Three hours. More than twice as much time as it would usually take to travel by bus from the Marina to the Sunset District. Unless he’d gotten lost or something had happened to him on the way… No, the hell with that kind of thinking. But Darby had been to Bryn’s house, presumably still had a key and searched it, and Bobby wasn’t there-
Or was he?
The brown-shingled house was completely dark, sheathed in mist, when Runyon pulled up in front. Fast walk up the path and stairs to the front porch. Bryn kept a spare key in a little box mounted under the window ledge to the right of the door. He went there first, felt inside the box. Empty.
All right.
He had his own key to the place, as Bryn had one to his apartment-an in-case-of-emergency exchange and a measure of their mutual trust. He let himself in, closed the door behind him, and stood listening before he switched on the hall light. Silence except for the faint snaps and creaks you always heard in an old house in cold weather. Cold in there, too, with the furnace off or turned down; he could see the faint vapor of his breath as he made his way to the bedrooms at the rear.
Bobby’s room was empty, the bed neatly made, everything in place. Same in Bryn’s room. The spare bedroom, her office, the living room, the kitchen were just as empty. She kept a flashlight in the pantry; Runyon found it, tested it, and then opened the door to the basement and flicked on the light.
A short flight of stairs led downward. He hadn’t been in the basement before, took a moment to orient himself. Furnace and water heater at the far wall. To his left, washer and dryer and storage cabinets; to his right, a workbench and rows of hand tools hung on a pegboard. Behind the water heater, Bryn had said. He crossed to it, found the narrow space where he could wedge his body behind the unit. The opening to the crawlspace that led deeper under the house was closed off by a sliding panel. He eased it open partway.
“Bobby? It’s Jake.”
Silence.
He slid the panel open the rest of the way. The pale overhead light didn’t reach this far; all he could see inside was heavy blackness.
“It’s okay for you to come out now,” he said, keeping his voice low pitched, normal. “Your dad’s gone. There’s nobody here but me.”
Silence.
“You can trust me, Bobby, you know that. I’m your friend and your mom’s friend. I know where she is and I’m doing everything I can to help her. But I need you to help me do that.”
Silence.
Runyon hesitated. He didn’t want to go into the crawlspace himself or use the flashlight, but he had to be sure the boy was there. Had to get him out if he was, and without scaring him any more than he already was.
“I’m going to put on a light,” Runyon said. “Don’t be afraid. I just want to see where you are.”
Faint rustling sound… the boy moving away from him? He leaned down to put his head and arm inside the musty opening, aimed the flash at an angle to one side, and flicked the switch.
Bare boards, disturbed dust, tattered spiderwebs jumped into sharp relief. Sounds of movement again in the deeper blackness beyond the reach of the light. He moved the beam along the side wall, not too fast, until it touched the crouched shape far back against a maze of copper piping. Bobby, one hand lifted to shield his eyes against the glare.
Immediately Runyon shut off the flash. “Okay, son,” he said into the darkness. “Now that I know you’re there, I’m going to go over and sit on the steps. Come on out when you’re ready and we’ll talk.”
No response.
Runyon backed out of the opening, straightened to step around the water heater, then crossed to the stairs. He sat on the third riser from the bottom, the flashlight beside him, and waited.
Five minutes. Six, seven. If the boy didn’t come out, Runyon wasn’t sure what he’d do. Go in after him, carry him out? Not a good option, because it would likely damage what trust Bobby had in him, keep him withdrawn and silent. Leave him in there, call his father and the police? That wasn’t much good, either. Finding out what the boy knew was imperative, and Runyon would never have a better opportunity than this.
Ten minutes. Eleven-
Faint scraping sounds from across the basement. A soft thud, as of a sneakered foot thumping against wood. A muffled cough. Coming out.
A few more seconds and the pale oval of Bobby’s face peered around the edge of the water heater. Runyon didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Ten-second impasse. Then Bobby moved again, out into the open in slow, shuffling steps, blinking in the ceiling light.
He stopped in the middle of the basement, fifteen feet from where Runyon sat. Stood there in an attitude of expectant punishment, chin down, eyes rolled up under the thin blinking lids, shivering a little from the cold. A purplish bruise under his left eye, the aftereffect of Whalen’s blow to his nose, showed starkly against the facial pallor. Web shreds clung to his hair; his light jacket and Levi’s were streaked with dust and dirt smudges.
Looking at him, Runyon felt a long-forgotten emotion-a tenderness, an aching compassion that had its roots in fatherhood. The time Joshua had fallen out of his crib when he was a baby, bruising an arm… that was the last time Runyon had experienced that kind of feeling. As if this kid, this relative stranger, were his child. He had to stop himself from going to Bobby, wrapping him in a protective embrace.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, son,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. Nobody’s ever going to hurt you again.”
Four-beat. Then, in a scared little voice, “Where’s my mom?”
“Don’t worry, she’s all right.”
“Where is she? Why isn’t she home?”
“It’s cold down here,” Runyon said. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll put the furnace on. We’ll talk up there.”
No response.
He got to his feet in slow segments. Bobby watched him without moving. Runyon smiled at him, then pivoted and mounted the steps into the kitchen, leaving the door wide open. The thermostat was in the front hall; he went there and turned the dial up past seventy to get the heat flowing quickly. When he returned to the kitchen, the boy was standing in the basement doorway. So far so good.
Runyon said, keeping his distance, “It’ll take a few minutes for the house to warm up. Want me to get you a blanket meanwhile?”
“No. Where’s my mom?”
“I won’t lie to you, Bobby. The police are holding her in jail.”
“Jail? Why? She didn’t do anything.”
“I know that. The police will, too, before long.”
“When will they let her come home? When can I see her?”
“Soon. Maybe tomorrow.”
Some of the boy’s tension seemed to ease, make him less skittish. His breathing was audible: little nasal hissing sounds.
Runyon said, “But there are some things I have to know in order for your mom to be released. About what happened yesterday.”
No response.
“It’s very important. I need you to talk to me about it, Bobby. For your mom’s sake. Okay?”
Six-beat. Then, “Okay.”
“You know Francine is dead?”
“Yes. I know.”
“The police arrested your mom because they thought she killed Francine-”
“No! She didn’t, it wasn’t Mom.”
“Who was it? Do you know?”
“Mom wasn’t there; she came after.”
“After Francine was killed?”
“Yes.”
“How long afterward?”
“I don’t know… a few minutes.”
“Who was in the kitchen with Francine, Bobby?”
Headshake.
With the basement door still open, snapping, thrumming sounds from the cranked-up furnace were audible below. Reliable and efficient, that furnace, only a few years old; Bryn had told him that. Warm air pumping up through the heat registers had already begun to take the edge off the house’s chill. Runyon moved to his left, then forward a little; Bobby responded as he’d intended, coming out of the doorway and sideways in the other direction, nearer the heat register.