Mourners

28

The address was a private home in Forest Hills, one of the city’s older residential neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. You couldn’t tell much about it from the street. More modern than some of the homes in the neighborhood, a hillside split-level on a narrow lot, with an unobtrusive redwood and brick facade. A curving set of stone steps led down to it through a southwestern-style rock-and-cactus garden. If you stood off at a side angle, you could tell that there were broad decks on both levels that would command views of Mount Davidson and portions of downtown and the bay.

It was nearly five o’clock when I got there. I went down and rang the bell. Nobody opened the door. I climbed back up and checked the enclosed platform garage along one corner of the property at street level. But it was just a box with no doors or windows so I couldn’t tell if it was empty or not.

I sat waiting in the car. Might be a long wait, but now that I was here I was inclined to stay put at least a couple of hours and probably longer; I have more patience than usual when it comes to specific business. Get this done tonight if at all possible.

The wait lasted exactly forty-seven minutes. A car came too fast around a curve in the street behind me: black Ford Explorer, big as hell, just the kind of wheels I expected him to have. Brakes squealed; he swung sharp into the driveway. The door ground up and the SUV disappeared inside. When he came out, pausing to close the door with an inside button, I was waiting for him.

He squinted at me out of bleary eyes. “Hey,” he said, “what’re you doing here?”

“Talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Lynn’s sister is staying with her, if that’s what you-”

“Kayabalian told me.”

“Poor kid. She’s in a bad way right now, but she’ll get through it.”

“With your help?”

“Right. Anything I can do. So what’s on your mind?”

“How about we talk inside. More private.”

“Sure, sure. No problem.”

Down the flagstone steps again. He let us in, led the way through a wide foyer past a staircase to the lower level, into a living room that took up the entire width of the main floor. Wine-colored drapes were partly open over a picture window and sliding glass doors to the deck.

Casement said, “Man, I’m beat,” and scrubbed a hand over his heavy crust of beard. In the house’s stillness it made an audible sound like sandpaper on wood. “I need a drink. Get you one?”

“No.”

There was a well-stocked bar along one wall, trimmed in leather with matching stools in the same wine color. Behind it, he rattled a bottle against the rim of a crystal tumbler. I gave the room a quick scan. White brick fireplace on the side wall opposite the bar. Burgundy-colored leather furniture, the floor polished hardwood with burgundy and white throw rugs. Half a dozen paintings, all modernistic abstracts, all with the same colors in them.

Casement came out from behind the bar with a half-filled glass, Scotch or bourbon. He’d seen me looking around; he said, “Some decorating job, eh? My ex-wife. She had shitty taste in everything except me.”

He laughed at his own wit, took a long pull of his drink. I stood there watching him.

“Ahh,” he said, “that’s better. How about we sit down, put our feet up?”

“You go ahead. I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself.” He flopped into a chair at an angle to the fireplace. I moved around in front of him. “What’re we talking about?”

“Tell you a little story first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Story? What kind of story?”

“About a friend and partner I had once. His name was Eberhardt, a former cop like me. Good man, basically, but he made mistakes and he had more demons than most of us. When our partnership and friendship busted up, he opened his own detective agency. But he couldn’t make a go of it. He started drinking heavily, made more mistakes and slid into a deep hole he couldn’t get out of. Things got so bad for him he lost his will to live, decided to take the coward’s way out. He sat in his car one night in an alley off Third Street and tried to make himself eat his gun. Only he didn’t have the guts to do it on his own. He called the one person left in his life who cared about him, and she came down, and he begged her until she gave in. He pulled the trigger but it was her hand that helped him do it.”

Casement’s expression was blank; I might have been telling him about the weather. He said without meaning it, “That’s too bad. But why tell me?”

“You could say,” I went on, “that Eberhardt committed suicide. He wanted to die, it was his finger on the trigger, he just needed a little assist. But you could also say that the person who gave him that assist was guilty of murder. By law in this state, that’s what assisted suicide is-a willful act of murder.”

He was getting it now. His thick eyebrows drew together; he shifted position on the chair and slugged more whiskey. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“I think it does.”

“Yeah? Well, spit it out then.”

“Troxell also had help committing suicide. Your help, your assist.”

“You’re crazy, man! I wasn’t anywhere near Ocean Beach last night.”

“You didn’t have to be. But your hand was on that gun just the same. And that makes you guilty of murder.”

“Jim was my friend, for Chrissake. Why would I want him dead?”

“Because he was in the way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. You’re in love with his wife.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s plain enough,” I said. “The way you look at her, act around her. You love her and you want her and you knew the only way you could have her was if Troxell was dead.”

Casement threw down the last of the whiskey, shoved onto his feet. I set myself, but he wasn’t coming my way. He swung across to the bar to slop more liquor into his glass. Stayed there with it instead of returning to the chair, cocking a hip onto one of the leather stools, as if he wanted distance between us while he regrouped. I didn’t let him have it. I walked over there, slow, and stood even closer than before, just a few paces separating us.

Up went his glass. When it came down again, he said, “Maybe I do love Lynn in my own way. I never made any secret that I care about her. That doesn’t mean I wanted my best friend dead so I could move in on her.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“What put that goddamn crazy notion in your head, anyway?”

“Little slips you made, little things she and Kayabalian and Troxell himself told me. Bits and pieces that add up to the same conclusion.”

“Wrong conclusion.”

I grinned at him. Wolf grin, just the baring of teeth. “Here’s the way I see it. Sometime after Troxell witnessed what happened in the park, he came to you and told you about it. Or you dragged it out of him. Doesn’t matter which. He couldn’t make himself go to the police and he couldn’t confide in his wife, he wasn’t made that way. But he was full of guilt and starting to unravel and he needed to talk to somebody. Who else but you, his best buddy since high school.”

“Blowing smoke, man, that’s all you’re doing.”

“He confided his obsession with death and suicide, too. And not in an offhand way, like you made it seem-straight from the gut. He was serious about putting himself out of his misery, he’d been building to it even before the Erin Dumont trigger. But some men, men like Eberhardt, men like Troxell, just can’t do it on their own, no matter how much they want to die. You saw that. Saw your opportunity, hatched your little scheme, and went to work on him.”

“How am I supposed to’ve done that, smart guy?”

“Couldn’t have been too hard. You knew how to manipulate him-you as much as told me so yourself, all that stuff about getting him to tutor you in school, arranging for him to lose his virginity. Strong, confident jock, weak and emotionally screwed-up nerd. Not much of a contest at all. Reinforce his low self-esteem, lead him to believe his situation is hopeless and he’d be doing it for his wife as much as for himself, shore up his resolve and courage, finally offer to help him do the job.”

That must have been pretty close to the way it happened. Casement fidgeted again, slugged more whiskey-about as much reaction as I was going to get out of him.

“You went to work on her, too,” I said. “Kept telling her how worried you were about her husband and his mental state. Suggested she hire detectives to follow him. You wanted her to know just how bad off he was.”

Between his teeth: “Why would I hurt her like that if I’m so much in love with her?”

“To make her need you, lean on you. It was also a way to set Troxell up for the final push over the line. You must’ve been happy as hell with my report, the suggestions I made, the weekend grace period. After I left you talked her out of notifying the family doctor; Kayabalian told me that. You didn’t want any medical interference that might keep Troxell from listening to anybody but you after the confrontation. You spent a long time alone with him Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday-working on his hopelessness and death obsession, maneuvering him into a state where he could blow himself away.

“Mrs. Troxell hid his car keys Saturday, in a place he’d never think to look. But Kayabalian told me you were with her when she did it. Troxell didn’t find those keys on his own; he’d’ve had to tear the place apart and he didn’t, he slipped out of the house almost immediately after he got out of bed. He got the keys from you. You took them from the hiding place and handed them over before you left that afternoon.”

I watched Casement’s face closely as I spoke. No expression except for tight lips and a faintly throbbing vein in one temple. No sign of guilt or remorse. Incapable of either emotion; I had him pegged that way. Cold bastard. Self-involved, borderline sociopath.

“Why would a man like Troxell use a gun on himself?” I said. “That bothered me almost from the first. Wouldn’t be his choice if he were doing it on his own-the idea had to’ve been planted in his head, nurtured. ‘A small caliber handgun is quick and painless, Jim, you do it somewhere outside the home, out on the beach, say, and there’s not much mess for anybody to clean up.’ When he says he doesn’t think he can shoot himself, you keep telling him he can, and show him just how to do it, and eventually you’ve got him convinced. ‘With help you can find the necessary courage to go through with it. And I have all the help I need now.’ Troxell’s words to me on the phone Saturday night. I thought he was talking about going to the police, but what he was really talking about was putting that bullet in his brain.”

“Bullshit,” Casement said again.

“Then there’s the clincher,” I said, “the weapon itself. Brand-new twenty-two-caliber automatic. Where did he get it?”

“How should I know? Bought it someplace.”

“Where?”

“A gun shop, where else.”

“That’s what you said this morning. But you know and I know nobody can buy a handgun in this state without a valid permit. Troxell never applied for one. I checked.”

“So what? So some sleazeball dealer sold it to him under the counter. Or he bought it on the street.”

“There aren’t that many sleazeball dealers who’d risk a stiff fine and a jail sentence on such a small illegal sale. How would a man like Troxell, an advocate of gun control, go about finding one in the first place? Same thing for a street buy-how would he know where to go and who to approach? No, he had to’ve gotten the piece from somebody he knew.”

“Not me.”

“Closed-off type like him, no close friends except you-it couldn’t be anybody else. You sell sporting goods, you have easy access to target weapons like the twenty-two he used.”

“You can’t tie that pistol to me,” Casement said. “No way.”

“Pistol. Right. That’s another thing you said this morning. I told you and Mrs. Troxell that he’d shot himself, she said why did he do it that way. And you said, ‘A pistol… that’s as quick as it gets.’ ”

“Gun, pistol, what’s the difference?”

“Pistol refers to a semiautomatic handgun. You damn well know that in your business. But I didn’t say what kind of weapon Troxell used. It could’ve been a revolver, or a even a shotgun or rifle.”

“I just assumed it was a pistol. You can’t prove any different.”

“No?”

“No. Can’t prove a goddamn thing you’ve said.”

“I could try.”

“Go ahead. You won’t find anything.”

“The police might,” I said.

“Take this crap of yours to the cops? You do, you’ll be one sorry son of a bitch.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Damn right it’s a threat. Any hassle, and I’ll sue you for slander and defamation. I’ll take everything you’ve got.”

“You’d have to prove malicious intent. The malice here is all on your side.”

“I’m warning you. Back off.”

“No. I may or may not talk to the police. I am going to talk to the widow.”

Blood-rush darkened his face even more. He said savagely, “You stay the hell away from Lynn.”

“She has to know what you did.”

“She wouldn’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth. She’ll believe it eventually.”

“Goddamn you, I won’t let that happen!”

“You don’t have a tenth of the influence with her you did with her husband. If you did, you wouldn’t’ve had to help him die to get your hands on her.”

He slammed the glass down on the bar top, lunged off the stool and up close to me. I set myself again, arms out away from my body, but all he did was get into my face. “Stay away from her,” he said, spitting the words, spraying saliva.

“All for nothing, Casement. She’ll hate your guts, she won’t have anything to do with you.”

“She will, she’s mine now! You’re not gonna take her away from me, not now, not you or anybody else.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He grabbed handfuls of my shirt and jacket, yanked me up on my toes. “I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll kill you!”

I drove the heel of my left hand up hard against the tendons in one wrist, at the same time chopping down with my right on the other wristbone. The force of the moves made him yell, broke his hold and exposed the upper part of his body. I gave him a hard shove, two-handed against his chest. He went staggering backward, would have gone down if he hadn’t collided with the bar stool; he caught it and used it to steady himself. If he’d charged me then, we’d’ve been into it hot and heavy and the advantage would have been his. But he didn’t. He hung there, breathing hard, his face congested, glaring hate and rage at me.

“I’m half your age, old man,” he said thickly. “I could break you in half.”

“You could try.”

“Beat the shit out of you and claim you attacked me.”

“You wouldn’t get away with that either. I go back a long way in this city-I was a cop before I went into private practice. Lies about me and my methods don’t get believed.”

He didn’t say anything to that. Heavy silence for a few seconds, broken only by the ragged rhythm of his breathing. Then he scraped his beard crust again, straightened, pushed the stool away from him. In a choked voice he said, “Get out of here. Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Gladly.”

I moved away from him sideways, keeping him in sight, in case he had any ideas about mixing it up again. No ideas, but more vicious words as I reached the hallway. “I meant what I said. You take Lynn away from me, I’ll kill you.”

For an answer I showed him the wolf grin one more time.

Outside the wind chilled me, brought the realization that I was sweating. I took a couple of long breaths, calming down, as I climbed to the street. In the car I took the voice-activated recorder from my coat pocket and ran the tape back far enough to be sure it was all on there. The recorder, one of Tamara’s recent purchases for the agency, was state-of-the-art; both our voices were clear and distinct. Okay. I hadn’t been able to maneuver Casement into a direct admission of guilt, so I probably still didn’t have enough to go to the law. Kayabalian could tell me when I played the tape for him.

One thing for sure: Casement had said more than enough to convince Lynn Troxell when she heard it.