Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

“What? Why do you want to know that?”

“Required for our files. Yours or your wife’s?”

“Mine,” Erskine said, and immediately broke the connection.

Okay. So I’d rattled his cage as much as I thought was wise at this point. He was perceptive as well as cunning; he’d gotten the message that I was on to him. It wouldn’t worry him much right now — he was too sure of himself and the invincibility of his plan — but it might make him a little more vulnerable next time I talked to him. I would not be nearly as subtle when I did.

Still, my gut feeling was that it would take a lot more than words to break Peter Erskine. If he could be broken at all.

Menlo Park Fire Station 4 was a small building that housed a modern pumper and the Advanced Life Support vehicle. Originally it must have been solid brick, in keeping with its attractive upscale surroundings, but like so many brick structures that had survived the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake in ’89, it had been redesigned and rebuilt to conform to seismic safety regulations. According to Tamara’s search, it was manned 24/7 by a captain and two firefighters working shifts of seventy-two hours on, seventy-two hours off, and the trio working today were the same three who’d been on duty last night.

My investigator’s license and mention of the fact that I was employed by Peter Erskine got me an audience with the captain. He was a little leery of me at first, until I assured him that I was not there to question his team’s response time and lifesaving efforts; everybody these days, especially public servants, is litigation fearful and prickly because of it. Mr. Erskine, I explained, was only interested in knowing if his wife had been conscious at any time while she was being stabilized and/or during her transport to Peninsula General, and if so, if she’d said anything — any last words that might be a comfort to him. I don’t like lying to people, particularly lies of this sort, but you do what you have to do in the interest of justice.

The captain didn’t seem to find the request unusual. He said Mrs. Erskine had been conscious briefly, but couldn’t tell me if she’d spoken. That information would have to come from the other two members of the team, and they were currently out on a call. I was welcome to wait for their return.

The wait lasted nearly an hour and a half. When the ALS unit finally pulled in, I had to hang on another fifteen minutes while they did some cleanup work on the engine. It was four o’clock by then. If the two firefighters had nothing to tell me, I’d head over to Peninsula General. The evening-shift ER personnel would have come on duty and I might be able to convince a doctor or nurse who had attended Marian Erskine to talk to me.

But it didn’t come to that. The firefighters were cooperative, and the licensed paramedic, a young, linebacker-size Latino named Tejada, told me what I wanted to know.

“The woman was conscious, yes,” he said, “but only for a minute or so as I was stabilizing her. She was in very bad shape. Frankly I was surprised she survived the ride to the hospital.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Yes, but it didn’t make too much sense.”

“To me, either,” the other firefighter said. He was an older man, a red-haired Irishman named Reilly. “Delirious mumblings.”

“Can either of you recall what it was she said?”

“Something about shooting somebody, wasn’t it, Alex?”

Tejada dipped his chin. “Sounded like ‘I shot him three times but he wouldn’t fall down; he just kept coming at me.’”

I made an effort to keep my expression blank so they couldn’t tell how much significance those words held for me. “Is that all?”

“All that was coherent.”

“Was there a gun anywhere near her when you got there?”

“A gun? No.”

“Could one have been on a nearby table, maybe?”

Reilly said, “No gun. We’d’ve seen it if there was, after what she said about shooting somebody.”

I thanked them and was about to leave when Tejada said, “You know, I just remembered something else she said. One word, just before she went under for good.”

“What word?”

“Reverend.”

“Sure that’s what it was?”

“Pretty sure.” He shook his head sadly and crossed himself. “Knew she was dying, poor lady. Asking for a padre.”

No, I thought as I went out to the car, she hadn’t been asking for a padre. Tejada had misheard: the last word spoken by Marian Erskine hadn’t been reverend.

It had been revenant .

So now I had a pretty good idea of how they’d worked it last night. Manufacture enough raw terror with the right kind of supernatural trappings and you can practically guarantee a weak heart will stop beating without ever laying a hand on the victim. Neat, clean, sadistically bloodless — the so-called perfect crime.

Like hell it was.

Prod Erskine some more now? I decided against it. Marian Erskine’s last words were a piece of evidence against him, but only a small piece. Push him too far too soon, even if I made no direct accusation, and he was liable to sic a lawyer on me.

Better idea: he was the strong link, so go after the potential weak link instead.

Melanie Vinson.

If my take on her was accurate, she was a long way from being a mental giant — an easily manipulated follower who’d gone along with the murder scheme out of greed or love or a combination of both. In over her head, and at least a little scared; her twitchiness yesterday in Erskine’s office, on the eve of her part in delivering the deathblow, suggested that.

Fear can be a weapon in serving justice, too, if you use it effectively. Turn hers back on her and it might well crack her wide open. And if she cracked, the odds were good she’d take Erskine down to save herself.

The offices of Peter Erskine, Financial Advisor were locked up tight. I hadn’t expected otherwise, but the building was on my way out of Menlo Park and I had nothing to lose but a few minutes by stopping there first. I programmed Melanie Vinson’s home address into the GPS, followed the disembodied voice’s directions into Palo Alto and through a maze of residential streets not far from the Stanford University campus.

It was after five o’clock and already dark when the voice told me I’d arrived at my destination — a block of facing rows of town-house-style apartments extending back from the street in the shape of a broad horseshoe. Not a new complex, but well maintained, in a neighborhood so thick with shade trees it had a bucolic atmosphere. I’d seen modern rent/lease places like this before, often enough to know that there would be a courtyard with a communal swimming pool and recreation area in the middle of the two wings. Driveways angled up adjacent to each wing, along which were shedlike structures where the tenants parked their cars.

I wedged mine into a spot at the curb across the street. Before I got out, I transferred the voice-activated tape recorder I keep in the glove compartment into my coat pocket. The night was clouding up and a cold wind had begun to blow; I pulled up the collar on my suit coat as I followed a walkway into an open foyer in the front curve of the horseshoe. Melanie Vinson occupied apartment #11; I rang the bell — once, twice, three times, leaning on it the last two. No response. Not home or ducking visitors if she was.

Thanks to Tamara, I had Vinson’s landline and cell numbers written down in my notebook. Landline first: four rings, and an answering machine with one of those smart-ass-cute “you know what to do at the beep” messages kicked in. I clicked off before the beep sounded and tried the cell number: straight to voice mail.