Sudden Exposure (13 page)

Where to start, with the 911 call, or hold that in abeyance? Or ask about a gun? I’d run him through files the other night. We had no gun permit listed.

Despite the uniform and the tight protective vest, I felt like I could breathe. I realized, as I pressed the doorbell, that I felt different than I had the whole time I’d been on patrol. Now I felt like me.

I
RANG
K
ARL
P
IRONNEN’S
buzzer again. It pierced the interior silence then died like a cigarette stubbed out in a planter. The door was set with the smallest and highest leaded glass window I’d ever come across—a peep hole for the tall. Raising myself on tiptoe, I peered into the dark at one small light in the distance. Had it flickered, I’d have taken it for a candle. It was that kind of house.

I turned the volume on my radio down to a murmur, pushed Pironnen’s buzzer again, and held it in. I’d have laid cash that Pironnen was inside, too stubborn or too frightened to answer, except that it was dead quiet in there. No barking, no scraping of toenails. Occasionally there’s a dog that doesn’t go racing to the door; one dog, maybe; definitely not three together. The buzzer groaned on inside. No footsteps approached. I lifted my finger. Still no sound.

But I’d be damned if I was going to walk away. I tapped the buzzer like Sergeant Joe Friday, in a series of staccato beats. Behind me, the onlookers, numbering over fifty by now, created a mosaic of sound, asking each other for facts, tossing in speculations, edging forward to hear as the radio on Murakawa’s shoulder sputtered a call.

Raksen had arrived and was setting up lights around Bryn’s car. As soon as he started photographing, he’d provide a show worth waiting for.

I rang the buzzer one last time. Pironnen didn’t have to come to the door. Legally, he could stare through the leaded glass at me and still choose not to open up. But damn it, a woman was dying, her face a mush of blood and flesh from the gunshots. Hours ago she’d been on the stage, catching the last ray of sun. For a woman determined to stay in the center of things, who seemed alive and focused only when she was in the spotlight, it was a cruel irony to meet death with no face. Soon—maybe already—she would be just another corpse, a lump of matter in a closed box. There would be no last viewing for her friends, fans, supporters, to fix her face in their memories and give her that small bit of immortality.

Footsteps—stockinged-foot soft—approached. Pironnen would peer through his leaded peep hole at the glass-distorted night. He would spot me and pad away. And if I called out “Police!” he’d just pad more quietly.

I bent my knees and stayed close to the door. The footsteps stopped. I could hear his wheezing breath. He was looking. Seeing no one. If he left I’d have to—

The door opened a few inches.

I stood. “Mr. Pironnen, you remember me, Officer Smith. We talked the other night when you were out with Nora, Ocean, and Pablo. Where are they? I didn’t hear them. It’s freezing out here, do you mind if I come in?”

His eyes widened and his wheezing breaths were barely more than puffs—I’d overloaded his circuits. While he was letting them unscramble, I walked in.

I took a couple steps through the entry hall and into the living room. The whole room was brown and black and gray, the colors of the dogs, and coated with hair malamute thick. The sofa, tables, mantel, lampshades, radio, pictures were so completely covered they might have been merely raised sections of the wall.

I am not a good housekeeper—well, not a housekeeper at all—so I understand the progression by which a socially acceptable room deteriorates into an embarrassment. I know that, like true rabbits, dust bunnies multiply. If you let them go for a month—not intentionally, of course—they will clump together. But if you fail to collect them at that key moment and permit another few weeks to pass, they will disintegrate again.

But this room was so far beyond my experience I couldn’t begin to guess how long it had been in the making. Or how long since there’d been a guest in here. Not in this decade surely. Probably not in the last two.

Pironnen himself was liberally covered with dog hair. It was no wonder the man was wheezing. And also no wonder I hadn’t heard footsteps. I glanced at his feet. Through the muck of dog hair I could make out the brown leather around the pointy toes of his wing tips.

Pironnen edged back till he was five feet away. His narrow mouth pursed. Deep-set gray eyes cowered in their sockets. And short gray hair hung over his forehead protectively. His navy V-necked sweater seemed inadequate for the cold of the house, and his black chinos bagged at the knees. He didn’t ask me to sit—thank God. I was hoping the smell—that musty-sweet odor of dog, here layered with dust and dirt, a sort of compost lasagna—would diminish as I stood here. But no such luck—it was the aroma of the house. Hairs floated in the light like snow. With each inhalation I was sure I felt a strand entering my nostril. I snorted and tried to inhale more gently, so the air didn’t move.
Give it up, Smith!
Perhaps I’d forgotten the point of breathing!

I looked back at Pironnen. He hadn’t moved or changed expression. Now that I was inside the house, I needed to guide those circuits of his into usable paths. “Aren’t the dogs here?”

“Out.”

“For their walk?”

“Out.”

“Do you usually take them out at night?”

He nodded.

“But there are too many people around tonight, huh?”

Again he nodded, the stiff lines of his fearful face tightening. Instinctively, I wanted to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but that would have been the worst move. And of course, I didn’t want to touch him. I kept my gaze on him, letting its effect seep in. Already, he was nervous enough for his voice to crack—if he spoke more than one word at a time. I wished now I’d heard the 911 tape. Distorted by multiple circuits, the voice might not have revealed much, but the syntax, that could hang him. I decided to go for broke. “What kind of gun do you have?”

“None.” His voice didn’t break; he looked no more frightened than before. That was the problem with the far different drummer set—with them an extreme reaction didn’t stand out.

“Have you been outside at all tonight?”

He hesitated.

“When?”

“Earlier.”

“Before or after it was dark?”

“Oh, after,” he said definitely.

“Don’t you go out in the daytime?”

“No … unless … sometimes, I have to.”

“For doctors and dentists?” I was leading him, but there was no choice. I wondered what percentage of his conversation was spent with people leading him. Or not waiting for him to force out the words at all. How long had the man lived alone, where words were tools best used singly to suit the canine mind?

“Doctor, dentist. Yes.”

“And business?”

“Through the mail.”

I nodded, letting that thought settle before I moved on. “But you went out tonight after dark?”

He nodded.

“Do you recall the time?”

“Eight twenty.”

Amazing. “How come you remember so specifically?”

“My chess match with Milwaukee is at nine. I’ve got to get back.”

“Do you play with a friend there?”

He stared, perplexed. It was a moment before he said, “I’m on Chestnut.”

“A computer bulletin board that arranges chess games? How many games are you playing now?”

His eyes shifted up and to the side as if the answer were hanging off his right brow. “Twelve.”

“You have twelve chessboards set up here?” How could he tell the red squares from the black under all this hair? And the king and queen and the horses, wouldn’t they be buried in the underbrush?

“No, no boards.”

“No boards?”

“In my head.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Was the man a genius, or was he hallucinating? For the moment I opted for the former. “Mr. Pironnen, I’m really impressed. You must be a very penetrating thinker. And you must remember everything, right?”

“No.” It was a single word, uttered without intonation, but it screamed:
Don’t patronize me.

Cops don’t embarrass easily, but I could feel my face coloring now. “Tonight,” I said, “did you see the flashing lights outside?”

“From in here. Ambulance.”

“Did you call it?” I slipped the question in.

“No,” he said, but this “no” had none of the nuances of the previous one. Just a straightforward no.

I pressed my lips together against a sigh. Had a confession been too much to hope for? Or even evidence that he was the culprit? I didn’t picture Pironnen shooting Bryn and reaching across her dying body for the phone. I couldn’t imagine him choosing to come that close to anyone.

Still, the 911 tape had radio codes in the background. “When you were out tonight, did you see the Volvo station wagon?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

I asked about the period before the ambulance arrived, but he denied, with that blank expression, hearing shots, seeing anyone unusual on the street, then or earlier. “At night, I don’t have to talk to people. Even if they see me, they don’t rush over, push in on me.”

“Have you found that with the neighbors, pushing in on you, calling it help?”

He didn’t smile, but he nodded more easily. I guessed that that was as close to a smile as he came. For him, was every human contact a potential smothering? Did he have the same cringing reaction outside that I had in this room?

“Bryn Wiley,” I said, “did you know her?”

Again he nodded, and I noted that the quality hadn’t changed. He was relaxed as he recalled her. “Ellen’s cousin. I saw her over there.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No. She was always on her way.”

“But you know Ellen?”

The creases around his eyes and mouth deepened.

“Did she try to help?”

He nodded.

“Nora jumped on glass. Split her paw open. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Outside. Ellen saw it. She came running. We took Nora to Dr. Abbey, the vet.”

That sounded like Ellen. It made me smile. “Did you go inside the vet’s?” I wanted to know whether Ellen was just doing a favor or using the opportunity to push him into social contact. I wasn’t surprised when he nodded. That sounded like Ellen, too. She’d have been the right person to support him.

“Have you and Ellen gone back since?”

“Yes, Dr. Abbey’s.”

“Anywhere else?”

The lines deepened and he physically pulled back though he was a good five feet away from me already. It was too big a question. “The last time was when?”

“Yesterday.”

“Where did you go then?”

“Vet.”

“And?”

“Bank.”

“And?”

“Herb store.”

I smiled. A good, if very Berkeley, choice. In an herb store Pironnen wouldn’t stand out; he’d be a run-of-the-mill customer there. Ellen must have given this operation serious thought. Pity she hadn’t socialized him enough to be out paying attention to his surroundings, and his neighbors.

“Mr. Pironnen, Bryn Wiley has been assaulted, seriously,” I said, watching his reaction. His face showed a flicker—of surprise, curiosity, fear, I couldn’t say what. “Someone called nine one one to report her injury. About nine o’clock tonight. We have reason to believe you and your dogs were nearby. Did you see anyone near her car then? Think!”

“
I
was home at nine. Milwaukee is at nine.”

“Well, as you were coming home, then.”

“I
remember
coming down the street. I told you, no one was there.”

“Her car was damaged two days ago. It might have been done by the same person. Have you seen anyone around their driveway in the last week who looked … odd?”

“You mean like me?”

The perception so shocked me it took me a moment to smile. After his last quixotic hint of reaction, I wouldn’t have thought he could make that leap to see himself through someone else’s eyes. I explained what I meant, but that didn’t prompt an answer.

The interchange, or perhaps his snatching control of it, seemed to focus him. He walked toward the front door with the firm steps of dismissal. Another witness I would have detained long enough to set straight, so he didn’t nurture the seed of noncooperation before our next interview. But with Karl Pironnen I wasn’t sure which rules to play by, or if there would be any game to win. I turned to follow him, from habit scanning the dining room, peering in the kitchen, and noting the only hair-free square inches in view—a tarnished silver frame holding an old photo. Two young men stood arms draped around each other’s shoulders. There was no question they were brothers. I bent closer, squinting to make our their long, thin, happy faces through the smudged glass. In Pironnen’s I could see the fearful seed of what he had become; the other man looked like what he might have been—fuller faced, confident, smiling at Pironnen. Fingerprints mottled the soot and I realized the dog hair had not been
cleaned
off the frame but merely shaken off each time it had been picked up. I put the photo back and sighed, sending a tornado of hairs in my face. Time is vital after a murder, and by and large I had just wasted a quarter of an hour of it. “Mr. Pironnen, Ellen is missing. I’m worried about her. Can you think where she might be?”

“Oh yes,” he said quite easily. “Off with Sam’s wife.”

“E
LLEN IS WITH
S
AM
Johnson’s wife?”

Pironnen nodded, seemingly oblivious of my shock. “Has been. Didn’t say she was right now.”

“Did Bryn know about that?”

His brow wrinkled in puzzlement as if he couldn’t comprehend why I would think he would know such an esoteric bit of information.

“Have you seen Ellen with her before? How often?”

He shrugged.

When nothing changes, time doesn’t exist. Pironnen didn’t have a job, or appointments on the sixth or eighth, or friends coming by on the fourteenth. What did time mean to him? But no, wait, he did have some commitments, his chess games. “Do you remember the last time you saw Ellen with Sam’s wife? What chess game were you working on then?”

“Oklahoma City. Very tight game.”