Subject went home, straight home, following the identical route he’d taken to Wisconsin Street. Runyon parked in the same place he’d waited earlier. It was only after the last of the house lights went off upstairs, half an hour later, that he was satisfied Troxell was in for the night.
Home himself then, a short drive up Nineteenth Avenue to his apartment on Ortega-four nondescript furnished rooms on the third floor of an equally nondescript stucco building. He hadn’t eaten since a late lunch, hadn’t been hungry enough to bother before tonight’s surveillance. He made himself a cup of tea, found half a container of Chinese takeout in the refrigerator. Colleen’s drink, Colleen’s favorite food. His, too, now. In some way he didn’t quite understand he needed to maintain the patterns the two of them had followed when she was alive. Continuity, maybe. Or a way to hang on to the hope that she was still alive, somewhere, on some other plane of existence, even though he wasn’t religious and did not really believe in either an afterlife or immortality.
He ate at the dinette table in the kitchen, then added hot water to his teacup and took it into the front room. At the secretary desk in there was a copy of the reverse city directory; the agency had a copy, but he liked having his own for situations like the one tonight. The occupants of the blue Stick Victorian had a listed phone number and the reverse directory identified them as Ralph and Justine Linden. He booted up his laptop, wrote out a detailed eight-paragraph report on the evening’s surveillance that included the property owners’ names, and e-mailed it to Tamara.
6
JAKE RUNYON
Olivet Cemetery, Colma.
Troxell’s second stop on Thursday morning. His first had been the florist shop on West Portal that Bill had followed him to the day before, where he’d picked up a large, white-flowered wreath. He must have been a good customer; there’d been a CLOSED sign on the shop’s front door and he’d had to knock to gain admittance. Then he’d driven straight out Nineteenth Avenue to the 280 Freeway and on down to Colma.
Overcast morning, cold, damp from thin streamers of blowing fog. The weather and the early hour combined to keep the mazelike grounds mostly deserted. Only one other car was parked in the section Troxell went to, two-thirds of the way in-a maroon Datsun, no sign of its occupant. Subject parked his BMW a short distance behind the Datsun; Runyon pulled up fifty yards away. He watched Troxell take the wreath from the trunk and carry it in among the graves, moving as if he were passing through a narrow tunnel, eyes front all the way; he seemed to have no interest or awareness in what lay behind or to either side of him. Man with a single-minded purpose-to reach the end of the tunnel and whatever waited there.
For that reason, Runyon followed more closely than he would have otherwise, on a zigzag course among the headstones and obelisks and wooden markers. There were no paths here, all the graves set into barbered lawn shaded by cypress, yew, and palm trees. The grass was slick with dew, and he was careful of his footing. He could feel the cold and damp stiffening his bad leg. Nearly six years since the car accident that had fractured the tibia in three places, forced him to endure two rounds of surgery, and then to take a partial disability retirement from the Seattle PD, and he still had twinges and the slight limp in cold, damp weather. But it wasn’t much of a cross compared to what had happened to Ron Cain, behind the wheel when their high-speed fugitive pursuit turned deadly. If he closed his eyes he could still see, as if the image had been burned into his retinas, what was left of his partner lying crushed and bloody inside all that twisted metal.
Troxell had been to this part of the cemetery before, more than once-evident from the fact that he neither slowed his pace nor glanced at any of the markers he passed. He knew which grave he wanted and he went straight to it. Two things set it apart from its neighbors. One was the headstone-larger and taller than most, made of shiny new white marble, with gold lettering and filigree work. Expensive. The other thing was the number of wreaths and bouquets that draped the grave and covered the lower section of the stone. More than half a dozen, all of them of real flowers, not the artificial variety that decorated most of the other burial plots; some fresh, some starting to wilt, one spray of white carnations that had turned brown and brittle.
Troxell transferred the dead carnations to a nearby trash receptacle, then carefully placed the new wreath where the carnations had lain. When he was satisfied, he straightened and stood stiffly, unmoving, his head bowed as if he might be praying. He stayed like that for a long time, the fog wisps swirling around him, as oblivious to the cold as he was to his surroundings.
Runyon was so intent on Troxell and the gravesite that he didn’t see the woman until she walked into the periphery of his vision.
His first look at her was brief and indefinite; she came at an angle from his right, and she was wearing a bulky coat, a muffler, and a knitted cap that obscured much of her bent head. He paid some heed to her when he realized she was heading in Troxell’s direction, enough to tell that she was young, long-legged, red-haired. But she didn’t have his full attention until she approached the grave where the subject stood and halted next to him.
Her presence surprised Troxell; she said something that made him jerk, swing half around. Runyon was moving by then, on the same trajectory. The woman spoke again, but there was enough wind sound to block out the words. Subject’s head wagged; his reply caused her to reach out and pluck at the sleeve of his coat. He recoiled as if she’d tried to strike him, said something to her in a raised voice. Part of it carried to Runyon, the words “I’m sorry.” Then Troxell spun away from her and hurried back toward the road, bypassing Runyon in a blind rush. The woman stayed where she was by the grave, looking after him-her head raised now, the muffler down off her mouth and chin.
Runyon’s first clear look at her was a glance that immediately morphed into a rigid stare. Jolting sensation inside him; his chest tightened, his breath came short. Momentary confusion, a feeling of disorientation, ran James Troxell right out of his head.
Colleen.
She looked like Colleen.
From a distance, in the hazy morning light, she might have been Colleen.
He started toward her, a reflex action so abrupt it brought a twist of pain in his bad leg. In that same moment she moved, too, cutting away across the lawn. “Wait!” she called after Troxell. “Wait!” But he neither slowed nor turned his head, just kept fast-walking to where he’d parked his BMW.
Runyon cut ahead to the flower-banked grave, paused there just long enough to read the inscription on the marble headstone.
IN MEMORY OF
ERIN DUMONT
1980–2005
“In the midst of Life there is Death”
The woman seemed to have realized that she was running across gravesites instead of in the grass strips that separated them; he saw her falter, then slow and shift her route sideways. Troxell was already inside the BMW, a hundred yards away. There was enough time for Runyon to get to the Ford and reestablish pursuit, but he didn’t do it. The woman had halted next to a marble bench, and when Troxell pulled away she sank down on it, unmindful of the fact that it was a memorial rather than a public bench and wet with mist besides. She lowered her head into the splayed fingers of one hand.
Runyon approached her slowly. She didn’t seem to know he was there, even after he stopped in front of her, until he said, “Excuse me, miss.” Then her head snapped up and she blinked at him.