No introduction, just “a friend”; she didn’t even look at the man as she spoke. He dipped his chin once, sharply, but said nothing, made no attempt to shake hands. He was in his mid-thirties, sandy-haired, well set up and pretty-boy handsome except for a muscle quirk at one of corner of his mouth that gave the impression of a perpetual sneer in the making.
Runyon said, “Your brother’s inside, Ms. Beckett.”
“Is he rational? I mean, I understand you talked to him and he told you some wild stories he made up.”
Is he rational, not is he all right. She seemed less worried about the kid’s welfare than about what he might have revealed.
“Calm enough. Withdrawn.”
“But not high… drugged?”
“No. No sign of drugs on the premises.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Kenny’s much easier to handle when he’s sober and tractable.” Tractable. Another less-than-concerned word.
Runyon was not about to argue the alleged drug-use issue with her. He shrugged and said nothing.
“I’ll get him,” she said. “You don’t need to wait any longer.”
“I’ll just make sure he goes along peaceably.”
“She told you you don’t need to wait,” the sandy-haired man said. “If Cory can’t handle him, I can.”
“I’ll wait anyway.”
Sandy-hair seemed to want to make an issue of it. The Beckett woman said, “It’s all right, Frank,” smiled at him the way you might smile at an overly aggressive pet, laid her smoky eyes on Runyon for three or four seconds, and then moved on past him to the door.
He stood watching the shack. Sandy-hair, Frank, paced back and forth on the weedy ground, his hands thrust into the pockets of a light jacket. The electrical wire strung in from the highway, empty now of birds, thrummed in the wind; that was the only sound until Kenneth Beckett let out a cry from inside and then began shouting.
“No, no, I won’t, why can’t you leave me alone!”
Runyon started toward the shack, but Frank cut over in front of him and grabbed his arm. “Stay out of it,” he said. “She can handle him.”
“Let go of my arm.”
“Yeah? Suppose I don’t?”
Runyon jerked loose, started around the man. Combatively Frank moved to block him. They did a little two-step shuffling dance that ended with Frank trying to shove him backward, saying, “Don’t mess with me, man, I’ll knock you on your ass-”
He half choked on the last word because by then Runyon, in two fast moves, had his arm locked down against his side with forearm and wrist grips. That brought them up tight against each other, their faces a couple of inches apart. Frank worked to struggle free, making growling noises in his throat, but Runyon held him immobile for half a dozen beats before he let go. When he stepped back, it was just far enough to set himself in case Frank had any more aggressive notions.
He didn’t. Just glared and rubbed his arm without quite making eye contact again. Runyon had dealt with his type any number of times while on the Seattle PD and since. A testosterone-heavy hothead, semi-tough until he came up against somebody tougher, more assertive. When that happened, his temper cooled fast and more often than not he’d back down.
Runyon put a little more distance between them before he turned toward the shack. The yelling had stopped; it was quiet in there now. But he went to the door anyway, shoved it open.
The two of them, brother and sister, were standing next to the table, close enough for her to have been putting low-voiced words into his ear. Both looked at Runyon in the open doorway. Kenneth Beckett’s face was moist with sweat, but she’d managed to calm him down except for little twitches in his hands, as if they were being manipulated by invisible strings. He looked docile enough in a resigned, trapped way.
“It’s all right, Mr. Runyon,” the Beckett woman said. “He’ll come with me now. Won’t you, Kenny?”
He shook his head, twice, but the word that came out of his mouth was, “Yes.”
“But you’d better change your clothes first. So you don’t get mud all over my car.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“How did he get so muddy?” she asked Runyon.
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“No. He wouldn’t say.”
“He slipped and fell on the riverbank.”
“The riverbank? What happened?”
“Minor panic attack when I got here. He ran out, I ran after him.”
Slight frown. “You didn’t hit him or anything?”
“I don’t operate that way, Ms. Beckett.”
“He never touched me,” the kid said. “It was my fault. My fault. It’s always my fault.”
She slipped her arm around his shoulders. “That’s enough, now. Go ahead and change your clothes, and I’ll pack the rest of your things.” Then, to Runyon, “We’ll be ready in a few minutes. It’s quite all right for you to leave now.”
No, it wasn’t. He backed out and shut the door to give them privacy. Frank was moving around behind him, walking off his anger and humiliation in tight pacing turns. Runyon went to the Ford, backed it up far enough to allow the van clearance, then switched off the engine and got out to stand next to the driver’s door. He didn’t move, watching the sandy-haired hothead continue to pace, until the Becketts came out five minutes later.
Kenneth Beckett balked when he saw Frank. “Why’d you have to bring him?” he said to his sister.
“I explained that to you inside, Kenny. Somebody has to drive your van back to the city.”
“Not him, not Chaleen.”
She seemed not to like the fact that he’d used Frank’s last name. But all she said was, “Would you rather ride with him than me?”
“No!”
“Then please don’t make any more fuss.”
Runyon moved over to where the two of them stood. Cory Beckett said, “Really, Mr. Runyon. Why are you still here?”
“Because my job’s not finished until you’re on your way. And because I have the keys to the van.”
He handed them to her. Frank Chaleen came stomping over, the incipient sneer fully formed now, and took the key ring out of her hand. He said to Runyon, “I hope we cross paths again sometime, buddy. Things’ll be different then.”
“I doubt that.”
Chaleen stalked away to the van. Kenneth Beckett said to the middle buttons of Runyon’s shirt, “I didn’t mean what I said before. About Cory, about the necklace… I made it all up. I was kind of disoriented, I didn’t know what I was saying.”
Runyon said nothing. The kid’s words had a dull, recited cadence, like lines delivered by an amateur actor. Coached, he was thinking, as Cory Beckett led her brother to the Camaro. Part of what she’d been whispering into her brother’s ear inside the shack. That, along with Frank Chaleen’s presence and attitude, made him even more convinced that what Beckett had told him earlier was the truth.
7
“She’s a real piece of work, all right,” Tamara said when I finished giving her a short rundown of my interview with Cory Beckett. The woman’s apparent involvement with Andrew Vorhees didn’t surprise her any more than it had me. “Whatever she’s up to, you can bet it’s more than just being Vorhees’ mistress.”
“If she is his mistress.”
“Oh, yeah. Her name’s on the lease for that Snob Hill apartment, but the monthly rent’s fifty-five hundred. She came out of her marriages pretty well fixed, but not well enough to be living it up without some extra juice. Up until six months ago she and Kenny shared a small apartment in Cow Hollow that rented for about two K.”
“So you don’t think she could have afforded Abe Melikian’s five-thousand bond commission and whatever collateral she had to put up for the rest.”
“The five K, maybe, but what do you bet Vorhees supplied the collateral. There’s blog rumors he’s been keeping a woman on the side. Dude’s not exactly what you’d call discreet.”