I said, “Poor miserable bastard.”
Runyon said, “At least he’s not hurting anymore.”
“That sounds like you approve of suicide.”
“Not a matter of approval. Let’s say I understand the impulse.”
I let that go. Maybe he’d entertained the idea himself after his wife’s slow, painful death; I did not want to know. Suicide was an alien concept to me. I’d seen too much death, spent too much time trying to keep myself and others alive; life was too important to me to see it thrown away on a selfish and cowardly act. Maybe Troxell wasn’t hurting anymore, but his wife damn well would be for a long time to come. As far as I was concerned he’d had no right to do that to someone he professed to love, to any survivor who had to keep on with the hard business of living.
We were standing on the dune, on either side of what was left of James Troxell, both of us with flashlights. I’d notified the 911 dispatcher before calling Runyon, but he had been up by the Beach Chalet, not far away, and he’d gotten here first. Nonemergency 911 calls take a while to bring a response, even late at night, in these emergency-glutted times.
He put his light on the small weapon in the dead man’s hand. It threw cold glints off the metal frame. “Twenty-two semi-auto.”
“Target pistol.”
“Yeah. Looks new.”
“Bought for the occasion,” I said. “He didn’t own a gun before. Didn’t like guns, from what I was told.”
“Funny way to take himself out then.”
“Making some kind of statement. Or because it was the quickest way.”
“Takes guts to shoot yourself in the head,” Runyon said.
“Not if you want to die badly enough.”
Neither of us held our lights on the dead face, but I could see it well enough in the overspill from where the beams were pointed. I shut mine off, turned my back to the corpse. The sea continued to hammer at the beach, the larger breakers throwing up jets of faintly luminescent mist as they came crashing down. The wind seemed stronger now; it had erased Troxell’s footprints, was filling in most of mine and Runyon’s. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my nose and ears when I touched them.
Runyon asked, “So where does this leave us on the Dumont homicide?”
“Good question. I’ll talk to Jack Logan first thing in the morning. He’ll chew my ass for allowing the weekend grace period, but if we’re lucky that’ll be the end of it. We’re covered as long as the Lindens don’t say anything when the law comes around and finds what you found.”
“They’ll keep quiet. Last thing they want is trouble.”
“No pressure on them to give up that key, right?”
“No. I was careful about that. There’s no reason for them to turn on me.”
“Unless the illegal rental angle comes out some way. Never know how people will react when their little scams blow up in their faces. Sometimes it makes them vindictive as hell.”
Runyon had nothing to say to that. He knew the truth of it as well as I did.
I watched the ocean for a time, the constant shifting from oily black to light-striped gray as the moon and the running clouds played around overhead. “I wish I knew if Troxell knew any more about the homicide than he wrote down.”
“We’ll never know, now.”
“What’s your guess?”
“He didn’t.”
“Mine, too. But that could just be wishful thinking.”
Other sounds rose above the pound of the surf: more than one vehicle turning off the Great Highway into the horseshoe entrance to the parking lot. Swirls of red light put a bloody shine on the sky in that direction.
“Here we go,” I said.
We spent another long, cold hour and a half up there with uniformed cops and then a team of plainclothes homicide inspectors, none of whom I knew but one of whom, the older of the inspectors, recognized my name. I did most of the talking. There wasn’t any hassle, just the usual time-consuming, crime-scene grind of repetitive Q and A-all very routine and professionally handled. An ambulance showed up halfway through and a pair of attendants slogged off and then slogged back with the clay shell of James Troxell encased in a black body bag. That was all very routine and professional, too. No muss, no fuss. Every man who dies in the city, no matter who he is or how he ends his life, is treated the same: get the remains under wraps and on ice as quickly as possible, so the living don’t have to face yet another reminder of their own mortality.
I asked the older inspector if it would be all right if I notified the widow. I wouldn’t have done it if this had been a homicide, or if there had been doubt that it was anything but a suicide; the book says there has to be an official notification of next of kin in cases like that. But there’s usually some latitude in a cut-and-dried suicide. No cop wants to break that kind of news if he can avoid it; it’s one of the hardest and most thankless jobs in police work. I hated the prospect myself, but I felt I ought to do it because I was involved and because Lynn Troxell had called me for help and because I was the one who’d found the body. Moral responsibility, if nothing else.
The inspector tried not to look relieved. If I wanted the job, he said, I was welcome to it. Just make sure the widow showed up to ID the remains within twenty-four hours. I said I would.
We dispersed not long after that. Runyon went to his apartment, the cops went back to their mean streets, Troxell went to the morgue, and I went to St. Francis Wood. On the way I called Charles Kayabalian and notified him, too. One more lousy task that I felt obligated to handle.
Drew Casement opened the door at the Troxell home. Face black-rimmed with beard stubble, hair uncombed, athlete’s body slumped a little inside faded Levis and a heavy sweater. And a grim ramble of words once I was inside: “I made Lynn take a Valium and lie down, she’s frantic, exhausted. You didn’t find him, right? He wasn’t at the place on Potrero Hill, I don’t know where the hell he could be. I thought it would be best if I came here instead of chasing around the city, I didn’t want Lynn to be alone at a time like this-”
“I found him,” I said.
“… What?”
“I found him.”
“Where?”
“Ocean Beach.”
“Ocean Beach. Jesus, I should’ve thought of that myself-”
“He’s dead, isn’t he.”
Those words came from Lynn Troxell in a flat, empty voice. She was standing in the doorway to the formal living room, barefoot but dressed under a loose-fitting terrycloth robe, her face pale and her eyes starry and unblinking. Composed, with no outward signs of the earlier turmoil. The Valium, maybe. But more likely it was hopeless resignation, the ashes of panic in this kind of situation.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Troxell.”
She sagged a little against the doorjamb. Otherwise, no reaction.
Casement went to her, put his arm around her as if to hold her up. She didn’t seem to notice he was there. He said to me, “How did you find him?”
“Does that matter?”
“No, no, I just…” He shook his head.
Mrs. Troxell said in that same flat, empty voice, “How?”
“That doesn’t matter, either, right now.”
“Please. I want to know.”
“He shot himself.”
“He… shot… That can’t be right…”
“There’s no doubt.”
“Why would he do that? He didn’t own a gun. He wouldn’t have a gun in the house.”
“He was sick,” Casement said, “he wanted to die. Get it over with quick. A pistol… that’s as quick as it gets.”
“Where would he get a gun?”
“Bought it somewhere, a gun shop…”
She shook her head, a meaningless, loose-necked movement.
“Lynn, maybe you should lie down again.”
“No,” she said. “I want to see him.”
“Christ, you don’t want to do that, not now-”
“I want to see him.” She asked me, “He’s not still at the beach? You didn’t just leave him there?”
“No, of course not. I called the police as soon as I found him.”
“You should have called us, too,” Casement said.
I ignored that. So did Mrs. Troxell.
She said, “And they… took him away?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The city morgue.”
“Where’s that?”
“Basement of the Hall of Justice.”
“They’ll let me see him?”
“Yes. You’ll need to make an official identification.”
Casement said, “Does she have to be the one? Can’t I do it, or somebody else?”
“Next of kin. But it doesn’t have to be now. Morning’s soon enough.”
“Now,” she said, “right now.”
He said, “Lynn, please-”
“No. Will you take me? If not, he will. Or I’ll drive myself.”
“I’ll take you, if you’re sure it’s what you want-”
“What I want is for my husband to still be alive.” She did that habitual twining thing with her long-fingered hands. She was so pale now she might have been exsanguinated; the skin across her cheeks was almost transparent, so that you could see the veins, the crawling muscles beneath the skin. “I’ll get dressed and we’ll go. It won’t take me long.”
“You are dressed-”
“I can’t go like this. For God’s sake, Drew.”
She twisted away from him, walked stiffly out of sight. He stared after her for a few seconds before he faced me again. Anguish showed in his dark eyes; he spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
“She’ll be all right,” he said. To himself mostly, as if he were trying to convince himself that it was true. “It’ll take time, that’s all. Time.”
I stayed silent.
All he could find to say to me was, “Thanks for what you did,” in a distracted voice.
“For nothing,” I said.
I found my own way out.
Four thirty, a hint of dawn in the dark restless sky, when I got home. I let myself in as quietly as I could. Kerry had left a couple of lights on for me; I went down the hall, eased open the bedroom door. The night-light in the bathroom let me see that she was asleep. But she’d always been a fairly light sleeper and I knew that if I went in there and got undressed and got into bed, she would wake up and ask questions that I didn’t feel like answering right now. More importantly, she needed sleep and she wouldn’t get any more if I woke her up. Neither of us would.
I stood watching her for a time. She’d kicked off the blanket and sheet and lay sprawled out on her back, breathing in soft little snores, her auburn hair fluffed out around her head and one arm flung over on my side of the bed. She looked very young in that pose and that light, like Emily does sleeping. Young and innocent and vulnerable.
I love you so damn much, I thought. You have to tell me what’s wrong, babe, let me do something, anything to help fix it. If I ever lost you…
But I wasn’t going to let myself go there. Not after what I’d been dealing with. I eased the door shut again and shut off the hall light and catfooted into the living room. It was early-morning cold in there, and I hadn’t been able to get warm since that first long walk on the beach; I turned the heat up past seventy. Then I took off my shoes and lay down on the couch with my coat on and Kerry’s afghan pulled up to my chin. I thought maybe I could sleep a little, or at least lapse into a doze, but I was wide awake and I stayed that way as daylight began to creep in around the drawn drapes.
I kept seeing James Troxell’s dead face, stark and bloody in the beam of my flashlight. And the film of windblown sand over his staring eyes. And the shiny new. 22 in his stiffened fingers.
Suicide. Such a waste, such a stupid senseless needless waste.
And after a while it was another dead face I was seeing, another stupid senseless needless waste I was thinking about. Eberhardt’s. Eberhardt, and the way he’d died.