Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

The first thing-the only thing-I saw were her eyes.

They were huge and very green and very soft, expressive and warm and yet containing a kind of pleading, like a child after a severe punishment saying no more, no more. And there was sensitivity, too, in their depths, and tragedy and gaiety and sensuality, and I thought with a small part of my mind: What’s the matter with you, you can’t be seeing all of those things, and yet I was seeing them, they were all there for me to see and interpret.

There was something in my eyes for her, too. I became aware of that very suddenly, and I wondered dimly if she was reading the same things I was, if a similar kind of inner reflection was there for her as well.

Neither of us moved for several long seconds; then, finally, she made a soft meaningless sound deep in her throat and put her hand up at the edge of the door, as if she were thinking of shutting it. I tried to find something to say to her, but I could not seem to think of anything. I looked at the rest of her, and I was in no way disappointed: small, slender hands; long flowing hair the soft reddish-gold of autumn leaves; no makeup, but none needed to accentuate elfin features as symmetrical as expert sculpturing. She could have been twenty-seven or thirty-two-a totally unimportant factor-and she was soft and gently rounded in a pale lavender skirt and a white sweater with lavender bands like narrow epaulets across the shoulders.

‘What is it?’ she said then, in a voice that was just a shade too high.

I felt awkward suddenly, and my hands seemed large and curiously spasmodic. I got them down into the pockets of my overcoat. ‘Is… Are you Cheryl Rosmond?’

‘Yes? What is it you want?’

‘I’d like to talk to your brother. Doug Rosmond?’

‘Oh,’ she said, and her hand dropped away from the door. There seemed to be a faint flush just under her small ears.

‘Is he at home, Miss Rosmond?’

‘Yes, he’s here.’

I told her my name and my profession. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face, but she was not looking at me at all now; her gaze was to the left of me and beyond, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, the blades of grass in the lawn. ‘I’ve been hired to locate a man named Roy Sands, a friend of your brother’s; he’s disappeared.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it.’

‘Do you know Sands?’

‘Yes. We… Yes.’

‘May I come in, Miss Rosmond?’

‘Of course. Doug is on the back porch, fixing the drain on the laundry sink. I’ll get him.’

‘Thank you.’

She backed away, and I entered and shut the door. It was pleasant in there, warmly comfortable: curving mahogany sectional and matching chairs upholstered in pink and pastel-yellow, white alabaster lamps giving off warm light through shantung shades, staggered knickknack shelves on one wall with glass and porcelain figurines of owls and elephants and horses. The floor was almost completely covered by a muted-patterned rug.

Cheryl kept on backing away, looking at me, and then away, and then back. She said, Til get Doug,’ and turned abruptly through a doorway.

When I was alone, I took my hands out of my pockets and stared at them. They looked faintly gray, the veins bluish and prominent. I put them away again and went around the room, looking at the pictures on the walls without really seeing them.

A voice said my name, and when I turned, a guy in the same age bracket as Hendryx and Gilmartin was standing in the doorway through which Cheryl had gone moments earlier. She was not with him. I wondered if she had gone to some other part of the house, where she could not hear her brother and me-or whether she was out there in the kitchen, at the stove or at the drain-board, listening and maybe thinking about me in the same way I was thinking about her…

I shook myself mentally and got my mind focused on Doug Rosmond. He was coming toward me now, a big, quiet-looking man dressed in a gray sweatshirt and old, dusty jeans. He was her brother, all right: the same reddish-gold hair, his thick and unkempt; the same green eyes; the same symmetrical features-though in his case distinctly masculine. He would have had a lot of women in his time, I thought-he was the kind of guy they felt instinctively protective toward, the maternal instinct-but unlike men such as Hendryx and Gilmartin, he would have left each of them with their pride and their self-respect afterward; there was no hint of cruelty or cynical contempt in his face or his steady gaze.

We got the amenities over with, and I sat on one of the chairs. He went over to lean against an inexpensive television-and-stereo unit nearby; I supposed it was because he did not want to sit on the furniture with his dusty clothing.

‘I’m glad to hear that Elaine Kavanaugh called a detective in to help find Roy,’ he said. ‘She was pretty worried about him when I talked to her.’

‘When was that, Mr. Rosmond?’

‘A couple of days ago, the last time. She called to find out if I’d heard anything from Roy. Just grabbing at straws, I guess.’

‘Do you have any ideas where Sands might be?’

‘No-none, I’m afraid.’

‘I take it you don’t think he went off of his own accord?’

‘Not the way he felt about Elaine, not without telling her he was going,’ Rosmond said. ‘Besides that, Roy isn’t the kind of guy to just disappear unexpectedly-like a boozer will, sometimes, or an outdoors type, or a guy with a lot of independence.’

The booze angle had occurred to me briefly on the drive back from Marin County. I said, ‘Sands isn’t much of a drinker?’

‘Not Roy. Puke and pass out on three shots and sick for two days afterward-that kind of guy. A couple of beers nursed out over an evening is his limit.’

So much for that possibility. I asked Rosmond some of the same questions I had asked Hendryx and Gilmartin earlier, and got the same general answers: Sands was basically introverted, a gambler and hell-raiser only in the mildest sense, and an all-around nice guy. There was nothing in any of that, or if there was, I couldn’t see it; I was having a difficult time keeping my mind orderly because of Cheryl, and I found my eyes straying toward the open doorway to the kitchen from time to time.

I lit a cigarette and told Rosmond about Hendryx’s meeting with Sands at the Presidio. I asked, ‘Did Sands ever mention business or acquaintances, anything at all, in the Pacific Northwest?’

‘Not that I know of. Well, wait, there’s a guy named Jackson, Nick Jackson, I think, that came from Oregon or Washington originally. Roy had some trouble with him a while back, at the Presidio.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Well’-he lowered his voice-’Roy was sleeping with Jackson’s woman and Jackson didn’t like it; this was maybe three years back, before he met Elaine. Jackson was a major then, and he tried to railroad Roy into a dishonorable, and maybe some time in the stockade, because of it.’

‘How so?’

‘There was a little black-marketeering going on-cigarettes, booze, stuff like that. Roy didn’t have a damned thing to do with it, but Jackson tried to make out that he did.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. They caught the guys who were doing it.’

‘No repercussions between Sands and Jackson?’

‘Bad feelings, maybe, but nothing rough.’

‘Anything since?’

‘Not that I know about.’

‘Do you have any idea where Jackson is now?’

‘No. He’s not at the Presidio, though.’

‘I’ll check on it.’

‘I doubt if Jackson could have had anything to do with Roy’s disappearance. I mean, the trouble was three years ago.’

‘You never know,’ I said. I worked on my cigarette a little. ‘There’s no reason you’re aware of for Sands having gone to Oregon from San Francisco?’