the half-dozen sheets from the tray. SFPD computer printouts on the Erin Dumont rape-murder, no cover note.

  She’d just finished going over them at her desk when the phone rang again, main line. Boss man checking in.

  “Jack Logan came through,” she told him. “Homicide inspectors’ reports and coroner’s report, both.”

  “I figured he would. Anything that didn’t get into the media?”

  “Plenty. Erin Dumont wasn’t attacked and killed where her body was found. No forensic evidence at the site or on her clothing. Lacerations and a few fibers on her buttocks and legs consistent with rough upholstery material, like a car seat.”

  “Forced into a car and driven somewhere else.”

  “Or got in willingly with a guy she knew. Question is, why didn’t he leave the body where he did her? Had to be pretty isolated, wherever that was. Why risk bringing it back and dumping it near where he picked her up?”

  “Good point,” he said. “If the vicinity of Thirtieth and Fulton is where he picked her up.”

  “She went jogging in that area every weeknight, according to her sister-in and out of the park.”