Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

The closet. Dresses, pantsuits, blouses, slacks, jackets, and a pair of raincoats on hangers; a rack of shoes, an umbrella on the floor; some boxes on the shelf above. All the clothing pockets were empty. He took the boxes down one by one. Some kind of fancy gown in the first, baby clothes in the second. The third contained mementoes, most relating to Kevin-a gold-plated baby spoon, a wallet of baby photos, a lock of fine blond hair. None of the other items meant anything to him, except for a woman’s plain gold wedding band without an inscription. He wondered fleetingly why she’d kept it. Not for sentimental reasons, not the way she felt about Court Spicer.

In the bathroom he scanned the contents of the medicine cabinet. The usual over-the-counter medicines and first-aid items, a prescription vial of Ambien, a packet of birth-control pills, an asthma inhaler.

Kevin’s bedroom. Fantasy books, a Nintendo Game Boy, a stuffed tiger with a torn ear, a poster illustration from one of the Harry Potter novels. The boy’s clothing neatly put away in his dresser and closet. Everything in place, awaiting his return.

Fallon went out of there, hesitated, then on impulse stepped into Casey’s bedroom again. He stood sweating in the stuffy air, looking around. He wasn’t sure why-just a vague feeling that he’d missed something the first time. Under the bed? He dropped to all fours, lifted the bedskirt to peer beneath. The only things on the carpet were a pair of skeletal dust mice.

When he straightened, his gaze was on the bureau-on the teakwood jewelry box. Its size registered on him for the first time: twelve inches wide, eight or nine inches deep. He opened the lid again. The tray with the earrings and other pieces was only a couple of inches deep, which meant another six inches or so of space. It took a little effort to lift the tray out; there was a fingertip catch that you couldn’t see unless you put an eye down close to it. And underneath- A ribbon-tied sheaf of handwritten notes, a wallet-sized photo album, two small jewelry cases. Casey’s secret stash, hidden away in the one place where a small boy was least likely to stumble across them.

Fallon opened the cases first, both of which bore Tiffany’s labels. Their velvet-lined innards were empty, the expensive jewelry they’d contained hocked or sold to finance Sam Ulbrich’s investigation. Presents from Spicer, bought with the blackmail money from David Rossi. That was what he thought until he read through the bundled notes, looked at the photos.

Those told a different story. The true story about the source of the jewelry, and a lot of other things too.

They told him what she’d withheld from Ulbrich and from him-some of it, anyway. Deliberate lies of omission that had led him in all the wrong directions and jeopardized his freedom.

They told him who might be responsible for Spicer’s death.

They told him the probable reason for her and Kevin’s disappearance, and how he could go about finding them now.

The notes were all brief, written in a precise, backslanted male hand, some containing promises and sexual innuendo. Only a few were dated; the earliest was October 2000. All were signed with a single initial. The color snapshots were of a lean, handsome man in his forties, of Casey, of the two of them together. Just them, nobody else. Several had been taken around a garden swimming pool with rows of palm trees in the background; in one of those, she’d struck a provocative pose wearing only a pair of bikini swim pants. Fallon took that one out of its glassine envelope. Written in purple ink on the back, in a different hand from the letters-Casey’s hand-was “V. and me, Indio, 7/03.”

V. The same initial that was on the notes.

V for Vernon. Vernon Young.

She’d been having an ongoing affair with her boss that dated back a long time before her divorce from Court Spicer.

WERNON YOUNG REALTY WAS a successful operation, housed in its own stone-and-glass building in an upscale neighborhood near Mission Bay. Eight desks arranged behind a gated counter laden with brochures, flyers, and business cards. Five of the desks were staffed when Fallon walked in, the sales reps, three men and two women, all busy on phones and computers. None of the men was the lean, handsome type in Casey’s photo collection.

Fallon said to the receptionist, a young woman with red hair, blue eyes, and a white smile, “I’d like to see Vernon Young.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Young is out of the office today.”

“Hasn’t been in all week, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t. He’s away on a personal matter.”

“Where can I reach him? It’s important.”

“I’m afraid you can’t. He’s not available.”

“Not even by phone?”

“Not at all. If it has to do with a property, perhaps one of our agents can-”

“I need to speak to Mr. Young personally. I left a message for him yesterday, but he didn’t get back to me. Has he called in for his messages?”

“No. No, he hasn’t. I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon, Mr.-?”

“Jablonsky. When do you expect him back in the office?”

“I really don’t know. Perhaps tomorrow or Friday. Would you care to leave another message?”

“No. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Casey Dunbar, either?”

“Why, no. Ms. Dunbar has been on vacation the past week.”

Vacation. Sure.

Like the one he’d been on since last Friday.

The woman who answered the phone at the Young home sounded middle-aged, tired, and not overly bright. “Mr. Young’s not here. Neither is the missus, but she’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Who am I talking to?”

“Mrs. Reilly. I’m the cleaning woman.”

“Does Mrs. Young know where her husband can be reached, Mrs. Reilly? It’s important that I talk to him. I stopped by his office, but they said they don’t know where he is.”

“I’m sure I don’t know either. You’ll have to ask the missus.”

“How soon will she be back?”

“She said around three. She’s at the hairdresser’s.”

Three o’clock. Close on two-thirty now. Another thirty or forty minutes of downtime.

He said, “I’ll come by around three, then. What’s the address there?”

“The address?”

“I’ve only been to the house once, two years ago, and I don’t remember the street or number.”

“Well…”

“It’s best if I see Mrs. Young in person. It could mean a big sale for her husband’s company.”

“It could?” the woman said, but not as if she cared. “Well, I guess it’s okay then. One two five five nine Wildwood, San Pasqual Valley. You know, where they had them bad fires last year.”

Fallon remembered “them bad fires.” They’d been all over the media a year ago this month. Four of them in San Diego County, the two worst in Poway south of Escondido and San Pasqual Valley in the northeast corner of the city. Over 400,000 acres burned, more than a thousand homes destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people evacuated into Qualcomm Stadium and other shelters. The scars were visible in the hills and canyons above the valley, irregular blackened swaths and patches where houses had once stood. New construction flourished in the area; he saw more than a dozen sites on his way up winding Wildwood Road.

He’d never quite understood the willingness of people to rebuild in the same area where a natural disaster had struck. Maybe they thought it couldn’t happen again. But this was wildfire country. The homes and the vegetation would grow thick again, the canyons would clog with dry brush, and all it would take to set it off again was another bolt of lightning or incident of human carelessness. One more reason why he preferred the desert. It had its natural dangers, sure, but if you knew what you were doing, you had some control over the risks they presented. In the remote, expensive firetraps in locations like this, you had little or none.