Bill Pronzini - The Stalker

“You run those last four through R&I?”

“What I was doing when you came in.”

Commac nodded. “I wonder if we’ll turn anything there.”

“Is that a question, or are you thinking out loud?”

“A little of both, I guess.”

Flagg said, “Probably draw the same blank we did on Kilduff and Conradin.”

“Is that a considered opinion, or are you just being cynical?”

Flagg grinned. “A little of both, I guess.”

The phone on Commac’s desk buzzed; it was an interdepartmental call. He depressed the button and lifted the receiver. He listened for a moment, said “Yes, sir,” and replaced the instrument. To Flagg he said, “Boccalou wants to see us, Pat.”

“What on?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Well,” Flagg said, getting to his feet, “here we go.”

They went across the bull pen and Commac knocked on a door marked: CHIEF OF DETECTIVES. A voice said to come in. They stepped inside and stood respectfully before the desk of Chief Nello Boccalou. Boccalou had inscrutable green eyes, a firm chin with a Kirk Douglas cleft, and longish silver hair that gave him a leonine and properly authoritative appearance. He smoked imported English tobacco in a long-grain briar pipe, and the office was filled with gray-blue clouds of aromatic smoke. He said, “Commac, Flagg.”

“Morning, Chief,” Commac said.

“Turn anything new on this Kilduff you questioned yesterday?”

“Not yet, sir,” Flagg told him.

Boccalou took the pipe out of his mouth and scowled at it and put it in an ashtray. “Well, I may have something for you. Squeal from the Los Gatos police.”

“Oh?”

“Seems they had a fire-bombing down there last night. Local man killed, assailant or assailants unknown. There were a couple of witnesses—neighbors, the dead man’s pregnant girlfriend, and an unidentified man who chased after the victim when he came running out of the burning house, clothes afire. This unidentified man managed to put the flames out, but it was too late; before the fire department and the Gatos officers arrived, he took off. The girlfriend was hysterical, but when they got her to a hospital and calmed down, she managed to give them a description of the unidentified and a partial on the license plate of his car. One of the neighbors supplied the rest of the plate, and Gatos ran it through DMV. Who do you suppose the car belongs to?”

“Steve Kilduff,” Commac said immediately.

“Uh-huh,” Boccalou said. “Description matches, too. Gatos has a want on him for questioning. They’re requesting we pick him up.”

“What’s the name of the guy who died?” Flagg asked. “The Gatos resident?”

Boccalou looked at a form on his desk. “Drexel,” he answered. “Lawrence Drexel.”

Commac and Flagg exchanged glances. “He’s on the Bellevue Personnel Roster,” Commac said. “He was stationed with Kilduff and Conradin.”

“It looks like a tie-in on the Smithfield unsolved, then.”

“Yeah, it sure does.”

“Go on over to this Kilduff’s apartment and bring him in on a hold for Gatos,” Boccalou said. “We’ll see what he has to say for himself.”

“Right.”

While they were waiting for the elevator to take them down into the vehicle garage in the basement of the Hall of Justice, Commac said, “How does this whole thing look to you, Pat?”

“Like there’s more to it than we might first credit,” Flagg answered.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not really.”

“Do you think Kilduff had something to do with this Drexel’s death last night?”

“Boccalou said he was the one who tried to save him.”

“Yeah.”

Commac rubbed the back of his neck. “Kilduff was scared when we talked to him yesterday. Scared shitless. The way you’re scared if somebody’s got a gun to the back of your neck.”

“I had that feeling, too,” Flagg said. “But I can’t figure an angle either. Hell, it’s been eleven years since that Smithfield job. Why, all of a sudden; should the guys who pulled it off—if Kilduff and the others are the guys who pulled it off—begin dying mysteriously?”

“There’s the obvious answer.”

“One of their own, you mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It doesn’t add,” Flagg said. “The time factor is all wrong. The only logical motive would be the money, and eleven years makes that ludicrous.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what else can it be?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Maybe Kilduff does.”

“Well, if he doesn’t,” Commac said, “he’s got a pretty good idea.”

The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside. They rode down to the basement in silence.

16

He had entered the hallway, walking stiffly, purposefully, and he was reaching out for the telephone receiver when the bell shrilled at him. He came up short, pulling his hand back as if the sudden cacophonous sound had somehow imparted a physical shock. He stood there listening to his heart plunge in his chest, and the bell rang a second time, and a third, and then he put out his hand and caught up the receiver and put it to his ear. He said “Hello?” carefully, guardedly.

“Mr. Kilduff?” an unfamiliar masculine voice said. “Mr. Steven Kilduff?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, speaking.”

“My name is Fazackerly, Deputy Sheriff Ed Fazackerly. I’m with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.”

He frowned, working his tongue over his lips. Now what? he thought. Jesus, now what? He said, “I... don’t understand.”

“You own a small fishing cabin on the Petaluma River, is that correct? In Duckblind Slough?”

“Why... yes, that’s right.”

“Well, we’re investigating the death by drowning of a young woman found about seven this morning near the dock at the rear of your cabin,” Fazackerly said. “Two foul-weather fishermen trolling the slough for catfish saw her floating face down in the water there. They summoned us immediately.”

A cold thing began to work its way slowly up along Kilduff’s back. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t—”

“We subsequently found evidence of recent occupancy of your cabin, Mr. Kilduff.”

“You mean somebody’s been living there?”

“Yes, for the past few days. You weren’t aware of this fact, I take it.”

“No. No, I wasn’t.”

“I wonder if I might speak to your wife?”

“My wife?” he asked, and the cold thing grew colder.

“Yes. Is she at home now?”

“No, she’s not here.”

“May I ask where she is?”

“I... don’t know.”

“Would you mind explaining that?”

“We ... we separated last week . . . ” Pause—one heartbeat, two—and then the automatic and immediate defensive barriers constructed by his brain collapsed, and the inescapable implications of Fazackerly’s words overwhelmed him. His knees seemed to buckle, as if the joints had somehow liquefied, and the cold thing froze his spine into humped rigidity, and a terrible tingling pain flashed upward through his groin, into his belly, into his chest, taking the breath away from him momentarily.

The telephone crackled. “Mr. Kilduff?”

The hard rubber circle of the receiver crushed his ear painfully against the side of his head. He fought air into his lungs, and they responded convulsively, expanding, contracting, and he got words out then, breaking a silence that was, in his ears, as loud as the combing of surf in a storm: “Jesus God, you don’t think Andrea is—?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kilduff,” Fazackerly said. “We found your wife’s car, a tan Volkswagen, parked in the clearing in front, and her purse was inside the cabin, on the table. Your name was on her insurance ID card as next of kin...”