Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth

Over in the park, next to where her poodle was squatting and soiling the grass, the woman stood peering in my direction again. So I got out of the car and hoisted the hood and pretended to fiddle around with the engine. That made her lose interest in me; when she came out a couple of minutes later she passed by without a glance. And she did not look back as she followed the poodle along the far sidewalk.

I waited until she turned out of sight on Twenty-third Avenue; then I closed the hood and got back into the front seat. And sat there again, trying not to look at my watch every minute or two. It was only a little past three-thirty: four and a half hours to go on my abbreviated shift. We had settled on a regular timetable beginning at eight tonight-Bert Thomas would be on from then until four A.M., Milo Petrie from four until noon, and me from noon until eight P.M. Which gave me the best of the three shifts, but they didn’t mind and the prerogatives were mine.

My mind fidgeted from one thought to another, the way minds do when you’re just sitting somewhere and not doing anything with your hands. One of the things it kept coming back to was the murder of Christine Webster. I had called Eberhardt while I was in the office, but he had no further information to give me. The city coroner had not finished his post-mortem examination at that time, and the Homicide inspectors assigned to the case-Klein and Logan-had only just begun interviewing the dead girl’s friends and relatives.

Why did Christine have my business card when they found her? That and other questions kept on nagging at me. What kind of trouble had she been in that would make her consider seeing a private detective? Did the trouble have anything to do with her murder? If she’d had the card for any length of time, why hadn’t she called me or come to talk to me?

Twenty years old. Dead. Murdered.

Why? Who and why?

I had a vivid mental image of her lying among the reeds and bushes, all bloody and twisted, and the anger cut at me again and made me feel restless. But there was nothing I could do about her-a dead girl I had never known. Nothing I could do about anything at the moment. Just sit and wait, sit and wait Martin Talbot appeared on the small front porch of his house.

I sat up straighter, watching him as he started down the brick staircase. I knew for sure it was Talbot because Laura Nichols had given me his description earlier, along with one of Victor Carding that she had pried out of her brother. Large, fair-skinned man with fanshell ears and close-cropped, wheat-colored hair. Wearing a tweed overcoat today, no hat or muffler. He turned toward me at the sidewalk and crossed the street ten yards ahead of my car, moving with a mechanical stride, head held stiff and motionless, like an automaton activated by remote control. Even at that distance, I could see that his expression was almost masklike, without animation.

He went through the gate into the park. I waited another ten seconds and then left the car to follow after him. He was a compulsive walker, Mrs. Nichols had said; so he was probably not going anywhere in particular. But the restlessness was still inside me and I was glad to be out and moving around with at least some sense of purpose, to help pass the time.

Talbot led me across the grass to the rim of the grotto, onto a path through the trees, down the steep wooded slope on a series of switchbacked trails. When he reached the grotto he turned to the west, went past and through shaded picnic areas, a wide green with a stage on the south side where concerts were held on summer Sundays, the deserted parking lot that fronted a rustic club building, another green, and finally to the lagoon at the far end.

He stopped on a strip of graveled beach, stood looking out at a handful of ducks floating on the gray water. Rushes and tule grass grew along the near shore; they made me think again of the place at Lake Merced where Christine Webster had been found. The absence of people and the dark sky gave the area a kind of depressingly secluded atmosphere, even though the backsides of several houses on Wawona and Crestlake Drive lined the north and south embankments above. The wind made wet whispery sounds in the pine and eucalyptus branches, built little waves that lapped over the gravel at Talbot’s feet.

There were more picnic benches near the lagoon, beneath a shelter-roof attached to a set of restrooms; I started over there just to keep from waiting at a standstill. As I neared the restrooms Talbot turned from the lagoon and plodded up in the same direction, at an angle to the nearest of the benches. But he did not look at me, or even seem to know I was there. He sat on the bench, stiff-postured, as motionless as a block of wood, and stared out at the lagoon again.

I hesitated, debating with myself. There was something about him, a vague impression I could not quite define, that made me want to take a closer look at him. The last thing you want to do on a surveillance is to approach the subject, make him aware of you-but this was not an ordinary surveillance and Talbot was not an ordinary subject. He seemed to have little awareness of externals: a man lost deep inside himself, suffering in his own private hell. If I spoke to him, chances were he would not remember me five seconds afterward.

All right, then. I moved away from the restrooms and circled around to approach him from the front, moving at a casual pace, He did not seem to see me even when I blocked off his view of the lake. I stopped two feet from where he was sitting. His face was narrow and bonily irregular, I saw then, with deep creases like erosion marks in the cheeks and forehead. The whites of his eyes gave the impression of bleeding: his sister had been right about him not sleeping much since the accident. But there was something else in those eyes, in the fixed vacant stare of the pupils-something that made the hair on my neck bristle.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Would you have the time?”

It took him three or four seconds to respond; then he blinked slightly and focused on me. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” Polite voice, but as empty as the bloodshot eyes.

“I was just wondering what time it was.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I’m not wearing a watch.”

“Thanks anyway.” I paused. “Cold out here, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Cold.”

I wanted to talk to him some more but there was nothing else to say. I just nodded and pivoted away, and immediately his gaze fixated on the lagoon again; he had not moved any part of his body except his head during the brief exchange between us.

Back beside the restrooms, I leaned against the wall with my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my coat. The wind seemed colder now. Whether or not Talbot was in danger from Victor Carding, I thought, that look in his eyes said he was in greater danger from himself. Much greater danger.

It was the look of a man who wants to die.

Talbot left the lagoon a little past five, made a perimeter loop of the park on Crestlake Drive and Nineteenth Avenue, and went back into his house. It was dark by then; he put all the lights on one by one, as if he could not bear to face the night hours unless he was surrounded by light. Chasing shadows-literally. But there were no lights to chase the shadows and the darkness that seemed to be inside him.

The minutes between six and eight o’clock dragged away. I stayed in the car the whole time, fidgeting, putting the heater on now and then to keep warm. Once I saw Talbot’s silhouette at a window on the Wawona Street side; but it was gone seconds later. He did not come outside again.

Bert Thomas showed up at eight sharp to relieve me. I spent a little time talking to him, letting him know my feelings about Talbot. Then I took myself away from there and drove straight home to my flat.