Nemesis (22 page)

“Do what?”

I should not have had to ask that question; I should have realized what he was doing. But I didn't until I saw the gun come out, and then it was too late.

All in one motion, with no hesitation, he dragged it from under the pile of papers, brought the long barrel up under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

I've seen men die before, more than once, but not like this. Not while I stood flatfooted, a cry stillborn in my throat, helplessly watching Canaday's head explode like a fireworks fountain, blood and gore geysering and spraying, the gun clattering against the desk, his body toppling sideways in the chair. The after-echo of the shot reverberated off the walls, the stink of cordite and loosened bowels fouled the air.

Bile spewed into the back of my throat; I had to lock the muscles to keep it down, and at that I almost didn't get out of that room in time, in a twisting lunge through the open French doors into the fresh hot late-summer breeze. I stood there on the patio tiles, bent over a little, until I was sure I wouldn't throw up. Then I began taking deep breaths to clear my lungs, my nostrils, my head. Telling myself I couldn't have known about the gun, couldn't have foreseen that Canaday had been nerving himself up to suicide, couldn't have stopped him in those last few seconds even if I'd caught on to what he intended to do.

None of it made me feel any less sick.

 

23

You do what you have to in situations like this. Whatever you have to do.

Before anything else, I called 911 and reported the suicide. Name and address of the deceased, my name and profession—that was all the information I gave to the operator. Yes, I would wait for officers to arrive. No, I hadn't touched nor would I touch anything.

That last was a small lie. I stood on the patio for maybe a minute after disconnecting, to determine if any of the neighbors had heard the shot and would come to investigate. None had, evidently; no heads appeared above the hedges bordering the yard, the front door chimes didn't go off, the neighborhood was as drowsily quiet as it had been before Canaday blew himself away. In the midst of death, life goes on unawares. Then I steeled myself and went back inside the office.

The stench in there may still have been as strong, but I was mouth-breathing now so I wouldn't have to smell it. I went around the side of the desk. One look at Canaday and the splatters on the whitewashed stucco wall behind him was all I allowed myself. The slug's impact and the jerking weight of his body had kicked the chair backward a couple of feet; he was half sitting, half lying sideways across one armrest, what was left of his head tilted at a grotesque angle. The gun had jarred loose when his arm flopped down against the desk's edge, lay at his feet. An old .41 Magnum, from the look of it. No wonder the bullet had torn his skull apart.

There was no gore on the floor between him and the desk; he'd fired at just enough of a backward angle so that all except for random droplets was behind him. I wedged myself into the space, my back to the body, and bent to look at the scatter of papers on the top.

Financial records, mostly, at least those in plain sight. I fished a pencil out of a leather-wrapped canister, inverted it and used the eraser to move the papers around. One of those underneath was a vellum sheet with Canaday's personal letterhead imprinted at the top. Shaky, down-slanted handwriting filled the upper third.

Nancy—

You made me do this. You and your demands, your coldness in bed, your love of money, if you'd stuck by me I could have found a way to go on but now it's too late I can't

That was all. Unfinished suicide note, blame-shifting, pathetic. And no mention of Verity Daniels.

There was nothing else of a personal nature among the papers. Using my handkerchief, I opened the desk drawers one by one. Nothing in any of them that connected Canaday with Daniels in any way.

Still quiet outside, except for birdsong and the distant barking of a dog. But the minions would be here pretty soon now. I took a turn around the office, avoiding eye contact with Canaday's remains and the wall behind him. Not expecting to find anything; not finding anything. I thought about looking through the rest of the house, but there wouldn't be enough time for a thorough search, and even if there had been it would probably be an exercise in futility. Anything to do with the dead woman would've been in here, his private space.

Had
Canaday killed Daniels? No reason for him to lie about it with suicide on his mind … unless he'd been unable to put words to the guilt that was eating at him. Plenty of other reasons for him to take the coward's way out: financial ruin, abandonment by his wife, loss of his child, loss of the mistress he'd loved. Murder didn't have to be one of them.

Let it be Canaday, I thought. Let it end right here.

But my gut feeling was that it wouldn't.

*   *   *

The Lafayette police kept me around for a little under two hours before they let me go. Except for a couple of rounds of Q&A, the first with a pair of uniforms in the patrol unit that responded to the call, the second with a plainclothes investigator, I sat under the oak tree in the front patio and waited. All the officers were efficient, polite, respectful. I felt bad about lying to them, even though the lies were minor enough. Sins of omission, really.

I did not own up to being in the room with Canaday when he shot himself; I said that my conversation with him had lasted only three or four minutes, and that I'd just left through the open French doors and was coming around to the front of the house when I heard the gun go off inside. Then I'd run back to the office, found Canaday dead, and immediately called 911. About everything else, my reasons for being there, the investigation I was pursuing, my failure to interpret the man's drunkenness as a prelude to suicide, I was completely truthful. The sins of omission were necessary, I felt, to avoid detailed explanations and any suspicions the law might have had that I was the cause, direct or indirect, of Canaday's self-destruction. They didn't need to know that I'd witnessed it, or exactly what information I'd gotten from him beforehand. But the main reason was, I had no desire to verbally relive any of that time in the company of a man alive one minute, dead the next.

They seemed to believe me; there was no reason why they shouldn't. Still, I worried a little while I sat there under the oak, waiting and chafing at the delay. Worried, and thought about different things to keep my mind focused and the memory screen blank.

Suicide was one of the things I thought about. I understand and empathize with an intolerably suffering cancer patient choosing to take his or her own life; I might do the same thing myself if I were ever in that unbearable condition, despite my Catholic upbringing. But the other kind of self-destruction, Canaday's kind, I do not understand or condone. It's the ultimate selfish, craven act of a person so wrapped up in his own misery that he neither thinks of nor cares about those whose lives are affected by his cowardice. In Canaday's case, his daughter, if not his wife. Other relatives. Friends. The women who worked for him at Gateway Insurance. The companies he represented, his individual clients. There's always somebody left behind who gets hurt in one way or another. And always somebody who has to come in to clean up the mess.

Over the years I've had dealings with all sorts of individuals struggling to survive. None of them had given up and taken the easy way out; no matter how hard things got, they hung on with both hands to life, love, faith, hope. Same with the millions more in this and other countries, those whose struggles I was aware of and those I would never hear about.

No one goes through their time on this earth error-free, sin-free, unsullied and unscathed, not even the powerbrokers or the uber-rich or the holier-than-thou religious right. We all suffer to one degree or another. As far as I'm concerned, the scattered few like Vincent Canaday who quit in mid-conflict, who throw away their most precious gift at the expense of others, deserve neither pity nor sorrow, but only contempt.

*   *   *

Before I drove back to the city, I called Tamara to tell her what had happened and what I'd found out from Canaday. But not that I'd been in the room with him when he blew his head apart. She had no need to know the literal truth any more than the Lafayette cops or anybody else did. What I'd seen in that office was a thing to be shared with no one, now or ever—another link in the chain of large and small horrors that belonged only to me.

“See if you can get hold of Dragovich,” I said, “and fill him in. I'll stop at the Hall and do the same with Figone and Samuels. If Canaday murdered Verity Daniels, they're the ones to dig it out with the cooperation of the Lafayette cops.”

“Yeah, if they follow up.”

“They will. They're pros and they don't want Jake to be guilty any more than we do.”

“
Did
Canaday do it?”

“Make it easier on all of us if he did.”

“But you don't think so?”

“Leaning against it. The way he talked about Daniels, how much he loved her, how he'd never have hurt her … He could've been lying, but why? He was ready to die, I wish to Christ I'd realized how ready—he had no reason not to come clean if he was shouldering that kind of guilt.”

“Unless that's the real reason he offed himself.”

“Her death, yes, that was part of it. But he talked freely enough about his wife leaving him, his financial troubles, his relationship with Daniels. I just didn't get the impression he was holding anything back.”

“So if he didn't do it, all we've got is this new lover of hers.”

“If he exists.”

“It'd explain where she went all those early mornings and on weekends the past couple of months.”

“Yes, it would. Clandestine meetings somewhere.”

“Why wouldn't they just get it on in her condo?”

“Hard to tell with her. Married man, maybe, and he was afraid of being seen with her.”

“Somebody close by—that's what she told Canaday, right?”

“All she'd tell him, he said.”

“Must be another resident of Bayfront Towers. Up until two months ago Daniels never did much of anything except sit in her condo and watch TV, and think up stupid games to play.”

“Not necessarily. She went out to eat, buy necessities. She could've met someone in the neighborhood. Bayfront isn't the only condo building in that area.”

“Well, we better hope it's somebody in Bayfront. Otherwise, how do we find him?”

I had nothing to say to that.

“What about the guy who hit on her in the elevator, Weatherford?” Tamara said. “Maybe she didn't say no after all, and he lied to save his ass.”

“Worth checking on. He's the CEO at what company?”

“TechPerfect, on New Montgomery.”

“Call them up and find out if he'll see me. Either there or at his condo, asap.”

“Probably have to go through a gatekeeper. Should I say why you want to talk to him?”

“Just that it pertains to the murder of Verity Daniels.”

“What if he refuses?”

“Then we'll know something right there, won't we?”

*   *   *

I came off the Bay Bridge in the shadow of the Hall of Justice and made that my first stop. Samuels and Figone were both away from their desks in the homicide division, but expected back shortly. I went from there to the main jail. Visiting hours were still in effect, so they let me see Runyon without any hassle.

Locked down twice, I thought when they brought him out. Inside his cell and inside himself. His way of coping with any difficult situation, and one I sometimes wished I could emulate. But I didn't have the discipline or the patience for it. If I'd been in his shoes, I would have been climbing the walls by this time.

His neutral expression didn't change when I laid out the latest developments. “But you don't think Canaday killed Daniels,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“Hoping it turns out that way, but … no, I don't. Or that Hank Avery's our man. No solid motive and no ties to the city. It figures to be somebody who knows the city well.” I told him my suppositions about Lake Merced and Daniels having had help in picking Baker Beach and Lands End.

“Makes sense.”

“Canaday might qualify from the short time he lived here, but a native or long-time resident is more likely.”

“The new lover.”

“Have to bank on that possibility for now. You're sure Daniels never mentioned Chad Weatherford's name? He's a native San Franciscan. Or anybody else's name, even in passing?”

“Positive. I'd remember if she had.”

“What about places in the neighborhood where she might have met somebody?”

Runyon thought about it. “A couple of well-known restaurants, that's all. No bars or clubs.”

I asked him which restaurants and made a mental note of the names. Popular places, always crowded for lunch and dinner. Not much chance any staff members or regular customers would remember Verity Daniels and a man she'd met or dined with, but if I ran out of other leads I'd make the rounds of those places and others in the neighborhood.

Jim Figone was at his desk when I left Runyon and went back to the homicide division. I replayed Canaday's suicide and connection to Verity Daniels for him, not offering any opinions, just laying out the facts. He listened with interest, said he'd follow up with the Lafayette PD and let me know if any evidence came to light that linked Canaday to Daniels's murder. He didn't say he hoped it would turn out that way, but I had the impression he was thinking it. I also had the impression that he shared my gloomy doubts that it would.

*   *   *

At the agency Tamara said, “Got you an appointment with Weatherford. Tomorrow morning, eleven-fifty, his office at TechPerfect.” Her mouth quirked sardonically. “And make sure you're on time—man can't spare you more than ten minutes.”