I was driving down a dark, twisty road, going somewhere in a hurry. Trees, houses, fence posts materialized and dematerialized like wraiths in the stabbing headlight glare. There were other people crowded into the car with me, front seat and back; I couldn’t see their faces in the blackness, but I could feel them close around me, somebody’s fetid breath moist on the back of my neck. I was sweating from all the body heat. A disembodied voice kept saying, “Slow down, slow down, slow down,” and I kept driving fast, rustlings and whisperings all around me as the clutch of passengers shifted position.
Up ahead something took on sudden definition in the headlights: railroad tracks, flashing red semaphore lights, a crossing arm that was just starting to come down across the road. One of the faceless people shouted, “Look out! Train coming!” Another one in the backseat threw an arm around my neck and yanked my head back. I struggled to loosen the grip so I could breathe. And then I could see the eye of the locomotive bearing down from the left, big and bright like a madman’s eye, growing larger and larger until it took away most of the dark. I hit the brakes, hard. The car slewed, skidded, came back on a point. Warning bells began to clang as I brought us to a grinding stop nose up to the crossing arm. The locomotive was a roaring giant now, its headlamp as painfully blinding as the sun at midday, and the bells kept clanging and jangling One of the faceless women said, “Who’s that at this hour?”
I said, “What? What?”
Kerry said, “The phone, there’s somebody on the phone.”
And I was sitting up in bed, damp and disoriented, part of the sheet in a stranglehold around my neck. The lamp on Kerry’s nightstand was on; the light made me squint. I fought off the sheet and blanket, fought off the remnants of the dream, and got my hand on the phone and finally shut off the noise.
I growled something half coherent into the receiver. A woman’s voice said my name, then rushed into an apology for calling so late, and then there was a jumble of words that didn’t signify. What did come through was the emotion behind them: they were soaked in the raw fluids of panic.
“Slow down,” I said, “I can’t understand you. Who is this?”
“Lynn Troxell.” Raggedy breath. “Oh God, I didn’t know who else to call…”
That got rid of most of the sleep fuzz. “What is it, what’s happened?”
“It’s Jim, he’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“A few minutes ago. I woke up, he wasn’t in bed, and then I heard his car. I don’t know how he could have found the keys but he must have, I hid his spare set, too…”
The red numerals on the nightstand clock swam into focus: 12:57. Sunday night, Monday morning.
“He’s going to kill himself,” she said.
Christ! Completely awake now, the night sweat cold on my back and under my arms. “What makes you think that?”
“He left me a note.”
“Saying what, exactly?”
“ ‘I’m so sorry for all the pain. Please forgive me.’ ”
“Nothing else?”
“Just ‘all my love’ and his signature. He never writes notes, it can’t be anything but…” Another raggedy breath. “I thought he was all right, he seemed all right. Drew talked to him for a long time this afternoon and said he seemed all right… oh God, I don’t know what to do…”
“Have you notified the police?”
“I wanted to, but… no, I called Drew first and he said the note isn’t enough for them to do anything, it’s too vague, it doesn’t mention suicide…”
He was right about that. A 911 call wouldn’t have bought her anything but frustration and more panic.
“He thought maybe the place on Potrero Hill, he’s on his way there now, but what if Jim isn’t there? I can’t think where else he might have gone…”
I could; I had a better idea than Casement’s. I said, “I’ll see what I can do to find him, Mrs. Troxell.”
“Will you? I know it’s not your problem anymore, but I didn’t know who else to call… You’ll let me know right away, no matter what?”
“Right away. You have my cell phone number if you hear anything first. Meanwhile, try to stay calm.”
“Calm,” she said. “Yes, all right, yes.”
Kerry had picked up enough from my end of the conversation to understand what was going on. She said as I yanked on my pants, “Is there anything I can do?”
“No. One of us chasing around in the night is enough.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“If there is,” I said, “it shouldn’t take long to find out.”
Ocean Beach.
That seemed the most likely place he’d head for. Not Potrero Hill. Troxell was a neat, almost fastidious individual, conscious of the feelings of others; he wouldn’t want to clutter up the Lindens’ lives by doing the dutch in their backyard. His wife had said yesterday that he was drawn to water, and the beach, the Pacific were a magnetic pull; he’d already been out there twice this week. Walk into the ocean, maybe, let the undertow drag him out; hypothermia would make the drowning fairly quick. Neat, clean. From his point of view, anyway.
Suicide. Building to it, planning it all along. That was the reason for his call Saturday evening. In his careful way he’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t still being watched, followed. The thank-yous and explanations had been sincere enough but nothing more than camouflage. Hell, I’d known it at the time. Refused to admit it to myself because I couldn’t be sure and there hadn’t been anything I could do about it. You can’t stop a person from plotting to do away with himself, any more than you can stop a person from plotting a crime, until it reaches the commission stage. Something I could do now, if it wasn’t too late, but even then it might only be a stopgap measure. If a suicide case is determined enough, nobody-not a loved one and esspecially not a stranger-can prevent him from going through with it sooner or later. Still, you have to try. As long as he’s alive there’s hope he can be saved. Even if there wasn’t you’d still have to try.
As soon as I was in the car and rolling I used my cell phone to call Jake Runyon. I didn’t like dragging him out of bed, but it was necessary and I knew he wouldn’t mind. A night call woke him up a lot faster than it did me; he was alert and responsive within seconds. Three sentences were enough to tell him what was going down and what I suspected.
He said, “Lloyd Lake’s another possibility. That’s where he saw the abduction.”
“Christ, I didn’t even think of that. You’re right, he might be drawn back there. But I still think it’s the beach.”
“I’ll swing through the park first and check it out.”
“Okay. I’m on Portola now, heading for Sloat, so I’ll cover the south end of the beach. If he’s not at Lloyd Lake, you head for Cliff House and work on down the Great Highway.”
Traffic was light; I drove faster, risked running one of the lights on Portola Drive. There might still be time. If Troxell didn’t act immediately; if he stuttered out there on the beach, like the ones who crawl into bathtubs with a razor blade often do with their hesitation cuts. It all depended on how intent he was, how far he’d stepped over the line.
Sometimes you make the right guesses. The first place I went to was the beachfront parking area at the foot of Sloat Boulevard, because it was the closest section of Ocean Beach to both St. Francis Wood and Diamond Heights, and because it had been Troxell’s Thursday night destination. His destination this time, too, by God. The only car on the sandswept asphalt out there was his silver BMW.
I almost missed it; would have if I hadn’t driven through the horseshoe turnaround at the entrance and into the lot itself. It was drawn in close alongside the old building that housed public restrooms, all but the rear deck invisible in the thick shadows. I cut in next to it, dragged the six-cell flashlight from under the dash before I jumped out.
He hadn’t bothered to lock the driver’s door. I leaned in, flashed the light front and back. Empty.
The tide was in and the wind was up as it had been all week; the breakers rolling in off high, choppy seas made a steady roaring noise like the oncoming locomotive in my dream. The pavement was drifted with sand; I had to pick my way across to the beach side of the lot to keep from slipping. The moon was out, but high running clouds kept hiding and then revealing it-shine, dark, shine, dark, like an erratic neon sign blinking on and off. In the seconds it shone, I could see the beach for a few hundred yards in both directions. He wasn’t on it. Nothing was on it, not even a seabird.
I buttoned my overcoat collar to the throat, pulled on the gloves I’d jammed into a pocket, and climbed over the wire guardrail. The earth shelved off abruptly here, in a series of short drop-offs and rock-and-sand declivities; I used the flash to pick my way down onto the beach. The wind, heavy with the smell of brine, flung stinging grit into my face and eyes as I slogged through loose, dry sand. Down here the crash of surf was thunderous. Big waves, white-foamed and angry-looking, spread fans of dirty spume over two-thirds of the beach’s width.
If Troxell had walked out into that pounding surf, he’d have been dead in less than a minute. Sucked out by the undertow and carried away, what was left of him to be deposited here or somewhere else up or down the coast when the sea was calm again.
The hesitation possibility took me to the upper edge of the surf line, along it a ways to the south and then back in the opposite direction. The ebb and flow of the breakers would have erased any close marks, but back up here there was a chance of finding some indication of recent passage. But there wasn’t any. No footprints anywhere in the wet sand; it was as darkly smooth and glistening as white-rimmed black glass.
Salt spray caked my face now. Particles of sand had gotten into my left eye and set up a burning so sharp I had to keep it squeezed shut. The wind cut through the layers of clothing I wore, seemed to lay a sheeting of ice over my flesh. Give it up, I thought, before you catch pneumonia. But my legs weren’t listening. They kept slogging me forward, beyond the entrance to the parking lot toward the skeletal remains of an old pier farther up the beach.
The wet sand remained smooth, unbroken.
A sudden gust blew up a whirlwind of sand; I managed to get my head and body turned in time to keep most of it out of my face. In that same moment the moon appeared from behind a rampart of clouds. When I opened my good eye I had a clear look at the series of low, grass-crested dunes that stretched away close to the Great Highway. The moonglow painted their slopes white-empty white, all except one. That one, close beyond the parking area, had a blob of something dark and elongated on it about halfway up.
I squinted, moving forward to try to get a better look. Man-sized blob, a shorter elongation jutting out to one side that might have been a leg.
The moon vanished again. Darkness shrouded the dunes; all I could see over there was the backwash of lights along the the Great Highway and Sloat Boulevard. The flash beam wasn’t strong enough to reach that far. I tramped that way as fast as I could, the wind giving me a good push from behind. By the time I neared the foot of the dune I was panting and shivering. I switched on the six-cell again, laid its light on the back-sprawled shape.
Too late. Already too late when I arrived at the beach, by maybe fifteen minutes.
Troxell’s eyes were open wide, their view of eternity obscured by a film of blown sand. Small wound on his right temple, the blood still glistening wet there and where it was spotted on the sand near his head.
I’d been wrong about him letting the sea take him out. That hadn’t been his intention at all. He’d walked straight over here from the parking lot-the single line of his footprints was still visible-and sat down on this sheltered dune with the highway hidden behind him to avoid any possible interference. And then, for whatever skewed reasons, the man who’d been a vocal advocate of gun control had blown his brains out with a small-caliber pistol.