I knew instantly what was in the kid’s mind and I wanted to yell at him not to do it; reach over and grab him and haul him down before he acted. But any sudden cry or activity on my part would probably trigger Cahill. Nothing for me to do but keep Cahill’s attention centered on me and then attack when Matt attacked.
“Listen to me, Cahill,” I said. “You’re making a big mistake.”
“You listen, slick. You shag ass out of here right now, no more crap, or I hurt these two. You understand me?”
Matt’s hand was on the vase.
“Suppose I don’t?” I said. “You going to shoot me down in cold blood?”
“Maybe. You want to find out?”
“You ever killed anybody, Cahill? No, I don’t think so. Not with a gun anyway. You’re not that cold-blooded.”
“You don’t know me, you don’t know what-”
Matt swung the vase up and chucked it, all in one quick blurred motion. Oh yeah, a ballplayer-a good one, thank God. The vase slammed into the side of Cahill’s head, knocked him sideways and his hot eyes out of focus. The crack of the pottery shattering and Cahill’s pained bellow and Kay Runyon’s startled cry all seemed magnified, like eruptions blowing away the silence.
Matt was closer to Cahill and I had the couch to get around; he got there first, hurling himself at the bigger man just as the gun came up in Cahill’s hand. The thing went off and Kay Runyon screamed, but the muzzle was pointed downward; the bullet burrowed harmlessly into the floor.
The force of the kid’s lunge drove both of them, reeling, into the far wall. They bounced off, into another table; the table buckled and collapsed under their combined weight, brought them down with it in a tangle of arms and legs and broken wood. I saw the Saturday night special pop loose from Cahill’s grasp, but when I went after it somebody’s leg flailed out and tripped me, sent me sprawling into the back of the couch. Kay Runyon made another noise; I heard Cahill say “Shit!” explosively. I got my footing back, turned in time to see him punch Matt over the eye and break free. He looked for the gun, but I was already lunging for it. I scooped it up, swung around with my finger sliding through the trigger guard.
Cahill wasn’t going to fight me for it. Coward underneath all that hard-ass exterior: he’d turned tail and was running for the hallway.
I yelled for him to stop but he didn’t break stride; he veered away from the front door, though, instinctively realizing I could see him if he tried to get out that way, take a clear shot at his back. He charged ahead into the kitchen. I started after him, but Matt was on his feet by then and between me and the hall. His mother and I both shouted his name, a half-beat apart so that the effect was of an echo. He didn’t listen to either of us. Just pelted, head down, in Cahill’s wake.
I lumbered around the couch, got past Kay Runyon. “Stay here, call nine-eleven,” I told her, and ran on through the hall into the kitchen.
It was empty; Matt had just slammed out the back door. I yanked the thing open, went onto the porch. Cahill was off to the right of the studio, barreling across the lawn toward the fence that separated the Runyon property from the pedestrian ladder street beyond. Matt was twenty yards behind him and gaining.
At first I thought Cahill would slacken speed and jump for the top of the fence, try to scale it. But no, he kept right on going full tilt toward the access door. He hit it like a bull smacking into a bullring wall: head lowered, shoulder up, legs driving. The lock burst loose in a shriek of metal and wood, the door flew outward, boards splintered loose from the fence and the whole thing wobbled and sagged. Somehow Cahill kept his balance, turned uphill on the ladder street. Matt was right behind him. I could hear the two of them pounding up the steps as I ran across the yard.
When I came out onto the street and looked upward, Cahill was on the concrete halfway up, trying to use the iron side railing to give himself greater impetus. But Matt was younger, faster; he caught Cahill by the shirt, yanked him back and around, and smacked him full in the face. I saw blood spurt, heard Cahill roar with pain. Then they were locked together, slugging at each other; and then they were down on the landing, rolling around in an even more frantic embrace.
Cahill had the greater strength, would have won the wrestling match inside of two minutes. But I was up there with them in less than one, jockeying to stay out of harm’s way so I could draw a bead on Cahill’s head. He gave me the opening I was after when he rolled on top of the boy and reared back to throw a punch. I clouted him on the right ear with the flat barrel of the Saturday night special. It stunned him; a grunt came out of his throat and he tried jerkily to turn my way. I clubbed him again, and a third time as he was toppling sideways. The third blow laid him out facedown on the dirty concrete, kept him there.
There was a shout from near the top of the hill. A bearded guy had his head poked over a privet hedge, peering down at us. “What the hell’s going on down there?”
I called back, “Dangerous police situation, don’t interfere,” and his head vanished instantly. I could hear other voices now, here and there in the vicinity, and they kept up an intermittent chatter. But nobody else ventured out onto the ladder street, wholly or in part.
I looked over at Matt. He was sucking at a knuckle, his eyes still bright with rage.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. His shirt was torn, one arm and one cheek were gouged and bleeding, and he was going to have a honey of a black eye before long. “You?”
“Pretty good now.”
“I hope you busted his fucking skull.”
“I didn’t hit him that hard. You took a stupid damn chance, jumping him like that inside. And then chasing him out here. You could have got yourself killed.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had enough of his crap. You know?”
“I know,” I said. “Real well.”
“You want me to call the cops?”
“Your mother should already have done that. You better go and tell her you’re all right.” I shifted the Saturday night special to my left hand, hauled my keys out and gave them to Matt. “Then go out to my car and bring the handcuffs from the trunk. They’re in a box in there.”
“Right.” He trotted away down the steps.
I sat in a patch of warm sunlight and listened to the neighbors and watched Cahill. He was beginning to stir around. Pretty soon he lifted himself onto all fours, raised his head. His nose was bent and crooked, leaking blood; Matt had busted it as effectively as Cahill had busted his father’s. When his eyes cleared and he saw me he tensed, started to pull his feet under him.
“Don’t even think about it, slick,” I said. “I’ll shoot your eye out if you don’t sit still and keep your mouth shut. Believe it. It’d be a pleasure.”
He believed it. He sat still and kept his mouth shut, before and after Matt brought the handcuffs.
CHAPTER 19
NARROW AND SEVERAL BLOCKS LONG, Mountain Lake Park is tucked away behind Lake Street apartment buildings and stands of tall cypress and eucalyptus. The little lake there reaches up into a corner of the Presidio army base. It used to be called Laguna de Loma Alta, Lake of the High Hill, after the Presidio’s four-hundred-foot elevation; “Mountain Lake” is a poor substitute. Thick shrubbery rims it to the waterline, except for a thin stretch of beach on the south end. Ducks, swans, and patches of tule grass occupy its relatively clean waters. Soothing, well used, and safe in daylight-that’s Mountain Lake Park. Just the kind of place where a paranoid munchkin would feel secure.
I got there just past four. My meeting with Annette Olroyd was supposed to have been at three, but the law had kept me at the Runyon house until three-thirty. Branislaus had come out, among others, and before and after Eddie Cahill had been carted off to jail there were strings of questions to answer. When I saw I wasn’t going to get away in time to keep the three o’clock appointment, I’d called Ms. Olroyd and switched the time. She hadn’t liked that, but I’d soft-talked her into it
. It was even money as to whether or not she would actually show up.
I parked on the short section of Eleventh Avenue that deadends at the park, walked across gopher-hole-pocked grass toward the lake. There were a lot of people around, walking and running and bicycling; tennis players exerted themselves on the nearby courts and kids made a racket in the playground farther down. Not as many as there would have been earlier though. Fog was starting to sift in from the ocean and a wind had sprung up and the day was turning chill. In another hour the sky would be a sullen gray, the wind salt-sharp and numbing.
I found the big rock with no trouble; it was the only one around. The plaque embedded in it said that Juan Bautista de Anza had camped on this spot a couple of hundred years ago and that in 1957 the Daughters of American Colonists had considered the fact to be worthy of commemoration. I doubted that one in fifty thousand users of the park had ever heard of Juan Bautista de Anza, much less knew what it was he’d accomplished. It made me a little sheepish to realize I wasn’t the one exception. I sat down on his memorial, thinking wryly that at least somebody had remembered him; nobody was going to remember me a couple of hundred hours, let alone a couple of hundred years, after I croaked. Or erect anything in my memory except a headstone.
Not far away, a lean, homely dog was snagging a Frisbee tossed by a guy wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt-both of them in defiance of the park’s leash law. That dog could really get up off the ground, a sort of canine version of Michael Jordan elevating for a slam-dunk. Air Dog. I watched him until his owner got tired of the game and the mutt wandered off to take a dump in some bushes. Then the Grateful Dead guy and I both pretended Air Dog had temporarily ceased to exist.
I looked out over the lake and listened to the steady hum of traffic on Park Presidio Boulevard and thought about Eddie Cahill. Close call in Ashbury Heights earlier; it was a small miracle nobody had been hurt except Cahill. I couldn’t find too much fault with Matt Runyon, though. He was a good kid, if too impulsive for his own good. His mother’s son, not his father’s: strong, tough inside where it counted. He’d get through this ugly time without too many scars. So would Kay Runyon. Or maybe I just wanted to think that was how it would be for both of them.
Victor Runyon. Dead yet or not?
Nedra Adams Merchant. Dead or not?
My relationship with Kerry. Dead or not?
I shifted around on the rock and looked at my watch. Ten after four. The fog was rolling in fast now; a gust of wind bothered my hair and made me shiver. Air Dog and Grateful Dead were heading out toward Lake Street. So were several others.
Come on, lady, I thought-and behind me, not too far away, a tentative voice said my name.
I craned my head around. A woman in a knee-length blue coat was standing there peering at me through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. I hadn’t heard her approach; she’d come over grass and she walked soft. I wondered how long she’d been standing there studying me, making up her mind.
I said, “Yes, that’s me. Ms. Olroyd?”
She nodded and came forward hesitantly and stopped again about three feet away. She had no intention of sharing the rock with me. She was about forty, thin, ash-blond-not unattractive except for the fact that she wore about a pound of makeup. Bright red lipstick, green and purple eyeshadow, rouge on her cheeks… as if, consciously or unconsciously, she’d constructed a mask to hide behind.
She said in her munchkin’s voice, “May I see some identification, please?” Not quite making eye contact as she spoke.
“Of course.”
I produced my wallet and opened it to the Photostat of my license and leaned forward to hand it to her. She took it carefully, so as to avoid touching my hand; squinted at the license for a full thirty seconds before she returned the wallet.
“Okay?” I said.
“Yes.”
I put the wallet away, smiling at her. She didn’t smile back. “Thank you for coming, Ms. Olroyd. I appreciate it.”
“For Nedra’s sake,” she said. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Me too.”
A little silence. Then: “Do you honestly believe the postcards will help you find her?”
“They might, yes. Did you bring them?”
“Yes.”
“May I see them?”
She opened a canvas handbag, peered inside, brought out a pair of cards. Held them for a few seconds, as if she couldn’t bear to let go of them, and then thrust them in my direction-again without making eye contact.
Two standard-size picture postcards, one labeled Clear Lake and depicting an aerial view of that large body of water and its surrounding hills, the other labeled Lakeport and showing a cluttered view of the town’s municipal pier and boat harbor. I turned them over. The postmark on one was smeared and unreadable; the postmark on the other read “Lucerne CA 95458.”
“Well?” Annette Olroyd said.
I didn’t answer her. I was reading the messages written on the cards, one in purple ink, the other in blue ink. The handwriting was the same on both, but firmer and deeply indented into the card on the older of the two, dated June 10, as if it had been written in anger or some other strong emotional state. The words on that one said:
Dear Annette-
Greetings from Clear Lake. I’m sorry I didn’t call you before I left the city, but I needed to get away for a while. Personal reasons. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I don’t know when I’ll be back, probably not for a while. I’ll call you then.
Nedra
The other card, dated July 9, was a little shaky, as if Nedra hadn’t been feeling well that day. Its message was briefer and even more nonspecific:
Dear Annette-
Just a note to let you know I’m fine and thinking of you. See you soon.
Nedra
I looked up and caught Annette Olroyd’s eye; she lowered her gaze immediately. “Well?” she said again.
“Did Nedra ever mention Clear Lake or Lakeport to you? In person, I mean.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t.”
“So you don’t know where she might have been staying when she wrote these cards?”
“No.”
“Not even a guess?”
“I said no.” Her voice rose querulously on the last word. She put her hand out. “May I please have the cards back?”
I laid the postcards on her palm. My fingers brushed her skin; she jerked away from me as if I’d burned or contaminated her. Timorous, paranoid, afraid of the male animal… Nedra Merchant hadn’t helped her much after all. I wondered if she’d always been like that, or if the husband who’d left her had been responsible. If it was the husband, he must be a piece of work-one of the breed of men who would have served society best if they’d been castrated at birth.
She said, “I’ll be going now,” and stuffed the cards into her handbag. “When you find Nedra…” She let the sentence trail off, staring over the wind-ruffled water.
“Yes, Ms. Olroyd?”
“Please ask her to call me. I need… I’d like to talk to her. Will you do that?”
“Of course.” If she’s alive, I thought.
“Thank you.”
And away she went, body drawn in and shoulders hunched against the wind. I waited until she reached the Eleventh Avenue entrance before I headed out myself. I didn’t want to add to her anxiety by following too close.
***
AT THE OFFICE I KEEP an accumulation of California city and county maps. I drove there from the park and rummaged up the map for Lake County and spread it open on my desk.
Lake is a small, mountainous county a hundred miles or so northeast of San Francisco. A resort county: vacation tourism is its main industry, far outdistancing pears, walnuts, grapes, and other agricultural crops. Clear Lake dominates it-geographically, demographically, and economically. With more than a hundred miles of shoreline, it’s the largest natural lake in the state, Tahoe being bigger but partially in Nevada. Lakeport, on the west shore, is the coun
ty seat and largest town with some fifteen thousand year-round residents. The population of the entire county is only slightly more than fifty thousand, so the standard map I had provided complete street guides not only to Lakeport but to all the other towns and villages of any size.
I checked the listing of Lakeport streets. Then I tried Lucerne, a little resort community on the northeast shore; nothing for me there either. Nice? Nice was a kind of sister hamlet to Lucerne, a few miles away and a bit smaller.
And there it was.
In Nice, high up off Lakeview Drive, was a short street that had the shape of a dog’s leg on the map-a street called Thornapple Way.
***
I TOYED WITH THE IDEA of driving up to Lake County tonight, but it was a long way and the Cahill situation had left me physically and emotionally drained. Better to get as much rest as I could tonight and head out fresh in the morning.
So I took myself home. And there was a message from Kerry on the machine.
It was brief and it didn’t say much: “Hi, babe. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I wanted to see you today but I have to go out again about two. Call me if you get in before that. Or tonight after six. We need to talk.” I played it back three times. She sounded subdued but not grim or portentous. The “hi, babe” was a good sign; the “we need to talk” could be good or bad.
Six-fifteen now. I tapped out her number, but she wasn’t home yet; her machine answered. After the beep I said, “Just returning your call. I’m in for the evening-call or come on over.” I hesitated, thought, What the hell, and said, “Love you,” before I disconnected.
I opened a can of minestrone, dumped in some grated Parmesan cheese, and cooked it up and ate it with a handful of crackers. It didn’t set well, just seemed to lie simmering in my gullet while I sprawled out on the couch and listened to an old blues record. Bad choice of record, though: Bessie Smith singing such cheerful ballads as “Down Hearted Blues” and “Down in the Dumps” and “Baby Have Pity on Me.” I put a Pete Fountain tape on instead.
Demons Page 17