Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

He thought he knew the answer to that, too, now, but he did not want to talk about it in front of Gloria. Or with Gabe, for that matter.

He wagged his head, turned to ask Gloria, “Where’re the San Francisco phone directories?”

“Same place they’ve always been, on the bottom shelf with the other directories. Jack, what’s this all about?”

“I’ll explain later. Gabe can tell you some of it.”

“But if I see that woman again, what should I do? Call the cops?”

“No. No police. Don’t do anything.” He started across to the row of wall shelves, stopped and swung around again. “You didn’t happen to see what kind of car she’s driving? On Sunday?”

“No, I didn’t pay any attention.”

“Well, if she shows up around here again, try to find out. The license number, too.”

Mannix asked, “What’re you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet. Something.”

“You want my help?”

“Thanks, but no. We have to handle this ourselves, Cassie and me.”

He shut himself inside his cubicle, opened the San Francisco white pages to the Bs. No residence listing for Valerie Burke, but there was one for a V. Burke: 9871 Parnassus. That had to be her. Make sure, though. Call Macatee, give him an excuse, ask him to check his files.

He put through a call to the Hall of Justice, spoke to a man in Missing Persons whose name didn’t register. Macatee wasn’t in. Wouldn’t be until later in the day. He tried to talk the phone voice into giving him the information about Burke, but all it got him was a refusal and a hang-up.

Hollis put the receiver down, jerked it up again, and rang Animal Care. The first thing Cassie said when he finished relating the news was “We can’t keep this from Angela. Not now.”

“I know it. You’d better be the one to tell her. I’m too wound up. Ask her if she’s had any personal contact, any trouble with Valerie Burke. And what she knows about the woman.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Try to find Burke. There’s one listing in the S.F. phone book that may be her. I tried to get hold of Macatee to confirm, but he’s not on duty.”

“Confront her, try to frighten her off?”

“Yes.”

“If she’s as far gone as we think, it won’t do any good.”

“We have to try. We don’t have any other choice.”

“The police.”

“No, not yet. Not without some kind of proof. The cops are our last resort.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Call Angela,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

Cassie was pale and tense when she got into the Lexus. He tried to find reassuring words; his mind was blank. At length he said, “Angela?”

“I talked to her. Now all three of us are shook up.”

“What did she say about Burke?”

“Not much. She hardly knows her — saw her a few times at Rakubian’s office, never socially. But she had the feeling the woman didn’t like her, resented her for some reason.”

“They have words or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Does she know anything about Burke’s personal life?”

“Nothing at all, and no idea where she lives.”

Dead air hung thick in the car until they were on 101 headed south. Traffic was moderately heavy; it became a constant struggle not to keep changing lanes, to stay within the speed limit.

When the silence grew oppressive, he broke it by voicing his earlier thoughts — that Valerie Burke was someone Rakubian felt he could dominate. Cassie had been staring straight ahead; she roused herself, shifted position so that she was facing him.

“Vulnerable and unstable,” she said. “Love can turn to hate pretty quickly in that kind of personality.”

“He was so arrogant and self-involved, he probably didn’t even notice.”

“Or care if he did. I wonder what put her over the edge that afternoon at his house. Did she go there to kill him? Plead with him to take her back? Or did it have something to do with Angela?”

Something to do with Angela. Hollis remembered his visit to Rakubian’s law offices the day before, Friday. It was possible Burke had eavesdropped, heard some or all of what was said, the lie that Angela was ready to reconcile with Rakubian. Brooded about it that night, and showed up at his home on Saturday in a desperate attempt to talk him out of keeping the appointment in Tomales Bay. He wouldn’t have liked that; he’d have berated her, scorned her, maybe threatened to force her out of his life entirely by firing her. And when she couldn’t stand any more abuse, up went the statuette and down went Rakubian.

It could have happened that way. If so, would Burke say something about Tomales Bay in front of Cassie? He’d have to lie again then, much as he’d hate doing it — pass it off as the ravings of a deranged mind. Cassie must never know how close he’d come to committing murder.

He changed the subject. “Must’ve been a terrific shock for her when she found out his body was gone.”

“Yes, but how did she guess you were responsible?”

She’d eavesdropped, all right: Knew about the appointment, guessed that Hollis must have gone to the house to find out why Rakubian didn’t keep it, and worked out his motive for the cleanup and removal of the corpse.

“Whatever the explanation,” he said, “she knows it was me and she hates me for it. First Angela took him away from her — her interpretation — and then I took away and hid what was left of him. She couldn’t bury him herself, tell him she was sorry, say good-bye.”

“She might even blame us for his murder. You know, ‘I didn’t want to hurt him, I loved him, they made me do it and it’s all their fault.’ But why did she wait so long? Two months is a long time to be plotting revenge.”

“Has to be another reason, something specific to explain the timing.”

After a pause Cassie said, “Angela.”

“What about Angela?”

“ She’s the reason. She took Kenny to Utah two days after the murder. Burke didn’t know where she’d gone, had no way of finding out.”

“That must be it. She was waiting for Angela to resurface, come back home. The first note arrived less than a week after the kids returned. If she’d begun stalking us before then, we might’ve told Angela to stay where she was. Burke wanted us to think we were safe — and for all of us to be together again where she could get at us.”

“It wouldn’t have been hard for her to monitor the situation,” Cassie said. “Drive to Los Alegres once or twice a week, check our house, your workplace and mine, ask discreet questions here and there. She’d’ve known within a few days that they were home.”

She shivered as if with a sudden chill. “It gives me the creeps, thinking of her spying on us, stalking us all that time.”

“She’s gotten bolder, too. As if...”

He let the rest of it slide, but Cassie was thinking along the same lines. She said, “As if she doesn’t care anymore if we know it’s her. That really scares me. That, and what we found at Rakubian’s house yesterday. God only knows what she’ll do next if we don’t find a way to stop her.”

The Parnassus Street address was a four-story brick-and-stone- faced apartment building two blocks from the University of California Medical Center. A bank of mailboxes climbed one wall of the entranceway, each labeled with the tenants’ names. Neither Valerie Burke nor V. Burke was among them.

Hollis rang the bell on the box that bore the words “Bldg Mgr.” A young woman cradling an infant told them that yes, Valerie Burke had been a resident here, but she’d given up her apartment and moved out at the end of June. No, she hadn’t left a forwarding address or said where she was going. No, the woman had no idea where Burke worked or anything else about her; she’d kept to herself and besides, people in this building minded their own business. That last with an edge to it, as if she were making an accusation.