Camouflage

13

JAKE RUNYON

Another busy road day. Over to Oakland, first thing, for a deposition in an insurance fraud investigation. Then down to Union City for another interview with the second witness in the hit-and-run accident case: the attorney for the injured party had some questions he wanted answered to verify the man’s reliability. Then back across the bay on the Dumbarton Bridge and up to Palo Alto to talk to a woman who had new information on the subject of a backburnered skip-trace.

Ordinarily Runyon didn’t mind that kind of workday. Preferred it, in fact. When he’d first joined the agency, he’d asked for assignments that kept him on the move and put in as much weekend work as he could without requesting overtime pay. And most of his spare time had been spent behind the wheel; long drives that he’d pretended were to familiarize himself with the highways and back roads of the greater Bay Area but in reality were excuses to keep him moving, keep his mind occupied and focused on externals. That was how he got through his waking hours. Once he’d accepted the fact that his and Joshua’s estrangement was permanent, work became his only reason for existing. When he wasn’t on a job, he shunned company. Had no use for casual friends, didn’t want another woman even for a single night because he’d lost, or believed then that he’d lost, his sex drive.

But he hadn’t thought of himself as a lonely man. Empty, consumed by loss-a loner by choice and circumstance. It wasn’t until he met Bryn that he realized the truth about himself. And was finally able to let go of his grief, drag himself out of his self-imposed limbo.

Bryn and her son and Francine Whalen were the reason the long road day dragged by. Frustration nagged at him. He kept trying to devise some way to expose Whalen for what she was, but without support from the people she’d wounded he was hamstrung. An outsider, already walking a tightrope line. Confronting her directly, trying to intimidate her, was sure to backfire. You could intimidate a rational person whose emotions were under control, but not a calculating, unstable, and possibly sadistic one. It might even trigger her violent impulses, with Bobby as the handiest target.

Francine, out.

Another face-up with Robert Darby wouldn’t get him anywhere, either. Just be another exercise in futility. The man was too deep in love and denial to listen to reason until the truth was shoved in his face. And then it might be too late.

Darby, out.

What did that leave him? Not much. Another go at Bobby, if he could manage it. The boy had opened up to him a little on Saturday; maybe there was a way to gain enough of his trust to counteract Francine’s hold on him. Talk again to Gwen Whalen, Tracy Holland, the ex-husband, try to convince at least one of them to come forward. See if he could track down the man Francine had lived with before moving in with Charlene Kepler, David or Darren something.

But the first person he wanted to see tonight was Bryn.

He drove back into the city on 280. It was a couple of minutes shy of four o’clock and he was on Nineteenth Avenue, waiting at one of the stoplights fronting the S.F. State campus, when his cell phone vibrated.

He checked the screen. Bryn. He clicked on, saying, “I was just thinking about you-”

“Jake,” she said, and he knew instantly that something was wrong. Her voice had a clotted sound, as if her throat was full of phlegm. When she spoke again, he could hear the kind of ragged breathing that comes with near hysteria. “Jake, I need you… I don’t know what to do…”

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“Can’t, I can’t… not on the phone. Can you come here… now, right away?”

“Where are you? Home?”

“No. Robert’s flat in the Marina.”

Jesus. “Is Bobby all right?”

“Yes… yes. Hurry, Jake. Please hurry.”

“On my way. Twenty minutes.”

Heavy traffic on Nineteenth Avenue made it twenty-five minutes. Runyon didn’t let himself think on the way. You got an emergency call, you waited until you arrived at the scene and assessed the situation before you opened up your mind.

Avila was a short, slanting street off busy Marina Boulevard, Robert Darby’s address within shouting distance of the Marina Green and the city’s West Harbor yacht clubs beyond. Runyon parked illegally at the corner, the hell with it, and ran to the brown stucco building mid-block and leaned on Darby’s bell in the tiny foyer. The answering buzz came almost immediately. Inside, up a flight of carpeted stairs. Bryn was waiting for him in an open doorway at the top.

She’d composed herself in the time it had taken him to get there, evident in the way she stood with her back straight and her arms down at her sides. But it was a brittle kind of calm; the aftereffects of shock and near panic showed in her eyes, in the paleness of the undamaged side of her face. But what caught his attention first, before any of that, was the drying smear of blood across the front of her blouse.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“The blood-Bobby’s?”

Bryn shook her head, but Runyon couldn’t tell if it was a negative or reflex.

“Where is he?”

“In his bedroom. I washed the blood off his face, made him lie down with an ice pack…”

“You said he was all right.”

“He is now. She hit him in the face, there was blood all over him when I got here. From his nose, from a ring cut on his cheek. His nose isn’t broken, thank God.”

“Francine. Where is she?”

“The kitchen. She… oh, God, Jake…”

Bryn turned away from him, walked to the middle of the room. Steadily, if rigidly, her arms still hanging down and pressed close to her body. Runyon eased the door shut, went to stand close in front of her. Peripherally he was aware that the living room had too much furniture, that the decor was done in a confused jumble of colors-blue, green, orange, brown. But the only color he had eyes for was the crimson on her blouse.

“You’d better sit down,” he said.

“No. I can’t sit still.”

“Where’s the kitchen?”

“I don’t want to go in there again.”

“You don’t have to. Just point me to it.”

“Through the swing door over there.”

He left her, pushed through the swing door. The kitchen, big, lit by track lighting between a pair of skylights, was at an angle beyond a formal dining room. One step into it, he pulled up short.

Bad, all right. As bad as it gets.

Francine Whalen lay on the floor between an island stove and a dinette table, twisted onto her back with her skirt hiked up over her thighs, eyes open with that milk-glass cloudiness he’d seen too many times before. Blood all over her blouse, too, and on the floor around her. The knife in her chest had a curved bone handle stained with bloody fingermarks. The lingering aroma of something she’d been baking contrasted sickeningly with the carnage.

Runyon backed up, turned, returned to the living room. Bryn was pacing in slow, restless steps; she stopped and stood still again when she saw him. A little color had come back into the right side of her face. The paisley scarf over the crippled side hung askew; he rearranged it so the stroke-frozen flesh was completely covered. She didn’t move or speak until he finished.

“I did it,” she said then. “I didn’t mean to, but I killed Francine.”

“What happened, Bryn?”

“She showed up at my home last night, threatened me in a cold-blooded, vicious way… I was afraid she might do something else to Bobby just to spite me. I shouldn’t have come here today, I know that, but I couldn’t help it, I had to make sure he was all right.” Flat voice, without inflection, but Runyon could hear the undercurrent of emotions like a distant sea whisper. “She didn’t want to let me in. I knew something was wrong by the way she acted. I pushed past her, and when I saw Bobby, all the blood, what she’d just done to him, I… went a little crazy. I screamed at her and she screamed back. Then she tried to claw my face. I slapped her, she slapped me and ran into the kitchen, I ran after her. What happened after that… it’s not very clear. We were struggling and the next thing I knew she had that knife in her hand. I grabbed her arm, twisted it, tried to make her drop the knife, but instead she… somehow it got between us and… the next thing I knew I was standing over her with blood on my hands.”

Her hands were clean now. She saw Runyon looking at them, at the fresh-looking Band-Aid on one finger, and said, “I washed it off in the bathroom. Some of it was mine… she must have cut my finger in the struggle.”

“Did Bobby see it happen?”

“No. God, no. He never came out of his bedroom.”

“Sure of that?”

“Yes. I’m sure. He doesn’t know Francine’s dead.”

“Did you call anybody besides me?”

“No.”

Runyon glanced at his watch. Four forty. “What time does Darby usually get home?”

“I don’t know…”

“When you were married to him-what time then?”

“No set time. He usually called if he was going to be later than six. Oh, God, I don’t want to be here when he comes.” She gripped Runyon’s arm. “Jake, do we have to call the police? Can’t you just take Bobby and me away from here?”

He could, sure. Leave the door open, let Darby find Francine’s body. Call the law from Bryn’s house, or not call them at all, on the slim hope Darby and the police would assume an intruder had killed Francine. But running out, pretending, lying, were always bad ideas. Always ended up making a bad situation even worse.

“You know I can’t do that,” he said.

“Just Bobby, then. I don’t care what happens to me…”

“But I do. There’s no place to take him and even if there was-”

“His doctor. His nose should be looked at, he could have other injuries.”

“You said he was all right.”

“Jake…”

“We stay right here, all three of us. I’ll request an EMT unit for Bobby.”

“I should’ve taken him to the doctor myself. But I was so upset, I wasn’t thinking clearly…”

“Bryn, listen to me.” He waited until her eyes focused on him. “You’re certain Francine was the one who picked up the knife?”

“Yes, I told you. She would’ve stabbed me if I hadn’t grabbed her wrist.”

“All right. Then you acted in self-defense. Bobby can verify that she hit him in the face-”

“No. I don’t want him involved.”

“He’s already involved.”

“He won’t talk about the abuse, you know that.” Bryn sucked in a breath, released it. “Will the police arrest me?”

Yeah, they would. This was Francine’s home, there was no witness to corroborate what had happened in the kitchen, and the fact that Bryn had delayed reporting the crime by calling Runyon instead of 911 all mitigated against her; the cops wouldn’t have any other choice. They’d book her on a 187 PC-the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. The initial charge in a case like this was almost always the most severe, justified or not.

Runyon said, “Don’t worry about that now. When they get here, be polite but don’t volunteer any information. Tell them you’ll answer all their questions when you have your lawyer present. Understand?”

“Yes, but my lawyer only does family law-”

“I’ll get you a criminal defense attorney. When you see him tell him everything you told me, exactly as it happened. Don’t withhold anything.”

“All right. Whatever you say.”

“Sit down while I make the calls.”

“I have to check on Bobby.”

“Go ahead then.”

Runyon watched her disappear through a doorway on the other side of the room. Then he flipped his cell phone open. He knew a couple of SFPD’s homicide inspectors, and Bill’s longtime poker buddy, Jack Logan, was an assistant chief whom he’d had some dealings with as well. But it wouldn’t be a good idea to try personalizing this; that kind of approach could backfire. Better to just make a standard 911 call. He identified himself to the operator, briefly explained the situation, and requested an EMT unit for a child with minor injuries.

The best criminal attorney he knew from his short time in San Francisco was a tough old veteran named Thomas Dragovich. Runyon called Dragovich’s law office, caught him in, and explained the situation in clipped sentences. Dragovich agreed to represent Bryn and reiterated what Runyon had told her, that she wasn’t to answer any questions without him being present; said he’d be at the Hall of Justice to consult with her as soon as she was processed through the system. There wasn’t much else Dragovich could do until she was arraigned, and that wasn’t likely to happen for seventy-two hours. The police could hold her that long while they investigated and turned whatever evidence they’d gathered over to the DA’s office.

After Runyon clicked off, he went quickly through the hallway door and down to where the bedrooms were. Bryn’s low-pitched, crooning voice led him to the last of them: “It’s going to be all right, baby. It’s going to be all right. You didn’t do anything wrong, it was all just a bad dream. Don’t think about it, forget it ever happened. It’s going to be all right.”

The door was open; Runyon stepped through. Boy’s bedroom overstuffed with the kind of material possessions a busy and overindulgent father lavishes on his son in place of quality time and genuine affection. Bryn was sitting beside Bobby on the double bed, the boy lying on his back with one hand limp on his middle, the other holding an ice pack to the center of his face. The T-shirt and Levi’s he wore were clean, blood free. His eyes were open, starey, looking ceilingward while his mother talked to him.

She didn’t hear Runyon come in, didn’t know he was there until he made a small noise at the door. The noise startled her. She stopped crooning, bit her lip, glanced at him, then reached up to smooth a palm across Bobby’s forehead. He took no notice of the gesture; the starey eyes were motionless, the lids unblinking.

Runyon said, “Your attorney’s name is Thomas Dragovich. One of the best. You’ll see him later at the Hall of Justice.”

“Thank you.” Solemn, formal.

Runyon moved over to the bed, leaned down for a closer look at the boy. Bobby’s nose, visible under the ice pack, didn’t look too bad-a little swollen, but not bleeding anymore. A Band-Aid covered the cut on his left cheek. The brown eyes flicked toward Runyon, but only for a moment; a single blink and they went starey again. Aware but nonresponsive. Reaction to the new abuse, Bryn’s fight with Whalen-a retreat into himself, his own private hiding place.

Bryn said, “Don’t try to talk to him, Jake. Please.”

He nodded. “You want to wait in here?”

“Yes. Just the two of us.”

“Okay.”

Runyon left the room, went back down the hall. He was nearing the doorway to the living room when he heard the sounds-the front door opening, somebody coming in. He quickened his step, passed through into the living room. And pulled up short, because he wasn’t looking at police officers or EMTs.

“You,” Robert Darby said, staring back at him. “What the fuck are you doing in my home?”