Nemesis
Authors: Bill Pronzini
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For Mike White, with thanks once again for his essential advice on matters of police procedure and criminal law
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CONTENTS
“Nameless Detective” Mysteries by Bill Pronzini
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PROLOGUE
Difficult times, painful times.
Kerry wasn't the same after what happened to her in Green Valley in the Sierra foothills.
A thing like that, the unrelenting terror of it, takes a heavy physical and mental toll on everybody involved. I'd suffered through it, too, as had Jake Runyon, but Jake and I were thick-skinned, case-hardened veterans of crises and near-fatal experiencesâin my case a similar abduction and lengthy confinement years ago. We were able to shed the worst of the effects in fairly short order, regain what passes for a normal state of mind in men like us. But what we'd gone through those four horrific days in early July was nothing compared to what Kerry had endured at the hands of the psychotic named Balfour.
She'd faced her ordeal, and the ten days in the hospital that followed her rescue, with the same heroic courage, resiliency, and determination with which she'd survived breast cancer. Only this time she'd come a lot closer to dying an even more terrible death, and the psychological damage had been profound. Her physical wounds healed and left no discernible scars, but even after more than two months, her emotions were as raw and festering as flesh exposed beneath flayed skin.
Those four days in July had robbed herâshort-term, I prayed to Godâof all the qualities that made her the strong woman she'd been before.
And left her fearful.
Ever since I'd brought her home from the hospital, she refused to leave the condo by herself. Was reluctant to go out in public even if I was with her, and avoided people she knew the handful of times I was able to talk her into it. The only person aside from Emily and me that she'd deal with face-to-face was her mother at the seniors' complex in Larkspur where she lived. Cybil, elderly and frail, had not been spared the knowledge of Kerry's ordeal because of the media attention it had caused, and her health had further deteriorated as a result. That, too, contributed to Kerry's fearfulness.
She had trouble sleeping. Nightmares that she wouldn't talk about plagued her when she did drop off. More than once she cried out in the late-night darkness, and twice screamed loud enough to wake both of us.
She'd lost weight, grown thin and gaunt. She had no appetiteâshunned food half the time, only picked at it when Emily and I succeeded in convincing her to eat. Her fondness for wine disappeared; she wouldn't take so much as a sip. That, at least, was something of a relief: too many others in her fragile emotional condition tried to find solace in alcohol.
At odd momentsâat the dinner table, while reading or watching TVâshe would suddenly burst into tears, then rush away to lock herself in her office. She spent most of her waking hours closeted in there. That was all right up to a point; the one piece of normalcy she'd been able to recapture was her ability to work. Except that what amounted to an escape mechanism seemed to grow into a kind of mania. She spent ten, twelve hours a day at her computer, directing ad campaigns, writing copy, interfacing with the other upper management people at Bates and Carpenter.
Most of the time she didn't want to be touched by either Emily or me, not even so much as a hug or peck on the cheek. But every now and then, late at night, I would wake up to find her body fitted tight against mine, her arms and legs wrapped around me, clinging so fiercely it was as if she were trying to crawl inside my skin.
Nothing helped much. Not a handful of sessions with a crisis counselor and a psychologist her doctor recommended; she talked to them freely enough, or so she claimed, but didn't seem to take anything beneficial from the sessions. Not prescription tranquilizers or sleeping pills. Not the comfort and reassurance offered by friends and coworkers, and by Emily and me daily. It wasn't that she was apathetic; she tried as hard as she could. It was just that she was “temporarily lost inside herself,” as the doctor phrased it.
Despite the negligible progress, I kept telling herâand Emily and myselfâthat the medical people were right and the condition was only temporary; that the old time-heals bromide was true. I believed it. So did Emilyâa rock during all of this, so much more mature than her fourteen years, never complaining, always upbeat and supportive. But did Kerry believe it?
Time. Time. Give it enough and she'd find her way back.
I did not return to work myself. Kerry said I should, but it was lip-service encouragement; it was obvious she felt more secure when I was close by. I wouldn't have returned in any case. For my own peace of mind I had to be there for her in case she needed me. And I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate on complex or even routine investigative matters; I'd have been more of a liability than an asset to the agency.
I had a long talk with Tamara about my decision. She understood and accepted it without question. She and Jake and Alex Chavez could handle the caseload as it stood now; if it grew too heavy, she'd bring back Deron Stewart and if necessary hire yet another part-time field operative. We could afford the extra expenseâbusiness had never been better, despite and in certain cases because of the lousy economy. Meanwhile I'd be available for consultation by phone or for the kind of simple tasks I could perform using my limited computer skills.
We called it a leave of absence, but that was only a convenient euphemism. Even when Kerry found herself againâwhen, not ifâI was not so sure I wanted to climb back into harness on the former semi-retired, part-time basis. It might be better for everybody if I phased myself out of the operation completely. Kerry was not the only one who had been stripped bare in Green Valley. I'd lost some of my courage and resilience and determination up there, too.
Difficult times, painful times.
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Part One
JAKE RUNYON
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1
The address Tamara had given him for Verity Daniels's condo was one of the big, new SoMa high-rises on Harrison, just off the Embarcadero. Which meant that Ms. Daniels had money and plenty of it, one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that Tamara had agreed to an afterâbusiness hours appointment to accommodate a prospective client. You couldn't buy into a place like Bayfront Towers unless you had a minimum of a quarter of a million to spend on lodging.
Runyon didn't have to try to find street parking, which would've been next to impossible in South Beach at 5:30 on a weekday: too many restaurants and clubs, and the Giants playing a late-afternoon game at AT&T Park down at China Basin. Bayfront Towers had an underground garage with visitor parking. But you couldn't just leave your car and take an elevator up to the residents' units unannounced; you had to go through security protocol first.
A uniformed security man in the garage had Runyon's name and the fact that he was expected by Ms. Danielsâthat was the first step. Then he was directed to take an elevator that only went up as far as the lobby; the other garage elevator was for residents only, operated either by key or keycard. In the lobby there was a glassed-in cubicle full of monitoring equipment and another uniformed guard presiding over it. Runyon had to sign a logbook before he was allowed access to the visitor's elevator. Modern urban living in steel-and-glass luxury. All well and good for those who could afford it and felt comfortable with it. For him it would have been like living inside a fortified watchtowerâliving scared.
The high-speed elevator whisked him up to the twelfth floor, deposited him in a carpeted hallway with indirect lighting and pieces of decorative furniture that no one would ever sit in. Muted chimes sounded inside condo 1206 when he pressed an inlaid pearl button. There was a peephole in the door; he felt himself being scrutinized even though he'd been announced by the desk guard, had opened the leather case containing his license photostat, and held it up to the glass eye. Even so, it was half a minute before chain and bolt locks were released and the door opened.
“I'm Verity Daniels, Mr. Runyon. Thank you for being so prompt. Please come in.”
Thirty or so, large-boned and on the voluptuous side. Dark hair cut in a short, feathery, in-curling style, mild blue eyes under artfully plucked and arched brows, a wide mouth painted with too much lipstick, a beauty mark just above the angle of her chin. Runyon was no expert when it came to women's clothes, but he knew expensive silk when he saw it: the silvery gray jacket and skirt and darker colored blouse with gold buttons must have had a four-figure price tag. Likewise the diamond-chip earrings, the blood-ruby ring on the little finger of her right hand, the thin platinum gold watch on her left wrist. An expensive packaging job, and yet the effect didn't seem quite natural. As if she weren't used to all the rich woman's trappings, wasn't completely comfortable with the image she presented.
The place, a large studio rather than a full-sized apartment, gave him the same impression. Richly furnished in blond wood, modern art on a couple of the walls, thick, pale blue carpeting, matching blue drapes drawn back over picture windows that provided an off-angle view of the bay, the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island, the East Bay hills. The only thing that didn't quite fit the decor was a huge flat-screen TV mounted on another wall. The rest carried the carefully planned, formalized stamp of an interior decorator, and all of it looked brand new, unlived in: no personal touches, nothing out of place. He wondered if Ms. Daniels was afraid of disturbing its showroom perfection. If she wasn't at home in surroundings like these, why choose to live in them?
She seemed to think his casual inspection was centered on the flat-screen. “I watch a lot of TV,” she said, but not as if embarrassed by the fact. “It's really too big for the room, isn't it? The television?”
To be polite he said, “Looks okay to me.”
She invited him to sit on one of a pair of streamlined chairs, claimed the other across a kidney-shaped, glass-topped table. She sat primly, knees together, hands folded in her lap. Runyon set his briefcase on the floor and readied his notebook while he waited for her to open the conversation. Took her close to a minute, but not because she was having difficulty finding words, he thought. She spent the silent period studying him, her eyes unblinking, a faint half smile appearing and disappearing on her too-red mouth. Measuring him, trying to decide how competent and trustworthy he was, maybe. He'd been subjected to that kind of client scrutiny before.