Bill Pronzini - Mourners

Real easy, she thought bitterly, to understand why some women hated men, all men. Be real easy right now for her to count herself among that sisterhood.

JAKE RUNYON

Scott Iams, Erin Dumont’s boyfriend, worked for a catering company on Union Street on the edge of Cow Hollow-one block from the boutique FashionSense, where she’d been employed. Upscale neighborhood, mostly residential, tucked between Pacific Heights and the Marina, so named because city farmers and ranchers had kept dairy and beef cattle there during the Gold Rush years. Choice real estate nowadays, the kind of district where young, unskilled people worked and counted themselves lucky for their above-average salaries, but still couldn’t afford to live.

Iams was twenty-four, red-haired, linebacker-sized. He had the kind of face that would normally be good-natured, easygoing, but that was marked now by the filaments of tragedy. His blue eyes were mournful, his manner dull and listless. Runyon’s name and ID stirred up a little animation but no surprise; Risa Niland had called him earlier, he said, told him about her meeting with Runyon at the cemetery and his offer of help. He had a break coming and suggested they go for a walk while they talked. “I can’t seem to sit still since it happened. Seems like I have to be moving all the time, even in the middle of the night.”

Outside, Iams set a fast, long-striding pace that Runyon had to work to match. It was cold and windy here, this close to the bay, and there were twinges again in his bad leg. Exercise was good for the rebuilt bone and muscle; he’d learned to relish the pain, convert it into positive energy.

Iams said, “I don’t know what I can tell you, Mr. Runyon. Some nights I’d go jogging with Erin, but that night I had to work late. That night of all nights. Jesus, it makes me half crazy every time I think about what she must’ve gone through. I loved her, you know? I mean I really loved her.”

“How long had you been dating?”

“Six months, about. We met at Perry’s, that’s a bar up the street. We hit it off right away. I don’t believe in love at first sight or anything like that, but this was pretty close. You know?”

“Was she seeing anybody else at the time?”

“Not really. She had a lot of dates, she was so beautiful…” His voice caught on the last two words; he shook his head and repeated them, more to himself than to Runyon this time. “So beautiful.”

“Any steady boyfriends before you?”

“A couple, sure.”

“Relationships end on friendly terms?”

“As far as I know.”

“Was there anybody she had problems with?”

“Problems?”

“Men she dated who came on too strong, men she rejected who wouldn’t take no for an answer, kept bothering her?”

“Cops asked me that, too.”

“And?”

“I don’t think so,” Iams said.

“But you’re not positive?”

“She’d’ve told me if there was.”

“It wouldn’t have to have been recently. Before she knew you, at any time.”

“No, she’d’ve told me. We told each other everything about ourselves. That’s how serious it was getting between us… ah, Jesus. Jesus. Why her? Of all the people in this city, why Erin?”

There was nothing for Runyon to say to that.

Iams said, “I’ve been thinking the guy must’ve been a stranger, one of those crazy random things. But I guess he could be somebody she knew. And he wouldn’t’ve had to be hassling her, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

There was a little silence before Iams said, “Fatso.”

“Who would Fatso be?”

“A guy who was hanging around her for a while. But it couldn’t be him.”

“Why couldn’t it?”

“Well, it was a couple of years ago, before we hooked up. And he didn’t hassle her, not the way we’ve been talking about.”

“What did he do?”

“Just kept showing up, following her around like a big fat dog.”

“Is that the phrase Erin used, a big fat dog?”

“Yeah. She said he was humongous.”

“How big is humongous?”

“Three hundred pounds or more.”

“Where was it he kept showing up?” Runyon asked. “In this neighborhood? Where she lived? Someplace she went regularly?”

“… I don’t know. All she said was he was around for a while and then he was gone, like maybe the Animal Control people came and carted him off to the pound. She thought it was funny. She was laughing when she told me about him.”

“What was his real name?”

“All she called him was Fatso.”

“She know what he did for a living?”

“If she did, she didn’t say.”

“He followed her around, you said. Literally?”

“I don’t think she meant it like that,” Iams said. “Just that he kept turning up places she went.”

“Did he approach her, strike up a conversation?”

“Hi, how are you, that kind of stuff.”

“Ask her to go out with him?”

“Once. She blew him off.”

“How did she blow him off?”

“How?”

“Cut him short, let him down easy, laugh at him?”

“She didn’t say anything about that. But Erin… she wasn’t a cruel person. She made jokes about him, sure, but she wouldn’t’ve done it to his face.”

“How did he take the rejection?”

“Like it was what he expected. Went off with his tail between his legs, Erin said.”

“Did he keep coming around after that?”

“I think maybe once or twice.”

“How long altogether?”

“Not very long. Maybe a month.”

“Then he just disappeared? No reason or provocation?”

“Nothing she said or did, no. There one day, gone the next.”

“Did she see him again after that?”

“No. Erin said they probably put him to sleep at the pound because nobody would want to adopt him, he’d cost too much to feed. She was really pretty funny, all that dog stuff.”

“Sure,” Runyon said. “Funny.”

“He couldn’t be the one, could he? I mean, he never really bothered her or anything. And it’s been a long time…”

“Do you know if Erin told her sister about this man?”

“Well, she probably did. They were close.”

“How about girlfriends she might have confided in? Or who might’ve been with her when Fatso was hanging around?”

“Well… she had a lot of friends, and I don’t know all of them. Risa could tell you better than I can.”

“I’ll ask her,” Runyon said. “One more thing. Did you tell the homicide inspectors about Fatso?”

“Yeah, I did. But they didn’t ask nearly as many questions as you did.”

Which meant they didn’t see much in it and wouldn’t have spent a lot of time on the lead. Maybe they were right. And maybe they weren’t.

The two women who owned FashionSense had nothing to tell him. At first there was a pretense of restrained cooperation, but after a handful of questions it was plain that they resented the intrusion. One of them, Joy Something, a sleek blonde in her early thirties, ended the pretense finally by saying, “Oh, Lord, we don’t know anything about what happened to Erin, if we did we’d have told the police. We’ve answered these same questions so many times already. Really, it’s becoming tedious.”

“Tedious,” Runyon said flatly. “A young woman who worked for you was brutally raped and murdered less than two months ago, the man responsible still hasn’t been identified, and you find the investigation tedious.”

The other woman, dark-haired, Tess Something, said, “For heaven’s sake, Joy didn’t mean it that way.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Joy Something said. “We’re not insensitive people. But you have to understand our position, Mr… what was your name again?”