Mourners: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) (7 page)

“How long have they owned it?”

“Sixteen years. Granny unit’s illegal—no record of an outbuilding on the original deed, no record of a building permit or application for one since.”

“Some leverage in that, if we need it. Anything unusual in their backgrounds?”

“No. Two more of your average San Francisco white folks.”

All I said to that was, “Leverage in that, too. People with clean records want them to stay that way.”

“You gonna talk to them?”

“Let Jake follow up. I’ve got some other things to do. See what I can get out of SFPD on the Dumont case, for starters.”

There’d been a time when I had several contacts on the San Francisco cops—friends from the days when I’d been one myself, a couple of guys I played poker with now and then, a couple of others whose paths I’d crossed in a friendly way. Time and a series of high-profile screwups, scandals, and shakeups had dwindled their number, and changed the shape and policies of the department. Ed Branislaus had quit the force and gone into private security work in Arizona. Harry Craddock had been promoted and
transferred to the Ingleside District Station. Lieutenant Jack Logan, the man I’d known the longest and was closest to, was in line for an administrative position and would probably retire if he didn’t get it; either way it went, he was no longer as inclined to do favors for friends and/or to bend departmental rules.

Logan was in and he took my call readily enough, but he was a little on the curt side. We barely got through the how-are-yous before he asked, “So what can I do for you?”

“Some information, if you can manage it.”

“Well, I don’t know, buddy. You know how things are these days.”

“I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

“Important?”

“Too early to tell. Small chance it could be, though.”

“New or cold case?”

“Couple of months old.”

“Still open, then?”

“As far as I know.”

“Too damn many that are. Which one is this?”

“Rape homicide in Golden Gate Park, end of March. Woman named Erin Dumont.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember it. What’s your interest?”

“We’ve picked up a connection to a case we’re working. Pretty tenuous right now, no direct link to the homicide itself. But I could use some more information.”

“Give it to us right away if the link develops?”

“You know I will, Jack.”

“All right. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do. Let me have your e-mail and fax addresses.”

I recited the fax number and Tamara’s e-mail. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Don’t thank me yet. If you don’t hear from me by this afternoon, you won’t have anything to thank me for.”

One more call, this one to Charles Kayabalian. He was in and he came on the line immediately. “I was just about to call you,” he said. “It’s been three days.”

“Two and a half. This kind of investigation takes time, Charles, you know that.”

“Yes, but Lynn . . . well, you saw how worried she is. She called me a little while ago. I told her you’d be in touch when you have something to report. Soon, I hope?”

“Soon enough. Maybe tonight. We’re still gathering information.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Jim
isn’t
seeing another woman, is he?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Don’t tell me it’s something worse?”

“I don’t know what it is yet,” I said. “As soon as I have a clear idea, I won’t keep it to myself.”

“Why the call then?”

“Gathering information, as I said. Specifically, Drew Casement. Mrs. Troxell said he was a close friend of her husband’s.”

“Of both of them, yes.”

“Does he know she’s hired a detective?”

“Yes,” Kayabalian said. “She confided in him before she came to me. As a matter of fact, he’s the one who suggested it.”

“Where can I reach him?”

“He owns a sporting goods store in Stonestown. West-side Pro Sports. But I’ve spoken to him and I doubt he’ll be able to tell you much that Lynn and I haven’t already confided.”

“Worth a shot anyway.”

“I don’t want to be pushy, but . . . don’t keep Lynn waiting too long. She’s in a pretty fragile state.”

Chances were that state wouldn’t improve when I did talk to her again. But all I said to Kayabalian was, “I won’t. ASAP.”

The connecting door between Tamara’s office and mine was open, and when she heard me ring off this time she came over into the doorway. She was still wearing the scowl. “Clark Simmons,” she said

“Who? Oh, right, the double homicide when Troxell was a kid.”

“Simmons was the other witness. His parents.”

“Locate him?”

“For all the good it’ll do. He’s dead. Twelve years.”

“He died young. How?”

“Heroin overdose in Phoenix,” Tamara said. “Sent to live with an uncle down there, in and out of trouble with the law from the time he was thirteen. Drugs, vandalism, breaking and entering, car theft.”

“Sounds like it might be the result of psychological damage.”

“Yeah.”

“Ten years old, you see a thing like that happen to your parents . . .”

“Or your friend’s parents, same thing.”

“Maybe. Hell, probably. There has to have been some
damaging effect on Troxell, too. But what kind, exactly? Simple mourner syndrome, or does it go deeper than that?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m just a glorified secretary around here.”

Another one to let slide by. I pushed my chair back. “Time for me to get a move on.”

“Where you off to?”

“To have a talk with Troxell’s friend, Drew Casement. Maybe he can give me some insight into what’s going on inside the man’s head.”

He couldn’t get Risa Niland out of his mind.

She rode with him all the way back to the city, a presence that kept interfering with his thoughts and memories of Colleen. The resemblance, the initial shock . . . yes, sure. He understood that. What he didn’t understand was the way he’d reacted afterward, was still reacting. Abandoning a surveillance, talking to the woman as he had, the impulsive offer of help, this fixation—none of that was like him at all. Unprofessional, out of character. Disturbing, because he sensed that it wasn’t just a momentary aberration he could shake off and forget about. He’d spent months after Colleen’s death coming to terms with the rest of his life; established a mind-set and a course of action, his narrow, empty little world arranged and compartmentalized and clearly defined. And now this. All of a sudden, in a few short minutes, something had happened to throw it all off kilter again and he didn’t even know what it was.

He forced himself to focus on James Troxell. Three places he knew of where the man might have gone; his home in St. Francis Wood was the least likely, check the other two first. Potrero Hill was the closest. He swung over to 101, followed the same route to Wisconsin Street the subject had taken last night. No sign of the silver BMW anywhere in the vicinity of the Linden property. He made a quick check of the neighborhood, just in case, and then drove downtown to the financial district.

Troxell had a monthly space lease in a parking garage on New Montgomery, a couple of blocks from where Hessen & Collier had their offices. The location of the space was in the case file: second floor, number 229. And that was where he found the BMW, nose in tight against a concrete pillar. All right. Evidently this was one of Troxell’s days to attend to his profession.

He reported this to Tamara. Did she want him to hang around in case Troxell decided to go out again? The answer he wanted to hear was no, and that was the answer he got. She had another job for him, the kind he preferred, the kind that would keep him moving and his mind occupied.

Most Bay Area commuters worked in San Francisco and lived in one of the neighboring communities. Ralph Linden was one of the smaller percentage whose lives were structured the other way around, city dwellers with jobs outside the city—the fortunate types who had a relatively easy daily commute because they traveled opposite morning and evening rush-hour traffic.

The company that employed Linden, Yumitashi International,
was located in Emeryville—two floors of a high-rise on the inland flank of Highway 80. The glass doors to the reception area bore a circular logo with the initials YI intertwined in the center; another, much larger logo, this one sculpted of bronze, covered part of one wall inside. There were no other adornments except for a couple of modernistic paintings that looked like original art and several pieces of modernistic furniture. Runyon saw nothing anywhere to indicate the nature of Yumitashi International’s business enterprise.

He told the woman on the reception desk that he was there to see Ralph Linden. She sent him down to the lower floor, where he repeated his request to another receptionist there. No, he didn’t have an appointment; it was a personal matter. One of his business cards persuaded her to call into the inner sanctum. Before long a fresh-faced young Japanese woman appeared through a doorway, smiled at him in exactly the same bright impersonal way as the two receptionists, asked him to wait please, and went back inside with his card. Short wait. She returned in less than five minutes, and this time it was him she took inside.

Two other employees, one Japanese male and one Caucasian female, offered bright impersonal smiles in the hallway; another Japanese male did the same from inside one of the offices. One big happy family at Yumitashi International. Or the smiles were company policy designed to convey that impression. Either way, the effect on Runyon wasn’t the one they intended. All the smiley faces gave him an off-center feeling, as if he’d stumbled into a training center for pod people.

Ralph Linden wasn’t one of the clones. He was on his
feet behind his desk, mouth turned down instead of up, muddy brown eyes behind thick-lensed glasses betraying a nervous bewilderment, when the smiling woman bowed Runyon into his small office. The business card was between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, the way you’d hold something that might explode. He looked at it again as the woman retreated. When the door closed softly behind her, he said, “I don’t know you, Mr. Runyon, I don’t understand why you’re here. What would a private investigator want with me?”

“Information.”

“What sort of information? You mean about me?”

“Not directly.”

“My wife? Someone in my family?”

“No.”

That seemed to make Linden even twitchier. He was a bulky man pushing fifty, immaculately dressed in a three-piece gray suit, white shirt with gold cuff links, conservative tie. But he didn’t wear the clothes well; he wouldn’t wear any clothes well. There was a rumpled, ungainly look about him, as if he’d been fitted together out of mismatched spare parts. Wrinkly bald head, long jaw, heavy beard shadow, large ears, thin neck, long arms, big hands with knobby wrists, narrow upper body, broad hips. Uneasy on his feet, too, unlike a lot of big men. Even standing still he conveyed the impression of being loose-jointed, awkward. He would shamble when he walked, and prefer sitting down in any kind of interview or social situation, preferably with something like his gray-metal desk like a barricade between himself and anybody else. He’d relax a little then, be easier to talk to.

Runyon said, “All right if I have a seat?”

“This won’t take long, will it? I’m very busy, and the company discourages personal—” A thought seemed to strike him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Yumitashi International, does it? If it does—”

“It doesn’t. I just have a few questions.”

“Well,” Linden said again, and immediately lowered himself into his chair.

Runyon wedged his body into a molded plastic chair that was more comfortable than it looked. The office was a fifteen-foot-square box, neatly kept, the walls painted an antiseptic white, with one small window that faced west and provided an oblique view of one of the other high-rises on the bayshore side of the freeway and a small piece of the Bay Bridge approach. The desk, the two chairs, a computer workstation, and the two of them filled it and made it seem even smaller. Some sort of graph or chart was displayed on a side wall, headed with the words
EXPANDING HORIZONS
—ironic in this tight, cramped space. He wondered how anybody could stand to spend eight or more hours a day, five days a week, cooped up in here. He’d been in the office two minutes and already he felt claustrophobic.

He waited until Linden was settled. Right—the man was more at ease sitting down. Then he said, “I’m here about your rental unit, Mr. Linden.”

“My . . . what?”

“Rental unit.”

“You must be mistaken. I don’t own any rental property . . .”

“Granny unit on your property in the city.”

“Oh, Christ.” The words seemed to pop out of him. And he was nervous again, wearing a pained, mournful look in place of his frown. “I knew it. I
knew
this would happen someday. . . . How did you find out?”

“Does it matter?”

“Did somebody report it? Is that how?”

Runyon said nothing.

Linden lifted his hands, held them palm up and stared into them as if he were trying to read something in their crosshatching lines. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said, “I want you to know that.”

“No?”

“My wife, Justine, it was her idea. Her mother didn’t even want to move out here, for God’s sake. She was perfectly happy in Toledo.”

Again Runyon was silent.

“But she had to have her way,” Linden said. “Her brother’s the one who built the unit, not me.”

“Is that right?”

“Ted Mason. He’s a contractor, one of those gypsy contractors. He built it himself on weekends and holidays. Oh, sure, I helped him, but what choice did I have? It was the only way I could keep peace in the family.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wanted to apply for a permit, but he said we didn’t need one. He said there were ways around it as long as none of the neighbors complained. He was right, damn him, but I’ve never felt comfortable about it. I knew we’d get caught someday.” Linden shook his head. “All that money, and she only lived there two years. My mother-in-law. Two years, and Justine found her dead in bed one
morning and then what we were going to do? The building was just sitting there, empty.”