Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

“Nothing. Just an idea.”

“What sort of idea?”

I couldn’t look at him; he’d have seen it in my expression. I caught up the two albums, took them back to the closet and shut them away. By the time I turned around again, I had my facial muscles under control.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m going to go talk to the neighbors again; there might have been somebody you missed. Suppose you stay here, in case she comes back. Or calls.”

“All right.”

“While you’re waiting you can write me out a list of names and addresses of Mrs. Peterson’s friends in this area. I know you talked to all of them yourself, but I want to check with them again. Will you do that?”

“Sure, whatever you want.”

I got out of there; went over past the fenced pasture where the horses were grazing, toward a big white house on the other side. My mind kept working, putting it all together, making me sweat a little. I did not want to believe it was possible, but there it was.

Hannah Peterson’s first husband hadn’t been anybody called Adams. His name had been Lester Raymond.

She had been married to the man who had murdered her father.

It had to be that way. Arleen Bradford had told me that Hannah had run off to Nebraska with her first husband; that she’d done it not long after Raymond murdered his wife and her lover and disappeared with all the cash and negotiable securities; and that Raymond was the macho type and used to come over to the Bradford place fairly often. Hannah had only been eighteen at the time, a young and impressionable age, and she’d inherited her father’s love of trains; another train buff like Raymond was just the type to attract her. Add all of that together with the fact Raymond had lived in Omaha himself for thirteen months in 1967 and 1968, and you had too many things that dovetailed too perfectly to be coincidence.

The irony of it was bitter. Raymond had gone berserk when he found out about his wife’s infidelity, but he’d been playing around himself; some macho men were like that, the old double standard. Or, hell, maybe he hadn’t gone berserk after all. Maybe he’d known about the cash and securities, maybe he’d gone out to the architect’s place in Malibu with the intention of stealing the money, maybe the murders had been premeditated. So he could afford to go off with his young girlfriend, Hannah, and start a new life.

In any case, where did Hannah herself fit in? Had she been a party to the killings and the theft? It wasn’t likely, not from what I knew about her. She may have had questionable morals, but she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. Whatever had motivated Raymond that afternoon in Malibu, I doubted if she had found out what he’d done until afterward.

Why had she stayed with him once she did find out? A combination of reasons, probably. Fear; Runquist had said she’d been afraid of the man. Fear of the law, too, of being put in jail as an accessory to homicide. Her youth. Love for Raymond, or at least a strong infatuation. Maybe a sense of adventure and excitement at the idea of living with a fugitive. And the money, of course. Yeah, money would have been a strong mitigating factor in anything Hannah had ever decided to do.

Then why had she finally left him? Again, a combination of reasons. Disillusionment. Raymond was a lot older than she was, he was basically a law-abiding, hard-working citizen; he’d taken most of the money and put it into a house and a business in Omaha. Hannah wasn’t ready to settle down as the wife of a middle-aged man in Nebraska. So they’d fought, and the relationship had deteriorated, and finally she’d got up enough courage to sneak out one night and come running back home to California.

But why home? Well, neither her father nor her sister knew the man she’d run off with was Raymond; they probably hadn’t known she was in Omaha either until she told them. So there was no danger to her there. Still, hadn’t she been afraid Raymond would come after her, for fear that she might expose him to the police? No, it wouldn’t work that way. She couldn’t have exposed Raymond without exposing herself as an accessory; Hannah was no martyr, and Raymond had to have known that as well as anybody. Maybe she’d written him a note, or called him once she was clear of Omaha. If he left her alone she’d never tell anyone about him, all she wanted was her freedom… something like that.

And Raymond hadn’t chased after her. What he’d done instead was to cover himself, just in case Hannah slipped up, by moving out of Nebraska and heading for Denver. That had all been late in 1968. Meanwhile Hannah had taken up with the rock musician and was busily engaged in forgetting about Lester Raymond. Except for those photos in her album, that is. For some reason-narcissism again, maybe-she’d kept four pages of snapshots of her and Raymond and Omaha for her own private viewing.

It was easy enough to figure why she’d burned the photos on Friday night: after all these years Lester Raymond had come back into her life, and in the craziest, most terrifying way possible. No wonder she’d been distraught. It wasn’t just that her father had been murdered; it was that he’d been murdered by her former husband. Rage, or whatever emotion had been governing her at the time, had led her to rip the photos out of the album and destroy them.

And then what?

Sometime between six o‘clock, when Runquist left her, and eight o’clock, when she’d telephoned him, she had had another call. From Raymond? Yeah, it must have been. But why would he have contacted her of all people?

Well, I thought then, why not? He was on the run again, with a fresh murder rap hanging over him; he didn’t have much money this time, he had no transportation; he was desperate. And when the story broke in the papers on Friday, Hannah’s name had been right there-“Hannah Peterson, of Sonoma.” She was the only person he could turn to for help, because he could force her to give it to him; he had her in a box on the accessory thing back in 1967. If she refused to help him-with money, a car, a place to hide, whatever-he’d tell the police all about her involvement.

But that was as far as I could take it on deduction and speculation alone. Where had Raymond called Hannah from on Friday night? Here in Sonoma? It didn’t have to be; he could have holed up anywhere in the vicinity, told her to come pick him up or bring him something. Why had she called me? And where were the two of them now? Had Raymond done something to her? Or was it just that she was on the road somewhere, with or without him, maybe on her way back home?

I hadn’t told Runquist about any of this; the shape he was in, it would have pushed him right over the edge. The last thing I needed on my hands right now was a candidate for the twitch bin. Telling the police about it was another matter. I had to do that, and I would-but not just yet. The problem was, even with all my fancy deduction and speculation I didn’t have one shred of proof to back it up. Hannah had burned the photographs; none of her family or friends knew much about her first husband; the FBI obviously hadn’t identified her yet as the woman Raymond was married to in Omaha; and at first consideration the whole idea sounded screwy as hell. By the time I got done talking to the Sonoma cops, the county cops, the FBI, and Christ knew who else, it would be tomorrow afternoon.

Maybe I could turn up a lead on my own, here and now. If I could manage that I would have something more substantial to take to the authorities. I’d give myself the afternoon, until five o’clock. If I hadn’t come up with anything by then, and if Hannah still hadn’t returned home, it was straight to the Sonoma Police Department…

One of the horses in the pasture made a loud snorting noise. It came from close by and it jarred me out of my musing. I had stopped walking and was leaning up against the fence, and the horse, a big reddish beast with hairy legs, was giving me a baleful look from about five feet away. Its teeth were bared as if it were thinking about taking a bite out of my neck.