Camouflage (Nameless Detective Mysteries) (8 page)

“Checked on that, too. No. Owns a small house in Blodgett, worth about fifty K. Lives on Social Security. No life insurance.”

“So we could be on the wrong track after all,” I said. “Looking for a felony where none exists.”

“You think? I don’t. Why’s this Dogpatch woman pretending to be Roxanne McManus if she’s not an ID thief? And what happened to the real Roxanne? And what’s up with Jane Carson?”

“Good questions. Maybe the answers are simple, not sinister, and we just haven’t thought of them yet.”

“Balls,” she said.

“Well, in any case, we’re on hold until I talk to Virden. No client, no ongoing investigation.”

“Don’t have to tell me. I learned that lesson the hard way.”

*   *   *

Nothing from Virden by close of business. I tried his cell one more time, got the same Out of Service message.

“Still pissed and ducking us,” Tamara said.

“Probably. I’ll make one more try tomorrow.”

“What do we do if he’s blown us off?”

“You know the answer to that. Mark the case closed and forget about it. There’s nothing else we can do.”

9

JAKE RUNYON

Getting people to talk about their private lives was never easy, and a subject as delicate as child abuse made the job twice as difficult. If they were willing to talk at all, emotions flared up and got in the way: lies, evasions, exaggerations, angry recriminations, irrational outbursts like the one from Gwen Whalen. That was one common reaction; the other was the one he’d gotten from the other sister, Tracy, when he reached her by phone in Ojai. As soon as he mentioned Francine’s name, Tracy said in bitter tones, “I have nothing to say about her,” and hung up on him. Either way, a refusal to cooperate. The fact that Francine had two estranged sisters, one of whom had suffered severe emotional damage, was significant to him, but it wouldn’t be to Robert Darby. Lawyers were a breed apart. You had to practically hit them over the head with hard evidence, and even then they were liable to twist its interpretation to meet their own ends.

Late Tuesday afternoon he went to see Francine’s ex-husband, Kevin Dinowski, at the California West Exchange Bank downtown. Dinowski had an impressive-sounding title, Regulatory Market Risk Representative, but judging from the size of his windowless office, it was neither a high-level nor a high-paying position. Runyon got in to see him by using the “personal matter” approach; few people were able to resist when a private investigator had that kind of interest in them—assuming they had nothing to hide.

Dinowski was in his thirties, enthusiastic, and friendly enough until Runyon mentioned Francine’s name. Then he stiffened and pulled back. But he didn’t close off. Bitterness and something that might have been hatred for his ex-wife made him willing to talk about her. You could almost see the professional poise peeling away like layers of dead skin, to reveal the private scars and still-open wound underneath.

“What’s she done now?” he said.

“Now, Mr. Dinowski? She do something before?”

“Soured me on marriage, for one thing.”

“I understand you were married only a short time.”

“I must’ve been out of my mind,” Dinowski said. “Blinded by sex, that’s my only excuse. It’s true what they say—you don’t really know someone until you live with them for a while.”

When he didn’t go on, Runyon prompted him with, “We all make mistakes.”

“Some bigger than others. I’ll never make one like Francine again.”

“Another man is about to. She’s engaged to be married.”

“Well, I feel sorry for the poor guy, whoever he is. Is that why you’re here? Checking up on her for her future husband?”

“Something like that. He has a little boy, nine years old, from a previous marriage.”

“Francine as a wife is bad enough, but as a mother? I pity that kid.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s crazy, that’s why. Ceritifiable.”

“How is she crazy?”

Dinowski looked away, not answering. A muscle fluttered along his jaw. The shape of his mouth was lipless, pinched.

Runyon said, gambling, “Violent tendencies?”

“Tendencies? She’s psychotic when something sets her off, and it doesn’t take much to set her off.” Dinowski shot the left sleeve of his suit coat, unbuttoned his shirt cuff, and drew that up. The skin along his forearm bore a long puckered scar. “See this? She threw a pot of boiling water at me one night. Just because of a mild criticism of what she was cooking. If I hadn’t ducked away in time, it’d be my face that’s scarred. That was the last straw. The next day I filed for divorce.”

“There were other incidents, then?”

“Oh yes. None as bad as the boiling water, but bad enough. Just fly into a rage for no good reason. One time in bed she … never mind the details. It was the only time I ever hit her, slapped her, and she scratched the hell out of me in return. Lord, I wish I’d never laid eyes on her. Those were the worst five months of my life.”

“Would you be willing to repeat what you’ve just told me, Mr. Dinowski?”

“Repeat it? To whom?”

“Her fiancé, the father of the little boy I told you about.”

“To stop Francine from marrying him, is that it?”

Runyon said, “There’s a chance she may have been taking out her aggressions on the boy.”

“Christ. Hurting him, you mean?”

“He has a fractured arm and multiple bruises.”

“A nine-year-old kid? Well, I’m not really surprised. I told you she was crazy, totally out of control.”

“Can I count on your cooperation, then?”

“Cooperation?” Dinowski hesitated. Wary thoughts had come into his head; Runyon could tell by his body language and the sudden altered state of his expression. “I don’t know. If I step into this, spoil her plans, she’s liable to come after me again. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“You’d be saving the boy a lot more grief.”

“Or causing him more. She could take it out on him, too, you know. This man she’s marrying … who is he? Somebody important? Somebody with money, I’ll bet. Francine loves money.”

“He’s a family law attorney.”

“A lawyer? Wait a minute, now. I can’t afford to get involved with lawyers. My position here at the bank, my finances … a lawsuit would ruin me … no. No, I don’t think I’d better get involved.”

“Think about the boy, Mr. Dinowski—”

“No, I’m sorry. No. I’d like to help, but it’s not my problem;
she’s
not my problem anymore. I shouldn’t have said anything to you in the first place.” He drummed blunt, nervous fingers on the desktop. “You’re not going to repeat it to this lawyer, are you? Without my permission?”

“Not without permission, no.”

“Well, good, I appreciate that. I wouldn’t want it to get back to Francine. As crazy as she is, there’s no telling what she might do. You understand, don’t you? I hope you find some other way to stop her from marrying the lawyer, hurting the boy anymore, I really do—”

Runyon was on his feet by then and moving toward the door. He left without giving Kevin Dinowski another glance or another word.

*   *   *

Francine Whalen’s ex-roommate, Charlene Kepler, still lived in the same apartment on Broderick Street in Laurel Heights. Runyon drove out California Street from downtown, but he didn’t go directly to the Broderick address. It was not quite five o’clock, and Charlene Kepler wasn’t likely to be home yet; she worked for an insurance company in the Transamerica building.

He turned into the Laurel Heights shopping center. You could find a Chinese restaurant in just about any mall in the city, and this one was no exception. He’d eaten Chinese food five or six times a week after Colleen was gone; it had been her favorite and he’d used it as a way to maintain a connection to her and the life they’d shared together. He hadn’t felt the need as often since meeting Bryn, but it was what he was in the mood for tonight. Chinese restaurants were usually quiet and orderly, good places to think as well as eat.

Over tea and a plate of kung pao chicken and fried rice, he went over his talk with Kevin Dinowski. As much as Dinowski seemed to hate Francine, he might’ve exaggerated the extent of her behavior, but that scar on his arm, assuming he’d gotten it the way he claimed he had, said otherwise. Further confirmation that Francine was violence prone and unstable. Capable of greater acts of violence than hurling a pot of boiling water, inflicting bruises, and breaking a little boy’s arm. Capable of killing someone, child or adult, if one of her sudden rages got amped up high enough and she completely lost control.

Runyon had already decided not to repeat what Dinowski had told him to Bryn. Without the self-centered banker’s cooperation, it would only increase her fear and anxiety.

Dinowski, out. Francine’s two sisters, out. Maybe Charlene Kepler had a horror story of her own to tell and was willing to pass it on to Robert Darby. But even if she did, there was no guarantee it would do any good. Without a second or third person’s account to back it up, Darby might claim she had an ax to grind and dismiss it as fabrication. A man in love or lust, a man who had yet to be subjected to Francine’s violent outbursts, was a man in denial.

Runyon had lost his appetite, not that he’d had much to begin with. He left half the meal unfinished, went back out into the foggy night.

*   *   *

Charlene Kepler was home and willing enough to talk to him. Runyon interviewed her in an untidy living room while her current roommate banged pots, pans, and dishes in the kitchen. Kepler was a plump thirtyish redhead, the chattery, scatterbrained type who had an annoying habit of starting every other sentence with “well” and sprinkling others with “you know.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can tell you about Francine,” she said. “We were roomies for only about five months and that was, what, six or seven years ago. I haven’t seen her since she moved out to get married.”

“So you weren’t close friends?”

“Well, no, we weren’t. We shared expenses and that’s about it.”

“How did you happen to get together?”

“Well, we were both working at the same place, Mitchell and Associates—that’s a law firm in Cow Hollow. I was in the secretarial pool and she was one of the, you know, the paralegals. Well, she’d been living with this guy and they broke up because he got another job back east someplace and she needed a place to live. And I needed a roommate because the girl I was living with moved out to get married. My roomies are always moving out to get married, I don’t know what it is—I wish I had that luck with
my
relationships. Well, anyway, that’s how we got together.”

“The guy Francine was living with—do you remember his name?”

“Well, no, not exactly. David, Darren, something like that.”

“Last name?”

“I don’t think she ever mentioned it.”

“Did she say what kind of work he did, where his new job was?”

“Well … no, I don’t think so. She didn’t talk about him much. I mean, well, you know how it is when you break up with somebody; you don’t want to even
think
about the person.”

“How did you and Francine get along?”

“Oh, well, okay, I guess. We didn’t spend very much time together. She had her life and I had mine.”

“Ever have any problems with her?”

“Problems? You mean did we argue or fight about stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there were a few times. She liked everything neat and tidy and I’m not a neat and tidy person. I mean I try not to be a slob, but I just don’t care about picking up after myself, you know? Life’s too short to worry about the little things.”

“Did she ever become violent?”

Kepler blinked at him as if he’d asked her a question in a foreign language she didn’t understand.

Runyon said, “I’ve been told that Francine has a violent temper, a tendency to lose control when she’s angry. Did she ever attack you, try to hurt you?”

“Well…” The plump face colored slightly. Kepler’s voice was rueful when she said, “Well, there was one time, right before she moved out. She got all dressed up to go out on a date with the guy she married, Kevin I think his name was, and the outfit she had on … well, the colors, you know, they just didn’t go with her blond hair. I shouldn’t’ve said anything, but I did and she got real mad, I mean
real
mad, and started yelling four-letter words at me. I tried to tell her I was sorry, but she wouldn’t listen, just started after me like, you know, like she wanted to break my neck or something. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. She pounded on it a few times and I guess after that she calmed down and went out. Well, I was so shook up I stayed in the bathroom for a good half hour, until I was sure she was gone.”

“What happened when you saw her again?”

“Well, she acted like nothing had happened. I told her she’d scared me pretty bad and she said, ‘Well, don’t ever criticize my clothes again,’ and I said I wouldn’t and that was the end of it.”

“And that was the only incident?” Runyon asked.

“The only one. Francine was real sweet most of the time, you know?”

*   *   *

Charlene Kepler, out.

Now he had nothing to tell Bryn.

10

BRYN DARBY

She stood looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, fingering the vial of Xanax and wondering how many of the little white pills it would take to put her out of her misery.

A dozen or so would probably do it. This was a new prescription, the vial almost full—more than enough. Wash them down with a couple of glasses of wine, throw in four or five Vicodin to make sure, and when she started feeling the effects lie down in bed with the lights on to wait for the dark. Easy, painless. Just go to sleep and no more hurt or fear or black depression, no more looking at what she was looking at right now.

The face in the mirror was like one of those split theatrical masks, only hers wasn’t half tragedy and half comedy; it was half living and half dead. That was how she thought of the left side, not as paralyzed or frozen, the euphemisms used by the doctors and everybody else, but as dead. Part of her already dead. Pale waxy flesh, the corner of the mouth puckered so that she couldn’t open it all the way, couldn’t eat or drink in a normal fashion, dribbled and drooled like a baby. Puckered lines around the eye, too, and the optic nerve damaged so that she had cloudy vision out of it. The muscles and nerves already atrophying, no way to stop it, no chance of recovery. Most of the time she had no feeling on that side, but sometimes, and now was one of them, there was a faint burning sensation as if she were standing too close to a stove or heater. Her doctor claimed that this was psychosomatic, a phantom sensation, because of the extent of the nerve damage. Dead tissue has no feeling. Death has no feeling. Except that it did. The dead side of her face
burned
.