Bill Pronzini: Mourners

He was getting it now. His thick eyebrows drew together; he shifted position on the chair and slugged more whiskey. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“I think it does.”

“Yeah? Well, spit it out then.”

“Troxell also had help committing suicide. Your help, your assist.”

“You’re crazy, man! I wasn’t anywhere near Ocean Beach last night.”

“You didn’t have to be. But your hand was on that gun just the same. And that makes you guilty of murder.”

“Jim was my friend, for Chrissake. Why would I want him dead?”

“Because he was in the way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. You’re in love with his wife.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s plain enough,” I said. “The way you look at her, act around her. You love her and you want her and you knew the only way you could have her was if Troxell was dead.”

Casement threw down the last of the whiskey, shoved onto his feet. I set myself, but he wasn’t coming my way. He swung across to the bar to slop more liquor into his glass. Stayed there with it instead of returning to the chair, cocking a hip onto one of the leather stools, as if he wanted distance between us while he regrouped. I didn’t let him have it. I walked over there, slow, and stood even closer than before, just a few paces separating us.

Up went his glass. When it came down again, he said, “Maybe I do love Lynn in my own way. I never made any secret that I care about her. That doesn’t mean I wanted my best friend dead so I could move in on her.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“What put that goddamn crazy notion in your head, anyway?”

“Little slips you made, little things she and Kayabalian and Troxell himself told me. Bits and pieces that add up to the same conclusion.”

“Wrong conclusion.”

I grinned at him. Wolf grin, just the baring of teeth. “Here’s the way I see it. Sometime after Troxell witnessed what happened in the park, he came to you and told you about it. Or you dragged it out of him. Doesn’t matter which. He couldn’t make himself go to the police and he couldn’t confide in his wife, he wasn’t made that way. But he was full of guilt and starting to unravel and he needed to talk to somebody. Who else but you, his best buddy since high school.”

“Blowing smoke, man, that’s all you’re doing.”

“He confided his obsession with death and suicide, too. And not in an offhand way, like you made it seem-straight from the gut. He was serious about putting himself out of his misery, he’d been building to it even before the Erin Dumont trigger. But some men, men like Eberhardt, men like Troxell, just can’t do it on their own, no matter how much they want to die. You saw that. Saw your opportunity, hatched your little scheme, and went to work on him.”

“How am I supposed to’ve done that, smart guy?”

“Couldn’t have been too hard. You knew how to manipulate him-you as much as told me so yourself, all that stuff about getting him to tutor you in school, arranging for him to lose his virginity. Strong, confident jock, weak and emotionally screwed-up nerd. Not much of a contest at all. Reinforce his low self-esteem, lead him to believe his situation is hopeless and he’d be doing it for his wife as much as for himself, shore up his resolve and courage, finally offer to help him do the job.”

That must have been pretty close to the way it happened. Casement fidgeted again, slugged more whiskey-about as much reaction as I was going to get out of him.

“You went to work on her, too,” I said. “Kept telling her how worried you were about her husband and his mental state. Suggested she hire detectives to follow him. You wanted her to know just how bad off he was.”

Between his teeth: “Why would I hurt her like that if I’m so much in love with her?”

“To make her need you, lean on you. It was also a way to set Troxell up for the final push over the line. You must’ve been happy as hell with my report, the suggestions I made, the weekend grace period. After I left you talked her out of notifying the family doctor; Kayabalian told me that. You didn’t want any medical interference that might keep Troxell from listening to anybody but you after the confrontation. You spent a long time alone with him Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday-working on his hopelessness and death obsession, maneuvering him into a state where he could blow himself away.

“Mrs. Troxell hid his car keys Saturday, in a place he’d never think to look. But Kayabalian told me you were with her when she did it. Troxell didn’t find those keys on his own; he’d’ve had to tear the place apart and he didn’t, he slipped out of the house almost immediately after he got out of bed. He got the keys from you. You took them from the hiding place and handed them over before you left that afternoon.”

I watched Casement’s face closely as I spoke. No expression except for tight lips and a faintly throbbing vein in one temple. No sign of guilt or remorse. Incapable of either emotion; I had him pegged that way. Cold bastard. Self-involved, borderline sociopath.

“Why would a man like Troxell use a gun on himself?” I said. “That bothered me almost from the first. Wouldn’t be his choice if he were doing it on his own-the idea had to’ve been planted in his head, nurtured. ‘A small caliber handgun is quick and painless, Jim, you do it somewhere outside the home, out on the beach, say, and there’s not much mess for anybody to clean up.’ When he says he doesn’t think he can shoot himself, you keep telling him he can, and show him just how to do it, and eventually you’ve got him convinced. ‘With help you can find the necessary courage to go through with it. And I have all the help I need now.’ Troxell’s words to me on the phone Saturday night. I thought he was talking about going to the police, but what he was really talking about was putting that bullet in his brain.”

“Bullshit,” Casement said again.

“Then there’s the clincher,” I said, “the weapon itself. Brand-new twenty-two-caliber automatic. Where did he get it?”

“How should I know? Bought it someplace.”

“Where?”

“A gun shop, where else.”

“That’s what you said this morning. But you know and I know nobody can buy a handgun in this state without a valid permit. Troxell never applied for one. I checked.”

“So what? So some sleazeball dealer sold it to him under the counter. Or he bought it on the street.”

“There aren’t that many sleazeball dealers who’d risk a stiff fine and a jail sentence on such a small illegal sale. How would a man like Troxell, an advocate of gun control, go about finding one in the first place? Same thing for a street buy-how would he know where to go and who to approach? No, he had to’ve gotten the piece from somebody he knew.”

“Not me.”

“Closed-off type like him, no close friends except you-it couldn’t be anybody else. You sell sporting goods, you have easy access to target weapons like the twenty-two he used.”

“You can’t tie that pistol to me,” Casement said. “No way.”

“Pistol. Right. That’s another thing you said this morning. I told you and Mrs. Troxell that he’d shot himself, she said why did he do it that way. And you said, ‘A pistol… that’s as quick as it gets.’ ”

“Gun, pistol, what’s the difference?”

“Pistol refers to a semiautomatic handgun. You damn well know that in your business. But I didn’t say what kind of weapon Troxell used. It could’ve been a revolver, or a even a shotgun or rifle.”

“I just assumed it was a pistol. You can’t prove any different.”

“No?”

“No. Can’t prove a goddamn thing you’ve said.”