Trophies And Dead Things

Eight

Rae was running toward Willie from the corner, where her old Rambler American was parked. Under the streetlight her face was white; her breath came in ragged gasps. I scanned the street, saw no one except people peering through the doors and windows of nearby houses. Then I rushed down the steps to where Rae was now bending over Willie.

As I knelt beside her, he groaned and uncovered his head. He wasn't wounded or hurt, I saw with relief. And when he struggled to sit up, I saw that he had been scared sober. Rae said, "Thank God you're all right!" and started to cry.

"Good thing old habits die hard," Willie said shakily. "I heard that bullet whine by and hit the dirt as fast as I ever did in Nam."

Footsteps came up behind me. Hank. "Anne-Marie's calling nine eleven," he said. "You okay, Willie?"

He nodded. "Help me up, would you?"

Slowly other residents of the street-some of them clad in nightclothes-had begun to come out of their houses and off their porches. They glanced around fearfully, afraid of more violence. A low murmur started and swelled to a clamor of questions and exclamations. I heard a man's voice say shakily, "Jesus, it must of been another of those random shootings!" As Hank and Rae got Willie to his feet, I asked the people near me what they'd seen. Most had only heard the shot, although one man had been standing at his front window and glimpsed a figure running toward Church Street, where the J-line streetcars operate all night long.

Anne-Marie pushed through the crowd. "Was anybody hurt?"

"Willie's reflexes saved him," Hank said.

"Reflexes, hell! If I hadn't been drunk, I'd be dead right now. First time I ever got any benefit from that.I was real unsteady, so Rae went to get her car. Guess I staggered right when he squeezed off the shot. I heard that bullet up close before I hit the dirt; sucker couldn't of gone past more than a couple of inches from my head."

"Who fired at you?" I asked. "You get a look at him?"

Willie shook his head, then glanced at Rae and said, "Come on, honey, quit crying."

Rae wiped her eyes on her sleeve and grabbed his arm. He patted her hand absently.

"Did you see anyone?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "No, nothing."

"Willie, where was he?"

He gestured vaguely at the other side of the street.

"Can't you pinpoint it more exactly?"

"Christ, McCone, I was dog shit drunk!"

I looked over there, thinking of the random shootings-and of my earlier feeling of being watched. And of Hank's similar feeling at All Souls the previous week.

Anne-Marie suggested we wait for the police in her flat, then led us through the crowd, fishing her keys from her jeans pocket. Sirens were audible in the distance now.

I followed on Willie's heels. "Can you think of anyone who would want to take a shot at you?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. I suppose somebody might of taken a dislike to one of my commercials." He meant the words humorously, but they came out flat.

"Well, you are something of a public figure."

Anne-Marie got the door open and we trooped inside.

"Willie," I said, "will you try to think-"

"McCone, just lay off. My mouth hurts, my head hurts, and now I'm gonna have to talk to the cops. You know how I feel about cops."

"But-"

"Just lay off!"

We went into Anne-Marie's living room. Willie collapsed on her pale yellow sofa and stuck his booted feet on the white French Provincial coffee table. She didn't protest. Rae hovered behind the sofa.

I glanced at Willie. He had an odd expression on his face, as if remembering something disturbing. "McCone," he said, "come to think of it, I've had the feeling lately that somebody was following me."

"Did you actually see someone?"

"Nope. It's like I sense somebody's there, but when I look, nobody is."

"When? How often?"

"Couple of weeks now. Maybe six, seven times. Always at night."

"Where?"

"Outside my house, or All Souls when I go see Rae. I-"

There were footsteps on the porch. Hank and two uniformed officers entered. Reluctantly I stepped aside so they could speak with Willie.

By the time they finished getting preliminary information from all of us, the plainclothes team arrived. I wasn't surprised to see Greg Marcus, since he was heading the investigation into the snipings and had told me that morning that he'd been working long hours. He had an inspector named Bridges in tow, and looked as fresh and alert as if he were just beginning his day; Bridges looked sleepy and cross. Although the set of Greg's mouth was grim when he entered the room, his lips twitched in amusement as he surveyed us.

"This is about as wretched as I've ever seen this crew," he said. "Can't you people even stay out of trouble when you're having a dinner party?"

Willie frowned, trying-I thought-to decide whether he ought to take offense at Greg's levity. Rae had no reservations on that score: she glared at him. From their expressions I knew that Anne-Marie and Hank shared my relief; Greg's comment had injected a note of normalcy into a frightening situation.

Quickly he turned to the uniformed men and instructed them to go outside and see if they could locate the bullet. Then he asked Anne-Marie, "Is there someplace where Inspector Bridges can take statements from you folks, while I talk privately with Willie?"

She nodded and motioned for Bridges to follow her. Hank and Rae went out behind him, Rae looking back over her shoulder at Willie as if she were afraid he might vanish in her absence. I lingered near the door.

"You, too," Greg told me.

"Can't I-"

"No."

I folded my arms and set my jaw.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "You know I hate it when you look at me like that."

I remained where I was.

"Dammit, stay then. But don't interrupt. One interruption and you're out of here."

I nodded and sat down on a spindly chair by the window bay.

Greg sat next to Willie and began to question him about the shooting. Basically he asked what I had asked previously, and received similar replies. But when he came to the subject of people who might have wanted to harm him, Willie retreated into shrugs and near silence. It wasn't, I thought, that he didn't like Greg personally; Greg was also an old friend of Hank's, and that was enough to exempt him from Willie's general distrust of the police. It was more likely that he was embarrassed to mention anything as ephemeral as a feeling of being followed-bad for the macho image he likes to cultivate.

Finally I said, "Willie, tell him what you told me."

Greg glanced my way, eyes narrowing.

"I said I wouldn't interrupt, and I'm not-neither of you is saying anything. Besides, this is important. Tell him, Willie."

Willie sighed and repeated what he'd said before.

When he finished, Greg looked thoughtful, rolling his ballpoint pen between his fingers. It was a gold Cross pen that I'd given him the first Christmas we'd been together, and the fact that he still used it touched me in an odd way.

Finally he said, "What's interesting here is that it's the first time we know of that the sniper's missed. If the person who shot at Willie is the one who did the other killings. I wonder if the four victims felt as if someone was stalking them."

"If someone was stalking them," I said, "what does that do to the theory that the killings are random?"

He shrugged. "Could be he just picks his victim and bides his time until he finds a good opportunity."

"But he also might have a motive-however irrational-for picking those particular victims."

"I'd like that better. It would give us more to work with."

Willie scowled. "What if he tries again?"

"We'll put a man on your house right away."

"I can't stay in my house the rest of my life!"

"Willie, we'll do what we can. For now, that's all I can promise you."

Willie nodded-still scowling-and got up. The way he strode out of the room made apparent his displeasure at what he interpreted as a too-casual attitude on Greg's part.

Greg said to me, "Where were you when the shot was fired?"

"Upstairs, in the hall."

"And you were the first person down on the street, I suppose."

"Unless you count Rae. She was at the corner when it happened, getting her car. She didn't see anything, she said."

"Did you?"

"No. But when I arrived around ten, I had the same feeling of being watched as Willie described. And Hank says he's had it, too-last week, at All Souls. And there's a link between Hank and one of the sniper's other victims." I explained about the Hilderly case.

Greg jotted down some notes as I spoke, then said, "I'll talk to Hank about this."

I remained sitting, studying him. Now that the interview was over, he looked tired. He ran a hand over his gray-blond hair, rumpling it, and stretching his long legs out under the coffee table. Oddly enough I found I wasn't thinking about the sniping or its implications; I was thinking about how far Greg and I had come in the years we'd known each other- from adversaries, to lovers, to friends. Of the three, this latter stage suited us best.

I said, "I'm sorry if I kind of bullied you into letting me sit in."

He shrugged. "I'm used to your bullying by now. And as usual, you've done me a favor. Willie wouldn't have talked frankly without your prodding." He rubbed his eyes and added, "Send Hank in here, would you?" I nodded and stood up.

"And if you remember anything later that you haven't told me, give me a call right away." I nodded again.

"Or if Willie tells you anything he might not have wanted to mention in front of me."

Once again I nodded-I was beginning to feel like one of those tacky dashboard ornaments with its head on a spring-and backed out of the room.

When I arrived at All Souls at eight the next morning, Ted Smalley sat at his desk, tapping away on his computer keyboard. I checked the chalkboard for messages, then said, "You know, you really could have taken the day off."

Without stopping he replied, "I need to keep busy. Besides, I've got a law co-op to run. What with people being all excited and upset about last night's sniping, I've got my hands full."

Ted is convinced that All Souls would cease to function without his constant attention; half the time I suspect he's right.

I remained by the desk. After a moment Ted lifted his long-fingered hands from the keys and dropped them in his lap. "All right-what?"

"I'm sorry about Harry, and I'm here if you need me."

He nodded and briefly closed his eyes, compressing his lips. Despite his anglicized last name, Ted, a slender man with short black hair and a goatee, is of Russian-Jewish ancestry. His ascetic features make me think of a poet or composer, rather than an efficient and dedicated legal secretary. This morning they were honed fine by pain; his skin had the waxy, translucent quality that comes from lack of sleep.

I went around the desk and gave him what I intended to be a brief hug, but sudden panic engulfed me and I clung tightly to his shoulders. What if Ted contracted AIDS? How could any of us bear that?

He seemed to sense my fear, because he patted my arm-the bereaved comforting the comforter-and said, "Don't worry. I'll be here to get your phone messages garbled when we're both in our dotage."

"At least you'll have a good excuse for it then." I released him and hurried upstairs.

My office is at the front of the second floor-a big room with a fireplace and a bay window that overlooks the flat, characterless sprawl of the Outer Mission district. I dumped my bag and briefcase on the new rose-colored chaise longue that I'd recently bought to replace my ratty old armchair, then took off my jacket and dropped it there, too. My original plan for the chaise had been as a place to lie down and relax while I thought through difficult cases. What I mainly did, however, was pile things on it. At the moment it also held a cardboard file box, a tape recorder, and my camera.

I went to the desk that stood in the window bay and reached out to dial Hank on the intercom, then realized he'd said he would be in court until noon. "Damn!" I muttered, wishing I could talk to him now.

Before I'd left his flat the night before, I'd asked Hank if he thought the sniping might have been directed at him, as Hilderly's attorney-that Willie might have been mistaken for him in the dark. Perhaps Hilderly's killing had had some connection with him changing his will; perhaps the sniper thought Hank possessed more knowledge of Hilderly's doing so than he actually did.

But Hank had been adamant that there was no connection. The sniper striking where he had, he said, was merely a bizarre coincidence. After all, he pointed out, what possible connection could the other victims have with Hilderly?

It was a valid point, but I was unconvinced. And I thought Hank's insistence on sheer coincidence was more of a way of not dealing with a personally frightening aspect of what had begun as a simple probate of an estate. I would have liked to ask him if he still felt so certain in the sane light of morning.

After a moment I stopped brooding about it and removed a handful of files that had appeared in my In box since Friday: background checks on two prospective employees for a small security firm that Larry Koslowski, the health nut, represented; a request for surveillance on a clerk thought to be stealing and reselling merchandise from a liquor-store client; a list of points needing clarification from an interview I'd conducted with a witness to an industrial accident at another client's dry-cleaning plant. I put the surveillance job aside for Rae. She liked getting out into the field, but most of the routine tasks she handled didn't permit that; this would be a chance for her to spread her wings. Then I put in a call to Gene Carver, Hilderly's former employer at Tax Management Corporation, hoping to ask him about the seminar Hilderly had attended in May and later described to his son Kurt as having had a profound effect on his life. Carver, however, was out of town; his secretary said he would call back later in the week.

Finally-in order not to dwell on the events of the night before-I began to work through the other files: telephoning, checking and rechecking facts. When my intercom buzzed for the first time that morning, I was surprised to see it was nearly ten.

"Tracy Miller on line three," Ted said.

"Thanks." Tracy is my friend at the DMV, who-in exchange for lunches, dinners, and an occasional free ticket to a play or a concert-cuts the red tape by running names through her computer for me. I punched the flashing button. "Hi, how you doing?"

"Better than you, I'm sure. That was a hell of a thing you were involved in last night."

The Chronicle had been full of news of the city's apparent fifth sniping this morning, and Willie's picture had been prominently featured on the front page. "Sure was. I'll tell you all about it the next time we get together."

"Good. Listen, your assistant's on another line, and since I know this information's for you, I thought I'd pass it on directly. We show no driver's license or vehicle registration for David Arlen Taylor, but I came up with an address on Libby Heikkinen Ross. Post-office box in Inverness over in West Marin, and an address on Pierce Point Road there."

I took them both down and reminded Tracy that I owed her a dinner for various favors done over the past couple of months. She promised to check her calendar and call me back on the weekend. After I replaced the receiver, I swiveled around and stared out the window at the gray-shrouded flat-lands.

I knew Inverness, more or less. It was a picturesque country town with a population of no more than a few hundred, nestled between heavily wooded hills and the marshes of Tomales Bay, not far from the Point Reyes National Seashore. One of its chief attractions was a Czechoslovakian restaurant where a former lover and I had taken refuge during a downpour one long-ago October night, warming ourselves by the woodstove and drinking slivovitz with the proprietor. In a place like Inverness, Libby Heikkinen Ross would not be difficult to locate.

I swiveled around again and dialed Rae's extension on the intercom. When she answered, I asked, "How's Willie this morning?"

"I was just talking to him. He's so pleased with his newfound celebrity that he's even forgotten his jaw hurts. KPIX is sending somebody out to interview him for the six o'clock news, and I think he's having visions of stardom."

"God forbid that his head should get any more swelled. Look, I've got an address for Ross over in West Marin, so I'll probably be gone for most of the day. They didn't have anything on Taylor, but I want you to hold off on checking out-of-county Vital Statistics; there's a chance Ross might know his whereabouts."

"I guess I'll just cover here, then." Rae sounded disappointed at not getting out of the office. "Only for a while. I need you to finish up a background investigation I've started for one of Larry's clients. But then we've got a surveillance job, starts at noon when the subject comes on shift at Lloyd's Liquors. I'll drop both files by your office on the way out."

"A surveillance job? For me?"Now she sounded elated.

I knew how she felt. The prospect of a drive to West Marin had raised my own spirits measurably.