Mourners nd-31

by Bill Pronzini

  Pretty soon he said, “You should’ve come in with this as soon as you found out. Troxell might still be alive if you had.”

  “I know it. What can I say, Jack? I screwed up.”

  “Well, you’re not the only one. The wife, the lawyer.”

  “We all made the same mistake. It looked like he was going to come in voluntarily. We wanted to believe it, so we believed it.”

  “Suicides. Christ. You just can’t figure what goes on inside their heads.”

  “Sometimes you can,” I said, “if you make the right connections.”

  “Yeah, well, not this time.”

  “No, not this time.”

  “So all right,” he said, “it’s over and done with. End of story, if what you’ve told me is true. You sure there’s nothing else I should know?”

  I hesitated before I said, “Not about Troxell.”

  “The Dumont case?”

  “Jake Runyon’s working on an angle he dug up, mostly on his own time.”

  “Yeah? Why’s he so interested?”

  “He feels sorry for the victim’s sister. So he’s doing it pro bono. Dog with a bone, you know how it is.”

  “What’s the angle?”

  I told him about Sean Ostrow.

  “Sounds pretty circumstantial to me,” Logan said.

  “So far,” I agreed. “No hard evidence of any kind. If there was, Jake would’ve turned it over by now.”

  “I hope so. For both your sakes.”

  “You want me to have him come in anyway, talk to you or the inspectors who caught the case?”

  Logan thought about that. “Not much point. But if he does turn up anything definite, you send him in on the run. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay. Go on, get out of here. I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes.”

  Bullet dodged. I didn’t waste any time taking myself out of the line of fire.

  I caught up with Charles Kayabalian at Civic Center, in the City Hall lobby. He was defending the plaintiff in a civil suit, the judge had just called noon recess, and Kayabalian was on his way to lunch. He had no problem with me joining him. I wasn’t hungry, but you have to eat-had better eat when you’ve gotten little sleep the night before and a developing head cold from all the running around in that Ocean Beach chill. The last thing I needed right now was to wind up sick in bed.

  Rough weekend for Kayabalian, too. He didn’t look as poorly used as Logan or me, maybe because he was several years younger, but the signs were plain enough on his thin, walnut-brown face. And in the fact that his usually impeccable attire was on the rumpled side today, the knot in his paisley tie just a bit off-center. He yawned more than once on our way to the restaurant on Van Ness.

  Once we were seated with our lunches in front of us I asked him when he’d last talked to Lynn Troxell. He said, “Just before eight o’clock, briefly. I called to see how she was bearing up.”

  “And?”

  “She sounded calm enough under the circumstances.”

  “Casement still with her then?”

  “Yes. He answered the phone.”

  “Was he going to stay with her?”

  “Until Lynn’s sister could get there from Marysville. Lynn asked her to come-she needs family at a time like this and they’re fairly close. Or Casement did the asking, I don’t know. He said he was going to notify Martin Hessen and anybody else that needed to be told. Better him than me, frankly.”

  “The sister was coming right away?”

  “As soon as she could. She may be there by now.”

  We talked a little more while we finished our sandwiches. My ham and cheese was going to lie in my stomach all afternoon; I could feel it hardening up in there already as we got up from the table. On the way out of the restaurant Kayabalian allowed that he would probably go over and see Lynn Troxell in person later today. “I’m not relishing the visit,” he said. “A stranger’s grief is bad enough, but in a friend or loved one… well, you know what I mean.”

  “All too well.”

  “You won’t be seeing her again, will you?”

  “Not right away, no.”

  But eventually. Like it or not, sooner or later-I was pretty sure of that.

  At the agency, we had Sassy Tamara to start the week. Hip, flip, and cynical. I liked that version a lot better than Gloomy or Grumpy. At least she was more or less responsive.

  When I asked her about her weekend, she said, “I almost got laid by a dude wanted me to wear Marilyn Monroe’s hair.”

  “Huh?”

  “Carries it around in his briefcase in case he gets lucky.”

  “… Is that some kind of joke?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “On me.”

  Young people nowadays. Sometimes they seem to speak a language that sounds like English but makes no more sense to people of my generation than Urdu or Sanskrit.

  We talked some, comprehensibly, about Troxell’s suicide and Jake Runyon’s unofficial investigation into the rape-murder of Erin Dumont, his call this morning with the baseball hunch. Tamara hadn’t been able to track down a current address for Sean Ostrow yet, but she would. There was damn little information she couldn’t dig up sooner or later; it was a matter of professional pride with her, in spite of all that office-drudge nonsense she’d given me.

  “Sounds like Jake is convinced Ostrow is the perp,” I said.

  “Leaning heavy that way,” she agreed. “Once he knows where to find Ostrow, he’s gonna want to get in the man’s face. You think we should let him go ahead? Or tell him to back off?”

  “He’s got good instincts. My inclination is to let him stay with it.”

  “We’re off the hook now. Might put us right back on.”

  “I know it.”

  “But sometimes you have to keep pushing, right?”

  “Sometimes your conscience won’t let you do anything else.”

  “Just don’t push too hard.”

  “That’s the tricky part,” I said. “Knowing how hard to push and when to stop before it becomes a shove.”

  I went into my office and put in a call to the Troxell home. Answering machine. I identified myself, but if anybody was monitoring calls, they didn’t pick up. I left an “if there’s anything I can do” message and let it go at that for now.

  For a time I tried to do some routine work, but my head wasn’t into it. Shortly before three o’clock I packed it in and went to tell Tamara that I was through for the day.

  “Going home?” she asked.

  “Not right away. Couple of things I need to do first.”

  “Business?”

  “Pushing,” I said.

  26

  JAKE RUNYON

  Midafternoon traffic in Marin and Sonoma counties was heavy enough to cause slowdowns. The temperature was fifteen degrees warmer up there, summer-hot in the vicinity of Santa Rosa. The Ford’s air-conditioning was busted, so Runyon drove with the window down. Windless heat mixed with exhaust fumes crawled through the car, sweating him and making him aware of how tired he felt. Lack of sleep seldom bothered him; all he’d ever needed was four or five hours a night. He remembered one hot summer in Seattle, when he was working vice. A string of violent assaults on prostitutes had everybody on the squad pulling extra duty, and he’d gone sixty-seven hours straight without closing his eyes and been as alert and functional when they finally cornered the perp in an abandoned building as if he’d just gotten out of bed.

  Stop and go, stop and go. He kept trying to shut himself down in order to make the drive easier, but he was having trouble doing it today. The missed sleep, maybe. Memories kept intruding unbidden, like feelers probing through his mind and then expanding into sharp images.

  That same summer he’d gone the sixty-seven hours without sleep. A few weeks later, early August, the much-needed vacation. Colleen had talked him into driving up to the Cascades, going camping in the national forest. He was an urbanite, he didn’t know anything about wilderness camping, b
ut he’d done it to please Colleen. And the experience hadn’t been bad at all. All those giant trees, all that empty virgin quiet-peaceful and stimulating at the same time. Both of them enjoying themselves, frisking around in the woods like a couple of kids, Colleen playful and horny that one warm afternoon in the little meadow where they stopped to make camp. So there they were, going at it in the grass under towering redwoods, her on top and making more noise than she usually did, and then all of a sudden she’d let out a shriek that had nothing to do with their lovemaking and froze, pointed, and yelled, “Jake, look!” And he’d twisted around and looked, and damn if a bear hadn’t been standing at the edge of the glade, watching them.

  Small brown bear, but it looked big as hell from down on the ground. They’d shoved apart and he’d jumped for his. 357 Magnum, but he didn’t need it. The bear had already taken off running by the time he got it out of his pack. And there they stood, buck naked, him armed and loaded for bear, listening to a real bear crashing away through the woods. Then Colleen started to laugh. “We scared him more than he scared us,” she said. “I’ll bet that poor peeping bruin doesn’t stop running for hours.” Her words got him laughing and they couldn’t stop. They must’ve laughed for ten minutes, hanging on to each other and whooping it up like a couple of crazy people.

  Their private joke for years afterward. All he had to do was wink and say “Peeping bruin,” and Colleen would break up. That fine, rich, bawdy laugh of hers… he’d loved that laugh, nothing made him feel better than hearing her laugh A horn blared behind him, snapped him out of it. Cars were moving up ahead and he was still sitting there dead stopped. Christ. He accelerated to rejoin the flow, rubbing off sweat with his free hand. Freeway noise poured in through the open window, but he could still hear Colleen’s laughter echoing inside his head. Echoing and then fading. And gone.

  He paid attention to the highway, only the highway the rest of the way into Santa Rosa. It was just four o’clock when he rolled into the parking garage behind the downtown Macy’s.

  Arlene Burke wasn’t on the checkout desk or the floor in the housewares department. One of the other clerks said she was working in the stockroom and went to fetch her. She had the photograph in her hand when she came out. She gave Runyon a wan smile, said, “We can talk back there,” and led him to a corner near the stockroom door. The whole time she held her body turned a quarter to the left, to keep the right side of her face out of his line of vision. But he’d already seen the bruise along the cheekbone that a heavy application of makeup hadn’t quite covered. He didn’t say anything about it. She had enough hurt in her life as it was.

  The photograph was a five-by-seven candid color shot taken at some sort of small dinner party by someone without much camera skill. It was more or less in focus, but off-center so that Sean Ostrow’s right arm was missing from the frame. The rest of him was there from the waist up. Over six feet tall and suety fat-three discernible chins, bulging belly that seemed to start under his collarbone and showed beneath the hem of a tentlike blue T-shirt. Sandy hair pulled back tight on his massive skull, part of the ponytail visible behind one shoulder. Irritated frown on the thick-lipped mouth, as if he hadn’t wanted his picture taken. Pretty much the image Runyon had expected to see, but that wasn’t why Ostrow seemed vaguely familiar.

  “You said this is a good likeness of your brother, Mrs. Burke?”

  “As he looked back then,” she said. “That was taken, oh, it must be four years ago.”

  “He’s changed since?”

  “Lord, yes. I almost didn’t recognize him when he moved down from Sacramento.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’d never seen him that thin before.”

  “Thin? You mean he’d lost weight?”

  “You didn’t know about that? I thought you did, or I’d’ve said something on Saturday.”

  His fault, dammit. He hadn’t asked the right questions. “How much weight did he lose?”

  “Sixty pounds by then.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He said he was sick and tired of being fat. I thought he looked good at about two-fifty, but he wasn’t satisfied.”

  “Kept on losing?”

  “Oh, yes. It was like he was obsessed with being thin. Or on a mission to change his life. He hardly ate anything, twelve hundred calories a day, never any more. He always hated exercise before, but he’d started jogging and joined a gym and worked out regularly. He kept on the same program while he was here.”

  “How much weight had he lost the last time you saw him?”

  “Close to a hundred pounds. Isn’t that amazing? No more ponytail, either-his hair cut short and styled real nice. He looked wonderful, like one of the people on that TV show, Extreme Makeover. A new man, you know? I was so proud of him.”

  A hundred pounds. A new man. Runyon looked at the photograph again, worked on it with his imagination until he had a clear image of the man as he must look now-leaned down, the sandy hair cut short and restyled. Then he knew why the image was familiar.

  The young guy Risa Niland had been talking to in front of her apartment building Saturday afternoon was Sean Ostrow.

  On his way to the parking garage, he called the Get Fit Health Club. Risa wasn’t there; the man who answered said she’d left early, around four o’clock, he didn’t know why. Runyon tried her home number. She wasn’t there either; her machine picked up. He left a terse message asking her to call him as soon as she got in.

  Sean Ostrow was the perp, all right. No doubt about it now. Obsessed with being thin, on a mission to change his life-that was why he’d quit SunGold and left San Francisco two years ago. Starting over, making himself into a new man. Motivated by an even greater obsession: Erin Dumont. Took two years before he was satisfied with the change, and then he’d moved back to the city and presented the new Sean Ostrow to Erin Dumont. And she’d rejected him again. Two years, all the sacrifice-for nothing. Rage and hatred consumed love and worship, and that was why Erin Dumont had been slugged, strangled, and raped.

  What wasn’t clear was why now, two months later, he was hanging around Erin’s sister. The way he and Risa had been on Saturday-not like strangers meeting for the first time. How long had she known him? What was their relationship? What was brewing inside his head this time?

  Runyon got the car out of the garage and onto the freeway headed south before he called the agency. He told Tamara about Ostrow’s weight loss, and the fact that Ostrow had made contact with Risa Niland. She didn’t waste any time with questions or speculations; she said, “You were right about him-he’s the perp,” and let it go at that. “Right about the Giants baseball angle, too. I talked to the vice president of guest services, man does the hiring at S.F. Baseball Associates. Ostrow was an usher at SBC Park.”

  “Was?”

  “Hired in late March, fired in mid-April.”

  “Why was he fired?”

  “He only worked one game, opening day. Called in sick the second day, didn’t show up or call in the next two games.”

  “Mid-April,” Runyon said. “Just a couple of weeks after the murder.”

  “Too sick over what he did to care about his dream job anymore.”

  “Fits along with the rest of it. You get his new address?”

  “Not yet. Against SFBA policy to give out personal information.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I think I’ve got a line on it. Felicia at SFPD. That’s why I didn’t call you. Waiting for her to get back to me.”

  “Today?”

  “She said maybe. Let you know as soon as I hear from her.”

  Tamara called back forty minutes later, as he was climbing Waldo Grade to the tunnel above the bridge. “Got it,” she said. “Eleven ninety-seven Twenty-seventh Avenue.”

  That was only a few blocks from where Risa lived, where Erin had lived. Ostrow had found a place as close to his obsession as he could get.

  “Okay. Thanks, Tamara.”

  �
��What’re you planning to do?”

  “Find Risa Niland and warn her. Talk to Ostrow as soon as I can find him.”

  “Jake… go easy. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I won’t cross any lines if I can help it.”

  27

  RIST NILAND

  He was waiting for her when she got home.

  Street parking in the neighborhood was always a problem, after four p.m. especially. Tonight she had to drive around for ten minutes until she found a space, way over on Balboa, and walk back uphill lugging the three heavy plastic grocery sacks. She was beginning to hate this city. So wonderful when she first moved here all dewy-eyed from Green Bay-magical, as she’d said to Jake Runyon. Now, after seven years, the allure had worn off; now it seemed dirty, chaotic, inconvenient, cold, dangerous, ugly. And yet, as often as she’d vowed to leave if and when Erin’s murderer was caught, move back to Green Bay or Milwaukee, start a new life there, she wondered if she could actually go through with it. Despite what had happened to Erin, despite the ugliness and the hatred she was feeling, San Francisco was home, California was home. Her job was here, most of her friends were here, Jerry was here… no, the hell with Jerry, he didn’t fit into the equation anymore. Did he? Oh, God, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Yes, she did-she wanted things back the way they were, Erin alive, the good times with Jerry, life to be uncomplicated again. She wanted to be naive and carefree, to live in a never-never land of magic and make-believe.

  She sighed heavily as she reached her building. Another bad day, compounded by a mild hangover, and another bad night coming up. In the foyer she set the sacks down, fumbled in her purse for her key.

  “Risa.”

  The voice came from just behind her, and when she turned, there he was. Hunched inside a tan parka, his sandy hair windblown, his big hands clenched in front of him in a funny way that made it seem, in that first glance, as if he was about to start praying.

  “Oh, Dave, hi. What’re you doing here?”

  “Can I talk to you? I really need to talk.”

  There was something in his tone that made her look closely at him. What she saw shocked her a little. There was so much anguish in his cold-reddened face, in his pale blue eyes, it was like he was wearing some sort of tragedy mask. He’d been sad and hurting ever since she’d known him, Saturday even more so than usual, but tonight… he seemed almost ravaged.