Bill Pronzini: Camouflage

“Francine did so much damage to so many people… I won’t pretend I’m not glad she’s dead.”

“No need to. You’re entitled.”

“If only she’d showed her vicious side to Robert the way she did to Bobby and her sister. We might all have been spared.”

“Too calculating and manipulative to allow that to happen before they were married. But she wouldn’t’ve been able to control herself indefinitely. She’d’ve gone off on him sooner or later.”

“Well, he must know by now what she was underneath that sweet facade. But will he admit it?”

“He’d be a fool not to. Overwhelming evidence now.”

“Yes, but he’s such a cold, inflexible son of a bitch… I can’t believe I didn’t see his true nature before I married him. But he could be so sweet and charming when it suited him…”

“Camouflage, like the kind Francine wore.”

“He’ll try to take away what little time I have with Bobby, out of spite. I know he will.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“How can I stop him? I told you how he manipulated the judge at the custody hearing; he’ll do the same thing again-”

“His influence in the legal community isn’t as strong as you think. Dragovich knows a family law attorney with a much better rep who owes him a favor.”

“I can’t afford another expensive attorney. I’ll have to mortgage the house, take on a lot more design work, to pay my legal bills as it is…”

“We’ve been over that. Money’s not an issue-we’ll work it out.”

“Jake-”

“No, listen to me. Dragovich spoke to the family law guy, Jeb Murphy, and outlined your situation to him. Murphy will stop Robert from denying you visitation. And he thinks there’s a good chance he can get the original custody decision reversed.”

“… Oh, Lord, could he really do that?”

“If he’s as good as Dragovich says he is. Bobby doesn’t want to keep on living with his father-too many ugly memories associated with the abuse and Francine’s death. He wants to live with you. He told me so, and running away, coming here the way he did, proves it. He’s old enough for his wishes to carry weight with any reasonable judge.”

“I can’t tell you what having him with me again would mean.”

“Don’t try. I think I know.”

“I wish he were here now; I wish I could hold him, comfort him, tell him how much I love him.”

“You’ll have the chance soon.”

“How soon?”

“As fast as the lawyers can make it happen. Murphy will contact you tomorrow morning.”

“You arranged all of this? When?”

“I had a talk with Dragovich before I came over here. He’s the one doing the arranging.”

“But it was your idea.”

“Call it a mutual resolution.”

“You’re such a good man. And I’m such a fool for not trusting you, lying to you the way I did.”

“Let’s not get into that again. You did what you felt you had to do.”

“But I caused you so much trouble…”

“Trouble’s my business.”

“Don’t joke-please. I’m serious.”

“So am I. Helping people in trouble is what I do, you know that. Helping people I care about makes it twice as rewarding.”

“… Will you do one more thing for me?”

“If I can.”

“Stay with me tonight.”

“You don’t need to show me gratitude, Bryn.”

“It’s not that. No, really, it’s not. I don’t want to be alone tonight. You’re the only person besides my son who makes me feel needed and I want to be close to you. You feel the same way, don’t you? At least a little?”

“More than a little.”

“Then you’ll stay?”

“You know I will.”

“And not just while it’s dark. Until morning. From now on, every night we’re together-until morning.”

The woman we knew as R. L. McManus remained a fugitive approximately six and a half hours after her flight from the Chileno Valley property. Officers from both Marin and Sonoma counties, using helicopters and search dogs, found her hiding in an outbuilding on an occupied ranch three-quarters of a mile to the north and arrested her without incident.

Her real name, we found out later, was Shirley Pulaski. She and Carson, real name Veronica Boyle, were wanted fugitives, all right. In their native state, Minnesota, for grand theft and attempted murder and in Washington State for theft and coercion. They’d been working variations on the same scam for at least six years before they disappeared into their new stolen identities in San Francisco, making a total of thirteen-targeting elderly people with money and other assets who either were alone in the world or had far-flung relatives, at first ripping them off and using threats of bodily harm to keep them quiet. Pulaski and Boyle’s nonviolent MO changed when one of the Minnesota victims caught wise and refused to be intimidated. They broke the old woman’s neck, probably would have killed her if a neighbor hadn’t intervened. It was that incident that turned the two of them into fugitives.

They’d set up another room-rental scam in Spokane, operating under aliases. A spooked victim had blown that one up, too, and again they’d managed to slip away and disappear. Likely that was when they’d headed for California and hatched their plan to steal new identities and not take any more chances on being caught by disposing of their fleeced marks. The real Roxanne Lorraine McManus and the real Jane Carson may have been their first two murder victims, each chosen as much because of the resemblance factor as for the profit motive. Odds were that no one would ever know exactly what had happened to the genuine McManus and Carson. Or to the remains of the pair’s elderly prey prior to Rose O’Day.

Neither Pulaski nor Boyle had confessed to any of the crimes. They weren’t talking to the police, the media, apparently not even to their public defenders. A couple of homicidal sphinxes. Didn’t matter, though. There was more than enough hard evidence on the Chileno Valley property and in the Dogpatch house to convict them. In one of the boxes stored in the barn the police discovered more than fifty thousand dollars in cash and active bankbooks belonging to Rose O’Day, Gregory Pappas, and one other victim. The police also found a. 32-caliber Beretta that later matched the slug the coroner removed from David Virden’s skull.

When the forensic people got everything sorted out, the body count in that cistern was five-two men, three women. Virden had died of a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, no doubt on his second visit to the house; the stain on the living-room floor proved to be his blood, confirming that that was where he’d been caught off-guard and shot. The other four had been fed lethal doses of prussic acid. None could be positively identified because nothing was found anywhere for their bone-marrow DNA to be matched to.

I’m not much of a believer in the death penalty, as either a method of punishment or a deterrent, but when it comes to savagely cold-blooded mass murderers the law-and-order principles by which I’ve lived most of my life tend to outweigh my humanitarian sensibilites. I’ve only dealt with truly evil individuals a few times in my life; Pulaski and Boyle were right down there with the worst. If the DA decided to try them for multiple homicide with special circumstances, nobody would get much of an argument from me. All I’d have to do was think of their elderly victims, of what I saw and smelled inside that well house, and I might even say lethal injection was letting Pulaski and Boyle off easy.

For me, the hardest part of the aftermath was telling Judith LoPresti what had happened to her fiance. Tamara offered to do it, but she’s young and not always as tactful as she might be. The task was mine, lousy and painful as it was. I’d had to do it before, under even grimmer circumstances: telling Emily of her mother’s murder three and a half years ago.