Nothing from him.
“All right,” I said, “look at it this way. I think Cahill bugged Nedra’s house too. Two years ago, before he went to prison the second time. His fixation for her is not only sick, it’s potentially deadly. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes. Potentially deadly.”
“You still believe she’s alive and unharmed, wherever she is? That she’ll come home one day?”
“I have to believe it,” he said.
“Then help put Cahill away. For Nedra’s sake, if not for your family’s. You’ve got no good reason not to, Runyon.”
Silence for almost a minute, while he stared again at the street. The expression on his battered face was fixed. I was not even sure he was thinking about what I’d said until he spoke again.
“All right.”
“You’ll come with us to the Hall of Justice? You’ll file assault charges against Cahill?”
“I’ll file charges,” he said.
Agonistes found four infinity transmitters in the Runyon house — one in each of the three phones they had, including the phone in Kay Runyon’s studio, and another behind the light switch in the master bedroom. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind, he said, that they’d been planted recently. They were brand-new, shiny, dust-free.
As soon as he was done, I got the Runyons into my car and drove downtown to the Hall of Justice. Agonistes followed in his van. Kay Runyon was in much better spirits; her husband’s decision had relieved her and resuscitated her dying optimism. Matt was solemn. At seventeen, life is either carefree or dead-bang serious, without much shading in between. Runyon sat next to me in the front seat, not speaking, body rigid, eyes straight ahead. If he was thinking about backing out at the last minute, I wasn’t going to let him do it.
At the Hall, we ran into a little luck. An inspector I knew named Branislaus was on tap in General Works, so I didn’t have to go through a lot of preliminary explanations. I told Branny most of the story, with backup from Agonistes and Kay Runyon. He asked questions; we supplied answers. Runyon cooperated fully, in flat tones with plenty of candor even when the questions concerned Nedra Merchant and his relationship with her.
The whole thing took about half an hour. Then there was paperwork, and more questions to complete it — another hour. When that was done Kay Runyon asked Branislaus, “Will you arrest Cahill right away, tonight?”
“That depends on the Daly City police, and on how difficult Cahill is to pin down. I’ll request a pickup-and-hold on him immediately. Then it’s out of my hands.”
Agonistes went home with Kay Runyon’s check for five hundred dollars; she hadn’t batted an eye when I told her his fee. I drove the Runyons back to Ashbury Heights. Matt and his father went straight into the house. Mrs. Runyon stayed for a few words with me.
“You’ll keep looking for Nedra?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I thought you would but I wanted to be sure. If we’re ever going to have Vic back, Matt and I, it won’t be until he knows she’s dead. Or alive and no longer available to him.”
“I’ll be in touch, Mrs. Runyon.”
“Thank you,” she said, and before she went into the house she did an odd thing: She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. It made me feel old. And it made me feel bad, because it started me thinking again about Kerry.
I couldn’t go home, not yet, and I had no taste for restaurant food or tavern beer. Where else but to the damn office? No messages: still no word from Kerry. Unless she’d called me at home... but I knew I wouldn’t find a message from her there either. I sat at my desk and tried to lose myself in paperwork, all there was to occupy my hands and my head at seven o’clock on a Saturday evening.
Twenty slow-moving minutes of that — and the telephone bell went off, so loud in the heavy silence that I dropped the pen I was using to sign a dun letter.
I picked up fast, knowing it wouldn’t be Kerry, hoping it would be. It was Kay Runyon. Sounding upset again, frantic to the point of tears.
“It’s Vic,” she said.
“What about him?”
“He found where I hid his car keys. He’s... gone.”
“Take it easy. Maybe he just needed to get out for a while. Even if he went up to Crestmont—”
“You don’t understand. I mean he’s gone. He left me a note. In the bedroom, on the nightstand.”
“A note? Saying what?”
“Saying good-bye.”
Chapter 16
I asked her, “How long ago did he leave?”
“Within the hour. Matt had a date tonight and I went to the store. There wasn’t anything to eat in the house and I thought it would be all right to leave Vic alone for a little while...”
“He seemed okay when you left?”
“Yes. He was in the bedroom, lying down.”
“Did he have much to say after I dropped you off?”
“More than he has lately. He said he was glad you’d talked him into signing a complaint against Cahill. He said now he didn’t have to worry about anything happening to Matt and me.” She made a sticky breathing sound, as if she were having respiratory difficulties. “Oh God, I’m afraid, I’m so afraid.”
I didn’t have to ask her why. I could hear Runyon saying to me earlier, talking about his family: They’d be better off without me. Deep depression, a feeling of hopelessness... and if he’d stopped believing finally that Nedra Merchant was alive, that she’d come back and take up with him again, you had more than a note saying good-bye. You had a man shaking hands with death.
She said, “I think he took a gun with him.”
Fine, dandy. “What kind of gun?”
“I’m not sure... a pistol, for target shooting. He used to take Matt target shooting. It was packed away in the garage and now it’s gone. I looked before I called you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the gun before?”
“He hadn’t had it out in so long, I just forgot about it. Until I read that note...”
He didn’t want to do it there, I thought, where she or Matt would find him. Nedra’s house? Would he want to die there, sully the seat of his shrine? Maybe, maybe not. He was a sick man; there was no way to predict what kind of thoughts were working inside the head of a man with his type of affliction.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kay Runyon said. “Tell me what to do. Should I call the police?”
“Yes. As soon as we hang up. Talk to Inspector Branislaus if he’s in, tell him exactly what you told me. Then call the suicide prevention hotline; their people are trained in this sort of thing.”
“All right. Will you try to find him too?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“That woman’s house...”
“It’s the first place I’ll check.”
“I was going to drive there myself,” she said, “but if he’s there... if he’d already... I couldn’t stand to find him, to see him like that...”
“You don’t have to explain, Mrs. Runyon.”
I heard her draw another sticky breath. “His office... that’s another place he might have gone. Should I try to call there?”
“After you’ve talked to the police and suicide prevention.”
“Yes, all right.”
“Is there anywhere else he might be? Someplace private he goes when he wants to be by himself?”
“Mount Davidson,” she said. “He... the monument up there, the cross. He’s always found it a peaceful place. We used to go together sometimes...”
“Anyplace else?”
“I can’t think of anyplace.”
“Call my car phone if he comes home or you hear from him or the police. If I don’t contact you, you’ll know I haven’t found him and I’m still looking.”