Bill Pronzini: Bones

He said, “You think it's a one-eight-seven? Why?”

One-eight-seven is police slang; Section 187 of the California Penal Code pertains to willful homicide. “I didn't say that,” I said.

“If his wife killed him, it's a one-eight-seven.”

“I know that. But I didn't say I think she killed him. I said I think she's covering up. She knew he was dead long before we found him.”

“I repeat: Why?”

“Three reasons. First, her actions today, the things she said to me on the phone and after I got here-they don't ring true. She said she didn't call her husband's doctor because she was too upset. She didn't call the police either. And she didn't try to get a friend or a neighbor to help her. Instead she left the house, drove down to Van Ness, and called me. Why? Because she wanted someone who knew how suicidal he'd been to find the body; she didn't want to admit that he was dead before she left here.”

“Hardly conclusive,” McFate said.

I said, “Then there's the gun.”

“What about the gun?”

“It's under Kiskadon's chair. You saw that. If he shot himself, how did it get all the way under there?”

“It fell out of his hand and bounced on the carpet,” McFate said. “If you remember, his right arm is hanging down near the floor.”

“Leo,” I said, and watched him wince. He hates for me to call him Leo; he would prefer that I call him Mr. McFate, or maybe just sir. “Leo, the gun is lying all the way under the chair, over on the left side. Even if it fell out of his hand, it's not likely that it could bounce more than a foot on a shag carpet.”

He scowled at me. “I suppose you deduce from that that Mrs. Kiskadon threw the weapon under the chair.”

“She had something to do with it being there, yes. I can't say whether or not she threw it under the chair, or whether or not she actually shot him. But she was in the room when he died.”

“And just how do you deduce that?”

“Her handbag, Leo. On the floor behind the desk with half its contents spilled out.”

“I saw it,” he said stiffly. “I assumed she dropped it when the two of you found the deceased.”

“Uh-uh. She didn't have that bag or any other when I got here. Not in her car, not in her hand when she followed me in. She told me her husband had come out of the den earlier, waving the gun around, and then went back in there and locked the door; she didn't say she'd been in there, and she would have unless she had something to hide. And if she wasn't in the den, what was the purse doing in there? And why is it upended on the floor unless there was a struggle or something that led to the shooting?”

McFate didn't say anything. But he was thinking about it now. You didn't have to beat him over the head with logic-not too hard, anyhow.

“The car keys must have been in her coat pocket,” I said. “Either that, or she scooped them up off the floor before she ran out. I guess you noticed that the door has a push-button lock. Kiskadon probably pushed the button when he went in there for the last time; all she did was shut the door on her way out, maybe without even realizing it. All she was interested in was getting away from here.”

McFate said grudgingly, “If you're right, then she must have murdered him.”

“Not necessarily. It could have been an accident-a struggle over the gun. Why don't you ask her?”

“I don't need you to tell me my job.”

“God forfend I should ever try.”

“Wait here,” he said, and stalked out.

I waited, but not for long. I was even twitchier now and the kitchen seemed too small and too much of a reminder of the life the Kiskadons had shared before today, when what they shared became death. People were moving around out in the hall; I opened the door and looked out. The assistant coroner had arrived and Dwiggins was ushering him into the den. I came out of the kitchen and wandered down there, being careful not to get in anybody's way.

At an angle I could see part of the room, but not the part where the body lay. One of the lab men was down on his knees, poking among the splinters of wood that my forced entry had torn from the jamb. I watched him-and the thought came to me again that this was the way it had been thirty-five years ago, on the night Harmon Crane died. Man is shot in a locked office, door gets busted in, the cops come and poke around and clean up the remains. Some things don't change in thirty-five years; some things never change.

And who says lightning doesn't strike twice? It had struck twice in this case, one father and one son all those years apart, one suicide and one manslaughter…

Twice, I thought.

Or was it one of each? Kiskadon's death had looked like a suicide but wasn't. Why not the same with Harmon Crane? Even with that locked door, the door that the police back then had said couldn't have been gimmicked-wasn't it possible Crane had been murdered after all?

Twice, I thought. Twice!

And I had it. At first, just the simple misdirection gimmick that had fooled the police and everyone else in 1949. But once I had that much, I began to see the rest of it, too: the distortions and subterfuge and misconceptions that had befuddled me, the full circumstances of Crane's death, the significance of that letter carbon, the probable reason Angelo Bertolucci had died and the name of the person who had murdered him. All of it exposed at last, dark and ugly, like those mildewing bones out on the rim of Tomales Bay.

I considered telling it to McFate, but that would have been like telling it to the wall. Besides, it wasn't his case; it was only peripherally related to Kiskadon's death. DeKalb was the man I wanted to tell it to. But not yet, not until I got some personal satisfaction first.

Before long McFate reappeared. I was still in the hallway, still twitchy because I wanted to be on my way. He showed me his scowl and said, “I thought I told you to wait in the kitchen.”

“I had to go to the toilet. What did Mrs. Kiskadon say?”

“… You were right,” he said in reluctant tones. He was looking, now, at the top button on my jacket. “She admitted it.”

“I thought she might. She isn't a very good liar.”

“No, she isn't.”

“She didn't murder him, did she?”

“An accident, she claims.”

“It probably was,” I said. “She's not the type to commit premeditated homicide.”

McFate said with heavy sarcasm, “Thank you for your expert opinion.”

“You're welcome. How did it happen?”

“Her husband spent the night in his den, just as she told you. She tried to talk him out this morning but he wouldn't come, not until about noon.”

“And he was waving the gun around when he finally showed.”

“Yes. He threatened to shoot himself and she told him to go ahead, she couldn't stand it any longer. Fed up, as she put it. He reentered the den and she followed him. She'd been about to go for a drive, just to get away for a while, which is why she was carrying her handbag.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Kiskadon sat at his desk. She tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen; he put the weapon to his temple and held it there with his finger on the trigger, saying he intended to fire.”

“Uh-huh,” I said again. “At which point she panicked and tried to take it away from him. They struggled, she dropped her handbag, and the gun went off.”

“So she alleges.”

“How did the gun get under his chair?”

“It fell on the desk after the discharge,” McFate said. “She must have swept it off onto the floor; she doesn't remember that part of it very clearly.”

I nodded. “Poor Kiskadon. If she'd left him alone, he probably wouldn't have gone through with it. Suicides don't make a production number out of what they're going to do, usually; they just do it.”