Bill Pronzini - Camouflage

Finding Francine Whalen proved easy enough. Born in Alameda twenty-nine years ago; father and mother both deceased. Two younger sisters: Gwen, unmarried, a resident of Berkeley, and Tracy, married and living in Ojai in Southern California. Graduate of Sadler Business School in Oakland. Three previous paralegal jobs before joining the West Portal firm of Darby and Feldman three years ago; exemplary references. Married to an S.F. investment banker, Kevin Dinowski, in September 2005; divorced February, 2006, no children. Previous address before moving in with Robert Darby: apartment on Broderick Street in the Laurel Heights neighborhood that she’d shared with another woman, Charlene Kepler, also a paralegal, age twenty-five.

Police record: none, not even a traffic citation.

No red flags in any of that, unless there was something in the brevity of her marriage. Abusers of children were usually one or a combination of three things: victims of abuse themselves, the possessors of deep-seated hostilities and anger management problems, chronic drug users or alcoholics. There was a fourth, less common variety: psychotic child haters, the worst of the lot. Finding out which of these fit Whalen might take some work, but it could be done. The problem was tying whatever explanation for her actions to her abuse of Bobby. Robert Darby, as the boy’s legal guardian, was the one who had to be convinced first, and without Bobby’s corroboration it’d take conclusive evidence to make his father accept the truth about the woman he was planning to marry.

Runyon did quick checks on her two sisters, ex-husband, and former roommate. Nothing there, either; records all as superficially clean as Francine Whalen’s. He created a file of all the information he’d gleaned. If need be, he’d turn it over to Tamara on Monday and ask her to run deeper background checks. One of the benefits, like his talk with Bill yesterday, of working for good people in a small agency.

He spent what was left of the afternoon in front of a bad but commercial-free TV movie. Not watching it, using it for white noise while he waited to hear from Bryn. He had the ability to switch off his thoughts, like shutting down a machine, during any waiting situation. Survival trick he’d learned over the long months of Colleen’s illness, the only way he’d been able to keep himself sane and functioning while he watched the cancer eat away at her.

Bryn called a little after six. Her voice was quiet and even toned, but he’d known her long enough to be sensitive to her moods and feelings. As she was to his. Damage control mechanism between two damaged people. He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“Bobby still won’t admit anything, Jake. He won’t talk about Francine at all.”

“You ask him directly about the abuse?”

“Not at first. I asked how he liked her, if they got along, if he was glad she was going to be his stepmother, that kind of thing. All he did was mumble. He wouldn’t look at me the entire time. Finally I just… I came right out and asked him if she was hurting him.”

“And?”

“That was the only time he reacted. He shouted at me to leave him alone and ran out and hid in the crawlspace.”

“Crawlspace?”

“Behind the water heater in the basement. Where he’d go when he was little and something scared him. It took me five minutes to find him and another ten to coax him out.” Bryn drew a long, shaky breath, let it out in a faint hiss. “There’s no doubt, Jake. He’s terrified of that bitch. I came close to getting in the car and driving over to Robert’s and confronting her.”

“Bad idea,” Runyon said. “She wouldn’t admit it-and it might make her angry enough to take it out on Bobby.”

“I thought of that, too. That’s why I didn’t do it.”

“Don’t say anything to your ex, either, when you take Bobby back tomorrow.”

“If I take him back.”

“Another bad idea if you don’t. You know what Robert would do.”

“I know, but I can’t stand the thought of Bobby being alone with that woman anymore. The next time he does something to provoke her… God knows what she might do to him.”

Runyon didn’t respond. Bryn’s fear was legitimate, the point inarguable.

He heard her take another couple of breaths, composing herself. Then she said, “Did you find out anything about Francine?”

“Nothing so far that might explain her behavior. Her marriage didn’t last long enough to produce any children.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Pause. “Jake? Would you try talking to Bobby again tomorrow? He responded so well to you today…”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

“I hate to keep burdening you with this-”

“It’s not a burden. You know I’m there for you.”

“Yes. But it seems so one-sided.”

“Not so,” he said, and meant it. Being there for Bryn meant being there for himself. She was his salvation. Gave him reasons other than work to get up in the morning, ways to fill his days and nights that didn’t involve long, aimless, solitary drives. Helped him regain his self-respect. Made him a man again, physically as well as mentally. He wasn’t sure whether what he felt for her was love or a kind of abiding gratitude; if it was love, it was an altogether different kind from what he’d shared with Colleen. One thing he did know for certain: he would do anything for Bryn, just as he’d have done anything for Colleen.

He spent part of Sunday afternoon trying to get through to Bobby again. The avuncular approach, the buddy approach, the detective approach. None of it got Runyon anywhere. The boy was locked in tight now, like a frightened young animal hiding in the shadows of a cave. Poking his head out into the light on Saturday had been a onetime thing; he was too afraid to let it happen again.

That left only one way to stop the abuse, the potentially dangerous way-by running a backdoor investigation of Francine Whalen.

It didn’t take Tamara long to locate Roxanne Lorraine McManus. Just two billable hours, in fact. That kind of speed is good for client relations and PR purposes, but it doesn’t do much for the agency’s bank account. We weren’t going to make much out of the extra document delivery charge, either.

Surprise: Ms. McManus was alive and well and living in San Francisco.

I was in my office where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing, when Tamara brought in the data printout. When I decided to semiretire a few years ago and made her a full partner and essentially turned the agency over to her, the plan was for me to come in a couple of days a week, do a little office work here and there, and pretty much stay out of the field. Yeah, right. Tamara’s head for business practices was far superior to mine; in short order she found ways to double our business, which necessitated hiring a second field operative, Alex Chavez, with me taking up the rest of the slack in lieu of hiring a third. Two days a week became three, three became four and sometimes five, and pretty soon I was doing almost as much work as before, office and field both. Some semiretirement. Not that I minded too much, though, most of the time. I’ve never been any good at sitting around trying to think of something to do with myself, and with Kerry now a vice president at Bates and Carpenter and Emily away at school or off with her friends, the condo was a pretty lonely place on weekdays.

“I’d’ve found her even sooner,” Tamara said, “except that now she’s using initials instead of her first and middle names.”

“R. L. McManus. Don’t find women doing that much.”

“Only one I can think of is k d lang.”

“I wonder why she made the switch.”

“Probably never liked her given names. I wouldn’t be too happy with ‘Roxanne Lorraine’ myself.”