Victims (17 page)

Suddenly, vehemently, she shook her head. A brief, desperate defiance flared in her eyes. “No. I don’t. I
don’t know
.”

“Where were you Friday night between the hours of eleven
P.M
. and one
A.M
.?”

“I was—” The brief fire died; her eyes went dark again, fell away again. “I was drinking.”

“Where?”

“In a bar, somewhere.”

“Which bar? Where?”

“I—I can’t remember. A lot of different bars. With a lot of different people.”

“Were you driving your car?”

“No. I took cabs. I always take cabs.” She looked at me with a kind of wan defiance, then said, “My driver’s license was revoked last year.”

“Do you remember what time you got home?”

“I think it was about 1:30. Something like that.”

I was about to ask her for names, or faces. I was about to ask her whether she’d taken anyone home, Friday night: a nameless, faceless man who could be her alibi. But then I realized that, once again, I was on treacherous ground. According to law, once the suspicion of guilt enters an officer’s mind he must warn the suspect of his or her constitutional rights. And I wasn’t willing to make Alexander Guest’s daughter a murder suspect. Not on my own authority.

“You think I murdered that man,” she mumbled. “Don’t you?”

“Mrs. Kramer, that’s not for me to—”

“You do, goddammit. Why don’t you say it? Are you afraid? Are you afraid of my father? Afraid he’ll—what’s the expression—get you put back to pounding a beat?”

I handed the highball glass back to her and stepped away. “I’m not afraid of your father, Mrs. Kramer. But I’m not stupid, either. It’s a serious matter, accusing someone of murder. A
very
serious matter, as you well know. Without more proof than I have now, I’m not making any such accusation against you. However, I’ll tell you this—” I broke off, trying to weigh the consequences of what I was about to say: “I’ll tell you that, yes, Kramer’s gun—your gun—killed Quade. As I understand it, both you and Kramer agree that the gun was kept here, in this house. And it’s obvious that, at some point, someone took that gun out of this house, and took it to your father’s house, where it was used to commit murder.” I let a beat pass, searching for some reaction. I saw nothing. Her face was expressionless as she stared out of the window at her expensive view.

“So really,” I said quietly, “it all comes down to a pretty simple question: Who took that gun out of this house, and when did he—or she—do it? That’s what we’ve got to determine first. Then we’ve got to find out who pulled the trigger.”

Still, she made no response. Her face was frozen in a mask of hopeless misery. Her eyes were empty, her mouth was slack, twitching slightly at one corner. Her head hung slightly forward, as if she could no longer support its weight. She was breathing unevenly, in short, shallow gasps.

“I’m going to leave now, Mrs. Kramer,” I said softly. “I’m going to interrogate Durkin, downstairs. Then I’m going to talk to the D.A., and to my superiors. Meanwhile, if there’s anything you want to tell me—” I showed her my card, then put it on the window sill. I hesitated, then said, “Say good-bye to John for me. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t have time to show him my handcuffs. Tell him I haven’t forgotten. He’s a good kid.”

As I turned away, I heard her mumble, “Too good to have a drunk for a mother. Is that what you—” Suddenly I heard her sob. It was a harsh, ugly sound, torn from the tortured depths of her soul. I didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge her torment.

A
S I KNOCKED ON
Durkin’s door, I spoke softly to Canelli. “What’d you think? Before we got here—before I told her Kramer’s gun was the murder weapon—did she know the gun wasn’t in the closet?”

Promptly, Canelli nodded. “That’s what I think, Lieutenant. Definitely, she knew it wasn’t in the closet. Because if she’d thought it
was
in the closet, that’s the first thing she’d’ve said. Sure as God made little green apples, she knew that—”

The door opened to reveal Bruce Durkin. He was barefooted, wearing a blue terry cloth robe with “Bruce” stitched in white on the left breast. The robe came to mid thigh, revealing thick, muscular calves.

“I was just going to take a shower,” he said.

“We won’t be long.” I stepped forward. “We just want to check on a couple of things.”

He backed away grudgingly, into a short, narrow hallway. The cramped quarters emphasized Durkin’s wide, weight lifter’s shoulders, his short, stocky neck, and his powerful torso that tapered to a trim waist. For a moment the three of us stood crowded shoulder to shoulder. Finally, still grudgingly, Durkin turned and led the way to a small living room that looked out to the east, across the city. The room was furnished with cheap plastic furniture that made the apartment look like a third-rate motel room.

“I was going to go out.” He sat on a sofa, crossed his heavy, hairy legs and pulled the short bathrobe across his thighs. It was an incongruous moment: this big, brawny man plucking at his robe like a painfully modest girl struggling with a short skirt.

Canelli and I took two matching metal straight-back chairs, facing Durkin. “We just found out that you did time for aggravated assault down in L.A.” As I said it, I experienced a sense of relief, a feeling that I was on familiar ground. Unlike Marie Kramer and Alexander Guest, Bruce Durkin was a known quantity to me.

Sullenly, he shrugged. “It was a barroom fight. I told you about it, Saturday. The other guy picked up a bottle. I picked up a chair.”

“How much time did you serve?”

“Six months in Chino.”

“What was your sentence?”

“Twenty-four months. It was a first offense.”

“Are you still on probation?”

He shook his head. “No. Probation expired almost a year ago.”

“Where’d you do your probation?”

“Los Angeles. I came up here as soon as I’d served my time.”

“Do you have friends here?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you get this job?”

“A friend of mine—Eddie Johnson—is a process server. He does a lot of work for Mr. Guest. I went to work for Eddie, serving summonses. So—” He shrugged. “So when Mr. Guest needed a bodyguard, he asked Eddie if he knew of anyone.”

“You didn’t tell Mr. Guest that you served time.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It never came up. He didn’t ask, so I didn’t say anything. It’s like—you know—in the army. Don’t volunteer.”

“So Alexander Guest moved an ex con into his daughter’s house, to guard his only grandchild.” As I said it, Canelli guffawed.

“Nobody’s perfect, I guess,” Canelli observed.

Durkin glanced at Canelli with flat, hostile eyes, then looked away indifferently.

“What’re you to Marie Kramer, Durkin?” I asked. “I know you’re John’s bodyguard, and a driver, and I guess you do some household chores. But what else do you do?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know what I mean, Durkin. She’s an unhappy woman. She drinks too much, and she spends her weekends at the singles’ bars, looking for men. What’s she doing during the week? What’d you do for her, during the week?”

“What’s she say I do for her?”

“I’m asking you.”

He shrugged his bully-boy shoulders as he looked at me with shrewd, street-wise eyes. Finally he said, “I’m not going to answer that. It’s private, what you’re asking. Private business.”

I nodded, then decided to match his carefully calculated indifference. I’d let him wonder what I knew about his relations with Marie.

“Mrs. Kramer has a gun in her bedroom,” I said, “a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. You know that.”

“I—” His eyes fell away. I had him guessing. How much did I know? How much had she told me?

“Come on, Durkin—” I tried to make it sound casual, as if it was a routine question: groundwork, nothing more, confirming information I already possessed. “Just answer the question. Did you know about the gun?”

“A ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ will do,” Canelli said. “Just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”

I kept myself from reacting. I’d wanted to slip the question in casually. It was one reason I’d asked him whether he was sleeping with Marie Kramer. I wanted to mask the more important question with a less important one. By picking up the question, emphasizing it, Canelli wasn’t helping.

Showing an indifference he obviously didn’t feel, Durkin shrugged again. “Yeah, I knew about the gun.”

Still trying for a seemingly casual indifference, I asked, “Did you ever handle the gun?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Once. She was afraid of it. She wanted me to check the gun, see if it was loaded.”

As I nodded in return, I exchanged a covert look with Canelli. Half an hour ago, Marie Kramer had said that only her father and her child and Gordon knew she had the gun.

To protect Durkin, Marie Kramer had lied. She’d known the stakes. She’d known—or suspected—that her gun was the murder weapon. But then she’d lied.

“Did she ask you to unload it, or what?” Canelli asked.

“Yeah.”

“And did you unload it?” I asked

He nodded. “Yeah. I put the shells in one of the drawers, inside the closet. I put them in a sock.”

“So your prints would be on the gun,” Canelli said.

Remembering that the gun had been wiped clean of fingerprints, I said, “They’d be on the cartridges, too.” I let a beat pass, then added, “A lot of people forget about cartridges.”

“Listen—” Frowning uneasily, he leaned forward on the plastic sofa. The robe fell open across his thighs, unheeded. With relief, I saw that he was wearing undershorts. “Listen, what’s this all about, anyhow? What’s this about her gun, anyhow?”

“What it’s about,” I said softly, “is that her gun was used to kill Charlie Quade.”

As if he suspected a trick, Durkin looked from me to Canelli, then back to me. I saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. His big hands, one on either knee, were clenched knuckle-white.

I decided to gamble, and tell him the rest of it: “There’s no question. That’s the gun, the murder weapon. It was ditched not far from the crime scene. It’d been wiped clean of fingerprints.” I let a long, deliberate beat pass as I saw his heavy, stolid face begin to come apart, spasmodically breaking up into tics and twitches. Durkin was softening up—fast. “But there’re fingerprints on the cartridges,” I said. “Latents. There’ll be your prints, since you already unloaded the gun. Then there’ll be other prints, too—the murderer’s prints, on top of yours.”

“Ah—ah—” His mouth was working impotently, trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

“Or maybe there’s just your prints,” Canelli said softly. “Just yours, nobody else’s. From when you maybe took the cartridges out of the sock and reloaded the gun. Friday.”

Suddenly Durkin got to his feet. Caught by surprise, I rose with him, instinctively falling into a crouch, fists clenched. Canelli was on his feet, too, instantly on guard, reaching under his jacket for his service revolver.

But Durkin wasn’t going to fight. He was going to yell.

“Get outta here, you bastards. Get
out.
If you—you don’t get out, I’ll call Mr. Guest. He told me to call him, if—if—” Mouth twisting, head turning from one of us to the other like a confused bull ready to charge, Durkin took a furious step forward, threatening us with clenched fists.

I raised both hands, to placate him. In close quarters, if he came for us, I doubted whether Canelli and I could subdue him without getting badly hurt.

“Okay,” I said. “Cool down. We’re going. But remember—” I backed one cautious step away, then another step. “Just remember, all we want is the truth. If we get it, and if you’re clean, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

I gestured for Canelli to open the door, then gratefully walked out into the central hallway that served both Marie Kramer’s part of the house and Durkin’s tiny apartment. At the top of the stairs, I saw John Kramer. Eyes round, the boy said, “Did he hit you? Did you hit him?
Did
you?”

Safe now, I could smile. “Cops don’t hit people if they can help it, John. It’s not smart.”

“That’s because they hit back,” Canelli said, opening the front door and stepping outside.

“S
OMEONE INSIDE, THERE—” CANELLI
jerked his head back toward Marie Kramer’s townhouse—“sure knows more than they’re telling.”

“I’m glad I took you along. I wouldn’t want to deal with Durkin alone.”

“Jeez, yeah,” Canelli said fervently. “I know what you mean. That guy’s got muscles on his muscles.”

Our cruiser was parked down the hill from the Kramer house, and out of sight around the street’s first downhill curve. We walked to the car and got inside. I told Canelli to turn on the ignition, but not to start the engine. Then I switched on the radio and contacted Communications. I identified myself and ordered a round-the-clock, two-man stakeout on the Kramer house, located at 845 Telegraph Place.

“I want us to keep them under surveillance until the stakeout comes.” I pointed to the curve ahead. “I’ll walk up there, where I can see the house and you can see me. If our relief hasn’t come in a half hour, you relieve me.”

“Yessir.”

“Keep your eye on me.”

“Yessir. Right.”

I got out of the car and walked up Telegraph Place. The narrow, winding street clung to the side of the hill, spiraling up to Coit Tower, at the top. As always, a steady two-way stream of tourist cars was clogging Telegraph Place. Bound for the sightseer’s circle at the crest of the hill, the uphill stream inched forward, moving in a constant, closed-circuit, bumper-to-bumper parade. Finished with sightseeing, the downhill stream moved faster. The September evening was warm and soft; the sky was a clear, darkening blue overhead. Across the bay, the lights of Oakland and Berkeley were beginning to sparkle in the hills that rimmed the East Bay.

Because the evening was clear and warm, the procession of cars climbing the hill was more congested than normal, moving more slowly. Most of the sightseers would park at the observation area that circled Coit Tower. They would get out of their cars, look dutifully at the view, snap a few pictures, get back in their cars and join the descending procession. Later, after dark, teenagers would begin arriving on the scene, hoping to find a parking place and cop a quick feel before the police on the beat hassled them.