Bill Pronzini - Mourners

“Could be he didn’t have a choice,” Runyon said.

“What, you mean he might’ve been locked up somewhere those two years, for some other crime?”

“Worth checking on.”

But Ostrow, according to Tamara’s contact at the SFPD, had no criminal record of any kind in California. A record in another state was still a possibility, but getting that information would take time.

She ran other checks. Sean David Ostrow was a member of the Teamsters Union, but obtaining personal information from a major union on one of its members was almost as impossible as obtaining it from the IRS. Under a fairly recent state law, private individuals-and that included private detective agencies-no longer had open access to DMV records. But the DMV, unlike unions, could be circumspectly breached with the right kind of know-how. Ostrow had a California driver’s license, issued four years ago in San Francisco and valid for another two years. His registered vehicle was a 1988 Ford Taurus, license number 2UGK697. The first numeral and first letter matched the ones on Troxell’s memory notes, but that didn’t have to mean anything; 2U was a common enough prefix. His birthdate was May 14, 1979. His address was listed as 2599 Kirkham, and there had been no notification of change since the date of issue.

Runyon drove out to Kirkham Street. Number 2599 was a twelve-unit apartment building not far from Golden Gate Park, but on the opposite side several miles from where Erin Dumont and Risa Nyland lived. Ostrow’s name wasn’t on any of the mailboxes in the foyer. None of the other boxes bore a building manager’s label, so he rang bells until he’d gone through all twelve. Three responses. A woman on the second floor said she remembered seeing Sean Ostrow in the building (“How could you miss him?”), but she hardly knew him and had no idea where he’d moved to or when. A sharp-tongued woman on the same floor said she didn’t know anybody named Ostrow; she’d only lived there a year and a half, and added mistakenly that she didn’t want anything to do with any goddamn salesmen. An elderly black man on the same floor said he’d known Ostrow slightly, that he was friendly enough but didn’t have much to say to anybody; he’d lived there about a year and moved out abruptly “two years ago last May. I remember because it was the same week I fell and broke my hip. Asked him how come he was leaving. Said there was something he had to do and he couldn’t do it in the city. Said he was going east.”

“No specific place?”

“Just east, that’s all.”

“What was it he had to do?”

“Asked him, but he just smiled and walked away.”

When Runyon got back to the agency, Tamara had more background information on Ostrow waiting for him. Most of it was routine. Born and raised in Astoria, Oregon, worked there as a beer-truck driver for a year after high school graduation. Mother deceased, father’s whereabouts unknown. No criminal record in Oregon. Spotless driving record in both Oregon and California.

But there was one potential lead. Ostrow had an older sister, Arlene, married the same year he’d quit his job in Astoria. Her name was Burke now, and she and her husband had also relocated to northern California-to Santa Rosa, where they were still living.

The weekend started off on a troubling note and kept getting progressively worse.

Kerry was still in a funk Saturday morning. Not the withdrawn, openly depressed, gloom-dripping variety; the kind that in some ways was even worse because it was all pretense and sham. False cheerfulness. Pallid little smiles. Chatter about anything and everything except what was going on inside her head, and evasions and circumlocutions whenever I asked her a direct question or tried to draw her out. At breakfast I suggested that the three of us go for a drive down the coast, have lunch in Half Moon Bay or a picnic on one of the beaches around San Gregorio. Wonderful idea, she said, but she needed to work on one of her accounts, the Harmony Dairy account; it probably meant a trip downtown to Bates and Carpenter at some point, hadn’t she mentioned this last night? Maybe tomorrow we’d go for the drive, if she could come up with the right copy for Harmony’s new ad campaign by then. Or maybe Emily and I should go today, just the two of us, she didn’t want to spoil our weekend just because she had to work.

She gulped coffee and excused herself and went away to her study. Her plate was still full of eggs and toast; she’d eaten no more than two bites of either. Emily looked at the plate, then looked at me with an expression of deep concern.

“Something’s wrong with Mom,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“She won’t talk to me about it.”

“Me, either. I asked her, but she just changed the subject. What’re we going to do?”

“Wait until she’s ready to tell us. We can’t force her.”

“No, but… I’m really worried.”

“So am I.”

“What if it’s something serious? What if-”

“We’re not going to play the ‘what if’ game,” I said. “All that does is make the waiting and the worrying worse.”

“So we just pretend everything’s okay?”

“For now, for today. How about that drive?”

“I don’t feel much like it, Dad.”

“It’s clear here, it’ll be nice down the coast.”

“Can’t we just stay home?”

“You can if you want to. I need to get out for a while.”

Emily chewed her lip. “I guess I do, too. I guess I don’t want to stay home after all.”

Charles Kayabalian called at two thirty, just after Emily and I got back from lunch and a batch of errands. “Well, I wouldn’t want to go through that again,” he said. “Makes trial law seem like a walk in the park.”

“Troxell didn’t take it well?”

“Hard to say just how he took it. He didn’t put out any arguments or denials, didn’t seem upset by the fact that Lynn was having him followed or the contents of your report. Didn’t say more than a dozen words the whole time, most of them monosyllables. He just sat there like a stunned deer. The look on his face… Christ.”

“He agree to go to the police voluntarily?”

“Monday morning. With me along as counsel.”

“Why not today or tomorrow?”

“I suggested that, get it over with as soon as possible, but he wouldn’t go for it. Needs a little time to work himself up to it, I think. The three of us tried to be gentle, but we still hit him pretty hard.”

“Only three of you?”

“Lynn, Drew Casement, and myself.”

“What happened to the family doctor?”

“She decided against calling him. I can’t blame her.”

“But Troxell did agree to get help?”

“Well, he didn’t balk at the suggestion. That look on his face, the few things he said… poor bastard, he knows he’s in a bad way.”

“The sooner the better,” I said. “And there should probably be eyes on him until he does.”

“Lynn made him promise to stay home until Monday morning.”

“But will he keep the promise.”

“She and Casement will make sure he does,” Kayabalian said. “She hid his car keys where he won’t find them, as a precaution. The three of us talked about it afterward.”

“Shaky situation, just the same.”

“I know it. But what can you do in a case like this? There’s only one legal issue and we’ve got that covered. The rest of it… no right way or wrong way to handle it, it’s all psychological and emotional gray areas. All you can do is take it slow, feel your way along, hope for the best.”

Kerry had been gone when Emily and I returned; it was after five when she reappeared, laden with Chinese takeout that she’d picked up on the way home from Bates and Carpenter. Still cheerful, her smiles more genuine tonight, and full of apologies. “I know I’ve been in a terrible mood lately,” she said at the dinner table, “and I’m sorry for taking it out on both of you. I won’t keep doing that, I promise.”