Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) (57 page)

"But why go after Smith before
the others, in that case?"
 

I shrugged. "Opportunity. Smith
was a loner, easier to stalk."

"Okay." Greg leaned back in his
chair, rubbing his chin, eyes trained on a point above my head. Once
again I waited.

Finally he said, "The time lapse
bothers me. I know we've said Davis or Owens, or the combination
thereof, pushed him over the edge, but surely in twenty years there
would have been other nudges. Why didn't he go after his victims long
ago?"

"I've thought about that. There's
an additional factor—and fortunately, it's one that may speed an
identification. I think he might have been in a mental institution most
of that time. Perhaps he'd only recently been released."

"Good point." Greg's gaze
remained focused on the distance as he considered. "What we've got
here," he said, "is a lot of conjecture, if you want to know the truth.
But it's better than any lead I've developed. And obviously the place
to start investigating is at Letterman. As it happens, I've an
acquaintance in the CID at the Presidio who will expedite requests for
information." He reached for his Rolodex and thumbed through it.

I asked, "Do you still have a man
on Willie's house?"

"No. We're so damned
understaffed. But I'll try to get one back on, plus another on Hank."

"I don't think you need to worry
too much about Willie; he told me he was going home and not coming out
until it was all over. And I'll take care of Hank, at least for
tonight."

"You sure you want the
responsibility?"

"I don't mind. It's a calculated
risk. The sniper's pattern has been to fire when the victim's alone.
Even when he shot at Willie, Rae was way down by the corner."

"Well, be careful. I don't want
to lose either of you."

"You won't."

Greg picked up the phone receiver
and punched out a number. "Busy, dammit."
 

I stood and shrugged into my
jacket. "I'd better get over to All Souls."

"I'll phone you there when I have
something." Greg came around the desk and walked me to the door of the
cubicle. Then he paused, his hand on the knob. "And Sharon— thanks for
your cooperation. The chief's been on my case since Willie was shot at,
as the mayor's office has been on his. This comes at a time when
nailing the sniper could make my career—and failing could break it."

I looked up at his face, somber
in the neon light that glared down from the ceiling fixtures. "How so?"

"A captaincy is opening
up—Narcotics. I'm the major contender for it."

"Greg! Congratulations!"

His answering smile was wistful,
and I knew why. The captaincy was a desk job, one in which he would
juggle paper, policy, and politics. There would be no actual field
investigations, no more satisfaction of personally piecing together a
solid case against a perpetrator. And yet, it was time . . .

"You
want
the promotion,
don't you?"

He sighed. "Yes and no. But I
know it's the only logical step. And I'm tired, Sharon. I'm tired of
being called out in the middle of the night to crime scenes. I'm sick
and tired of violent death. And I'm sick of dealing with scum, of being
reminded at every turn of how vile people can be."

"You think you won't be in
Narcotics?"

"Maybe I just need another brand
of vileness." He paused, his lips quirking up mischievously. "Besides,
my appointment will really piss off McFate. He was recently passed over
for lieutenant."

"In that case, I hope it comes
through fast. And speaking of McFate . . . ?"

"Probably over at the
Intelligence Division again. He seems to prefer his cronies on the old
detail to those on Homicide." Greg glanced through the door. "Well,
what a surprise. Maybe now I'll actually
get a report on the Grant case out of him." He motioned to a desk on
the far side of the squad room. A pearl-gray suit jacket was draped
precisely over a silly-looking brass garment rack that was more
appropriate to a bedroom, and I could see the back of McFate's head.

"You know," I said, "even though
I need to talk with him, I was kind of hoping he wouldn't be here."

 "I
know how you feel. Good luck."

I crossed the noisy, cluttered
room, avoiding boxes of files, misplaced chairs, and even someone's
bowling bag. When I stopped next to McFate's desk, he kept his eyes on
the report in front of him. Moments later, he looked up, expression
going glacial when he saw me. "Ms. McCone," he said, "what may I do for
you?" McFate didn't ask me to sit down, so I remained where I was. His
gaze moved up and down my body, taking in my jeans, sweater, and suede
jacket in a manner that stopped just short of being contemptuous. A
slender needle of irritation pricked at me, but I adopted a
businesslike tone. "I have some information pertaining to the Grant
case." He smoothed his luxuriant brown mustache—surely it wasn't real;
could one purchase a fake, like a toupee?—with his index finger. "Yes?"

"I've found evidence that Grant's
real name may have been Andy Wrightman."

"Evidence."

"One of Perry Hilderly's heirs
mentioned the name when I described Grant to him."

 "Oh, I see—
hard
evidence."

With an effort I kept my voice
level. "It's something you may want to look into. Wrightman was
associated with Hilderly in the late sixties; he was a campus hanger-on
at Cal, something of a hippie and a drifter—"

Now McFate smiled superiorly. "I
can assure you that Thomas Grant was never a hippie or a drifter—quite
the opposite. Frankly, I think you're
becoming obsessed with this Hilderly business."

"And frankly, I think it's
logical that there might be a tie-in."

"Ms. McCone, my background check
on the victim was very thorough."

"Would you care to share what you
turned up?"

"No, I would not. I am not, as
you put it, in the habit of sharing the details of my investigations
with civilians. Nor do I care for any further input from you."

I glared at him. McFate remained
impassive. I said, "Do you plan to share the details of your
investigation with Lieutenant Marcus? He mentioned to me a few minutes
ago that he was hoping you'd brief him."

McFate's cleft chin jutted out.
"I intend to speak with him momentarily." His impatient glance toward
his superior's office indicated that only my annoying presence was
preventing him from doing so. He picked up a file, stood, and motioned
at the way out of the squad room.

I remained in front of him,
blocking his path. "You know, Leo," I said, "it strikes me that the
past of a man who practiced law the way Grant did can't have been any
too savory."

McFate smiled thinly. "And that,
Ms. McCone, shows exactly how much you know." He brushed past me and
moved toward Greg's cubicle. Greg still stood in its doorway;
apparently he'd been watching the entire exchange. As McFate entered
and took a seat, Greg smiled at me and shrugged sympathetically.

Irresistible impulse overcame me:
I made a single-fingered gesture at the back of McFate's well-barbered
head. Snickers erupted from the desks around me. Greg rolled his eyes
and went back into his office.

I left the squad room, oddly
elated by my display of temper. I'd always been the good kid on the
private investigators' block: cooperative, professional, rarely
antagonistic. But even good kids have
their limits. I figured I was entitled to throw an occasional fit.

As I punched the Down button at
the elevators, I wondered why I'd allowed Leo McFate to enrage me. The
man was petty and mean-spirited; why couldn't I just ignore him?

Because, I told myself as I
brutalized the button some more, the man's an asshole. When you're
dealing with someone who suffers from that altogether-too-prevalent
malady, it's very often catching.

I made two detours on my way to
All Souls: first to pick up a pizza, so I wouldn't have to sponge off
the folks who lived there (and probably have to eat some god-awful
health food), and then to my house to pick up my gun.

The strongbox where I keep my .38
is actually an ammunition box that my father pilfered from the navy
years ago. The box sits on the floor of the linen closet in my
bathroom, hardly an original hiding place, and one that it wouldn't
take a competent thief two minutes to find. However, its lock is a good
one, and when I had the closet built while I was renovating the
cottage, my clever contractor put a bolt straight through the bottom of
the box and into the floor joist. Any thief who wants to make off with
it will have to take part of the cottage along, too.

I went into the bathroom, pushed
aside a jumble of cleaning supplies, and flattened myself on the floor
so I could work the lock. I hadn't had the .38 out in so long that it
lay beneath the velvet pouch containing my grandmother's garnet
earrings that I'd last worn on New Year's Eve. The sight of them gave
me a flash of bittersweet nostalgia. I'd met George Kostakos on
December 30; he'd called me for the first time at a few minutes after
midnight on New Year's.

So much had happened since then:
we'd come so close, only to move apart. George had said he cared deeply
for me, that when his estranged wife's mental condition stabilized
he'd come back and see if I'd still have him. But months had passed,
and I'd heard nothing; now I wasn't even sure I wanted to. Maybe it was
better to go through life alone, protected from its hurts and
disappointments. Maybe people who only indulged in casual, short-term
relationships were the ones with the greatest chance at happiness.

But casual, short-term relationships had never worked for me. And I
wasn't sure that happiness was a reasonable goal, anyway. At times it
seemed a myth—something an advertising agency had dreamed up to sell
more toothpaste.

"Enough!" I said aloud. "You've got things to do." I took out the gun,
locked the box, and got up off the floor.

That was another thing: I found that I talked to myself more lately.
People always talk to themselves, particularly those who live alone,
but with me it was, as if the sensible, self-sufficient side of my
personality was trying to tell the other, vulnerable side to shape up.
And I suspected that the sensible McCone was losing the debate.

Before I left the house I checked my answering machine in case Wolf had
tried to reach me at home. The first message was from Jim Addison,
sounding angry because I hadn't returned his call. I fast-forwarded
through it, unwilling to allow my uneasiness about his potential for
violence to compound my tension about the sniper. The only other
message was from my mother, complaining because I hadn't called her
last week. I should have, but I'd let it go because I really didn't
have anything to say. And now I couldn't, because Ma is very sensitive
to undertones in my voice and would catch on quickly to the fact that
things weren't right. Then she would worm it out of me about the sniper
and about my friends being in danger, and finally, because she was way
down in San Diego and couldn't have done anything to help even if she
were right here, she'd worry. When Ma worries about one of her
children, she calls the other four and tells them all about it, and
soon she has a big McCone worryfest going. The only family member who
doesn't feed into it is my father; Pa just stays out in his garage
workshop,
playing the guitar and singing dirty folk songs in a voice loud
enough—because he's getting deaf—to scandalize the neighbors.

No, I decided, I can't call Ma back until this whole thing is over.

At quarter past eleven Rae and I sat cross-legged on her brass bed
playing what seemed like our thousandth game of gin rummy; we'd been at
it since nine. Initially we'd discussed the snipings and the Hilderly
case, but then we'd fallen silent. Now the only sounds were the slap of
the cards, the distant bellow of foghorns, and small moans and sighs of
contentment from the trunk under the dormer window, where Ralph and
Alice curled together in luxurious sleep. Rae was baby-sitting them
tonight, since Ted had gone to a memorial service for their former
owner.

I had to admit how tranquilizing the presence of a sleeping cat could
be. And Rae's room—which she'd created herself at the rear of the
Victorian's unfinished attic, after she'd lived in her office for
months and none of the regular rooms had become available—was lovely. A
snug aerie full of plants and white wicker furniture and splashed with
yellows and golds and greens, it revealed her heretofore unknown flair
for interior decorating on a small budget.

I picked up a king and discarded a trey. "Gin."

She glared at me. "I've been waiting for one card since the deal."

"Them's the breaks." I didn't even bother to write down the score, just
let my hand gravitate toward a stainless-steel bowl containing the
dregs of a batch of popcorn. Comfort food is what I call things like
popcorn and macaroni-and-cheese and milkshakes and butterscotch
pudding—food that is reminiscent of childhood and reduces the world to
simple terms when it becomes too complicated to bear.

Rae said, "What's the matter—you feeling gruffly?" 

I smiled at the word, one of
those that I've come to consider Rae-isms. "Yes. I'm sick of gin rummy,
even if I am winning. Is Hank
ever
going to go home?"