“Not before a prostatectomy, no.”
“What are my chances with surgery? Survival, and the ability to function sexually?”
“At this stage, assuming the absence of complications, the survival rate is very good. The impotence factor is problematical no matter what we do.”
“How soon before we know about the hormone treatments?”
“A few weeks at the outside.”
“And if they’re not working, I’d need to go under the knife right away?”
Otaki raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you may be changing your mind?.”
Did it? Maybe so. Funny, but the prospect of submitting his body to a surgeon’s scalpel did not seem quite so terrifying now as it had for so long. If there was a chance, even a small one, that surgery would keep him alive, make him whole again, didn’t he owe it to Cassie as well as to himself? Pigheaded, selfish, angry, closed off... he’d been all of that and more. Chained to Pop all these years. And chained to Mom, too, by the way she’d died. It didn’t have to be that way. Cassie had opened up his mind for the better. Why not let a frigging scalpel open up his body toward the same result?
“Let’s say I’ll be in a more receptive frame of mind,” he said, “if and when the time comes.”
Tuesday Evening
Cassie said, “I think we may have been looking at the stalker from the wrong perspective.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s been nagging at me all day. We keep assuming it must be a man. Eric, Ryan, Gabe... all men. But the more I think about it, the more it feels to me like a woman.”
“A woman smashed in Rakubian’s skull?”
“Why not? Women can be just as violent in the right, or wrong, circumstances. You know that. And the weapon... a statuette, heavy but not too heavy... it’s the sort of object a woman would grab in self-defense or the heat of anger.”
He was silent, weighing the possibility.
“Then there’s what’s been done to us so far,” Cassie said. “Written threats, poison pen notes... woman’s methods more than a man’s. The phrasing in the notes, too. ‘What did you do with his body?’ ‘You’ll suffer for what you did.’ Wouldn’t a man be more likely to say, ‘Where’d you hide the body?’ ‘You’ll pay for what you did’ or ‘I’ll fix you for what you did’?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly. “Maybe.”
“And the vandalism. Everything breakable in the living room smashed, couches and chairs slashed to ribbons, all that spray paint... it had a tantrumy look, didn’t it? Not that a man is above throwing a tantrum, God knows, but the way the room looked... it just didn’t feel like a man’s work. Neither does sugar in the van’s gas tank. It’s the first trick I’d think of if I wanted to sabotage someone’s car. One tire punctured, three tires flat — that’s another thing.”
He knew what she meant by that. “Takes strength to jab a sharp object deep enough into hard rubber to bleed the air out. Try it once, find that out, and then you start unscrewing the valve caps.”
“Exactly. None of this is conclusive, but when you take it all together... I think I’m right, Jack.”
“Who, then? I can’t think of any woman we know who’d have it in for us.”
“Someone Rakubian was seeing after Angela left him, or even before she left him.”
He shook his head. “Not as obsessed with her as he was.”
“A woman from his past, then. Didn’t he tell Angela he had one serious relationship before he met her?”
“That’s right, he did. He wouldn’t say when, or who the woman was. He kept his private life too damn private.”
“The police might’ve found out.”
“I can check with Macatee. But it still doesn’t add up, Cass. Why would a woman, anybody from Rakubian’s past, be stalking us? Angela, yes, that’s conceivable — some sort of crazy jealousy thing — but why would you and I be targets?”
“I can’t imagine. If we just knew who she is...”
“I’ll call Macatee first thing in the morning. But if he can’t point us in the right direction—”
“Then we’ll think of something else.”
21
Wednesday Morning
Macatee couldn’t help them.
“I talked to at least two dozen people acquainted with David Rakubian,” he said. “They told me pretty much anything I wanted to know about his professional practice, background, ethics or lack of ’em. But none of those people, his office staff included, had anything but a superficial knowledge of his private life. He guarded that like a miser. All we really know about it came from your daughter, Mr. Hollis, and she couldn’t give me any idea who he was involved with before he met her.”
“Wasn’t there anything in his house — old letters, photographs...”
“Not a thing,” Macatee said with weary patience. “My advice is the same as the last time we talked — quit worrying about David Rakubian. Quit wondering what happened to him or who might’ve had something to do with the disappearance. Count your blessings and let it be.”
After he put the phone down, Hollis rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Tired, logy today. Stress, not enough sleep... oh, he was in fine shape. He stood and slogged out of the study, into the kitchen to talk to Cassie. She had gone there to listen to the conversation with Macatee on the extension.
Now she was at the catchall desk in one corner, rummaging intently through the drawers. “I know I put them in here somewhere,” she said when she heard him come in.
“What’re you looking for?”
No response. Then, “There they are!” She straightened and turned, holding up what she’d found.
“Keys?”
“Angela’s. To Rakubian’s house and alarm system. The night she left him and came home, she swore she’d never go back and threw them on the floor. Remember? I put them in the desk and forgot all about them until just now.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“Well, even though she waived community property she’s still entitled to claim her personal possessions. Technically, anyway. And we’re her parents, we have a right to go there on her behalf.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“You heard what Macatee said. He searched the house, probably more than once, and didn’t find a thing.”
“It’s possible he overlooked something. Why not go down there and see?”
She had a point. He didn’t much care for the idea of prowling again through those dark, oppressive rooms, but the prospect of more passive waiting had no appeal at all. “It’s worth a try,” he said.
“We can leave right away. I’ll call the clinic, tell them I won’t be in today.”
“If that’s going to leave them shorthanded, I don’t mind going by myself.”
“Uh-uh. It’s a long drive to the city and back.”
“I feel strong enough today.”
“Don’t try to be Superman again, okay? It’s all right to lean on me a little sometimes, you know.”
“I know.”
“Besides, I want to go. And two can search more thoroughly than one.”
“Call the clinic,” he said. “I’ll get our jackets.”
It was one of those inverse-weather-pattern days, overcast in the North Bay but mostly clear in San Francisco. The sunlight hurt his eyes as they started through the park to Nineteenth Avenue; he put on dark glasses to shield them. When Cassie turned her van — she’d picked it up at the repair shop the night before — onto Sloat Boulevard and they entered St. Francis Wood, he felt a curl of tension forming. Criminal returns to scene of his crime, he thought, and then realized he’d spoken the phrase aloud.