Demons

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:

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:

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 county 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.

Seven o’clock.

I couldn’t get my mind off Kerry. Memories... so damned many memories. The first time we’d made love, after she’d done most of the seducing. “Ask me if I want to go to bed,” she’d said, and I’d said, “Do you want to go to bed?” And she’d said, “I thought you’d never ask,” and took my hand and led me like a kid into my own bedroom. The way she’d looked and the way she’d cried when I showed up at her door after the Deer Run nightmare. An afternoon we’d spent wandering among tide pools near Carmel. A night in a fancy motel in the Napa Valley, the two of us splashing like kids in one of those big in-room Jacuzzi tubs.

Other memories, too, not nearly so pleasant. Kerry saying, “I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while,” and then walking out of my old office on Drumm Street — the first time I thought I was losing her. And Kerry lying crumpled and bloody on the floor of my closet, not so long ago, beaten unconscious by a man who was after me...

Seven-thirty.

I got up and paced around, thinking: What a wreck I am. An old derelict floundering in heavy seas, looking for steerage back into a safe harbor.

The image that little metaphor conjured up made me laugh out loud. At myself, sardonically. An old derelict? A more apt description was of something darting around underwater, not floundering on top of it, something small and bright and silly: one of Walter Merchant’s clownflsh.

Eight o’clock, and eight-thirty, and nine.

I went in and took a hot bath. That usually starts the phone ringing off its hook, but not tonight. Out with Blessing again — where the hell else would she be? Driving me crazy. Down in the dumps. Baby, have pity on me.

But she didn’t.

The phone stayed silent.