As I drove out Nineteenth, my head was full of Victor Runyon. What had happened between him and Nedra, beginning in early May, was not hard to figure now. He had been coming apart slowly for some time: years of overwork and stress, the added stress of his affair with Nedra. She had been the catalyst, and the final catalytic act was her ending their relationship. That was what turned her from the controller into the controlled; from the predator into the victim.
Angry words, threats, at her home on Saturday, May 9th; an ugly scene. That day, or the next, Nedra had driven up to Lake County — to get away from Runyon, or maybe just to be alone for a while. When he found her gone he figured out where she went and drove to Nice himself. Another confrontation, even more volatile, and the last threads of his sanity had unraveled. He’d locked her in the root cellar. Not with any intention of keeping her there, not at first; just a wild and angry attempt to force her into changing her mind. But she had spirit and she’d made the mistake of resisting him, taunting or threatening him. A day or two or three, and by then it was too late: he was committed. He’d hold her prisoner until she saw things his way, agreed to marry him. An impossible fantasy, but in his battered mind it was his only hope.
It wouldn’t have been difficult for Runyon, an architect, to turn that cellar into a livable cell, no more than a couple of days’ work with her locked in the downstairs toilet where she could yell her head off without being heard. He’d have had the .22 with him by then, to keep her obedient. Early May was when he’d taken the gun from his garage, not last Saturday. I’d have bet money on it.
Before too long, Nedra would have stopped openly fighting him, pretended to give in, said or done anything to free herself. But she’d have waited too long: he didn’t believe her. Hate and malice had gotten mixed up with his desperate love; he’d wanted to punish her as well as bend her to his will. Three and a half months... he’d punished her, all right. Broken her at last. He must have realized that when he went up there again on Saturday, and it was a good thing for her that he had. Otherwise she’d be dead now. They both would be.
Runyon had reached the point of killing himself; the goodbye letter to his wife proved that. But suicide wasn’t the only thing on his mind when he walked out of his house Saturday evening. If Nedra had continued to resist him in any way, or if he’d still felt there was no hope for the two of them, he’d have shot her before turning the .22 on himself. I’d have bet money on that too.
Instead he’d found a totally dependent Nedra, all his at last. “Baby,” she’d said, and he’d taken her out of her prison, and cleaned her up, and made love to her, and yesterday or this morning he’d packed her bag and promised to take her home. Today he’d locked her up again — “just for a little while,” he’d have said to her — while he ran around Lakeport buying her cosmetics, presents, food, and champagne to celebrate their homecoming. Even finding me there with her hadn’t changed his plans. All he cared about was the two of them, being together, going home.
It all seemed so clear-cut... and yet I hadn’t tumbled to any of it, hadn’t had a glimmer of suspicion, until I saw Nedra crouching inside her prison. No one had suspected — except, for God’s sake, Eddie Cahill. Had Runyon let something slip in one of his monologues at the Crestmont house that Cahill had overheard? Or was his belief in Runyon’s guilt based on reasoning as wrongheaded and monomaniacal as Runyon’s? Didn’t matter much, either way. The point was, that damned shrine had acted like a screen to obscure the truth from me; so had the things Runyon had told me on the way to S.F. General, the things he’d done to preserve Nedra’s home and finances. They were all part of a madness much deeper and more complex than a layman like me could have diagnosed. His lies were not so much calculated falsehoods as self-denials of the terrible act he’d committed. The shrine, the paying of her bills, the preservation of her mail and her phone messages, were not just expressions of blind, sick faith; they were devotional preparations for her homecoming, the beginning of their life together.
Still, even with all the complexity and obfuscations, I might have guessed at least some of the truth. There were things that pointed to it, like lights in a heavy fog. Kay Runyon had told me her husband traveled a lot as part of his profession, that he’d increased his travel time considerably over the past several months. If I’d checked into that I’d have discovered that few if any of his recent trips were business-related. When he’d left the city it had been to go to Lake County, to attend to Nedra. Then there were the postcards. As far as I knew, only two people had received cards — Dr. Muncon and Annette Olroyd, the only two who had expressed serious concern in messages left on her answering machine. Runyon had monitored those tapes; he’d told me so himself. The only other person who had listened to them was me.
And finally there were things he’d said on the ride to the hospital, revealing little phrases. Give it enough time, she’ll change her mind. I know she will. She has to. And: I do know she’s alive, she’s all right, she’s not really hurt. And: [I’m her] lover and best friend. Now especially she needs no one but me. And: She’ll come back, safe and sound. She has to, for both our sakes. You understand? She’ll come back with me. That last was the most telling of all. With me, he’d said, not to me. I just hadn’t paid attention to the word choice at the time.
The house on Paraiso Place was small and Spanish-style: white stucco, red tile roof, wrought-iron trim. In front was a pocket-size lawn and a couple of cypress that had been sculpted to resemble bonsai trees. In the driveway alongside sat a new beige Cadillac Eldorado. Maybe that was a good sign and maybe it wasn’t. I would have liked it better if Walter Merchant weren’t home, if he’d taken Nedra straight to a hospital.
I parked behind the Caddy, went up and laid into the bell. When I finally let up I thought I heard steps inside, but the door didn’t open. I leaned on the bell some more, kept it up for a full minute. The door stayed shut.
“The hell with this,” I said aloud. Then, in a much louder voice, I called out my name and: “I know you’re in there, Merchant. Open up, damn it, and talk to me.”
Nothing at first. But as I was about to sing out again, he said from close behind the door, “Go away. We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Don’t play games with me. I just came from Nedra’s house. I called the paramedics but not the police, not yet. You’ve got ten seconds before I do. And you won’t like what I tell them.”
He used all ten seconds to make up his mind. A chain rattled, the door swung inward. Walter Merchant didn’t look like a confident, dignified, take-charge lawyer tonight. He was pale, slump-shouldered, his hair mussed, his clothing rumpled and untucked. There was a hunted look in his eyes. And across the front of his pin-striped shirt, smears of dried blood.
He said dully, “How did you know to come here?”
“Lucky guess.” But it hadn’t been. He’d told me in his office that he hadn’t given Nedra any reason to change the locks on her house after the divorce; that being the case, and given his feelings for her, it was reasonable to assume he’d kept a key, just in case. And he’d been hanging around there on Saturday night, with his torch for her burning hot. And who else but Merchant would have made himself a drink in there tonight, made himself at home in the place that used to be his home?
I pushed past him, into a living room furnished expensively but without much style or taste. There was nobody in it except Merchant and another collection of tropical fish in a tank that matched the one in his office.