Bill Pronzini: Vixen

She moved away from me without answering, out onto the balcony where she stood stiffly outlined against the sweeping view of the city and the bay. I had the good sense not to follow her. She was not out there very long. And when she came back inside, it was without any trace of anger or resentment.

“I thought it over,” she said, “and you’re right. You know me so well it’s scary sometimes.”

“Not as well as you know me. Which is even scarier.”

That earned me a wan smile. “You fetch Emily while I get ready. Then we’ll head over to Marin.”

We spent two hours in Muir Woods, part of it wandering the network of marked trails among the groves of giant coast redwoods in search of a suitable spot. When we found one, we slipped off among the towering trees — another small law respectfully broken — and once we were sure we were alone and unobserved, Kerry opened the mortuary container and carefully scattered Cybil’s ashes among several of the tall trees. Then the three of us held hands and murmured words of remembrance to one another and thought our private thoughts. Kerry was solemn throughout; I imagined she might cry a little, but she didn’t. She gave me another small smile, this one sad, wistful, on the walk back to the car.

All in all, it was a private, peaceful, dignified ceremony.

We agreed that Cybil would have approved.

I treated Kerry and Emily to Sunday morning brunch, and afterward we went to the park for a leisurely walk around Stowe Lake, then home to our individual pursuits. Normal, quiet, relaxing day that I expected would continue through to bedtime.

But it didn’t.

Because this was the day the Cory Beckett powder keg suddenly and lethally blew up.

Most wage earners look forward to time off on weekends, one or two days of freedom to rest, putter, engage in recreational pastimes. Runyon wasn’t one of them anymore. Not after the long, empty months in Seattle following Coleen’s slow and agonizing death, not after the move to San Francisco and his failure to end the long estrangement with Joshua, not even after he’d become involved with Bryn. Work was his primary focus, the one thing he was good at, the only activity that gave him any real satisfaction.

Weekends when he had no business to occupy his time were nothing more than a string of hours of enforced waiting, to be endured and gotten through. He had no hobbies, no particular interest in sports or cultural events; he was constitutionally incapable of sleeping more than five or six hours a night, or of sitting around the apartment reading or staring at the tube or just vegetating. An active diversion more job-related than pleasurable was the only sure way he’d found to deal with those empty Saturdays and Sundays: close himself inside the Ford and burn up long miles and tanksful of gas on the highways, back roads, streets, and byways of the greater Bay Area and beyond, familiarizing and refamiliarizing himself with the territory and what went on in each part of it. The better he knew his turf, the better he could do his job.

This weekend was not one of the empty ones. This Saturday and Sunday he’d been working a field case, acting on a hunch. It was one of the few jobs he disliked on general principle, involving stakeouts and spy photography, but he didn’t mind it so much in this case because the subject was the sort of scofflaw it would feel good to take down.

The stakeout was in Belmont, near a fairly affluent tract home owned by a businessman in his forties named Garza. Garza had a large accident policy with Northwestern Insurance and had put in a claim citing an on-the-job injury that prevented him from doing any sort of manual labor. He had a doctor’s report to back him up. Northwestern smelled fraud and hired the agency to investigate, with Runyon being given the assignment.

Fraud was what it was. He’d found out that Garza and the doctor were old high school buddies who played golf together now and then, conducted a couple of drive-bys at Garza’s home and business, and finally readied his digital camcorder and began the stakeouts in the hope of proving the subject wasn’t anywhere near as incapacitated as he claimed.

The Saturday stakeout had been a bust; Garza had spent most of the day at the small plumbing supply company he owned, supervising his handful of employees and doing nothing contrary to his injury claim. The hunch that had drawn Runyon to the subject’s house today was the fact that Garza was having a new driveway put in. The man was too smart to do any heavy work at his place of business, but there was the chance that he’d decided to cut costs by doing some of the driveway renovation himself.

Most of the day it had looked like another bust. But then a little past three-thirty, Garza figured it was safe enough to put in a couple of hours of work on the driveway. The garage door went up and there he was, coming out with a shovel in hand. He looked around without spotting Runyon in the Ford, then started shoveling and spreading gravel. No strain, no pain, not even a wince while he worked.

Runyon had recorded three full minutes of damning video when his cell vibrated. He put the camcorder down before he checked the phone. And then he forgot all about Garza.

The caller was Kenneth Beckett, with his third and final cry for help.

“Help me, Mr. Runyon. Please. I don’t want to do it.”

The naked desperation in the kid’s voice put Runyon on instant alert. He could feel himself going tight inside and out. “I don’t understand. What don’t you want to do?”

“The gun... I couldn’t, I couldn’t...”

“Cory’s gun?”

“She said I had to do it because of what happened to Mr. Vorhees.” The kid’s shaky voice changed, rose in the falsetto imitation of his sister’s. “‘He’s out of control, Kenny, we can’t let him hurt us, too.’”

Chaleen. Vorhees’ killer after all, for some reason as yet unclear. And Cory found out about it. And now, in her warped mind, it was payback time.

“But it’s not right,” Beckett said. “Even a bastard like him, even if he did what she said... it’s not right. I tried to do it like she told me to but I can’t .”

“Then don’t. Don’t! You understand me?”

A kind of moan and then silence.

“Ken? Where are you calling from?”

“His place. She let me have my cell, so I could call her when it’s over, but I...”

“You haven’t called her?”

“No, I couldn’t. Just you.”

“Chaleen’s place, you said. His home?”

“He’s in there. Cory put something in his drink when they were together before. He...” The falsetto again. “‘It’ll be easy, all you have to do is put the gun to his head and close your eyes and squeeze the trigger...’”

“Ken, listen to me. Chaleen’s home, is that where you’re at?”

“... No. The factory.”

“And you’re where now, exactly? Inside? Outside?”

“In my van, out front.”

“All right. Stay there. Don’t leave the van, don’t call Cory, don’t do anything. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You understand?”

Runyon was talking to himself. The line hummed emptily.

It took him twenty-five minutes of fast driving to cover the distance from Belmont to Chaleen Manufacturing in the city. Nearing dusk by the time he reached Basin Street. The industrial area was quiet, Sunday deserted. When Runyon entered the last block, drove past the factory grounds, the ropy muscles in his shoulders and back drew even more taut.

The street was empty of vehicles of any kind, and the only one inside the chain-link fence, parked in the shadows next to the detached office building, was a newish black Cadillac. There was no sign of the blue Dodge van.