Bill Pronzini: Mourners

He walked past the house, taking his time. Three pot-metal numbers were arranged vertically on one of the rounded porch pillars, just readable in the darkness; he made a mental note of them. The path Troxell had taken was like a short, hollow tube that ended in a wood-and-wire gate set into an eight-foot-high frame joined to house and garage. Nothing was visible beyond it except shadow shapes given faint definition by the diffused light glow. All the windows on that side of the house were dark as well.

No cars on the street at the moment, no one on the sidewalks. Runyon stepped quickly into the tube. The wind made sounds in the night; there were other sounds, too, but they were all muted city noises, none close by.

It wasn’t until he reached the gate that he could see what lay behind and below. There was more room back there than he’d expected; an overgrown boundary fence was visible two-thirds of the way down the incline, so that most of the available yard space belonged to the Victorian’s owners. Between the house and the fence was a shelf, natural or man-made, and another building squatted there-a low, blocky structure maybe forty feet square, with a door and window on the near side. A set of wooden steps angled down to it from the gate. Granny unit, probably, either built to conform to city codes or put up without permits. One large room or two small ones, plus bath. Nice and private. The light came through the single window, filtered by closed blinds. No way to tell from here if Troxell was alone inside or not.

Runyon tested the gate latch. Locked, of course. You could climb over the frame, but you couldn’t do it without making some noise. He was trespassing as it was; no point in compounding the offense. He retraced his steps to the sidewalk, made sure he was unobserved as he came out, and climbed back up to the Ford.

Long wait this time. After a few minutes, he cranked his mind down to basic awareness and just sat there, low on the seat, not moving until leg and shoulder and back muscles protested and then just enough to ease the cramping.

At 10:24 by the dashboard clock Troxell reappeared and walked in deliberate strides to his wheels. Nothing in his hands now; they swung open at his sides. Runyon moved as quickly and easily as if he’d been sitting still for two and a half minutes instead of two and a half hours. He started the engine, waited until the BMW was away from the curb and heading downhill before he made a dark U-turn, then put on his lights and followed.

Subject went home, straight home, following the identical route he’d taken to Wisconsin Street. Runyon parked in the same place he’d waited earlier. It was only after the last of the house lights went off upstairs, half an hour later, that he was satisfied Troxell was in for the night.

Home himself then, a short drive up Nineteenth Avenue to his apartment on Ortega-four nondescript furnished rooms on the third floor of an equally nondescript stucco building. He hadn’t eaten since a late lunch, hadn’t been hungry enough to bother before tonight’s surveillance. He made himself a cup of tea, found half a container of Chinese takeout in the refrigerator. Colleen’s drink, Colleen’s favorite food. His, too, now. In some way he didn’t quite understand he needed to maintain the patterns the two of them had followed when she was alive. Continuity, maybe. Or a way to hang on to the hope that she was still alive, somewhere, on some other plane of existence, even though he wasn’t religious and did not really believe in either an afterlife or immortality.

He ate at the dinette table in the kitchen, then added hot water to his teacup and took it into the front room. At the secretary desk in there was a copy of the reverse city directory; the agency had a copy, but he liked having his own for situations like the one tonight. The occupants of the blue Stick Victorian had a listed phone number and the reverse directory identified them as Ralph and Justine Linden. He booted up his laptop, wrote out a detailed eight-paragraph report on the evening’s surveillance that included the property owners’ names, and e-mailed it to Tamara.

JAKE RUNYON

Olivet Cemetery, Colma.

Troxell’s second stop on Thursday morning. His first had been the florist shop on West Portal that Bill had followed him to the day before, where he’d picked up a large, white-flowered wreath. He must have been a good customer; there’d been a CLOSED sign on the shop’s front door and he’d had to knock to gain admittance. Then he’d driven straight out Nineteenth Avenue to the 280 Freeway and on down to Colma.

Overcast morning, cold, damp from thin streamers of blowing fog. The weather and the early hour combined to keep the mazelike grounds mostly deserted. Only one other car was parked in the section Troxell went to, two-thirds of the way in-a maroon Datsun, no sign of its occupant. Subject parked his BMW a short distance behind the Datsun; Runyon pulled up fifty yards away. He watched Troxell take the wreath from the trunk and carry it in among the graves, moving as if he were passing through a narrow tunnel, eyes front all the way; he seemed to have no interest or awareness in what lay behind or to either side of him. Man with a single-minded purpose-to reach the end of the tunnel and whatever waited there.

For that reason, Runyon followed more closely than he would have otherwise, on a zigzag course among the headstones and obelisks and wooden markers. There were no paths here, all the graves set into barbered lawn shaded by cypress, yew, and palm trees. The grass was slick with dew, and he was careful of his footing. He could feel the cold and damp stiffening his bad leg. Nearly six years since the car accident that had fractured the tibia in three places, forced him to endure two rounds of surgery, and then to take a partial disability retirement from the Seattle PD, and he still had twinges and the slight limp in cold, damp weather. But it wasn’t much of a cross compared to what had happened to Ron Cain, behind the wheel when their high-speed fugitive pursuit turned deadly. If he closed his eyes he could still see, as if the image had been burned into his retinas, what was left of his partner lying crushed and bloody inside all that twisted metal.

Troxell had been to this part of the cemetery before, more than once-evident from the fact that he neither slowed his pace nor glanced at any of the markers he passed. He knew which grave he wanted and he went straight to it. Two things set it apart from its neighbors. One was the headstone-larger and taller than most, made of shiny new white marble, with gold lettering and filigree work. Expensive. The other thing was the number of wreaths and bouquets that draped the grave and covered the lower section of the stone. More than half a dozen, all of them of real flowers, not the artificial variety that decorated most of the other burial plots; some fresh, some starting to wilt, one spray of white carnations that had turned brown and brittle.

Troxell transferred the dead carnations to a nearby trash receptacle, then carefully placed the new wreath where the carnations had lain. When he was satisfied, he straightened and stood stiffly, unmoving, his head bowed as if he might be praying. He stayed like that for a long time, the fog wisps swirling around him, as oblivious to the cold as he was to his surroundings.

Runyon was so intent on Troxell and the gravesite that he didn’t see the woman until she walked into the periphery of his vision.

His first look at her was brief and indefinite; she came at an angle from his right, and she was wearing a bulky coat, a muffler, and a knitted cap that obscured much of her bent head. He paid some heed to her when he realized she was heading in Troxell’s direction, enough to tell that she was young, long-legged, red-haired. But she didn’t have his full attention until she approached the grave where the subject stood and halted next to him.