Bill Pronzini: Mourners

Lynn Scott Troxell was a personal friend of Kayabalian’s. She had been in the same graduating class at UCLA with his daughter, and while at the university she’d married her high school sweetheart. The marriage hadn’t worked out, and not long after her divorce, which Kayabalian had handled for her, she’d met and married James Troxell. That was as much background information as Kayabalian had been willing to impart; he wanted her to lay out the rest for me, along with her reasons for wanting to hire a private investigator.

“It’s a domestic matter,” he said, “and I know you don’t care for that kind of work. But it’s not your typical domestic case. At least, I don’t think it is and neither does Lynn.”

I met the woman in Kayabalian’s Embarcadero Center offices later that day, with him present mostly in the role of observer. She was in her midthirties, dark-haired, slender, very attractive in a quiet and remote sort of way. The first thing you noticed about her was her hands; they were thin and very long-fingered, the bones and veins prominent, the nails cut short and unpolished, and there was grace and strength in the way she moved them-like the hands of a concert pianist. The second thing you noticed was that there was a sadness in her, deep-rooted and as remote as her beauty; you had to look deep into chocolate-brown eyes to see it. Not a recent sadness, not the result of whatever domestic problems she was having, but one long ingrained-the kind of melancholy you’d find in a supplicant who’d lost faith, say, or an idealist who had been irreparably disillusioned. Something had hurt her once, long ago. Her busted first marriage, possibly. Or maybe the cause was nonspecific; maybe it was just life, the long long chain of experiences and day-to-day living, that had done it to her.

Her first words to me were, “I’m afraid there’s something wrong with my husband.”

“How do you mean, Mrs. Troxell?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know exactly. He’s not the same man he was a few months ago, even a few weeks ago.”

“In what way is he different?”

“Erratic, strange… not like Jim at all.” The long-fingered hands moved together in her lap, lacing and interlacing. “He’s a private person, introspective, but we have always been able to communicate. Now I can’t seem to reach him. It’s as if he’s… going away.”

“You think he may be planning to leave you?”

“Yes, but not as if he wants to. As if… I can’t explain it. It’s a terrible feeling I have, almost a premonition.”

“Can you pinpoint when this change in him began?”

“I first began to notice it, little things, four or five months ago.”

“So it wasn’t sudden.”

“Yes and no. I know that’s an ambiguous answer, but… The specific behavioral changes were more or less gradual, but I think something happened about two months ago that had a profound effect on him. Emotionally, psychologically. That’s when he really began to change.”

“Can you connect it with any specific event?”

“No. All I can tell you is that it seems to have had nothing to do with me or our friends or his work. Something outside our… his.. normal sphere.”

“These behavioral changes-what are they exactly?”

“Moodiness, hours alone in his den, avoidance of social activities. And recently, one or two evenings a week away from home. He won’t say where he goes, just stonewalls the subject. The one time I asked if I could go with him, he said he didn’t want company.”

“How late does he stay out?”

“Four to five hours, usually. From six thirty or seven on. Once last week, until after two A.M. He… well…”

She fell silent, her gaze moving against mine. Neither my face nor my eyes showed her anything. One of the many things detective work teaches you is how to maintain a poker face. Besides, I wasn’t thinking anything yet. No preconceived notions and no quick judgments-that’s something else the business teaches you.

I asked, “What else, Mrs. Troxell?”

“Now he’s taking days off work-unexplained absences. One or two days a week.”

“The same days?”

“No. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it.”

“You said unexplained absences.”

“He won’t give me or anyone at Hessen and Collier a reason. He just calls in with some excuse.”

“Does he stay home, hole up on those days?”

“No,” she said. “He leaves at his usual time every morning, whether he goes to the office or not, and stays out most of the day.”

“How did you find out he wasn’t going to his office?”

“Mr. Hessen, Martin Hessen, called me last week. He’d spoken to Jim about it, but Jim stonewalled him, too.”

“Is he letting his work slide?”

“Not to a crisis point, not yet. But of course Martin and the other partners are concerned.”

“Have you spoken to your husband’s friends?”

“He only has one close friend, Drew Casement-they’ve known each other since high school. But he hasn’t confided in Drew. Or anyone else that I contacted.”

“So you have no idea where he goes, what he does during his day and evening absences?”

“Not a clue. I thought of following him myself, but I wouldn’t be any good at that sort of thing. That’s why I need your services. I have to find out before… I have to find out.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, there’s the obvious explanation for his actions and the behavioral changes-”

“It isn’t another woman,” she said flatly.

“I’m sure you don’t want to consider the possibility, but-”

“It is not another woman.”

“I have to say this. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a woman.”

“No.” Sharply this time. “Whatever is causing this, it isn’t love or sex.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’d know if it was. A woman knows. Besides…”

“Yes?”

Her hands moved again, joining, unjoining. “My husband has been very attentive to me recently. You understand? Very passionate.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but you’re wrong. The passion has nothing to do with guilt or subterfuge or even release of tension. It’s more than simple physical desire. It’s a deep-seated need… in some way I don’t understand he needs me more than he ever has. The closeness, the intimacy. As if he’s trying desperately to hang on.”

“To you emotionally?”

“Just trying to hang on,” she said.

Just trying to hang on. Euphemism for a man struggling against a mental breakdown. Based on what Lynn Troxell had told me and the two days’ surveillance I’d put in so far, that was the most likely explanation for her husband’s abnormal behavior. Stress-related, maybe, with the trigger being some disturbing event or experience; or the gradual degenerative result of a genetic flaw or any number of other possible psychological and/or physical factors. Breakdowns happen all the time to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons, and manifested in all kinds of ways. More and more every year, it seems; Tamara and Runyon and I had run up against an extreme case ourselves just last Christmas.

Hell, with all the pressures and insanities in the modern world, it’s a wonder a lot more individuals don’t slide off the edge-great streams of them like lemmings off a crumbling cliff.

It was after four thirty when I got to the new suite of offices in a venerable three-story building overlooking South Park. Jake Runyon was in, sitting at his desk and studying something on the screen of his laptop. Behind him, the seldom-shut door to Tamara’s office was closed.

“Hey, Jake. Tamara leave already?”

“No. In her office.”