Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (37 page)

Rae nodded thoughtfully. "So what do you need me to do?"

"First, set up some appointments for me. I called the victim's
mother from the pay phone at San Quentin, and she agreed to see me
after three." I looked at my watch. "I've got to leave in a few minutes
in order to get down to Palo Alto on time. See if you can catch the
roommate, Amy Barbour, at work and arrange for me to meet her at the
apartment around six or seven. If that's okay, set up something with
George Kostakos for tomorrow, the same with Mrs. Whitsun and the
boyfriend, Marc Emmons. I'll drop in at Café Comedie and talk with the
people there this evening."

"Phone numbers?"

"I'll leave the file on my desk." I stood up. "You probably should
read it and the trial transcript, plus look at the video—if you can
stomach it."

"If I can stomach a week with Doug's family—"

I cut her off; the tape was nothing to joke about. "I'll probably
want you to verify some of the facts turned up in the police
investigation, as well as run checks to see if there's been any
activity in Kostakos's checking or charge accounts—that sort of thing.
But that can wait until tomorrow. "

"Right. What about the investigator in charge of the case? Do you
want me to contact him?"

"Can't—he's dead. But there's somebody I know in the department who
might pull the file for me—if I ask nicely."

Greg Marcus, my former lover, would be at the New Year's Eve party
on Saturday—and my new dress was low cut and red, the color he liked
best on me.

Laura Kostakos had told me to take the University Avenue exit off
Highway 101. As I did, I felt a stab of nostalgia for my college days,
when I'd dated a Stanford grad student who lived near the interchange,
in the area that is actually part of the troubled community of East
Palo Alto but then had been almost as desirable as Palo Alto itself.
His was a long street lined with nothing but apartment buildings; they
ranged from no-frills to luxury complexes replete with swimming pools
and putting greens. I'd attended some of the best parties of my life on
that street, but those days, a friend who lived in Palo Alto had
recently told me, are gone.

Now, she said, even the most opulent of the complexes are showing
signs of the hasty, poor-quality construction that dooms them to early
obsolescence. Their facades are cracked; their rooflines sag; the
putting greens are weedy, the swimming pools filmed with mold. Instead
of Stanford students and young professionals and naval officers from
Moffett Field, they are largely tenanted by working-class blacks who
have moved across the freeway from East Palo Alto proper, looking for a
better life.

As I drove past the bars and liquor stores and shabby businesses on
the stretch of University Avenue known locally as Whiskey Gulch, I
reflected on the stinginess and hypocrisy of a society that rewards its
aspiring minorities with the ruling class's leavings, then tries to
claim the neighborhood is declining because of the "new element" that's
moved in. The decaying apartments of East Palo Alto were several cuts
above the decrepit Potrero Hill projects where Bobby Foster grew
up—World War II-vintage cell blocks where fear and violence lurk in
every enclosed staircase and entryway—but they weren't much when you
considered how hard their occupants had worked to get there.

At the end of the strip of businesses, a sign announced I was
entering Palo Alto itself. The neighborhood changed: stately trees
arched over the pavement; handsome homes decked with Christmas wreaths
stood far back on manicured lawns; the cars in the driveways were
Mercedeses and Cadillacs and sports models. Palo Alto is a reasonably
liberal town that prides itself on culture and intellect (while
determinedly avoiding the strident radicalism of such academic enclaves
as Berkeley), so I was fairly sure that not all the blacks on this side
of the dividing line would be wearing starched uniforms—but I also
suspected there wouldn't be enough bona fide minority residents to hold
a chapter meeting of the NAACP.

Chaucer Street, where Laura Kostakos lived, was one of a number in
the exclusive Crescent Park district that were named after literary
figures. Her house was Spanish style—a two-storied, white stucco with a
red-tiled roof. The front lawn was full of big dead patches; a loose
rain gutter rattled in the wind. Behind the mulberry tree that shaded
the arching front window, I could see drawn drapes. The magnolia tree
near the door had dropped its leaves on the brick walk, and nobody had
bothered to clean them up. As I rang the bell, I noted the absence of
any kind of Christmas decoration.

Mrs. Kostakos took a long time answering my ring. When the door
finally opened, I saw a tall woman with graying blond hair worn loose
upon her shoulders. It was a style that would have looked too youthful
on many women in their late forties, but on her it seemed right,
imparting a fragile air that enhanced her fine bone structure. Her blue
velvet lounging pajamas—curious attire for three in the afternoon—hung
loose on her, giving the impression that she had lost a great deal of
weight; she'd applied no makeup to hide the dark half-moons under her
eyes.

She thanked me for coming, even though I was the one who had
requested the interview. Then she led me down a long, narrow gallery
lined with spotlighted oil paintings and sculpture on pedestals. The
air in the gallery was chill. Laura Kostakos moved stiffly, in the gait
of a much older woman. As the folds of her pajamas rippled, I caught
the scent of a gardenia like perfume I'd always associated with my
maternal grandmother.

At the far end of the gallery was a living room whose dark exposed
ceiling beams radiated out to a curving wall containing a series of
five small window seats. The windows encased within the jutting
sections of wall admitted little light; through them I could see a
free-form swimming pool that looked as if it had been carved from lava
rock. The murky mid afternoon light sheened the black water.

The living room itself was gloomy. Shadows gathered in its far
reaches, where glass-fronted bookcases hulked; on the table at the L of
the sectional sofa, a single low-wattage lamp burned, giving off a dim
halo of light. The chill I'd felt in the gallery penetrated here, too.
I glanced at the stone fireplace, saw the grate was choked with dead
ashes.

Laura Kostakos motioned for me to sit on the sofa. I took a place
next to the table with the lamp. She positioned herself on a
ladder-back chair across from me.

To establish rapport, I said, "This is a lovely room."

She glanced around, then shrugged disinterestedly. "Yes, I suppose
it is. I barely see it anymore." After a brief pause, she added, "It's
good of you to take an interest in my daughter's disappearance."

"I should warn you right off that my interest is in behalf of the
young man convicted of killing her."

She nodded, picking at a piece of lint on her velvet-covered thigh.
"I have no problem with that."

I removed a notebook and pencil from my bag. "I've come to you for
two reasons. First, I'd like to get some idea of Tracy as a person,
hear what she was like."

"Is like, Ms. McCone. Tracy is still alive."

"That brings me to the other reason I asked to speak with you.
You've told people that you believe she's alive, and I'd like to know
why."

She nodded again and waited. Apparently she expected me to conduct a
formal interview, as the police would do.

I said, "What kind of a young woman was… is Tracy?"

"A normal young woman. More talented than most, but quite… normal.
If anything, her normalcy borders on the pathological. At least, that's
what my husband would say— he's in psychology, you know."

"Could you explain that more fully?"

"Tracy is overly conscientious. She works very hard and is extremely
self-critical. Very harsh on herself at times. With girls of her age
you expect some irresponsibility: they're late for appointments; they
forget to call home; they miss birthdays or Mother's Day. But not
Tracy. Even her play has a serious quality, as if she's playing for
keeps. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, I do. You and your husband—"

"We're separated," she said quickly.

"I see. Both of you are professors at Stanford?"

"Yes, although we've elected to take extended leaves of absence.
From the university and from one another."

I debated probing into the marital situation but decided it had no
bearing on the case, other than as a by-product. "I notice that Tracy
was working as a cocktail waitress before she began to break into
comedy. Were you disappointed that she chose not to attend college?"

"Actually she did attend for two years—Foothill Junior College. But
when the time came for her to transfer to a four-year school, she opted
to move to San Francisco and try her wings at comedy instead. Frankly,
Ms. McCone, Tracy isn't academically inclined. I doubt she would have
been happy or successful continuing with her education."

"So she moved to the city with your blessing?"

"Well. Neither of us was exactly delighted with her decision. It's a
rough world for a young single woman with no marketable skills, and
show business is even rougher. But it was what she wanted, and I knew
what it was like to have parents who pressured me to succeed
academically. In the end it turned out well for me, but there was a lot
of pain along the way. I didn't want to do the same thing to my
daughter— particularly when chances of it working out were slim—so I
persuaded George to let her have her way."

That, I thought, might have been one of the causes of the breakup of
the Kostakoses' marriage; perhaps he blamed her for sending their
daughter to her still-undetermined fate. I said, "I recall reading
somewhere that you subsidized Tracy's income with an allowance. Does
that mean that she couldn't have supported herself on what she made at
Café Comedie?"

"Not at first. We gave her the allowance and use of our credit cards
so she could afford a decent place to live and a few luxuries from time
to time. She never abused the cards; she isn't that kind of girl."

"Has there been any activity in those accounts since her
disappearance—activity that could be attributed to her?"

"No. During the year before she disappeared, she established her own
credit. She didn't need our cards anymore."

Mrs. Kostakos sounded faintly mournful. "A few weeks before she
disappeared, she told me that soon she wouldn't need the allowance
anymore, either. I told her it wasn't necessary to push herself to be
self-sufficient. We have plenty of money; we both have good positions,
and George inherited a substantial amount of money. But Tracy needed to
be her own woman in every respect."

"The reason she wouldn't need the allowance anymore was that her
career was taking off?"

"That's what I assumed."

Or her declaration of impending financial independence might have
some connection with her disappearance. I made a note on my pad. "You
and Tracy were close?"

"Yes. We had a weekly lunch date, on Fridays. We were to have lunch
the day after she vanished. I'd planned a drive across the hills to the
coast. We often did things like that—going for long drives, taking
picnics."

"What kinds of things did you talk about?"

"The usual things a mother and daughter talk about, I suppose."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Well. My work, my students. Her career, how it was going. People we
knew. What we'd done in the past week, books we'd read, movies we'd
seen."

"Did she ever talk about problems? Ask your advice?"

"Tracy has always been capable of solving her own problems. And as
far as I know, she had none at that time."

"She never gave any indication that she might be unhappy—with her
work, her living situation, her boyfriend, perhaps?"

"No."

"Mrs. Kostakos, I've studied the news accounts of Tracy's
disappearance, as well as the Foster trial transcripts. All along
you've firmly stated that you believe Tracy disappeared voluntarily."

She nodded.

"Yet you say she gave no indication of unhappiness, never mentioned
anything that was troubling her."

"… That's right."

"Then why are you under the impression that she would just vanish of
her own free will?"

Laura Kostakos shifted on her chair. She brought her hands together
in her lap.

"Why, Mrs. Kostakos?"

Silence.

"You continue to pay the rent on her apartment. Even though you have
plenty of money, that strikes me as the sort of thing you wouldn't do
unless you had a reasonable expectation that one day she'd return."

"I have never for a moment doubted that she will return."

"But why? And what about the ransom note, the car that was found in
the mountains? How do you explain them?"

She rose from her chair so quickly that it startled me. I watched as
she moved in her old-woman's walk to the center window seat and stood
with her back to me, one knee resting on the cushion. The afternoon had
darkened beyond the glass; the black lava rock pool made me think of a
lagoon teeming with alien life forms.

"Mrs. Kostakos?"

"There's a hummingbird feeder hanging on that pine beyond the pool,"
she said. "Can you see it?"

I looked, spotted a smear of red. "Yes."

"I put it there last summer. I wanted the hummingbirds to come
around, so I'd be less lonely. But there's one that is vicious. Every
time the others come to drink, he swoops down and chases them away. It
reminds me of how people have swooped down and chased away my hopes."

I couldn't think of an appropriate comment.

"Do you know what I'm going to do about that bird?" she went on.
"I'm observing him, learning his habits. I've found a stone, a nice
flat one that will skim through the air. As soon as
I'm sure I'll get the right bird, I am going to kill him."