“That’s doubtful,” I said.
“Doubtful? Then you’re not sure?”
“We’re reasonably sure it isn’t.”
“What’s going on then? What’s the matter with him?”
“I can’t say, Mr. Casement.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both. My reports go directly to my client, no one else.”
“Lynn and I don’t have any secrets.”
“Then you can get the details from her when the time comes.”
“You haven’t told her anything yet?”
“There’s nothing definite to tell at this point. That’s why I’m here. Gathering information, trying to piece things together.”
He ran a hand over his face. He was clean-shaven, but he had a heavy beard shadow; longish fingernails made a faint rasping noise in the bristles, like the wheeze of an asthmatic. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to push myself at you. It’s just that I’m worried about Jim. Lynn, too.”
“Sure. Understood.”
“I’ll help in any way I can, but…” He made a helpless gesture. “If I knew anything I’d’ve told Lynn right away. Jim is… well, he’s shrink-wrapped.”
“How’s that again?”
“Oh, you know, not a guy who’ll open up to anybody about anything, even his wife. She must’ve told you that. Sometimes you have to work just to get him to talk about sports or the weather.”
“You’ve known him since high school, is that right?”
“Right,” Casement said. “Senior year at Lafayette High. His family moved over there from Moraga the summer before. He didn’t have any friends, never made friends easy. Funny, in a way, that the two of us ever hooked up.”
“How so?”
“I was a jock back then-football, baseball. One of the cool crowd, lots of chicks, always partying. I didn’t study much and my grades got so low I came close to being declared academically ineligible partway through football season. Jim… well, he was the nerd type. Smart, real smart. His best subjects were my worst: history, math. So I asked him to help me out, and he did.”
“Tutored you.”
“That’s it. Once we got to know each other, spent some time together, we hit it off. The old opposites thing, I guess. He was never easy to talk to, but once you got past his… what’s the word?”
“Reticence?”
“Yeah, reticence. Once you got past that he still didn’t say much, but what he did say made sense. He helped me and I helped him. He’d always been a loner, shy, still a virgin in his senior year.” Casement grinned. “I took care of that little problem for him. Got him some dates, got him laid more than once before graduation.”
“Did he ever say anything about his childhood?”
“You mean what happened with his friend’s parents? No. Never. I asked him about it once, and he just wouldn’t deal with it.”
“How did you find out?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Casement said. “It wasn’t a secret or anything and I guess somebody mentioned it-my old man, maybe, he was always going on about violence in our society.”
“Do you know if Troxell ever talked to his wife about what happened?”
“If he did, she never mentioned it to me. You think that could have something to do with the way Jim’s acting now?”
“It’s possible. Do you?”
“Well… it happened so long ago, more than twenty-five years.”
“Some people never get over that kind of shock.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
“A few develop a kind of morbid preoccupation with death,” I said.
“Is that right? How so?”
“They think about it constantly. Read and talk about it. Develop obsessive interests in violent crime. Attend funerals, even the funerals of strangers.”
“None of that sounds like Jim.”
“He never expressed or exhibited any particular interest in violent crime?”
“Not to me. I mean, the subject’s come up, sure, how can you avoid it these days? He hates all that crazy shit, same as I do. But he puts the blame on the wrong horse. Only serious argument we ever had was over gun control.”
“So you’d say he’s strongly antiviolence?”
“Absolutely. Bleeding heart, victims’ rights type of guy.”
Like me. But all I said was, “Nonviolent himself.”
“Oh, sure. Jim wouldn’t hurt a fly. At least…” Casement paused. “What about the idea of suicide?”
“What about it?”
“That’s another sign of preoccupation with death, isn’t it?”
“It can be. Why?”
“Well, something Jim said to me when we were having the gun control argument. I just remembered it. I said suppose somebody attacked him, could he kill in self-defense. He said, ‘No, the only person I could ever kill is myself.’ ”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“You bet I did. Something like ‘Don’t tell me you’ve thought of knocking yourself off.’ He said yes, he’d entertained the notion. Those were his exact words, entertained the notion. He meant it, too. He wasn’t kidding around.”
“Did he elaborate, give you a reason?”
“Uh-uh. I said, man, you’ve got everything to live for-beautiful wife, money, nice home, great job-why would you ever think about a thing like that? He just shook his head and changed the subject.”
“Did it ever come up again?”
“No,” Casement said. “Christ, that couldn’t be it, could it? What’s going on with him now?”
“Let’s hope not.”
“But if it is, why now all of a sudden?”
“There’d have to be some kind of provocation,” I said. “Even people who’ve thought about suicide over a long period of time don’t suddenly decide to do away with themselves.”
“You mean something has to push them into it.”
“A trigger, yes.”
“What would do it?”
“Severe shock, emotional upheaval.”
“Something he saw? Like when he was a kid?”
“Why do you say that?”
Casement said, “A few weeks ago, right around the time he started acting weird, I stopped by their house and he was even quieter than usual. I asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘I saw something, Drew.’ I asked him what’d he seen. He wouldn’t say. All he’d say was ‘I wish to God I’d gone straight home that night.’ ”
“Those were his exact words?”
“Near as I can remember.”
“He give you any idea which night he meant?”
“No.”
“Or where he was or had been that night?”
“Uh-uh. Just closed right up again.”
“But you’re sure the conversation took place a few weeks ago? Late March, early April?”
“Had to’ve been right around the first of April.”
“Was his wife there at the time?”
“Not in the room with us, no.”
“Did you say anything to her about what he’d said?”
“I meant to, but I didn’t. Didn’t seem all that important, went right out of my mind.”
“And he didn’t bring it up again?”
“I’d remember if he had.”
11
TAMARA
Horace called the office again at one thirty.
“Tamara, listen to me, please. I didn’t sleep much last night, haven’t been able to stop thinking about how we left things yesterday. I can’t stand the idea of you hating me, after everything we had together. Can’t we-”
That was as far as she let him get before she banged his ear.
She thought about putting the answering machine on in case he called back. Didn’t do it. Didn’t want to hear his voice again. Damn the man! He’d gone and hooked up with Mary from Rochester, he was through with Tamara from San Francisco and she was through with him, why couldn’t he just leave her be so she could get on with her life?
Until his call, some numbness had started to set in. Hadn’t been an easy morning with Bill hanging in the office, giving her the kind of looks Pop used to-you couldn’t keep anything from that man, not for long. Word! What she needed today wasn’t paternal understanding, what she needed was to be left alone. Better after he went on out. Not as much trouble concentrating, able to throw herself deep enough into her work to keep her mind off Horace and the sorry state of her love life. Everything was humming along on the professional side-they’d have to hire another investigator if their caseload got much heavier-and then all of a sudden the personal side turns to shit. And wasn’t that always the way with her? Get one part straightened out and running smooth, and bang, something else screws up. Like she was cursed or something. Like somebody somewhere kept making voodoo Tamara dolls and sticking pins in them.