Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

NOW HE HAD SOMETHING else to think about. Had Casey kept something important from Ulbrich, something that might have a bearing on Spicer’s death and her and Kevin’s disappearance? If so, then it was likely she’d withheld the same information from him too. Her account of her life and troubles with Spicer had seemed straightforward enough, and nothing he’d found out so far had contradicted it. But he didn’t really know her. And as Ulbrich had said, he’d wanted to believe her.

Where do you go from here, Fallon?

Good question, and it kept echoing inside his head as he walked back to where he’d parked the Jeep. No theories left that fit the facts as he knew them. No clear-cut course of action. Options, sure, but Ulbrich had had a phrase that fit them, too, all of them: grabbing at straws blowing by in the wind.

All right. The only thing he could do was to keep grabbing.

Avila Court ran parallel to Adams Avenue, not far from San Diego State University-a ten-minute drive from Ulbrich’s office building. Number 716 was an old-fashioned, Spanish-style bungalow court, the kind that had proliferated in southern California in the ’30s and ’40s but that you didn’t see much of anymore. There were eight stucco units in this one, each facing a central courtyard and separated from their nearest neighbors by grass strips and wooden fences.

The courtyard was empty when Fallon walked in. Casey’s bungalow was the second in from the street on the left, its stucco front wall age-pocked and in need of a fresh coat of whitewash. Some kind of flowering shrub grew tall in a planter box next to the front door, giving off a cloyingly sweet scent.

A stuffed-full mailbox told him he wouldn’t get an answer when he rang the bell. He rang it anyway, three times. Then he reached down to test the knob-another futile gesture.

Salsa music, not too loud, filtered out of one of the bungalows across the way. Its facing window wore a set of closed Venetian blinds, as did the windows on all of the other units except for one at the far end. The angle of the sun let him see through the glass to the room inside that one. Furniture shapes, but nobody moving around.

Casually, as if he belonged there, he took the accumulation of mail out of the box and shuffled through it. Catalogues, two bills, a handful of junk mail. No letters or postcards.

Between Casey’s bungalow and the neighbor on the right were a pair of gated areaways separated by a fence, where garbage cans and odds and ends could be stored. Still carrying the mail, Fallon moved over there and lifted the latch. The gate opened inward; he stepped through, shut it again behind him. Two bicycles, one a small boy’s, and a pair of garbage cans all but filled the narrow space. The wooden fence was seven feet tall, weathered but in decent repair, built to provide privacy because the bungalows were set so close together.

One window, small and frosted, overlooked the areaway. Bathroom window. On the way to it, he dropped the mail onto one of the cans. When he pushed upward on the frame, it gave an inch or so before binding up. Casey wasn’t one of the people who left their bathroom windows unlocked.

Not that it mattered. From the way the sash had moved, he knew it was locked with a simple lever arrangement hooked into a plate in the sill. The largest of the blades in his Swiss Army knife slid easily into the crack. He maneuvered the blade against the lever, wiggled and prodded until it released from the plate. With his left hand he held it balanced on the blade while he pushed the sash up with his right.

It made a creaking noise, loud enough in his ears to freeze him for a few seconds. Closing the knife, he sidled over to the gate. There was a thin gap between two of the boards, wide enough for a view of the courtyard. Still nobody around. He stayed there for a couple of minutes, watching and listening. No one came out of the other bungalows or into the court from the street.

Back to the window. Illegal trespass: one more risk, one more felony added to those he’d already committed-and the hell with worrying about it. He hoisted himself into the opening, ducked his head under the sash, corkscrewed his body until he had one leg and then the other inside.

The bathroom was just large enough for a stall shower, sink, toilet. The toilet was positioned directly below the window, its seat lowered and hidden inside a furry pink cover. He stepped down onto the linoleum floor, then out into a short hallway.

Two small bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining alcove, a living area with a gas-log fireplace-all the rooms small, almost cramped, and smelling faintly of dust and the mustiness of places closed up for more than a few days. The bungalow had come furnished-the bland sparseness of the pieces told him that-and Casey hadn’t made much of an effort to personalize it. But she kept a neat house. Everything in its place, the kitchen sink and counters scrubbed clean, the beds made, the books and other kid things in Kevin’s room put away.

Fallon started in the living room, with no idea of what he was looking for. Something, anything-new information, a fresh lead, another straw.

In one corner was a secretary desk, a Dell PC and monitor perched on it. He turned the computer on, booted it up. Casey hadn’t installed a password; he was able to open her mailbox and document files. All of the E-mails she’d received during the past week were spam. And all that was stored on the hard drive were a tax file listing income and expenses, another file of PG &E online receipts, and a handful of video games. The Web sites she’d bookmarked told him nothing, either. Health sites dealing with asthma and women’s issues, YouTube, eBay, kid-related sites.

He made himself take his time going through the desk drawers and pigeonholes, putting whatever he looked at back where he’d found it. The usual paperwork: bills, receipts. A Book-of-the-Month Club flyer, a brochure from a youth camp. In one of the drawers was her checkbook, and a filled transaction register; the combined entries went back nearly six months. Rent, water and garbage, MasterCard, doctor, dentist, a day-care outfit that had probably looked after Kevin when he wasn’t in school and she was working. None of the checks had been written to private individuals.

He scanned through the deposits. On Friday of every week, she banked the salary and commissions she earned from Vernon Young Realty, noted as such in the register-all modest sums. But there were other deposits as well, regularly posted at the beginning of each month, each in the amount of $1,000. The source of that money wasn’t noted. He booted up the computer again, checked the tax file. No record of the monthly $1,000. So where did it come from and why wasn’t she listing it as income?

There was nothing else in the desk. Or in the rest of the living room; he opened every drawer, even lifted the cushions on the couch and two chairs and examined the backs of the pictures on the walls. The kitchen next. Drawers and cabinets, the refrigerator and its freezer compartment- nothing. He went from there into Casey’s bedroom.

The first thing that drew his attention was a silver-framed 8 × 10 photograph on the nightstand. Professionally done head-and-shoulders color portrait of Kevin, his pale hair neatly brushed, his mouth shaped into a shy smile. In this photo you could see that his eyes were light brown, with long, fine lashes. Fallon felt his chest constrict. The boy didn’t look anything like Timmy, really. But the longer he looked at Kevin’s likeness, the more it seemed to morph into Timmy’s.

A dog-eared paperback novel, a package of tissues, a tube of hand cream, and a pair of nail clippers were the only contents of the nightstand drawer. He turned to the mirrored dresser. On top was a teakwood jewelry box that contained a tray of earrings, two bracelets, a necklace, and a brooch, none of the pieces expensive. The dresser drawers held nothing but lingerie and folded shirts and T-shirts.