Illusions

10

I cooperated fully with Sheriff’s Lieutenant Battle. It would have been foolish to do otherwise even if Ira Erskine was still among the living; cooperation with police agencies is vital to a private investigator if he wants to maintain friendly relations and avoid any official complaints to the State Board of Licenses. I gave him a quick rundown of Erskine’s reasons for hiring me and the results of my investigation, and offered to fax him a copy of my report; he said that might be helpful and provided their fax number. Whatever Erskine had done with his copy of the report, it hadn’t been among his effects in the motel room or in his rental car. What had been found that led Battle to me was my business card, tucked inside Erskine’s folder of traveler’s checks.

Even after the lieutenant rang off, I had some difficulty coming to terms with Erskine’s sudden death. I hadn’t liked him much, but I had empathized with his problems, and for him to die the way he had was a bitter nut to swallow. Cleaning a .38 Police Special with a round in firing position... stupid as hell. But it happens more often than you might think, and the fact that a cleaning woman and two guests had heard the shot and within minutes found the body locked inside the ground-floor room seemed to support an accidental-shooting explanation. What gnawed at me was that Erskine had had the weapon in the first place. Why bring it with him from Santa Fe? Or if he’d gotten hold of it out here somehow, that made the situation even odder. Had he had some screwball idea of trying to force his ex-wife into returning to New Mexico with him? A man as in love with an ideal as he’d been was capable of something like that. Yet if she was any kind of human being, with even a shred of compassion or maternal feeling left in her, she’d have gone willingly to be with their dying son. From the impression of Sondra Nelson I’d been given by the hostess at Silver Creek Cellars, she was anything but cold-hearted.

Still... I’d told Erskine where to find her late Thursday afternoon. He’d had three full days to contact her, tell her about the boy. So why had he still been at a Healdsburg motel this morning unless she’d turned him down flat? And not just hanging around there, waiting, but cleaning that .38 Police Special?

Strange dude, Tamara had called him. No argument there. Well, maybe the .38 hadn’t had any direct connection to his reunion with his ex-wife. Maybe he’d been one of these paranoid gun nuts who see menace lurking everywhere they go and can’t travel ten miles without packing heat for protection. And San Francisco, after all, as everybody east of Reno knows to be gospel fact, is a wicked, wicked city.

I asked Tamara to fax a copy of the Erskine report to Lieutenant Battle, and while she did that she offered her take on the situation. Which was suicide. Sondra Nelson had blown him off; refused to go back to Santa Fe to be with their son, given him no hope of reconciliation. And he’d been “whacked out” enough to take himself out. I said I didn’t buy it, but that was because I’d had enough of people ending their own lives with handguns; I didn’t want to deal with the issue even in theory. It was possible, though. At this stage anything was possible.

Ira Erskine was dead, that was all anybody knew for sure. And his son was still dying alone back in Santa Fe. Sondra Nelson’s past had caught up with her with a vengeance. Yes, and I was more than a little responsible.

Feelings of guilt began to build in me, to the point where I considered contacting her and expressing my regrets. But I didn’t give in to the urge; I was the last person she’d want to talk to, now or ever. In a few days I could call Battle, get a follow-up on Erskine’s death and find out what Sondra Nelson’s plans were regarding her son. Otherwise I was out of a tragic and difficult situation and I’d be smart to keep it that way.

Wrong.

I wasn’t out of it. Not by a damn sight.

Sheriff’s Lieutenant Battle called again early Tuesday morning. He said without preamble, “The Erskine shooting. It’s not as cut and dried as I thought. There’re inconsistencies.” His tone put me on alert; it was more official-sounding today. “Conflicting information that needs clarifying.”

“How can I help? I told you everything I know yesterday—”

“I’d prefer we talk in person this time, if it’s all the same to you. What’s your schedule like today? Can you free up time to come to Santa Rosa?”

“I think so. What’s convenient for you?”

“Say one o’clock. Our offices are at six hundred Administration Drive. You know where that is?”

“I’ve been to the courthouse.”

“One o’clock,” he said, and left me sitting there holding the receiver and thinking, What the hell?

Half a century ago, Santa Rosa — fifty-some miles due north of San Francisco — was a sleepy little town with a population of under twenty thousand, built close around the then two-lane Highway 101. Alfred Hitchcock considered it such a perfect example of prewar small-town America that he picked it for the location shooting of one of his best films, Shadow of a Doubt. Even twenty-five years ago its growth rate was relatively slow and it retained much of its quiet, homegrown ambiance. Since the early seventies, though, spurred on by high birth rates and thousands of new residents pouring into California every year, not to mention that old debbil greed, hordes of real estate developers descended on Sonoma County and have since turned a few million acres of open farmland and rolling wooded hills into look-alike housing tracts and shopping centers and “luxurious hillside homes with spectacular views.” The perfect example of small-town America has evolved into the perfect example of late-twentieth-century urban and suburban sprawl. Santa Rosa’s population has ballooned to 150,000 and shows no sign of leveling off, and right along with its rampant growth, the burgeoning new city has been plagued by the usual assortment of urban social ills: ghettoization of poorer neighborhoods, homelessness, widespread drug and gang activity, and a steady upsurge in violent crime.

The newish complex built around Administration Drive, off the freeway north of downtown, was an inevitable result of the urbanization of Santa Rosa and population increases throughout Sonoma County. All of the county’s administrative buildings and offices are located there, in an area that covers several acres. There are parking facilities for a few thousand cars, but I couldn’t find a spot anywhere within a short hike of the courthouse and sheriff’s offices. I had to walk nearly half a mile from where I finally deposited the car. Not that I minded the exercise but Battle’s second call had put an edginess in me and the sooner I found out what was back of it, the better I’d feel. Maybe.

The parking hunt and the walk made me ten minutes late. Battle didn’t seem bothered; he waved away my apology, told me to have a seat, and spent a few seconds taking my measure while I did the same with him. His office was not much larger than a cubicle and the two of us pretty much filled it; he was a couple of inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me, which made him a very big man. Forty-some years of living and somewhere around half that number in law enforcement had lined and toughened his-face, and his eyes, dark brown under heavy brows and a low-hanging shock of iron-gray hair, said that he couldn’t be pushed or fooled and you’d be well advised not to try to do either.

“I did some checking on you,” he said. “You’ve got a rep for honesty, so I’m assuming everything you told me yesterday is factual. The story Erskine handed you, the nature and substance of your investigation.”

“It’s factual. I wouldn’t have any reason to lie or withhold information.”

“But evidently Erskine did.”

“You mean he lied to me?”

“That’s right.”

“For instance?”

“The terminally ill son back in Santa Fe.”

“...The boy’s not dying of leukemia?”

“There is no boy,” Battle said. “No son, no living children. His only child was a little girl and she died in infancy five years ago. Crib death, age five months.”

I sat there with my mouth hanging open a little. “His ex-wife?”

“She’s real enough. The mother of the baby that died. But if she was ever a drug addict, the Santa Fe police have no record of any arrests, and a woman at the Salishan Gallery who knew her disputes it. She was never in a rehab center in New Mexico.”

“The disappearance three years ago...?”

“Oh, she left Santa Fe after a divorce and settlement, but it was four years ago, not three. From there she went to Taos for a while, not Albuquerque. Then she moved back to Chicago, where she was born, and then to St. Louis, Phoenix, and finally out here about three years ago. In St. Louis she had her name legally changed to Sondra Nelson.”

“She tell you all that?”

“Yesterday afternoon, at James Woolfox’s ranch. Funny thing is, I could’ve saved myself the trip. She was right here at the courthouse until one-thirty. Jury duty. So she couldn’t have had any direct involvement in the shooting. Erskine died at approximately 7:40 A.M., and she was already in the jury room by then. Jury Commissioner’s office verified it.”

I was silent for a little time, working to sort out and reslot all the new information he was feeding me. “Before she settled in the Alexander Valley, why did she move around so much?”

“Same reason she changed her name. To keep Erskine from finding her.”

“Afraid of him?”

“Scared to death.”

“Jesus, don’t tell me he was a wife-stalker?”

“Just what he was, according to her. Abused her before the baby’s death, even more afterward. She tried to leave him a couple of times; he dragged her back. Love-hate thing on his part, and violent both ways. Last time he beat her up she had to be hospitalized and that’s when she filed for divorce. He kept after her, she got a restraining order and moved to Taos. He went up there and threatened to kill her. The old story — ‘If I can’t have you, nobody can.’ That was when she started running in earnest.”

“And I found her for him. Bought that sob story of his without checking any damn part of it.” I smacked the heels of my palms together, hard enough to hurt. “Stupid. Stupid! There were signs... I should’ve recognized them for what they were.”

“What signs?”

“He was so intense. Obsessive. And the way he reacted when I found her, some things he said that I ignored or misinterpreted — Christ. It never even occurred to me he might be stalking her.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Battle said. “Everybody makes mistakes in judgment. Besides, he’s the one who’s dead, not her.”

“He must’ve seen her, talked to her. What happened?”

“Showed up at the winery Friday morning. She nearly had a hemorrhage. After four years she figured she was safe.”

“Yeah.”

“No threats then. Charm and pleas — told her how good she looked, how much he still loved her and wanted her back. He wouldn’t leave. Then Woolfox got into it.”

“And?”

“Some harsh words between the two men, that’s all. Erskine left, but an hour later he started calling up the winery. She wouldn’t talk to him. So that night he began pestering Gail Kendall, the winery chemist. Found out somehow she was his ex’s best friend and the two of them had roomed together until six weeks ago, when Nelson moved out to Woolfox’s ranch. Erskine got wind of that, too. On Saturday afternoon he showed up at the ranch.”

“With or without the Police Special?”

“If he had it with him, he didn’t flash it,” Battle said. “Verbal threats only, but pretty strong ones. He wouldn’t leave until Woolfox told his housekeeper to phone us. But he was back again on Sunday, at the ranch and winery both — not that it did him any good. Woolfox and Nelson spent Saturday night and Sunday with a friend in the Napa Valley. Kendall was invited along because they were afraid Erskine would continue to harass her.”

“And Monday morning Erskine turns up dead of a gunshot wound. End of threat. Convenient.”

“Coincidences happen. And disturbed people do foolish things.”

“So you’re satisfied the shooting was accidental?”

“Satisfied? No, not yet. That’s one of the reasons you’re here. It could’ve been suicide; stalkers are prone to taking that way out. But seldom until they’ve killed the woman first. That’s their whole focus, either getting her to come back to them or killing her if she refuses. Why go to all the trouble to track her down and then take no for a quick answer and blow himself away? Doesn’t fit the psychological profile.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed.

“Homicide’s more likely, but the circumstances seem to rule it out. He was alone in the room, the door and windows all locked tight. Mexican maid and two guests heard the shot, and the male guest, a man named Doyle, convinced the maid to use her passkey. He swears they were inside Erskine’s room within five minutes. And that he didn’t hear anything inside after the shot, or see anything suspicious in the vicinity.”

“Pretty convincing, all right.”

“And that’s not all,” Battle said. “The locals who had reason to want Erskine dead all have solid alibis. Sondra Nelson was here at the courthouse on jury duty, like I said. Woolfox was still in the Napa Valley; not only his friend but the friend’s wife and a grown daughter verify it. Gail Kendall went back home Sunday night — she lives in the hills near Geyserville — and her car had a dead battery when she got up Monday morning. She called Triple A to come out and jump it for her. The tow-truck driver confirms time and place.”

“One of the three could’ve hired it done,” I said.

“Anything’s possible. But where would respectable citizens find a paid assassin on short notice? And even if one could be found, why would he go to a lot of trouble to arrange a fake shooting accident in a motel room? There are a few hundred better, safer ways and places.”

I nodded. “Yet you’re still not quite ready to close it out as accidental. How come?”

“You’ve cleared up some of the inconsistencies, but there’re still loose ends. And the fact of Erskine turning up dead so soon after threatening his ex-wife. Convenient coincidences happen, but that doesn’t mean I like them. Anything more you can tell me?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve got a few questions, though. Things that occurred to me while we’ve been talking.”

“Go ahead.”

“How much corroboration have you got that Erskine was an abuser and a stalker?”

“Enough. The woman at the Salishan Gallery in Santa Fe confirmed the abuse; so did hospital records. We verified the restraining order and three complaints by Janice Erskine on file with the Santa Fe and Taos police. And both Woolfox and his housekeeper were witnesses when Erskine threatened her life at the ranch on Saturday.”

“Did Woolfox know about Erskine before he showed up? Or did she keep her past a secret from him?”

“Told him everything when they got engaged.” Battle paused and then said mildly, “You wouldn’t be trying to build a scenario that’ll help ease your conscience, would you?”

“No way. I screwed up and I accept full responsibility. I’m going to feel lousy about it for a long time.”

He watched me awhile, then shrugged and said, “Yeah, well, live and learn. Anyhow, there’s no question that she was terrified of Erskine. It was in her voice and her eyes the whole time I talked to her. He was stalking her, and the odds are he’d have harmed her eventually, or tried to. My job is to make sure a case is what it seems to be before I wrap it up, but I hope like hell this one was an accidental shooting. Nice justice in a stalker getting careless and blowing himself away before he harms the woman.”

“Wouldn’t make me unhappy, either,” I said. “Sounds like she’s had a rough time.”

“Too damn rough. She seems decent — I liked her.”

“She still on jury duty, or did they let her off?”

“Empaneled for a gang-rape trial, called but not seated. Obligation completed.”

“One more question, Lieutenant?”

“Ask it.”

“Did she send a postcard to an old friend in Santa Fe, or was that another of Erskine’s lies?”

“Lie. She swears she’s had no contact with anyone in Santa Fe since she left Taos. Wouldn’t have dared risk writing a postcard or letter, or making a phone call, or even setting foot back in New Mexico.”

“Then how did he track her to this area?”

“He didn’t tell her and she doesn’t have any idea.”

“Well, if it was through another private detective, he or she is a hell of a lot smarter than me.”

“How so?”

“Figured out what Erskine was up to and refused to have anything more to do with him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed me.”

“How’d he happen to pick you, anyhow?”

“Referral list from an agency in Santa Fe. That’s what he told my assistant.”

“Which agency?”

“Patterson.”

“You know them?”

“Yes. Reputable firm. I handled a split-fee investigation for them a few years ago. He probably did get a referral list from them. Either they did work for him, or he paid them a small consultancy fee.”

“I’ll check, see if they can tell me something I don’t already know.” Battle got to his feet. “Well, I think that’s it for now. I have your card, here’s one of mine. Call me if you think of anything else.”

I said I would, and that should have been the end of my involvement in the matter. But it wasn’t, not just yet.

Ira Erskine had made a fool out of me, a burden compounded by what I’d done to Sondra Nelson — and James Woolfox and Gail Kendall — by turning a psychopath loose on her without even a whisper of advance warning. The guilt I felt today was twice as strong as yesterday’s, too strong to ignore. I couldn’t just fade away, forget it all as if it had never happened; I’m not made that way. I had to have some sort of closure in this case, just as I needed one in Eberhardt’s suicide. And that meant facing her, owning up — not because I wanted her forgiveness, but because it was the only way I could begin to forgive myself.