It read:
Ms. Christine Webster,
You are going to pay for what you did. One way or another, I promise you that. You bitch, I’ll hurt you worse than you hurt me. I’ll HURT you.
Creepy stuff, all right. The product of a sick mind. I refolded it and put it down on the coffee table. Lainey left it where it lay; she seemed not to want to touch it any more.
I said, “How many of these were there?”
“Six. They came about every other day.”
“Where were they postmarked?”
“Here in the city.”
“Did Christine contact the police about them?”
“Yes. But they said there wasn’t anything they could do because he hadn’t tried to do anything to her. Well, maybe he did do something to her,” she said bitterly. “And now it’s too late.”
“Did she tell Jerry about the threats?”
“No. He would have quit his job and come down here to be with her, and she didn’t want that; he couldn’t be with her twenty-four hours a day. But she was going to tell him if they kept on much longer.”
“You told the police she was thinking about seeing a private detective,” I said. “When did she decide that?”
“Last week.”
“Was my name mentioned at all?”
“No. And I don’t know where she got your business card; I didn’t even know she had it until the policemen asked me about it.”
“Do you have any idea why she didn’t get in touch with me?”
“I guess because she hadn’t made up her mind yet. I told her seeing a detective was a good idea, but she thought it would cost too much; she didn’t have much money.”
It wouldn’t have mattered to me, I thought. I would have tried to help if she’d come to me; I take jobs for the money but I don’t turn them down, not this kind, because of a lack of it. God, why didn’t she come to me?
Useless thinking again. I pushed the thoughts away and asked Lainey, “You’re sure Christine had no personal enemies? Old boyfriends she’d broken up with, men she’d turned down, people she might have offended in some way?”
“I’m as sure as Chris was. Do you think her killer is someone she knew?”
“Yes,” I said. “Unless she’d have gone out to Lake Merced at night to meet a stranger.”
“I guess she probably wouldn’t have. But she was a pretty trusting person, you know. And a kind person, too.” Lainey shook her head. “She never hurt anybody, that’s the thing. Oh, she was forever trying to tell people how to run their lives-but in a nice way, just trying to help them. She never hurt anybody.”
“Had anything unusual happened to her recently, before the threats started? Anything she might have done or been involved in?”
Lainey gave that some thought. “No, I’m sure there wasn’t,” she said at length. “A girl she knew did commit suicide a little over a month ago, but that didn’t have anything to do with Chris.”
Suicide again. “What girl was that?”
“Her name was Bobbie Reid. She worked in the same building Chris did downtown-Chris had a part-time job with the Kittredge Advertising Agency-and they got to know each other.”
“Were they close friends?”
“No. Chris didn’t see her socially as far as I know.”
“Why did Bobbie take her own life?”
“Chris said she was depressed about some sort of personal problem. One night she just swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills.”
“Did Chris know what this personal problem was?”
“I think she did, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She said Bobbie was dead and there was no use talking about the dead-” Lainey winced: Here we were talking about Christine and Christine herself was dead. “She could be kind of close-mouthed at times. Like she didn’t tell me or Jerry she was pregnant until after she’d known it herself for weeks.”
“Do you have any idea who Bobbie worked for?”
“No. The Kittredge Agency is in a big building in the Financial District and it must have at least a hundred offices in it.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”
“That’s all I know. Is it really important? I just don’t see how her suicide could be connected with Chris’ murder.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But it’s something that ought to be checked out, just in case. Did you tell the police about Bobbie Reid?”
“No, I don’t think I did. It didn’t occur to me then; I was pretty upset.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
She nodded. And from outside, in the direction of the Medical Center, there was the faint shriek of a siren. Lainey cocked her head, listening to it-and shivered and hugged herself again. “Is it cold in here?” she said. “It feels cold.”
“A little,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “I think I’d better be going. I don’t have any more questions.”
“All right. Will you let me know if you find out anything?”
“Of course.”
“I won’t be home for the weekend, though. I’m flying down to San Diego tonight. That’s where Chris’ parents live, you see, and the funeral is tomorrow.” She wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I hope a lot of people come,” she said. “Chris liked people.”
The siren kept on wailing in the distance, like a discordant note in a dirge.
Or the scream of a young girl dying.
ELEVEN
I stopped for lunch at a cafe on Irving Street. Not because I wanted food; I had no appetite after the interview with Lainey Madden. But I had not eaten breakfast and my stomach was kicking up hunger pangs. It was already a quarter of one, and it seemed like an intelligent idea to give the digestive juices something to work on.
Over a tasteless hamburger and a cup of coffee I took my first look at what the Chronicle had to say about the murders. Both stories-a news report on the Carding homicide and an update on the death of Christine Webster-were on page two, the front page being given over to reports of trouble in the Middle East and a big Gay Rights march through Civic Center. There was suggestion of a possible link between the two cases and some attention was paid to Jerry Carding’s mysterious disappearance from Bodega Bay; otherwise it was pretty straightforward stuff, no open speculation, just the basic facts. Martin Talbot was said to have confessed to the Carding murder, but the police were still investigating. My name was mentioned three or four times. There was even a paragraph on my career background in which I was referred to as “something of a Sam Spade type, the last of San Francisco’s lone-wolf private eyes.”
When I finished forcing down my hamburger I took the paper outside and deposited it in a trash receptacle. Then the last of San Francisco’s lone-wolf private eyes got into his car and drove through the cold gray fog to S.F. State College.
There was no street parking near the Nineteenth Avenue entrance, so I turned into Park Merced and left the car in front of an apartment building on Cardenas. The woodsy campus, when I finally got onto it, was crowded but relatively quiet. It had not always been that way. I remembered the television footage from back in 1968: a student strike protesting the war in Vietnam and demanding a Third World Studies department and an open admissions policy; disruption and cancellation of classes, rock-throwing incidents; and our present U.S. senator, S.I. Hayakawa-then president of S.F. State-calling in the police riot squad to bust a few heads. Sad times back then. Ugly times. And all because of a war that we should have stayed the hell out of in the first place.
Well, things change-even for the better sometimes. The kids still looked the same, though, at least to my crusty old private eye: long hair and frizzed hair and Afros, beards, the kind of clothing my generation would have called Bohemian. Whatever happened to suits and ties and girls in winter outfits and summer dresses? The question made me smile mockingly at myself. Pining away for your lost youth, huh? I thought. You Sam Spade type, you. Come on, who cares what college students wear as long as they’re happy and getting themselves an education? And most of these kids looked happy enough-maybe because it was Friday and they had the weekend and Thanksgiving vacation to look forward to, or because, for now anyway, all was right in their world.