“No. It has to be here. As soon as possible.” His voice kept climbing, loud enough so that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. The raw edge of desperation in it sounded genuine. “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you’ll come right away. Will you? Please?”
I wanted to say no. I’d had enough of Krochek and his wife and their problems. Maybe I would have said no if I’d had morning appointments, pressing business, but my calendar was right there in front of me and there was nothing on it except routine business that I could deal with anytime. Besides, it was one of those days anyway, and I’ve always been a sucker for people in need. Heart full of mush, head full of rocks.
“Please?” Krochek said again. Begging now. The word had a moist sound.
“All right. But no promises for anything more than a few minutes’ talk.”
“That’s all I ask. Right away?”
“As soon as I can get there.”
He thanked me, twice. Then he said, “I’ll have the five hundred in cash,” and broke the connection.
I resisted an impulse to slam the receiver down. Tamara had been hanging around listening; she grinned at me from the connecting doorway.
“Don’t say it,” I said.
“Say what?”
“He offered me five hundred bucks for a brief conference. That’s the only reason I’m going.”
She laughed as if I’d said something funny.
M itchell Krochek must have been waiting on his front patio; he opened the gate and stuck his head out as soon as I pulled into the driveway. He looked rumpled even from a distance: hair uncombed, floppy slippers on his feet, one tail of his shirt hanging out over a pair of faded Levi’s. Up close, he had the bleary-eyed, saggy look that comes from too much alcohol and too little sleep. Anxiety showed plainly in his eyes. Something else, too: fear.
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” he said.
It had taken me more than an hour and a half to make the drive. More annoyances: construction slowdown on the bridge, and even though Janice Krochek’s directions were still relatively fresh in my mind, I’d gotten lost twice in the maze of Oakland Hills streets and had to stop to consult my map. But all I said to him was, “I’m here now. What’s going on?”
“Come on inside. I’ll show you.”
He led me into the house. Cool in there, almost chilly. And gloomy; there were a lot of arched windows, but all of them were draped in patterned monk’s cloth. Tile floors, white stucco walls decorated with Mediterranean-style artwork. I don’t know much about art, but the paintings and sculptures seemed original and expensive. Here and there were bare patches where other paintings had once hung. If I’d asked about them, I was pretty sure the answer would be that his wife had sold some of their more valuable pieces to support her habit.
The kitchen was where we went. Big, wide, with a tiled rectangle in the center that held a stovetop, sinks, a dish-washer. The windows here were unshaded, and above the rectangle were a couple of skylights that let in plenty of gray daylight. No sun today, not in the city and not over here.
Krochek stepped around the far side of the rectangle, giving me room to join him. He said, pointing, “There. On the floor.”
I went and looked. Hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
Spots and smeared stains, dark and crusty on the light-colored tiles. An uneven trail that led from near the rectangle to an open door at the far end-a laundry room, looked like. I got down on one knee for a closer look at the stains. When I rubbed a finger lightly over one, it came away with a few dry flakes clinging to it. One of the spots was still sticky.
“It’s blood, isn’t it,” Krochek said.
“It’s blood. When did you find this?”
“Last night when I got home. I came out here for a drink of water …”
“What time?”
“Must’ve been close to midnight.”
“And no sign of your wife?”
“No. I looked everywhere in the house, outside, even in the garage. Her clothes are still in her closet.”
“Anything missing out here?”
“Missing?”
“Kitchen utensils. The sharp kind.”
“… Oh. No, the knife rack’s full except for the one there by the sink.”
I went over and looked. No stains on the shiny blade of the butcher knife on the drainboard. Dirty dishes cluttered the sink, giving off a faintly sour smell.
“I don’t suppose you called the police.”
“Christ, no,” Krochek said. “You know the first thing they’ll think, don’t you?”
“So you called me instead.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
Yeah. “More blood in that room back there?”
“A little, not much.”
“Anywhere else in the house?”
“No. Here, just here and the laundry room.”
“Anything else out of the ordinary? Signs of disturbance?”
“No. Just the blood.”
“You keep a gun in the house?”
“Gun? No. I wouldn’t know how to use one.”
“Does your wife?”
“No way. She’s afraid of guns.”
“That’s a good thing to be. The laundry room have an outside door?”
He nodded. “It was unlocked.”
“You look around outside?”
“Last night and again this morning. Nothing.”
“When did you last see your wife?”
“Yesterday morning, before I left for work.”
“How did she seem then? Her mood, frame of mind.”
“I don’t know. She was asleep, or pretended to be.”
“How was she the night before?”
“Twitchy and bitchy. Her middle names.”
“Did you take her to see a doctor?”
“She wouldn’t go. Just kept saying she didn’t need one.”
“And I don’t suppose she gave you any idea of who beat her up?”
“She wouldn’t talk about it. Didn’t have much to say to me at all. She stayed in one of the guest rooms Monday night, drinking.”
“Receive or make any phone calls?”
“Not that I know about,” Krochek said. “I checked the answering machine. No messages.”
“Did you talk to your neighbors, find out if they know anything?”
“No. I didn’t want to talk to anybody until I talked to you. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. People mind their own business up here.”
“Rebecca Weaver seemed pretty interested on Monday.”
“That’s because she was out front when you brought Janice home. She’s not usually nosy.”
“You said you got home around midnight. Why?”
“I don’t… what do you mean?”
“Why so late? You had a battered wife and an iffy situation here. Where were you?”
Eyeshift. “A business dinner, I couldn’t get out of it-”
“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Krochek. Not anymore. Not if you want my help.”
He gave his lower lip a workout before he said, “All right. I was with a… friend.”
“What friend? What’s her name?”
“Do you have to know that?”
“What’s her name?”
“Deanne Goldman. She works for another firm down on the Square. We
… she has an apartment near Lake Merritt… Look, you have to understand. There’s been nothing physical between Janice and me for more than two years. A man has needs, you know how that is…”
Justifying himself. His kind of man always does, to others and to himself. I said, “How long has it been going on?”
“A few weeks.”
She wouldn’t be the first. Nor the last, probably. Janice Krochek, in the Hillman last week: You think he’s some kind of saint? Well, he’s not. Far from it. Some pair. A pair I wished now more than ever that I’d never drawn.
“Will she verify you were with her?”
“Yes, sure, if it comes to that. But I didn’t go over to her apartment until after seven.”
“No?”
“I worked until five-thirty, had a couple of drinks and a sandwich at the Ladderback.”
“Alone?”
“Alone,” Krochek said. “I didn’t talk to anybody except the waitress and she was busy as hell. Is there any way to tell what time this… whatever it was… happened? From the blood, I mean.”