Bill Pronzini: Mourners

Fatso! Oh God, that’s who he was… Fatso!

“Two years. I couldn’t stand not seeing her, so I drove down sometimes and watched her to make sure she was all right. She never knew, I never let anybody know. All those guys she dated, they weren’t important to her. She was waiting for the man who was worthy.” He was making little hiccuping sounds now, as if he might start to hyperventilate. “Two years and I was ready, I got the kind of job I always wanted, a nice apartment for us, all the money we’d need for a while. I went to see her after she got off work. I didn’t tell her who I was, I wanted to see if she’d recognize me. She didn’t. I asked her out, I wasn’t even shy about it, but she said no. She didn’t want anything to do with me. The next night I went to see her again. In the park, while she was jogging. I got her to sit in the car with me and I told her then who I was and what I’d done for her. But she still didn’t want anything to do with me. She said she was going to marry somebody else, she said even if she wasn’t she could never be with me. She said… she said every time she looked at me she’d remember the way I used to be, how fat I was, like a big fat dog, and she laughed.. she laughed at me… two years and everything I did for her and she was laughing at me…”

His hand was no longer at Risa’s throat; now he held her pinned at the shoulders. His face loomed close enough for her to smell his breath, feel the heat of it. She’d never seen more suffering in any human being-and it made her hatred burn even hotter. She wanted nothing more in the world than to rip that face off his head, shred his suffering between her fingers until there was nothing left.

“I don’t remember what happened after that,” he said. “I swear to God, I don’t remember. I-”

“You beat her! You strangled her! You raped her!”

“I don’t remember. I don’t, I don’t, I must have been crazy-”

“You raped her after she was dead!”

“No! I didn’t know she was dead, Jesus I didn’t know, I don’t remember, I woke up and she was naked and I… she… I couldn’t have done that to her but she… I don’t… Erin… I’m so sorry…”

“You son of a bitch!”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t work, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I tried to give myself up to the police but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell anybody but you. I had to be close to you because you were close to her… Forgive me, Risa. Please. Please. Please

…”

She couldn’t stand to hear any more. His words hammered in her ears, inflamed her with such fury that she couldn’t think. Bile rose into her mouth. “I’ll never forgive you, never!”

“Risa…”

“I hope you rot in hell!” And she hurled globs of spittle and vomit straight into that ugly suffering face.

Mistake, oh God, she realized that as soon as she did it.

An animal sound ripped out of him. One hand and then the other clamped like an iron collar around her throat.

The address was a private home in Forest Hills, one of the city’s older residential neighborhoods west of Twin Peaks. You couldn’t tell much about it from the street. More modern than some of the homes in the neighborhood, a hillside split-level on a narrow lot, with an unobtrusive redwood and brick facade. A curving set of stone steps led down to it through a southwestern-style rock-and-cactus garden. If you stood off at a side angle, you could tell that there were broad decks on both levels that would command views of Mount Davidson and portions of downtown and the bay.

It was nearly five o’clock when I got there. I went down and rang the bell. Nobody opened the door. I climbed back up and checked the enclosed platform garage along one corner of the property at street level. But it was just a box with no doors or windows so I couldn’t tell if it was empty or not.

I sat waiting in the car. Might be a long wait, but now that I was here I was inclined to stay put at least a couple of hours and probably longer; I have more patience than usual when it comes to specific business. Get this done tonight if at all possible.

The wait lasted exactly forty-seven minutes. A car came too fast around a curve in the street behind me: black Ford Explorer, big as hell, just the kind of wheels I expected him to have. Brakes squealed; he swung sharp into the driveway. The door ground up and the SUV disappeared inside. When he came out, pausing to close the door with an inside button, I was waiting for him.

He squinted at me out of bleary eyes. “Hey,” he said, “what’re you doing here?”

“Talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Lynn’s sister is staying with her, if that’s what you-”

“Kayabalian told me.”

“Poor kid. She’s in a bad way right now, but she’ll get through it.”

“With your help?”

“Right. Anything I can do. So what’s on your mind?”

“How about we talk inside. More private.”

“Sure, sure. No problem.”

Down the flagstone steps again. He let us in, led the way through a wide foyer past a staircase to the lower level, into a living room that took up the entire width of the main floor. Wine-colored drapes were partly open over a picture window and sliding glass doors to the deck.

Casement said, “Man, I’m beat,” and scrubbed a hand over his heavy crust of beard. In the house’s stillness it made an audible sound like sandpaper on wood. “I need a drink. Get you one?”

“No.”

There was a well-stocked bar along one wall, trimmed in leather with matching stools in the same wine color. Behind it, he rattled a bottle against the rim of a crystal tumbler. I gave the room a quick scan. White brick fireplace on the side wall opposite the bar. Burgundy-colored leather furniture, the floor polished hardwood with burgundy and white throw rugs. Half a dozen paintings, all modernistic abstracts, all with the same colors in them.

Casement came out from behind the bar with a half-filled glass, Scotch or bourbon. He’d seen me looking around; he said, “Some decorating job, eh? My ex-wife. She had shitty taste in everything except me.”

He laughed at his own wit, took a long pull of his drink. I stood there watching him.

“Ahh,” he said, “that’s better. How about we sit down, put our feet up?”

“You go ahead. I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself.” He flopped into a chair at an angle to the fireplace. I moved around in front of him. “What’re we talking about?”

“Tell you a little story first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Story? What kind of story?”

“About a friend and partner I had once. His name was Eberhardt, a former cop like me. Good man, basically, but he made mistakes and he had more demons than most of us. When our partnership and friendship busted up, he opened his own detective agency. But he couldn’t make a go of it. He started drinking heavily, made more mistakes and slid into a deep hole he couldn’t get out of. Things got so bad for him he lost his will to live, decided to take the coward’s way out. He sat in his car one night in an alley off Third Street and tried to make himself eat his gun. Only he didn’t have the guts to do it on his own. He called the one person left in his life who cared about him, and she came down, and he begged her until she gave in. He pulled the trigger but it was her hand that helped him do it.”

Casement’s expression was blank; I might have been telling him about the weather. He said without meaning it, “That’s too bad. But why tell me?”

“You could say,” I went on, “that Eberhardt committed suicide. He wanted to die, it was his finger on the trigger, he just needed a little assist. But you could also say that the person who gave him that assist was guilty of murder. By law in this state, that’s what assisted suicide is-a willful act of murder.”