Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

“What about Rakubian?”

“There must be some other way...”

“To keep him from hunting her down? He’s relentless. He’s not going to give up, vanish from her life or ours.”

“Lord, how I wish he would.”

Suppose he did? Hollis thought.

Suppose he does ?

“Promise me you’ll be rational about this,” Cassie said. “That you won’t do anything we’ll all regret.”

“Rational. Yes.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

It was not another lie. Rational was exactly what he would be from now on. He needed a plan, one that eliminated the threat of potential witnesses, the necessity for a bogus alibi. One in which there was no body and no evidence linking him to any crime. A rational, detailed plan, drawn with the same care as he drew one of his building designs. Could he go through with it then?

Yes, because he had to.

“You’re right,” he said, “we have to let Angela do what she believes is best. Give her as much support as we can.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean it. But this Boston idea... I don’t care for it at all. It’s one thing to have people in support groups helping her; they know what they’re doing. But trusting complete strangers three thousand miles away? Even if Eric can arrange it, I think it’s a mistake.”

“So do I. I’ll talk to her again, try to persuade her not to rush into anything. If she won’t listen, we’ll just have to let her go. But at least get some information from Eric about his friend’s family when you talk to him.”

“I will.”

“The only other thing we can do is pray,” she said. “Trust in God to keep them safe.”

God, he thought, God created David Rakubian, didn’t He? God isn’t the answer.

The answer is me.

Thursday Morning

Angela and Kenny were still in bed when he left the house. Cassie usually got up when he did, even though she wasn’t due at Animal Care until ten, but not today; she was inwardly focused, uninterested in both coffee and conversation. He understood her reticence and was grateful for it. His head ached from tension and lack of sleep; he had no more patience than she did for a replowing of last night’s hard and bitter ground. They’d talk later, after he spoke to Eric and she had another go-round with Angela.

On the way downtown he tried calling Eric’s private number at his Cal Poly dorm. Busy signal. And another at the number of his roommate, Larry Sherwood. Dorm life was a lot different now than when he’d gone to college; there were private phone lines in each room, to accommodate computers as well as telephones. Constant computer use made getting through difficult sometimes. He’d just have to keep trying.

The building Mannix & Hollis, Architects, shared with two other small businesses was a converted and refurbished Victorian, once someone’s elegant home, on the bank of the Los Alegres River near the boat basin. An attractive location, with a view of part of the historic downtown district across the waterway. And a barometer of how well he and Gabe were doing, how far they’d come since pooling their talents and starting the firm in the old, cramped quarters on North Main fourteen years ago.

He parked in the adjacent lot, next to Gloria’s noisy — “farty,” she called it — little Nissan. Gloria Rodriguez, the firm’s occasionally irascible, often foulmouthed (in both English and Spanish) and indispensable jack-of-all-trades: computer draftsperson, bookkeeper and accountant, receptionist, secretary. Most mornings she was in and working before he arrived; Gabe, a habitual slow starter, seldom showed up until after nine-thirty. Gloria’s computer workstation was a neat island in the office’s chaotic sea of angled drafting tables and flat-topped tables cluttered with designs, specs, U.S. and California code books, supply catalogs that hadn’t been shelved with the others covering one wall. She swiveled away from her Mac as he entered, hoisted her plump body out of her chair, and scowled at him. He knew that scowl. Knew even before she pushed three business-size envelopes at him that David Rakubian was its source.

“These were shoved under the door when I got here,” she said. “Looks like that verga has taken to hand-delivering his crap now.”

Hollis took the envelopes. Same as the others, plain white, except that the only computer-generated typing on these was his full name, Jackson M. Hollis. Gloria wasn’t reticent about opening anyone’s mail; the fact that the envelopes were still sealed meant that she didn’t care to view the contents any more than he did. She knew all about Rakubian. He could not have kept the situation from her and Gabe if he’d wanted to, not after the phone calls and mailings began coming here as well as to the house.

“I’ll bet he showed up at your place last night too,” Gloria said. “He didn’t go after Angela and Kenny again?”

“No. Phone calls and drive-bys, mostly.”

“Jesus, Jack, how much more of this can she take?”

“Not much more. She’s made up her mind to go into hiding with the boy.”

“Oh, shit. When?”

“Soon. I doubt we’ll be able to talk her out of it this time.”

Gloria scowled and heaved a sigh. “I hate to say it, but maybe it’s the best way. I mean, guys like Rakubian, stalkers, psychos...” She crossed herself and added, “I don’t understand how God can let people like him walk this earth.”

Hollis didn’t respond to that. He said, “I’ll be in my office,” and crossed to enter his private cubicle at the rear.

He threw the envelopes on his desk, cocked a hip against the edge, and tried again to call Eric. Still busy, both lines. He resisted an urge to bang the receiver down, went to open the blinds.

The early fog was beginning to burn off; pale sunlight sparkled on the muddy brown water below. For a time he stood looking downriver, watching a small launch glide beneath the D Street drawbridge. Pleasure craft and dredgers were all you saw on the river these days. Not so long ago, when Los Alegres had been an agricultural center mostly undiscovered by day-trippers, San Francisco commuters, Silicon Valley dot-commers, and voracious suburban developers, there had been barges loaded with feed and grain from the old mills that had once flourished here; and until the mid-sixties, barges and small cargo ships had carried chickens, eggs, produce, and other goods to and from the San Francisco Bay markets.

Everything changes, he thought. For good reason, bad reason, no reason at all. Blink your eyes and familiar things, things you’ve taken for granted all or most of your life, are suddenly different. Blink your eyes and everything you’ve built, the whole perfectly designed, rock-solid structure of your existence, is so unstable it might collapse at any time.

He turned from the window, sat at his desk. The thick file with Rakubian’s name on it was in the locked bottom drawer; he took it out, set it beside the three envelopes. Looked at them, looked away at the framed blueprints of two of his AIA award-winning home designs on the wall. Out front he could hear Gloria running the big copy machine. He was aware of the faint, not unpleasant ammonia smell of blueprints that seems always to linger in architects’ offices, that was overpowering for a time after the blueprint service made delivery of a new batch. Familiar, comfortable. One more part of his life on the brink of irrevocable change because of a tiny malfunctioning gland and one man’s psychotic obsession.

Three or four minutes passed before he finally stirred and picked up one of the envelopes, tore it open. Single sheet of white bond paper, black computer printing in its exact middle. Two words in oversize capital letters.