“Yes.”
“No message of any kind?”
“Message?”
“For you or someone else. Written or recorded.”
“No.”
“What did you think happened to her?”
“I thought she’d gone away for a while.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Because of us, the fight we had. To think about us.”
“Was she in the habit of doing that?”
“What?”
“Going away suddenly, unannounced,” I said. “Disappearing for a few days, a week, longer.”
“Once. She did that once, right after we met.”
“How long was she gone that time?”
“A few days. She went to Tahoe.”
“By herself?”
“Yes. She said she did that when she wanted to think.”
“Always to Tahoe? Any special place up there?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Okay. So at first you thought she went away to think things over-your proposal, your relationship.”
“Yes,” Runyon said. “Give it enough time, she’ll change her mind. I know she will. She has to.”
“You still believe that? That she’s been holed up somewhere for nearly four months, trying to make up her mind?”
Silence. We were on Twin Peaks now, nearing upper Market; oncoming headlights sliced into the car, fragmented and threw splinters of light against his battered face. He had his head tilted back again but his eyes were open, blinking now and then against the glare.
“Is that what you believe now?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
“What do you believe?”
“I don’t know what I believe. I do know she’s alive, she’s all right, she’s not really hurt.”
“Is it possible she went away with another man?”
“No,” he said.
“Wasn’t seeing anybody but you in May? Couldn’t have broken off your affair because she’d met somebody new?”
“I told you why she wanted to leave me.”
“Tell me about the man who attacked you tonight,” I said.
Runyon coughed, spat thickly into the towel. His breathing had become more clogged from the swelling and the blood; it had a scratchy, wheezing cadence, like a man in the last stages of TB.
“Mr. Runyon? The man who attacked you-who is he?”
“… I don’t know his name.”
“He knows yours.”
“Don’t know how he found out.”
“Tonight isn’t the first time you saw him face-to-face?”
“No. Twice before.”
“Where? Nedra’s house?”
“Both times. Just… showed up there.”
“How long ago, the first time?”
“Three weeks.”
Right, I thought. And after you left that night, he followed you home. Easy enough then for him to find out your name and telephone number.
“What did he say to you, that first time?”
“He wanted me to leave Nedra alone.”
“Did he know she was missing?”
“No. He does now. He thinks I did something to her.”
“You tell him she’d disappeared?”
“No. He found out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long did it take him to find out?”
“Not long. A few days.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Veiled threats. Not like tonight.”
“On the phone as well as in person?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you his relationship with Nedra?”
“No. He… talks about her as if he owns her.”
“A former lover?”
“Man like that? No. Nedra would never give herself to a man like that.”
“Like what? A violent man?”
“Crude, uneducated. Ugly.”
“She ever mention someone like him in her past?”
“No.”
“Someone who’d bothered her, made trouble for her?”
“No.”
“Would she have confided in you about that sort of thing?”
“Of course she would. We have no secrets.”
Sixteenth Street coming up. That was the more direct route to S.F. General, over on Potrero, but I didn’t take it; this time of night, it would be jammed around Mission Street with low-riders and the coffeehouse-and-disco crowds. I kept on going to Duboce and turned there.
I asked Runyon, “What have you done to try to find her?”
“Done?”
“You must have done something. Talked to friends, relatives-”
“She has no relatives. She’s an orphan.”
“Friends, then.”
“No. Nedra is a private person.”
“Everybody has at least one friend.”
“Me,” Runyon said. He was still wheezing, the words coming out with difficulty. “Lover and best friend. Now especially she needs no one but me.”
Christ.
“People she works with, clients-you talk to any of them?”
“A few.”
“None had any idea what happened to her?”
“Where she was, no. I didn’t say she’d disappeared.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I… couldn’t. Too personal, too painful.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said she’d gone away for a while and I’d lost contact with her. I said she’d be back eventually. But they wouldn’t listen, they were all so angry.”
“Because of work she owed them?”
“Yes. No loyalty to her, no compassion.”
“I don’t suppose you contacted the police, the missing persons bureau?”
“No, I… I couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“Have to be a relative to file a missing persons report. They couldn’t find her anyway. If I couldn’t reach her-the man who loves her, knows her best-how can strangers?”
Bullshit. You don’t have to be a relative to file a missing persons report; all that’s required is a personal or professional relationship with the individual and a willingness to detail it to the authorities. Maybe Runyon didn’t know that, but he could have found out easily enough. He loved Nedra, he wanted to marry her, he was pathologically entangled with her… but still he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to uncover his ass and go public with his affair. And then he’d waffled too long and it was too late to do much of anything: he was hamstrung and any fresh leads to Nedra’s whereabouts had gone stale, were probably lost for good by now. Weak and ineffectual personality, operating under a dangerous overload of indecision and worry and stress-that was Victor Runyon. Man caught and strangling slowly on the cord of his obsession.
“Just what exactly did you do, Mr. Runyon?”
“What?”
“To try to find Nedra.”
“Everything I could think of. Went through her papers, her mail, her bills. Listened to her phone messages. Kept checking her favorite places… restaurants, shops, the aquarium, the De Young.”
“That’s all?”
“What else could I do?”
“You paid her past-due bills, didn’t you?”
“Bills? Yes, I paid them.”
“When they shut off the electricity at the house.”
“Yes. I should have paid them sooner.”
I didn’t have to ask him why he’d done it. It was the same reason he’d built the shrine: an expression of sick, blind faith.
“She’ll come back,” he said thickly, “safe and sound. She has to, for both our sakes. You understand? She’ll come back with me.”
Like one of the disciples waiting for Christ to rise from the dead.
***
KAY RUNYON HAD ALREADY arrived when I walked her husband into the emergency room at S.F. General. And she hadn’
t come alone; the other member of the family, Matt, was there too. When she saw Runyon’s bruised and swollen face she bit her lip, hard; otherwise she showed no reaction. Neither did her son. Matt stood stone-faced, tense, his young-old eyes as bleak as the linoleum floor and the drab beige walls. Neither of them made a fuss or got in my way while I deposited Runyon on one of the benches.
I went to talk to an admissions nurse, tell her the nature of Runyon’s injury. My footsteps echoed hollowly in the big room. Slack time, as early as it was and on a weeknight: only two other people in the waiting area, and both of those on silent vigils. No major-accident or gang-shooting victims so far tonight; no crack or heroin overdoses, no stabbings or bludgeonings or other serious trauma injuries. Even so. there was a charged atmosphere of expectancy among the staff: it was only a matter of time. I’d been here once on a particularly eventful Saturday night, and it had been like a combat-zone field hospital-the hurt and the dying lined out on benches and gurneys, hurrying paramedics and frazzled nurses and doctors in blood-spattered smocks. War is hell, and so is life in some parts of the city. In those parts, on certain nights, it amounts to the same thing.
When I got back to Runyon, his wife and son were sitting one on either side of him. Mrs. Runyon was saying something to him, but she might have been talking to herself for all the reaction she was getting. He didn’t seem to know she was there. Kay Runyon, yesterday afternoon: He just… retreated. Into himself, like a turtle pulling its head into its shell. Yeah. He could bear his soul to me in all its raw, pathetic torment because I was a stranger and the contact was impersonal, without emotional baggage, like confiding to a priest in a confessional. Where his family was concerned it was just the opposite: too much emotional baggage, with the biggest chunk of it being guilt.
I caught Kay Runyon’s eye, gestured to her. She got up immediately and hurried over to me. The strain had hollowed out her cheeks even more, built little ridges of muscle around her mouth and along her jawline. But she was a strong woman, a hell of a lot stronger than her husband, and she had herself under rigid control. No tears tonight, not here and probably not in private.
I said, “Why did you bring the boy?”
“Matt knew something bad had happened,” she said. “He could see it in my face. I couldn’t lie to him. I told you yesterday, we don’t have secrets.”
Runyon in the car, talking about Nedra: We have no secrets. “Everybody has secrets,” I said. “Besides, this isn’t something a seventeen-year-old kid ought to know about his father.”
“… Is it that bad?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Tell me.”
“Not just yet. The nurse has insurance papers to be filled out. Can Matt do it?”
“Yes.”
“Give him the job. Then we’ll talk.”
She moved away to talk to the admissions nurse. While she was doing that an intern came out with a wheelchair, and he and Matt helped Runyon into it. Runyon’s face was a purple-and-red horror now, his nose swollen lopsidedly to three times its normal size. Whatever the boy felt looking at it, his own face betrayed nothing. He stood stoically as the intern wheeled his father out of sight.
I sat on a bench, away from everybody else, and watched Kay Runyon hold a low-voiced conversation with Matt. He argued with her but not for long; in less than a minute he took the insurance papers and sat down and began to scratch at them with a ballpoint pen.
She joined me again. Sat heavily, fumbled in her purse and came out with cigarettes and a lighter. I tapped her arm, pointed to a no smoking sign on one wall. She said, “Shit,” and put the cigarettes away. Then she said, “I hate hospitals. The smell… it’s a death smell. Especially in a place like this. How can doctors and nurses work here?”
“Probably because to them it isn’t a death smell,” I said. “To them it’s a life smell.”
“I wish I cared about other people that much.”
“You care, Mrs. Runyon.”
“No, I’m selfish. I only care about my own.” She drew a thin, shuddery breath. “Who did that to Vic, hurt him like that? The man who’s been calling?”
“Yes. I don’t know his name yet, but I will tomorrow.”
“Nedra? You found out who she is?”
I nodded and told her about Nedra Adams Merchant. All of it, full details and without trying to soften any of the facts. Bare knuckles don’t hurt any more than blows encased in velvet. She had steeled herself for the worst, but there was no way she could have anticipated Nedra Merchant’s disappearance or the scope of her husband’s reaction to it. The news grayed her skin, added sickness to the pain in her eyes.
“I don’t know him anymore,” she said. “I don’t know the Victor Runyon you’re talking about.”
“But he knows himself now, better than he ever did before. That’s part of his problem. He knows and he can barely cope with the knowledge.”
“He’s still a stranger to me. I love the man I married, but I loathe and despise that stranger in there-I hate him as much as I’ve ever hated anyone. Does that make sense to you?”
“Some.”
“Maybe I’m having a breakdown too,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Vic is. We both know that.”
“Yes.”
“What do I do about it? Talk to a psychiatrist?”
“I would. As soon as possible.”
She nodded; it was a decision she’d already made and she’d wanted support for it. “But I can’t force Vic to get help and I can’t keep him chained at home. He’ll go back to her house, you know he will. What if that man shows up and attacks him again?”
“There’s something to be done about that. Once I know who he is I’ll have a hard talk with him, threaten him with police action or a lawsuit. That might scare him off.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll talk to your husband, try to convince him to press assault charges.”
“Suppose he won’t? Then what?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“What about Nedra? Do you have to report her disappearance to the police?”
“Reporting it isn’t up to me, not unless I have evidence of foul play, kidnapping, some sort of crime.”
“Is that what you think happened to her?”
“I don’t have any opinions yet.”
“Can you find out? Just you alone?”
“Three and a half months is a long time,” I said.
“But it is possible.”
“With some luck, yes.”
“Will you try? If it turns out she’s dead, if Vic is shown proof that she’s gone for good, it might bring him to his senses. Don’t you think so?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Will you do what you can? Please?”
“I’d already planned on it.”
She started to thank me, but I didn’t want to listen to that; she had nothing to thank me for. I cut her off by saying, “About your husband’s car. Do you want me to drive you to Forest Hill so you can pick it up? Or drive your son?”
“No, not Matt. I don’t want him to see where she lives. You can drive me. I’d just as soon leave the car where it is, but that won’t keep Vic home. He’d only take a taxi.”
“We can go now or in the morning.”
“Now. I can’t stand this place another minute. And I need a cigarette-God, I need a cigarette. Matt can drive his father home in my car.”
***
KAY RUNYON DID NOT HAVE much to say on the ride to Forest Hill. She sat stiffly, smoking one coffin nail after another in that quick, nervous way of hers. Even with my window down, enough of the smoke stayed in the car to irritate my lungs. But I endured it; I didn’t have the heart to take away the one thing, even briefly, that gave her a measure of comfort.
When we rolled onto Crestmont she sat up straighter and peered intently through the windshield, like an animal entering hostile territory. And when I pulled over beh
ind her husband’s BMW she asked abruptly, “Which house is hers?”
I pointed it out.
“Very nice,” she said. “I’m sure it’s lovely inside. Does she have good taste in furnishings too?”
I didn’t answer that. She didn’t expect one anyway.
I kept the engine running, but Kay Runyon was not quite ready to get out of the car. She sat staring past me at the wood-shingled house across the street-and then she made a sound, low in her throat, a kind of rumbling. It took me a couple of seconds to identify it as bitter, humorless laughter.
“Vic found out some unpleasant things about himself,” she said, “and now I’m finding out some unpleasant things about myself. I don’t have much compassion. I’m as cruel and selfish as dear Nedra.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I hope she’s dead,” Kay Runyon said. “I hope she died suffering; I hope she’s been rotting in the ground somewhere for the past three and a half months.”
CHAPTER 8
THE FORD ECONOLINE VAN WAS registered to a Richard Rodriguez, with an address on Lowell Street in the city.
Harry Fletcher at the DMV had that information for me fifteen minutes after I opened the office on Friday morning. The balding guy hadn’t struck me as a Latino, but appearances can be deceiving. So can the registered ownerships of vehicles; people who buy used cars don’t always bother to reregister them, and people who drive a particular one aren’t always their owners. Two other automobiles were registered in Rodriguez’s name as well: a second, older Econoline van and a 1990 Olds Cutlass. Whoever Richard Rodriguez was, he believed in buying American. I asked Harry for the license numbers of the second van and the Olds, in case I needed them.
My next call was to TRW, to request a credit check on Rodriguez. Then I punched up the number of the AMA, to see if they’d come up with anything for me. They hadn’t; no licensed psychiatrist named Duncan had practiced in San Francisco or anywhere in the Bay Area within the past ten years. The S.F. Bay Area Psychological Association had drawn the same blank where practicing psychologists and psychotherapists were concerned. Either the man Nedra Merchant had been seeing was unlicensed-some kind of head quack-or Lawrence April had in fact misremembered the name.
I put the Runyon-Merchant matter on temporary hold so that I could take care of the preliminaries on the department-store skip trace and then get some billing done. No bills sent, no checks received: and my cash flow was a little sluggish at the moment. I was working on the billing when the telephone went off.
Demons Page 7